The Interacademy Council of Scientists: Not at movie director James Cameron's level

There may be no issue where science and politics have been more thoroughly conflated than climate change. Rhetoric and politics have too often masqueraded as science. The last few days provided some text book examples of how acute this problem has become.

Today, the Interacademy Council, a group of scientists created in 2000 to help assess scientific information for policymakers, released their assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report. The assessment came in the wake of a number of scandals about the inaccuracy of some of the claims made in that document.

For example, when a claim in the 2007 report, stated that Himalayan glaciers might be gone in 35 years, was found to be unsupported, the head of the IPCC Rajendra Pauchari scoffed at the criticism. Pauchari called it "voodoo science," and "told Indian television that he believed attacks on him were being orchestrated by companies facing lower profits because of actions against climate change recommended by the IPCC." Ultimately, Pauchari had to admit that the number was wrong and that it had no scientific backing.

When the Interacademy Council looked at that and other claims in the IPCC report, they found a number of additional problems. One was how the IPCC characterizes potential impacts. For instance, they critiqued the following statement:

In Central and Eastern Europe, summer precipitation is projected to decrease, causing higher water stress. Health risks due to heatwaves are projected to increase. Forest productivity is expected to decline and the frequency of peatland fires to increase. (High Confidence, IPCC 2007b, p 14).

The Council noted that this statement is virtually meaningless. They said:

There is no indication about when these events are expected to occur or under what conditions. What changes in climate would give rise to these results? What is assumed about adaptation? It could be argued that, given the imprecision of the statement, it has an 80 percent chance of being true under some set of circumstances.

Despite being scientifically meaningless, this is exactly the type of statement politicians use to justify policy choices, implying there is high confidence that risk occurs. The ambiguity about the causes is actually helpful to politicians because it gives them wide latitude to choose the policy they prefer.

The heavy politicization of climate change also leads to some rather foolish behavior. Witness movie director James Cameron. In a bit of bravado, Cameron told a group earlier this year "I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads." As you can imagine there were many who were happy to take him up on his offer. After a fair amount of pressure, Cameron agreed to debate at a recent environmental conference. Ann McElhinney, producer of the documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong," a film that highlights the risks of a thoughtless rush to global warming regulation was one of the people who was to debate Cameron. She picks up the story from there:

He wanted the conference to end with a debate on climate change. Cameron would be flanked with two scientists. It would be 90 minutes long. It would be streamed live on the internet.They hoped the debate would attract a lot of media coverage. "We are delighted to have Fox News, Newsmax, The Washington Times and anyone else you'd like. The more the better," one of James Cameron's organizers said in an email. It looked like James Cameron really was a man of his word who would get to take on the skeptics he felt were so endangering humanity. Everyone on our side agreed with their conditions. The debate was even listed on the AREDAY agenda.

But then as the debate approached James Cameron's side started changing the rules. They wanted to change their team. We agreed. They wanted to change the format to less of a debate—to "a roundtable". We agreed. Then they wanted to ban our cameras from the debate. We could have access to their footage. We agreed. Bizarrely, for a brief while, the worlds most successful film maker suggested that no cameras should be allowed-that sound only should be recorded. We agreed. Then finally James Cameron, who so publicly announced that he "wanted to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out," decided to ban the media from the shoot out. He even wanted to ban the public. The debate/roundtable would only be open to those who attended the conference. No media would be allowed and there would be no streaming on the internet. No one would be allowed to record it in any way. We all agreed to that.

And then, yesterday, just one day before the debate, his representatives sent an email that Mr. "shoot it out " Cameron no longer wanted to take part. The debate was canceled.

Why would Cameron duck the debate? In part because his proclamations about climate change had more to do with his image among his peers than a genuine search for scientific truth. Politics trumped science. When it became clear that science was not his forte, he backed out and his spokesperson even offered a very unscientific and elitist explanation: "[The other debaters are] not at James Cameron’s level to debate, and that’s why that didn’t happen. Cameron should be debating someone who is similar to his stature in our society."

When the head of the IPCC resorts to political attacks on opponents, and pop-culture icons use their "stature in society" to move themselves beyond criticism, science has been set aside in favor of eco-fads and political power.

If we truly care about the risks of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, we'll reject the damage being done to science by politics and pop culture and honestly address the risk of climate change.