CONFUSED ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?

Join the crowd it seems, if the members are made up politicians from all levels of government in Australia. Perhaps in this instance the politicians accurately represent the population.

70 per cent of the 300 politicians surveyed by the University of Queensland agreed that climate change was one of Australia’s major challenges. Margot O’Neil reported for ABC TV’s Lateline that while the majority of respondents identified that climate change was happening, they were uncertain about the consequences and the key indicators, such as rises in global mean temperature.

There was some cognitive dissonance involved:

For instance, 75 per cent of politicians believe the Great Barrier Reef is threatened by global warming, but only 55 per cent agree that ocean ecosystems are also threatened, even though the Great Barrier Reef is part of the ocean’s ecosystems.

I suppose this confusion, that perhaps I might share, reflects the fact that the Great Barrier Reef has iconic status and is generally not presented in the media in the frame of the ocean’s ecosystems. The Great Barrier Reef has special significance, and is therefore used to illustrate the case without a wider context.

They also did not understand the significance of 2 degree Celsius rise in mean global temperature, but I think it hard to realize that a seemingly small rise in temperature across the globe can have such an effect. After all the temperature variation in the climate system is far larger. Unless, as I did the other day, read about the effect of nighttime temperature increases on stable crops such as rice and corn productivity it is not likely to have an appreciation of the impact of temperature. Scientists who typically have high level training in physics and chemistry sometimes underestimate the lack of familiarity with the concepts that we might have learnt about 40 or more years ago, but more in reference to an experimental rather than a natural observation context.

What is really interesting is the difference in perception of anthropogenic causality of global warming according to party membership. It seems the PR effort has been disproportionately successful on Liberal-National politicians. In retrospect this may explain why Malcolm Turnbull failed in his leadership. Margot O’Neil reports:

Asked whether the planet was warming because of human activity producing greenhouse gases, 98 per cent of Greens said “yes” compared to 89 per cent of Labor, 57 per cent of non-aligned politicians and 38 per cent of Liberal-National politicians.

Throughout the survey, many more Liberal-National politicians answered “don’t know” or “uncertain”.

“What you’re seeing is greater certainty and belief on the part of the Labor Party politicians and more knowledge about the specifics of climate change, whereas for the Liberal-National Party politicians it’s greater uncertainty, and that uncertainty is creeping through in terms of being able to respond to specific questions about climate change that tap into the detail of climate change,” Dr Fielding said.

Only 56 per cent of surveyed politicians trust the world’s leading climate science body, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), although nearly 70 per cent said they were greatly influenced by what scientists said.

But again, that depended on party affiliation. Ninety-eight per cent of Greens said they were greatly influenced by scientists compared to 85 per cent of Labor politicians, 54 per cent of non-aligned politicians and 44 per cent of Liberal-National politicians.

It would have been interesting to find out the sources of information that politicians accessed for information about global warming, and whether they studied science and were actively interested in scientific subjects. The PR people probably know where the plant the information/disinformation to have the maximum impact and return for their investment. Perhaps we should all do more pop tests to get out misconceptions, inconsistencies sorted, and then to realize the limits of our understanding.