Climate change sceptics aren't all alike, so don't tar them with the same brush

Denying the sceptics a voice on the IPCC report is surely bad for democracy and bad for science

The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/09/climate-change-sceptics-not-all-alike

Last week my friend and onetime colleague, the UK government's former climate adviser John Ashton, berated the BBC for giving Australian climate sceptic Bob Carter undue airtime in its reporting of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The geneticist Steve Jones also weighed in, reminding the corporation not to fall into the trap of "false balance" by treating the views of sceptics equally alongside mainstream climate researchers.

The nub of their argument is that science isn't like politics. In the latter, journalists have a responsibility to reflect opposing views. But once a scientific debate is settled, it is pointless and irresponsible for the public broadcaster to air a discredited point of view.

There's no denying the validity of this argument, or its force. Very few journalists (at least in the developed world) would give space to those claiming HIV doesn't cause Aids, to flat-Earthers, or those who believe that vaccines make us ill. In the same way it is right that we turn off the microphone to those who say that human-induced climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the shadowy forces of world government at meetings of the Bilderberg group.

But those of us in the business of science and environment journalism need to be careful that we don't overstep the mark: sceptics are not all climate deniers. Scepticism is complex and encompasses a range of opinions, many of which are perfectly valid, even if, personally, we don't agree with them. Moreover, shutting out dissenting voices is a disservice to our audiences, to institutions such as the IPCC who benefit from the scrutiny, and ultimately doesn't help engender much trust in institutions of government.

Much of science is like politics. Like politics, science teems with argument, with dissent, anger and plenty of ego. Only we rarely get to hear the noise around science because it happens far from the public, mostly in peer-to-peer conversations, or in the coded language of hard-to-understand learned journals.

Much science journalism doesn't help, in part because it isn't like political journalism. The culture of a lot of science journalism is to report on the final outcomes of a scientific process, like news of Nobel prizes, the excitement of a new discovery, or the announcement of an IPCC report. We are much less good at following and reporting on a scientific process while it happens, with all its twists, dead-ends, and occasional dramas.

Those of us who do keep an eye on the IPCC know that how it works isn't always pretty and that, for all the talk of consensus, there's always been plenty of debate on the inside, and, yes, plenty of scepticism, only some of which reaches the outside world.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, the sceptics included developing country representatives. They argued that, as a UN body, the IPCC's membership was much too dominated by the interests and values of countries in the northern hemisphere and that its reports were unreflective of the scientific literature outside of Europe and North America. This wasn't a comfortable message, but the IPCC's then leadership, led by its chair, Robert Watson, took it on the chin and vowed to do something about it.

Almost a decade later, sceptics of a different hue campaigned against India's nomination for the IPCC chair, Rajendra Pachauri. These days Pachauri is the subject of virulent attacks from sceptics from the right. Then, his candidacy was supported by the administration of George W Bush. And then of course we had "climategate".

Coverage of these and other debates within the body undoubtedly made life uncomfortable for some of its leaders, but it strengthened the IPCC internally and helped media audiences appreciate that science isn't always a linear business, nor a series of revealed truths to be announced periodically at press conferences.

And, yes, while much of the science of climate change is settled, or on the way to being settled, there remains plenty of argument about its impacts, and about how to deal with it.

The science of the safety of genetically modified organisms is, likewise, mostly settled, too. To the best of my knowledge, eating GM foods does not cause death or disease. But there remain important questions, unrelated to biology, about whether GM has a future in world agriculture. There are eminent scientists and economists asking such questions and we would never seek to censor their views.

In the same way, there is much about climate change that is up for grabs. There is debate about its impacts at the local scale; and also much debate about the costs of taking action, with many eminent voices on both sides. It is only right therefore that, when the next two IPCC reports are published (on climate impacts and climate economics), journalists continue to reflect the diversity of opinion that exists and not search for a false consensus.

• Ehsan Masood is editor of Research Fortnight and presented Science: Right or Left? for BBC Radio 4