Winning the War of Climate Communication. Is Greta Thunberg the Memetic Weapon we Needed?

Who speaks on behalf of young people about climate? Greta Thunberg does. She is the embodiment of the concept that what matters in communication is not the message but the messenger. Only a believable messenger can pass a believable message. And she is believable: she has a direct stake on the issue, it is HER future she is defending, just as the future of the people of her age. She is defending her future from old people who think only of their immediate satisfaction. They are the virus destroying the planet, she is the cure.

Years ago, I think it was in the mid-1980s in Berkeley, I was berated at length and in colorful terms (to say the least) by a young mother for not having buckled up her 4 years old daughter, a classmate of my son, while I was transporting her in my car. As partial justification for my inexcusable wickedness in that occasion, I can say that, as far as I can remember, at that time there was no mandatory seat belt law in California (and also that the car I drove at that time, a Dodge Dart, was so old that I think it didn't have seat belts in the back seats!). But never mind that:  I was wrong and she was right.

The story of that day in Berkeley came to my mind more than once in the debate on climate change. You see, today we tend to think as obvious that seat belts are saintly things that save lives. But it was not so obvious in the 1970s and in the 1980s: we forgot about that, but there was a strong debate on the matter with some people maintaining that there was no proof that seat belts actually saved lives. According to a 2006 article by John Adams, risk expert of the University College London, mandating the use of seat belts in 18 countries resulted in either no change or actually a net increase in road accident deaths.

Think about that using the eyes of those people who deny the validity of climate science: you could ask what proof do we have that seat belts make you safer? Of course, we can play as much as we like with crash tests using sophisticated dummies, but hey, those are just models! You know how these debates go over the Web, once they start, they never arrive at a conclusion. And nothing is done.

So, why do we wear seat belts but don't do anything about climate change? It is because there are people like the lady who berated me in Berkeley who want everybody to wear seat belts. They are parents, siblings, spouses, they have a stake in the safety of the members of their families, they don't care so much about subtleties, demonstrations, and statistics, they can see that if their child is belted she won't smash into the windshield with her head in case of a collision. If you argue that they are wrong, they will say you are a monster (as I was told I was, that time in Berkeley) and they'll be perfectly right. It is because these people have argued, pushed, and worked in favor of seat belts that today there are mandatory seat belts laws.

Now, about climate change: who is arguing about people's safety? Mostly, scientists. And there lies the snag: scientists do not have a direct stake in the issue of climate. Most scientists, old or young, seem to be interested mostly in their carers. And if the climate situation is so bad as scientists say they are, why do they still take planes to attend their silly international meetings? Scientists are not here to save the planet: they are there to write papers, speak at conferences, teach formulas to their students, they are just boring people.

In practice, scientists are the worst possible messengers to pass the climate change message. Not surprisingly, they haven't had too much success, as we all know. Imagine that if -- that day in Berkeley -- instead of a young woman berating me I had been facing a white-haired scientist showing me data and diagrams. I am a polite person, but I am sure I could have told him something not so polite, instead of the apologies I told to the mother of my son's friend.

That's the problem, and it can be solved only by a change of paradigm in the memetic struggle: We need to change the message, but more than that we need to change the messenger. And there we are: Greta Thunberg. You see the difference? She has a stake in the issue: it is her future that's being jeopardized by old men, the future of her generation. She has a right to speak, she has a duty to speak, she has the force to speak, and she does that. And the message she carries is extremely strong. It is a meme that diffuses in the memesphere and even the dark forces of denial will have a hard time stopping it.

Of course, it is not enough to be young, to be intelligent, to be motivated to succeed in this task. The memetic war is no child's play. It is a deadly struggle, even though, normally, only virtually so. But even a smart young lady as Greta Thunberg needs to be supported - in a certain way "weaponized." And that's what has been done by the people of "wedonthavetime." She is not just a different messenger, she carries a different message: it is "I want you to panic" -- it is a much powerful message than the edulcorated version carried by scientists ("see, folks, we don't want to trouble you but, well, there might be a little problem...").

Greta Thunberg is now an awesome memetic weapon to fight the battle against the dark forces of ignorance and of denial.

We still have a chance.




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How to neutralize Greta Thunberg. I think that today just the thought of Greta Thunberg scares the bejesus out of the people of the anti-science crowd but I am sure they are already thinking of strategies to fight her. So far, the best they could concoct has been to ignore her, but some kind of smear campaign is likely in the near future. It was already done 50 years ago to silence Rachel Carson, the author of "Silent Spring" by defining her a "histerical priestess of nature". Already a few days ago, Ms. Angela Merkel hinted that Greta Thunberg is part of a hybrid warfare attack waged by the Russians against Europe: you can't imagine what these evil Russians are capable of! And, of course, if Ms. Thunberg makes the smallest slip in one of her speeches that can be twisted and packaged in order to make her look racist or anti-semitic, then she is dead in the water. But the most effective campaign against Greta Thunberg might come from her potential allies, people on "the left" who think she is not radical enough and that the very fact that she is helped by PR experts is an insult to the intelligence of humankind. Among this nefarious band, the deranged people belonging to the NTHE (near term human extinction) sect are the worse. They believe that we are going to go extinct soon anyway, so there is no need to do anything and we can continue to live as we did before and so Ms. Thunberg and her ilk should just stay quiet, go home, and die in silence. They are very vocal and could do real damage, fortunately, so far they are a tiny minority. 

Chasing Ice: the power of shutting down climate science deniers

Obviously, the images of this gigantic glacier calving not prove anything in themselves. In this clip, you have to go to minute 4:20 to see a quantitative assessment of how the ice melting rate has accelerated in a century or so. And, yet, if you go to the YouTube page of the clip, you see something unexpected. It may be just an impression of mine, but it seems to me that the comments of deniers are few and unable to hijack the discussion; as, instead, it normally happens every time you try to argue for the scientific basis of climate science. In short, these images are not only impressive, they are also effective in driving home a basic point: global warming is changing our world; it is changing it deeply, it is doing that now.

Most of us do not think in equations. We tend to think, rather, in terms of images and associations. And we believe in something when we see it happening, not when it comes a prediction of some complex mathematical model. As climate change progresses, it becomes more and more evident: you can see its effects around you with your eyes; just as you can see with your eyes this giant glacier calving.

So, if you have a chance, try to watch the whole movie, "Chasing Ice" by James Balog. It is beautiful, incredible, eerie, and terrifying. We need more movies like this one!


h/t Gloria Germani

A clash of epistemologies: why the debate on climate change is going nowhere.

(From Wikipedia) Epistemology (ἐπιστήμη, episteme-knowledge, understanding; λόγος, logos-study of) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge^[1][2] and is also referred to as "theory of knowledge". Put concisely, it is the study of knowledge and justified belief. It questions what knowledge is and how it can be acquired, and the extent to which knowledge pertinent to any given subject or entity can be acquired. (image source)

A few weeks ago, someone barreled into the comment section of a post on climate change on the blog of the Italian Society of Chemistry (SCI) with a series of attacks against climate science and climate scientists. The ensuing clash was all in Italian but, if you follow the debate on climate, you know very well how these things go. The newcomer monopolized the discussion by repeating the usual legends; climate has always been changed, there has been no temperature increase during the past 15 years, there is no proof of the human effect on climate, and so on. And you can imagine how the scientists following the blog reacted. The discussion rapidly degenerated into assorted insults and personal smears, until the moderator closed the comments. That was way too late: the climate science denier emerged as the winner; while the scientists managed to give the impression of being both narrow-minded and sectarian.

It was a classic case of climate trolling, but with one difference. This time, the troll didn't try to hide his identity (as trolls usually do); rather, he came with a name, an address, and a CV. He was Mr. Rinaldo Sorgenti, vice-president of the Italian Coal Industry Association ("Assocarboni"). Mr. Sorgenti's exploits on the SCI blog give us a chance to understand what generates the kind of behavior that we define as "trolling."

So, I am willing to bet that Mr. Sorgenti is NOT a paid disinformer - as he was accused to be in the debate. In other words, he doesn't deny climate science because he is on the payroll of Assocarboni (actually, he maintains that he gets no money for his position of vice-president, but I figure he gets at least a few perks from it). I would also say that not even the opposite holds true: Mr. Sorgenti is not the president of Assocarboni because he is a climate science denier. No, I would bet that denying climate science and being involved in the coal industry are two non-separate and non-separable elements of Mr. Sorgenti's worldview. And this worldview has little or nothing to do with what we call science. Mr. Sorgenti is not a scientist, he doesn't know how the scientific method works or, if he knows, he doesn't believe it works or it is useful for anything. He uses the methods of debate commonly used in the political debate; a method of discussion that we can define as "rhetoric."


Mr. Sorgenti's case is not isolated. Over several years of debate (if we may call it in this way), I came in contact with a number of people who can be defined as "trolls" or "deniers". Most of them (including Mr. Sorgenti) believe (genuinely, I think) that you can use the methods of the political debate to arrive to a conclusion on a complex and difficult scientific field such as climate science; and they resent being shortly dismissed by scientists. Scientists know how much work and study is needed to understand climate science and resent what they saw as superficiality and approximation in the debate. The result is the kind of clash we saw on the SCI blog. It was, if you like, a clash of epistemologies: rhetoric against the scientific method.

As in all clashes of absolutes, debaters think they are speaking the same language and they start from the same assumptions, but they are not. The problem is identified by Adam Dawson on "The Ruminator"in these terms:

..... you have to understand that in America there are two different types of science. There’s science that is profitable for corporations, which is good and righteous and rock solid. That’s the Smartphone, the water heater, the GPS, the 700 channels on the 62 inch flat screen, the boner pills, and so on and so on. And then there’s the science that costs corporations money, which is fraudulent, con-artist mumbo jumbo. Under that second definition are things like climatology, pollution measurements, oceanography, and other disciplines that might fuck up the profit margins of energy producers and manufacturers.

I think Dawson is right on target about the "two different types of science", but the point is not so much that some types science cost corporations money. Science and technology push for change and change often means that someone will lose money, but that doesn't mean that change is impossible. The Internet, for instance, is bankrupting newspapers, but the newspaper lobby doesn't appear to be very effective in stopping the Internet from expanding. Rather, the fundamental point is that scientific fields such as climate science use different methods for gathering data and managing knowledge than, say, the science of solid state devices. It is an epistemological difference: the kind of certainty that can be derived from a well designed laboratory experiment performed on a solid state device is not possible in climate science.

The different epistemological approach becomes really fundamental when it is question to implement a policy based on the result of the models. Climate scientists mostly agree that there is no simple technological remedy to avoid disastrous climate change. Then, what we are proposing is not hard engineering, but some kind of social engineering based on a general consensus that the danger of climate change is real. Now, how do we obtain such a consensus? To start, we need to share the basic assumptions on how the conclusions of climate science are obtained and validated; this is a question of epistemology. And when we deal with social matters, the traditionally accepted methods of attaining knowledge (and consensus) are not based on the scientific method. The debate becomes political, and the methods used for political debates are completely different. As I said, it is a clash of epistemologies.


In many ways, we seem to be learning to use different epistemological methods in the climate debate: have you noticed the claim that there exists a "97% consensus" among scientists on the climate problem? It has had a remarkable impact; considering how rabidly it has been criticized on the deniers' side. But can you think of a single case in the history of science when a scientific controversy has been subjected to a majority vote? Never that I know. In science, we believe that the scientific method is sufficient to arrive at a consensus. Political controversies are a different thing; data and interpretations are much more uncertain; hence the need for a vote. 

I am not saying that science should turn into a political organization. It is already something, however, that we recognize what we are dealing with: it is a political debate, not a scientific one. And we need to recognize that to stiffen up and look offended when someone belittles climate science is not useful. Even worse is to state that someone is a paid disinformer because he is not using the scientific method. We need to be way smarter than that if we want to go somewhere in fighting climate change.

"Recursive Fury:" the reasons of Frontiers' blunder

As you probably know, the scholarly publisher "Frontiers" recently decided to retract an already approved and published paper ("Recursive Fury") on the subject of conspiratorial attitudes in the debate on climate change. This action prompted the resignation of some of Frontiers' editors, including myself, as I described in a previous post. Here, I return to this subject with more details. 

When I was contacted by the staff of "Frontiers" and asked to become "chief editor" with them, I thought it was an excellent idea. I was attracted, first of all, by the fact that the journal was completely "open access," an idea that I have always favored (I was probably one of the first to experiment with open access publishing in chemistry). So, I accepted the offer with considerable enthusiasm and I started to work on a journal (actually a section of a journal) called "Frontiers in Energy Systems and Policy".

Once an editor, I discovered the peculiar structure of the Frontiers system. It is a giant pyramidal scheme where each journal has sub-journals (called "specialties" in Frontiers' jargon). The pyramid extends to the people involved with the scientific editing: it starts with "chief editors" who supervise "chief specialty editors", who supervise "associate editors", who supervise "reviewers". Since each steps involves a growth of a factor 10-20 in the number of people, you can see that each journal of the Frontiers series may involve a few thousand scientists. The whole system may count, probably, tens of thousands of scientists.

Why this baroque structure? The official explanation is that it makes the review process go faster. In this, the pyramidal structure of Frontiers looks somewhat like a military "command and control" system which is, indeed, designed to speed up the communication/action process. Of course, if you enlist as an editor in Frontiers, you are not given orders by the layers above; nevertheless you are continuously pestered by communications and reminders about what you have to do and you are supposed to pass these communications to the layers below you. All these messages do push you to complete your assignments.

But my impression is that the pyramidal structure of Frontiers was not created just for speed; it had a a marketing objective. Surely, involving so many scientists in the process creates an atmosphere of participation which encourages them to submit their papers to the journal and this is where the publisher makes money, of course. This is a strategy typical of pyramidal marketing schemes, such as "multi-level marketing" I cannot prove that the structure of Frontiers was conceived in these terms from the beginning, but, apparently, they are not alien to use aggressive promoting tactics for their business.

As you may imagine, such a complex system brings many problems. First, the plethora of sub-journals makes the whole Frontiers system look like Borges' Chinese "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge" - in short, a mess. Then, in the case of very large systems the problem of control is practically unsolvable: see Reagan's "Star Wars" as an example. Maybe Frontiers is not so complex as the old strategic defense initiative, but the problems are the same. Their Internet site is supposed to manage the activity of thousands (or perhaps tens of thousands) of scientists but, in my experience, it never really worked. And managing the whole system must require a considerable number of permanent staff. As a result, publishing with "Frontiers" doesn't come cheap.

So, after nearly one year of work with Frontiers, I was growing more and more perplexed. I had this feeling of being just a cog in a giant machine that didn't work very well and which had the only purpose of making money for the top layers of the pyramid. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with the idea of making money in the publishing business: absolutely not. It is also clear to me that if the publisher is a commercial enterprise, then it is their right to decide what to publish and what not to publish. The way Frontiers behaved with "Recursive Fury" shows this attitude in a crystal clear manner. Their management listened only to their lawyers and they took the decision that involved the lowest financial risk for them. It was not just an occasional blunder, it was the consequence of the decisional structure of the publisher.

Once this point was clear, it appeared also clear to me what the problem was: granted that a commercial publisher can publish what they want, who defends science (and in particular climate science) against special interest groups, lobbies, assorted anti-science groups and single madmen? You can't ask to do that to a commercial enterprise which is (correctly) focused on profit. But you can ask why so many scientists should give their time and their work for free to a commercial enterprise which doesn't appear to be really interested in defending science. At this point, my choice was obvious. I resigned as an editor of "Frontiers." Others did the same for similar reasons.

I hope that these notes help clarify my position in this story. As I said in my previous note, my resignation had nothing to do with the virtues (or the defects) of the paper titled "Recursive Fury." I am not qualified to make a judgment in that field and, anyway, this is not the point. The point I wanted to make - and I hope it is understood - is that we have to react against the climate of intimidation which is engulfing science, and in particular climate science. This climate of intimidation takes many forms and the case of "Recursive Fury" shows that it has now reached also scientific publishing. The problem, here, is not with a specific publisher. It is that we are stuck with a century old model of communication: expensive and ineffective and, worse, easily subverted by special interest groups (on this point, see for instance this post by Dana Nuccitelli).

So, what can we do? Initially, open access seemed to be a good idea to improve on the publishing process, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it may be causing more harm than good. In addition of having generated hundreds of low quality "predatory publishers,"  it is being appropriated by traditional publishers and turned into a way to extract even more money from scientific research budgets.

I still believe in open access publishing, but I think we have a lot of work to do if we want it to become the revolution in scientific communication we hoped it would be. That will take time and, for the time being, we are stuck with a system based on commercial publishers who are not necessarily keen to defend science in this difficult moment. But we can at least fight back if we refrain from publishing with journals which fail to defend science and even walk away from them as editors, as I did with Frontiers. That should give them at least a nudge in the right direction.

Centennial of Alfred Wegener's continental drift theory: the start of Earth systems science

 

Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) during a scientific expedition in Greenland, in 1912. His theory of "continental drift," presented for the first time in January of that year, started a scientific revolution in geology that deeply affected the way we understand how Earth systems work. 

One century ago, in January 1912, Alfred Wegener presented for the first time his theory of "continental drift" at a meeting held in Frankfurt, in Germany (*). Wegener had collected geological and paleontological data that gave weight to an old observation: that the margin of continents on the opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean seemed to correspond; as in a gigantic puzzle. Accordingly, Wegener proposed that the present continents were once joined together but had slowly drifted away from each other over hundreds of millions of years. (image source: J. Floor Anthony)

The story of the theory of continental drift spans several decades. Initially rejected by a majority of geologists, it gradually gained acceptance, until it became standard in the 1950s. Later on, it became part of what we call today "plate tectonics" which is a pillar of everything that we know in Earth systems science.

Occasionally, the troubled story of Alfred Wegener's theory has been perversely appropriated by climate deniers to claim that they are discriminated by the scientific establishment. But that only shows that climate deniers don't understand how science works. All new scientific theories are subjected to close scrutiny and Wegener's one was no exception. Its acceptance took time for various reasons, including the start of the First World War, shortly after it had been presented. Mainly, however, it was because at the time of Wegener there was no evidence that continents could actually move and no proof that they actually did. When satisfactory experimental evidence on these points became available, the theory was universally accepted. It is true that the debate on continental drift was harsher than usual, but it was not different than any scientific debate, as you can read in detail at this link. Wegener himself would be appalled today if he could see his name associated to junk science, as sometimes it is (see here, for instance).

The relevance of Wegener's idea of continental drift (and of its underlying mechanism: plate tectonics) is not just related to an old scientific debate. It is the basis of the modern science of Earth's systems, which includes climate science. Continental drift is a manifestation of the dynamic forces existing inside the Earth, in the region that we call "mantle". It is because of the flow of matter from the crust to the mantle and back that the system maintains a concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sufficient to maintain plant photosynthesis. Without plate tectonics, there could be no life on Earth. Indeed, Venus and Mars have no active plate tectonics and - as far as we know - no organic life.

But plate tectonics does not just maintain some carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It also regulates its concentration and, with it, the surface temperature of Earth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas acting as the Earth's "thermostat knob." The mechanisms of plate tectonics have slowly reduced its concentration in order to maintain an average constant temperature, despite the gradual increase of solar irradiation over geological times (some 10% each billion years). This regulation is far from being perfect: during the past Aeons, the Earth saw ice ages and very hot periods but, on the average, temperatures remained within the bounds necessary for life to exist. Unfortunately, this regulation mechanism is too slow to remedy to the perturbation we are causing today to climate by our carbon dioxide emissions. Still, what we know about the mechanism of plate tectonics and its consequences on the past history of our planet should make us more careful about what we are doing now to the ecosystems. This knowledge goes back, ultimately, to the work of Alfred Wegener: scientist and pioneer of Earth systems science.

You can read how modern Wegener's view of Earth systems science was from this excerpt from UCMP (University of California Museum of Technology)


"Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combing all this evidence. . . It is only by combing the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine 'truth' here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability. Further, we have to be prepared always for the possibility that each new discovery, no matter what science furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw."



* Wegener, Alfred (1912). "Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane), auf geophysikalischer Grundlage" (in German). Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 63: 185–195, 253–256, 305–309. Presented at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society, Frankfurt am Main (January 6, 1912).