Extract from The Guardian
The veteran scientist on Trump’s limited impact, Russia’s ruthless climate stance and on the urgency of COP26 in Glasgow.
‘Governments must up their ambition’: Peter Stott in his garden.
You have spent a quarter of a century in climate science. On a personal level, how does that feel?
At
times I have felt exhilarated about the progress of our science and
hopeful that it will be acted on. In other moments, I felt dispirited
that our warnings were ignored, such as at Copenhagen in 2009, or
worried when we were attacked as in Moscow in 2004, or in the US and UK after Climategate.
At those times, I felt I was uncovering an uncomfortable truth and
there were people who were literally trying to stop me from saying it.
Now I feel anxious that the clock is ticking on the whole issue. Another
very hot year has gone by and there is no sign of action that is
sufficient to change the data trends. That makes me concerned about the
science I have spent 26 years doing. I hoped this work would make the
world a better place, but I am increasingly anxious that this will not
happen in time.
Your
area of expertise, climate attribution, links the crime (climate chaos)
to the criminal (human emissions, notably from fossil fuel companies). That is a technically and politically sensitive activity. How is this knowledge applied?
When
I started, my field was very obscure, not just to the general public
but also to my scientific colleagues. But today it is hugely in the
public consciousness due to extreme weather. The fact that science is
now able to show the link between greenhouse gas emissions and rapidly
increasing floods and heatwaves is important. As a result, weather
forecasters such as Laura Tobin
are starting to bring climate change into their broadcasts on TV. I
think we will see much more of that in future as we are able to make
increasingly rapid and definitive statements.
I hoped this work would make the world a better place, but I am increasingly anxious that this will not happen in time
That is already happening. Earlier this year, the Hadley Centre was very quick in analysing the extraordinary 49.6C temperature record in Canada and showing it would have been effectively impossible without human emissions. This kind of information is very relevant to people. It can help to save life and property in the immediate disaster and then plan what to do next. To understand how we can protect ourselves in the future, it is no longer enough to have a simple weather forecast. We need to understand how the climate is changing.
You have attended many Cop climate conferences and will be there again in Glasgow this week. What are your expectations?
Cop26
is so important. We have had a year’s delay due to Covid and the
previous Cop, in Madrid in 2019, was not hugely successful, so Glasgow
is a meeting where governments need to up their ambition. If they don’t,
we won’t avoid warming of more than 2C. The toll of extreme weather
around the world shows just how urgent the situation is. The latest IPCC
report, produced in August, has the starkest conclusions that
scientists have ever made. The scientific evidence is that reductions
need to happen rapidly and they need to be substantial if the goals of
Paris are to be met. There is a broad consensus now. The great majority
of governments accept the need for change. The biggest emitter, China,
is heavily engaged because its own scientists, with whom I have worked,
are telling them exactly what scientists in other nations are saying:
that weather is becoming more extreme and more people are being
affected. The US has rejoined the Paris agreement under Biden, which is a
hugely positive step since Trump left.
Your book is framed by Trump. It starts with him coming to power and ends with his defeat. How big was his impact on climate science?
I
have never seen my scientific colleagues so fearful as they were on the
night of the vote count for his possible re-election. We knew things
could get much worse for the climate and for us if he won.
Trump regarded US scientific assessments about the climate as wrong. He put sceptics in key positions. Scott Pruit, the [former] head of the Environment Protection Agency, said warming is not connected to fossil fuels. Thankfully, Trump was only in power for four years, so there was a limited amount of damage he could do.
We know about risk from a scientific perspective. We are very confident about the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather and how those risks increase if we carry on emitting greenhouse gases, along with very scary risks such as the collapse of Antarctic ice sheets or the Amazon rainforest. We struggle to quantify how probable some of these things are but we know they are very significant risks and we want the world to act on them. We are very frustrated if politicians don’t get this point about risk. Just because there is a degree of scientific uncertainty, it doesn’t mean the risks aren’t very substantial.
One of your fellow climate scientists, Michael Mann, has suggested
Russia is behind much of the climate denial movement. In your book, you
describe a brutal meeting in Moscow that descended into a shouting
match and walkouts…
Russia
is a major exporter of gas and other fossil fuels and it can be
ruthless in protecting that business, as I found in 2004, when I and
other scientists were ambushed at a climate event in Moscow. We arrived
to find that Putin’s main adviser, Andrei Illarionov, had gathered the
world’s main climate deniers and given them a platform to argue climate
science was corrupt and there was no link between fossil fuels and
climate change, and that even if there was a link, that it would be
beneficial to Russia. Illarionov even said climate change was being used
to attack Russia. He even used the word “war”. The entire event was a
show trial. The real Russian scientists were marginalised or silenced.
All of us there were being used by Russia to gain leverage in
international negotiations. I think that ruthlessness continues to this
day, and makes it difficult for the scientific truth to be told there.
In
the book, you describe some of the dirty tactics, particularly at the
time of Climategate, when the leak and misrepresentation of hacked
emails from climate scientist Philip Jones were used to
stir up doubt ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009. Jones
and his colleagues were later fully exonerated, but what was behind
this attack?
The timing was suspicious. This happened
shortly before Copenhagen. Hacked data suddenly appeared on a Russian
server and was then circulated rapidly among denier communities, along
with frustrated questions from the source asking why more malicious work
wasn’t yet being done with the information. There was clearly a group
who were very keen to get hold of the material and weaponise it as
effectively as possible. The UK media made things worse. The Daily Express and Daily Mail
were very keen to use this material to argue global warming was a great
scam. I would not say Copenhagen collapsed purely because of
Climategate, but I would say the mood going into Copenhagen was bleak,
and that is important.
Negotiations benefit from a good mood and are hampered by a bad mood. The hack was deployed to create that bad atmosphere.
I
recall one scientist saying the community were “scared shitless” at the
time. But the situation is very different now, isn’t it?
Climategate
shook public confidence and caused climate scientists to be more
hesitant as a community. Just when the public needed to know more, they
were hearing less because of this dampening effect. Thankfully, science
has moved on. The clarity of evidence is now much stronger and so is the
language. With the latest IPCC report, we see that clarity coming through in a call for urgent action.
How has the stance of the media changed?
One
important battle is now over. Most of the media now accept that climate
change is happening and we have to engage with it, so there are fewer
false-balance debates on TV between deniers and scientists. It is
certainly not happening in the BBC any more. Denialism has moved now to
questioning the cost of climate action. There is a risk that this debate
will not be informed by science, but by putting up someone who says it
is way too expensive against someone who says it is not. I hope the
media will be wary once again of false balance on this. There is a whole
raft of research and evidence that the costs of doing nothing are far greater.
Haven’t
scientists also fallen short in the way they communicate their message –
relying too much on cold hard data and not enough on storytelling that
touches the emotions?
That is a fair criticism. I wish we as
a community had engaged more with storytelling. Going back to the start
of my career in the mid 1990s, we collectively thought that the numbers
that we presented to policymakers would be enough to resonate with the
public. We had not thought enough about communication strategy. At the
IPCC meeting in 2007, for example, we produced a good report for
policymakers, but it was dry for the public. Scientists thought that the
information we generated in laboratories would carry the day. But back
then we did not think enough about connecting with people’s worries and
fears. Things have moved on quite a lot since then. A key aspect for me
now is to engage with economists, social scientists and artists. We need
to challenge each other about how we tell these stories.
How far should scientists go in the direction of activism?
My
book is a kind of activism. What is important is that scientists
shouldn’t hold back from the implications of what we say. Science needs
to be acted on. That can only be done, in democratic nations at least,
by citizens who make informed choices about how to act. There has to be a
conversation between scientists, citizens and government. That is where
people’s values, aspirations and hopes come in. There are a number of
choices to be made – how to drive down emissions and how to make the
most of the opportunities that this produces. The choices are made by
citizens. But scientists should not be coy; we need to be more active
and engaged about the implications. That is why I wrote this book and
told this story.
Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial by Peter Stott is published by Atlantic Books (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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