Ten years ago, climate scientists were accused of exaggerating the risks, and now they’re accused of underplaying the dangers. There are times when it seems a no-win situation, but as renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann argues in his engaging — and eye-opening — new book The New Climate War, this is no time to give up.
If anything, he says — thanks in no small part to Greta Thunberg and the climate kids — the public mood has changed. This time feels different. It looks different; it smells different. Dr. Mann is newly optimistic about a favourable shift in the political winds. The youth climate movement has had an almost incalculable effect on the public conversation, and has reshaped the debate to focus on inter-generational ethics.
It’s one thing to say you love your kids, but quite another to ensure they have a better future.
Dr. Mann holds advanced degrees in climatology and geophysics. His day job is Distinguished Prof. of Atmospheric Science and director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center, but he’s more widely known as the co-creator of the “Hockey-stick Graph” in 1999.
The self-explanatory graph showed the sharp rise in global temperatures since the industrial age in terms even a Trumpist climate denier or hockey fan might understand. That made him a lightning rod for controversy, for both climate deniers in general and the fossil-fuel industry in particular. His email has been hacked; his social media accounts have drawn unfriendly fire from online trolls; and his public profile has made him a ready target for conservative politicians and media outlets beholden to the fossil fuel industry.
He doesn’t care!
They come at him, but he’s more than willing to take them on. HIs Twitter account is lively and engaging, and he’s quick to reply to tweets that engage him on a personal or scientific level (I have personal experience of this). He has 168,000 Twitter followers and counting at @MichaelEMann, not bad for a career academic, glorified lab rat and policy wonk. Dr. Mann has been on Twitter since 2011, and is a long way from walking away from the social-media platform, as others in the public eye have done.
The New Climate War shows how the fossil fuel industry has waged a 30-year campaign of disinformation to deflect blame and responsibility from a crisis that even the most entrenched climate deniers are now forced to admit is real, and not a figment of Al Gore’s imagination.
That said, Mann insists it’s unhelpful to keep carping about the negatives. The New Climate War points the way to potential solutions. Mann finds hope where it’s often all too easy to dwell on the negatives. He has an almost unshakeable faith in humanity’s ability to solve big-picture problems. That may seem naive, but there it is. It will take our collective focus, dedication and application, but we can get there in the end.
“Sorry, Bill Gates, but we don’t ‘need a miracle,’” he has said. As one Twitter follower pointed out, Dr. Mann is an actual climate scientist; Bill Gates is a rich man with opinions.
“Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic,” Mann told the UK’s Sunday Observer this past weekend in a wide-ranging conversation with the 2019 SEAL Award winning environmental journalist Jonathan Watts. “Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.”
Good people fall victim to doomism, he added.“I do too, sometimes.”
I’m much the same, as anyone who read my last post about polar bears on International Polar Bear Day knows. I still think polar bears are doomed, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to give up on climate models just yet. The New Climate War points the way to possible ways out, provided we pay attention. And persevere.