Heating Planetary Climate and Souring Societal Climate
Below is an essay I wrote in November, collecting some my thoughts and observations about science denial, climate change, and misguided climate activism. I hope you enjoy it. Linked right below are a few popular science topics I’d like to write about in 2024. If you run a popular science print or online magazine and are interested in these topics, drop me a line. And now ….
Climate and A Climate of Science Denial
I am not a climate scientist, but one step downstream on the ladder of scientific causality: As a marine biologist, I see the effects of anthropogenic climate change on multiple levels. I see bleached corals, an emergency reaction of the reef-builders where they expunge the symbiotic algae from their tissues in response to photosynthetic reactions going into overdrive at higher temperatures; I saw tropical fishes in the waters of Sydney, hundreds of kilometers south of where they were thought to occur, parts of a massive, planet-wide realignment of faunae in response to a changing climate; and I read a growing body of scientific literature on the negative effects of the increasing temperatures and of the changes of ocean chemistry also caused by humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions. Most important among these changes is the ongoing acidification of the world’s oceans, where more acidic seawater makes it harder and harder for reef-building organisms like corals to lay down their carbonate skeletons. An image emerges in front of my scientific eye where a number of escalating serious problems affect the planet’s biosphere.
While I am stoic by choice, and not prone to exaggeration, the situation is without any doubt very serious. The phenomenon of climate change denial hence strikes me as a particularly bizarre and counterproductive reaction to a crisis which is both human-made, as well as still within range of a possible solution by implementing changes in human economic activity. We understand what we do to the planet, and we can still solve the problem. Denying that there is a serious problem instead of making every possible effort to solve it strikes me as a sad, complete antithesis to human rationality.
Flavors of Denial
Science denial in general fascinates me. It comes in different flavors, with a wide range of scientific insights denied, and with the denier communities ranging from a single fringe guy (more about him later) to a well-financed, world-wide community of deniers with professional deniers organized in think tanks (deny tanks?) at the top. The severity of the effects of the different flavors of science denial also varies widely; There is little damage in thinking that the moon landings were staged in the desert in Nevada; I think it’s funny, and I suspect that many of the moon-landing denialists took up the cause as a kind of practical joke. In contrast, Holocaust denial strikes me as extremely disgusting, but the immense damage has been done. In the case of climate change denial, an organized, well-published effort at denying can quite likely prevent or delay solutions to this very serious problem.
I get the impression that a two-fold relationship exists between the relevance of the scientific insight to the lives of the deniers, and the complexity of the science they deny. The more complex the science in question is – the harder it is to understand – the easier it is to ferment doubt about the scientific insights in question. On the other hand, the more relevant a field of inquiry is for the life and the ideological consistency of a person’s beliefs, the more of a reason that person will have to deny the science.
When looking at different combinations of relevance for folks’ lives, and the complexity of denied science, we can easily see that this is true:
My most favorite brand of science denial is ion channel denial. As a graduate student I would attend the yearly meeting of the German neuroscience society in Gottingen, which exposed me to a variety of interesting brain research, from the structures of the proteins in the nerve cell membranes, the ion channels, to the cognitive abilities of monkeys. And I got to exposed to an older colleague, a well-spoken gentleman with a big white beard, who didn’t believe in one of the most basic paradigms of neuroscience, the fact that ion flow through membrane-bound proteins, the ion channels, is at the core of neural excitability and function. The idea that the fine-tuned opening and closing of these ion channels causes electric potentials across the cell membranes to fluctuate rapidly, and that this is the basis of all signal conduction in the brain had been around since the 1940s. Several Nobel Prizes have been handed out for working out the details of ion channel function and pretty much everyone who is active in brain research agrees that ion channels are what makes brains tick; everyone but the vocal, bearded gentleman in Gottingen. He would stand up after almost every scientific talk he attended and questioned the ion channel paradigm, often in the form of quite a forceful monologue somewhat unrelated to the preceding talk. I once had the pleasure to answer his question after presenting the science I did in the course of obtaining my doctorate, in a lecture in Göttingen. Even though what I had done didn’t even have anything directly to do with ion channels, Dr. Ion Channel Denier asked me about them. I remember giving a non-confrontational, evasive answer of sorts. The German neuroscience community, to their credit, was always polite to Mr. Ion Channel Denier, even though they clearly though of him as having gone off the deep end.
This is an absolute boutique type of science denial, comprehensible only by biologists with at least advanced undergraduate training in neuroscience. The common man wouldn’t even understand what is being denied here. Ion channel denialism is the overpriced Belgian chocolate of science denial. It denies a complex body of science, with no relevance for everyman’s everyday life. It’s not a popular brand of science denial.
In sharp contrast, no type of science denial questions such a really simple piece of science as flat earthism. The fact that the Earth is a spheroid is completely obvious from several everyday observations and a tad of thinking, and has been known since antiquity. Nevertheless, the notion that the planet is supposed to be roundish hits a nerve with simpletons who can’t see beyond the fact that the acre they stand on looks flat. The flat-earthers deny not a complex body of science but a completely obvious fact – their science denial is in the opposite corner of the aforementioned ion channel denial. This makes them a small, generally ridiculed minority in society, regardless of the support of this idea by a few famous athletes and actors. I enjoy watching some professional sports, but I never got the idea that someone who is good at throwing a ball or a punch would be a quality source of advice for science and life. The flat Earther athletes are prime examples for this lack of a relationship between athletic prowess and understanding of the real world.
Climate change denial is a different kind of beast; it’s the worst-case scenario for a science educator. The science behind both the warming of the atmosphere as well as of its downstream effects is complex; As an example, understanding the aforementioned loss of symbiotic algae in the tissues of corals necessitates understanding of cell biology and biochemistry way above what the average person absorbs from a high school education.
On top of that climate change is highly relevant, for every single person living on Planet Earth. Climate science is hence easy to deny (it’s complicated) and there are reasons for many people to deny it (it would be so much nicer if it wasn’t true). This combination is the perfect storm of science denial.
Huxley and Astroturf
Aldous Huxley correctly observed that it’s easier to run a propaganda campaign in favor of beer than one in favor of oppression and police violence. A beer advertising creative worker has a so much easier starting position since almost everyone likes beer to begin with. The situation is similar for those spending big bucks on promoting science denialism. It’s clear that global warming denialism isn’t a completely engineered wave of opposition to climate science and science policy, but it’s also clear that some of the institutions who profit from digging up and selling fossil fuels have fueled this type of science denial with their fat wallets. Just like the beer-ad people, the stokers of the flame of climate change denial started from a favorable position: It’s not a pleasant thought that many of the activities which have provided the basis of our economy and our everyday conveniences are to blame for an environmental problem which engulfs the whole planet. It’s psychologically tempting for many to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist, or that it’s not that bad after all, or that some gimmicky technological solution (human ingenuity! Vaguely outlined human ingenuity happening in the future trumps the principles of atmospheric chemistry and physics!) will take care of the problem. The generously financed corporate climate change denial fell on fruitful psychological ground. Next to the severity of its social effect, and the unfortunate combination of high relevance & easy-to-deny complex science, this aspect of climate change further adds to make climate change denial a worst-case scenario of science denial.
Australia: A Hot, and Heating Place. Why could that be?
From amazing national parks, to the most entertaining pubs in the world and intriguing art scenes, there are a lot of great things about the country I called home before moving to the Philippines, Australia. The rampant and unapologetic climate change denial in its corporate media and significant parts of its society is not one of them. While climate change denial exists in Europe, it’s not invited to polite dinner parties among the educated section of the population. In Australia, climate change denial runs rampant, and is not ashamed to go out into public. What climate change deniers only whisper among themselves after the fourth beer in Euroland (“Nonsense! World-wide conspiracy to steal our savings!”) can be shamelessly shouted out in public in Australia.
The obvious explanation for this difference in anthropogenic climate change denial acceptance is found in the workings of the Aussie national economy, which depends to a good degree on digging up rocks (coal, iron ore) and selling them to companies owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Per capita, there are few countries messing with the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration as much as the Aussies. That kind of global environmentally anti-social money-making scheme will give you a bad conscious, if you accept the fact that climate change is real and human-made.
In the early 2010s, when I lived in Australia, some of the newspapers with the largest circulations promoted climate change denial. Even the top columnist of one of Australia’s scuba diving magazines aggressively argued that climate change is a hoax, and that the Great Barrier Reef, which has experienced several coral bleaching events due to ocean warming, is just fine. the tourists don’t need to worry! The columnist has passed away by now, and I have no interest in naming him (De mortuis nil nisi bonum), but he was a stunning example for how widespread and accepted climate change denial is in Australia. If anything, one would expect that the writers of a scuba diving magazine would be very environmentally minded, not denying the science of a serious environmental problem.
The Australian journalists are not necessarily more immoral than their much less climate change denying European colleagues (though immoral they certainly are). They just happened to find themselves in a social and economic environment where climate change denial is much more acceptable.
Climate change denial and science denial in general grow in a web of psychological, societal and scientific calamities. On top of the actual science being complex there is ample actual scientific misconduct and corruption, the types of problems which science deniers frequently claim to be at the basis of all of the science they deny. The week I am writing this essay the president of famous Stanford University stepped down due to a history of unsavory data manipulations in his neuroscience labs. This doesn’t invalidate all of neuroscience, of course, but it surely adds fuel to the idea that scientists are dishonest, and that their results are up for sale.
Add to this the fact that frequently the insights from science about the real world are scary, more so if you hold certain religious or ideological views which contrast with reality.
This stew of social and psychological issues are then met with feelings of stone age tribal cohesion among groups of people who don’t like a particular field of science. Communities of deniers form, and they bounce cherry-picked arguments in support of their science denial around among themselves. Any criticism of their ideas is increasingly seen as an attack on the group. Us-versus-them replaces any remnants of intellectual exchange. As a fire accelerator, social media can turn a few people in a pub who think that climate change, evolution or a spheroid Earth is all made up bull-shit into large, international and well-connected communities. Social media won’t cause science denial but can certainly accelerate it.
Any kind of censorship, besides being morally repugnant, will not solve this complex network of psychological, and social factors which leads to mistrust of science. But I shouldn’t even write “censored”! You always can tell when a concept previously considered odious comes back in fashion, a new term pops up for it right away. Censorship no more, content moderation it is. There is too much at play here than what could be solved by present-day “content moderation”. Removing what a poorly written algorithm or an overworked office worker in a developing country consider “misinformation” will not fix a complex issue like science denial. If anything, this type of amateurish online policing will cause more suspicion against perceived authority acting in bad faith. My own social media presence mostly revolves around the sharing of my underwater photography and videography, but even posting in this harmless field has gotten my content “moderated”. A picture of a fish known as a “flasher wrasse” was removed by the social media police, likely because a “flasher” also refers to a person who indecently exposes himself. Obviously, the damage to my free speech rights was minor, and upon protesting the image of Paracheilinus mccoskeri was restored, but this and a wealth of similar comical episodes are telling: This is not the kind of “content moderation” which I want to rely on to keep the online conversation wise and well-informed.
Superglue, not Super Effective
Sadly, the irrationality that has become such an integral part of the Zeitgeist is not restricted to the – in any case increasingly vaguely defined – political right. From my voluntary, and very enjoyable exile in a Philippine fishing village I follow the events on European streets, and my consternation is significant. Europe has seen a recent trend of activists blocking commuter traffic and vandalizing art in the name of protesting climate change policy. Germany, the world capital of the wagging middle-finger, seems to lead the way in this trend, with the United Kingdom not far behind. This must be the worst protest movement ever in terms of effectiveness, costing massive amounts of sympathy for the cause it aims to champion. Reading the stream of cynical to blatantly hostile social media comments provides a gauge how little success these activists have in garnering sympathies for their cause. Demographic surveys confirm the impression: in a survey conducted in Germany in April 2023, only 5% of the queried harbored sympathy for the activists, while 60% stated that they were completely and wholly opposed to their actions.
These activists are people with whom I share a fundamental-level common goal: effective climate action, now. Seeing them act so strangely and counterproductively is disturbing to me. The corporate stoked climate change denial stupidity is akin to an anticipated punch to the abdomen for which I have braced my abs in advance; the climate-crisis-inspired gluing of soft hands to the pavement is more like a sucker punch by someone I considered a mate; more surprising, and physically as well as psychologically more painful.
The self-congratulatory suffering of the climate-crisis superglue-afficionados bears cunning resemblance to what Nietzsche called slave morality, what he also considers the despicable moral basis of Christianity, the celebration of the pitiful. A sense of morally superior suffering oozes out of the pavement-gluers body language, with their facial expressions mirroring those of the Jesuses of renaissance paintings. The names some of these groups chose for themselves (“Last Generation” in Germany) further add to the apocalyptic end-of-times vibe the pavement-gluers project. It’s not a problem-solving type of mentality.
It’s hard for me to evade the conclusion that the aim of this movement is not to call the masses to effective climate action, but an effort to pacify the uneasy feelings of the participants. This purpose isn’t even hidden, in interviews the activists often state that they don’t want to have the feeling that they didn’t do anything in the face of the oncoming climate catastrophe. How what they do solves any of the problems of contemporary climate-policy seems unclear, and somewhat secondary to the activists themselves. These are not the wing-men and wing-women I am hoping for in my efforts to talk climate-sense into the general public.
To continue to have the chance to thrive, and to preserve more than a sad remnant of the planet’s biodiversity, humanity must have an adult moment soon. There are of course many smart and dedicated scientists, engineers and bureaucrat/administrator/politician types who work hard to alleviate the climate crisis. It would be really nice if more people would join them and fewer would fight reasonable climate policies or distract from the issue with clownish stunts. I am no sage to predict if that will happen or not.
I am under no illusions about the minor part I can play, at best, in solving this problem, but I am also not going to sit on my couch being passive in the face of an oncoming catastrophe. During the last years I have written about climate change and its effects, such as coral bleaching and ocean acidification, for popular science magazines, both online and in print, and both in English and in my native German. On at least one occasion a sceptic reader engaged in an email correspondence with me after reading one of my articles. The gentleman wasn’t convinced that the climate is changing and that humans are to blame; our correspondence was polite, and after several weeks of back and forth I convinced him that yes, this is what the data say loud and clear: humans are messing with some of the most fundamental aspects of the chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean. If I don’t overthrow a major paradigm in biology in my remaining decades as an active biologist, this success in popularizing science will remain my most proud achievement as a scientist, towering above the achievement of publishing a few manuscripts in journals with glorious-sounding names (to other inhabitants of the little world of academia) and high impact factors.
Still, I suspect that the person who coined the phrase that the sword is mightier than the pen didn’t have a sword. I do, a full functional and sharpened replica of a historical Filipino battle sword, a gift from my father-in-law, which is mounted on the wall above my desk. It serves as an excellent reminder of my limited influence, should hubris catch up with me and should I start thinking that writing a few clever articles will save the world.
