Climate Skepticism [View all]

Since being banned from the EE forum for expressing a view that is essentially "yes, climate change is happening but it's not as bad as we thought", I have spent a great deal of time considering the tendency of people engaged in the political process to simplify issues into having only two sides. As a result, I found this article to be a welcome sign that people are starting to understand that there are nuances to the climate debate that have not been expressed properly:

http://www.mikehulme.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Extract-from-Chapter-50-Climategate.pdf

<snip>

Understanding skepticism

One of the interesting responses from the academic community since Climategate has been a new
interest in studying and understanding the various manifestations of climate change skepticism .
One obvious reason for this interest is the evidence that voices skeptical of the standard climate
change ‘plan’ (cf. Sarewitz, 2011) multiplied in the months following Climategate. This has been
shown in the work of Painter and Ashe (2012) and Grundmann and Scott (2013) who followed media
reporting of climate change around the world in the months following Climategate. Taking climate
change skepticism as an object of study has engaged new scholarly communities – such as social
psychologists, rhetoricians and anthropologists – and a wider range of academics than the select few
sociologists who had been working in this field before. By paying attention to the political and
cultural values which shape the production, circulation and reception of climate change knowledge a
much richer and more helpful picture emerges. The populist notion that all climate skeptics are
either in the pay of oil barons or are right-wing ideologues, as is suggested for example by
studies such as Oreskes and Conway (2011), cannot be sustained.

There are many different reasons why citizens may be skeptical of aspects of climate science,
certainly why they may be skeptical of knowledge claims which get exaggerated by media and
lobbyists (see Chapter 38). This may be because of innate suspicion of ‘big science’ (which climate
science has become, with powerful patrons in government and UN and international institutions) or
because of a commitment to forms of data and knowledge libertarianism, as in the Wiki-leaks
movement. Some of the individuals who pursued CRU scientists for access to data in the months
leading up to Climategate may be seen in this light; they had no connections with the oil industry or
conservative think-tanks. Other expressions of skepticism may result from issue fatigue, cynicism
about a media who seek to sensationalize (as quoted above in the 2011 UK opinion survey quoted
above) or the experience of cognitive dissonance. This latter idea captures the feeling of discomfort
when someone holds two or more conflicting beliefs and Kari Marie Norgaard explores this in her
ethnography of climate skepticism in a small town in Norway (Norgaard, 2011). Norgaard exposes
the psychologies of climate change belief, doubt and unbelief embedded in local histories, cultures
and community social practice.

But beyond these reasons for climate change skepticism, in the years following Climategate it has
become more important to distinguish between at least four different aspects of the conventional
climate change narrative where skepticism may emerge. Trend skepticism would be disbelieving
of evidence that suggested a change in climate was occurring, whereas attribution skepticism
would be doubtful that such trends were predominantly caused by human agency. Impact
skepticism would question whether the melodrama of the discourse of future climate catastrophe
is credible and policy skepticism would query dominant climate change policy frameworks and
instruments. When this more nuanced analysis of climate change skepticism is combined with a
valorisation of the scientific norm of skepticism and the democratic virtue of scrutinizing and interrogating
vested interests, there becomes room for more respectful arguments about what climate change signifies
and what responses may be appropriate. My contention is that the events surrounding Climategate in
late 2009 have opened up new spaces for such agnostic democratic virtues to be exercised.

<snip>

Using the categories described above, I would describe myself as an 'Impact Skeptic'.