it's not the thing, it's the other thing

The British Parliament has pretty thoroughly vindicated the East Anglia CRU in the e-mail leak “scandal”, agreeing that it didn't amount to much more than a couple of unfortunate turns of phrase and had no bearing at all on the science. This is, of course, very good news, and a fine example of a government body behaving like adults in a difficult political environment. It's also a good moment to put on our political operative hats and evaluate how the scientific and environmental activist communities did with this one.

The short answer: not so good. Sure, Rasmussen reported that we didn't lose any notable ground in public opinion as a result of the story. But we surely didn't gain any, and in the weeks around Copenhagen we spent as much time explaining the meaning of the word “trick” as we did advocating actual policy. With polls finding increased climate change denialism, the weak outcome of Copenhagen, and the general rise in conservative activism, the story helped form a classic media narrative - we're losing. After a decade moving the conversation most of the way from “is global warming real?” to “what are we going to do about it?”, we took a big step back toward having to debate the facts again.

Sometimes that's how it goes. Anyone in politics understands that you have good days and bad days. The thing is this: when the denialists find a gambit that works for them, they're going to use it over and over until it stops working for them. It's already started happening, with the “errors” in the IPCC AR4 report dominating climate change reporting for weeks. Just as with the CRU e-mails, the community carefully looked at the details of the accusations, acknowledged failings where they occurred, and explained the underlying science. The result has been exactly the same: the news story reads “Are there errors in the IPCC report? Scientists argue it's okay.”

So – back to that Parliament report. Committee Chair Phil Willis said:

“Climate science is a matter of global importance. On the basis of the science, governments across the world will be spending trillions of pounds on climate change mitigation. The quality of the science therefore has to be irreproachable. What this inquiry revealed was that climate scientists need to take steps to make available all the data that support their work and full methodological workings, including their computer codes. Had both been available, many of the problems at CRU could have been avoided.”

This is familiar territory. 'If scientists only learned to communicate better - if they were only more careful about mistakes - if they only presented themselves as more neutral - or maybe less neutral – we'd finally get policy to respond to science and convince all those people we're right.'

That's almost entirely untrue.

Climate change policy is under attack by a thoroughly professional, organized, funded, determined group of political interests. We're not in a fight about science, as almost all scientists think. We're in a fight about politics. Better communication from scientists would be great, and the scientists doing everything they can to beat back denialists should be applauded. But scientists can't effectively lead this fight. The political fight over health care wasn't led by doctors. The U.S. didn't invade Iraq because of advocacy from soldiers or experts in Middle Eastern culture.

Modern politics is – just like scientific specialities - a highly skilled and extraordinarily demanding trade. Climate change scientists, right now, are bringing a textbook to a gun fight. It's a losing game. They need to stop wading into political battles, and instead put their support, money and trust into building effective political organizations, headed by professional organizers capable of sustaining serious campaigns.

Exactly what those campaigns would look like is a topic for another post. But I'll tell you this: when there's a massive theft of documents followed by quote-mining accusations from political hacks funded by the coal industry, the pros aren't going to go with “Wait, let me explain what we meant by the word 'trick' there.”