The Power of words

Although Hurricane Sandy has given us ample empirical evidence that something extraordinary is happening to the weather, scientists have been reluctant to attribute causation to climate change. This is understandable ; as members of the only discipline that still enjoys credibility across the political spectrum, scientists can’t afford to say anything that can’t be shown to be objective unbiased fact. The magic combination that will convince most people is to directly see something for themselves, and then have scientists corroborate that they really saw what they thought they saw. People disposed to believe in climate change, such as myself, have no trouble making the connection. Even other more skeptical witnesses have been won over by Sandy. Bloomburg Business Week, not a usual source for sketchy theories, has in large letters across its most recent cover, "It’s Global Warming, Stupid!" But to get to that point of total acceptance where we take climate change seriously requires that confirmation from scientists. The problem, according to Linguistics professor George Lakoff, is in the language scientists have chosen to use to characterize recent weather and climate events.

In speaking of scientists’ reluctance to use the word "cause", Lakoff says: "Semantics matters. Because the word cause is commonly taken to mean direct cause, climate scientists, trying to be precise, have too often shied away from attributing causation of a particular hurricane, drought, or fire to global warming.

Although they can’t claim direct cause, they can claim systemic cause. The term may not be familiar but the concept is. "Smoking is a systemic cause of lung cancer. HIV is a systemic cause of AIDS. Working in coal mines is a systemic cause of black lung disease. Driving while drunk is a systemic cause of auto accidents. Sex without contraception is a systemic cause of unwanted pregnancies.

"Systemic causation, because it is less obvious, is more important to understand. A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes. It may be probabilistic, occurring with a significantly high probability. It may require a feedback mechanism. In general, causation in ecosystems, biological systems, economic systems, and social systems tends not to be direct, but is no less causal. And because it is not direct causation, it requires all the greater attention if it is to be understood and its negative effects controlled

"Lacking a concept and language for systemic causation, climate scientists have made the dreadful communicative mistake of retreating to weasel words. Consider this quote from "Perception of climate change," by James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy, Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

"…we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.

The crucial words here are high degree of confidence, anomalies, consequence, likelihood, absence, and exceedingly small. Scientific weasel words! The power of the bald truth, namely causation, is lost."

So, although we can’t predict when and where exactly the next extreme weather event will occur, we can definitely say that climate change is a systemic cause of hurricane Sandy as well as the droughts, fires, and extreme heat of last summer.

I think we can take that one step further and say that the burning of fossil fuels is a systemic cause of climate change.

I would even go so far as to say that burning fossil fuels is a direct cause of climate change. If scientists understand that carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere very much faster than it is expected to dissipate, the overall effect is cumulative. If that is so, then, as Bill McKibbon says, we know how much temperature rise we can expect from burning a given amount of fuel. We know that the burning of the current known reserves of coal, oil, and gas will raise the global temperature well beyond the 2 degrees that is considered the maximum increase we can endure. So, as Lakoff says, what is the point of continuing to drill for more?

The reason, of course, is profit, and to pursue profit despite the fact that we are assuring our own destruction is insane. Nevertheless, we know that that is the course our country intends to follow regardless of who won this election. So, be prepared to continue fighting even harder to prevent this madness, and remember that we all need to do our own cutting back right here on Vashon.

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terry@vashonloop.com