The trap of American climate skeptics

Public comment on the U.S. Department of Energy's climate change report, released in late July, closed Tuesday evening, September 2. Dozens of scientists had announced they would take up their pens and use the forum to denounce a report that was "biased, riddled with errors, misrepresentations, and cherry-picked data to suit Mr. Trump's political agenda," according to The New York Times . And they stuck to it, with a well-reasoned 434-page response.

“Spending several weeks, along with dozens of other scientists, correcting cherry-picked data from a US government report wasn’t on my agenda this summer,” Andra Garner, a climate scientist at a university in New Jersey, told The Guardian . “ But it was clearly what the situation demanded.”

Indeed, this report, written by five notoriously climate-skeptical scientists, serves to justify the Trump administration's backtracking on climate change. Its conclusions are not that climate change does not exist, but that its harmful consequences have been exaggerated, or even that it could be beneficial (plants would grow faster thanks to an excess of atmospheric _CO2 , for example). By responding, have these 85 climate experts not rushed into the very trap that was intended to lure them into?

Because “angering scientists can be intentional,” Grist says . Their reaction ultimately echoes the fringe positions of the report’s authors and suggests there’s still a debate going on. “It can create a false sense of equivalence in the public sphere,” Max Boykoff of the University of Colorado tells Grist , while the vast majority of researchers are alarmed by the catastrophic consequences of climate change. In 2007, NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt expressed concern after a televised debate among scientists on the reality of climate change: “Can a verbal joust of this kind help clarify big scientific questions? Or does it necessarily prove the less alarmist camp right?”

Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist who led the rebuttal, told the New York Times about the authors of the Department of Energy report: “Their goal was to confuse the issue, to construct an argument that seemed plausible, easy for the general public to use, ensuring that no one knows whether climate change is a good thing or a bad thing.”

We can always watch this from afar and reassure ourselves that we won't fall into the same outrageous traps. But a campaign to delegitimize the fight against climate change is already underway in Europe, where the American climate-sceptic think tank The Heartland Institute has aligned itself with far-right parties, the Guardian revealed in January. A new kind of vigilance is required of us all.

Surveying the bowels of Antarctica

It took international cooperation, four years of drilling, and millions of dollars to extract a 2,800-meter-long ice core from East Antarctica, which will now be studied by researchers from the British Antarctic Survey. The deepest samples are believed to be at least 1.5 million years old, and the treasures they contain could “revolutionize” what we know about climate change, writes the BBC . Read more here .

All-purpose peat bogs

Restoring wetlands in Europe means “strengthening defenses while saving the climate,” says biologist Hans Joosten at the Financial Times. From Finland to Poland to the Baltic states, the idea is gaining ground. Once re-watered, peatlands drained for agriculture would become traps for armored vehicles in the event of an attack from Russia—and would once again become _CO2 traps. In 2022, according to Politico, drained peatlands released 124 million tons of greenhouse gases in the EU, as much as the Netherlands. “When you re-wet them, they stop releasing _CO2 and start capturing it again,” says Hans Joosten. Find out more here .

In the Amazon, less forest, less rain

Deforestation plays a major role in the reduction in rainfall observed in the Amazon over the past 35 years, note the authors of a study published in Nature Communications . They estimate that it played a 74% role in this decline. “This is enough to jeopardize the balance of the forest and compromise its ability to absorb _CO2 ,” Le Temps emphasizes. To find out more, click here .

Where to survive the climate crisis?

The world's "super-rich have long since begun seeking refuge" from climate change, explains the Frankfurter Rundschau, echoing an international study. The "Global Adaptation Initiative" at the University of Notre Dame in the US has mapped the safest destinations for the climate crisis. The ranking assesses countries' vulnerability and adaptive capacity. The top 10 future climate havens include Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia. Read more here .

You have just read issue number 108 of Climatiques.