The Iron Lady of Climate Research: Drop the Geek Language

"I am fed up with academics who are scared of speaking out."

Ann Henderson-Sellers, professor of physical geography at Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia, thinks global climate research has been infested by too much gobbledygook. According to her, rampant professional "code language" and fear of being misquoted by climate skeptics only serve to drag out the climate debate. In this interview with Monday Morning,* she calls for a transparent and honest debate as to what researchers can do in order to urge politicians to react more quickly to the climate threat.

"The need for action is beyond discussion. Reams of acknowledged scientific reports demonstrate that the climate changes are beyond question. The problem lies in the fact that this message seemingly has not been absorbed by politicians and the ordinary citizen. This is because, among other things, we as researchers have not been good enough at communicating and fear being misquoted."

Ann Henderson-Sellers is among the world's most knowledgeable climate researchers. In 2006 and 2007, she was Director of the U.N.'s World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), which monitors international research on the climate. For more than 35 years, she has advocated the need to act in face of the greenhouse effect. And it is quite evident that she herself does not belong to the category of scholars afraid of speaking out.

Speaking to Monday Morning, she openly characterizes IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as "stodgy, outdated, and uncontroversial." And, if prodded, she will switch to a parlance which would make a hardened sailor blush. Like, say, when Monday Morning asks her to elaborate on her own astonishment as to "why the hell government leaders all over the world react to the financial crisis by pouring oodles of money into unsustainable industries."

"No government officials are brave enough to say: 'Listen up, folks: We have wound up in a damn mess. The banks are in deep do-do, and the climate is in deep do-do. We are going to have to solve these problems and we need to solve them in a way which will boost the economy and keep us alive at the same time.'"

Even though usually thousands of miles and a time difference of more than 10 hours separate Ann Henderson-Sellers from the Danish climate debate, she is currently very topical in a Danish context. Tomorrow, she arrives in Copenhagen to take part in the international climate seminar Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions at the Bella Center. Here, more than 2,000 climate researchers from all over the world convene for three days for a scientific assessment of the climate struggle before the political summit in Copenhagen come December. [See the Climate Community's recap of the seminar here.]

She urges her fellow researchers to seize this opportunity to rethink how the scientific community communicates with regard to climate changes. This will increase the chances of reaching an ambitious climate agreement in Copenhagen later this year.

"We need to stop speaking in code. We have to face the fact that words that make perfectly good sense to climate researchers are still cryptic to ordinary people. The terminology that we have developed to discuss climate changes is an obstacle to fostering political change. We have to make it easier to understand why it is of the absolute essence to act now."

So even the husband will understand...

Ann Henderson-Sellers became particularly aware of communication as a completely essential tool for mobilizing a popular understanding of climate changes in 2007 when she and her husband saw Al Gore's picture An Inconvenient Truth.

"I have been working with the greenhouse effect from before it became a fad – since the 1970s. My husband and I have been married for just as long, and yet he said to me as we left the cinema: 'This is really important we should do something.' We are talking about a man who has been listening to me for 35 years. Just the same, it was as if this was the first time he heard about the greenhouse effect."

Henderson-Sellers has subsequently delved into analyzing the language employed in traditional communication regarding climate changes – including IPCC reports and reports on climate-economy models from researchers like Australian professor Ross Garnaut and British Lord Nicholas Stern, who incidentally will also participate in this week's seminar.

Can you provide examples of how existing communication creates confusion and possibly causes the climate debate to drag out?

"Easily. One expression often used is 'positive feedback.' If an ordinary person hears that 'your boss is giving you positive feedback on your work this year,' he will think, 'Wow! That's great!' Among climate researchers, there is the opposite reaction. Here, positive feedback means that the triggered climate change is strengthened – a small change gets stronger and stronger due to a snowball effect. It is clear that this kind of code language will create confusion.

On top of this, the Stern Review from 2006 uses this term in both senses – in the colloquial as well and the technical climate sense. I am not saying that Stern wrote a bad report. He is a great communicator and is also scheduled to address the seminar in Copenhagen. But why should a person who is only beginning to get a grasp of this issue – as mayor, as a political adviser, or as an ordinary citizen – need to wade through all this ambiguity? Why don't we make things easier to understand? This is clearly an area where the scientific community should make an effort as we approach COP15."

Are you saying that in the time to come, science needs to focus more on creating better communication than on creating new results?

It is not only the geographical distance of nearly 10,000 miles that delays the response. An audible sigh is also emitted:

"What is the point of massive investments in climate research which once again concludes 'This is really happening, and it is our own fault?' I can think of no statement more powerful. What more can science say?"

"To be sure, new research can provide better models to foresee changes and make us better understand how these changes are coming much more quickly than previously predicted. But the brass-tacks scientific case for political action was unambiguously documented in IPCC's Fourth Evaluation Report from 2007. This means that you can safely say there are no more scientific challenges with regard to climate change documentation.

The IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize and we brought the report with us to the Bali Climate Summit in 2007 in order to have it translated into action. But the world's governments failed. Big time. They arrived at a very feeble schedule for fighting climate change, in effect limited to, 'Well, I guess we have to do something.' It is hard to imagine what new things science could say in a fifth evaluation report."

A need to change gears

According to Ann Henderson-Sellers, there is generally a need to shift gears in climate change research. The challenge no longer lies in documenting whether or not man-made activities cause climate changes. Instead, research needs to illuminate acute questions concerning how quickly and how profoundly this is happening – as well as which actions are called for.

Moreover, she feels that the entire existing setup for the U.N. international climate panel needs to be reconsidered. "The problem lies in the fact that IPCC reports are only allowed to refer to literature already published. Thus the results are by definition obsolete, since it takes about 18 months for scientific research to make it into print. Furthermore, the process requires that all the scientists in the working groups reach agreement on the wording of all chapters. This means that all the lead authors must agree on every chapter.

Therefore, you have to go for the lowest common denominator, which makes for a conservative result. And, most important of all: The summary, which is probably the only part actually read by politicians, must be squared with all delegations from all governments in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, making the output even more conservative. Altogether, this means that everything becomes stodgy, outdated, and uncontroversial."

Henderson-Sellers also took part in evaluating the IPCC's work processes through a questionnaire survey conducted by WCRP and two other climate research organizations among the lead authors. This survey revealed that researchers feel very stifled by the bureaucratic process; and also that there is a prevailing "unhealthy fear" of being misquoted by climate skeptics. According to Henderson-Sellers, this fear contributes to curbing free dialogue on climate research and protracting the debate.

It is symptomatic of the communication problems that the organizations did not manage to relay this message when the evaluation took place at the end of 2007. "Did we manage to deliver a clear message that there is a strong need to rethink IPCC procedures designed 20 years ago? My personal view is clearly, no," says Henderson-Sellers.

As an example of this fear of misinterpretation, she mentions that the evaluation of the questionnaire survey was originally to be called "What Did the IPCC Get Wrong?" This proposal was "squashed in the corridors" at one of the partner organizations, as she puts it. They feared that "skeptics" would make use of this to criticize IPCC. Instead, the evaluation was called "Learning from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report."

Henderson-Sellers did, however, remedy this in September last year, when she published her own assessment entitled "The IPCC Report: What the Lead Authors Really Think," which highlights the areas of critique.

Learn from the financial crisis

But will a changed strategy of research and communication be enough to make politicians take the predicament seriously and act upon it?

"I don't know. This is only a small piece of a greater jigsaw puzzle. The question is, Why aren't politicians already taking action? And this I simply don't think I understand. I don't believe politicians are stupid – definitely not. And the handling of the global financial crisis, which in some ways is analogous to the climate crisis, shows that they do in fact possess the ability to act. It was only towards the end of 2007 that people began to realize that a financial crisis was in the making – and already here in 2009, all governments have begun to act. Unfortunately, by printing money in order to provide so-called financial injections, supporting banks that should have been allowed to go bankrupt and breathing life into unsustainable industries."

It is clear that Ann Henderson-Sellers has ventured into a subject where her convictions require a potent choice of words. The torrent of opinions flows faster, and there are practically no pauses between sentences:

"Just think of it: Our elected governments print money, which sinks us all into debt, in order to implement plans that – if we are to be kind – are not very thought through. Frankly, many are damn stupid. Governments the world over, including Australia's, I regret having to admit, are using the money on the car industry. Last year the global car industry produced some 90 million vehicles, selling only 50 million. This number will drop further – not just because people can't afford gasoline and are increasingly opting for public transportation, the bicycle, or their feet, but because the climate can simply not afford that we go on driving around in cars.

The car industry is dying for all the right reasons – nevertheless governments are choosing to give it artificial respiration instead of using the money to create new green jobs. The frustrating part is that in a very short span of time, governments have acted on the financial crisis. Why not then act on the global climate crisis? This I simply do not understand."

Isn't the answer that it is much easier to defend our present lifestyle, including the possibility of transporting yourself in your own car, instead of instituting reforms and initiatives demanding that citizens – the voters – must change their way of life?

"Yes, at the national level I think you are right. It is understandable that they react swiftly to the financial crisis. But my question still remains: Why the hell do they pump money into the car industry instead of, say, solar energy plants? If the same sums were invested in green technologies and green infrastructure, we would see much better and more long-term effects, financially as well. Why the hell are they doing the absolutely wrongest things?"

Contact the author, Monday Morning's climate change correspondent Bjarke Wiegand, at: bw@mm.dk.

*Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Monday Morning.

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