Brand Grab: Miscommunication

4 April 2011

The thing about working in the sustainability space is that you are never short of a debate. Everyone's favourite debate is the one about whether climate change is real or not. Yes, I know you are now thinking, 'We have done this one a million times', 'The science is in', 'The facts are clear' and 'I have my view'.
 
The trouble is that the debate is still taking place. Amongst the taxi drivers of Newtown. The farmers in Dubbo. The Senators in the house. In this climate there is increasing skepticism and frustration amongst the Australian battler because there does not seem to be anyone making it believable and understandable.

Even for those of us non-scientists who think there must be some logic and substance to the science it is still easy to be persuaded that there are still some doubts as to whether the scientists have got it right.

It is no wonder that this is occurring. Take this rather juicy piece. It is compelling stuff. A seemingly credible scientist Gregg D. Thompson who did his own research and ran his own straw poll survey to dispel the Climate Change myth.

Q1. What % of the air is CO2?

Respondents' Answers: nearly all were 20-40%, the highest was 75% while the lowest were 10-2%.

The Correct Answer: CO2 is less than a mere four 100ths of 1%! As a decimal it is 0.038%. As a fraction it is 1/27th of 1%. (Measurements for CO2 vary from one source to another from 0.036-0.039% due to the difficulty in measuring such a small quantity and due to changes in wind direction e.g. whether the air flow is from an industrialized region or a volcanic emission, etc.) Nitrogen is just over 78%, oxygen is just under 21% and argon is almost 1%. CO2 is a minute trace gas at 0.038%. We all learnt the composition of the air in both primary and high school but because most people don’t use science in their day-to-day living, they have forgotten this. Also, the vast bulk of the population have very little knowledge of science so they find it impossible to make judgements about even basic scientific issues let alone ones as complex as climate. This makes it easy for those with agendas to deceive us by using emotive statements rather than facts. For a detailed breakup of the atmosphere go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition
 
You can find this piece on this website:
 
http://preventdisease.com/news/11/012411_inform_public_co2.shtml
 
So, given this new and compelling piece of scientific 'evidence', I thought I should get it checked out by some scientists I know who work with Skeptical Science. Let's have a look at their response to Gregg D. Thompson's first question.

The document begins by making a number of irrelevant and misleading statements about human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The three principal misleading statements and errors are:

  • "CO2 is less than a mere four 100ths of 1% [of the atmosphere]"
  • "Humans produce only 3% [of global CO2 emissions]"
  •  "If the public were aware that man-made CO2 is so incredibly small there would be very little belief in a climate disaster"

These statements presume that anything that is present as a small proportion can have no effect, which is clearly nonsense. In reality, the percentages of CO2 in the atmosphere and of human CO2 emissions are irrelevant to the risk that those emissons pose. A very small proportion of arsenic in drinking water can be very dangerous, for example. 99% of the atmosphere is composed of non-greenhouse gases, so the entire greenhouse effect is caused by the remaining 1%
 
The second statement ignores the fact that although natural emissions are much larger than human emissions, the natural carbon cycle is in balance. Natural carbon sinks absorb more than natural carbon sources emit, and human emissions upset that balance. That's why humans are responsible for the 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past 150 years.
 
You can find the rest of their counter-argument here:
 
http://www.skepticalscience.com/preventing-misinformation.html
 
The Skeptical Scientist response seems to sum up why it is so hard for the majority of people to get their head around the Climate Change issue. And consequently so easy for the skeptical view to take root.

I received the original Gregg D. Thompson argument on email from someone I trust and who is super smart, well-read and academically highly qualified in his field. No doubt he was sent it by another smart and successful professional in his network.

It is very easy for a unqualified journalist to pick up the multitude of similar pieces of mis-information and present them as fact. The challenge for those of us working in the Brand Sustainability space, is to translate the real science into easy to understand statements, that have the same level of cut-through and believability.
 
My favourite quote made by Lord Deben (Margaret Thatcher's Environment Minister) in a recent visit was, "Climate Change is real, it is man-made and we can do something about it." He was practical and market-focused too. Every Monday morning he walks into his office and tells his staff, "We are here for two reasons. To save the planet. And make a profit."
 
It doesn't get much simpler and clearer than that.

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