Climate change and the danger of cargo-cult scientism

A Guardian article this week trumpeted a survey of 383 of "the world's top climate scientists" which found almost half think global temperatures will rise at least 3C. They asked the wrong experts.

Guardian Design/Halil Kahraman

"Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds," desclared a breathless article in the Guardian this week by Damian Carrington.

I like a lot of Damian’s work, but this the sort of climate reporting that drives me nuts.

The Guardian approached 843 lead authors and review editors of IPCC reports since 2018, people described as “many of the most knowledgeable people on the planet”. Of these, 380 replied and completed a questionnaire.

But of these 380, how many are experts on the energy system? Because, I'm sorry to say, no matter how anguished experts on glaciology, disease, flooding, penguins, hurricanes, etc may be, they have no standing in a discussion about emission pathways.

Let's have a look at the area of expertise of those quoted in the article:

• Gretta Pecl, University of Tasmania - marine ecologist

• Peter Cox, at the University of Exeter - mathematician and climate modeller

• Jesse Keenan, Tulane University - real estate and urban planning

• Nathalie Hilmi, Monaco Scientific Centre - macroeconomics and finance

• Dipak Dasgupta, Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi - economics and finance

• Henry Neufeldt, UN’s Copenhagen Climate Centre - environment and soil science

• (E) Lisa (F) Schipper, University of Bonn - environmental social science

I have nothing but respect for their knowledge and achievements in their areas of expertise, and I salute their (unpaid) work on the IPCC reports. However, it is striking there is not one energy or energy systems expert among them. And only one, Peter Cox, who can translate an emissions pathway into a temperature outcome.

If you want to know the impacts of a given level of temperature on the planet and economy, they would be the people to go to. But when the question is what level of emissions we are likely to actually see, I am afraid they have no more standing than a professor of art history.

In fact, I would rather ask a professor of art history. Because as soon as you probe the output of these eminent academics, you find that they have been basing a substantial proportion of their research - as the academic system and the IPCC has been encouraging them to do for over a decade - on the wildly implausible and endlessly discredited #RCP85isBollox scenario.

It's no wonder the experts in the Guardian survey are so anguished and pessimistic: they have been force-fed a business-as-usual scenario in which the burning of coal increases by a factor of 7-10 by 2100. It's not going to happen: setting aside the upwards blip due to the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, global coal demand peaked in 2013 and is about to enter decades of decline.

None of this is to say we don't have a climate problem and we should not act urgently. Of course we do and we must. According to the most authoritative projections of our energy future by organisations like BloombergNEF and the International Energy Agency (IEA), we are currently on track for around 2.5C of warming. If we continue to tighten the policy environment to squeeze out emissions, and if innovation continues to deliver, I believe we could still end up achieving the Paris Agreement's hard target of "well below 2C". But we could, if climate sensitivity is at the high end of expectations, end up at at 3C of warming by 2100, which would be catastrophic.

The point is not that we should ignore climate change, or downplay it, not at all. The point is that if we really want to understand the future of global temperatures, so that we can then figure out their impacts and make smart policy and investment decisions, there is no point asking a bunch of economists, environmental and social scientists.

By all means we must "Follow the science", but it must not be cargo-cult scientism - treating the views of scientists as gospel even in areas about which they know little or nothing.