The Nobel Divide and the Climate Divide

Robert Laughlin, a winner of the physics Nobel in 1998.

Stephen Chu, a winner of the 1997 physics Nobel and the secretary of energy.

Ivar Giaever, a winner of the 1973 physics Nobel Prize.

Burton Richter, a winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics.

3:26 p.m. | Updated Here’s a look at new science revealing the deep internal biases shaping how people regard research on global warming, and a riff on how that’s reflected among winners of the physics Nobel Prize. (Can you guess which of the Nobelists pictured here are convinced that humans are, or aren’t, dangerously fiddling with the planet’s thermostat? Answers below.)

Fascinating new research highlighted by the National Science Foundation a few days ago provides support for something that many Dot Earth readers know all too well: Deep-rooted cultural predispositions powerfully shape people’s perceptions of scientific findings.

The paper, “Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus,” was written by Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale, University of Oklahoma political science professor Hank Jenkins-Smith and Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University, and is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Risk Research. The focus of the research was information and attitudes on climate change, nuclear waste disposal and data on the merits of concealed handguns. (The Cultural Cognition Project site has a lot more background.)

The new paper’s findings, helpfully unpacked here, cut against arguments of those who say flawed media coverage is a big factor impeding progress on climate policy. They are missing something much more profound. I’m hardly defending the media, myself included. Newsroom norms, reporters’ reflexes, shrinking resources and growing work burdens all guarantee coverage will always be far from perfect.

But the research by Kahan et al. reinforces a point made succinctly here not long ago by David Ropeik, the author of “How Risky Is It, Really?”

Facts, in and of themselves, are meaningless, in the purest and fullest meaning of that word. We interpret them, judge them, screen them through subconscious mental processes (the heuristics and biases discoveries of Daniel Kahneman et.al.), qualify them based on the trustworthiness of the source, and weigh them in the context of our own life circumstances and views and values. Alone, facts are lifeless stones the ground.

So you spend your formative years developing, say, a libertarian or liberal view on world events. You bone up on climate science and policies. Then you choose a like-minded Nobel laureate, dig in and hold fast. (The old dictum “For every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D” applies to Nobel laureates, as well.)

The cultural and cognitive filters in human brains makes it easy for George Will to build a following and then go out and find a winner of a physics Nobel whose views mesh with Will’s “no worries” approach to the energy and climate challenges. Here’s Will’s column from Newsweek extolling the virtues of an essay in the current issue of The American Scholar by Robert Laughlin, a physics Nobelist who contends that the climate system is far beyond man’s capacity to influence.[*]

Conversely, President Obama can find a physics Nobelist to suit his policies. I recently interviewed Burton Richter, a physics Nobelist making a big push for a climate-friendly energy revolution, but also had an e-mail exchange earlier this year with Ivar Giaever, a winner of the physics Nobel who sees pronouncements of dangerous human-driven warming as more religious than scientific. Giaever confirmed his view, writing:

I participated in a panel discussion in the Nobel meeting in Lindau in 2008 where I said the global warming has become a new religion. Please see the statement from the American Physical Society where it is stated: The evidence is incontrovertible; i.e. it can’t be discussed, just like religion. The [society] will discuss the mass of a proton for example, or negative energy, but global warming is incontrovertible…. We have gone through this before: the acid rain used to be a big problem, then the ozone hole took over and Freon is no longer used for refrigeration which costs you dearly, and now finally we have global warming to worry about. But there is NO unusual rise in the ocean level, so what where and what is the big problem?

The bottom line? The predispositions within us, which are amplified these days by polarized media and politics, almost guarantee that even “perfect information” on climate will never magically galvanize the kind of response that would be required to decarbonize human energy choices even as human appetites and numbers crest.

That, of course, is the situation only as long as the debate revolves around views of global warming. On energy, there is an entirely different span of views, and far more agreement that humanity doesn’t have the choices it needs for a smooth ride in this century. Ever more reason to pursue an “energy quest” instead of seeking to “solve the climate crisis.”

Next week, I’ll be posting an exchange I had with Kahan and Jenkins-Smith on their work.

But internal biases, of course, are only one element shaping a person’s approach to global warming. Another is familiarity with the science. I sent Robert Laughlin’s climate analysis, and George Will’s piece, to an array of climate scientists, including fellow Nobelist Richter. I’ve published their reactions in a new post.

[* As per the exchange with Michael Tobis below, I've dropped a portion of the asterisked sentence about human's ability to influence climate inadvertently (the American Scholar column doesn't expressly address that question.]