Culture

Making a contribution

Many of the scientists that we observed spoke of their pride in contributing to the IPCC process. During the public event, Professor Peter Cox, Co-Lead Author of working group one (WG1) described how the IPCC was a “miracle of consensus” and he was “very proud to be part of that“.

Thousands of scientists and academics contribute their time voluntarily to the IPCC process as reviewers and authors of the three working groups. Professor Thomas Stocker (Co-Chair of WG1) described these individuals as “The fine fabric of the root system of the scientific community”.

The IPCC process is a mammoth task, but scientists and academics contribute because they recognise the inherent societal value in the work they are engaged in and are proud to be involved.

Threats to the process

Stocker cautioned about over reliance on the voluntary labour of scientists and academics contributing to the process, and requested more institutional support. Stocker also pushed the academic community to be alert to the potential for a weakening of the scientific process as researchers and funders respond to the IPCC.

He was wary of research proposals that claim they are important because they will be good for the IPCC. Instead, he stressed the importance of curiosity driven research in the process of scientific discovery.

Governance

Whilst all panels had at least one woman, they were predominantly made up of older white men. Whilst this was a UK-based event and this undoubtedly had some impact upon the demographics, this observation does reflect the gendered and racialised nature of the leadership and decision making within international climate research.

Developing a consensus is at the heart of the IPCC process, and this came through strongly in the presentations. Critical engagement with the panelists generally came from the audience, rather than other panelists.

Some diversity of message did begin to emerge from the more interdisciplinary panels in the proceedings. For example, working group three (mitigation) and the panel on the relationship between science and policy. However, some of panelists felt the need to be explicit about when they were speaking as an individual rather than as a representative of the IPCC on some topics.

These observations reflect that whilst scientific consensus is strong in relation to the science of climate change, a more political space exists around what should be done about it, and highlights a possible tension for those that challenge the common sense of this political space within the IPCC.

Some panelists also drew attention to the structure of the IPCC working groups. Ottmar Edenhofer (Co-Chair of WG3), for example, argued that whilst there was good cooperation between the groups, better integration of working groups was needed for future assessments.

Communication and engagement

The IPCC Transformational Climate Science conference was fairly heavily branded by the institutions organising the event: the Met Office, University of Exeter and University of Leeds. This contributed to a professional, somewhat corporate, style to the proceedings and publications.

As is common within scientific research many of the speakers used slides of charts and tables to illustrate their presentations. During the public event more visual imagery was used in an effort to communicate better with a non-scientific audience.

This communication style is reflected in the IPCC’s written output. Each working group report is a lengthy professionally produced report of between 1,400–1,900 pages, written in a scientific technical style. However, a shorter PDF document featuring 19 headline statements was published for policy makers.

Tensions between different communication cultures go to the heart of the IPCC process. These tensions focus on both the what and how of communication.

Key speakers stressed that they felt it was important for the IPCC to:

Provide scientific knowledge in a policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive manner. – Professor Thomas Stocker, Co-Chair WG1: Observation notes

However this position was challenged on a number of occasions by audience members who demanded a more pro-active approach to policy shaping from the IPCC scientists. There was applause when one member of the audience suggested that it was possible for the IPCC to point out policy inconsistencies without being prescriptive.

Another area of contention from the audience related to WG1’s decision to present all different future climate scenarios in the final report. In particularly, audience members questioned whether it was a good decision to present the 2ºC warming scenario even though it was now almost impossible to achieve this target.

Audience members also challenged the IPCC’s medium of communication, suggesting more was needed beyond PDF documents to engage policy makers and the public with the findings.

Websites featuring short videos, images, key facts and figures, and downloads of relevant documents for each working group have now been published. This is the video produced by working group three:

Follow the links below to explore the findings of the different IPCC working groups:

• Working group one: The physical science basis

• Working group two: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability

• Working group three: Mitigation of climate change

Despite these efforts to produce more accessible publications around the IPCC findings, public engagement tends to be through the lens of the media. Dr Saffron O’Neill (University of Exeter) presented research about how different media cultures influence significantly the message that is reported to the public.

Her findings demonstrated that the Guardian newspaper tended to report scientific consensus on key findings, whereas the Daily Mail tended to focus more on uncertainty when discussing the findings of the IPCC process. This demonstrates the ways in which the media can influence how the public understand the work of climate scientists and the IPCC.

It was perceived by many panelists that it was important for them to be able to communicate better with the public and policy makers about scientific uncertainty and what it means in the context of climate science:

I’m a mathematician. I’m very comfortable with uncertainty and probability. The question is how to communicate that. – Professor Mat Collins, University of Exeter, observation notes

Opportunity and optimism

Beyond the immediate findings of the three working groups, a discourse of opportunity emerged strongly, particularly from WG2 (adaptation).

A relatively technocratic discourse emerged from some speakers on this panel. For example, Professor Chris Field, Co-Chair of WG2, presented climate change as a challenge of managing risk: the problem needed to be made understandable and “actionable”.

“Sophisticated tools” and a “smart policy environment” were perceived to be part of the solution. He also recognised that climate change impacts were “uncertain” and “distribution” was unequal and “unfair”. He called for significant investment in adaptation research, but was keen to present a discourse of optimism and opportunity.

Similarly, Professor Corinne Le Quere (University of East Anglia and Tyndall Centre) argued that “most of the solutions [are going to be] in technology innovation“, and advocated exploring further the management of the natural environment and the development of ecosystem services:

The economics of climate change

A similarly technocratic discourse emerged in relation to a second key theme: that of a “carbon budget”. The carbon budget is the amount of carbon dioxide the IPCC has calculated society is able to emit in future years, whilst still avoiding the most serious and adverse climate change impacts. It is predicted that at the current rate the climate budget will be exhausted within thirty years, and warming of more than 2ºC will be inevitable.

Thomas Stoker (WG1 Co-Chair) described how the “carbon budget” was a new concept that had been introduced by the IPCC and it was making its way into the policy process. He explained that he perceived the concept to be “extremely powerful”, but recognised it was only part of the answer. Similarly, Corinne Le Quere described it as “simple and elegant”. Video

Professor Ottmar Edenhofer (Co-Chair of WG3) also argued that it was necessary to develop “a reasonable carbon pricing” to reduce emissions. Video

Many other panelists spoke positively about the climate budget concept, yet there were questions from the audience about the possible implications of adopting this approach.

For example, one individual asked how a carbon budget could be applied without impacting negatively upon the vulnerable and asked for more consideration of the political economy of climate change.

Similarly, another questioned how much time was spent by the IPCC discussing the limits of the current economic system particularly around issues of inequality and wealth distribution. It was questioned whether a climate budget would be able to address the issue of unequal distribution of climate change impacts amongst the global population.

Another audience member argued that there was too much emphasis on economic solutions and modelling, which they thought was concerning given the disarray of the economics discipline post-financial crash.

There was sympathy with some of these issues from some panelists, and the distribution of climate change impacts were discussed by a number of speakers, for example Simon Carney (WG3). However, Professor Thomas Stocker (WG1 Co-Chair) highlighted the restricted structures the IPCC process exists within when he argued that it was important for scientists to speak a language that policy makers understand: that of “GDP and dollars”.