Expert opinion from University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau
Opinion: I find myself now spending most of my academic retirement period explaining the science behind climate change to my local communities. What was the life journey that brought me to this role?
As a young child I remember being fascinated first thing in the morning by the pure blues and reds refracted by droplets of rain on grass, which looked to me like little jewels. Later, my two aunts who were committed environmentalists a decade ahead of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) introduced me to the natural world. As a young adult, my interest in natural colours broadened and became something of an enjoyable obsession. While living in Australia, every September I would travel to photograph the spectacular spring wildflowers of the Sydney sandstone region.
Since moving to New Zealand for a professorial appointment almost 40 years ago, I extended my personal environmental interests to include the native birds of the northland forests as well as the magnificent trees themselves. Above all of that, the stars of the Milky Way galaxy in the dark night sky is the most magnificent spectacle visible to humans by camera, and a reminder of the insignificance of the human presence in the universe.
My wife and I felt that as “townies” new to a rural setting, we needed to contribute to the local community of Warkworth, north Auckland. A close friend suggested that I contact the editor of the Local Matters regional papers to see if they would be interested in having me write a regular science column in the popular community paper, Mahurangi Matters. I have since then published about 50 columns in that paper, on climate change and renewables, on Covid and the vaccines, the space economy and the removal of space junk, artificial intelligence, 5G radiation anxieties and some other current topics that are preoccupying the community.
Climate change science is exceptionally interdisciplinary with all disciplines of science able and willing to contribute to the public discourse. The basic molecular science of climate warming by greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion lies in a combination of physics and chemistry. The impacts of climate change are studied by ecologists, biologists, geographers, and geologists. The development of renewables is mainly achieved by engineers, physicists and chemists. It is vital in the future that a whole-of-science strategy be adopted to deal with serious crises such as Covid or climate warming.
My early academic research and teaching background was in spectroscopy which involves detecting molecules absorbing and emitting radiation (light) across the electromagnetic spectrum. The absorption of infrared (heat) radiation by sharply increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases, is a simple but important example of spectroscopy. Every carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere that absorbs heat radiation (infrared energy) becomes a molecular-scaled sponge of warmth added to the atmosphere. The higher the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide originating from fossil fuel combustion, the warmer the atmosphere becomes.
My later research, which also involved spectroscopy usually as a molecular fingerprinting method, has been in investigating advanced materials. My spectroscopic research projects provided an ideal background to understand the development of renewables including solar panels, batteries, fuel-cells, wind turbines, photocatalysts, and green hydrogen production. An important motivation for me was a statement by the Nobel Prize in Medicine winner Professor Paul Nurse that climate change was challenging for non-scientists to grasp and therefore that scientists needed to assist communities develop a genuine understanding of climate warming.
After retiring to the rural region of Warkworth, I was invited to establish a science and climate group for the local community organisation, the University of the Third Age branch. Over the last four years I have organised talks on a variety of science-related public issues for talks by national experts. The speakers included the late and much-respected journalist Rod Oram, and other New Zealand experts from the universities, Crown Research Institutes and NZ Geographic.
The level of local interest in the science and climate group has increased sharply. At the same time, I was invited to give many other talks to several other U3A branches, Forest and Bird, Rotary and Rebus Clubs, Friendship Clubs, Men’s Shed Groups, and a regular annual talk to the Harbour Hospice Men’s Group. Over these few years, the accumulated total audience for these community talks was probably about 2000. Almost every meeting generated lively interest and questions. A particular highlight of the last year for me was my talk to the science honours students at the University of Auckland, where the youthful intelligence, engagement, lively questions and discussion were quite exceptional and inspiring.
Over these four years, while continuing to publish science columns in Mahurangi Matters, I wrote opinion editorials in the national media and I was invited to be a regular columnist for Chemistry in Australia, a newsletter read by industry managers as well as scientists and published by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Some of these articles on green hydrogen, solar and wind potential and space junk removal were picked up by the World Economic Forum.
It is important that scientists, aside from communicating with other scientists, must now engage with all of the other stakeholder groups, including government, industry, and consumers as all of these contribute to the growing climate problem and all need to be involved in finding solutions. My objective, inspired by the words of Paul Nurse, has always been to explain the underpinning science behind the current global concerns, including as the highest priority, climate warming. In this respect, scientists have become teachers for the world community.
In performing the role of global teachers, scientists can be reassured that most of the informed world community is on their side. This has been demonstrated by the massive 2021 Oxford UN Peoples poll (700,000 surveyed) showing that majorities across 18 of the G20 countries accept that climate warming is caused by humans, and that these majorities seek greater action from governments.
With core climate deniers numbering only about six percent, our primary focus must now be to explain to our communities the renewables pathway to zero-carbon.
Professor Cooney is to be commended for his efforts, but “Science” as he and I know it, is on a very shaky and decayed tree. The bulk of the population’s “science” information is not gleaned from lectures, but in 1-2 minute grab-bytes on social media, and much of that is simply biased or wrong (Ivermectin for treating covid, for example). After all, about 40% of NZ adults are functionally illiterate and don’t attend lectures. My observation is that face-to-face lectures reach an ever ageing “middle-class” audience (check out your heading photo). Science is today an industry for profit, not “truth” (look at the fuss over covid vaccine production in the USA, subject of a Senate inquiry), Science publishing has been captured by mammon, a co-authorship (any subject) can cost US$500 (apply on the web), a paper (name a topic) can now be published in a week for $3K-$5K, no questions asked. Two examples: within 9 months of SARS-CoV-2 being named as a virus (Feb 2020), there were about half a million papers published mentioning the virus as a key word, one million on the disease (Covid-19). There are not that many research virologists, and certainly nobody has read all of the literature (5 million and counting as of today). So many papers are now retracted for fraudulent practices that websites now exist to document them; Another example – papers that negate climate change shibboleths and which are routinely ignored or derided without any valid science-based checking or criticism (Tuvalu is sinking due to sea level rise – right? Cyclone Gabrielle was our strongest ever to hit New Zealand since records began – right? or R.Morrison Cassie (a NZ scientist) who showed by measurement in the 1950’s that the pH of Wellington Harbour changes by 1.0 units over a tide cycle ) – a change many predict will lead to mass-extinctions. Climate change (global warming) is a huge $trillion industry (bordering on a religion) for which any cautionary “science” is now an irritation to be ignored. No face-to-face lecture for-or against a topic will have any impact at all, on youtube it might last a month and then be lost in time.
Thanks for those comments some of which go far beyond my article, so I will comment on a few that do relate in some way to my content. Science has changed greatly during my career and its integrity and systems if anything have become even more secure. During the course of publishing hundreds of research papers in top international journals (Royal Society, American Chemical Society, Elsevier etc) I have never paid for publication. However my research manuscripts were all submitted to high level peer-review involving typically three anonymous international expert reviewers chosen by the Editors. Co-authorship in any paper for which I was lead author (most of them) required a significant contribution to the intellectual content of the paper. Regarding global topics such as Covid and vaccines, the number of papers published was exceptionally high. This was because the number of research disciplines contributing to the field was also exceptionally diverse including not only virologists but also microbiologists, geneticists, biotechnologists, community health specialists, molecular biologists, medical chemists, applied mathematicians and statisticians, demographers, psychologists, specialist vaccine manufacturers (who make many billions of doses for the global population) and many other disciplines. That diversity and scale simply reflects the great importance of the vaccine to the global population. Of course the fact that the number of fatalities as reported via governments was several millions but according to the Economist was three times greater than this because in many poorer countries deaths were not fully reported. Overall, the standards of integrity in international research have never been higher which is not to say that fraud never happens. In my long research experience as an expert reviewer across numerous topics , errors of interpretation can happen and are corrected by authors but these rarely involve dishonesty.
Bravo. After a lifetime in chemistry education and science outreach I fully concur. The pleasure of discovery, and the rewards that come from sharing via public outreach, have meant a lot to me.
And it’s satisfying to know that repeat polling shows that a majority of citizens are seriously concerned about the climate crisis. There’s a problem though: this concern is utterly failing to translate into meaningful political pressure, or personal lifestyle changes.
Most people I know are reasonably science-literate; yet if climate comes up in conversation one can sense the metal gears grinding as they hunt for a less challenging topic – as often as not, their next flying holidays or ICE-fuelled road trip. And as for making submissions, challenging our parliamentarians, or supporting the Student Strike movement – nothing. It’s all too emotionally inconvenient.
Science education is clearly not enough; what we need is an ethical transformation. Ideas, anyone?
excuse my ageing fingers: ‘metal’ (gears grinding) should have been ‘mental’.
But my main argument stands: science education is losing the battle against selfishness, greed, greenwashing, disinformation and apathy.
I share some of your concerns. It is vital the NZ research scientists engage with their national and local communities to help ordinary citizens improve their understanding of the science behind major global problems, which puzzle or threaten the citizens and their communities. Scientists need, as far as their research allows, to accept the role of informal community science advisors for these big issues.
Agreed, and I applaud every effort to up the level of awareness. But the rate of change in public support for action is still far, far too slow. This crisis is unprecedented in human history; it requires a rapid, drastic cut in our collective GHG footprint. To use chemistry jargon for a moment: in achieving that goal, the rate-determining step seems not to be education but cognitive dissonance. I can do no better than to quote Gus Speth: “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change.
I thought that with 30 years of good science, we could address those problems.
But I was wrong.
The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy – and to deal with those we need a cultural and spiritual transformation.
And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
I am sympathetic to your views above but I see the situation a little differently. Conflicts of interest, loss of access to privileges, political alignments, gaps in very basic science and lack of awareness of possible modes of practical action, seem to me to play a role in discouraging climate action. The responses to my numerous community talks on climate indicate that most people in NZ genuinely want to know what they can do to contribute to a solution to climate change . Secondly, even many who intuitively accept that we are facing a very serious climate crisis do not understand the connection between fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric warming. For example, very few understand the way carbon dioxide and other green house gases absorb infrared radiation and how this leads to warming of the atmosphere. I suspect that this is due to a low level of knowledge in the community of the elementary physics of light. Physics as a subject in high school is probably discouraged because it is thought to be intellectually difficult and so is to be avoided if a student is seeking high level results. That factor of low knowledge of basic physics has been well documented in a recent Australian study. I encourage community individuals and audiences to read the NASA climate evidence site which is both very clear and easily readable by non-scientists. I think there is hope if we can address these two barriers.