If youโre a boxer, and your opponent is telegraphing his punches, thatโs a good thing. It gives you anย advantage.
If youโre playing poker, and another player is giving a โtell,โ the same story goes. Itโs to yourย advantage.
Opponents of climate change action are doing precisely that right nowโtelegraphing where theyโre going to attack. Hereโsย Norman Rogers of the Heartland Institute, already attacking a scientific reportโthe National Climate Assessment, which weighs climate risks to different regions of the U.S.โthat wonโt be out in its next iteration until 2013.ย Rogers attended an early advisory committee meeting, and has already started up the narrative that will be used against theย report:
There did not appear to be any member of the committee even mildly skeptical of the global warming catastrophe story.ย This was surely not an accident.ย I was told that every member of the committee had to be approved by the White House, presumably by Johnย Holdren.
As I noted in anย earlier post, Bush administration climate science whistleblower Rick Piltz knew this would happen.ย As Piltz put it:
This report will be attacked. There is no way to bullet-proof it against that war on science โ thatโs a myth. Theyโll look for procedural missteps, theyโll look for anything, theyโll invent something if they needย to.
In that earlier post, I commended Piltz for his foresight. Nowโand again, this report is not due out until 2013โit has already beenย validated.
So what do you do now? Just go through the whole National Climate Assessment processโall the advisory committee meetings, model runs, and so onโand hope that critics will forget aboutย you?
No: You start now working on a counter-narrative to defend the assessment. What does that narrative soundย like?
That can be debated, but to me, this is really about homeland security, broadly understood. This is about protecting our people from drought, from wildfires, from floodingโfrom all of the weather conditions that can be worsened by changing the climate conditions in theย background.
What role could be more important for government than protecting the livelihood of its citizens, and using the best available science to doย so?
Iโm not saying this is the best defense. All Iโm saying is this: If youโre working on a report with a two year time horizon, and you know that report is going to be attacked, then you should also be working on a strong explanation of why your report is important and valid. I sincerely hope that isย happening.
