Climate change inconsistency

Far, far, far be it from me to question the existence of climate change. Only ideologues and the very brave speak out on the possibility it’s all hokum.

But – and I know I’m going to regret this – I’m curious about an inconsistency. It’s not a scientific one, because heaven knows who understands that any more.

It’s about a disjunct between science and history as people recall it.

It goes like this: item of TV news shows howling winds, roaring seas, flooding rivers, and so on, much of the video shot on phones and submitted to TV stations for broadcasting (and payment?).

They put that frame thing around it, which is either a device to indicate what sort of footage it is or disguise the fact some people don’t know to shoot with the phone held horizontally.

Lately we’ve seen minutes of this kind of stuff shot in the US and Asia.

The good citizens of those countries now know to get their phones out at the drop of an incident that might be newsworthy.

They’re not trained, but they’ve seen that kind of thing on telly and think, my goodness, look at me – I’m a news reporter.

The actual reporters probably have too many health and safety rules to allow them out there at the height of a storm.

They usually get to stand in the cold and wet later, waiting for the channel’s main news slot to go to air, looking miserable but somehow exuding the gravitas of real news reporting.

They don’t seem to realise we’ve had our adrenalin pumped by amateur coverage already posted online.

But I’m being unfair, because they do something that’s important.

They interview survivors, usually bedraggled individuals who’ve just been through hell (there was a wonderful photo of one emerging from floodwaters with a kitten on his shoulder).

And there’s a stock question they usually ask – is this the worst you’ve ever seen?

Quite often, the stock response – and this is what intrigues my tiny mind – is someone naming a year when it was actually worse.

Something like what a man in America said last week: ‘‘This would have to be the worst storm we’ve had since 1945.’’ Or 1989. Or 1995. It has to be last century or it isn’t worth saying.

So what’s going on? Are these people in shock, fantasising, illinformed by granddad or by something reported in those solid but hastily prepared journals of record, newspapers, now recumbent within the microfiche machines of local libraries?

We can’t have it both ways: climate has either changed or it hasn’t.

If it’s got worse, as those of us with limited scientific knowledge have come to believe, then how come the terrible storms of today have often been preceded by something worse?

This is where we get to that uneasy interface between science and everyday perception.

The experts spend a lot of time and money exploring the world for evidence and analysing it to establish what’s going on.

It’s an imperfect process, because as sociologist Karl Popper famously observed, every theory only holds good until another comes along to disprove it.

He was referring to the social sciences, renowned for their imprecision, but so-called hard science with its mathematical equations is also open to challenge and further development.

The fracture between all that and the rest of us – and, more importantly, those who think they are in charge – is exemplified by cigarette smoking.

You’ve seen the old movie posters and print advertisements that depicted smoking as glamorous; then science began to reveal some awkward truths about smoking and cancer.

Yet it took 40 years from when people began to campaign against public smoking to the point ciggies were banned in workplaces and restaurants. NZ was ahead of the rest of the world.

I recall going into a cafe in England round the turn of the century and enraging fellow diners by asking them to quit blowing smoke in my direction.

The discovery of climate change evidence and the refinement of its theories are evolving in ways the general public may never fully grasp.

Meantime, most of us like to refer to our less precise memories of great floods, endless dry summers, and cyclones that rampaged from one end of town to the other.

While that kind of ‘‘evidence’’ endures in the public mind, climate change will continue to have its cigarette smoking hill to climb. And remember – people still smoke.

We can’t have it both ways: climate has either changed or it hasn’t.