The Heretic - a climate sceptic fantasy
- 21 Feb 2011, 14:18
- Christian
"The Heretic" is a fascinating play, because it gives us a view
of the world that many would like to believe is true. It's a
climate sceptic fantasy, full of scientific errors and the
rewriting of reality, writ large as absurdist comedy and given
respectability by a run at the Royal Court in London's Sloane
Square.
In the world of the Heretic, global warming really is a
worldwide conspiracy orchestrated by climate scientists. The play
comes bristling with oft-repeated sceptic arguments, voiced by
feisty maverick climate scientist Diane (says 'fuck', cracks jokes
about lesbian nuns). With expertise in sea level rise, her
wholesale disbelief that climate change is happening is sparked off
by a discovery that sea levels are not rising around the
Maldives.
In the real world, this 'finding' has been fairly
comprehensively debunked - see the science blog
Deltoid here, or a relevant scientific paper
here, which concludes 'The analysis clearly indicates that
sea-level in this region is rising. We expect that the continued
and increasing rate of sea-level rise and any resulting increase in
the frequency or intensity of extreme sea-level events will cause
serious problems for the inhabitants of some of these islands
during the 21st century." In the Heretic there's nobody to point
this out, and Diane quickly becomes a mouthpiece for a fairly
standard batch of arguments - she pulls apart 'the hockey stick' in
a lecture, sets her students exercises to teach them that warming
will stop when the atmosphere becomes saturated with CO2, and
argues that the medieval warm period shows climate change is all
just natural cycles.
Diane makes a very good climate sceptic, but she's not a very
convincing scientist. We're told her views have arisen because she
thinks "the science isn't good enough", and the play makes a lot of
this, including a section where she 'debunks' some climate science
live on stage. This raises a slight problem, because many of
Diane's own scientific pronouncements are factually incorrect.
Take sea level rise - ostensibly her specialist area. In the
real world, sea levels have risen about
10-20cm in the past hundred years. In 2007 the IPCC suggested
another
18cm - 59cm by 2100, with the potential for more if ice sheets
melt rapidly. But when asked to give an estimate of sea level rise
in 100 years time, Diane replies '10 centimetres plus or minus
fifteen.' Not only does she get to say this without losing her
credibility as a scientist, her colleague - a 'normal' mainstream
climate scientist - happily agrees with her.
Later, Diane dismisses the IPCC's projections of sea level rise
by claiming that they're all based on one tide gauge. Again, there
is no challenge to this, although needless to say,
it's not true. Later on still, Diane claims in an interview
with Jeremy Paxman that there's no evidence CO2 has caused warming
in the 20th century. But
there's lots of evidence. We're asked to cheer Diane on as she
busts the 'pseudo-science' of the climate mainstream, while
ignoring the awful howlers she keeps coming out with. Maybe we're
not supposed to care - it's a comedy, after all - but it does make
the whole thing pretty awkward.
Not content with rewriting scientific reality, the play also
repackages recent history to make it fit more closely with its
worldview. Diane finds herself at the centre of lightly
fictionalised versions of 'climategate' - the UEA email hack - and
'glaciergate' -
the IPCC mistake over when Himlayan glaciers were likely to melt
by. The real 'climategate' resulted in five inquiries,
which criticised the scientists for not being open enough about
their work, said they were "
unhelpful and defensive" and that they mishandled FOI requests
- but found no fundamental flaws in the fabric of climate
science.
The fictional email hack, however, carried out by one of Diane's
students, does reveal fundamental flaws. 'Glaciergate', rather than
being a terrible failure of fact-checking and peer review, becomes
a deliberate lie inserted into an IPCC chapter by a scientist in
order to benefit the 'poor people of the Himalayas'.
There's a slightly bemusing sub-plot about radical
environmentalists issuing death threats against Diane and trying to
kidnap her. It may be rather distasteful for those climate
scientists, like Phil Jones,
who have received death threats in real life.
But mostly, it's just ridiculous. In the play, the bar to
getting a scientific paper into Nature is to have it reviewed by
your 'best friend', and scientists write IPCC chapters on their
own. Throughout, climate scientists are shown to believe their work
is all a con, but carry on regardless.
The Heretic is a sceptic fantasy, and will probably increase the
sum total of human confusion. But on the other hand, all of the
things the Heretic throws at climate science are genuine articles
of faith for many. This vision of reality is what a part of the
climate sceptic lobby believes the world to be like. And when you
actually see it on stage, it all looks completely, utterly
ridiculous.