Debating Climate Change: Pathways Through Argument to Agreement (Science in Society Series)

160 Pages·2009·0.62 MB·English

by  Elizabeth L. Malone

Debating Climate Change
Science in Society Series
Series Editor: Steve Rayner
Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford
Editorial Board: Gary Kass, Anne Kerr, Melissa Leach, Angela Liberatore,
Stan Metcalfe, Paul Nightingale, Timothy O’Riordan, Nick Pidgeon,
Ortwin Renn, Dan Sarewitz, Andrew Webster, James Wilsdon, Steve Yearley
Business Planning for Turbulent Times
New Methods for Applying Scenarios
Edited by Rafael Ramírez, John W. Selsky and Kees van der Heijden
Debating Climate Change
Pathways through Argument to Agreement
Elizabeth L. Malone
Democratizing Technology
Risk, Responsibility and the Regulation of Chemicals
Anne Chapman
Genomics and Society
Legal, Ethical and Social Dimensions
Edited by George Gaskell and Martin W. Bauer
Marginalized Reproduction
Ethnicity, Infertility and Reproductive Technologies
Lorraine Culley, Nicky Hudson and Floor van Rooij
Nanotechnology
Risk, Ethics and Law
Edited by Geoffrey Hunt and Michael Mehta
Resolving Messy Policy Problems
Handling Conflict in Environmental, Transport, Health and Ageing Policy
Steven Ney
Unnatural Selection
The Challenges of Engineering Tomorrow’s People
Edited by Peter Healey and Steve Rayner
Vaccine Anxieties
Global Science, Child Health and Society
Melissa Leach and James Fairhead
A Web of Prevention
Biological Weapons, Life Sciences and the Governance of Research
Edited by Brian Rappert and Caitrìona McLeish
Debating Climate Change
Pathways through Argument to Agreement
Elizabeth L. Malone
London • Sterling, VA
First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2009
Copyright © Battelle Memorial Institute, 2009
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-84407-828-8 hardback
978-1-84407-829-5 paperback
Typeset by MapSet Ltd, Gateshead, UK
Cover design by Susanne Harris
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Malone, Elizabeth L., 1947-
Debating climate change : pathways through argument to agreement / Elizabeth L.
Malone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84407-828-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-84407-829-5 (pbk.) 1.
Climatic changes—Social aspects. 2. Climatic changes—Political aspects. 3.
Climatic changes—Government policy—International cooperation. I. Title.
QC903.M35 2009
363.738'74—dc22
2009007565
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To Richard Brown, kind and wise mentor;
and to Frank, Andrew, Ellen and Tyler,
for their non-stop love and support

Contents
List of figures and tables ix
Preface xi
1 Trying to Make Sense of Disparate Arguments about
Climate Change 1
2 The Many Faces of the Dispute 17
3 Climate Change: Part of Globalization? 35
4 Arguments: Agreeing and Disagreeing 53
5 Finding Common Ground: The Features of the Arguments 65
6 Elements of Arguments as Social Links 83
7 Beyond Family Ties: Social Network Analysis 97
8 Prospects for the Debate: Endless Recycling of Arguments or
Movement towards Agreement? 113
Appendix 1: Arguments sorted by family with coded rhetorical features 129
Appendix 2: Documents listed by argument 133
Index 139
Electronic supplementary material for this book is available online at
www.earthscan.co.uk/dcc in the form of a PDF file containing a first-stage
analysis for each of the 100 arguments considered in the text.
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 The Keeling Curve, showing increasing proportions of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 20
2.2 Physical science research results showing the relative contributions
of gases to increasing global warming and other climate changes 24
2.3 Policy preferences of cultural types 25
2.4 Integrated assessment modelling framework 27
6.1 Network of friends 84
7.1 Social network ties: Group 1a 98
7.2 Social network ties: Group 4a 101
Tables
3.1 Globalization dimensions 37
3.2 Climate change dimensions 42
4.1 Template for first-order document/presentation analysis 61
5.1 Overview of document set and rhetorical classifications 66
5.2 First-step analysis of Lindzen argument 67
5.3 First-step analysis of Ausubel argument 69
5.4 First-step analysis of Darwin et al argument 71
5.5 First-step analysis of Worldwatch argument 73
5.6 First-step analysis of Browne argument 75
5.7 First-step analysis of Edmonds and Scott argument 77
5.8 First-step analysis of Agarwal and Narain argument 79
5.9 First-step analysis of Meadows argument 81