Global warming, precipitation, rising waters… On a suspended terrestrial globe, students vary the data from a control panel to see what the Earth would look like by projecting a scenario at +2 or +3°C . State the facts, understand the impacts of climate change and show how to adapt society to this warming, this is the ambition of the new permanent exhibition “Climate emergency”, open on May 16 for ten years at the Cité des sciences in Paris. .
“The word emergency is welcome, emphasizes Jean Jouzel, paleoclimatologist and scientific curator of this exhibition. We know we have twice too many shows [de gaz à effet de serre] by 2030 compared to what is needed, that we are heading headlong towards +3°C. What we are experiencing today is what our scientific community has been considering since the first report of the IPCC”, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of which he was vice-president between 2002 and 2015.
Start from the scientific consensus
Faced with the rise of climatoscepticism on social networks, studied in particular by the mathematician David Chavalarias, the desire here is to make tangible and visible thirty-five years of research on global warming, relying on experts from the CNRS, Ademe or Inrae. And to recall that the scientific consensus exists on the fact that human activities generate CO2 and that a significant concentration of CO2 causes climate change on a planetary scale.
According to the 2023 edition of the barometer of the critical spirit of Universcience, 63% of French people link global warming to CO2, produced by human activities, and think that global warming itself is a consensus among scientists. More than a third of respondents do not agree or have no opinion.
But for Adrien Stalter, museographer and exhibition curator, “we are no longer explaining why there would be a hypothetical climate change, it is there, it exists. It’s scientifically proven. Now we move on to decarbonization. “” We did not say “we start arguments against and we will explain why it is false”, abounds Jean Jouzel. Our starting point is the IPCC scenarios. »
Impressive data sculptures
The exhibition relies on visualization, with impressive data sculptures. In two circles representing the direct and indirect emissions of the City of Paris, ten columns of cans in flashy colors face each other. The smallest measures 15 cm and represents intramural industry, the largest 7.5 m for aviation (means by which tourists come to visit the capital). They are there to show how high the sectors contribute to the city’s carbon footprint, worth a total of 21.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Data sculptures also make it possible to measure the carbon footprints of our modes of food or transport used, the individual thermal car representing the most important part.
In a video, an engineer explains what we can move towards to decarbonize the transport sector, and how electric must replace thermal, “but not under any condition, warns Adrien Stalter. Sobriety is the key word for decarbonization. Driving a large 7 or 8 ton electric vehicle is absolute nonsense. The electric car is also one of the main subjects of misleading claims on social networks, but this also shows that it raises tensions, a rejection.
“That’s what a lot of people want to hear”
“Let’s be clear, why does climate skepticism work on social networks? Because that’s what a lot of people want to hear, argues Jean Jouzel. That is to say: there is no problem with global warming, we can continue to live as before, we must not worry about what we tell you about the evolution of our societies. »
While he fears that climate skeptics will not come to the exhibition, he hopes that visitors can have a better knowledge of what climate change is. For him, the hardest thing to make people understand is that the actions that will be taken (or not) over the next ten years will be essential, “not for the current climate or between now and 2050, but for after 2050”. “The difficulty is how we act today to preserve a climate to which young people can adapt”, he pleads, hoping for a broad individual and collective awareness.