How the climate “debate” must be handled from now on

 I’m reposting a comment I just made to the top climate blog on ThinkProgress (headed up by Joe Romm) as it contains my current feelings about how the sheer danger and urgency of the position that humanity finds itself in is not effectively getting through to the public, and how the conventional way the scientific position is  being communicated is now failing us badly. I sketched out how we need to take the fight to the deniers, the propagandists and the irresponsibly complacent.

Romm’s post was about a recent New Scientist report – click link for the ThinkProgress post discussing it called 7 reasons climate change is even worse than we thought. Also have a look at the cover of the November 17th edition of New Scientist here which says it all loud and clear.

My post was in answer to the well rated poster “Prokaryotes” who posted this comment:

“prokaryotes says:

November 26, 2012 at 7:25 pm

Precautionary principle DEMANDS that we start cutting Co2 emissions immediately and go aggressively after the deniers”

_______________________________________________ 

To which I responded:

Yes, Yes, Yes! We need at least a two pronged attack. There are two major elements of the "sceptical arguments". Those put forward by the "lukewarmers", which have some scientific validity, and the much greater number of deceitful "magic tricks" that can fool those not up to speed with enough science. Both need addressing in different ways because they resonate with two different segments of society.

Firstly, we need a widespread global media friendly "debate" between four types - 1) representatives of the mainstream climate science position. Perfect would be Richard Alley. 2) the top "lukewarmers" - Lindzen is the obvious candidate 3) representatives from the risk assessment and forecasting industry such as actuaries from Munich Re. 4) economists who can assess the relative costs and benefits of doing either nothing or as much as it takes depending on the perceived risks.

At the commencement of this debate, the chairman should state the relative numbers of working, publishing peers that each scientific "side" of the debate has in their area of expertise and what the relative proportions of scientists supporting each side is.

Regardless of whether Lindzen put up a good show or not, the audience would see that his position is very much a tiny minority one. Too many of the public currently thinks there is an evenly balanced case on each side. Once they become aware of this error, they might see that they are in the position of Dirty Harry and the punk, neither of who knew for sure whether there was a bullet left in the Magnum  - except that the relative numbers of scientists and risks puts the public more in the situation of playing Russian Roulette with their family's and descendant's futures with an AK47 with a full magazine except one bullet...

I think the time has passed when just stating the consensus scientific position still works well enough to counter the powerful rhetoric and misleading arguments that the sceptical side has developed and refined over the last few years. The public is confused and uncertain as to who has reality on their side because the arguments of the "denialists" are just so damn convincing in THE MINDS OF THE PUBLIC. I have argued this point with committed educated "alarmists" and have been distressed to find out that too many just cannot understand it - they still think the way to convince the public is just to keep chanting ever louder that "the science is settled", "the consensus says" etc etc - they cannot seem to grasp that the public just doesn't blindly take the words of scientists as gospel any more and cannot see that their strategy is no longer helpful, but is fast becoming a handicap to generating more public pressure for urgent action.

In order to get political backing for the fundamental reforms we need, it is certain that the general public will need much greater confidence that action is necessary now and fast and that will only come when a large majority accept that the risks of doing nothing are huge and the benefits of an all-out assault on emissions will be much greater than they have been led to accept.

Websites such as skepticalscience.com are brilliant for the already converted, and their phone app debunking common denialist arguments is fantastic, but this is not enough. The general public has clearly not been exposed to those ripostes enough. The existence of resources like this that debunk the propaganda have not swayed the popular tide of doubt and uncertainty.

The second prong of the attack should be very widespread - newpaper ads, TV slots, radio shows, mass mailouts to residences etc - and should attack the denialist arguments that are just simple magic tricks, designed to mislead e.g. CO2 is a trace gas; it was warmer in the past; climate is always changing; warming stopped in 1997; CO2 is plant food; it's the Sun etc etc. Skepticalscience.com answers these by a clear exposition of the science but this is not an optimum strategy for convincing the mass of the public - what is needed is a clear set of analogies from ordinary life that ordinary people are familiar with and can relate to. An example to answer the "warming stopped in 1997" meme, which works because the climate unrealists draw a trend line from a recent cool period back to the height of the El Nino warmth and claim the trend is flat or declining, would be for the public to consider the graph of the weight of someone who overeats over decades but whose weight also varies wildly as they indulge in successive crash diets followed by periods of binge eating. Over thirty years they would only have to overeat, on average, by one ounce a day to eventually get to weigh over 600 pounds. The thirty year graph of their weight would look like the Himalayas as their weight varied by 50 pounds plus or minus as their eating habits changed but if the overeater drew a trend line from a "light" dieting period back to a "heavy" bingeing period, and claimed that they had no eating problems, most people would easily see that they were deluded and yet such a trick in the climate arena fools too many who are not familiar with such as the natural ocean cycles affecting temperatures over a couple of decades, climatologically, and thereby creating the convincing illusion on a cherry picked graph (to those unfamiliar with planetary mechanisms) that global warming has paused or reversed. People who would never get the statistical necessity that temperature trends only become significant over periods longer than 15 years would understand such a simple analogy straight off.

We need such a suite of analogies to "go aggressively after the deniers" because current practices are simply not working well enough. Too many still believe that the scientific debate is evenly balanced - that the climate sensitivity is too uncertain to guarantee a threat - even more would like to believe the hundreds of convincing pieces of deceit that there isn't any threat at all and that the science has been cooked up to get more governmental control of their lives or taxes out of their pockets.

Evil works behind the scenes

In the previous post, which was about a classic piece of denialist propaganda, sent to the JEP by Gerard Baudains, Gerard’s letter insinuated that J-CAN (Jersey Climate Action Network) are dupes for

GB: “push(ing) a theory scientifically proven to be untrue” … and “surely they must fall into the category I call 'useful idiots'—ie, used by others to promote an agenda without realising they are being used.”

This was a bit Alice through the looking glass as the actual dupes being misled by powerful, deceptive forces are Mr Baudains and the rest of the legions of climate science denialists. Unfortunately they are über-confident that the whole thing is just a gigantic hoax invented so that scientists can get more research money, or it’s a Trojan horse to bring in a world government or, at the very least,  a means of scaring people so that taxes can be raised.

The certainty of denialist dupes is often unshakeable – their arguments can be, and frequently have been, shot to pieces until there is virtually nothing left and yet they carry on regardless as if nothing had happened. Seemingly unscathed in their own minds, like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Tis but a scratch

 

Frequently they will use the same destroyed arguments again at a later date proving one of several things: 1) they are incorrigible 2)  they do not understand that when their argument was destroyed, it STAYS destroyed or 3) (and this does not apply to the sincere but gullible majority) they know they are spreading untrue propaganda and don’t care because all they want to achieve is the swaying of voters’ minds to promote their own special self interests, whether those are financial, political or ideological.

The following couple of videos show the more sinister aspect of the corporate propaganda being created which masquerades as being the natural views of “grassroots” citizens groups. The videos contain extracts from, and commentary on, a documentary called Astroturf wars – how corporate America is faking a grassroots revolution. The first one shows someone from Americans for Prosperity (click link for their website). Click here for the Wiki article on AFP. The “teacher” is basically showing Tea Party activists how to spread propaganda. AFP was founded/funded by the infamous Koch brothers.

Training Tea Party Activists In Guerilla Internet Tactics - BUSTED!

In the past, when I have touched on these subjects, I have attracted denialist trolls - some articulate and literate, others much less so – who have demanded that I back myself up with documentary proof of well established facts. This is one of the main tactics of denialists, and modern propagandists generally – to spread doubt and uncertainty in the minds of those reading the exchanges. It all wastes a colossal amount of time because it is rather like being told to produce proof if one had made a claim such as “don’t run around on the crumbly cliff edge or you might fall over and die” – a statement which is so blindingly obvious that video proof, or accident statistics, are not necessary to shine a light on the basic truth.

Try mentioning that the Koch brothers fund denialist/sceptic organisations and fundamentalist wing nut think tanks and you will get some troll turn up demanding proof. Here is some proof. Koch himself confirming, in his own words, what he has been accused of doing, and his company has denied he ever did. To be fair, they worded their denial in very slippery deceptive language so that they conveyed a certain meaning to the reader (to fool them) while actually stating something else.

Tea Party Astroturf Funders Caught On Tape

 

 

Reductio ad Absurdum (or – pointing out the craziness)

The denialist movment has gone to new heights of absurdity and paranoid style thinking with their current propaganda blitz on Climategate, Africagate, AmazonGate, Toyota pedalgate (oops, sorry - that one isn’t down to them but is being blown up out of all proportion by the same type of journalists). Just as the problems Toyota is having with the pedals/brakes doesn’t mean that all the rest of the engineering in their cars – known as probably the most reliable cars in the world – is suspect, so too the various “gates” have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the sound physics and climatology underlying global warming science but the frankly mad insinuations that are being printed almost daily are confusing the public mightily – which, of course, is the whole point of the propaganda.

A nice “reductio ad absurdum” cartoon from Marc Roberts

Sex, Lies and Videotape (ok - no sex - sorry)

One of the most popular pieces of "evidence" promoted by people who jump though mind-game hoops not to believe that mankind can be messing up the climate (like a certain Jersey Senator) is "The Great Global Warming Swindle" - a so-called documentary that was made for Channel 4. The DVD of this programme is still sold, and promoted, on many climate change denier websites and this is perhaps the biggest clue that deniers are most probably lying when they claim to be "sceptics" - or to be giving balance to the arguments - or that they claim to believe it is sensible to wait until the final scientific verdict is in (at some indeterminate time in the future).

Deniers must know the truth about what the "Swindle" film really is by now because they have been told a thousand times already that it is full of deliberate lies and crafted deception. The most obvious ones were actually edited out of subsequent showings of the film because they were just too blatantly deceitful! Scientists in it have complained vociferously that their interviews were deliberately edited to make them appear to say exactly the opposite of what they really did say. This sort of black propaganda does not happen by accident. And yet it continues to be promoted as some sort of balanced, reasonable counter-argument to the overwhelmingly accepted scientific position (that climate change is real; it’s happening now; that we are mostly responsible and it ain’t going to be pretty) by people who keep trying to pass themselves off as the voice of reason.

These denier types are in reality like the mythological Greek Sirens, who lured sailors onto the rocks with the beauty of their voices. Deniers are trying to lure the whole planet and all the people on it onto the climate change rocks if people give their pernicious lies and distortions any credence. Are they mad? Are they bad? They certainly are dangerous to know!

The latest “crock of the week” video ends up with Mr Sinclair pointing out that the creators of this diabolical propaganda appear to rely upon the fact that this apparently attractive package can circulate for years, fooling a fresh bunch of naive suckers every day, because "on the Internet nobody knows you're a fraud”. This is because too often “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” (The Boxer – Simon and Garfunkel). People googling around who want to have their biases confirmed will find this sort of garbage programme and they won’t bother to look into whether it is a credible source or not because it appears to be “scientific”.

It's Climate Crock time again

Climate denialists, when they're in full flood trying to mislead people, often claim that CO2 is a plant food and they encourage their gullible audience to join up what seem like the common-sense dots like this - if CO2 is a plant food then more of it will act like fertiliser and we'll get more crops and bigger trees which by themselves will suck up any excess. No problem - stupid climate scientists!

Of course, like some of the most effective, twisted propaganda, there is a fair amount of truth behind this claim - increased CO2 does indeed increase crop yield but only if the other nutrients and growing conditions are suitably balanced - if they are not, then increased CO2 is bad for plant growth. In the controlled conditions of a greenhouse, it can increase yields but, on the contrary, in the uncontrolled outside world the climate changes that increased CO2 will, and are, causing will alter growing conditions so much that global food supplies are highly likely to be very compromised.

Furthermore, I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that increased acidification of sea water due to increasing levels of CO2, which is happening now, will not prove to be a major problem for plankton and thereby the entire ocean food chain, which may end up going for a Burton... Here's a link to an article from the Telegraph last week, headlined

CO2 levels may cause underwater catastrophe

Just imagine - the famous "seafood diet" joke - if I see food, I eat it - may end up meaning little in a few decades when people ask "what was sea food, Daddy?"...

Here's the latest Climate Crock of the Week video demolishing the propaganda about CO2 as plant food.

Poisoning children's minds the Australian way

There seems to be a bit of a concentration of outspoken climate deniers in Australia.This link to a pdf file is to an electronic “children’s comic” entitled

“We’re not scared anymore Mr Gore (A Climate change story for little sceptics)”

The very kindest thing that can be said about the writer/s of this piece of cr*p is that they may be stupid, or weren’t paying attention when their so-called answers (to what they claim Al Gore said) were demolished many years ago. I don’t realistically think either of these are the case. They even included the classic misdirection “CO2 lags temperature rise” legerdemain that was covered in the last “crock of the week” I posted below.

Deniers like to call themselves “sceptics” to give the public the impression that they are simply not convinced and need more evidence to come to an objectively reliable conclusion. Nothing could be further from the truth. In itself their attempt to confuse people by masquerading as genuine sceptics is a lie because a sceptic, presented with a good answer to their “sceptical” questions would accept it. Deniers masquerading as sceptics ignore the fact that their BS has been answered and blown up (over and over again) and KEEP ON SAYING THE SAME THING to the next bunch of suckers. This is why  they are either totally stupid (unlikely) or just plain evil. That is why they are nick-named “deniers”.

While I was looking at the incredibly twisted propaganda, that this comic puts forward as some form of reasoned answer to climate science in order to fool children, I had much the same sort of reaction I had to that chilling scene from the classic 1972 movie “Cabaret”  where a fresh faced Aryan blonde youth ecstatically sings in the beer garden in 1931.

At first we only see the face of this boy singing to the seated guests what seems an innocent lyrical song about the beauties of nature. This gradually shifts and darkens to the militaristic power hungry "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" while the camera pulls back to show that the boy is actually one of the “Hitler Youth”. One by one, nearly all guests in the beer garden (except a bewildered old man - or an elderly veteran who has seen this before) get up and voluntarily join in the singing and saluting. Remember Goebbels!

Never forget that there are always people in the world who are so convinced of their own ideologies that they feel justified in lying and distorting and twisting and censoring the inconvenient truth to make their case and thereby get people to support them.

Crock of the week video – batten down the hatches!

 This video by Peter Sinclair counters a few misleading claims by the deniers/inactivists about rising seas and ice shelves. Ironically, some deniers are quoting figures from the latest AR4 IPCC report (Assessment  Report 4) to attack claims that sea level rise will probably be a big threat. As is often the case, it’s what the deniers don’t mention in their rhetoric that sharply illustrates their very shaky grasp on what is fair comment and genuine scepticism, as opposed to the black propaganda they so often seem to end up spouting. Are they stupid? Are they subtly greedier than Wall Street bankers? Are they evil? You decide…

Climate denial "crock of the week"

This is one of about 8 or 9 Youtube videos which demolish many of the pernicious deceptive myths and black propaganda that the climate denial lobby put out. This one targets one of the ideas of major denier S. Fred Singer and his highly irresponsible recent book, which puts forward one seriously misleading idea after another. It is prejudicially called "Unstoppable global warming every 1500 years" (click on the link to see a detailed expose of this book) and leans heavily on the so called "mediaeval warm period" and the Viking settlements in Greenland to fool people.

It's very worth looking at the rest of the videos- here's a link to a search page http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Climate+Denial+Crock+of+the+Week+&aq=f