Slamming the Climate Skeptic Scam
Updated: June 15, 2009
There is a line between public relations and propaganda - or there should be. And there is a difference between using your skills, in good faith, to help rescue a battered reputation and using them to twist the truth - to sow confusion and doubt on an issue that is critical to human survival.
And it is infuriating - as a public relations professional - to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.
That's what is happening today, and I think it's a disgrace. On one hand, you have the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – as well as the science academies of every developed nation in the world – confirming that:
- climate change is real;
- it is caused by human activity; and
- it is threatening the planet in ways we can only begin to imagine.
On the other hand, you have an ongoing public debate - not about how to respond, but about whether we should bother, about whether climate change is even a scientific certainty. While those who stand in denial of climate change have failed in the last 15 years to produce a single, peer-reviewed scientific journal article that challenges the theory and evidence of human-induced climate change, mainstream media was, until very recently, covering the story (in more than half the cases, according to the academic researchers Boykoff and Boykoff) by quoting one scientist talking about the risks and one purported expert saying that climate change was not happening – or might actually be a good thing.
Few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as this attack on the science of climate change. It has been a triumph of disinformation – one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world. As a public relations practitioner, it is a marvel – and a deep humiliation – and I want to see it stop.
Here’s how it works: Public relations is not a process of telling people what to think; people are too smart for that, and North Americans are way too stubborn. Tell a bunch of North Americans what they are supposed to think and you’re likely to wind up the only person at the party enjoying your can of New Coke.
No, the trick to executing a good PR campaign is twofold: you figure out what people are thinking already; and then you nudge them gently from that position to one that is closer to where you want them to be. The first step is research: you find out what they know and understand; you identify the specific gaps in their knowledge. Then you fill those gaps with a purpose-built campaign. You educate. If people are afraid to take Tylenol (as they were after someone poisoned some pills), you explain the extensive safety precautions now typical in the pharmaceutical industry. If people think Martha Stewart is arrogant and uncaring, you create opportunities for her to show a more human side.
In the best cases – the cases that are most personally rewarding – your advice actually guides corporate behavior. That is, if a client wants to protect or revive their reputation, if they want to convince the public that they’re running a responsible company and doing the right thing, the most obvious public relations advice is that they should do the right thing.
It's the kind of advice that, historically, has been a hard sell in the tobacco industry, in the asbestos industry - and too often in the automotive industry. Those sectors have provided some of the most famous examples of PR disinformation: "smoking isn't necessarily bad for you;" "it's not certain that asbestos will give you cancer;" "your seatbelt might actually kill you if you're the one person in five trillion whose buckle jams just as your car flips into a watery ditch."
But few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change. Few have been so coldly calculating and few have been so well documented. For example, Ross Gelbspan, in his books, The Heat is On and Boiling Point sets out the whole case, pointing fingers and naming names. PR Watch founder John Stauber has done similarly exemplary work, tracking the bogus campaigns and linking various pseudo scientists to their energy industry funders.
I have filled a whole book with details of the documented corporate action plans to deny climate change and confuse the public. Climate Cover-up will hit the shelves in the fall of 2009. In the meantime, one of the best proofs of climate disinformation came in a November 2002 memo from political consultant Frank Luntz to the U.S. Republican Party. Luntz followed the rules: he did the research; he identified the soft spots in public opinion; and he made a clever critical judgment about which way the public could be induced to move.
In a section entitled "Winning the Global Warming Debate," Luntz says this:
"The Scientific Debate Remains Open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."
If you download the memo and read the whole thing, you will notice that Luntz never expressly denies the validity of the science. In fact, he says, "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed."
" ... not yet closed"? Among those who disagreed with that assessment when Luntz wrote this report were the 2,500 scientists in the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada. In 2004, Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science magazine, said, "We're in the middle of a large uncontrolled experiment on the only planet we have." And to back up this sense of certainty, he reported that University of California, San Diego science historian Dr. Naomi Oreskes had published an analysis in Science in which she had combed through 928 peer-reviewed climate studies published between 1993 and 2003 and found not a single one that disagreed with the general scientific consensus.
Yet journalists continued to report updates from the best climate scientists in the world juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated raving of an industry-funded climate change denier - as if both were equally valid.
Notwithstanding, Luntz wrote: "There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science." He recommended that his Republican Party clients do just that. He urged them to marshal their own "scientists" to contest the issue on every occasion. He urged them to plead for "sound science" a twist of language of the sort that George Orwell once said was "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind."
Luntz's goal – which was embraced with unnerving enthusiasm by the Bush Administration - was to manufacture uncertainty and to politicize science. Like all tragedy, it would be hilarious if you could play it for laughs.
Luntz himself actually backed off this position a couple of years later, saying that the evidence of climate change was overwhelming. So it’s difficult to tell who is being wilfully blind and who, like Luntz, was falling victim to gross negligence in the way they ignore the science - and in the potential catastrophic risks that they promote. Whichever way you cut it, their actions reflect badly on the whole public relations industry.
As you might assume from my earlier criticism, I'm not suggesting that Frank Luntz or even a dubious cabal of ethics-free PR people are solely to blame for the public confusion on climate change. They have received extensive, if clumsy assistance from the media, which in a facile attempt to provide "balance" is willing to give any opinion an “impartial” airing as long as it is firmly in contradiction with another.
This is not just a feature of the point/counterpoint talking heads that have emerged as the principal vehicle for television news. Newspaper reporters are just as guilty of canvassing "both sides" of every argument, often without providing any critical judgment as to the validity or relative weight of either side. On the issue of climate change, journalists have consistently reported the updates from the best climate scientists in the world juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated raving of an industry-funded climate change denier - as if both are equally valid. This is not balanced journalism. It is a critical abdication of journalistic responsibility. Any reporter who cannot assess the relative merits of a global scientific consensus - especially in contradiction to an "expert" that the coal industry is paying to help "clear the air" - deserves to have his pencil taken away in solemn ceremony and broken into bits.
There is yet more blame to go around. You could criticize scientists for the dense, cautious and conditional language that they use in talking about the threats of climate change. But in science, credibility is a currency (this, in apparent contradiction to the state of affairs in journalism or PR). A scientist who strays, even momentarily, off the path of certainty or who wanders from hard science into policy is immediately dismissed as someone with an axe to grind.
You could also criticize environmentalists, whose tendency has been to stray too far in the other direction, extrapolating scientific assumptions to create scare stories so dispiriting that they create apathy rather than activism. These, in turn, have made easy targets for the energy industry's climate change deniers.
The important thing at this point, however, is not to assign blame. It is to educate yourself and to join this increasingly urgent political debate. This is not one of those relatively low-level PR boondoggles. We're not talking about single individuals dying because the auto industry held out against seat belt laws. We're not even talking about many 100s of thousands of people dying of lung cancer because the tobacco industry held out for "sound science" while actively increasing the amount of addictive nicotine in their product. We're talking about the future of the planet.
So please read on.
Read everything.
If you are actually practicing public relations, take a close look at your clients and at your own performance. There has to be a point where principle trumps short-term economic gain, a point where you admit to yourself that it’s not worth the money to put the planet at risk.
Whatever you do, you must keep a wary eye. By all means, read the sites that deny the reality of climate change. But then check on www.sourcewatch.org to see who paid for those opinions. Read the DeSmogBlog. Don't accept the word of people who pass themselves off as "skeptics." Be skeptical yourself. Ask yourself what motive the scientific community has to gang up and invent a phony climate crisis. Compare that to the motives that ExxonMobil or Peabody Coal might have to deny that burning fossil fuels indiscriminately could change irrevocably our existence on the planet.
And if you still leave the lights on when you're done, make sure they're shining in the shamed faces of the PR pros who are still trying to prevent sound, sensible policy change to affect this, perhaps the biggest threat humankind has ever faced.
I definitely need to do my homework
It is Upto us how we treat nature and all its components we need to take care more rather than blaming on each other.....take the first step on your own......
http://www.desertfox.co.in
My sense is that the /contrarian/denialist/skeptic propaganda is increasing in volume and effectiveness and the consensus propaganda, while not going away, is sounding more shrill and desperate.
I think that the consensus side needs to make some kind of adjustment in this fight. Not sure quite what, but somethings not right.
For those in Science writing/journalism, Eric Pooley's paper is a must read and very relevant to this post. When i did a series of reports on Climate last year, I was asked about, giving equal time to dissenters.
I replied that we do not usually have people on who think the Moon landing was a hoax every time we do a story about it. If it's in peer reviewed journal, it's likely fair game, but just because a few (very, very few) scientists disagree, does not obligate a journalist to offer equal time in every story on climate change.
Most news organizations have "gotten" this now, with the exception of some of the more notorious outlets like Fox News and the Wall St. Journal whose science reporting is nothing less than ridiculously inept.
Pooley's paper from the Harvard web site: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications/papers/discussion_papers/d49_pooley.html
Wow Jim You Sure Hit a Nerve!
And boy did the trolls crawl out of their caves to spout their foul drivel.
If that wasn't indicative of a coordinated denial campaign, I don't know what is.
Keep it up Jim, when you're receiving flak, you must be over the target!
Note the diagnostic sign that the first troll has a go at Al Gore.
These troll posts are so full of 'stupid', it's virtually impossible to know where to begin. Don't these trolls realise that 'stupid' is a depletable resource. The world supplies of 'stupid' must be declining rapidly.
Both sides have their propagandists that feel free to bend the truth. This article cleary is an example of the use of spin, half truths and outright falsehoods on the side of the AGW cause.
The first bit of spin is in the third paragraph when the IPCC is described as "Nobel Prize winning". True, but many would think this is some scientific accolade. Of course the IPCC merely won the Peace Prize which is basicaly a prize awarded for outstanding political correctness.
The first lie comes shortly after when it is stated that the science academies of every developed nation in the world confirm that AGW is threatening the planet in ways we can only begin to imagine. The statements of almost all academies are far more limited and guarded as too what they say about AGW.
Then comes another big lie - "those who stand in denial of climate change have failed in the last 15 years to produce a single, peer-reviewed scientific journal article that challenges the theory ". This often repeated statement is so ridiculously wrong that it immediately discredits anyone who states it (Google it if you doubt this).
One of the prime drivers of my scepticism is that so many of the champions of the AGW theory feel free to grossly exagerate the science and the likely impacts and have agendas that have little to do with addressing climate change.
If you really want to convince me then you must first embrace the values of rigorous honesty. This would mean that the leaders of the AGW cause should routinely denounce the dishonest and the exaggerators on their own side and refuse to publish any scientist unwilling to fully expose their data and their methodology to public scrutiny. It is not peer review that leads to the truth but open public scrutiny. Peer review just perpetuates group think.
Jim Hoggan, are you a troll? I've never seen anybody twist truth so preversly as you. How does the IPCC's cruddy science add up to 'truth' when it has been 'managed' and 'authored' by one-eyed political extremists? Here's an account of how the IPCC 'claimed' man-made climate change;
According to an article authored by John McLean and Tom Harris, published in Canada Free Press, only 600 of the 2,500 IPCC scientists reviewed the specific multi-chaptered report related to the possibility of man-made global warming. Of those 600 scientists, 308 made comments, but only 62 reviewed and made comments regarding the critical Chapter 9 related to man and his activities being the primary cause of climate change.
Of those 62, 55 are said to have a 'serious vested interest', leaving very few credible IPCC scientists out of the 2,500 who supposedly agree that global warming is manmade.
Virtually hundreds, if not thousands, of qualified and well respected scientists who have studied global warming and its causes and effects disagree with the IPCC scientists who were hand-picked by the notoriously corrupt United Nations organization to come to a consensual agreement regarding global warming.
So rather than 'look at the plank' in others eyes maybe you should take a closer look at your own shoddy science methods.
One does not have to be skeptical about the science of global warming to be skeptical of excessively "certain" long term predictions that involve weather and climate, the ultimate chaotic system that cannot be accurately predicted. OK, the earth is warming---it is always warming or cooling, after all. But there are enough credible, non-politically motivated contrarians in the scientific community to remind us that on this topic (unlike many of the others that the author improperly compared global warming to), there is huge room for disagreement. They just found a volcano under Antartica--gee, ya think that just might effect ice melting levels there? All those scientists didn't factor in THAT---they couldn't. A year ago we were told that global warming would lead to more hurricanes. Now a study comes out that says it may lead to fewer. You call THIS consensus? Is there anything that could occur in the next 5 years that would either prove or disprove global warming theories? No! Well then, is it responsible to spent billions of dollars, disrupt the economy, paralize developing nations and divert resources from other far more certain problems---infrastructure collapse, public health, funding social welfare programs, when more volcanos might be lurking? When other assumptions about the effects of climate change may be shown to be 180 degrees wrong? This is an ethically inert and scientifically inept article. When we are taling about such momentous consquences and sacrifices, "broad" consensus and "general" agreement are not enough. God bless the skeptics.
Hi Jim, talking about 'spin and propoganda' how do you state the IPCC Reports are "the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific consensus in history" when you know in fact the IPCC was set up by Governments, funded and manned by Governments, that the science isn't peer reviewed (or the Michael Mann 'Hockey Stick' which the IPCC has since removed wouldn't have ever appeared).
In fact Jim you know there's so many errors in your 'peer reviewed' IPCC Reports that even the IPCC vice president stated this month 'the IPCC have made a lot of mistakes'. I presume you know he's referring to the many statistical errors in the IPCC reports?
Like temperature gauges that aren't accurate, sea level recordings that aren't accurate, IPCC computer models that aren't accurate, maths that aren't statistically accurate, that the weather hasn't changed temperature since 1940, that the ice caps haven't melted in 50yrs, that there is no extreme weather, that global warming helps plant growth not as the IPCC claims makes food more insecure, that warming encourages rain and makes the Earth wetter, not as the IPCC claims leads to drought, shall I go on and on and on with your 'peer review'?
You say "there is a difference between using your skills, in good faith, to help rescue a battered reputation and using them to twist the truth - to sow confusion and doubt on an issue that is critical to human survival."
I agree with you. Are the IPCC hiring anybody at the moment because they could do with your skills for talking BS.
the denialist trolls and plain old spammers are swarming this thread like ants and honey!
Where did a new thread and 180 ish comments come from?
I saw Gore's movie... went "hmm, sounds serious".
I dug some more, found out that key points in his movie were either complete fabrications or hid the complexity of the discussion. Not minor errors either.
That led me to digging, and finding that the subject is NOT cut and dry, and therefore IS open to debate.
Before starving half the world to death as we put our food crops into our gas tanks, we should have a real dialog. I want the 'models' released as open source. I want honest open scientific debate.
Gore managed to take an issue and move it from not being discussed directly to 'discussion is over' instantly. That doesn't work for me. Not for something this critical. And barking back and forth at one another on forums like is occurring here is NOT debate. Both sides of this issue are handling it with PR rather than discussion.
People are choosing sides on this issue strictly based on whether they like Gore or not. Again, that is not science.
And by the way almost everyone who freelances has done work for Petrol companies (possibly Gore at times as well), my old new media company did work for Shell - that doesn't make me a lackey for Big Oil.
"If you are actually practicing public relations, take a close look at your clients and at your own performance. There has to be a point where principle trumps short-term economic gain, a point where you admit to yourself that it’s not worth the money to put the planet at risk."
Unfortunately i don't see this happening anytime soon. I would love to believe otherwise, but in an economy like the current one, it is nearly impossible to convince people to follow any kind of principles.
I once wrote a post on integrity, and although I believe integrity is crucial... in this day and age, too many people are lacking it.
I remember the day, not the date, when the Toronto Globe and Mail climate reporting changed. In 1988, Hansen, the midwest US drought, and in Canada, the Changing Atmosphere conference had put global warming on the front page. From now on that's where it will be, many thought. The Globe and Mail then ran stories periodically, as a few years went by, always stating the then commonly quoted "scientific understanding" that if emissions were not controlled in some way that global temperature would rise by between 1 and 4 degrees C by a date, then the story, whatever it was, Chairman named for Earth Summit, whatever. The years went by, then one day one of these reports stated that the scientific consensus was that global temperature was going to rise by 1 degree C. Period. The instant I read it I knew something was going on. From that point on the issue faded in that paper. The reporters must have received orders from either editors or owners that it was time the issue should be minimized by lying about what the "scientific consensus" was. The reporters duly wrote the reports and everyone kept working, as if no one had a problem.
However I look at what the lobbyists can be blamed for I lay this kind of thing right at the feet of the so called "fourth estate". Its one thing to realize that the same kind of campaign tobacco manufacturers were convicted for has been going on over global warming science, buts its another to say the lobbyists deserve all the blame.
The intelligent among us should have seen through it. I don't mean the people who saw this and have been trying to alert civilization for decades, I mean all those who say they are the smart money on Wall Street, the incredible geeks in the Valley, the analysts at the NSA, the people who say they are concerned about national security in Washington, the hangers on at all the universities in the world, the leaders in all of our communities, everyone who thinks they care about the future they are handing down to their own children.
The war lobby runs into real trouble as they find themselves unable to sustain things like Vietnam, or Iraq. They couldn't keep the Pentagon budget up at 7% of US GDP once the Soviet Union was gone.
There is some reality underneath all the lobbying, and one reality is that you can look back as far as ancient Greece and you can find them unable to understand, even as they were aware that they had trashed their own country by logging so many trees that the topsoil had flowed down into the sea, that there was some limit to what they could do to the planet. Sophocles wrote there was no limit, and in the same play he wrote that there was. We've been acting out in that contradictory way leaving it to our descendants to hit the wall or resolve it ever since.
Most people only discuss the global warming problem but does not directly take real action, and we will be conscious after late
Let me get this straight. A worldwide panel of certified legitimate climate scientists from the worlds leading climate / science organisations (USA, Britain, Japan, every nation on the planet) literally thousands of scientists who got together and produced the IPCC reports (all 4 of them) on the undeniability of climate change are all wrong. The scientists work for no more money than they normally make, essentially a volunteer group. (The deniers are paid for by oil companies.) Peer review is wrong because some git somewhere managed to scam it, yet some guy who has produced one, maybe at a stretch, two peered reviewed scientific papers is correct. The IPCC reports (all 4 of them) are wrong because they forgot to punctuate the last sentence in paragraph 4 page 82 which clearly shows that they don't know what they're talking about and are only trying to get more funding. But Joe Average with no expertise in science or climate surfin the net clearly sees through the scam, because he's seeking "truth" not consensus. oh and Fox news says its not true. Are you guys all drunk? Get a grip. Just a bunch of conspiracy theorists hiding behind the same old crap "I know the truth.". Yeah and space aliens are being held at area 51.
Global climate changes are mostly the result of the sun. Human activity has nothing to do with it. That is a fact. Any other discussion on the matter is largely made up "models" and other fear mongering BS. You say that the oil industry is paying for scientists to write bogus books and that the scientific community has no reason to lie about this global threat. I disagree. The UN mandate is to try and pull money from the rich countries to help balance the have and have not countries. So they suggest that the rich countries move their plants to the third world because they are exempt from Kyoto. If they were actually concerned about CO2 emmissions they would say all countries must reduce their outputs. The media realizes that you can't sell a newspaper by saying that everything is going to be okay. So they hype it up at every opportunity. Every storm, drought, flood is due to global warming and we must do something. Environmentalist and Climatologist are getting more funding now because we have seen a warming tend over the past few years. They are going to milk this as much as possible until the global cooling cycle takes over. Then they will revert back to their 70 stance that the world is going into an ice age and we must do something. Why do I care? Because these uninformed annoucements are putting in place policies that affect millions of people. Biofuels ramp up the price of food at a time when the third world is reeling from hyper-inflated oil prices. Putting billions into carbon taxes or developing expensive alternative energy sources means we have less money to put towards social concerns and legitimate environmental concerns. The hype and stupidity that has evolved because we had a few El Nino events is unbelievable. What are you going to do when things cool off? How are you going to repay the millions of dead and starving caused by irresponsible journalism? The global warming debate is not over but because the alarmist have been yelling their propaganda for so long that the old adage becomes true. You say a lie often enough it becomes the truth.
Everybody identified that Global warming has taken place. I don't think this is a good way that we have a debate on Climate warning is caused by whether man or natural. But having find how to reduce or avoid it will be better and have meaningful for us.
Anthropogenic global warming is a political movement, not a scientific movement, and I will gladly open myself up to personal attacks and blog flogging in order to fight this horribly misguided movement.
- Convenient Untruth -
Global Warming Notes
1. There are natural long-term temperature cycles, including 100-year and 1000-year cycles. For example, 800 years ago — many centuries before humans began to burn fossil fuels in significant quantities — the Earth’s atmosphere was considerably warmer than the highest average global temperature of the past two decades, whereas in between then and now there were periods when temperatures were much lower than they are today. The fact is that global warming periodically occurs, as does global cooling. Polar bears have obviously been able to adapt to these temperature cycles.
2. There are shorter-term temperature cycles of around one decade in length that appear to be influenced to the greatest extent by sunspot activity. The sizeable decline in the average global temperature over the past two years, for example, has coincided with a large decline in sunspot activity (a large rise in the number of “spotless” days).
3. The sunspot-related temperature decline of the past two years has been “inconvenient” for the Global Warming Alarmists because it has resulted in the polar ice caps expanding to their average level of the past 30 years and the global temperature dropping back to 1980s levels, despite the greater amount of CO2 now in the atmosphere. But as discussed in item 5 below, the Alarmists have an ace up their collective sleeve.
4. Some time ago it was discovered that there has been a positive correlation over the millennia between temperature and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Al Gore used this correlation to dramatic effect in his much-heralded promotion of the Global Warming cause, but additional data collected since then shows that the CO2 level FOLLOWS the temperature change, not the other way round. In other words, the empirical data suggest that if there is a long-term cause-effect relationship between CO2 and temperature it works the opposite way to the way in which Gore and Co. claimed.
5. There is evidence that the world has embarked on a cooling cycle, but not to worry: the term “Global Warming” is in the process of being replaced by the more general term “Climate Change”. Altering the terminology in this way is smart because the Earth’s climate has been changing since the beginning of time and will continue to do so REGARDLESS of what mankind does or doesn’t do. In other words, the climate alarmists are ensuring that they will have justification for imposing their collective will no matter what.
6. Some scientists extrapolated the most recent upward trend in temperature to yield cataclysmic forecasts. This was akin to someone in the Northern Hemisphere noticing, in August, that the temperature had been rising month after month since March and exclaiming: “If this keeps up we’ll all be dead by December!”
7. The claim made by the current US President and other politicians that the science of Global Warming is beyond dispute is a lie. Many scientists dispute the idea that human-generated carbon emissions have a significant effect on global temperature, including the more-than 100 scientists who signed the petition at Web Link and the 31,000 scientists who signed the petition mentioned in this Telegraph article.
8. Despite the US Environmental Protection Agency’s assertion to the contrary, CO2 is NOT a pollutant.
To be clear, global warming (the man-made variety) is most likely a giant hoax, but the political ship has set a course that it probably won’t deviate from regardless of the facts. Additionally, whether or not mankind’s burning of fossil fuels is an important cause of “climate change”, all things being equal it would certainly be better to have less air pollution. And at this time it seems that the most economically feasible way to achieve a meaningful reduction in GLOBAL air pollution is to expand the use of nuclear power.
Most of the world’s pollution is generated by the 5 billion poor people, which means that for a cleaner-energy solution to be truly viable it must also be cheap. The expensive clean-energy solutions that are presently fashionable within the ranks of the 1.2 billion rich people not only don’t have the ability to bring about a material reduction in global pollution, they will very likely cause pollution levels to INCREASE by making relatively dirty energy sources even cheaper for the most inefficient energy consumers. For example, the less coal that gets used in the US the lower the international coal price will become, leading to more coal being burned in countries such as China that use energy less efficiently than the US. Lastly, governments put their own economies at a major disadvantage when they force the use of expensive energy alternatives.
The economics of fuel come down to this: per unit of energy delivered, coal costs one-fifth as much as oil but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other equivalent) sharply narrows the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide & in the here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.
The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won’t trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good.
By pouring money into anything-but-carbon fuels, we will lower demand for carbon, making it even cheaper for the rest of the world to buy and burn. The rest will use cheaper energy to accelerate their own economic growth. Jobs will go where energy is cheap, just as they go where labor is cheap. Manufacturing and heavy industry require a great deal of energy, and in a global economy, no competitor can survive while paying substantially more for an essential input. Wannabe carbon police such as yourselves acknowledge the problem and talk vaguely of using tariffs and such to address it, but carbon is far too deeply embedded in the global economy, and materials, goods, and services move and intermingle far too freely, for the customs agents to track.
…So the suggestion that we can lift ourselves out of the economic doldrums by spending lavishly on exceptionally expensive new sources of energy is absurd. “Green jobs” means Americans paying other Americans to chase carbon while the rest of the world builds new power plants and factories. And the environmental consequences of outsourcing jobs, industries, and carbon to developing countries are beyond dispute. They use energy far less efficiently than we do, and they remain almost completely oblivious to environmental impacts, just as we were in our own first century of industrialization. ****A massive transfer of carbon, industry, and jobs from us to them will raise carbon emissions, not lower them.****
Every nation's government must take action in working with international agencies to replant and protect forests as a way to battle climate change.
For the moment I will ignore the tsunami of panic-stricken denialist scrabbling about, and say congratulations to you both on getting this out. And thank you for a much-needed and very clear-headed analysis of the shenanigans of your less-than-ethical colleagues in PR.
The point that all of the deniers seem to be missing is that the book is not about the science itself, but rather about how the science is being mis-represented and how to think critically about sources.
I'll be giving out this book to anyone I meet who is sitting on the fence or falling for the Lomberg/Monckton/Ball/Lindzen/whoever nonsense.
I was, BTW, vastly amused to see that a couple of commenters actually invoked the esteemed Dr Timothy Ball, chairman of the NRSP (Not Really Science People). Is he still alive? He's certainly not relevent.
So well done Jim & Richard. Based on the number of comments here, I think you really got up their noses!
Fern
Unfortunately, there is also an unknown phenomenon until recently called "Global Dimming" that has been confusing the data.
Some bodies of water are actually cooler in places because particulate matter in the air from pollution and jet plumes dim the sun. cheap web hosting The sun is markedly dimmer all over the planet than it used to be, which has not only mitigated the effects of global warming but also confused researchers.
What this means is that we are actually in a whole lot more trouble than we thought and that global warming due to greenhouse gas emmisions should actually be happening at approximately twice the rate it is now.
Unfortunately dimming has given us cooler weather in places and at times that Consrvatives have been able to exploit for their own ends.
Now that we have data on dimming, which was confirmed after 9/11 when all air trafic was grounded in the US and temperatures and sunlight rose while being monitored, web site development we can address this skewing of the data on global warming.
The skeptics won't have much fuel for much longer. Its only been about a year since this phenomenon was widely known and proven. internet marketing It will become a part of the discussions on Global Warming soon.
Im subscribing to this blog via RSS, and ill tag it "utter bullshit" or "made me laugh" or maybe both.
Great post! Thank you very much! Anyway science is not democratic. That 98.5 percent does not change reality my friend.
you are right
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With so much real and false information spreading around at the same time, people get generally confused and instead of working together to come up with a solution, we just get separated more. With one side opening their eyes to the horrors that are unfolding before their very eyes, and another side turning its back. No matter what the problem is when a lot of people work on the solution bit by bit, we will be able to maybe avert this.
It's such a shame sometimes that even we, fool ourselves into thinking that everything is fine, and worse yet, we pay people to fool other people to think that everything is fine...
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Yes, I completely agree with you. The PR folks should be VERY ashamed of themselves for this type of behavior.
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As a skeptic, I believe that to avoid ridicule or torment, we must go along with the popular view of Global Warming. Follow the mass F.T.W. ...um, okay. Regardless, I can understand where a non-skeptic is coming from. Especially when W. Gray's approach in Al Gore's treatment is rather disparaging.
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I often hear and see what you wrote in your writing. the difference is not visible, if packaged good. Your article is very inspiring to me.
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Nice article. I've read the book and have to say that all the skepticism out there freaks me out. Finding solutions to problems start with recognizing them first.
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But then after being challenged on my understanding of the science, and doing 400 hours of reading of papers and blogs since last year..
I now am 100% a skeptic.
I read Whatsupwiththat daily, along with about 35,000 other visitors. Ditto Climate Audit.
This site, on the other hand, does not contain science, but is filled with ad homiem attacks.
for shame!
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You had lots of evidence re the "science" to give you reasons to be cautious.
I offer of proof McIntyre's work on MBH(see climateaudit.org) The IPCC adopted bogus science without checking... shame!!!
McIntyre and McKitrick Submission to NAS Panel on Millennial Paleoclimate Reconstructions
Washington DC, March 2, 2006
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(b) What are the principal scientific criticisms of their [Mann, Bradley and Hughes] work and how significant are they? (c) Has the information needed to replicate their work been available? (d) Have other scientists been able to replicate their work?
Our answers to these questions are as follows.
(b) With respect to Mann et al. [1998, 1999] (MBH98-99), our most important objections [see McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2005d and www.climateaudit.org] are:
• The study used “new” statistical methods that turned out to “mine” for hockey stick shaped series. These methods were misrepresented and/or inaccurately described in important particulars and their statistical properties were either unknown to the authors or unreported by them.
• The reconstruction failed an important verification test said to have used in the study. This failure was not reported and the statistical skill was misrepresented both in the original article and by the IPCC.
• Dominant weight was placed on proxies known to be inappropriate temperature proxies, along with, at best, misleading information about their impact and, at worst, actual withholding of adverse results;
• The method of confidence interval calculation leads to unrealistically narrow confidence intervals;
(c) No. Systematic obstruction was placed at every step of the way of replication attempts. The underlying data were exceedingly hard to identify and obtain. The methodology was not accurately described in the paper and the computational code was withheld until the intervention of a Congressional investigation.
(d) No. Some authors (Ammann and Wahl) claim to have replicated the MBH results. Contrary to their representations, they have not confirmed MBH claims of statistical skill and robustness or dealt with all relevant aspects of MBH. Their emulation of MBH is almost identical to ours. Differences between us pertain entirely to the characterization of the results, rather than to the calculations themselves. In fact, their code actually confirms our claims about MBH verification statistics.
We have also carefully studied the data and methods of the major multiproxy studies used in the reconstruction of surface temperatures for the past millennium [Mann et al., 1998; Mann et al, 1999; Jones et al 1998; Crowley and Lowery 2000; Esper et al, 2002; Mann and Jones, 2003; Jones and Mann, 2004; Moberg et al, 2005; Osborn and Briffa, 2006]. We will focus our discussion on the most prominent of these studies, MBH98-99, which was heavily relied upon by the IPCC, but we will also itemize issues regarding the other studies, that should be of concern to the Committee.
Our concerns with other studies frequently cited in support of MBH are related to the above. For every study, there are pointless obstacles to replication, causing long delays to any statistical researcher attempting to evaluate the results. The studies are neither independent in authorship nor in proxy selection. None of the studies describe objective protocols for proxy selection. Because they have very small populations, their results are highly sensitive to proxy choice. The repetitive use of proxies known to be questionable as temperature proxies, but which happen to have a hockey stick shape (such as the bristlecone growth index), raises questions about potential bias in proxy selection. There is also evidence of considerable instability in well-known site chronologies depending on sample (e.g. the Polar Urals pre- and post- recent resampling), yielding remarkably divergent results even from the same site.
We can only briefly survey these questions and will leave list of major issues and questions for the Committee to consider.
With regard to Rep. Boehlert’s question (3b):
3) How central is the work of Drs. Mann, Bradley and Hughes to the consensus on the temperature record?
MBH is the origin of the claims that 1998 was the “warmest” year and the 1990s the “warmest decade” of the millennium. It was relied upon both by the IPCC and then, subsequently by national governments, including Canada. It became a standard for every subsequent multiproxy study and is included in all representations of millennial climate. Its results and methods continue in use, directly affecting papers released as recently as last month.