Now, the Faux News reporter sought to get Romm and Masters to support truthiness-arguments against climate science. In response to questioning the implications of a few errors within the IPCC report, the following exchange provides an excellent path, imo, to provide reporters an understanding of how to conceive of errors within 1000s of pages of reporting.
Fox News:
“So in this case would you ask the public to overlook these errors given that they are minor?”
Romm:
Well yeah.
Look, each of you works for media outlets that publish corrections. Yet you expect day by day the public should come back and not think because you made a mistake and admitted 2 or 3 or 4 mistakes every single day that somehow your reporting is not trustworthy.
Now, in the case of the scientific body, these are reports every 5 or 6 years. And they publish like three 1,000-page reports. It’s going to be very difficult for errors not to creep into it.
But, again, I encourage you to draw distinctions between the wealth of observations in this scientific literature and these reports, which are an effort to collect everything and digest it. It would be very difficult for it to be error free.
Climate disruption is occurring, seen in the confluence of record-breaking snowfall in Washington, DC, with drizzly weather at the site of the Winter Olympics.
What fleet efficiency can do for your company and the planet
This video seeks to provide a path to understand that individual actions can add up, inexorably, to something much larger. Just like millions of SUV tailpipes are contributing to driving climate chaos, millions taking steps to reduce the impact of their actions can help change the situation for the better.
For those of you not yet in the know, fleet efficiency is about reducing fuel consumption by taking incremental actions, including choosing better routes, avoiding idling and moving to higher MPG vehicles. These actions add up to fuel savings and emission reductions, especially when multiplied by the millions of vehicles in U.S. corporate fleets.
Sigh …
Sadly, this video focuses on what “she” (the driver of a company car, e.g. the employee) can do even though this is about “fleet vehicles” (e.g. company fleets). The video talks to what individuals can do with a fleet vehicle that mirror what we can do with our own cars: choose the right size (higher mpg!) vehicle, keep tires inflated, choose efficient routes, …
Again, this is about ‘fleet efficiency”, rather than individual actors, and the video doesn’t take even a moment to suggest that there is something beyond the individual, that there is an organizational and institutional role to play.
Well, there are businesses and institutions that are recognizing that there are ‘fleet-wide’ actions and choices that truly add up to ‘fleet efficiency’.
The following are just a few examples.
Wal-Mart (and increasingly other companies) has put in APUs in its trucks so that they do not idle the trucks when sitting in, for example, a parking lot or at a loading dock. They also have, as I understand it, a system monitoring every one of their trucks which, among other things, pings the system if a truck is stopped 15+ minutes without switching to the APU. This is part of an overall Wal-Mart program to double the fuel efficiency of their trucking fleet. (Note, this is a complicated calculation as much of the ‘efficiency’ is not to the truck but because of changing their cargo patterns, etc … but it is fleet fuel efficiency.)
UPS drivers are trained to always turn off their package cars when they stop for a delivery, never idling at the curb or in a driveway. “Even if the driver is out of the truck for a few seconds, the vehicle is always turned off.”
The US Marine Corps had a problem with increasing accidents with USMC vehicles. As part of a path to improve safety, they installed video cameras in the cars for a record in case of accident. They did not expect this but there was a significant (believe 15+%) improvement in fuel efficiency because the Marine drivers drove more cautiously / slower and thus more efficiently.
I will tell you that as soon as the Marines realized they were being filmed, and when you add that if they committed a violation or had an accident, they had to report to their CO, who in many cases was a general officer, guess what? They slowed down. So not only is that a good safety thing, but we saved a lot of fuel in the process of slowing them down. So there’s good news there.
There are companies that have installed feedback systems with reporting back as to driving patterns, speed, etc… Often done for safety reasons, drivers know that their bosses will know if they are driving well above speed limit (and thus less fuel efficiently).
There are systems for automatic monitoring of, for example, tire pressure not just within a car but to have that reported to a central ‘maintenance’ so that the company will ensure that tire efficiency is correct.
There are many other things that fleet managers can do from buying more fuel efficient vehicles (including hybrids), right-size rental car policies, etc …
Individuals matter and individual actions can add up. But, even though it isn’t an either/or situation, even larger impact can come ‘from the system’ making choices for efficiency.
EDF understands this, that there are things beyond the individual, that far more powerful than the enthusiastic individual actor are established policies, standards, and regulations that embed more efficient, energy-smart practices as the norm rather than the exceptional exception. They even had a five-step framework for a green fleet. Sadly, however, this video highlights the individual actor and seems to place the burden of action and impact on that individual employee rather than on the fleet owner / manager to change the overall system.
You just had to do it, didn’t you, Republican Party of Virginia? Couldn’t let last weekend’s Snowmageddon go by without a taunting video the snow backed up your belief that global warming didn’t exist? And national Republicans giddily joined in.
Never get in all up in Mother Nature’s grill and sneer “Bring ’em on.”
Just five days later, the DC area is waking up to intense snowfall & 60 mile per hour wind gusts, creating whiteout conditions. Is this “normal,” Republicans?
Recently, I realized that one of the reasons why it is so interesting to focus on energy and climate change issues is the incredibly complexity of issues, interconnections, and feedback patterns/cycles in these interactions. If one is serious in these domains and is even slightly curious in nature, it is essentially impossible to learn something new or consider a new way of looking at some part of the challenges / opportunities from a different angle every single day. That is, simply put, exciting.
As part of this complexity, there is a simple reality: anyone who asserts that they know everything about the issue(s), definitively, and knows every single answer is, well, simply not someone worth listening to about such complex domains.
Thus, a critical skill set is developing a sense as to who to trust and who is untrustworthy for consideration.
And, this “skill set’ can be used as a guide for where one might have uncertainty.
Greg Craven, youtube star extraordinaire and author of the highly recommended What’s the worst that could happen?, laid a hierarchy of authorities for considering a difficult subject area where one might not be expert but where you wish to figure out an answer via the thoughts and opinions of others. Quite roughly, in order, you could have from high (implicit) to lower (need to be confirmed) trust as follows:
Professional societies
Government Reports
University Research Programs
Think Tanks
Advocacy Organizations
Individual Professionals
Individual Lay People
And, if an institution speaks in a way that contradicts its normal bias (like a tobacco company stating that smoking tobacco causes cancer or a fossil-fuel company stating that CO2 is a major threat to humanity and we need to reduce the burning of fossil fuels), then it should be given stronger weight.
Craven lays out why professional organizations are at the top of the credibility spectrum:
professional societies are organizations that exist not to advance a particular agenda but to simply serve the communication and training needs of a particular profession. … With these groups, bias and political leanings are going to be small as can be expected in any human endeavor.
The level of expertise is fairly high because these groups are made up of people who know more about the field than anyone else; furthermore, fur such an association to come out with a statement, most of the members would need to agree with it, so what you’re getting is general agreement from a whole bunch of experts — no small thing. And, the longer an organization has been around or the mroe prestigious it is, the bigger the reputation it has to protect. You can be fairly confident that an organization has been quite thorough in making sure it doesn’t say something that later makes it look silly.
Now, “argument from authority” is a touchy subject. Just because the American Medical Association says today that X causes Y disease doesn’t mean that it won’t turn out that further research will uncover that X is unrelated to Y. Even so, when trying to figure out how to avoid Y disease, today, would we find it more likely that the AMA or a community glee club would have more relevant information and advice? “Authority” doesn’t mean certainty but, as Craven lays out, there are reasons to give some credence to such perspectives.
To apply this hierarchy of credibility, the first section might be laid out like this:
Table 1: Structuring a Table re authorities re humanity have a role in driving climate change
Humanity driving climate change
Uncertain about extent of human role
??? Who … and what credentials …
??? Who … and what credentials …
After the fold is an attempt at filling in this table.
The $millions put into Super Bowl advertising cannot, in general, be seen as anything approaching environmentally friendly considering what is core to most of the messages: consume and, well, consume more. There are, of course, some advertisements that are wrapped in “green” and which have at least a (debatable) case to made that they are environmentally-sensible communications. For example, tthe General Electric 2009 advertisement re the Smart Grid (see here and after the fold) could be looked at as part of educating the public about the power and value of moving forward toward a Smart Grid. From a different angle, the PepsiCo decision to forgo Super Bowl ads (first time ever, $33 million in ads at the 2009 Super Bowl) to give grants for nominated causes based on online voting (see the Pepsi Refresh site — note, they want to collect email addresses for, we can assume, advertising purposes) could be framed as ‘green non-advertising at the Super Bowl’.
Notable for the 2010 Super Bowl, no “Hemi” or super max McSUV advertising. (There was, of course, the horrible Dodge ad …) Despite the bad beer ads and the amusing Dorito ads that are far from environmentally friendly, without question the most environmentally ad served a product that seeks to claim a green label.
Audi chose to promote their new car as a great environmentally friendly product, one that could evade ‘green police’ crackdowns on the highway.
This advertisement is offensive and counterproductive on many levels.
[NOTE: As noted to a comment below, this discussion’s logic actually follows somewhat the reverse of the original reaction to the advertisement. On reflection, I regret beginning with the ‘weakest’, most intellectually diversionary, and least consequential point when writing this post but do not see it as appropriate to do a total redraft to mask how it was originally written. The reaction began with seeing a 30-second reinforcing of ‘ecoNazi’ which then led to the discussion that now begins … ]
The Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) was the name for the uniformed regular German police force in existence during the period of Nazi Germany, notably between 1936 and 1945. It was increasingly absorbed into the Nazi police system. Owing to their green uniforms, they were also referred to as Grüne Polizei (green police). … The Order Police played a central role in carrying out the Holocaust, as stated by Professor Browning:
It is no longer seriously in question that members of the German Order Police, both career professionals and reservists, in both battalion formations and precinct service or Einzeldienst, were at the center of the Holocaust, providing a major manpower source for carrying out numerous deportations, ghetto-clearing operations, and massacres
Damaging framing of what it might mean to go green
The Audi advertisement has “Green Police” cracking down hard for real and imagined environmentally unfriendly actions. We see police taking a man down for choosing a plastic bag at the supermarket checkout. A horde of police are shown arresting someone at the door for having incandescent bulbs on their porch. What seems to be a SWAT team hit hot tub partiers and chase a man running from it in a bathing suit (his underwear?). And, well, there are other “Green Police” take downs of other real or imagined environmentally-unfriendly behavior, actions, and/or possessions. This is a promotion of a view of ‘going green’ that suggests heading toward a police state, destroying liberty, rather than any sort of vision of a more positive future.
As right-wing commentator Jonah Goldberg suggested, this could easily have come from some astroturf group serving as a front-pieces for fossil-foolish interests:
Until the pitch for Audi intrudes, you’d think it was a fun parody from a right-wing free-market outfit about the pending dystopian environmental police state
While Audi intended this advertisement to boost the Audi TDI Clean Diesel which was, mistakenly in my opinion, named “green car of the year”, this advertisement in the most prominent advertising venue of the year serves to promote a very destructive perspective on what might happen as the United States moves toward more environmentally-friendly policies and regulations.
EnviroNAZI and Ecofascist are “used as a political epithet by political conservatives to discredit deep ecology, mainstream environmentalism, and other left and non-left ecological positions”.
The Audi advertisement feeds directly into this “political epithet”, feeding a “tea party“-type framing of threats to civil liberty, serving to undermine public support for serious action to address America’s oil dependency, energy profligacy, and the challenges/opportunities that Global Warming present us (the U.S.).
It is simply astounding that a German company would play against such a framing, making oblique references to a Nazi police unit and providing what many will see as a broadside against environmentalism as somehow fascist in nature.
Such horrible framing in an advertisement for a green product makes “Green Police” the most environmentally unfriendly Super Bowl advertisement of 2010.
GE Scarecrow Smart Grid Ad from the 2009 Super Bowl. Note, this was the first (only to date) GE ad placed during the Super Bowl.
UPDATE / NOTE: JeremyBloom provides some examples from around the web to this ad:
…if you, too, are fed up with curly coiffed 18-year-old boys attempting to tell you to throw trash into the right-colored can and boasting of their ability to get their Prius to coast on the freeway, then the Audi spot might just be for you.
Audi’s Green Police: love it or hate it, that’s what it’s going to be like. Welcome to government interfering in every part of your life
Green Police Audi Commercial. I don’t think we’re too far away from this being the status quo. #libertarian
The green police AKA the LAPD in 2012. #tomanydamnhippiesinCali
the more the teabaggy interpretation just doesn’t quite fit. The thrill at the end, when they guy gets to accelerate away from the crowd, turns on satisfying the green police—not rejecting or circumventing them, but satisfying their strict standards. The authority of the green police is taken for granted, never questioned. If you’re looking to appeal to mooks who think the green police are full of it and have no authority, moral or otherwise, why would you make a commercial like that? Why offer escape from a moral dilemma your audience doesn’t acknowledge exists?
The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police—people who may find those obligations tiresome and constraining on occasion, who only fitfully meet them, who may be annoyed by sticklers and naggers, but who recognize that living more sustainably is in fact the moral thing to do. This basically describes every guy I know.
Nor does Sebastio Blanco at AutoBlogGreen who comments that “we’ve seen the Super Bowl ad (there’s a teaser companion spot here) and can tell you that it’s not offensive in any way”. That post also has Audi’s response to criticism over the ad.
Jeffrey Kuhlman, the chief communications officer for Audi of America, told AutoblogGreen that he personally talked to two Jewish leaders – Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti Defamation League, and Fred Zeidman, Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum – about the green police ads and that they did not see a problem with the spot
the issue of green police vs. Ordnungspolizei. Ordnungspolizei is directly translated to mean Order Police. It’s more than just the difference between capital letters and small letters, it’s official versus nicknames. And in our research not one person drew any other distinction other than “environmental”.
We researched the term. We tested the ad concept with focus groups. We sought input and reaction from key organizations, including the Jewish community, and we sent out a press release that went to thousands of media, and not one reaction. I then worked again with key Jewish leaders after the blogger raised the issue, just to make sure that we hadn’t missed something, and again, we were reassured that the term is not one that has historical significance, and that reactions to the term are completely in line with our intent … environmental enforcement.
The problem is, there’s already been a Green Police enforcement organization, but not one that you’d want to be associated with. This Green Police was part of the Nazi persecution and execution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust of the Second World War.
The implications of Audi’s choice of name for their campaign could be huge, especially since Audi is a German company.
The problem? The Green Police was a name used in Nazi Germany to refer to the German Order Police, or Orpo, who were given the moniker because of their green uniforms. The Orpo weren’t merely traffic cops, however. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, one battalion was central in sending Jews, Poles and Gypsies to concentration camps.
While the mock PSAs are humorous, with a shtick that leans more toward Reno 911! than Schindler’s List, it’s certainly never fortuitous for a German company to bring up reminders of the Third Reich. Still, it’s likely that most U.S. viewers won’t connect the “Green Police” in their history books with the ones in Audi’s Super Bowl ad promoting its A3 TDI clean-diesel vehicle.
… I’m not sure the German car company understands that the idea of “Green Police” they are spoofing is, in fact, precisely what many conservatives in this country actually think is the primary reason people who care about the environment — the apparent target audience of this ad — are trying to get the nation to take action on global warming
Laughing … Yes, one can and should laugh …
And, to be clear, I see paths for having fun with the idea of over zealous driving of environmental messages. There is the Will Ferrell / et al “Green Team” skit which does not, imo, drive home the ‘enviro-fascist’ type message and is quite clearly comedic. It has also spawned many spoofs (good and bad).
There are even elements within the “Green Police” ad to amuse (that, I believe, police aardvark is an example), but the overall 30 second experience for the ‘average’ Super Bowl viewer reinforces a distorted view of what can and should happen as America moves forward toward a prosperous, climate friendly, clean-energy future.
Note, this is perhaps the best advertisement that appeared during the Super Bowl … even if some want to criticize it as anti-green for promoting international travel.
February 4th, 2010 · Comments Off on Obama’s Missing The Boat on Clean Energy Will Turn Off Voters
This guest post from tboggia expresses an outrage over some of President Obama’s words shared by many fighting for a clean-energy future.
Right after the State of the Union, young climate activists submitted a question about the President’s remarks on clean energy and crossed their fingers hoping that it would get asked. The smiling faces of Energy Action Coalition activists made it in the the intro screen as the YouTube announcer explained the format.
During the CitizenTube State of the Union Q & A discussion, President Obama severely dodged a question submitted by young activists about his support of dirty energy.
His answer is unwise, and deceitful. I hate to say this about the President that has done more to invest in a clean energy economy than anyone before him (not a hard accomplishment since W, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter were the only presidents in office since clean energy became an issue), but young people are tired of being lied to by the White House and congress.
Despite the evidence and public support, President Obama’s comments disregarded the potential of renewable energy. Instead, he championed dangerous and dirty alternatives like Carbon Capture and Sequestration (for some incomprehensible President Obama keeps on calling it ‘clean coal’) and nuclear energy even though many studies question their ability to quickly and cheaply reduce our emissions. CCS is extremely inefficient, forcing us to dig up and burn much more coal per unit of energy produced (that certainly won’t help our friends in West Virginia fighting to protect their mountains). Nuclear energy consumes large amounts of fresh water, already a precious resource that will become even more rare as the climate warms up.
Is President Obama’s support for these dirty forms of energy just a gimmick to schmooze voters? Apparently not, since polls shows overwhelming dislike of coal and nuclear.
So, President Obama, since you dodged our question this time, would you please answer this:
Why do you support the corrupt dirty energy policies of your opponents and ignore the warning signs of scientists, the calls from entrepreneurs, and the passionate pleas from my generation asking you to rapidly deploy renewable energy and energy efficiency?
February 3rd, 2010 · Comments Off on Now we know the problem … scientists need to caveat more …
John Beddington, the UK government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, evidently thinks the key challenge in the global discussion of climate change is that scientists don’t caveat their work extensively enough and that scientists speak too forcefully.
[Beddington] said the false claim in the IPCC’s report was symptomatic of a wider problem with the way evidence was presented in the field of climate science. “Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate,” he said. “We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There’s definitely an issue there. If there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, ‘There’s a level of uncertainty about that’.”
Oh, wow, the problem is solved. There is all the skepticism in the world (and in the US) not because fossil-foolish interests have, for decades, mounted a campaign to confuse on the science nor because anti-science operatives (politicians and otherwise) have sought to whip up anti-science frenzy for political purposes nor because fundamentalist lunatics undermine knowledge/understanding of science … No, evidently John Beddington believes that the fault lies with the scientists not caveating their results and language strongly enough. If scientists would only be more cautious, there wouldn’t be such confusion.
Beddington said scientists should give a caveat to their predictions where there was uncertainty, and release source data “wherever possible” – but added that uncertainty was no excuse for inaction. “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism,” he tells the Times newspaper today. “Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”
A question for John Beddington:
What “proper scepticism” is being “dismissed”?
The issue is not, for those battling disinformation campaigns about climate science and what is happening to the planet, well-documented and thoughtful challenges to some element of the scientific understanding that merits consideration and, perhaps, incorporation into enriching our understanding of the highly complex work of climate science. The real issue is the willingness of far too many to engage in abusive practices from misrepresenting evidence to reintroducing (time and again) items into discussion that have been shown (via peer reviewed process) to not stand up to scrutiny.
Beddington’s comment is one to regret since the true challenge is not that scientists are too aggressively engaging in public dialogue but that scientists and scientific knowledge is too absent from that discussion. The problem is not an absence of caveats but the reality that the nature and style of scientific dialogue creates an impression of uncertainty and confusion to the public in the face of those who are willing to lie with a smiling face.
UPDATE: A comment from a correspondent:
What do the two (the messy wgii case study page & the issue of uncertainty and caveats) even have to do with each other? “He said the false claim in the IPCC’s report was symptomatic of a wider problem with the way evidence was presented in the field of climate science. ” Huh? In what way is it a symptom?
Significantly, the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, laid out a similar scenario in a March speech to the government’s Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster. He warned that by 2030, “A ‘perfect storm’ of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions,
Beddington’s speech raises uncertainties but also, certainly, raises the alarm:
You are talking about serious problems in tropical glaciers – the Chinese government has recognised this and has actually announced about 10 days ago that it is going to build 59 new reservoirs to take the glacial melt in the Xinjiang province. 59 reservoirs. It is actually contemplating putting many of them underground. This is a recognition that water, which has hitherto been stored in glaciers, is going to be very scarce. We have to think about water in a major way.
But the climate change agenda is there and we have to think about it, but this is looking to me like it is getting worse.
…
The other area that really worries me in terms of climate change and the potential for positive feedbacks and also for interactions with food is ocean acidification. This graph is again a little complicated… we are around about here. And around about here is as acid as the oceans have been for about 25 million years. Now, this is not a silly prediction by those who are wanting to argue that we’re all doomed. This is actually simple physics and chemistry. Knowing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, knowing the level of interaction that will occur with the ocean with that level of CO2 in the atmosphere, this is what is going to happen. It may be a little bit lower, but certainly by 2030, you are going to look at an ocean system which is enormously problematic in terms of its acidity.
As I say, it’s as acid today as it has been for 25 million years. When this occurred some 25 million years ago, this level of acidification in the ocean, you had major problems with it, problems of extinctions of large numbers of species in the ocean community. The areas which are going to be hit most severely by this are the coral reefs of the world and that is already starting to show. Coral reefs provide significant protein supplies to about a billion people. So it is not just that you can’t go snorkelling and see lots of pretty fish, it is that there are a billion people dependent on coral reefs for a very substantial portion of their high protein diet.
So, this is cheerful stuff, isn’t it? What I have said, which I guess is why I have been talking to the media a bit, is I have coined the point that we have got to deal with increased demand for energy, increased demand for food, increased demand for water, and we’ve got to do that while mitigating and adapting to climate change. And we have but 21 years to do it.
Lets start with a non-science misrepresentation. About Lutz’ comment, Wallace writes:
It was at a small private luncheon at Cacharel in Arlington, Tex., when Lutz uttered those words.
“Small private luncheon” suggests that reporting of Lutz’ comment was somehow distasteful, unethical practice. Hmmm … Perhaps Wallace’s readers might have a different understanding of the situation if he had explained that this was a “small private luncheon” that was for media, on-the-record set up, as I understand it, by General Motors’ public affairs staff.
Thus, Wallace’s opening begins with something almost certainly designed to mislead his readers which is a perfect start to a piece that blatantly misrepresents.
Let us take one example:
on the last day of 2009, Wolfgang Knorr of the Earth Sciences Dept. at the University of Bristol released new research showing the possibility that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has not risen in the past 160 years. Maybe he’s wrong, but at least he published his views for peer review in the Geophysical Research Letters.
Wallace utterly misrepresents Prof Knorr’s work and publication. Knorr’s published work (“Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?“), which Wallace cites, does not argue that the “carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has not risen in the past 160 years”. This is an utter misrepresentation of Knorr’s words and work, suggesting that Wallace relies on Fox News rather than Knorr for his sourcing.
What Knorr’s work examines is whether the fraction of CO2 emitted (both from natural and manmade paths) that is absorbed in the oceans, land, and remaining the atmosphere is changing. Knorr’s work suggests that the relative amount staying in the atmosphere has been stable. To be clear, Knorr’s work is at odds with what others have concluded and is a good example of how science advances through open analysis of data, critiques / responses, and corrections/changes. Honestly, I do not know whether Knorr’s work is correct but it is without doubt that Wallace utterly misrepresents it. Knorr absolutely did not suggest, anywhere, that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have not changed over the past 160 or 60 or 20 or 10 years.
This is just one of many utter misrepresentations by Wallace in this column. The two paragraph following Wallace’s misrepresentation of Professor Knorr’s work misrepresents the discussion of global cooling 30 years ago,
Then there is this doozy
The fact is that no one can even agree on whether or not the highest temperatures recorded in modern times came in the 1990s or during the Dust Bowl days of 1934
Okay, the uncertainty seems to be whether the highest US temperatures were in 1934 or in the past decade. In case Mr Wallace and Business Week‘s editors have forgotten, this is “Global Warming” (not regional, U.S. or my backyard warming) we’re talking about.There is no uncertainty in the scientific community that the hottest 10 years (and, hottest 12 years) in the 150 years of modern temperature records have all come from 1998 to the present.
This column is filled with mistatements of fact (FACT) (such as what people stated, about scientific measurements, etc …) The column is filled with a myriad of misrepresentations of the state of scientific discussion that distort the state of the science. And, it opens with a deceptive description suggesting that quoting from an on-the-record media event was somehow inappropriate.
Perhaps the scariest portion of this error-filled monstrocity? The note that ends it:
This is the first of a multipart series of columns on global warming.
We can hope, perhaps without reason, that Business Week might actually do some fact checking of the coming columns.
It is sad that Business Week is so willing to publish a commentary that is so systematically distorting of openly published material. This leads to a basic question that any and all of the magazine’s readers consider:
How can any of Business Week‘s analysis of business and statistics and finances be trusted if such false and misleading material is published without, evidently, the slightest effort to actually do fact checking?
Osama bin Laden has accustomed us to wacky, destructive, and immoral approaches to the world. When it comes to climate change, bin Laden doesn’t disappoint — yet again coming up with an unacceptable, misguided, counterproductive, and immoral “answer”.
“This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions – whether intentionally or unintentionally – and about the action we must take,” bin Laden said.
“Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury – the phenomenon is an actual fact.”
Yes. It is a fact. And, Osama bin Laden claiming something is true doesn’t make it untruthful.
However, Osama’s solution path isn’t nearly as truthful as the reality of climate change.
.. the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.
He says the world should “stop consuming American products” and “refrain from using the dollar,”
Well, okay Osama:
1. Turning the world back to the 12th century, including killing off perhaps 95 percent or so of the world’s population supportable without modern technology and with women suppressed without health care (dying in child birth), might well actually address “climate change” in an incredibly dystopian and immoral fashion. (Oops, moral in your distorted lens on the world.)
2. The United States is, well, roughly responsible for 25 percent of current global emissions. Eliminating the US economy doesn’t “solve” climate change.
3. Shutting down all industrial nations, including of course “developing” nations like China and India and Brazil, would have a major impact in terms of mitigating climate change but with an impact … please see 1.
Now, bin Laden has a world view based on destruction and on looking backwards a millenium.
That bin Laden is able to, via his distorted lens, gain a glimpse of reality and claim to understand that climate change is a serious issue meriting attention doesn’t suddenly make climate change unreal even though there will be those who seize on this to say things like “bin Laden is against it, therefore I’m for it …”
The path “to stop” climate change is not to “bring the wheels of the American economy” to a halt, but to turn those wheels toward the creation of a clean-energy future … to help Saudi Arabia turn itself into the “Saudi Arabia of Solar Power” … to aid Afghanis prosper with micro-hydro and wind power and efficient lighting … to tap geothermal power in nation’s around the world …
bin Laden calls for a path backwards via destruction when the true path toward tackling climate change is to move forward via construction of a more secure and prosperous clean energy future …
[bin Laden’s] strategy is not to stop global warming, but rather to draw broader global support for his anti-American efforts. What better way to wreak havoc and chaos in the nation of his enemies than to associate himself with one of the fastest growing sectors of the US economy: clean energy.
Those in the struggle for a clean-energy economy and safe climate future, should ask themselves why bin Laden would come out with this statement. This is the man who has shown no concern for human life, indeed revels in killing innocent people – why does he now care about rising sea-levels?
His plan is to drive the wedge between the climate cynics and climate activists even further, and it’s already working. This is the perfect story to kill any federal climate bill in the U.S. In fact it’s the perfect strategy if you desire chaos and destruction.
So how should the environmental movement respond?
Immediately and unequivocally condemn his comments. We can’t let ourselves be aligned with a terrorist. Bin Laden isn’t an environmentalist and cares nothing about climate change (because that would mean caring about people).
Whatever your feelings on climate change; don’t use his comments for your cause, because actually he will be using you.
Osama bin Laden is a terrorist and a murderer. He must be wringing his hands with glee at the thought of all the havoc climate change could bring.
Osama bin Laden is driving the wedge even deeper between climate cynics and climate activists. He has identified the perfect issue to reflame America’s culture wars and de-rail any climate bill. It’s a perfect strategy if you desire chaos and destruction.
A world suffering climate chaos would provide rich pickings for fanatics like Osama. He has hit upon the perfect strategy. With one climate statement he can cause rifts across the world and bring the world a little closer to climate change. Today he must be a happy man.
As soon as I saw this, I figured the conservatives were going to have a field day, and it turns out they’ve stooped low enough to go beyond the usual absurdity of loose guilt by character association, to guilt by issue association. Apparently, if you believe that rising greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming and must be reduced, then you’re in the same camp as a madman terrorist who shoots off rants in the form of tape recordings about all sorts of things. This is supposed to de-legitimize the argument that we should reduce greenhouse gas emissions. …
Bin Laden certainly wants the US to stay addicted to oil, and the real reason he is likely making those comments is to cause enough turmoil to derail ongoing efforts by activists and Congress to get us off of oil. Conservatives have just played right into Bin Laden’s hand.
Osama bin Laden took a break from his typical insanity today to blast an international enemy even President Obama loathes: climate change. Though his uninspired solutions only reinforce bin Laden’s image as a madman who’s entirely out of touch with reality, they at least make him look better than some of our elected officials. How shameful!
Terrorists try very hard to spread their disinformation. A key goal is to get others to spread it for them, especially ones who are holed up in a cave somewhere. Thus terrorists craft their disinformation into a sensational message that they hope gullible members of the global media will repeat.
So who got suckered into repeating the message of the number one terrorist in the world? …
It’s amazing that any major media outlet is dumb enough to repeat this, let alone write analysis as if Bin Laden actual believes anything he says.
For the record, it simply is impossible to stop global warming by bringing the US economy to a halt. Only right-wing ideologues could get suckered into pushing this crap for the likes of Al Qaeda .
