Occasionally, it seems worthwhile to resurrect earlier discussions, to try to bring attention to elements that should be part of our national dialogue but which, sadly, seem not ingrained in people’s thinking. No Regrets strategic thinking looks to satisficing — how would this pan out across multiple scenarios. Considering what a No Regrets Strategy would entail should be part of all major policymaking endeavors. For US energy policy, the “no regrets strategy” would attempt to steer a course that would provide the strongest and most prosperous America overlapping two scenarios: climate change is truly a crisis, requiring massive effort, or climate disruption is not necessarily as severe (or as humanity driven) as the current scientific knowledge tells us it is. Here is a repost, with some change, from a post from earlier this year.
One of the most promising, yet also most frustrating, aspects of dealing with Climate Change is how the noise (the static) of the debate makes it difficult for the majority of people to understand the power of the “No Regrets” strategy opportunity and promise. [Read more →]
Matt Ortega, Astrotruth.org, caught the American Petroleum Institute photoshopping a stock photo to make the group look a bit more like America. Oops … put a black head on a body but forgot to color in the hands. (Perhaps their graphic ‘artist’ failed color within the lines?)
Rachel Maddow followed up … and provided some more detail. There was another white head lopped off, to be replaced by an Asian man.
To top it off, as Maddow’s notes, this same stock photo was used by the coal industry earlier this year in a different deceptive campaign.
Within journalism, there is a real challenge. Are there, truly, two sides to every issue? Should all voices be treated equally? Do journalists have a responsibility to assess statements for truthfulness or is the job simply to be a transcriber and “reporter” of whatever is told to them? How can one be “objective”, be “honest”, do “high-quality” journalism?
too many news outlets have a tendency to lead to false equivalency in its search for balance. Some 5-10% Americans believe that the Apollo moon landings were Hollywood creations, with it all filmed in secret studios in the desert. One has to wonder whether, when the Chinese or someone else again lands on the moon (or Mars), those news outlets would give equal weight to these voices in a search for balance? After all, their standing in reality-based analysis of science is just about that of Global Warming Skeptics / Deniers who regularly are given prominent billing in news articles and commentary pages.
Today, evidently in a balancing move, one of The Washington Post editorials, Curbing Carbon, called on Congressional action to address climate change. (Far from the first Post oped calling for action.)
And, The Post published (online, that is) a must-read piece, Don’t let the climate doubters fool you, from someone we might expect merits listening to on science issues: Dr. Alan I. Leshner, the chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science. It begins
Don’t be fooled about climate science. In April, 1994 — long after scientists had clearly demonstrated the addictive quality and devastating health impacts of cigarette smoking — seven chief executives of major tobacco companies denied the evidence, swearing under oath that nicotine was not addictive.
Now, the American public is again being subjected to those kinds of denials, this time about global climate change. While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin wrote in her Dec. 9 op-ed that she did not deny the “reality of some changes in climate,” she distorted the clear scientific evidence that Earth’s climate is changing, largely as a result of human behaviors. She also badly confused the concepts of daily weather changes and long-term climate trends …
For Fred Hiatt, the head of The Washington Post‘s editorial board, it seems that the role of journalism is to seek balance as what is occurring when it comes to climate change, energy, and environmental issues is the repeated publication of error-ridden and falsehood pieces occasionally balanced by truth.
Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. … We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.
Thus is a statement at the core of the now decades-long, deceitful truthiness-laden campaign to confuse and distort when it comes to issues of climate change and Global Warming.
Whether ghost-written shallow absurdities from the likes of Sarah Palin or densely footnoted, falsehood filled treatises from the likes of “Lord” Christopher Monckton, the dedicated energies (whether fossil-fuel funded or simply fossil foolish) to denigrate science, knowledge, and reality-based policy making focus on “success [as] the important thing,” with utter disdain for truthful discourse.
However, the more interesting point is that Monckton publicly cracked. It’s one thing to say intemperate things about your ideological opponents in private email correspondence that you never intend to make public, but it’s something else entirely to do the same in a public forum. Clearly, when being badgered, even a practiced speaker like Monckton can get frustrated and publicly say things that are intemperate at best.
The way I see it, climate disruption deniers have only two courses of action they can take. Either they can condemn Monckton’s intemperate public remarks just as they have condemned the private intemperate remarks of climate scientists in the illegally-obtained CRU email archives. Or they can forgive Monckton his public remarks and similarly forgive the climate scientists their private remarks as well.
Forgiving Monckton but condemning the CRU climatologists would be hypocritical.
Does Brian really think that the climate disruption deniers, such as Marc Morano, have any concerns about avoiding hypocrisy?
There is a different issue at play here, if one wishes to look toward hypocrisy.
Monckton, George Will, and other self-proclaimed climate ‘skeptics’ have shown themselves willing (enthusiastic) to repeat falsehoods, time and again, even after having been provided conclusive evidence of even basic factual errors in their statements.
With the “Hitler” (e.g., Nazi) word being thrown into the mix, the question becomes who the following quote more accurately reflects when it comes to the discussion of climate science?
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels
“The number of people being killed by this misplaced belief in climate change is if anything greater than the number of people killed by Hitler.” – Lord Monckton, the chief architect of climate change denialism.
He also said that young people who are pro climate change are akin to the Hitler youth. “I don’t care whether the Hitler youth thought they were doing the right thing. I don’t care whether the Hitler youth of today think they’re doing the right thing. The consequences in both cases are deaths of people that we don’t care about as much as we should.”
This is who is leading the battle against climate change. We have a far larger problem than the fact that some people are denying climate change. Conservatives in this country have taken to a rather disturbing extremism that embraces McCarthyism (labeling everyone a socialist and a Maoist, and doing it with a straight face), and literally believing that climate change advocates are worse than Hitler – not just making the dumb comparison, but actually believing it. These people are certifiable. And dangerous. And they’re the intellectual leaders of today’s Republican party. And at some point, the Republicans are going to be back in office, with these people guiding them. And then we’re all in trouble.
If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn’t take place, I’m sure we’d have a robust debate about it right now.
Sadly, too many will simply have their fingers stuck in their ears, screaming “Goracle“, ignoring what Gore says even though his words are (not atypically) some of the clearest and most cogent comments about our energy/climate opportunities and challenges that we are likely to have.
When asked about energy costs potentially rising due to climate action,
If you want your energy bills to go up, you should support an ever greater dependence on foreign oil, because the rate of new discoveries is declining as demand in China and India is growing, and the price of oil and thus the price of coal will go sky high. That is the formula for increasing energy bills.
When asked about the hacked emails from the UK’s Climate Research Unit, he responded:
To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. … the noise machine built by the climate deniers often seizes on what they can blow out of proportion, so they’ve thought this is a bigger deal than it is.
When asked about (self-proclaimed) “skeptics” and the validity of their questioning science
I have followed the debate for 40 years. It was a somewhat harder case to make 30-40 years ago, but it was still clear. So many of the details have been filled in now, it’s very hard to find a respectable argument contrary to the consensus on the main points about global warming. Some people don’t want to hear that, but it’s a fact.
All in all, it is a good interview by John Dickerson: serious, interesting questions with thoughtful and solid responses. Recommended reading.
MITCHELL: Well, one of the things that Palin has written recently on Facebook is that this is doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that makes the public feel like owning an SUV is a sin against the planet.
GORE: Well, the scientific community has worked very intensively for 20 years within this international process, and they now say the evidence is unequivocal. A hundred and fifty years ago this year was the discovery that CO-2 traps heat. That is a — a principle in physics.
It’s not a question of debate. It’s like gravity; it exists.
As someone weaned on the Watergate-era Washington Post, The Washington Post opinion section has been abysmal in its ‘faux and balanced’ nature in recent years. And, it is sinking to a new low in its fostering of a ClimateGate era.
Amid the Copenhagen climate summit, Fred Hiatt has chosen to descend the paper to a new low, seeming to prove that there is somehow a balance between outright falsehoods and ignorance, on the one side, and scientific knowledge and honest discourse on the other.
Not content with publishing George Will’s fabrications about the stolen emails (for which, see Carl Zimmer), they now have a piece by climate expert Sarah Palin. The Washington Post simply does not care about the accuracy of the columns it publishes. Let’s look at just one paragraph:
The e-mails reveal that leading climate “experts” deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What’s more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.
I didn’t add the link to this paragraph. It’s a link to the WaPo‘s own report on the email theft and it directly contradicts Palin. For example, the WaPo‘s news story says:
Phil Jones, the unit’s director, wrote a colleague that he would “hide” a problem with data from Siberian tree rings with more accurate local air temperature measurements.
But Palin says that he tried to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, when in fact he showed the increase in global temperatures since 1960. The Wapo‘s report does not support any of the false claims in Palin’s paragraph. No they didn’t deliberately destroy data, no, they didn’t try to stop their critics from publishing. And while the emails show there are many things that the scientists disagree on, they doesn’t mean there is no consensus about anything — they agree that it is getting warmer and that we are causing it. So what use is the Washington Post? If they are not going to do even the most perfunctory fact checking on the stuff they publish, what value do they add?
Fred Silva (Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp) is actually more polite but easily as damning, highlighting how Palin once spoke of the need to cut emissions and is now singing (a sour note) back to the reality-denying teabagger base.
If clicking through the web and reading scientific reports might have been too hard for the Post’s editorial page “fact checkers”, perhaps they could have popped some popcorn and watched this 10 minute video to have more than enough material to reject Palin’s truthiness.
James Hrynyshyn, Island of Doubt, in Sarah Palin, edited tried to be helpful, provided editorial suggestions to make the OPED truthful but had to give up after the first paragraph took too much time and too much red ink.
PS: We can almost be certain that Sarah Palin did not actually write this OPED, but that this ghostwritten piece is part of the campaign to try to create some form of ‘street creds’ of her policy death and intellect. However appealing this piece might be to the Republican base, its anti-science talking points are a travesty and, well, simply false truthiness.
A new report by the UN confirms what many other studies have already suggested. The decade 2000-2009 will “very likely” be the warmest decade on record.
In fact, “the ten warmest years on record have all occurred in the eleven years since 1997.” And with this latest report, which predicts 2009 to be the fifth warmest ever, it will now be that the eleven warmest years on record will have all occured since 1997. That is, the eleven warmest years on record will all have occurred in the last thirteen years.
But cheer up everyone concerned about Global Warming. It’s not occurring.
Investing in building energy efficiency is one of the most effective ways to create job and revitalize the economy while achieving other objectives. Ed Mazria and Architecture 2030 have been a fount of good ideas as to how to spark employment and boost economic performance while reducing polluting energy habits and kick-starting the nation toward a prosperous low-pollution future. These have truly been win-win-win concepts.
Invest $30 billion per year in mortgage interest buydown
To help fund home improvements in energy efficiency and renewable energy
Amount of interest rate buydown based on exceeding energy efficiency standards
Spark $280 billion in private investment and spending each year
Interest rate rate buydown requirements spending on improving home energy
Save home and building owners money
Reduced energy costs
Reduced monthly mortgage payments (even accounting for investment costs)
Reducing likelihood of foreclosure (energy efficient homes have lower foreclosure rates due to lower utility bills)
Reduce US greenhouse gas emissions
Built infrastructure is responsible for about 40% of US emissions
Energy efficiency in buildings is fastest payoff for reducing energy use / emissions
More than pay for itself
Return approximately $60 billion to federal government due to tax revenue
Reduce unemployment & other required government assistance
Create 4.5 million jobs
Spread throughout the United States, in all communities
At all educational and skill levels (from day laborers to master electricians to the mortgage industry to architects / engineers / scientists)
Among some of the hardest hit sectors of the work force (construction industry)
This multiple win approach, to achieve rapid and significant job growth while moving forward in other arenas, should be on the top of the pile as Congress develops a jobs bill in the coming month.
Clean Energy Jobs Go Home: $30 Billion to put 4.5 Million to Work
The 30% Energy Tax Credit has been quite useful in creating installation jobs for construction workers and for domestic suppliers of insulation, windows, doors, HVAC and solar.
But it misses most of the potential market.
Nothing for renters or their landlords.
Nothing for small businesses.
Nothing for non-profits.
Nothing for second homes.
Nothing for low income elderly homeowners.
Only primary residences are covered. And only for those that pay income taxes.
Expanding the tax credit (or check from the Treasury for those that do not pay income taxes) will save energy and create jobs quite cost effectively. [Read more →]
worthwhile to resurrect earlier discussions, to try to bring attention to elements that should be part of our national dialogue but which, sadly, seem not ingrained in people’s thinking. No Regrets strategic thinking looks to satisficing — how would this pan out across multiple scenarios. Considering what a No Regrets Strategy would entail should be part of all major policymaking endeavors. For US energy policy, the “no regrets strategy” would attempt to steer a course that would provide the strongest and most prosperous America overlapping two scenarios: climate change is truly a crisis, requiring massive effort, or climate disruption is not necessarily as severe (or as humanity driven) as the current scientific knowledge tells us it is. Here is a repost, with some change, from a post from earlier this year.
to seek to spark employment, the 