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The 'Feel Good' Approach to Climate Distortion
An article published today in the science section of the New York Times clearly demonstrates the importance of frames and narratives when discussing important political issues. John Tierney's article "Findings: 'Feel Good' vs. 'Do Good' on Climate" is currently among the most popular articles of the day. This widely read article is filled with distortions, redirections, and spin designed specifically to undermine public acceptance of one of the gravest threats we face as a global community
Several months ago, I critiqued a similar Times article by William J. Broad in my response, When Climate Message is Strong, Attack the Messenger!
Like Broad, Tierney seems intent on undermining the strong public acceptance of the significance of the climate crisis. He does this with the help of Bjorn Lomborg , a person whose expertise in statistics has been very helpful at distorting facts through the manipulation of numbers.
Set the Stage with Heroes and Villains
The persuasive power of Tierney's creation lies in the story it tells. He starts out with the line "After looking at one too many projections of global warming disasters... I was ready for a reality check." A hidden message lurks in this opening line. Here is a translation of the story implicit in his opening statement:
Alarmist environmentalists are naíve children who don't really know what is going on. They are out of touch with reality. They have repeatedly bombarded us innocent victims with tales of disaster and doom.
Now we know who the villains are. All those pesky people who express concern about global warming are bad. They cannot be trusted. So who can we trust? Enter Bjorn Lomborg, an 'expert' in political science who has stood firm against environmentalists for years. He is the "scourge of environmentalist orthodoxy" - Tierney's way of painting environmentalists as religious fanatics who refuse to give up their dogmatic ways. (One could instead interpret Lomborg's steadfastness in the face of an entire community of experts as being dogmatic.)
The heroes go on a quest. But it is "not an arduous expedition." Translation: "It is easy to show that the villains are wrong." All you have to do is walk over to the Brooklyn Bridge and look at the water down below. Simple. But the story is just beginning.
Treat Future Events as "More of the Same"
A typical technique used by climate contrarians is to frame projections of likely future events as predictions and call climate scientists foolish for predicting the future. Tierney goes the other way and frames future events as reflections of the past. Check out this quote:
"Since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the sea level in New York has been rising a foot per century, which happens to be about the same increase estimated to occur over the next century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." (emphasis added) He does more than claim numerical equivalence. That alone would merely be inaccurate (the average of all scenarios for sea level rise over the next century is closer to 1.5 feet, but could be as high as 3 feet). Instead, he goes further to imply that the rise in sea level over the last century didn't cause any harm. Therefore, another increase of the same amount will have the same consequence. Clever sleight-of-hand, isn't it? He does the same thing with temperature:
"The temperature has also risen as New York has been covered with asphalt and concrete...that's estimated to have raised nighttime temperatures by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming that has already occurred locally is on the same scale as what's expected globally in the next century." (emphasis added) Tierney's understanding of global temperature would earn him a failing grade in any physical science class. The warming in a small area (a city) for a short duration (overnight) is vastly different from the warming of the entire planet averaged over several decades. We can deduce that Tierney either sucks at physics (and doesn't have the sense to ask a real expert) or he is intentionally seeking to mislead people.
He goes on to say that "the impact of these changes on Lower Manhattan isn't quite as striking as the computer graphics." This reinforces the misconceptions he has just peddled while undermining the credibility of the science. In effect, this is saying that dramatic pictures are exaggerations, in truth things aren't so bad!
Learning a Lesson
We are meant to learn that "the lesson from our expedition is not that global warming is a trivial problem." This is a classic example of negating a frame to reinforce it. It is like saying "don't think of a white horse," which immediately evokes imagery of billowy white manes and tails on four-legged beasts. Tierney has Lomborg agree that "global warming is real and will do more harm than good," thus framing global warming as having unspecified beneficial properties that are not too bad after all.
And what would these heroes have us do to address a problem that is not "trivial"? We are told that "the best strategy, he says, is to make the rest of the world as rich as New York" and "buy air conditioners." That will fix everything.
This solution emerges because the problem has been trivialized by Tierney when he pointed out a few "confounding factors" that even Al Gore couldn't see. The first is "that winter can be deadlier than summer." This frame hides the deadly truth that droughts are strongly contributing to famine, disease, and destabilization of the entire horn of Africa. The climate crisis will impact people everywhere, not just in the north where winters can be harsh. The second is "that the weather matters a lot less than how people respond to it." We could take away from this the lesson that we should respond to the climate crisis as a serious threat, but that isn't what he has in mind.
Technology to the Rescue (Only the Wealthy Need Apply)
So we should buy air conditioners. Just pretend they don't run on electricity from fossil fuels. The global warming pollution involved is not a problem. Why is this a good thing? Because it doesn't hurt the economy! (Finally, the truth creeps out.)
Tierney goes on to say that "preparing for the worst in future climate is expensive" and we shouldn't do anything about it because it will mean "less money for the most serious threats today." Unspecified threats are deemed more important than the climate crisis, implicitly undermining its significance. At the same time, the false dichotomy of environment against economy has reared its ugly head.
What's worse, we are meant to infer that only wealthy U.S. cities matter. The 'big problems' Tierney wants us to focus on are giving "urbanites a break from the hot summer" and "reducing the urban-heat-island effect." We should just ignore the impacts of global warming on all those starving Africans. Or that we can't protect 17 million people who live at sea level in Bangladesh. He completely misses the fact that the climate crisis is a moral issue. The world's poor and disenfranchised will be hit hardest by global warming, not the wealthy cities of the United States.
A Peaceful Ending to a Simple Quest
How does the story end? Lomborg and Tierney are "sitting safely dry and cool inside the Bridge Café." All is well and there is nothing to worry about. In this little comfort zone, Lomborg reminds us that we should think of the children:
"I don't think our descendants will thank us for leaving them poorer and less healthy just so we could do a little bit to slow global warming. I'd rather we were remembered for solving the other problems first." By presenting past change as equivalent to what is in store, coupled with simplistic solutions to the wrong problems, we should solve 'real' problems that have not been specified.
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this nonsense. Six months ago I wrote this:
"Each day we fail to take responsibility for the mess we are in compromises our communities. Each day we fail to empathize with all creatures great and small we damage the health of our planet. Each day we fail to recognize our common good reduces the common wealth we have to share with each other. Why isn't this message printed in the New York Times today? That's what I want to know.
Isn't it finally time to transcend this kind of madness?"
That pretty much sums it up for me.
Joe Brewer is a fellow at The Rockridge Institute
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20 Comments so far
Show AllHere's the link to the Lomborg audio:
Bjorn Lomborg was on Colbert the other night, and Colbert did a job on him. Colbert tried to pin Lomborg down on when was the last time the world was this warm/had as much carbon in the atmosphere.
'Course Lomborg, the douchebag, refused to admit that it's been 600,000 years.
Following the writings of Bjorn Lomborg is like the fool who, chasing the mirage, flounders further and further into the desert in search of water. No respect for either him or his apologists.
To all the innocent victims. I apologize.
This is a good article in arresting the spin of the naysayers, but Joe Brewer, just like almost every other writer who addresses global warming, is also feeding us extremely conservative statistics.
For instance, the assertion that "the average of all scenarios for sea level rise over the next century is closer to 1.5 feet, but could be as high as 3 feet" is likely way off base. Why? Because studies of the last collapse of the Greenland Ice Shelf shows that it may have happened in a matter of days, not centuries. Likewise the collapse of the Laurentide Ice Shelf which created the Mississippi River basin at the end of the last Ice Age, happened in a much shorter time frame than we are allowing for our own coming catastrophe.
The problem is that scientist do yet not understand the dynamics of the ice melt, nor do they understand the effects of the feedback loops which will shortly come into play - if they haven't already. Therefore, these factors are not in the models.
It would be better if the science community was just honest with us, instead of feeding us these ridiculous statistics.
dponcy,
I agree, but one minor corection, Greenland and and Laurentian ice sheets are/were blaciers, not "ice shelves". "Ice shelf" refers to the places wherre a glacer extends as a floating ice body in a bay or the ocean. Melting of an ice shelf does not lead to sea level rise, since the ice is alrady floating.
I am geologically familiar with the Ohio and Scioto river basins. The huge volume water-deposited Pleistocene age gravels that fill thse river valleys to hundreds of feet depth suggests that when the mile-thick glacier that covered Ohio started to melt just 12,000 years ago, it did it over a matter of years rather than centuries.
I agree with most of the comments here. I doubt very much that the ice sheets will slowly drip themselves to death over decades. Instead, I think we're in for sudden catastrophes.
The Greenland ice sheet (yes, it is an ice sheet, not a shelf) is upsloped. As temperatures have warmed, lakes have formed on top of it and the water has cut channels into the ice. If this continues, a lot of it can suddenly give way. This is described in the new book "With Speed and Violence". It has just appeared at our public library and is well worth reading (albeit, scary).
Might consider building a sea wall here and there, too. Meanwhile, what still isn't clear is this: what is the scary ecocrazyhippieliberal motive for creating such a vast, worldwide conspiracy, now going on it's 35th year, intended to convince all peoples everywhere that the climate is mutating?
What the moneyed attack on thinking also means is that we can't speculate.
I'm a speculator.
First, what's going haywire?
--Icecaps with a layer of melted ice/snow on top absorb 4 times as much heat as with fresh powder on top.
--The arctic ocean is now 1/3 melted and absorbing heat in summer.
--The Siberian tundra is melted for the first time in 40,000 years, and is giving off vast amounts of greenhouse gas.
--The price of oil is causing people to burn the world's forests and lots of coal.
I want to know, if everything is now going far more haywire than "predicted", and if the prediction has an intense sucking sound pulling it to the corporatist position, what's really going to happen? Take a guess! Speculate!
Dr. James Hansen of NASA, along with colleagues, pointed out that 3 million years ago the oceans were 75 feet higher than now. Why won't this happen within 100 years? Just a speculation, but it's coming. Why not? Give evidence why it could never happen.
Mark off the spots in your coastal town that are 75 feet in elevation. Just speculating, but that's what's left of your town. How tall is your hurricane barrier? Sell out the low property.
"If you can see through to the source of your fear, you will be free. I can never tell you anything more important.
If you see the name Bjorn Lomborg, you know that it comes wrapped in baloney. The man blew it a long time ago and Tierney is just another of the same tribe. Funny but when Crichton won acclaim among the nay sayers for a work of fiction, I was reminded strongly of Lomborg who is also a purveyor of fiction. None of them even begin to understand reality and live in fantasy worlds of their own construction as is readily evident to anyone who has ever read any of Tierney's columns. I sometimes wonder if he has been drinking Rovian kool-aid because he obviously believes in the Rovian assertion that they are making their own reality. Unfortunately the reality that exists outside their imaginations is oblivious to their imaginations and word games, and it will respond appropriately only to our actions, not our philosophies. As long as these two and others of similar ilk continue to retard any rational response to reality, then our children are stuck.
It's just fine to have nay-sayers on just about every topic, and there's no harm done in most cases. However, with something as vitally important as climate change caused by human industry, and the subsequent catastrophic consequences if ignored, the deniers, if proven wrong, need to be held accountable. It might be appropriate to apply the dealth penalty to the since the climate change deniers are the very types who favor the dealth penalty anyway.
As propaganda, Tierney's essay was well written. I loved the part about just making the poor richer, when global warming naysayers also do their best to make the poor poorer.
Didn't read the entire article. However, anyone even coming near suggesting that those few private families who have controlled our natural resources haven't brought us close to extinction just doesn't know what's going on.
Of course, Congress should nationalize oil and other natural resources --
And move us to electric cars in five years -- replacing 20% of the gas-guzzlers each year. GM doesn't want to do it?
Fine, let Congress raise a corportation to do it and let's subsidize both ends of this deal.
See: "Who Killed The Electric Car?"
We are nearing 7 Billion people on the planet --
We have widespread pollution of our air, seas, ground water, rivers, streams. Many common species -- polar bears, gorillas are heading for extinction.
No one that we know of has studied whether nuclear blasts/testing have contributed to Global Warming but Bush has renewed blasting 'em. A few nuclear bombs went for a ride a few weeks ago; unknown to the pilot and ended up at Barksdale, a launching area for missiles.
We are further contaminating the planet with endless wars.
Depleted uranium, plutonium, Agent Orange on the loose and having made populations and our troops ill.
Brewer noted that the NY Times has been publishing now three of these phony attacks on Global Warming. We should also note the NY Times' unholy alliance with ExxonMobil these many decades from which Exxon spewed its lies and distortions and misinformation from the Op-Ed page in what is amusingly called "ad-editorials." If readers have had questions or challenges to Exxon-Mobil's anti-Global Warming propaganda, unfortunately, the NY Times does not entertain "letters" which address "ads" in their newspaper-!
Outside of the NY Times, ExxonMobil spent tens of millions setting up right-right anti-GW think tanks and buying "scientists" who would lie for them. Actually, a few months ago, the Royal Academy of Scientists called upon ExxonMobil to stop their disinformation campaign and published details of the deception.
Bandaids are not going to improve GW. Only drastic action will give us a chance of changing the outcome.
First -- I'd encourage anyone connected in any way with concepts of "Manifest Destiny" or "Man's Dominion Over Nature" begin to undue those myths. If you're a church goer start busting the myths. If it's something you've ever believed in, start educating yourself and challenging the myth with your own intelligence. If you have family or friends who still trust this license for the few to exploit nature, natural resources and animal-life, please discuss it with them and encourage their enlightement.
Second -- More than likely the "sin" in the Garden of Eden didn't have to do with the apple but with violence towards animals and the eating of animals. This is a practice which is harming the health of humans and the planet. It is the startlingly brutal slaughter of 12 million animals a day, hidden from view of the average consumer. The animal-factory farms are creating huge wastes which further pollute our air, ground water, rivers and streams.
Veganism can return us to healthy bodies, minds and a healthier planet.
Third -- When Al Gore addressed the USHR/Senate recently, he began one of his appearances by stating that there are new reports from seismologists of increased shaking of the earth. He was interrupted and didn't finish the statement.
About a decade ago, the NY Times printed an article in their front section which indicated that the dams and reservoirs which our Army Corps of Engineers had built over the past 50 years were "impacting the rotation of the planet." There was also a period around that time when much pressure was being felt to dismantle dams.
Global Warming will bring increased earthquakes, tornadoes, cyclones and other chaotic weather conditions. This is NOT simply a question of humanity disappearing, but the likelihood that the planet will not longer be turning.
Fourth -- We have to understand, as scientists pointed out in 1992 in their unanimous statement on Global Warming that responding will require a complete change of values.
Capitalism and democracy are not synomous. Unregulated capitalism to which we have been returned is merely organized crime. Capitalism is a ridiculous "King-of-the-Hill" system intended to transfer wealth/resources from the many to the few. Today we are mocked for wanting to end perpetual war and ensure that all citizens have health care.
We are mocked if we fight war and want safe bridges.
Fifth -- We are part of nature; not apart from it.
When we war on nature, we are at war with ourselves.
When we destroy nature, we are destroying ourselves.
If it doesn't seem too important or threatening to us that people in low-lying countries (17 000 000 in Bangladesh alone) will be displaced, maybe it will if we start to wonder where they will end up. NIMBY might be a wee bit difficult to enforce at this point.
Dr. James Hansen of NASA, along with colleagues, pointed out that 3 million years ago the oceans were 75 feet higher than now...
Actually, the more dramatic figure was that a mere 15,000 years ago, sea level was about 300 feet lower than now, The Chesapeake bay is a flooded river valley, and I've scuba dived on submerged former beach-cliffs and caves off of Palm Beach, Florida - the tops of the cliffs now being under more than 100 feet of water.
I believe the the melting of the Greenland ice cap will raise it about 30 feet.
But frankly, sea level change is one of the less harmful and mitigatable impacts of GW. Massive heat waves, droughts and famines, and the possibility of runaway doomsday warming like the great Permian extinction event, or worse, are the big things we need to take every measure to prevent.
And frank number wahtever,
please put away your Critchton propaganda novels. There is no ulterior "ecocrazyhippieliberal motive" here. I know it defies your whole capitalist model of homo Selfishiticus, but some of us really do care about the world left behind long after we're dead.
It positively reeks of petchouli and vicks vapo rub in this forum. I loved the suggestion that we begin mass exterminating 'deniers.' How compassionate. How Liberal. How funny. (AS IF. I love the way you glibbly suggest what you yourself could not do if we staked a "denier" in the grass and gave you bludgeon.) And yet - that IS the 'sum of it' (IF this mentally defective brain-trust is correct,) now isn't it? 3 BIL of us have to go, but better make it 4 to be certain. And truthfully, it doesn't really matter which 4 BIL goes either. It's just about reducing the critical mass of human meat on Sol Rock 3. Deniers, racists, bankers, pols, the rich, the industrialists, or the poor. Anyone will do. And hey - why not the poor? They are the most likely target after all. They cost less. There are more of them. We could elimate some continents nearly wholesale - which would be wonderful for efficiencies sake!
Sigh. Thankfully the lot of you are exactly that - mentally defective. And increasingly frustrated apparently as the rest of the world begins to realize just how so... Here's a prediction for you fine bunch of sub-normies: 10 years from now, global warming will be the new debunked hysteria machine - replacing that oldie but goodie "the new ice age". (An ice age is still statistically more probable given documented geo-history btw...) Prediction 2 - none of you will have jobs yet. Prediction 3 - 87% of you will still be virgins.
I'd advocate trying to take control over those things in your life that you ACTUALLY have control over. GW is just the latest narcissistic fantasy device utilized by the inconsequential eco-lost boy/girl to inject some sense of meaning into an otherwise purposeless life. It is deadly to you all, but not in the way you think. It ain't gonna be the water OR the heat that kills your clown show - it'll be the preference for your own agenda over the truth. Good luck with that... For my part, I'm going to go stop the bum down the street from trying to rip my elderly neighbors purse off her shoulder. He'll probably kill her before a 30 ft tide does. Probably.
And PJD, I'm glad you 'really do care about the world left behind long after your dead.' That is what I so appreciate about you people - you CARE. Soooo much! Sniff. It occurs though: If you REALLY cared, and you REALLY believed in the destructiveness of man the way you say - well, you know - there's really only one way to show your commitment that isn't a cop-out. Every moment you and Grousefeather are breathing it's a big net negative for Gaia... Come on. Show you're serious and take one for the team. It is the least you can do - anything less and you're just a poseur.
Tierney is a TOOL. He and that idiot Thomas Friedman unite to create a DUAL-PURPOSE TOOL. Toss in the accursed Judy Miller and you've got a handydandy NYT MULTI-TOOL.
When I see either of their names on an aticle in the NYT, I usually just ignore it and cruise on by...I get enough lies from George Bush and his ilk. But I did read that Tierney article in the Science Times -- and in addition to his specious fact-spinning I was particularly infuriated by his glib, la-de-dah "Let them eat cake" pronouncements.
Similarly, Friedman's opinion picece in this morning's NYT caused me to shout such vile profanity at the breakfast table that my dog slunk upstairs and hid under the bed.
People will continue to ignore climate warming.
This is a greedy society who only care about themselves. As long as people have homes where they can close the door. In the usa people have learned to settle they have convinced themselves that they are at least not living in a remote jungle.
"Set the Stage with Heroes and Villains"
Apparently Bush puts environmentalists in the same category as Al Qaeda. According to him, they both want to "ruin our way of life" by taking away our God given Texas right to drive big gas guzzling SUVs and use twice as much the gasoline as the next guy. The rallying cry is "don't let them take away your freedom" (to pollute and be wasteful)