by Moshpit
The hubris apparent in the notion that the climate is something we can control has found its match in the thought that climate scientists can now understand how to sell a message to the public. Somehow moshpit found himself photoshopped in the middle of this conversation……
ELEANOR HALL: Some of Australia’s top scientists are gathering in Sydney today trying to work out how to “shift public attitudes” on climate change.
MOSHPIT: We do science during the week and PR on our weekends.
The aim, according to organizers, is to publicize the facts of climate science in the face of a so-far highly successful campaign by climate skeptics.
The closed door meeting is being attended by Australia’s Chief Scientist as well as representatives from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, as David Mark reports.
MOSHPIT: Ya no press allowed or anybody else who understands communicating with the public
DAVID MARK: There’s nothing new about the greenhouse effect.
MOSHPIT: Perhaps we should sell a greenhouse effect with retsin! that worked for certs. And we need to sell the message with penguins. Polar Bears are so passe’
KARL BRAGANZA: The first sort of credited person with formulating that the earth has a greenhouse effect is probably a Swedish scientist known as Arrhenius. I think that’s how you pronounce his name and that’s in the late 1800’s.
DAVID MARK: That’s Doctor Karl Braganza, the manager of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre.
MOSHPIT: Dude you butchered his name, the Swedes won’t go for treaties now.
KARL BRAGANZA: But if you actually look back. It was earlier than that, probably in the early 1800’s that European scientists were first proposing the idea that, you know, the earth’s atmosphere does trap heat and warms up the surface.
MOSHPIT: Ya, this one time in band camp…
DAVID MARK: By the middle of the 20th century, scientists were linking the greenhouse effect with measured increases in carbon dioxide.
KARL BRAGANZA: People started actually recording CO2 in the atmosphere at places like Mauna Loa in Hawaii and that was in the late 50s and it was probably by the late 60s that we really realised that yeah, CO2 was really ramping up in the atmosphere.
MOSHPIT: Psst don’t talk about short trends. After 10 years we couldn’t tell anything
DAVID MARK: And as Doctor Braganza explains in the following decades more empirical evidence of rising temperatures firmed up the theory.
KARL BRAGANZA: The science itself is quite basic and quite straight forward and that’s why within scientific circles you’ll often hear people say that there is no debate within the science about the enhanced greenhouse effect and the reality of it.
MOSHPIT: Talk about the ice. Cue the Penguins.
DAVID MARK: And yet there is a debate and many would argue it’s a debate the scientists are losing to so-called climate sceptics.
CATHY FOLEY: What’s gone wrong is that I think scientists have probably had a lot of different people speaking.
MOSHPIT: Worse than that, they had British accents and funny names like Gavin. We need one credible spokesperson. Like Al Gore, only knowledgable. Or like Phil Jones, only credible. How about a talking Penguin with James Earle Jones’ voice!
DAVID MARK: Doctor Cathy Foley is the President of FASTS – the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies.
CATHY FOLEY: There’s been a bit of mix as to how do you believe one person as opposed to another and in the areas where scientists are talking with people who are well funded sceptics who aren’t necessarily, well aren’t definitely leaders in their field.
MOSHPIT: Maybe we can get those guys who did the polar bear photoshop job to photoshop McIntyre talking money from Shell Oil? Use one of the pictures of the CRU guys with Shell and just graft on McIntyre’s head. If you have problems just ask Mike, he knows the grafting trick
The general public just don’t know, who do I believe in the end if I read a book, which has some supposed specialist as opposed to a peer-reviewed researcher who’s been working in the field for a long time.
That subtlety is not picked up by them and they find it hard to say what’s right and what isn’t.
MOSHPIT: Let’s declare the debate is over so they don’t even get the chance to understand for themselves. The public is so dumb they will never see through that!
DAVID MARK: So today Australian science is hitting back.
MOSHPIT: Psst, you hit like a sheila, mate.
FASTS is holding a closed-door one-day climate change summit to quote “shift public attitudes in support of climate change action.”
MOSHPIT: Penguins. Teenage mutant ninja penguins.
CATHY FOLEY: I think that scientists really do need to try and get their collective might together to make sure that we have a clear and articulated voice that allows us to make sure that the general public actually understands what it is that we’re trying to achieve so that good decisions are made.
MOSHPIT: Penguins. With a clear voice like James Earl Jones.
DAVID MARK: But as we’ve heard, the science has been around for 100 years, so why is it the scientists haven’t been able to convince the lay people in all that time?
Doctor Cathy Foley.
CATHY FOLEY: I think the scientific community has been putting it out in a way, which they are scientists. They put out the information, which is the facts as they understand it. Scientists are focusing on that and trying to make sure that they put things across in a way which isn’t alarmist and I think that there always trying to tread that very delicate pathway.
MOSHPIT: and so like they put it out there in a way that is like factual as they like know it and they never used penguins to sell the message and like penguins are these funny creatures, not like scary polar bears, and so like that. Did I make sense? is this the conference on communicating with the public? I think I’m at the wrong convention. Can I get my teeth whitened here for free?
DAVID MARK: Could it be then that scientists are too focused on the facts; constrained by the scientific method and perhaps not passionate enough to have their message heard through the static of modern media?
MOSHPIT: Angry Penguins. That’s the ticket!
Doctor Karl Braganza.
KARL BRAGANZA: It’s probably been true that what we’ve been best at is giving a science lecture and no matter who we speak to whether it’s farmer groups or community groups or government, our mode of communication is to sort of give more information. If someone doesn’t understand something, well throw even more information at them and that might not be the best way to communicate issues to the general public at large.
MOSHPIT: Ya we need to stop this giving information thing right now. Lets bring in Mann and Jones, they did pretty well with that hiding information thing. People don’t want facts. They want… Penguins. Passionate Penguins.
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The first sentence should say “its” not “it’s”.
[Thanx, fixed.]
MOSHPIT: Worse than that, they had British accents and funny names like Gavin. We need one credible spokesperson. Like Al Gore, only knowledgable. Or like Phil Jones, only credible. How about a talking Penguin with James Earle Jones’ voice!
C’mon Mosh, you’ve read the emails. How much of an orchestration role do you think Mann and Hansen had in it?
Too bad Barbara Boxer wasn’t on this panel. she could have raised the spectre of climate induced nuclear war, and hordes of climate refugees fleeing catastrophic flooding, hurricanes, heat waves topping 150F, etc. – http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/15/boxer-claim-climate-change-leading-cause-conflict-questioned/ ” Terrorism. Nuclear weapons. Corrupt and oppressive regimes.
Sen. Barbara Boxer said last week that climate change — not any of that other stuff — will stand as the “leading cause of conflict” over the next two decades. “
Hysterical. 🙂
To Braganza’s understanding of early climate science and CO2 . . .
1824: Joseph Fourier calculates that Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere.
1859: John Tyndall discovers that some gases block infrared radiation. He suggests that changes in the concentration of gases could bring about climate change.
1896: Svante Arrhenius publishes the first calculation of global warming from human emission of CO2. He wrote “warm is better than cold.”
1897: Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin produces a model for global carbon exchange including feedbacks.
1899: Nils Eckhol (another Swede and friend/colleague of Arrhenius), an early enthusiastic spokesman for anthropogenic climate control believed that by controlling the production and consumption of CO2, people would be able to “regulate the future climate of the Earth and consequently prevent the arrival of a new ice age.”
1900: Knut Angström concluded that atmospheric CO2 and water vapor absorb infrared radiation in the same spectral regions and the any addiional CO2 would, therefore, have little or no effect on global temperature. It was thought that atmospgeric CO2 had already absorbed all the long-wave radiation; thus any increases in CO2 wold not change the radiative heat balance, but might augment plant growth.
1920: Chamberlin’s (and other’s) CO2 climate hypothesis falls out of favor. Chamberlin writes to Charles Schuchert (Yale’s Peabody Museum), “I greatly regret that I was among the early victims of Arrhenius’ error.”
“Sen. Barbara Boxer said last week that climate change — not any of that other stuff — will stand as the “leading cause of conflict” over the next two decades. “
Strangely, that is close to being correct, but it will be all the decisions based on the fraudulent premise of “climate change” that causes the conflicts.
@ur momisugly P.F. – do you have alink for that timeline of yours?
Heh. As funny as SM’s commentary was, it still didn’t match the (unintentional) humor of the article.
So to summarise (reading between the lines):
“We AGW scientists are smarter than the public, or those experts we kept out of the peer review process through dodgy and unethical schemes.
We need one really simple scary slogan and a bullet point presentation those dumb smucks can understand.
Instead of focusing on facts, or science and stuff, we need to speak the common gibberish of the demented tax paying peon.
If it weren’t for those satanic-jihadist-oil-backed-eco-terrorist-sceptics, we’d of had this in the bag ages ago.”
Stay tuned for the ABC’s next big geek speak fest, where we discuss culling the common herd of useless eaters and give ourselves a tax-payer funded raise for being so much more ruthless,condescending and callous than the simple ape-like-proto- homonids we like to call the electorate.
If you’d like to subscribe toABC’s totally unbiased propaganda and ranting, deposit your common sense and discernment in a doggy doo-doo bag and post to the “Getting richer by the second Carbon Traders ASS.” No.1 Main RD, The Bahama’s.
All payments to “The Internet Bank of Nigeria”.
They have it backwards. If they had actually been constrained to tell just the scientific facts, rather than alarmist rhetoric, among other things, people wouldn’t think they were full of crap. HINT: When you try and mislead people, they don’t take it well when they find out!
These people are like the boy who cried wolf, but imagine if he said “You know, I couldn’t just say “wolf” when there wasn’t one [But you did] but I probably should have because people would have been more concerned about wolves [You made them ignore you when you actually were telling the truth, by lying earlier]” If there actually did turn out to be an AGW problem, these people, not “the enemy” would be the ones to blame for people not listening to them-they have blown much of their credibility overselling their points.
To Hunter @ur momisugly 3:33: No link as it is part of my lectures on the topic. It was pieced together from a variety of sources. I saved the sources, but would have to dig to find them. If important, I’ll start digging.
“you hit like a shelia”
Mosh, you’re butchering the language!
uhhh, how about I offer a simple answer … the truth is easy easier to sell than a lie.
Nowhere near the need for tricks, mathematical obfuscation and in general phony theory. Maybe you should start by briefing the people on the Stefan-Boltzmann calculations that NASA hid for 40 years, which blows the whole global warming nonsense out the window. Oops, that might not work for you.
Hey just saying, truth is an easier sell.
Once again we observe that they can’t see their real problem. That AGW is a hypothesis, far from proven. These people attending this closed door “war cabinet” can’t even see that this event just further highlights that there is something to hide and that the last days of this panic may be at hand.
The real things to note in this interview are the between the lines messages. There is this big conspiracy of faceless men dealing out brown paperbags of money to sceptics to derail the AGW gravy train. That our alarmist scientists are obviously more intelligent and hold higher standards of ethical professionalism than mere sceptical , obviously senile old scientists who are way behind the pure absolutes of the undisputable AGW laws of nature. Our methods to smear, denounce, marginalise and insult our fellow scientists must ramp up to even higher levels with even better propaganda to assault the senses of the unwashed.
Perhaps they need to start a crusade. Put the hybrid into gear and charge off into the sunset in search of those pesky sceptical scientists. Flush them out and challenge them to debates ( whoops sorry we don’t debate AGW, it’s settled) put them in brand new labour camps manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines to appease the green gods of Pope Albert Gore, St James of Holy Hansenism and Brother Michael of Mannadjustments.
Keep up the good work everyone. Truth and common sense will win out in the end.
Poor silly Cath Foley – doesn’t she realise that almost all of us who are speaking out against this little hypothesis are scientists ourselves? Communication isn’t the problem, Cath – it’s the weak science.
Mosh, you’ll have to explain that ‘Angry Penguins’ bit to non-Australians. Please let them in on an excruciatingly funny literary hoax. My favourite was the ‘poem’ which was plagiarised from an army manual for mosquito control. And the subsequent obscenity trial, where one of our literati heroically defended the artistic merits of a forgery. You’d think the ‘towers of enteric substance’ would have given it away – but our hero trod firmly into the centre of it.
“Could it be then that scientists are too focused on the facts; constrained by the scientific method”
Fantastic. Back to post-normal thinking. Again.
Yep, I hate to be so evil – obviously funded by big oil – and demand this, but I’d like facts with my big-mac please, if you don’t mind!
Maybe they should leave the BS to politicians.
Once again, the heart sinks, reading the desperate outbursts of these “scientists.” Everything is just so disingenuous, so false, so self-delusional, and so utterly superior and vain, it’s difficult to know where to begin. It’s a classic case of “if we keep repeating the lie enough, it’ll become truth.” But it also reads like they’re desperately trying to convince themselves, never mind convince everyone else. Here’s my take on these cringe-making comments:
There’s been a bit of mix as to how do you believe one person as opposed to another and in the areas where scientists are talking with people who are well funded sceptics who aren’t necessarily, well aren’t definitely leaders in their field.
Here we go again. Well-funded skeptics. There was nothing “well-funded” about the Climategate revelations; those emails came free, and they’re utterly priceless. But of course if you’re not one of the “leaders in their field” then just who do you think you are to present opposing evidence? How dare you! You have no authority!
The general public just don’t know, who do I believe in the end if I read a book, which has some supposed specialist as opposed to a peer-reviewed researcher who’s been working in the field for a long time.
Yeah, “peer-reviewed.” Like that’s a concept that hasn’t become a joke. And again, who cares if someone puts out opposing evidence. It’s not the evidence we should be swayed by; it’s the authority of the “researcher who’s been working in the field for a long time.”
Could it be then that scientists are too focused on the facts; constrained by the scientific method and perhaps not passionate enough to have their message heard through the static of modern media?
“Focused on facts” and “Constrained by the scientific method”!!! Constrained!!! By the scientific method!!! As if that were true, and as if that would be a bad thing! Oh Jeez, pass me the bottle, I can’t stomach this sober.
These people just don’t get it; they don’t see that it’s this kind of blind arrogance and disdain for the scientific method that has got them into this mess in the first place. The answer to gaining the public trust is so damn obvious. Just present your evidence, put it our there, with all the raw and cooked data for all to see and scrutinise, admit to doubts and uncertainties where they exist, stop appealing to authority and consensus, drop the politics, and just be totally honest! It’s THAT simple! PLEASE!
That is one ominous suggestion Mr Moshpit.
We have already tried that one Downunder, and the Angry Penguins sure did come a cropper.
(My great uncle was one of them.)
They were the victims of a hoax, from which one Angry Penguin atleast (Max Harris) never really recovered.
At this point, I don’t think they’re ever going to grasp it. They already decided they know who the sceptics are and what they need to do to “win the fight” against them. They got it wrong. Arrogant people always think they know what you think. They absolutely never, ever, stop to ask. Foolish, arrogant idiots.
The people they need to convince are people like me. Just because I’m not a scientist doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Treat me like I am and you’ve lost me. Give me an Oxburgh enquiry report and tell me the Climategate scientists are therefore vindicated, you’ve lost me. Hide your data, you lose me. Deny a lawful, reasonable FOI request – I don’t care who from, or for what – and you lose me. Tell me (once again, I dare you!) that the science is settled because “the consensus” says so and you lose me. But most of all, if you throw your science at the wall and it doesn’t stick, you lose me.
They think that their message is failing because it’s not been “sold” well. Perhaps they think that they need a Billy Mays (RIP that bloke) to shout louder at us.. and louder still, until we buckle under the pressure to believe in what they tell us, JUST BECAUSE they tell us, because they know best. Nuh uh.
Show us the science. And we mean SHOW us the science – warts an’ all. Science that isn’t filthied with spin, that ain’t packed with an agenda, that withstands scrutiny and that shows that CAGW is a reality. And we don’t mean a theoretical possibility, or a computer modelled probability based on Hansen-kissed GISS and the like, we mean an actual, demonstrable, credible reality.
Can’t do that? You lost us.
National Geographic isn’t all bad:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxa6P73Awcg&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hl=en_GB&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Sung to the tune of
“Its My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To”
Apologies to Lesley Gore (no relation to algore)
See my piece on this here:
Climate scientists meet to improve brainwashing skills
Cheers,
Simon
ACM
SimonH says:
June 15, 2010 at 4:50 pm
I totally agree!