I watched some of this yesterday, noting that Mr. Hertsgaard seems to simply be making a ruckus to promote his new book. There doesn’t appear to be any depth beyond that. The Economist seems to agree. – Anthony
Who are you calling a climate crank, nut job?
by C.W.H. | WASHINGTON
HOW do you describe a phenomenon that is global in its impacts, yet must be addressed locally? A phenomenon that is difficult, if not impossible, to detect clearly at a single place in time? That’s the linguistic challenge that has confronted climate activists for decades. Forget the science and geopolitics of the issue. What name can communicators use to communicate the scope and severity of the challenge at hand?
…
The public is now aware of the issue. But the record global temperatures set last year make clear that naming a problem is quite different from solving it. The remaining challenge for “climate hawks”, as some environmentalists have taken to calling themselves, is to convince or confront politicians and businessmen, who still question whether the world has a climate problem. In that pursuit, the Guardian’s Leo Hickman worries that environmental activists have again gotten side-tracked in linguistic debates.
Just what the climate debate doesn’t need: a new moniker for those who do not accept the mainstream scientific view of anthropogenic climate change. According to environmental activists planning a day of protests across the US [on February 15th], “climate crank” is set to be the latest name added to the growing list – self-appointed, or otherwise – which already includes sceptic, denier, contrarian, realist, dissenter, flat-earther, misinformer, and confusionist….I’m left wondering whether this new exercise in name-calling will only serve to distract from the important task at hand.
…
Environmentalists efforts to fight spin with spin seem to have spun out of control. The Twitter hashtag created to publicize Tuesday’s event, #climatecranks, was used in nearly equal measure by both Mark Hertsgaard, the environmental correspondent for the Nation who coined the phrase and led the action, and an opponent of greenhouse-gas regulations, who co-opted it to heckle him. And America’s “fair and balanced” network was also quick to belittle the activists’ efforts. “Global Warming Nuts Try to Ambush Sen. Inhofe…Fail”, jeered the Fox News headline.
Climate activists have the science on their side, but American conservatives are winning the war of words. And as the rhetoric heats up, so too does the planet.
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read the whole article here http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/02/environmental_insults
I take it C.W.H. has not actually looked at the global temperatures for the past 10 or 20 years.
If you don’t like that label I’m sure their “quiver of useful arguments” only has more names to choose from.
“Climate activists have the science on their side.” Actually, The Economist, like the BBC, NYT, NPR, etc. do not recognize anything other than the alarmist interpretation of AGW.
And another take on the “science”: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/02/17/galileo_and_the_scientific_pose_of_the_left_108934.html
I read The Economist every week. There is virtually no topic that it does not link to Global Warming in a most disastrous way. None. There are at least 6 references per issue, many in the most unlikely articles. Clearly the references are added by an editor after the subject article was drafted in some instances. I do not think The Economist realizes how ludicrous this has become. The editors are besmirching an excellent publication with their irrational fear of warming, particularly given the scant evidence of any serious trend of the same in spite of their apparent ability to detect it everywhere.
I got dizzy reading this.
One can see that jumping the gun a few months in declaring the hotest year works if the Ec now states it as a fact. Why are reporters so ready to accept this kind of shoddy information.
One of the first and most common signs that someone is not presenting a scholarly or logically solid position is that the individual resorts to name calling. When your argument is so clear and convincing, you don’t need name calling.
I have a hint for them: It rhymes with “Fullship”.
That “ambush” of Inhofe was sad. They could only resort to “consensus exists, you and your ilk are not on-message,” and, “Wont you please think of the children?”
Pathetic.
That’s activism for you. In steps, here is how you become an activist:
1) Suspend critical thinking.
2) Accept same perspective as consensus, conform!
3) When in doubt, see #1.
funny how this has gotten so much publicity when it’s really just one guy calling people names in an attempt to sell a book.
pathetic.
And yet THIS is the best the warmistas can come up with?
prediction – 2 day flash in the pan.
I am nonplussed by the statement that the warmists have the science on their side. Quite the contrary. They have a set of computer programs that cannot back-predict our current climate and has failed in every attempt to forward predict climate variability. Vide the MET Office and snowstorms. If Al Gore and Jim Hansen had been correct in their predictions, we would be roasting today.
Rather than a new name for those who do not swallow the CAGW story line, how about a new name for the true believers: climaPopes.
Hahahaha.
Pretty funny, but it is sad that it has gottone to this point.
Well, The Economist magazine has swallowed CAGW hook, line, and sinker. As far as the editors are concerned, the science is 100% settled.
The Inofe video is pretty good. It’s amazing how patient he was with the activists. The other amazing thing is that a group of people apparently can sneak up on Senators and get within feet of them with no security in evidence.
Would of been interesting if he’d asked the girls if they:
Liked to be warm
Like to eat foods from outside the local area
Had to travel to see him
Like to have nice clothing
Liked to use electronic items that have to be shipped into the country
Actually, I like the term “climate hawk.” It is easier to say than what I have been using for a couple of years (AGW pessimist), and I think more people will understand the meaning and implications of “climate hawk.”
Yes, because just like that PPACA health-care bill, it encouters resistance because of the messaging and communication – not the substance. As angst about PPACA has kept its voter-approval below 50% for some time, all we hear about is that if the president could just communicate it better to the people the approval could significantly increase. It’s just those uneducated, non-critical thinking people that are hard to reach without the exact right message that don’t like it.
The Spectator covers the O’Donnell/Steig affair on front cover. Post at B/H.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/2/17/steig-story-on-spectator-cover.html
REPLY: thanks, they sent me a preprint, I’m working up a post – Anthony
The media are going full out today on studies claiming to link precipitation and flooding with increased co2. As an example,
Flooding linked to global warming: studies
Studies weaken argument that climate change is a ‘victimless crime’: researche
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2011/02/16/environment-floods-global-warming.html#socialcomments#ixzz1EEj3ONpf
The same stories are appearing on Reuters, etc., and the origin seems to be articles in Nature magazine.
These results are produced by computer models which include the theory that increased warming will increase precipitation. In the real world, there are many factors in play, and from year to year precipitation varies by only a percent or two. Many studies of real world weather confirm this. For example, see:
http://www.co2science.org/subject/p/summaries/precipglobal.php
Winning the war of words? Not so fast.
“Warming linked to extreme weather” reads the Toronto Star.
Extreme rainstorms and snowfalls have grown substantially stronger…with scientists for the first time finding the telltale fingerprints of man-made global warming.
Two studies in Wednesday’s issue of Nature link heavy rains to increases in greenhouse gases…
Global warming more than doubled the likelihood of flooding in England and Wales in 2000.
Studies are now underway to examine whether last years’s deadly Russian heat wave and Pakistan floods can be scientifically attributed to global warming.
So don’t leave the gates unguarded for too long. The regrouping has begun.
“read the whole article here”
Thank you, but no. I can still remember a time when I thought that The Economist was a somewhat decent publication. Then it embraced Marxist theory and anti-Americanism as fully as a college kid in a coffee shop. Sad. At least they can still recognize name-calling as counter productive, if not morally wrong and intellectually bankrupt.
The Economist is owned by the Rothschilds, who have been trying for a global carbon tax for 15 years.
Climate hawks, eh? More like this:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shitehawk
“Climate activists have the science on their side, but American conservatives are winning the war of words. And as the rhetoric heats up, so too does the planet.”
Yet another example bearing evidence of the decay of journalistic performance.
. . . “a day of protests across the US [on February 15th], . . .”
Really? Who knew?
“. . . The Twitter hashtag, . . .”
I don’t know anyone over the age of 14 that would know what this means. Can these people vote, do arithmetic, write a coherent paragraph . . .?