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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Dr. Cathy Folley: “… we believe that it’s important to get the facts [about AGW] out in a way that allows the general community and the politicians making decisions to make good decisions.”
Have you considered a Folley Catheter?
Sorry Jason (First comment) “it’s match” is correct, the match belongs to it, the apostrophe s implies ownership
david elder.
hehe.
I ended my career in literature studies by writing a program that constructed
modern verse using some rather rudimentary rules. The poems, posted on my office door, would sometimes bring great comments from people. The philosophical point I was making was about intentions and the ability to discern the ghost in the machine or…not. and also the point I suppose that a text is produced as a series of choices under constraint.. Sometimes the language makes you say things.. or rather only certain things are sayable.. and so our notions of creativity..blah blah blah blah….Angry penguins.
Great quote from the Wikipedia article from the the “Angry Penguins” hoaxers about the clique they pwned:
“Our feeling was that by processes of critical self-delusion and mutual admiration, the perpetrators of this humourless nonsense had managed to pass it off on would-be intellectuals ….”
Hmmm, what does that remind me of?
This is just as silly as left wing “scientists” proving that those that don’t agree with them are mentally ill. Frankly, it is obvious who is disturbed.
You guys realize that Lucia is in the hoax poems..
(a months supply of quatloos if you can spot the under currents
of this poem )
I have been noted in the reading-rooms
As a borer of calf-bound volumes
Full of scandals at the Court. (Milord
Had his hand upon that snowy globe
Milady Lucy’s sinister breast . . .) Attendants
Have peered me over while I chewed
Back-numbers of Florentine gazettes
(Knowst not, my Lucia, that he
Who has caparisoned a nun dies
With his twankydillo at the ready? . . .)
But in all of this I got no culture till
I read a little pamphlet on my thighs
Entitled: “Friction as a Social Process.”
Super-poca-fragi-lyptic-droughty-flooda-docious
Sung by penguins!
are you guys still arguing over apostrophes.
juanslayton says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:26 pm (Edit)
On behalf of gnu/linux, please–give the penguins a break. (They’re all in favor of openness, anyway.)
(Psst.. thats my diabolical plan.. get AGW to adopt the penguin… and then they HAVE to open source stuff.. )
anomaly time?
15 June: WashingtonTimes: Kerry Picket: (John) Kerry: Spain’s failed green job program was an ‘anomaly’
I asked Senator Kerry about Spain’s own failed experience in the area of subsidizing alternative energy, and the Massachusetts Senator’s response sounded similar to someone saying Marxism or Stalinism never succeeded, because it was never implemented correctly. AUDIO
“If you look at other European countries, it depends entirely on exactly how committed they were and how far they were willing to go in terms of the breadth of the program,” he said.
“You have some anomalies in some countries where they began slowly. They didn’t have the right incentives, they over-subsidized a couple of different things– we’ve learned something from some of those mistakes, but I’m confident that the way we’re approaching this is really private sector determined. That’s the key here.” (All emphasis is mine.)…
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2010/jun/15/senator-kerry-spains-failed-green-job-program-was-/
ELEANOR HALL: Some of Australia’s top scientists ….?????
Wrong – right there!
The “Pee Party”? (bedwetters)
Duck!
Paul @ur momisugly June 15, 2010 at 7:35 pm: Fancy a Swede coming up with that. Wonder where he got that idea? Or do we have a Jan/Feb publication date associated with that . . . ?
In the 1880s, Krakatoa went off and cooled much of the planet. With the depths of the Little Ice Age not that far back in history, the concern in Europe (especially Scandinavia) was a return to those devastating times. This launched investigations into the climate and what might have brought the world out of the LIA. Hence Arrhenius’ research and quote.
Shame shame shame sargeant Carter. Some of our sheilas can hit pretty hard Mosh. I’d put ’em up against a soft pom anyday. (pom = an Englishman)
p.s. My exes grandfather was Albert Tucker (of the Angry Penguins mob) Weird bloke, never liked me
Ed Caryl says:
June 15, 2010 at 3:29 pm
“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.
_______________
My thoughts exactly. It might even come to a point where the war on CO2 will end up with a war with China. It’s a bad omen that even military organziations in the US seem to agree with Boxer. Well, the warmists will get the cooling they want then, via a nuclear winter.
“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?”
Oh damn that pesky scientific method! When scientists are “constrained” by the scientific method and only say the things that they are certain of, then they cannot be alarmist as they cannot back alarmist predictions up with definitive empirical evidence which unambiguously and definitively places CO2 as the sole cause and driver of global climate change.
Without that certainty, they have to “dress-up penguins in sun hats and factor 50 suncream!”
“Constrained by the scientific method” OMG! if that phrase right there does not cut to the heart of the weakness in the CAGW theorem, I don’t know what does!
It makes me think of Scooby Doo. “The mystery machine stopped and Fred, Velma, Shaggy, Scooby and Daphne get out to confront the evil Catastrophic Anthropological Global Warming monster. Fred pulls off the CAGW’s mask and underneath there was nothing!!! All they could hear was a distant voice proclaim, “I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for that pesky scientific method”
Sheila is Australian slang for girl.
Mosh – Don’t be a such a whingeing sheila. You only lost 5 brain cells which was the payback for our five goal loss to USA.
BTW delicious irony that Anthony’s venue for Canberra is the Canberra Labor Club which is owned by the ACT Branch of the ALP (Australian Labor Party). The ALP is in power federally and Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, has stated “climate change is the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenge of our generation”.
This is not “science” hitting back. This is a very small group of non-scientists using non science to spread their own beliefs about the climate using the good name of the rest of science and scientists to spread their hysterical belief.
The big swing since climategate has not been amongst the general public who have seen so many other scares in the name of science that they are generally sceptical anyway. The big change has been amongst professional scientists and those with scientific training for whom the disclosure of the highly dubious practices during climategate severely undermines the claims by the climate people that they are applying the appropriate scientific standards.
And the irony, is that the more they try to use PR to “persuade” the gullible public, the more they portray themselves as people obsessed by PR to the masses at the expense of good vigorous science.
Paul says: “Even worse, however, is that according to the latest PIPS2 (Pontificating International Pseudo-Scientist) measurements of credibility mass, so far this June’s shrinkage is the worst on record.
And it’s far worse than we thought.
And my hens have gone broody …. yet more evidence that the rise in the credibillity mass index is having profound effects even at the micro-economic level!
Its all right for you northern hemisphere folk to mock “our ABC”, but we have to live with them (and pay for them with our taxes = salt in the wound). But the story was a good giggle – thanks, Mosh.
P.S. “shelia” should be “sheila”
The closed door meeting is being attended by …
I think I may have discovered the problem. A private echo chamber where we can all nod our heads at the idea that “sceptics” can’t follow quantum mechanics or statistics and even if they could are too busy living it up on oil funding to care.
Perhaps a better idea would be to at least take the time to study “the enemy” before formulating a new battle plan.
Scientists are focusing on that and trying to make sure that they put things across in a way which isn’t alarmist
With a straight face too …
I have just been in a motion tracking studio in Sydney and seen Happy Feet II in production. So many tap dancing penguins…Steve, stop giving these fools ideas!
In other news, a conference of yoga teachers gathered to discuss why is it that, if all that the world needs to solve its problems is love, people are not being more loving?
They conclude that cold intellectual science is the problem.
No no, don’t use penguins! They freeze to death too easily and the whole world watching soccer knows it :
http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/news/safrica-winter-freeze-kills-500-penguins–fbintl_ap-wcup-deadpenguins.html
IPCC lays and hatches it’s first egg…
Nature:
‘IPCC for biodiversity’ approved after long negotiation
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100612/full/news.2010.297.html
Peer review of peer review? Hmm…. how else to keep out any undesirable peer reviewed science.
Also see in Nature: Biodiversity: Putting a price on nature.
Where is MY big oil money??? I DEMAND MY SHARE OF THE BIG OIL MONEY!!!
Seriously, I am skint!