From George Mason University, shifting the message. Note that this is the same university that was shocked at the outcome of their poll on TV weathercasters. Look for this message in the media soon. Confusing weather and climate maybe? People don’t suffer from climate change in a single day, but local weather changes. Cold and flu “season” for example.
When Climate Change Becomes a Health Issue, Are People More Likely To Listen?
New study suggests re-framing the issue helps people better understand and relate to climate problem
FAIRFAX, Va.—Framing climate change as a public health problem seems to make the issue more relevant, significant and understandable to members of the public—even some who don’t generally believe climate change is happening, according to preliminary research by George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication (4C).
The center recently conducted an exploratory study in the United States of people’s reactions to a public health-framed short essay on climate change. They found that on the whole, people who read the essay reacted positively to the information.
Previous research conducted by Mason investigators and others, using people’s beliefs, behaviors and policy preferences about global warming as assessed in a national survey, identified six distinct segments of Americans, termed Global Warming’s Six Americas.
In the current research, 4C director Edward Maibach interviewed approximately one dozen people in each of the Six Americas after they read the brief essay on the human health implications of global warming. As expected, he found that members of the audience segments who already believe strongly that climate change is happening had a strong positive response to the new information, while people who are less sure if climate change is happening also found value in the information. Nearly half of the comments made by members of the “Disengaged” segment, for example, indicated that the essay reflected their personal point of view, was informative or thought-provoking or offered valuable prescriptive information on how to take action relative to climate change. Moreover, about 40 percent of those people in the “Doubtful” segment had similar positive reactions to the essay.
“Re-defining climate change in public health terms should help people make connection to already familiar problems such as asthma, allergies and infectious diseases, while shifting the visualization of the issue away from remote Arctic regions and distant peoples and animals,” says Maibach. “The public health perspective offers a vision of a better, healthier future—not just a vision of an environmental disaster averted.”
The research, which was published in the latest issue of the BioMed Central Public Health journal, also provides clues about specific public health messages that might not be helpful (such as eating less meat) and points to examples or associations that might trigger counter-arguments and negative reactions.
“Many leading experts have suggested that a positive vision for the future, rather than a dire one, is precisely what has been missing from the public dialogue on climate change thus far,” says Maibach. “We believe this survey is one step in shaping a way to talk about climate change that will reach all segments of the public—not just those who already are making behavioral changes.”
A copy of the full study can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/qc/1471-2458/10/299.
Heh, the first rule of Denier Club is you don’t talk about it.
===============
I forget, is it Climate Change, or Global Warming?
It seems their polling shows people don’t understand what the problem is.
The problem is, the people doing these polls don’t know what problem to make up.
Maybe we should be looking for ways to change the behavior of those at George Mason University pushing this nonsense.
More BS. Message is that if you don’t support or believe them you’re gonna die young. Fear repackaged. Same old, same old.
Nah, this won’t work either. It just makes them look sillier. Everybody knows (according to the Warmers) that weather isn’t climate!
Notice how we feel differently about the same temperature during different times of the year. For example, in mid-summer, 70 degrees feels downright cool. Yet during the wintertime, 70 degrees would feel just fineto most of us. The body has an amazing capability to adapt to temperature (and even to climatic) change, even in a fairly short time span.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say this again – Maibach, Leiserowitz, Nisbet et al have done much to bring the brand value of climate science down. Let them keep at it. 😉
These people have drunk copiously from the AGW Kool-aid…for example (Appendix 1)
“Global warming can harm people both directly and indirectly. Directly, global warming causes more extreme weather patterns including more frequent heat waves, more violent storms, and rising sea-levels – all of which can lead to people being harmed or killed.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry…
Goebbels 6th Principle of Propaganda (Based upon Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda by Leonard W. Doob, published in Public Opinion and Propaganda; A Book of Readings edited for The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues) :
“6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.”
Better to be broke when its warm and sunny than when its cold and wet.
Is there a memory hole on this site? I was just reading how “Climate Skepticism Could Soon Be a Criminal Offence in UK” and wanted to compliment you on finding yet more charm and wit from the far right of British politics, and puff, it was gone.
The sample size in their survey is way too small. Six areas at twelve people each? That’s only 72 people. That doesn’t sound like enough to be statistically significant.
If they want to hit the biggest demographic, they might as well play the religion angle.
God said to believe….
…but then that would put them in a catch 22
What a surprising conclusion:
In sum, there was clear evidence that the Alarmed and Concerned segments responded positively to the public health essay, and mixed evidence that the Cautious and Disengaged responded positively. There was no evidence that the Doubtful responded positively. It is worthy of note, however, that all six segments agreed with the essay’s opening frame device (O1) that “good health is a great blessing,” suggesting that human health and wellbeing is a widely shared value.
Nothing says ‘loser’ like trying to rebrand the product.
“Edsel” comes to mind.
If some ideas are stupid, re-framing them tells me they are still stupid.
Is the goal to make us more compliant to tax schemes and penalties?
In America, many of us live indoors. What difference does it make?
Last year Energy secretary Chu said to paint roof tops white. This year no comments on that.
Well, speaking as a newly annointed “Saloon Bar Sceptic” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1294922/Government-launches-Google-Earth-map-predicts-effects-climate-change.html
a term I actually prefer to “Disengaged”, I can only say that I think Google is factoring in the effects of climate change protagonists hot air too readily.
In vino veritas!
I don’t understand how you stupid skeptics can possibly deny that a 0.6 degree change over 50 years will cause a worldwide health crisis.
/sarc
“George Mason” is where the conservative columnist and sometimes talk show host, Walter Williams, teaches. I think of that University as somewhat conservative in outlook.
Jumping to the paper, we get the statement,
“Our health will suffer if we don’t take action .
Global warming can harm people both directly and indirectly. Directly, global warming causes more extreme weather patterns including more frequent heat waves, more violent storms, and rising sea-levels – all of which can lead to people being harmed or killed. Indirectly, global warming harms the quality of our water, air and food, and our ecosystems, all of which can lead to increasing rates of disease and death. ”
Our ancestors came from Africa, and we’re naturally partial to a warmer climate. A majority of the warming HAS to be at night and during the winter, As to more violent storms in a warmer world, that’s just silly. With more warming at the poles, the
temperature gradient between the poles and equator would lead to LESS violent storms.
As to the disease factor, Malaria is not a tropical disease. The largest malaria outbreak of modern times was in Siberia in the 1920s and 1930s, when 13 million were infected, 600,000 died and 30,000 died as far north as Archangelsk, on the Arctic Circle.
The paper was just silly fearmongering- A. McIntire
New medical term called AGW shortness of breath, kind of makes me sick.
I gagged on the very idea. Maybe I should be gagged on this subject. Maybe the government will gag me anyway as the are wont to do in England.
Spin and marketing….
These increasingly desperate clowns may be deluding themselves but they’re not deluding me…
Why would a university spend money in order to have a Center for Climate Change Communication?
This guy has a great job. Where do I sign up?
What better way to keep the fear-mongering wraith lurching on, like an invasion of the un-dead. All they do is take the well oiled “everything can kill you somehow” BS – spice in global warming as the new spectre and voila – 2 minute heebie-jeebies. Vigilantfish says:
July 19, 2010 at 6:06 am – Previous Post
“will draw on the propaganda and will find other causes if (when) this one fails, but it will be hard for them to find another Trojan horse of such global appeal.” Sorry, Vigilantfish, it appears they have an entire assembly line chugging away.
Desperate people do desperate things.
AleaJactaEst says:
July 19, 2010 at 8:10 am
I like your name, & your point too!
This report suggests to me that straws & clutching seem to be in mind. In the UK we have an expression for interesting news items like these, it begins with b & ends in s, with l,l,o,o,k, & c in between. I’ll leave it to readers to piece it together!
The easiest way to debunk warming as a health issue is to present the annual death graphs for any country with a significant warming trend. Eg the UK.
http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947392655
The biggest rise in deaths is during the winter. Trend overall is for less deaths.
There’s also a neat graph that gives rates of influenza like illnesses back to 1988. Note how ILI has risen and fallen inversely to global temperature.
http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947381241
It’s probably just a coincidence.
Throughout history it has been shown that ALL animal life (including humans) survives and THRIVES when it is warm, and we die of famine and disease when it is cold.
That is the way it always has been, and that is the way it always will be. Warmth = prosperity, cold = famine and death.
So….. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10679088
“If we confuse things more and more, people may give up to thinking and finally swallow all of our messages.”
I recently blogged about George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication HERE. They claim to be researchers, but their bios could easily be mistaken for the sort one reads on a Greenpeace website.
Here’s a snippet from director Edward Maibach’s bio:
Let’s see . . . when people take cruises and go on vacations they go to they go to places where it’s warm and comfortable. When many of us retire, we go to Florida and Arizona.
People with asthma and other respiratory problems often move to warm, dry climates — like the desert Southwest.
If a degree or two of warming is so bad for our health, why do those of us move to areas that are ten to twenty degrees warmer and thrive?
I have worked in weather from -15 degrees F to +115 degrees F without ill effects and certainly prefer my climate on the warm side.
Naturally-occurring climate change is indeed a health issue: overall, a warmer climate is always healthier than a cooler one. The mythological hydra of manmade warming/ climate change on the other hand is of course ever-dangerous and always threatening with all manner of disasters. But now, seeing that frightening people based on a myth hasn’t worked, they want to try using lesser, more-believable, closer-to-home “disasters” based on that same myth. Yeah, that’ll work.
WTF is “Six Americas”?
Sigh, malaria wasn’t enough. What the……?, a study on how to best propagandize CAGW? I know logic and critical thinking are no longer taught in our structures of “higher” learning, but apparently ethics is no longer taught, either. I can see it now. Headline—– CO2 SHOWN TO BE AS HARMFUL AS SECOND HAND SMOKE!!! ——- coming soon to an alarmist periodical near you!
Re-framing global warming/climate change into a health issue is like North Korea calling themselves the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea. They are neither democratic, a republic or for the people.
The authors have the following affiliations: Center for Climate Change Communication, Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
2 School of Communication, American University, Washington, DC, USA
3 Department of Statistics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
—-
I didn’t notice ANY formal involvement of one of the nation’s Schools of Public Health, so the public health value of this thing is dubious at best.
Most of the SPH in the USA are totally bought-into the AGW story, so it probably wouldn’t have altered the outcome, but I’m surprised they didn’t bring in at least one researcher with a PH credential.
Bad science, meh! I could easily write a questionnaire that implicated, say, ghosts with global warming, and get the same result. (sorry I mentioned that, they’ll try that next!)
The story line to AGW is unbelievable and it’s this. There is only one temperature on earth in which humans can survive, a deviation from this temperature upwards by 1C will give rise to immense disasters because of the positive feedback effects. There isn’t one single benefit to the human race coming out of this 1C rise in temperature.
Who in their right mind could believe this guff?
George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication
So, climate change communication is somehow different from other forms of communication and needs its own separate center to research both the fundamentals and the nuances of this separate form of communication. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is one more head on the hydra of corruption in science. Applied marketing research sponsored by a university. “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
Climate change now linked to bp-
Oil Spill may cause irreparable damage
to the Gulf Stream global climate
thermoregulation activity.
Gulf Loop Current Now Breaking Down
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2010/07/gulf-oil-disaster-is-loop-current.html
Be sure to download the pdf before bp or
bama elves hack it.
It was -17F during the winter, and now is 97F.
114 degrees of change, and somehow we manage to survive, raise children and live productive lives.
The climate may be warming as Earth continues to recover slowly from the privations of the little ice age, but that has nothing to do increasing levels of CO2. A new paper by ex-Nasa physicist Ferenc Miskolczi published by Britain’s respected “Energy & Environment” concludes that the IPPC’s computer programs that ascribe a “positive feedback” function that multiplies atmospheric water vapor’s effect on the greenhouse effect from increasing levels of CO2 are simply incorrect. I am pasting below the abstract and conclusion from the lengthy, complex paper. I will provide a link to the in a subsequent posting.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
THE STABLE STATIONARY VALUE OF THE EARTH’S
GLOBAL AVERAGE ATMOSPHERIC PLANCK-WEIGHTED
GREENHOUSE-GAS OPTICAL THICKNESS
Ferenc M. Miskolczi
3 Holston Lane, Hampton VA 23664, USA
ABSTRACT
By the line-by-line method, a computer program is used to analyze Earth
atmospheric radiosonde data from hundreds of weather balloon observations. In
terms of a quasi-all-sky protocol, fundamental infrared atmospheric radiative flux
components are calculated: at the top boundary, the outgoing long wave radiation,
the surface transmitted radiation, and the upward atmospheric emittance; at the
bottom boundary, the downward atmospheric emittance. The partition of
the outgoing long wave radiation into upward atmospheric emittance and surface
transmitted radiation components is based on the accurate computation of the true
greenhouse-gas optical thickness for the radiosonde data. New relationships
among the flux components have been found and are used to construct a quasi-allsky
model of the earth’s atmospheric energy transfer process. In the 1948-2008
time period the global average annual mean true greenhouse-gas optical thickness
is found to be time-stationary. Simulated radiative no-feedback effects of
measured actual CO2 change over the 61 years were calculated and found to be of
magnitude easily detectable by the empirical data and analytical methods used.
The data negate increase in CO2 in the atmosphere as a hypothetical cause for the
apparently observed global warming. A hypothesis of significant positive
feedback by water vapor effect on atmospheric infrared absorption is also negated
by the observed measurements. Apparently major revision of the physics
underlying the greenhouse effect is needed.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
CONCLUSIONS
The greenhouse effect is here monitored without the superfluous complications of
AOGCM climate models. The present method shows directly whether the global
average infrared absorption properties of the atmosphere are changing or not. In
general, if there has been global warming due to any cause, its possible correlation with
infrared absorption properties of the atmosphere will be directly apparent from accurate observations assessed by calculations of the absorption properties. The present results show an apparent warming associated with no apparent change in the absorption properties. Change in absorption properties cannot have been the cause of the warming.
The results show that the theoretical CO2-induced virtual increase in true greenhousegas optical thickness greatly exceeds the actual empirically measured change over the 61-year dataset. The fact that the virtual change is about four times the actual change is strong empirical evidence that there is a very strong dynamic compensation that stabilizes the atmospheric energy transport process against a potential perturbation by CO2 change. This means that the empirically estimated virtual feedback of water vapor effect on the greenhouse-gas optical thickness is not significantly positive contradicting the IPCC doctrine of it being strongly positive. It is clear from these data that the increase in surface temperature shown in Fig. 9 cannot in the least be accounted for by any effect of CO2 on greenhouse gas optical thickness, with or without positive feedback by water vapor. Merely empirical evidence does not necessarily justify predictions of the future: for them, in addition to empirical evidence, some logical warrant of generality is needed. Such a warrant of generality is usually called a physical theory. In order to predict the future, we need a principled physical theory to explain our empirical observations. The present paper has restricted its attention to the empirical observational testing of the quasi-all-sky model, and has avoided theoretical analysis. These empirical results could well be challenged by a comparable empirical method.
The BBC are running an article about shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas, complete with ‘before and after’ pictures. Any comments?
Is it just me?…or is this really an article about how people REACT to an article?
Doesn’t say anything about the validity of the issue all, just how people react to an article ABOUT the issue?
They’re sure taking the long way around the barn on this one.
JimB
I always seem to in better health when it’s warm than when it’s cold. The public can see through this nonsense.
Climate Change IS a health issue.
We expect to have about +/- 30 days of global food surplus just before the start of the Northern Hemisphere harvest this year (2010).
The coming global cooling will have a marked affect on that value (hint: It will not make the number bigger).
Unless the warmists drop their lies and tell the farmers to start moving into shorter season crops we will see global urban starvation on a level never seen before.
It is a health issue, just not the ones they are lying about.
Millions and millions may die from starvation in the June-August of 2011 or 2012 as a direct result of these lies.
I have to say that I agree with the message. The more I hear from the AGW crowd, the sicker I feel. Besides, is it not quite clear to everyone that this issue is causing epidemic levels of mental illness?
Henry chance says:
July 19, 2010 at 8:18 am
They can’t do that anymore… all the whitewash is being used for Climategate “investigations”…
Every time I read something like this I’m more convinced that I’m right. This has little to do with Science and a LOT to do with agendas and politics. I agree with Shub – let them talk, they’re doing a better job of discrediting themselves than “we” ever could.
“Boss? (*koff* *koff*) I think I’ve got a touch of the Global Warming. I won’t be in today.”
If I copied the address correctly, a pdf version of Dr. Miskolczi’s interesting paper that debunks IPPC’s pet theory of water-vapor’s positive feedback as described in my previous post can be found at:
http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B74u5vgGLaWoNDFjODAwMWMtNmNmYS00NDhmLWI3NjItMTE0NGMwNWMxYjQ2&hl=en
Reframing = marketing = creative lying. Mama taught me long ago not to believe everything you hear and always to consider the source.
So is my Alma Matter suggesting that heat is more dangerous than cold? Their donation requests have a date with my shredder. I will then put them in the postage paid return envelope with a printout of this news story and my addition of “Idiotic press releases have a negative affect on alumni donations”.
The gun control groups tried to do the same thing. Although there’s still a few doctors that try to push the idea of guns and associated violence as a public health issue, most have given it up. They failed at that attempt, and will fail on this one too. The public was smart enough to not buy the tactic on guns, and and they won’t buy it with respect to AGW either.
I think the only ‘health’ effects we will see from ‘Climate change’ are negative ones ultimately derived from poorly thought through energy policies based on wind and solar. To be brief; during Winter, more people will freeze to death because of said policies.
Didn’t we just read here yesterday how the Chicago Field Museum is doing this, with more potent Poison Ivy and the dangers of the spread of malaria.
Tsk, tsk … AGW proponents really have it bad:
… the glass is half empty
… every sunny, blue sky has a rain cloud just waiting to form and rain on your picnic
… things are going to get bad before they get worse
… anything bad can happen (not if), and it will
Or, to use Ayn Rand’s words, the malevolent universe premise.
This is introducing Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and, in this case, is brainwashing with bent propaganda to condition people to believe what they are told. This is getting dangerous. All the more important to talk to people and get them to understand what the global warming movement is trying to do – scare everybody into believing that we are somehow responsible for some predicted catastrophe which has yet to be proved will happen. It is all about power and control.
“It is reasonable to foresee the threat that the breaking of a crucial warm
stream as the Loop Current may generate a chain reaction of unpredictable
critical phenomena and instabilities due to strong non linearities which may
have serious consequences on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream thermo-
regulation activity of the Global Climate”
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2010/07/gulf-oil-disaster-is-loop-current.html
Energy Secretary Chu said BP would save the planet. Now it looks like BP is accused of climate change.
Donna Laframboise says:
July 19, 2010 at 8:53 am
Thanks for the link to the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication.
I note with interest that one of their partners is none other than…the Weather Channel!
Birds of a feather…
MrsB says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:16 am
“The BBC are running an article about shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas, complete with ‘before and after’ pictures. Any comments?”
Yes, before and after pictures are absolutely meaningless unless each of the 15,000 or so glaciers are chronicled. Glaciers are dynamic and not fixed to a size or location. They are constantly expanding and shrinking. It is simply more hysteria. The BBC should read this story and re-frame the arguments for totalitarian abuses of the individual. They’ve been slaughtered in the glacial area of the argument.
Even worst case climate change is equivalent to most of us to moving about 200 miles nearer the equator. No biggie. I use this estimate (from Lomberg, ISTR) to scale the claims of warmists. Like when they say we’ll get more snow and storms because of ACC. I live in Oxfordshire. If I moved to mid-France, about 200 miles south, would I see worse storms and snow? Nope.
Of course, if I wanted to negate the effects of ACC, I could move three miles to the top of that 600 foot hill over there, and the WHOLE EFFECT would be wiped out.
I understand people actually live in the tropics, even as far as the equator itself. Scary.
CodeTech says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:25 am
Every time I read something like this I’m more convinced that I’m right. This has little to do with Science and a LOT to do with agendas and politics. I agree with Shub – let them talk, they’re doing a better job of discrediting themselves than “we” ever could.
===========================================================
I agree, only I would ratchet it up a few notches, and encourage them to do more.
People are sick and tired of this, tired of bad news, and every poll is showing the numbers of people believing going down, while the numbers of people not falling for it going up.
We’re not 50 ft under water, billions of people have not died, New York is not frozen, and it’s still snowing.
It helps more than anything that we have a government that lies just about everything….
“Communication” is the Warmer’s new word for “Propaganda”. They can’t use “propaganda” directly as that conjurs up all sorts of bad memories from the Cold War, so they use a gentler, more obsequious word to describe it. However, their “communication” is indeed equivalent to “propaganda” and more and more people are catching on. Must be tough to be a Warmer these days–their faith is being exposed for the political Marxist cult that it truly is.
This is so FRUSTRATING!
“Heat Wave” hits the east coast for a week. “Record (bogus) temperatures..”
One elderly black lady in Philadelphia dies, attributed to the “Heat” (of course, note Heat does not equal temperature, I’m speaking colloquial ignorance here..)
Hum, same time, among the 100,000,000 people in this “Heat Wave”, 175 die on the highways, 1/3 to 1/2 due to “drunk driving”.
Wonder where the priorities should be.
Max
When the climate changes, and it never stands still for too long, it causes stress on populations. Vermin multiply and viruses thrive in cold & damp. Locusts come out in excessive dry spells. Heck, there’s a malady for just about every condition you can shake a stick at. What’s new here? Vermin of the two-legged variety have infested the place, bringing thier inverted resoning forth in an attempt to cash in. If we give them our money, they will give us thier paragorical blessing.
When the climate changes, and it never stands still for too long, it causes stress on populations. Vermin multiply and viruses thrive in cold & damp. Locusts come out in excessive dry spells. Heck, there’s a malady for just about every condition you can shake a stick at. What’s new here? Vermin of the two-legged variety have infested the place, bringing thier inverted reasoning forth in an attempt to cash in. If we give them our money, they will give us thier paragorical blessing.
Do you know something? You better” throw the towel”, accept Cap&Trade and everyone will forget about any climate change/global warming, for good or bad.
Please tell me, what are those “Six Americas”? I don’t know.
Where to begin. Have people been so brainwashed that they no longer know what the experience of “summer” or “winter” encompasses? As memory serves, there has always been seasonal flu in the winter and allergies in the summer. As well, summer at times can be hot, winter cold. Is everything other than perfectly average weather now considered anomalous or even extreme?
Richard Telford,
the article you referenced was known to google before it vanished.
Climate Skepticism Could Soon Be a Criminal Offence in UK | Watts …
19 Jul 2010 … People who are sceptical of climate change could soon be facing criminal charges in the European Court of Justice, British National Party …
wattsupwiththat.com/…/climate-skepticism-could-soon-be-a-criminal-offence-in-uk/ – 2 hours ago
But since it’s sourced from the BNP, it’s likely completely bonkers rubbish, so no loss…
They can try to redress socialism a million different ways, but if it smells like a dead rat it definitely is one.
Is frostbite a “health issue”?
This post is very imoportant. Why? Because it goes a long way to putting on full display the problem with science today. That science is a tool of a message carefully crafted for an outcome.
Kyoto/Global warming/man made global warming: represents one of the most outstanding marketing and sales acheivements in the history of the world. The fallacy of “facts” be damned. The transperancy of it all, makes its acheivement all the more impressive.
I recommend Chialdinis work: The Psychology of Persuassion, to see just how these marketers earn their living.
I found it!, these are the Six Americas LOL:
1)The Alarmed
2)The Concerned
3)The Cautious
4)The Unconcerned
5)The Doubtful
6)The Dismissive
(1) and (2) are Kool-Aid drinkers and Global Warming Church followers
(3) Have been invited to drink it, but still undecided.
If anyone really thought that ‘climate change’ was a scientific question, this nonsense should put that misconception to rest. The issue for these academics is not “Are we causing the Earth’s climate to change?” but “How can we convince the po’ ignorant masses that this ridiculous hobby horse called ‘climate change’ requires their sacrifice and tax dollars?”
Can you imagine a “Center for Quantum Physics Communication,” devoted to convincing the public that there is something to this field? Scientists don’t need to propagandize, but political ideologues do.
/Mr Lynn
Fix it now! For the children!
Amazing. This is the same thing “they” tried to do with gun control through the CDC. Thankfully, Congress withheld the funding for that little bit of junk science. Sadly, I have little hope that the SCOTUS will rule that there is no such thing as man-made climate change. Anyhow, this is what you get when your agenda drives your methods.
““Global warming can harm people both directly and indirectly. Directly, global warming causes more extreme weather patterns including more frequent heat waves, more violent storms, and rising sea-levels – all of which can lead to people being harmed or killed.”
Auugh the “violent storms” meme again. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. keeps trying to kill it (it’s apparently a misrepresentation of his work), but “the cat came back…”
This is why the later IPCC reports are still so dangerous. The are treated by the majority of the non-climate community as rigoruous, accurate, and definative. What marketing. Sigh.
After the Copenhagen and AH1N1 fiascoes none believe them anymore.
What new story are they planning now?
Here’s hoping the George Mason “University”, who ever they are decide to crank the CAGW machine on health issues!
The reality is that warm=good and cold=bad. Just check below to see how winter kills:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/06/winter-kills-excess-deaths-in-the-winter-months/
Donna Laframboise says:
July 19, 2010 at 8:53 am
“[…]In 2006, while on a walk in the mountains…Ed had an epiphany that forever changed his life. He realized that climate change is the ultimate threat to the public’s health and wellbeing…Ed’s research interest is focused on the question: How can we use communication and marketing to influence the behavior of populations for the benefit of society?”
I would take people like that seriously:
http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2006/04/15/let-my-people-go-posted-by-dave-in-texas/
I don’t know anybody who doesn’t believe climate change is happening; rather they, and I, believe the scientifically-proven (ie real science) fact that it’s been happening for 4 billion years.
Definitely you need a Climate change!, otherwise…..
This is wrong on so many levels. Just when I thought my climate crapometer couldn’t possibly be driven higher, this story comes out, about how framing a lie in terms of lies about public health makes it more sellable. As the above comments ably point out, public health has generally improved with rising average temperatures, and worsened in colder periods.
I suppose the next study will show that children become more concerned about melting glaciers if the meltwater is measured not in liters or cubic kilometers, but by the number of kittens that could be drowned in it. Global heat flux energy could be described in terms of the number of puppies that could be incinerated. Then they could be lectured in school to think of drowning kittens and burning puppies every time Mom or Dad starts the car.
So, according to these guys, Summer is less healthy than Winter. Good luck selling that nonsense.
MrsB says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:16 am
The BBC are running an article about shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas, complete with ‘before and after’ pictures. Any comments?
Too many variables to make a meaningful comparison. For starters you can’t usefully compare a monochrome and a colour photograph. Even if taken with similar cameras under similar lighting. Ice need not always appear as white and a photograph from that distance dosn’t tell you very well how much of it there is. That’s before even considering the likes of avalaunchs or that levels of precepitation can vary.
Two photographs taken decades apart isn’t much to draw any sort of hypotheis from.
The United Nations has warned that extreme winter weather has killed more than one million livestock animals in Mongolia and is likely to harm the country’s food supply and worsen poverty.
Volunteer workers in Mongolia have been telling the BBC News website their experiences of temperatures falling to around -35C (-31F).
According to reported national data, more than 1.7 million animals have died due to the zud this winter
Then people starve to death in the winter.
“Framing climate change as a public health problem”
“people who read the essay reacted positively to the information”
I would have expected people to react negatively to bad news.
Does redefining something make something real? How exactly does that happen, unless you are pedaling propaganda in the first place.
This is the IPCC version for health professional to pass down to their dumbed-down-fluoridated-patients.
You can frame climate change in any way you want to scare people dumb enough to know better:
Climate change COULD take away your pension plan.
Climate change COULD take all your money from your bank account.
Climate change COULD destroy your family.
Climate change COULD make your teeth rot faster (like the ice!!!).
Climate change COULD make the air in your tires hotter and risk having a blow out while driving on the highway.
Climate change COULD make your freezer work harder and cost you more in electricity.
Climate change COULD have snow fall in your neighbor’s lot while in yours it could be a scorching 40 Celsius.
Climate change COULD make politicians smarter… well I don’t think climate change could do that… one could wish though.
Etc…
Great – re-package 1 lie (AGW) into another lie (AGW causes health problems – evidence please?) so that you can scare the population into your social engineering scheme (govt energy control & left wing politics in general). Yep, that really makes me believe you have some solid science behind all of this. NOT. (sarc off)
Give it up folks. These idiots are teaching our children. When I was in college, they taught proven science not personal opinion. With the current crop of elitists pushing the progressive politics, global warming, multiculture and PC ,there is little hope for the future.
Andrew30 says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:22 am
‘Unless the warmists drop their lies and tell the farmers to start moving into shorter season crops we will see global urban starvation on a level never seen before.’
I never used to follow the ‘New World Order de-population’ stories before, but you’ve got to admit that as a strategy, it’s brilliant – get the world geared up for massive warming (seed/crop selection, growth areas, irrigation, supply chains, etc).
Then when big-time cooling hits, most will be screwed.
Still not buying into the conspiracy theories. But as the current vernacular goes, just sayin’…
The headline asks the wrong question.
“When Climate Change Becomes a Health Issue, Are People More Likely To Listen?”
Because people have been listening but rejecting the AGW movement it should read,
“When Climate Change is Framed as a Health Issue, Are People More Likely To Be Fooled?
This is so typical of the left wing. They always assume people who don’t buy their garbage haven’t heard their message loud enough or clear enough or in the right frame.
With AGW they can put it any way they want.
A billion climate refugees, wars are likely, health is at risk, drinking water will vanish, seas will rise, snow will disappear, mass extinction will occur, mass starvation etc.
As a regular monitor of RC and CP I’ve witnessed all of their lunacy mascarading as informative and educational advocacy.
It all comes back to the fatally flawed climate models and their fantasy that all they need do is pile up more asinine claims to make their case.
That reminds me of , and I speak from personal experience back then when I moved to English Canada, when you tell people you don’t speak the same language and don’t quite understand all they are saying, they tend to repeat the exact same phrase, words, but much louder… as if saying it louder would make the other person understand better.
Truth does not need subsidies, government and/or taxing. Only manipulation and falseness are requiring governmental action through subsidies and taxing.
Is not it like that, Mr. Obama ?
@frank K. – Weather Channel, Smether Channel. One of their partners is the Tata Institute of Social Sciences! Aside from the social “sciences” nature of the article, follow the money; start with Tata Chemicals.
Wasn’t there a peer reviewed paper that purported to show that when global warming reaches a certain level, humans will be unable to loose metabolic heat fast enough, and literally cook from the inside? Or am I imagining it?
Any Quebeckers will recall the framing of the “independence” oriented question for “sovereignty-association” in a referendum.
The independence question was refused so they made the association question so ambiguous that no one knew what yes or no really meant anymore. They had polling firms try different phraseologies to see if one version fared better than the other.
At some point, a yes answer can be achieved if you frame the question in such a way that a yes response sounds better than a no. (No matter what the subject.)
The PR firms must me making a bundle on this one.
bob paglee said:
“If I copied the address correctly, a pdf version of Dr. Miskolczi’s interesting paper that debunks IPPC’s pet theory of water-vapor’s positive feedback as described in my previous post can be found …”
Second reference to the IPPC. Pachauri would deny any connection to that place.
Can the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) be seen as anything other than as a Goebbelian graduate school of propaganda?
As for the actual “framing” study itself (found at biomedcentral.com), it illustrates that touting something as being sweet and pleasant (and healthy!) will always prevail over shilling that same thing as repellent and obnoxious. As in:
“Climate change laws will make the air smell as sweet perfume and will stuff your belly with healthy green salads.”
Versus….
“Climate change laws will make the meats rot in the sweltering summers and leave you shivering and cold in the winter.”
And the technique even predates Goebbels. Here’s some info from Wikipedia on the great PR manipulator Edward Bernays, who didn’t need to “frame” his ideas with “healthy and happy” in specious academic papers:
# Bernays worked with Procter & Gamble for Ivory soap. The campaign successfully convinced people that Ivory soap was medically superior to other soaps.
# Bernays helped the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) and other special interest groups to convince the American public that water fluoridation was safe and beneficial to human health. This was achieved by using the American Dental Association in a highly successful media campaign.
# In the 1930s, his Dixie Cup campaign was designed to convince consumers that only disposable cups were sanitary.
# Bernays used his uncle Sigmund Freud’s ideas to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast.
One dozen people. He, he he , haaaa haaa, splutter pant. OMG thats rich. OH! in each of six districts, oh well thats eer different, he, he he, haaaa haaa, spltter pant.
Hah! I laugh at their weak and futile attempts to re-brand CAGW! But when this tactic fails, what next? Will they drop polar bears from the sky? Portray desperate animals committing suicide? Will they (gasp!) throw dozens of airliners at New York City?
Hahahaha! I’m kidding, of course. Nobody could be that stu–
Oh, wait…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mxDPhVc9iM
Climate Change as Opium of the People.
At least it explains why the eco-nutters are in bed with the Marxists.
Hey, I have ideas for other institutes, such as the Institute for Astrology Communication, the Institute for Dowsing Communication, The Institute for Snake Oil Communication. Each with their own important brief to inform the public (objectively, of course). And, who knows, maybe I can scoop a few bob in subsidies.
“… even some who don’t generally believe climate change is happening”
Man I get sick of seeing this type of misrepresentation of the skeptic.
Steve Oregon said July 19, 2010 at 11:29 am:
“With AGW they can put it any way they want. A billion climate refugees, wars are likely, health is at risk, drinking water will vanish, seas will rise, snow will disappear, mass extinction will occur, mass starvation etc.”
Good points Steve, and I think the alarmists are seeing that their creepy and dire (unfulfilled) predictions are less and less effective. So what this George Mason U. study is touting is “AGW alarmism with a Happy Face.” As Bing Crosby crooned, “You’ve got to accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. Latch on to the affirmative. Don’t mess with Mister In-Between.”
Hence your list above becomes “With happy AGW laws, there will be billions of climate beneficiaries, wars will be less likely, health will increase, drinking water be abundant, seas will recede, snow will be beautiful, mass happiness and prosperity will prevail, etc. But we all must pitch in, and those holding us back from the beautiful low-carbon Shangri La must of course be nullified.”
Global Warming’s Six Americas: “the Alarmed (18% of the adult population), the Concerned (33%), the Cautious (19%), the Disengaged (12%), the Doubtful (11%), and the Dismissive (7%)” should be the Bamboozled, the Snookered, the Flummoxed, the Frazzled, the Skeptical, and the Realistic. Their numbers are of course highly inflated on the Alarmed/Bamboozled side, since this is all about “rallying the troops”. It must really suck to be them about now, and they need all the encouragement they can get.
@ Gary Hladik says:
July 19, 2010 at 12:26 pm
REPLY: Man, that is some sick [snip]! Do these people have NO shame??
May their funding streams continue to wither.
Well of course it’s a health issue, just imagine all the co2 eating away at the thermosphere, and all those more death rays from the sun getting through wrecking cellular havoc causing cancer.
DNA modification would work better, as in the “Brave New World”, the manufacture of a new docile, working class, as the “gammas’, would fulfill the most fantastic dreams of the self designated “Alpha” superiors, like, I am sure he considers himself, Al Baby bedwetter, a.k.a. “El Gordo”.
OT
NATURE NEWS – Seismology: The secret chatter of giant faults
The Earth – Jupiter synodic period (399 days = 1.093 years ~ 13 months)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sep19.htm
For the past few weeks, seismologists at the University of Washington in Seattle have been on high alert. Any day now, they expect a flurry of microtremors deep under the nearby Olympic Peninsula, just as occurs roughly every 12–14 months. And when that wave of vibrations comes along, the researchers will be ready to catch it.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100714/full/466312a.html
However all this insanity can be stopped, a la American way. ….
Buy more pop-corn!….Interesting times indeed.
MrsB says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:16 am
The BBC are running an article about shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas, complete with ‘before and after’ pictures. Any comments?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have shrunk, we’re not in the middle of an ice age last time I checked, and to expect things to remain exactly in stasis is simply unrealistic
Vuk etc. says:
July 19, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Would the moon’s position on that date modulate such “collective gathering”?
Would it be felt more strongly on those places where it happens a Sun-Moon opposition or conjunction relative to earth?. If so, where are these places located?
“Re-defining climate change in public health terms should help people make connection to already familiar problems such as asthma, allergies and infectious diseases, ”
Of course, since C20th warming only amounted to at most 0.7C folks with heat related health problems could always move a couple of hundred miles north instead of being taxed to the hilt for a non-problem.
Well, the following paper says that these forces get multiplied:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29238677/Earthquake-3
They changed the name from Global Warming to Climate Change then go on to say that people don’t understand what the problem is!
Though it’s bad I just pray for an extended cooling period (30 years or so) and watch these people squirm.
So if you tell people that by robbing their neighbour’s house, their increased wealth will yield health benefits, will that make them feel that robbing is a good thing??!!
This is a sign of desperation.
The first threat (you will all die!) didn’t work. So now they use a different threat (“You will all suffer from unspeakable illnesses!”).
Time to fire the marketing team I think.
The catholic church tried that a long time ago by scaring people and children to follow the Church and the way of God/Jesus or else they would suffer eternal damnation in Hell. Well, look where the Catholic Church is today… people are waking up to the Lies and Deceptions of organized religions.
Which is the state of the USA where there are more GWRs?
Ray says:
July 19, 2010 at 1:52 pm
In my country, a few days ago, a catholic bishop said “they are to defend the environment and not only that, if you ask me, I will tell you that my nation is the World, and we take care of our nation”.
You must remember that, past December, when Copenhagen agreement was dying, the pope himself, 24 hours before, came out to declare that “all good Christians should have to back the Copenhagen agreement”, though a few days later he added he did not support any green church.
This article clearly shows that most people, whether they are concerned about AGW or not, still have a fear of the `weather`, that`s conclusive.
I see the Earth a bit like the human body, it can loose excess heat quite well, but if it`s too cold, it will suffer. Nasty things like plague can set in, that killed around 30% in Europe, and much higher with indigenous peoples.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28353083/
http://presqueisle.mainememory.net/page/1061/display.html
http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec19/holocene.htm
Marxist ideology and socialist utopian beliefs are like religious faith. Rarely does a person change his religion on the basis of rational thinking. Conversion requires some sort of emotional trauma, humiliation, or near death experience.
So unfortunately for a site like WUWT, even the soundest arguments and physical evidence against AGW are unlikely to change many minds among today’s ruling elite and media. Indeed, the socialists are like fundamentalists. An important part of the appeal of their ideology lies in a “religious” sense of self-righteousness.
Ulric Lyons says:
July 19, 2010 at 2:11 pm
THEY will enjoy, whether heat or cold, only we the nasty and despicable subhumans will perish making them feel joyful….this is what Al Baby thinks in his wet full daydreaming, however we must assure it won’t happen that easy, because if easy then no fun.
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
July 19, 2010 at 10:59 am
‘Then they could be lectured in school to think of drowning kittens and burning puppies every time Mom or Dad starts the car.’
That’s soooo last century! The Department of Energy and Climate Change in the UK have already had a lengthy television campaign frightening kiddies with cartoons of drowning puppies.
I’m warming to the idea of incinerated kittens though!
This sounds all too wonderful. Reminds me of the hopey changy thing I voted for. And that turned out hopey changy crappy! Makes me think these global warming, changing, snow is warming and hot is warming, rain is warming and drought is warming folks consider people like me to be very, very stupid, and unable to learn from their own mistakes.
For Anthony,
Three retirees, each with hearing loss, were playing golf one fine March day. One remarked to the other…
“Windy, isn’t it!”
“No” the second man replied, “its Thursday!”
And the third man chimed in…
“So am I, let’s have a beer!”
I’m not very impressed by the survey or Maibach, et al’s, analysis of the responses. The 18-sentence, 1-page, statement on climate change elicits expected responses. What would the expected response be to the statement “O1 – Most people agree with the sentiment that “good health is a great blessing.”? Yes, near-unanimity
I scaled the data in Maibach’s Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 and calculated the average disagreement for the entire dataset to be 3.5 and the range was from -0.9 to 10.
In addition to O1 (Da = -0.9), the responses to B2 and C1 aren’t surprising:
B2 – Cleaner energy sources and more efficient use of energy will lead to healthier air for children and adults to breathe. (Da =0.1)
C1 – Peoples’ health is dependent on the health of the environment in which we live (Da = 1.5)
at the other extreme:
T3 – Indirectly, global warming harms the quality of our water, air and food, and our ecosystems, all of which can lead to increasing rates of disease and death (Da = 10.2)
Overall averages”
O – sentences: Da =3.5
T – sentences: Da = 4.6
B – sentences: Da = 2.2
C – sentences: Da = 2.3
IMO, focusing on potential benefits doesn’t offset the disagreements on the “threats” of the climate change debate.
“Framing climate change as a public health problem”
It sounds like the perfect marriage.
Both fields are full of liars, crooks, and scientists that over estimate what they know. Both fields want government funding. Both fields want to run our lives and both fields want more control over us.
No field of science has had more time, money, and research than medical.
The global warming scientists could learn some new tricks.
To be fair they are correct, this has always been about pollution not global warming or climate change.
So, let’s dump the carbon taxation scheme and require the EPA to do their job with industry.
We should also demand municipal projects like switching all buses over to natural gas, municipal owned power systems for public transportation like subway systems, methane capture from all public landfills, hydrogen powered trains, fuel cell electricity in all waste water treatment plants, and efficient government builds. Things that will actually reduce taxes over time is a great place to start.
@Alan says:
July 19, 2010 at 2:21 pm
“So unfortunately for a site like WUWT, even the soundest arguments and physical evidence against AGW are unlikely to change many minds among today’s ruling elite and media.”
To be able to demonstrate the cause of natural variation at all time scales over the last 2,000yrs could give one a measure of how much of the modern warming was man made (or not). Surely that would put a different slant on the debate? and with the added bonus of a deterministic forecast of future seasons, there must be more money in that, than extorting it off us for something we have not done.
While we’re at it, we should also replace every politician with an Engineer or Scientist who actually knows what they are talking about.
The problem isn’t Science — we already have the technology.
James Sexton says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:04 am
Sigh, malaria wasn’t enough. What the……?, a study on how to best propagandize CAGW? I know logic and critical thinking are no longer taught in our structures of “higher” learning, but apparently ethics is no longer taught, either…..
_______________________________________________________________
The lack of critical thinking and ethics in modern education is intentional. You can thank John Dewey, Father of progressive education.
There is no God and no soul. Hence there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, the immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or permanent moral absolutes.
By the middle of the twentieth century this philosophy had taken a firm grip on education. “William F. Buckley, Jr. commented that:
The teachings of John Dewey and his predecessors have borne fruit. And there is surely not a department at Yale that is uncontaminated with the absolute that there are no absolutes, on intrinsic rights, no ultimate truths.”
Dumbing Down America
“Dewey’s philosophy had evolved from Hegelian idealism to socialist materialism, and the purpose of the school was to show how education could be changed to produce little socialists and collectivists instead of little capitalists and individualists. It was expected that these little socialists, when they became voting adults, would dutifully change the American economic system into a socialist one.
In order to do so he analyzed the traditional curriculum that sustained the capitalist, individualistic system and found what he believed was the sustaining linchpin — that is, the key element that held the entire system together: high literacy. To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment and intellectual authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently. It gave individuals the means to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves. This was detrimental to the “social spirit” needed to bring about a collectivist society….”
Our children are being prepared by the government education system to take their place in the new society as under educated serfs.
I am glad I have become immune for any hoax, no matter how it’s presented.
I am also glad to know I am not the only one.
Watts up with that?
Science doesn’t employ the sociology department to “reframe” the science. That is what politicians do and it is more properly called propaganda when it is done to persuade or bias the people to accept a particular political agenda.
They’re on a loser if they try health scares – it is the one area that has been thoroughly debunked by infectious diseases experts like Paul Reiter. The health experts have the most rigorous cause-and-effect criteria and experience of all, and the alarmists will not last a minute at that level of scrutiny.
Some of your taxes have been wasted on a big project called the Isothurm project, where the authors included this classic: “Estimates of the temperature threshold below which cold-related mortality began to increase ranged from 15°C to 29°C; the threshold for heat-related deaths ranged from 16°C to 31°C.”
but of course “Additional research is needed….”
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/37/5/1121
PJP says:
July 19, 2010 at 1:42 pm
“This is a sign of desperation.
The first threat (you will all die!) didn’t work. So now they use a different threat (“You will all suffer from unspeakable illnesses!”).
Time to fire the marketing team I think.”
Agreed, because the next threat will be, “You will all be horribly inconvenienced,” and that won’t fly either.
Andrew30 says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:22 am
Climate Change IS a health issue.
We expect to have about +/- 30 days of global food surplus just before the start of the Northern Hemisphere harvest this year (2010).
The coming global cooling will have a marked affect on that value (hint: It will not make the number bigger).
Unless the warmists drop their lies and tell the farmers to start moving into shorter season crops we will see global urban starvation on a level never seen before…
It is a health issue, just not the ones they are lying about.
Millions and millions may die from starvation in the June-August of 2011 or 2012 as a direct result of these lies.
____________________________________________
And you forgot to mention that the lack of “global food surplus” is intentional, at least here in the USA. The 2008 short fall in grain caused by the US biofuel laws led to record breaking profits for Cargill and Monsanto and food riots around the world.
Food shortfalls predicted: 2008
““In summary, we have record low grain inventories globally as we move into a new crop year. We have demand growing strongly. Which means that going forward even small crop failures are going to drive grain prices to record levels. As an investor, we continue to find these long term trends…very attractive.”
Grain storage was abandoned thanks to the “Freedom to Farm Bill” of 1996 written by Dan Amstrutz, VP of Cargill the grain traders. He also wrote the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture. Bill Clinton finally admitted the ‘free trade’ policy has forced millions of people in third world countries into poverty and starvation.
The Grain traders on the other hand are gleeful. They even started an award named after Dan Amstutz The Amstutz Award is given by the North American Export Grain Association in honor of Dan Amstutz and in recognition of his outstanding and extraordinary service to the export grain and oilseed trade
The NAEGA in a Joint Letter with NGFA to President Bush, Argued Against a Global Reserve Grain Stockpile Here is an excerpt: ““Recently there have been increased calls for the development of a U.S. or international grain reserve to provide priority access to food supplies for Humanitarian needs. The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) strongly advise against this concept..Stock reserves have a documented depressing effect on prices… and resulted in less aggressive market bidding for the grains.”
An article at countercurrents.org comments bluntly: “Major ecological disasters, such as the recent drought in Australia, which hit food production and drive up basic commodity prices, are good news for the corporate investor…..the biofuel sector is currently regarded as a potential source of huge returns for investors. ..” http://www.warmwell.com/aboutfmd08.html
The idiotic biofuel boondoggle was bad enough but then there is the US House Concurrent Resolution 25
“The official title of the resolution [H. Con. Res. 25] as introduced is: “Expressing the sense of Congress that it is the goal of the United States that, not later than January 1, 2025, the agricultural, forestry, and working land of the United States should provide from renewable resources not less than 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States and continue to produce safe, abundant, and affordable food, feed, and fiber.” (Without producing CO2???)
What is the result of all this “attention” to our food supply?
The only thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make 1⁄2 of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.”…“This lack of emergency preparedness is the fault of the 1996 farm bill which eliminated the government’s grain reserves as well as the Farmer Owned Reserve (FOR),” explained Matlack. “We had hoped to reinstate the FOR and a Strategic Energy Grain Reserve in the new farm bill, but the politics of food defeated our efforts.” June 6, 2008 Tri State Observer, Milford, PA http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/health/food/news.php?q=1212803067
The UN/WTO has come up with model regulations called the Guide to Good Farming Practices that the Food cartel wants implemented around the world. So what is the “harmonization of laws” and “free trade” doing to farmers around the world. Mexico lost 75% of her farmers, Portugal lost 60%, the EU plans to oust a million Polish farmers of their land and India has farmers committing suicide every 8 minutes.
The results are seen clearly in the UK. ” North Farm is the last working dairy farm left for miles. Mr Lawton said: “… all my neighbours have given up. It’s become incredibly bureaucratic and it’s completely over-powered by bureaucrats – there must be two civil servants in Defra (Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs) for every farmer in the countryside.” . …The sheer amount of paperwork and restrictions on what farmers can do is a problem – it takes up around 60 per cent of Mr Lawton’s time. “It’s difficult particularly for us family farms who don’t have a huge staff for administration,” he said” http://www.thisisswindon.co.uk/display.var.2166378.0.tough_times_for_the_farmers.php
“Barton Briggs, one of Wall Street’s most legendary investment strategists, is advising the rich and powerful to buy up farms and stock them with “seed, fertiliser, canned food. wine, medicine. clothes etc.” (and the “etc” would seem to mean guns to keep away the rest of us) http://warmwell.blogspot.com/2008/02/rich-will-always-be-with-us-and-they.html
“….big investors are “hurriedly moving their wealth out of stocks and shares and into farmland….” The Times article suggests that, “Across the world, hedge fund managers, property developers and other investors” are all ready to buy up British farmland.” http://www.deepjournal.com/p/7/a/en/1237.html
Yeah, I think you just might have hit upon a future crisis in the making
Whatever it takes to get cap-and-trade passed so Goldman Sachs can suck off some of the profits from the CCX…
Woe to George Mason University. This little school has a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners. As far as I know all of them were in economics and none of them were particularly fond of a religion that decrees the end of the industrialized world. But you could look it up. To help you pass the time while you’re waiting for Google to decide what to tell you, read the columns of Professor Walter Williams, the man who made the GM economics department a reality.
Is there nothing AGW can do?
Lately we’ve been hearing that temperatures have been rising since 1750, before there was a USA or CO2 emitting devices, and of course the LIA disappeared like the medieval warm period. Anyway, if AGW/CO2 ‘pollution” is so bad for people how come life expectancy is 30 years more now than 1750 when there was nothing but fresh air everywhere?
“people who read the essay reacted positively to the information”
Presumably they weren’t reacting “positively” to the message that they would die young due to warmer weather. Presumably the study considers “positive” to mean “fears global warming more”. Regardless of whether there is any truth in the matter.
Of course we saw the same thing happen with the MMR vaccine in the UK a while back.
This could work quite well for them. Take the most nebulous argument regarding not clearly specified health fears, direct it at the possibility that it might harm children and you will end up with the most powerful propaganda tool for spreading your message, regardless of there being any truth in the tale you are telling. Ideally you want to give the idea that the children will die slowly and in terrible pain. Goebbels used the same tool to push the German’s to fight to the very end in WWII by suggesting that the torture that would be inflicted by the Allies on German children would be far worse than sudden death during an air-raid.
If you believe in CO2 you will go to Heaven.
If you believe in H2O you will go to Hell.
Hmmm, I think I will go for C2H5OH . It will bring me to Valhalla.
So now we have Universities researching not how to discover the truth but how best to spread falsehoods! Spin doctors have now become spin professors!
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The flip side to the “Publish or Perish” coin is “Publish and Perish”. The George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication (4C), not to mention the President and Dean’s of GMU, are apparently very unaware of the latter. I’ll bet the authors are tenured too, and totally unaccountable to anyone for this garbage.
PS: ‘BMC Public Health’ would seem to have a quality control problem as well.
Enneagram says:
July 19, 2010 at 2:01 pm
“[…]You must remember that, past December, when Copenhagen agreement was dying, the pope himself, 24 hours before, came out to declare that “all good Christians should have to back the Copenhagen agreement”, though a few days later he added he did not support any green church.”
Don’t forget the pope is a German. For the last 30 years, there was never any questioning of the AGW theory in Germany, nor do we have ANY political party that is skeptical.
@ geronimo says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:10 am
“The story line to AGW is unbelievable …Who in their right mind could believe this guff?”
People who don’t think for themselves and who don’t question their world, usually people who have an external locus of control and who are used to accepting authority uncritically. And that’s a pretty large majority of the human race, sadly. The psychopaths who we permit to run our world have relied on this for thousands of years and it’s been a very successful power strategy.
alan says:
July 19, 2010 at 2:21 pm
And that’s because of the “feelings” involved. Many good hearted people fall prey of these ideas…until is too late and begin realizing facts after 50 years, like in Cuba.
@ JimB says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:16 am
“Is it just me?…or is this really an article about how people REACT to an article?
Doesn’t say anything about the validity of the issue all, just how people react to an article ABOUT the issue?”
No, it has nothing to do with climate science, just how to con (sorry, persuade) people of the righteousness of your project. If you read Ed Maibach’s academic qualifications, you’ll see he has no background in science at all:
BA (’80), Social Psychology, University of California, San Diego
MPH (’83), Health Promotion, San Diego State University
PhD (’90), Communication Research, Stanford University
Dear IPCC;
Please dont be afraid of Climate Change.
It is the sum of all climate changes and tectonic changes/vulcanic activity that has given us the bio diversity we have today. No climate change, no diversity.
So, Dear IPCC;
Embrace climate change as a friend and try to live with it.
If you cannot accept climate change, and try to live with it, you will be
….. Extinct.
Climate change as a public health issue – when repeated crop failures over an extended period of time, species extinction, changes in migration patterns, etc., lead to starvation and malnutrition – yes
When people catch colds – no