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.
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.
@ur momisugly 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.
@ur momisugly 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