Guest essay by James Sawhill
![CRED_book_cropped_sm[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/cred_book_cropped_sm1.jpg?resize=270%2C422)
Climate reporting seems formulaic but science authors paste in those climate alarms too. Turns out, it’s not a coincidence.
h/t to Robin for alerting us to CRED
Effective communication in matters of uncertainty, such as catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, has been elevated to high art, actually higher education. The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, (CRED at Columbia University) [1], through the imaginations of their behavioral psychologists, morphed uncertainty into “strategic use of uncertainty” [4]. With a single stroke, they claim a double win of formulating valuable strategies for delivering climate claims and placing the burden of falsifiable proof upon CAGW skeptics.
Through these techniques, dire futures can be projected as news certainties and otherwise limited implications of post-doc research can promote social consequences with just the requisite nod to “global warming”.
The Process:
In addition to CRED, NSF has funded three other centers under this program:
Arizona State University Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC)
Carnegie Mellon University Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making (CEDM) and
The University of Chicago Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy (RDCEP) [8]
“CRED was established under the National Science Foundation Program Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU). The DMUU program supports research that advances our fundamental understanding of decision making under uncertainty for climate change and its related long-term environmental risks”. [8]
A 2010, National Science Foundation, 5 year grant of US $6,498,750.00 [7] to CRED at Columbia University required them to:
Conduct fundamental research on decision making associated with climate and related environmental change. The proposed research program should advance basic understanding about decisions dealing with issues like risk perception, resilience and vulnerability, disaster reduction, trade-offs, equity, framing, tipping points, complexity, and probabilistic reasoning associated with risky phenomena. The research program should also advance understanding of decision making under uncertainty specifically associated with climate and related environmental change. Research conducted by the collaborative group must be interdisciplinary in character and draw on expertise from multiple disciplines.
Develop tools that people, organizations, and governments can use to better understand the risks associated with climate and related environmental change and the options they have to address related risks. Proposals must address how the basic research can help people and/or organizations make better-informed decisions to cope with the potential consequences of climate change and related environmental risks.
Provide education and research opportunities for U.S. students and faculty. The individuals and groups to be served through these educational efforts may be varied and may include undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, students from groups underrepresented in the social and behavioral sciences, K-12 teachers, and/or visiting scientists and engineers.
Develop and disseminate tangible products for researchers, decision makers, and other relevant stakeholders. As part of its dissemination plan, the collaborative group may include the development of user-friendly web sites and/or other mechanisms to facilitate the dissemination of climate change information and its effective use in decision making. [6]
The Deliverables:
In addition to producing several websites [1,5], a developing Student Sustainability Solutions Website [9], a number of undergraduate and graduate degree programs, CRED has released their how-to guides for effective climate communicating:
The Psychology of Climate Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public. 2009
http://guide.cred.columbia.edu/index.html online or download pdf [2]
Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication. 2014 update of original guide
http://www.connectingonclimate.org/ pdf link [3]
In these, climate matters are not settled and that is an opportunity to portray the worst as perils to be avoided for the greater good. They finger those holding up efforts to save humanity and Earth from the ravages of an out of control climate = skeptics, but urge caution in approaching them. [3]
With their “disseminations” in hand you will have their expensively granted ammo without having to matriculate in any of the Earth Institute’s Doctoral or Executive Education programs. Plus you will have a handy tool for identifying the elements of what the mainstream describes as “research-driven marketing”[5], rather than journalism, and a quick reference for bringing imagined climate impacts home to your targeted believers.
Here’s the layout for the original guide (graphics and other munchies are in the links and pdfs and the principles are hyperlinked below if you just can’t resist wandering off there):
FEATURING THE PRINCIPLES OF THE
PSYCHOLOGY OF CLIMATE COMMUNICATION
In order to envision examples of certain uncertainty communication, it is revealing to read the leader’s words. [clipped and reformatted, full letter is reference 4]
“Letter from the Director
Climate Change: Uncertainty and the Burden of Proof
David H. Krantz
I propose that uncertainty about climate change is an argument for vigorous departures from Business-As-Usual. The burden of proof should be shifted: anyone who favors BAU should be obliged to demonstrate that catastrophic climate change is extremely unlikely.
Skepticism about climate change has many variants:
a) At an extreme is conspiracy theory: reduction of greenhouse gas emission is a plot to undermine our way of life.
b) Less extreme is the view that environmentalists select and exaggerate evidence of anthropogenic warming in order to lobby for change.
Many skeptics believe that serious consequences will be averted without drastic action – perhaps through scientific breakthroughs, or perhaps simply through massive expenditures on adaptation by future generations.
Finally, there is skepticism derived from uncertainty. The approximations in climate models lead to uncertainty, model forecasts are intrinsically probabilistic, and climate-impact models are crude; thus, both the future extent and the consequences of global warming are quite uncertain.
Skepticism, however, pales when one properly imagines ecological catastrophes that might affect Homo sapiens. Wally Broecker likens the climate system to an angry beast. We may be uncertain how this complex system will react, if we prod it with a sharp stick; but uncertainty is an argument for avoiding such a prod, not for testing it. The possible consequences of the beast’s reaction to the prod are too severe to run this risk.
Yet it may already be too late. For hundreds of thousands of years, Earth’s atmospheric CO2 has cycled between about 190 and 290 parts per million (by volume), while global mean temperature has co-varied, roughly in phase with CO2, over a range of about 10°C. But in recent years, we have driven CO2 to about 390 ppm in Earth’s atmosphere; and Business As Usual may drive it to double this already highly provocative level.
To help imagine what an ecological catastrophe would be like, one can think about such catastrophes as they affect species other than Homo sapiens. Some populations expand and shrink by a factor of three or more. A well-studied example is the Canadian lynx, whose subpopulations expand unsustainably, in response to easy prey, but then contract drastically. The pain and the intra-specific aggression of starving lynx go unrecorded; but if human population were to shrink by a factor of 3, at least the beginning of that catastrophe would be recorded, and would make the record of human genocide over the past few millennia look like a genteel tea party.
Such a catastrophe is far from certain; but can we rule it out? The burden of proof for BAU would be to show that it is virtually impossible. I don’t think that a credible argument of that sort can be made. Thus, uncertainty makes the case for vigorous departure from BAU.
CRED’s primary funding comes through the National Science Foundation program called DMUU, or Decision Making Under [Climate] Uncertainty. This program itself represents a small, ambivalent departure from BAU. Since climate change was uncertain, the U.S. government invested a little in research, rather than making a commitment to programs that might have strong effects on people’s lives. And over the past 6 years, CRED researchers have begun to understand the complex ways in which uncertainty affects decision making.
One of our themes is strategic use of uncertainty: people use it as an argument for whatever action (or inaction) they already favor for other reasons. A person with strong prevention focus may use uncertainty to favor caution: don’t commit to this romance, or don’t release water from this reservoir. With a promotion focus, the same uncertainty would argue for eagerness: seize the opportunity, it might work out!” [4, my bold]
Please don’t poke the beast.
REFERENCES
1] Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Earth Institute, Columbia University –http://cred.columbia.edu/
“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. SES-0345840 and SES-0951516”.
2] The Psychology of Climate Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public. 2009
http://guide.cred.columbia.edu/index.html online or download pdf
3] Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication. 2014
http://www.connectingonclimate.org/ pdf link
or here
http://ecoamerica.org/research/ pdf link
“This guide was made possible with the generous support of National Science Foundation SES-0951516 (awarded to the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions), and funding from the MacArthur Foundation, and the Linden Trust for Conservation provided to ecoAmerica”.
4] http://cred.columbia.edu/about-cred/letter-from-the-director/
5] http://ecoamerica.org/research/
research-driven marketing
6] http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09544/nsf09544.htm
NSF Program Solicitation
7] http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0951516&HistoricalAwards=false
2010 five year NSF award to CRED at Columbia University
8] http://cred.columbia.edu/about-cred/partners/dmuu-centers/
Psychological War nearly always precedes tyranny.
The entire actual K-12 implementation just reeks of this psychological emphasis. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/locking-in-marxs-dream-psychophysiological-means-precisely-what-we-fear-as-the-real-goal-of-education/ CRED is building on what the Frameworks Institute is developing as our approved framework for interpreting the world in areas beyond Climate Change or racism and Inequality. There is even an approved Illegal immigration framework now out.
Interestingly for the Michael Mann/ Mark Steyn/NR lawsuit, Mann is listed as a consultant on the 2014 CRED report
hmmm. Yet many climate alarmists are my age. Back when New Math was new. My early memories are the advent of hot school lunches. My favorite was and still is canned spinach. Given that k-12 curriculum was devoid of psychological mumbo jumbo and most climate alarmists made it through school under older systems, you cannot blame what is happening now on k-12 education.
I will concede that some of this climate alarmism is finding its way into k-12 education, but make no mistake, k-12 education is not its mother.
When the actual implementation has to be themes or applying general principles and not facts. When the very definition of Fostering Communities of Learners (which is how principals are rated to be effective) is about training students to exchange perspectives but reach a consensus. When the new to-be federal legislation is provision after provision of language about mental well-being, positive behaviors, higher order thinking skills (applying concepts to new untaught situations where there is no single correct answer) K-12 intends to work hand in hand with the climate alarmism to prevent students from having any idea what is true or not.
They will have practiced with the desired beliefs until they are unconsciously believed. If the people with the power to control what is to happen in the classroom state this is their purpose, we need to take their word for it.
We lawyers just love those admissions against interest.
“consultant” – pro-Bono? doubt it.
Should read
Policy
Outlook
Overlording
Provided
Under
Uncertainty
POOPUU is better
I thought it was CRED
Communicating Regardless of Evidence or Data
Mere CRUD
Tyranny is always preceded by a Psychological War.
“..a quick reference for bringing IMAGINED climate impacts home to your targeted believers”
How to lie for a noble cause.
“has co-varied, roughly in phase with CO2, over a range of about 10°C.”
Yep, tricks. This trick was Al Gore’s grandest lie of omission in An Inconvenient Truth. The stage show with the 700,000 year graph.
To those who are new to watching this game, if that graph shows causation of anything, it is heat change leads CO2 density change, not the other way around. “The other way around” is how Gore portrayed it. This fellow here is using the squishy “roughly in phase”, implying CO2 causation of heat change.
So $7 million for propaganda.
A small price to pay for these refinements to the fine art of “Science Communication”.
I am hoping that the upcoming fiscal collapse, will result in all such idiocy being unfunded.
This fiscal instability being a direct result of parasitic overload, it seems likely an awful lot of parasites must need starved.
So uncertainty is NOT a cause for reconsidering one’s ideas nor for caution in pushing for solutions to a problem that may not exist. It is an impetus for even more strident insistence in running off a cliff. Got it.
Stick to carrots.
(Please send my $7,000,000 to Sir Maxwell C. Photon @ …)
take a check, Sir Maxwell?
I should have realized you folks would go for the money shot first. So here’s more taxpayer dollars at work for DMUU:
Other centers –
DMUU: Decision Center for a Desert City II: Urban Climate Adaptation
Arizona State University; Start Date:09/15/2010; Award Amount:$6,506,908.00
DMUU: Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy
University of Chicago; S Start Date:09/15/2010; Award Amount:$6,054,994.00
DMUU: Center on Climate Decision Making
Carnegie-Mellon University; Start Date:09/15/2010; Award Amount:$6,449,015.00
Lots more moola , Career Awards . . .
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?QueryText=decision%20making%20under%20uncertainty&ActiveAwards=true&#results
Gold coin would be nice, thanks.
Max, are those the chocolate filled kind?
A check drawn on the Arkansas River bank?
They never seem able to answer the simple question, that being,”why is the final solution to manmade global warming the creation & establishment of a global socialist style government with wide-sweeping powers & authority?”
And why was it the exact same solution, including the primary principle of controlling CO2, to global cooling back in the ’70s?
One explanation could be: the power they possess is never enough. They must continue to consolidate power until they have it all.
As one of the IPCC founders said, “It doesn’t matter if AGW is true or not, since it forces us to things that need to be done anyway.”
AtB
“…the final solution…”
You have your answer.
years ago…scientists used to say temperature may increase in a range from 0 to 5 degrees, and people think, well ,they don’t know…and now…temperature may increase of 5 degrees..wow..
CRED is pure CRUD. They are essentially making the same argument the idiot Greg Craven made some 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
The UK Guardian newspaper has gone into censor mode. They are anhilating posts on their article that disagree with the party line.
see:
‘England faces major rise in record hot years due to climate change – scientists’
Such innocuous posts as this from Maida Comment have dissapeared;
“Disagree and be deleted”
Apparently it violates “community standards.”
And interestingly the deletions are not noted. It seems the moderators are working over time to get rid of any dissent.
This is also gone:
“ieclark: I see some comments by climate change sceptics are being removed.
Which raises the interesting point, now that the Guardian is running a campaign related to fossil fuels and climate change, can it be relied on for objective reporting of the subject?”
Their “do something” appeal founders on the fact that anything “we” do in the developed world will be insignificant compared to BAU in the undeveloped world. If our neighbor won’t build a dyke, why should we?
This argument is fairly common among contrairians, so they must be aware of it. But they failed to list it among contrarian beliefs. Why? It’s unanswerable.
Ahhh, the gravy train keeps rolling on. Maybe we all aught to just take a short break from reality and milk it for a while. Why let all tha goodies go to the undeserving?
In my dummy world I live in I could sum up this article in one short phrase, “climate change communication is a hustle” As in lying to somebody to steal from them.
Charlie
Perfect description of the Enviroprofiteers (controlling shareholder: Big Wind).
We should have never let the Chicago mob take over the US Treasury.
Those suckers can really piss away some money.
I know that this effort by the AGW crowd sounds sinister, but it’s really just advertising 101, and it’s really not very well done. It is extremely hard to shift the burden of proof in persuasive communication. Here’s a simpler and more down to earth example: “You can lose 20 lbs in one month, eating the foods you love, and with no strenuous exercise.” Now think about the claimant saying that it’s up to someone else to prove they’re wrong. It’s not a perfect parallel, but it’s the same principle.
Further, if you look at the some of the recent research from the PEW Center you can see that people are becoming more and more skeptical of claims from government, institutions, and most “so called experts.” It used to be that many institutions were just trusted, but now the burden of proof has changed in the other direction, these guys are just hoping they can shift it back.
Finally, a little bit about the source. Many of these bozos from Columbia have attempted forays into the field of persuasive communication in the past. From the things I’ve seen they’re pretty sophomoric, and the notion of “the strategic use of uncertainty,” is just the latest permutation of their long held belief in the power of “fear-mongering.” Again, the general public is just becoming immune to that sort of thing, well, unless your last name is McKibben.
This may be a sophomoric rhetorical question, but since they published this material for all to see won’t people recognize the strategies and ignore the message? Kind of like pulling the curtain back to discover the man behind the Wizard of Oz?
Not unless you’re in the room to see the man behind the curtain.
The problem with Krantz, et al., is that they’re creating a strategy that requires someone to see and think about the counterargument in order to be believe the argument. That might work when you have a (1) a persuasive individual, (2) dealing in a small group situation, (3) and you’re sure your more correct than wrong. It’s a bad strategy for approaching the general public because the general public is becoming skeptical of anyone who claims to be an authority or expert and makes a grandiose claim like “the consequences of failure to act are too unbearable to even contemplate.”
The climate-obsessed are good with words, but bad with numbers (unless the numbers represent grant dollars).
Actually, they’re not that good with words either, at least in terms of understanding “incoming”. How many years have we been telling them that all they need do to convince us is to show us some evidence of manbearpig?
It is truly astounding how much mental energy and lop-sided progressivism can be turned into a ‘pseudo-discipline’. Now there’s a manual to validate falsehood. Instead of just lying as normal, it’s now the politically correct thing to do. It describes perfectly the speechwriting techniques employed by Obama on down. A sort of measured, jerky, pregnant-pause-filled delivery, giving every morsel of obfuscation time to engage in fertile imagination. The fertilizer is as bovine as can be.
LOL… Beware of the overuse of emotional appeals! Reads like a church missionary committee handout.
Shhhhh … be vewy vewy quiet …
Science is noisy. Don’t use science, use your imagination, or you’ll awaken The Climate Beast.
Haha — you nailed it — Eugene WR Gallun
Exactly! +10
Chomp chomp… nnyeeaaah… WHAT’S UP DOC?
…I’ll let him do it:
I’d like an ecological catastrophe. My preferred global warming catastrophe is a world wide plague of cute, colourful hummingbirds. Is this what they mean? [My imagination is properly working overtime.]
Why not just call it the Ministry Of Truth? — Eugene WR Gallun
I like Doris Day’s take on the future:
Waltz anyone?
When I was in high school I had a best friend whose mom looked just like Doris Day. It was uncanny. She was also a phenomenal singer, and would sing Doris Day songs to the delight of everyone. It was great fun. (Plus she adored me and loved to cook so I would routinely have dinner at my house, and then have dinner at their house.)
That’s nice, Max. If she’s alive… Mother’s Day is coming up… 😉
She was your second mom, I think.
My recent guest post at Climate Etc concerning the systemic emotional content of climate communication (and resultant bias in scientists and society), including a quote from CRED, is very relevant here.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/24/contradiction-on-emotional-bias-in-the-climate-domain/
Note that their concern about the overuse of emotional appeals is *not* because these might cause inappropriate bias, but because they may go too far and produce backlash or a feeling of hopelessness.
‘Managing emotional communication’ in terms of the CRED and various other Consensus climate communication guides and papers, is not about minimizing the potentially biasing effects of emotion, but about *maximizing* emotional impact while not triggering the ‘undesirable’ effects. Hence after decades of repeated communication of this kind, emotional bias can only result.
There is other advice, e.g. for avoiding or pushing up the ‘issue fatigue’ barrier, which will also break down natural defenses against emotional appeal.
Both believers and skeptics find it tempting to over-interpret short-term hot or cold swings in temperature as evidence for or against climate change. Such confirmation bias in action can lead people who believe that climate change equals warmer temperatures to pay greater attention to supportive data, interpreting a heat wave in the Great Lakes region, for example, as evidence that their mental model is correct. Skeptics of climate change might pay more attention to news that announces close-to-normal levels of polar sea ice, a momentary finding but one that fits their mental model and enables them to disregard the more scientifically relevant trend of dramatic loss of sea ice in the Arctic and “debunk” climate change.
The writer of the above paragraph from the CRUD document obviously has no interest in getting alarmists to tone down their rhetoric, only in getting skeptics to fall for the alarmism.
Besides, the Arctic has ‘dramatically’ gained multi-year ice and ice volume since 2012 (see PIOMAS) so the quote seems rather dated already.
I love the way the author assumes that the sea ice recovery will be temporary. Why not assume that the loss was temporary, especially since the loss was accompanied by several unique circumstances that haven’t been repeated since?
Great point, Mark W..
1. Assume an unlikely position.
2. Redefine the NULL Hypothesis to be the unlikely position.
3. Demand the opposition accept the new NULL Hypothesis as true or prove it wrong and supply a replacement Hypothesis.
4. Invoke the Precautionary Principle to attenuate the opposition before they have an opportunity to present a counter argument.
The cult of CAGW’s problem is not communication of their mantra, the problem is it is not possible to defend the cult of CAGW’s mantra with logic and facts. The lack of facts to support the cult of CAGW’s mantra/paradigm, is the reason why there has never been a serious debate Skeptics Vs Cult of CAGW (i.e. A written debate where facts, observations, analysis, costs, and other key issues cannot be ignored.
Communication will not change the fact that the entire scientific basis for the CAGW paradigm is incorrect. The planet has started to cool and atmospheric levels of CO2 have started to drop. Oh boy, let the banners fly, let the bells ring, global warming has been solved, we are going to have a front row seat to watch the end of the interglacial phase.
Ignoring the fact that the entire scientific basis of CAGW is incorrect, it is fact that the green scams do not work. The cult of CAGW propose mandatory spending by the developed countries of trillions and trillions of dollars on green scams and mandatory transfer of green funds to developing countries. In addition they want to set up a massive UN bureaucracy to skim off the green funds that will be sent to the corrupt developing countries to be spent on more green scams.
At what point will the average voter have their epiphany and realize that the cult of CAGW is madness, not a good idea?
Germany for example has spent $750 billion dollars on green scams. Their consumers pay triple the cost for electricity as compared to US consumers. Germany is currently constructing coal fired power plants to enable their remaining nuclear power plants to be shutdown. Germany has 100% green power under optimum conditions, however, there green power efficiency (taking into account the periods of time when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, and so on, reality vs nameplate rating, maximum ouput of the installed green scams) is 20%. Germany has hence reached the absolute engineering limitation of the green scams, if there is no magic wand that can solve the storage of electrical power problem, Germany cannot reduce CO2 emissions further with green scams. They have reduced CO2 emissions by less than 20%.
If atmospheric CO2 was a problem which it is not, the only solution that significantly reduces CO2 emissions is a massive conversion to nuclear power. French CO2 emission are for example roughly half of Germany’s as France generates electrical power primarily by nuclear power, however, the green lobby is trying to shutdown nuclear power plants in France also. The only thing the greens hate more that CO2 is nuclear power.
Waste no time!
We (all) want our money back.
A good start will be for everyone of us to WRITE TO YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE (member of parliament or senator) AND DEMAND THAT THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH BE INCLUDED IN THE PARIS TREATY 2015.
THANK YOU. (The following words are those kindly presented by Lord Christopher Monckton to The Heartland Institute last year).
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
A get-out clause is a freedom clause.
“At any time after three years from the date on which this Protocol has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this protocol by giving written notification to the Depositary”.
Kyoto Protocol, article 27.
– – – – – — – — – – – – — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
(The above paragraph must be included in the Paris Treaty 2015).
I did not expect fair treatment for skeptical views and the content therefore provides nothing unexpected: misrepresentation, avoidance of the main issues skeptics have with CAGW and so on. If they are trying to prepare people for ‘encounters with skeptics’ they are not doing a good job.
The problem for the targets of this ‘training’ is that if the subjects know little except the spoon-feeding they received from popular media, their arguments will be demolished in open debate. Things as simple as an 18 year period without any net warming of the atmosphere effectively contradict the claims for ‘enhanced’ anything. What will they say in answer to another 5 years of declining temps?
“4.Beware the Overuse of Emotional Appeals”
What are they talking about? There remains little once the emotional appears are removed. CAGW is founded on emotional appeals. What is left at 350.org if they remove emotion and stick to science?
One of the interesting things about the above proposals for ‘training people’ is how completely the course is riddled with the very techniques they claim to be teaching. The prof are trying to use the indoctrination techniques in order to get people to use those very techniques. It can only work if the subjects remain ignorant and never question too much and how they are being indoctrinated!
The bit about the CO2 rising and falling over a carefully chosen time interval with incorrect generalisations can only be believed if one is ignorant of the longer term perspective, and the 800 year lag in the change in CO2 concentration is not discovered. How can the trainers keep the students ignorant forever? What if they start independent study? Google has been unable to stop people finding out they are being had on a massive scale. What now?
Maybe the plan is to get a climate deal in place that is binding and irrevocable and then they won’t have to worry about what people find out.
“4.Beware the Overuse of Emotional Appeals”
There is indeed major systemic emotional appeal in most Consensus climate communication. But in recent years they have found out through various analyses and surveys that fear memes are producing a negative backlash. Hardly a surprise. Hence, using the same analyses as a guide, they are recommending much more use of ‘worry’ and ‘hope’ and more subtle emotional appeals. They are not seeking to reduce the emotive content, far from it. They are seeking to maximize it without producing backlash! The ‘beware’ is not because they shouldn’t be using emotional appeals in the first place, it is because the guide is warning that the wrong sort, or over-strong appeals, will produce the ‘wrong’ result. See my link to Climate Etc. above.
Couple that with “strategic use of uncertainty: people use it as an argument for whatever action (or inaction) they already favor for other reasons” =
Maybe we’ll get lucky and only drown the polar bears, but just so we sinful humans don’t make it worse, invest our glorious clean, green, free-energy WhirlAway Wind so we can stop producing CO2 pollution.
Thanks for the link above and the good work.
L1es work…. for awhile…..
and then….
that most wonderful of all things, a human being,
starts to think… .
“Truman Show” — youtube video
Take heart, all of you warriors for truth!
In the end, truth wins.
*************************************************
A Note to the Discouraged:
Yes, yes, The Hustlers — perfect description, Charlie — will come up with another sc@m to separate fools from their money… but, the AGW battle is WON… just a matter of time (that’s why WUWT is so important — the l1ars are still shrieking and firing their stupid scuds from the periphery… must remain vigilant … rats are opportunists…).
True, some l1es are diabolically pernicious, communism, for one, but, as long as there are people who will stand up in front of tanks for liberty (Tiananmen Square) …. who will cry out on television “He is right! It IS an ‘evil empire!'” (Moscow)…. communism has not won… it is a usurping, occupying force, just like the statists in Wash., D.C. are these days… . They have not won. America (liberty-loving, free marketers) IS!
********************************************************************
GO, WUWT SCIENCE GIANTS!
Thank you, An-thony!! (and mods and guest writers and commenters!!!!)
If your gonna lie, lie BIG. I just couldn’t read past the first few paragraph’s, this is proof positive of a concerted effort to herd the public consciousness and pocket book to agree to eco tyranny policies. I am both alarmed and sickened by this CRED.
Merely the fact that they use this broad, catch-all term, “climate change” that encompasses all weather, tells me a lot about their marketing approach, who would deny that climate changes, at all?
Goebbels would be proud of this effort.
That was my first thought too.
What a waste of money and time, all they had to do was to look at the well published ways of indoctrination of Hitler and his mob.
Oh the horror the burning of the I-Pads!
They imply that by changing behavior that we can have some sort of meaningful impact on climate. Even assuming the models they worship are right (which I don’t ), there is no way we could have a meaningful impact short of grinding civilization as we know it to a grinding halt. So BY THEIR LOGIC (not mine) that leaves 2 choices:
1) Try to change our ways, reduce climate change & subsequently have civilization grid to a halt with all the horrible consequences that would go with that or
2) Continue with business as usual, which may or may not lead to detrimental effects (but we will at least have the tools to deal with it if there are bad side effects).
The fact that they choose option 1 shows they don’t even understand their own argument or it’s implications. They also clearly don’t understand the science & what would be required to make a meaningful impact.
I can only conclude from this that this is a faith-driven position and not a position rooted in science & logic.
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but I believe that Georgia Tech was an early candidate for this insidious targeting.
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These people are whipping the air pump wildly to keep inflating the bubble. If only the bursting of the bubble would hurt only the pumpers instead of all of humanity, to the very last one of us.
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As often, on similar threads, I recommend ‘Childhood’s End’ by Arthur C. Clarke. It’s not perfectly analogous but close enough to be scary work.
Too bad Pope Francis never read it.
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Why recommend “Childhood’s End”? That was the first modern sci fi novel I remember reading, but I don’t see the link.
Read it again. These devils are kidnapping the children without even delivering the Utopia that the optimist Clarke envisioned. Quite the opposite.
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When push comes to shove, I can’t figure out how anyone who has taken the trouble to inform themselves believes that here on a “water world” that a trace of CO2 in the atmosphere controls the planetary temperature. Beats hell out of me how that craziness was sold to the public.
Cuz people is dumb.
Cuz people
isbe dumb. FTFYAnd if the book of lies methodology is not enough, they also do consulting for a fee.
Does the book instruct on never talking about climate model prediction errors? Or is it just understood to stay away from that topic?
Have at that logic from the Director’s Letter.
Just another crude attempt to push the Precautionary Fallacy. Pitiful.
Also affirms what Steve C (?not going to go back to check) said above about how inept these guys really are with words (Goebbels would have laughed). Informed persuaders are careful to not violate this well-known fact: A confused mind says, “No.”
LOL, the AGWer’s wagon is stuck in their own gobbledy gook.
Clowns.
So with we being only 3%, why go to so much trouble to persuade us? Why is it important for everyone to believe this stuff? With the kind of majority the doomsters have, aren’t they just going ahead and doing what they want. They have: nearly all the news media, actually all the universities, all the governmentsexcept for Canada’s, Australia’s, Japan’s and Czech Republic’s. Other’s like China and Russia don’t believe the hype except to draw advantage out of Western self immolation., All the NGOs, UN, scientific bodies, agencies, societies and journals are all onside. Why do they need 100% show of hands. If I were an advertising guru or communications goon, I would take their $7 million and write on a piece of paper, forget about it, you don’t need more than you have.
The real truth is the pause has caused the CONSENSUS to have huge doubts of their own, where before it was a climate debauchery every night without a serious sign of resistance. Now, a lot of them are horizontal on psychiatrists’s couches and soon the real devastation of a cooling trend will set in and we won’t have enough rehab space. Moreover, psychiatrists have been robbed of their chief go to therapy, the age old cure of getting the depressed to face up to their DeeNile – ironically it was their patients that did this.
They’ve changed the name of the Climate call to arms several times because of no warming and even now say that with climate weirding, what could be more weird and scary having dreaded pauses! Look,it was government that came up with this research project. They see the elixir business in decline and want to find pop up phrases to get them out of their torpor. I tell you, this is for themselves. The end is indeed nigh.
“… this is for themselves. The end is indeed nigh.” (Gary Pearse)
Indeed!
Sounds familiar…
Baghdad Bob (youtube)
#(:))
Have you noticed practically NOBODY out there has their knickers in a twist? CC is at the BOTTOM of citizens’ list of concerns. Which is what first turned me on to the fact that there wasn’t any “there” there, to coin a phrase. They’re going to give a party to which no one goes.
Looks like psycho-babble to me, but then isn’t that what AGW is.
So we should destroy industrial civilization just in case the alarmists are right? And be good sports when it turns out, “Sorry — false alarm”?
If I followed the ‘Precautionary Principle’ I wouldn’t get out of bed.
I watched Interstellar today. Thought it was ironic that the evil scientist was Dr. Mann. Lol.
I love the fact that they add interested public at the bottom of the comment, what interested public?
“Yet it may already be too late.”
The old ‘urgent call to action’ ploy. I have been hearing this for at least 20 years.
A useful compendium of the tools of the trade. Time honored and well honed by the practitioners of this art form
http://changingminds.org/techniques/propaganda/propaganda.htm
If alarmism was based on common sense, they wouldn’t need an instruction manual.
The tactics used by the CAGW brigade remind me a lot of the tactics used by those who have relentlessly push for the redefintion of marriage and related matters. (See ‘After the Ball’ by by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen.) They treat people who disagree in exactly the same way as the CAGW brigade treat climate realists.
‘Uncertainty’ isn’t an argument for ‘vigorous departures’ at least in metrology any more than burden of proof is invertible in science.
Sounds desperate. Or perhaps the guys at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University, haven’t realized the comedy they’re emitting.