Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Professor Mike Hulme is worried people are ignoring climate warnings, so he suggests promoting climate action with “co-benefits”, convincing people to take climate action for reasons other than climate change. But some advocates of reframing have taken things a step further than Professor Hulme suggests. In my opinion their actions verge on deliberate deception of the public.
Science can’t solve climate change — better politics can, former IPCC scientist says
Natasha Mitchell
It’s not every day you hear that the climate change debate needs to be “more political and less scientific” — but that is exactly what Mike Hulme is calling for.
The 2015 Paris agreement was declared “a victory for climate science“, but Professor Hulme — who used to work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — is not convinced that the Paris deal will work.
In fact, he said he thought climate change was in danger of becoming a “fetish” and that rallying cries to “save the planet by limiting global warming to 2 degrees” could distract us from the “political logjam” in front of us.
“We can actually only deal with climate through the human imagination.”
…
He said a focus on immediate “co-benefits” would give governments, businesses and individuals the incentives they needed to move away from fossil fuels or to create carbon sinks.
Think solar panels or wind farms for those without access to electricity; planting forests that protect catchments and provide shade from the searing heat; or replacing coal-fired power stations — not simply to cut carbon emissions, but to reduce deaths from air pollution.
This approach could be attractive to hundreds of millions of people across the planet, regardless of their views on global warming, Professor Hulme argued.
…
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-05-02/why-science-cant-solve-climate-change/9711364
Professor Hulme makes reframing climate action as environmental policy sound all nice and fluffy. I’m sure Professor Hulme’s intention is to be open about the climate aspects of reframed climate action.
But in the USA, government employed activists quietly boast about using reframing to secretly maintain rebadged climate expenditure under President Trump.
From February 2017;
… ‘Deliberate framing’
My colleagues and I did a survey of over 200 local governments in 11 states of the Great Plains region to learn about steps they’re taking to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to them. We found local officials in red states responsible for public health, soil conservation, parks and natural resources management, as well as county commissioners and mayors, are concerned about climate change, and many feel a responsibility to take action in the absence of national policy.
But because it is such a complex and polarizing topic, they often face public uncertainty or outrage toward the issue. So while these local officials have been addressing climate change in their communities over the past decade, many of these policy activities are specifically not framed that way. As one respondent to our survey said:
“It is my personal and professional opinion that the conservation community is on track with addressing the issue of climate change but is way off track in assigning a cause. The public understands the value of clean water and clean air. If the need to improve our water quality and air quality was emphasized, most would agree. Who is going to say dirty water and dirty air is not a problem? By making the argument ‘climate change and humans are the cause’ significant energy is wasted trying to prove this. It is also something the public has a hard time sinking their teeth into.”
…
In my opinion such secret reframing verges on deliberate deception of the public.
If local government money is spent on rebadged climate action, that same money cannot also be spent on say improving schools or financial assistance for poor people.
Even if some of the reframed actions are necessary environmental works, say tree planting to protect a water catchment from soil runoff pollution, the fact that some officials appear to be secretly prioritising climate expenditure more than they admit invites suspicion that their judgement is skewed, that the alleged environmental works they advocate are receiving more attention and financial support than they would have received, had such environmental works been subject to a more objective cost / benefit analysis.
I do not think climate “reframing” is OK. If reframers want climate action, they should propose such action openly and honestly to the people, and accept that for most people such climate action simply isn’t a priority. Sneaking around “reframing” climate action as necessary local environmental work in my opinion undermines democracy, undermines the quality of information presented to taxpayers, and undermines the right of taxpayers to fairly decide how their tax money should be spent.
They are lying about a big lie?
If there were any other good reasons, the hysterical alarmism wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.
+97
Perhaps you should see this as a weasel way to save the alarmist self-esteem AND doing something for the environment – the actual felt-image of envronmentalists. Clean the air amd water – both left and right onside!
Forget CO2. Reduce particulate emissions.
Yeah!
Maybe this is a stealthly slide to sanity.
The problem is the studies on PM didn’t say what they wanted, so they had to fudge that too. The problem is they want control and don’t care how badly they have to mangle the truth to get it.
May 2018 is the 50th anniversary of Paul Ehrlich’s profoundly wrong environmental flatulence tome know as “The Population Bomb”, published in 1968. He predicted that hundreds of millions of humans would die of starvation during the 1970’s, due to overpopulation of the planet. He assured the world that 65 million of those poor starving bastards would be US residents. Like the current prophesiers of AGW-induced Doom, he was catastrophically, beyond ‘dumb ass’, wrong.
While starvation was a non-issue in the US, nearly 8 million US children did die between 1970 and 1980, legally killed by abortion. From the Center for Disease Control’s on-line data, I calculate 7,977,621 abortions in that time frame.
‘Reframe’ that juxtaposition, socialist scientists!
How Ehrlich has the impertinence to lecture the World today after his laughably bad predictions I don’t know. Has he no shame at all?
@Graemecat
Ah yes, but you see, he sucessfully warned the world, and thereby saved it—no FAIL!
He’s a hero, just ask him, he’ll tell you. Now please volunteer to pay for his smoked rift valey flamingo dinner, it’s the least you can do.
If people do not buy into the whole CAGW thing, then they are not supporting measures because it is supposedly going to massively affect CO2 levels or whatever. I can think of plenty of reasons to support a city park that have nothing to do with supposed climate mitigation or whatever claims they are trying to make. The fact that a person wants a park does not mean that they believe in CAGW and just don’t know it! *eye roll*
Sounds like people are trying to muscle in and take credit, as well as claiming greater influence than they actually have. The stupid thing is that their own “math” condemns them. Even if you assume they are right, and WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE, the math shows that there will be no measurable effect from any actions taken. Period. So even if you buy the CAGW crap, just give up, stop trying to claim anything you are doing is accomplishing anything temperature-related, and join the sane people in trying to improve things where needed, and maintain things everywhere else.
+1
“Sounds like people are trying to muscle in and take credit, as well as claiming greater influence than they actually have. ” Exactly. If something is working properly, don’t make excuses for being off with your solution. Take credit for what you didn’t do instead.
From the pic, it appears that someone is gonna be over run with bamboo when those stalks take root. Horrible nuisance plant, almost as bad as kudzu.
Reframing? A sensible example would have been to point out that encouraging renewables would mean we weren’t importing fossil fuels, mostly in the form of oil, and in return sending bagfuls of money to nations and regimes who basically hate the western way of life, such as Saudi Arabia.
By the same criteria fracking would prevent the need for oil imports, but few countries other than America have grasped that nettle. A wasted reframing opportunity
tonyb
Fracking my friend is going to cause very long term negatives consequences for the American nation in terms of environmental damage to underground water systems and health-related diseases. Why else do you think the EU 28 countries have rejected it, despite their being oil and gas resources on their sovereign territories?
Because the EU 28 have signed up to the various climate protocols for the last 20 years and the various climate advisers, lobby groups and leaders are very green. The official view (true or not) is therefore that Fracking causes pollution and environmental damage and only substitutes one form of fossil fuel for another.
tonyb
I believe it is because the average EU citizen is very well aware of the downsides to fracking. There were numerous ground level protests – citizen-led initiatives – that put pressure on governments to reject fracking initiatives
Ivan, you are ignoring the effects of Russian propaganda on the anti-fracking movement. While Gazprom is not the origin, RT and other media outlets spread the discreditable claims of the greens on the health effects. The US EPA under Obama, not inclined to overlook anything that would favor the greens in general, could not find any credible health risks from fracking.
Ivankinsman, you show your ignorance with that comment. The typical shale formation is several thousand feet underground; else it would not have reached the catagenesis oil/gas window. That is the problem with the near surface/surface Green River kerogen shale. The vertical well portions are double cased for the first ~1000 feet precisely to protect any fresh groundwater aquifers. The fracking takes place only within the horizontal portion of the well inside the shale deep underground. Those hydraulically induced fractures are minute, propped open with sand, and extend radially usually not more than a few dozen feet.
According to GREENPEACE you are completely wrong – several cases have been recorded in several states of groundwater contamination: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/issues/fracking/
Citing Greenpeace is exactly parallel to citing Alex Jones or RT.
Nope. Well respected organisation known for its enviromental initiatives, except it seems on WUWT.
One of its own founders asserts it is wacky, Ivan.
Once anti-nuclear went nowhere, Greenpeace branched out into all forms of environmental extremism in the attempt to stay relevant and garner donations. Science is not their heavy suit.
As usual you choose to go after the messenger and ignore the message when the facts do not suit your narrative:
“Even worse, the oil and gas industry has no idea what to do with the massive amount of contaminated water it’s creating. Fracking fluids and waste have made their way into our drinking water and aquifers. Fracking has already been linked to drinking water contamination in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, Wyoming, New York, and West Virginia.
An EPA draft report released in 2015 found more than 150 instances of groundwater contamination due to shale drilling and fracking.”
Fracking does not threaten ground water. The fact that you have bought into this lie as well is not surprising.
The EU operates on politics, not science. The people of the EU have little to no say in how their union is run.
The chemicals used in fracking do penetrate into groundwater. To say they do not is an unfounded lie and you know it.
Prove it, Ivan. Anecdotal crap is just that.
There’s been a grand total of one case, and that was because the storage pond on the surface leaked.
I remember reading this article some time ago and thought I would share it with you: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2013/dec/14/fracking-ponder-texas-video
Couldn’t get audio, Ivan, but it appears to be the typical enviro-catastrophic meme. “Those trucks and oil wells will destroy our world.” “I get headaches and nose-bleeds every time I think of it.”
Straight from the horse’s mouth about the negatives of tracking (fracking advocates of course just talk up the positives such as independent energy source blah blah blah).
Had Luddites such as Ivan held sway throughout history, there wouldn’t been have much (history).
EPA – Fracking can contaminate groundwater
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/reversing-course-epa-says-fracking-can-contaminate-drinking-water.amp.html
You are aware that hydraulic fracking has been used since 1948, in more than a million cases, including quite a few in Europe, and nobody found the slightest problem until it was changed from chemical gel to slickwater and was combined with directional drilling and thereby suddenly killed off “Peak Oil”- Then it became a big problem. Not environmentally but to environmental organizations.
Ivan,
I think what you meant was:
fixed it for you.
This idea of reframing sounds like a very good idea to me. When people hear or read about climate change they sometimes feel rather powerless to do anything about it. This is instead focusing on concrete initiatives people can implement. A good example is Queen Elizabeth II who is promoting forest planting in all the Commonwealth countries to create a kind of linked canopy.
Yes, that’s a good initiative. Everyone likes trees.
tonyb
Define ‘climate change,’ as in “When people hear or read about climate change they sometimes feel rather powerless to do anything about it.”
AGW and its impact on the climate.
Starting when? The current temperature is still well below the temperature of the last 3 warm periods and cooler than 90% of the last 10K years.
Gamecock and MarkW,
There you guys go again! Confusing comrade ivan with facts…..
If the people don’t buy the first lie, try a second one.
We can only deal with ‘climate’ as opposed to average global temperatures and precipitation, through the imagination, because that’s the only place it actually exists.
Thanks Leo, just what I’ve said quite a few times.
How does temperature equate to climate. or rainfall. or windiness. or sunshine hours
A person, any person, all persons, record ‘climate by visiting a place and spending time there (needn’t be long) out-of-doors.
There are 7 billion (and counting) ‘climates’ on the world
My old haunt (North Cumbria) provided a lovely proof of that.
Just 3 or 4 miles up the road from my farm lay the English Civil Parish of Bewcastle.
It held 2 distinctions:
It was.is the largest by area of any civil parish within England
It had the lowest population of any civil parish.
Why.
Because it had a crap climate. west facing, effectively inland and sheltered from the Gulf Stream, clay soil, lots of marshy ground growing Juncus Effusus and permanently damp. grey and miserable.
As witnessed by Cumbrian damp weather exploding my blood-sugar levels when I’d been working outdoors on a New Years Day
Compounded by what is seen in the English Lake District 40 miles to the south of there.
The Lakes have THE most expensive hotels in all of England.
Political Correctness, one-up-man-ship, romantic notions whatever etc etc, everybody wants to go there but nobody wants to live there.
(Lake District = home to England’s rainiest weather station and Scotland’s wettest (Eskdalemuir) is barely 50 miles north of the (approximate) centre of the Lakes)
It is a minor puzzle – does all the rain make The Lakes or are The Lakes causing all the rain?
Equatorial Rainforest style as it were.
There was a very silly movie a few years ago (when I still had a working TV) with the title “When the OIl Runs Out”. It was a panic-stricken disaster movie about gas at the pump no longer available, people shooting each other over a place in line, etc. A huge mistake in guesstimating the volume of an oil discovery. I watched this colossally idiotic (Gore-type) movie and realized that the producers had never spent more than an hour outside their homes or offices, probably because BUGS!!!! or POLLEN!!! or whatever.
I guess they missed the self-sufficiency of the Amish and homesteaders who don’t rely on such things. It was laughable. It was a few years ahead of the Gorebull panic movie. Now I wonder if there was a connection I missed.
I thought it was priceless that the producers said that crude oil came from dinosaur carcasses somewhere in that movie.
Well, some day – and likely not in my lifetime – the oil probably will run out, but we’re clever enough to come up with other solutions, aren’t we? We’re already on that path now. And since trees do help reduce flooding and soil erosion to a certain extent, planting trees is always a good idea.
The real problem is this helter-skelter approach to things. “Reframing” is another way of saying “I’m stealing that idea and taking credit for it”.
The best thing to do is clean up after ourselves, especially after those “climate protest rallies” which seem to attract a lot of trash afterwards – piles of it. If we could just put that trash to good use, something like burning it to create plant food (CO2) and ashes for fertilizer (potassium, phosphates, etc.) which could be bagged and sold to local gardeners. Stuff like that.
I think I’d have a small modicum of respect for people who mean well, if they came up with some practical stuff. But they don’t.
The biggest stupidity is the belief that oil will run out suddenly.
One day we have it, the next day it’s gone. Completely.
The reality is that oil will run out slowly over many decades, gradually increasing in price so that we have time to reduce demand and introduce alternatives.
Just wow.
We are trapped in a Magical Thought Bubble.
A lot like a Medieval castle. Strong self fortified place from where it is (relatively) safe to launch projectiles.
Be they arrows, cannonballs or Ad-Homs.
(Oh Noe!!!! Is that where the Crusades went wrong – they didn’t throw sufficient insults at the Muslims)
OK
U iz = Tiny Baby
Diet is (should be) a well proportioned mix of animal protein and (animal) saturated fat with very little sugar (carbohydrate)
As should be provided by your birth-mother or a Wet Nurse if she will not or can not.
Do we take that as a hint as to what out adult diet should comprise.
If not, why not?
(And I DO NOT want to hear that its because ‘someone else’ told you what to eat. Folks living inside Thought Bubbles do that)
Fast forward to England during WW2 – rationing and a time when folks were regarded as ‘never been more healthy’
The daily ration:
880 cals from protein
520 cals from saturated fat (very little vegetable fat was to be had)
310 cals from carbohydrate
No heart-attacks.
Few strokes except in the very elderly
Next to no cancer
No diabetes apart from Type 1
How many auto-immune disorders (There are easily 200+ diagnosable now)
What about Alzheimers and dementia back then. Did folks spend the last 5,7 or 10 years of their lives living as a cross between a cabbage and a new-born?
Compare to now – 2200 cals per day
11% from protein =240 cals and even then, easily half that is vegetable protein.
The rest comes from sugar and vegetable fat
So. Now tally the deaths from cancers, fatal auto-immune disorders, strokes and other cardio-vascular, obesity and diabetic complications. Is Alzheimers a cause of fatality or do any other other thing get you?
Got it now?
Ehrlich’s prediction is actually playing out and then some.
We are in a starvation situation.
We are starved of animal protein and animal fat – as recommended by our birth-mothers (in-loco Ma Nature) and it is killing us in droves.
There is a thought along the Gaia lines in that The Plants are in protection or defence mode.
They have sensed the attack upon them (from huge numbers of us eating them) and are working to reduce our number.
Plants being plants though, have to go about it in the most subtle and undetectable way they can.
And they’ve got it – they go in via the Reward System built into our own brains.
We actually seek out the poison and actively consume it.
It makes us happy – so what could possibly go wrong?
You left out sedentary life styles of TV watching, video game playing and using virtual experiences as a substitute for going out and doing it. And of course your one size fits all diet doesn’t make sense for everyone.
“they didn’t throw sufficient insults at the Muslims”
The leadership of Turkey is demanding that the EU make all criticisms of Islam illegal.
Given the linguine spined nature of the EU leadership, I’m pretty sure they will comply.
The EU already has. Have you not heard of hate speech laws/regulations, Mark?
You left out that anything coming from plants, whether’s it is broccoli or wheat, is a carbohydrate.
You should also add to that a warning to immediately stop drinking anything that has aspartame as a sweetener. I cut Diet Coke off my grocery list about 2 years ago and I have since then lost 40+ pounds of real weight, as I found when I went to get my flu shot last fall. And I didn’t starve myself, either. I don’t waste money on what is called junk food.
I’ve nothing against Hulme saying that policies should be argued on their merits, not on climate (twaddle). That is what most skeptics argue for. He often says some sensible things, but somehow seems unable to take the next step and ditch the global-warming spiel from the second part of the sentence. He wants to have his climate-cake and eat it.
he suggests promoting climate action with “co-benefits”
Here ya go, Mr Hulme, when it’s cold, put on your coat, when it’s warm, take it off.
“planting forests that protect catchments and provide shade”
At the same time, in some places, forests are being clear cut to set up solar cells.
It sounds like no regrets solutions. For instance, restoring grasslands for the medium term. If the sale is about emphasis, I don’t see the problem.
“My personal and professional opinion”. Who gives a rats about your so-called opinions? Oooh, my professional opinion. Everybody take cover, bloke here’s got an opinion. So important, your opinion.
Hulme didn’t bother to notice U.S. life expectancy falling from insurance-provided opioid deaths. It took open minds to find and report that.
Climate itself is an imaginary constructed in an attempt to understand the billion year planetary history within human lifespan. A thirty year timespan is asinine when some cycles affecting the weather have timespans at least twice that. Even worse is that reliable measurements are limited to the last 50 years.
We can only deal with climate change through human imagination?
Boy, I’ve been citing an entire generation living in virtual reality for a long time, now – it’s almost amazing to see it spoken so openly – and blithely.
This is what they meant by the term ‘flake’ – the inability to deal with the here and now.
Nothing new in framing Climate Change as a thing to be dealt with by the mechanisms/politics/religion used by human society. It was happening in 1661.
Samuel Pepys 21st jan 1661
It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all; but the ways are dusty, and the flyes fly up and down, and the rose-bushes are full of leaves, such a time of the year as was never known in this world before here.
House Of Lords 11th jan 1662
The Fast to be observed in Westm. Abbey, and the Bp. of St. David’s to preach.
¶Whereas His Majesty hath been pleased, by Proclamation, upon the Unseasonableness of the Weather, to command a general and public Fast, to be religiously and solemnly kept, within the Cities of London and Westm. and Places adjacent: It is ORDERED, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament assembled.
Samuel Pepys 15 jan 1662
fast day ordered by the Parliament, to pray for more seasonable weather; it having hitherto been summer weather, that it is, both as to warmth and every other thing, just as if it were the middle of May or June, which do threaten a plague (as all men think) to follow, for so it was almost the last winter; and the whole year after hath been a very sickly time to this day
This reminds me of the scene in Woodstock where the hippie crowd are exhorted to direct their thoughts towards the sky. “No rain” they shout, flexing their muscles at their newly found mystical new age powers. Segue to the torrential downpour.
They should have pleaded with the CO2 Gods, Ball.
Professor Mike Hulme was the founding Director of the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in 2000. Under his leadership, the Tyndall Centre introduced Social Science into the business of implanting the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming into the Public Consciousness:
“Global Warming – The Social Construction Of A Quasi-Reality”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/science-papers/reprint/social-construction
From the Tyndall mission statement in 2000:
Tyndall Centre wishes to –
“exert a seminal influence on the design and achievability of the long-term strategic objectives of UK and international climate policy”.
integrate scientific and social disciplines in promoting the idea of dangerous climate change and to stimulate public policy initiatives on energy and transport.
motivate society into an acceptance of the catastrophic perception of climate change and to impart the view that it, (society), has the ability, but needs the willingness to “choose our future climate”.
A Tyndall Briefing Note No. 16 November 2006 commented on the role of the media in “getting the message out”, but Hulme was now having doubts about the very catastrophism he and his institute had promoted.
“It is apparent that the vast uncertainties associated with climate modelling necessitate a wide range of possibilities, the extremities of which produce fertile ground for sensational reporting.
However, whilst this ‘creaming’ of scientific results for attention-grabbing headlines is a boon for interest groups, sceptics and politicians alike, our understanding of its effect upon the lay observer is lacking due to the absence of any kind of detailed investigation.
There is, however, growing concern that the social construction of the issue of climate change and its amplification by normative communication channels may be acting to distance or even remove much of the lay public from a point at which they feel they can take action.”
He enlarged upon it in a BBC interview:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6115644.stm
“Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the observable physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging which surrounds science’s predictions?
…the discourse of catastrophe is a campaigning device being mobilised in the context of failing UK and Kyoto Protocol targets to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
The signatories to this UN protocol will not deliver on their obligations. This bursting of the campaigning bubble requires a determined reaction to raise the stakes – the language of climate catastrophe nicely fits the bill.
…the discourse of catastrophe is a political and rhetorical device to change the frame of reference for the emerging negotiations around what happens when the Kyoto Protocol runs out after 2012.
The Exeter conference of February 2005 on “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” served the government’s purposes of softening-up the G8 Gleneagles summit through a frenzied week of “climate change is worse than we thought” news reporting and group-think. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4234467.stm
“By stage-managing the new language of catastrophe, the conference itself became a tipping point in the way that climate change is discussed in public.”
He became notorious for a short time for his exposition of “Post-Normal Science”
https://web.archive.org/web/20070325171818/http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1469
“Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science.
But to proffer such insights, scientists – and politicians – must trade (normal) truth for influence.”