Guest whatever by David Middleton
The New Language of Climate Change
Scientists and meteorologists on the front lines of the climate wars are testing a new strategy to get through to the skeptics and outright deniers.
By BRYAN BENDER January 27, 2019
PHOENIX—Leading climate scientists and meteorologists are banking on a new strategy for talking about climate change: Take the politics out of it.
That means avoiding the phrase “climate change,” so loaded with partisan connotations as it is. Stop talking about who or what is most responsible. And focus instead on what is happening and how unusual it is—and what it is costing communities.
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That was a main takeaway at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting this month, where top meteorologists and environmental scientists…
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The hope is to persuade the small but powerful minority that stands in the way of new policies to mitigate climate change’s worst long-term effects—as well as the people who vote for them—that something needs to be done or their own livelihoods and health will be at stake.
The new language taking root is meant to instill this sense of urgency about what is happening in ways to which everyday citizens can relate—without directly blaming it on human activity…
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“Is it humans or is it not? We really need to get beyond that,” Bernadette Woods Placky, an Emmy award-winning meteorologist who directs the Climate Matters program at Climate Central, told me.
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“They see it firsthand,” Robert Mark Simpson, a professor of geography at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told me. “There is a sort of acknowledgment that the climate is changing. They just don’t think humans are that impactful. [They think blaming humans is] a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. economy.”
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I asked Grandy that question. He believes recognition is just Step One and hopes that once doubters see climate change as the dire threat it is, it will be easier for them to get on board with the only solutions believed to be able to rein it in: phasing out fossil fuels and scaling back our carbon footprint.
After all, he said, climate change “is happening whether they like it or not. If they ignore it, it is still going to happen.”
I’m not sure if I excerpted the dumbest or least dumbest bits of this article. There’s not much dynamic range between the dumbest and least dumbest bits.
I got a big kick out of this… “Scientists *and* meteorologists”… Aren’t meteorologists scientists? I’m pretty sure they are, except for the meteorologists quoted in this article.
Then there’s this… “avoiding the phrase ‘climate change’”… Weren’t these same people vilifying President Trump and several Republican governors for doing exactly that? Avoiding the phrase “climate change”???
“Is it humans or is it not? We really need to get beyond that”… WTF??? We’ve been telling you that for decades…
“[They think blaming humans is] a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. economy”… Nonsense! It’s a conspiracy to overthrow all capitalist economies, not just the U.S. …
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history”, Ms Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”
Do these “scientists and meteorologists” really think that all they need to do is to redefine the language?
This one is priceless…
“[I]t will be easier for them to get on board with the only solutions believed to be able to rein it in: phasing out fossil fuels and scaling back our carbon footprint.”
— Jim Gandy, chief meteorologist for the CBS affiliate in Columbia, S.C.
Hey Jimbo! How did you get from Columbia SC to Phoenix AZ? Did you walk? Did you ride a bicycle? Did you drive a 100% electric vehicle, powered by 100% Unicorn farts?
Regarding phasing out fossil fuels…
Phasing out fossil fuels?
The warmist solution to the climate “problem” is to put society on a glide path back to pre-industrial poverty. The challenge for the warmists is to invent a language that makes this solution seem really really nice and well worth the cost. That WOULD be challenging.
Indeed so!
The UN-IPCC’s assumption that around 1750 the atmospheric CO2 levels were in equilibrium with the global temperatures, when, according to the UN-IPCC, CO2 mediated climate was optimal. But I ask is that what we should wish to aim for, is it what is truly needed ?
THIS PLANET IS ALL ABOUT LIFE! …
This implication from their assumption is back in 1750 the CO2/global temperatures were at optimum, and therefore matched all other life requirements on this planet, and so we should return to it.
But that was back in the LIA, why should we wish to have plant life struggling along at those levels of CO2? Why should we wish to have all life (the whole biosphere) on this planet restricted to 1750 values?
This idea is at it’s heart anti-life, for as atmospheric CO2 levels rises ALL life benefits from the consequential increase in plants’ abundance.
IMO any CO2 atmospheric level from 400 to 1000ppmv is preferable for all of today’s biosphere’s requirements, thankfully with the expansion of coal use globally, assisting the natural CO2 venting, that should be achievable.
Wait, I know – it’s “Climate Chains” (of causation). Man burns more and more fossil fuels, then the climate changes – voila, chain of causation, aka “Climate Chains”. Mankind – Guilty as charged!
People who want to twist the language are conceding that they can’t win the debate using normal words in the normal way.
They can’t take the politics out of it because they can’t take the money out of it; nor can they take the desire of the people for a reasonably good life out of it. Their solutions involve 1) phasing out fossil fuels, supposedly by investing in ‘renewable’ energy sources; this pretty much flies in the face of what’s happened in South Australia, for example, or Spain, or Germany, and 2) the concomittant reduction of the welfare of people (reduce transportation requirements by lumping everyone together in giant megalopolises where everything they need is (supposedly) close at hand — the urban planners’ wet dream, in which no one is allowed to have a single-family dwelling. I don’t think that people will stand for any of this.
A) “who or what is most responsible”; Forget about science, completely.
B) “focus instead on what is happening and how unusual”; It’s all about the immediate weather and the emotions one can frighten.
C) “what it is costing communities”; Especially harp about the costs based upon current valuations.
1) These alleged meteorologists, climate and environmental scientists definitely want to avoid science.
2) These same folks are all for propaganda, alarmism and scaring people.
No climate or meteorology science involved.
“Leading climate scientists and meteorologists are banking on a new strategy for talking about climate change: Take the politics out of it.”
If they took the politics out of “climate change”, there wouldn’t be anything left.
I am really having trouble with this one… If you don’t acknowledge the cause, how will your proposed solution make any sense? In other words, they are saying, “We don’t care whether CO2 caused it or not. The solution is lowering CO2.”
Climate Game
Climate Shame
Climate Insane
And
Climant Mundane
CAGW is a bit like the joke about the drunk under the streetlamp crawling around on his hands and knees. A passerby asks what he’s doing and he says: “I’m looking for my car keys.” The passerby asks where did he lose them and the drunk says he lost them on the other side of the road. The passerby says “Why are you looking here!?”, to which the drunk replies: “The lights better”.
The analogy with CO2 is that the fundings better.
I am in an argument with a “….small but powerful minority…,” Sigma Xi, which, among others, like AAAS, does not understand their advocacy conflict with science. Who will judge the judges (scientists) when the judges are not judges any more, but are preachers. These guys should go back and read the history of the atomic bomb and subsequent development of research. If it had been done like climate science, among others nowadays, what would we still be doing?
I’ve been recently reading some fisheries literature, too much simulation and assumptions even in some of the best, must be catching. Maybe this an important reason —-
.
“Ecosystem models are time-consuming and expensive to develop, but they cost a fraction of the other components required for their successful development. Model costs are typically two orders of magnitude below those of fieldwork,……and an order of magnitude below the laboratory work that typically informs conceptualization of key processes and formulation and parameterization of model equations.”
That list in the picture doesn’t include the Climate Faithful’s favorite name.
CLIMATE CRISES
It’s Al Gore approved and a common buzzword for Leftist Politicians.
~¿~
kind of admitting no one is listening.
state college PA is current 5F below their previous record cold for this date. Take that Dr. Mann.
I live in California. Our climate is the single biggest reason that people want to live here. When people stop coming here, then, and only then, will I believe that the climate is changing for the worse.
You may need to add Gov Brown to your thinking and reasons why people stop coming to California.
“Her name was McGill, she called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy.”
McCartney-Lennon
I’m pretty sure that millions of Americans in the northern US are very happy for any form of energy keeping their asses warm right now during this latest blast out of the arctic. I think the main sentiment up there is, “can I burn it and will it keep me warm, then do it”
Basic propaganda technique, repetition, loses its strength if sheeple gets bored. You need to invents something new.
“Climate change” is a powerful meme, because you omit indefensible words in CAGW. You assume catastrophe; You assume CO2 as a cause; You assume warming, when you talk.
People start to realize that 0,5 C change is not significant. It is just noise in observations. Not worth of trillions of dollars of pain.
Cancer is something very small but dangerous, because it is living and grows. Connecting word “cancer” to something is an example of a image marketing technique: transfer. Fears of chemicals and radiation have been very successful. No one have died, but industries have been destroyed. Expect attack on coal and diesel.
Propagandists need something emotional and something that can’t be easily proven wrong. You know, just in case, if ..
The Synod of the Church of England is disinvesting on fossil fuels unless companies conform to the Paris Agreement. What on earth does that mean? Reduce production as they don’t produce CO2. The Bishop of Salisbury who leads says that many governments and companies are adopting the IPCC ‘s mad SR1.5 document. It has actually disappeared without trace as it deserved . Why don’t these churchmen do a bit of studying about the subject? It’s very sad but hopefully won’t kill too many thu’ cooking inhalation on twigs and dung.
“Leading climate scientists and meteorologists are banking on a new strategy for talking about climate change: Take the politics out of it.
That means avoiding the phrase “climate change,” so loaded with partisan connotations as it is. Stop talking about who or what is most responsible. And focus instead on what is happening and how unusual it is—and what it is costing communities.”
This they cannot do! It is impossible to take the politics out of it because it’s whole reason for being is political. What is happening is ‘not much’, it is not discernible from natural variability and it is largely beneficial! Focusing on those things would kill the climate change industry in a heartbeat.
If we weren’t burning fossil fuels for energy, we would have to start burning them for the sole purpose of restoring more CO2 to the atmosphere. The increase in CO2 is that beneficial!
‘Atmosphere Cancer’: Now there’s a name to conjour with. Quite a few members of my family have succumbed to ‘bodily’ cancer (to coin a phrase), but the thing is there are so many different forms of it. (I won’t offer details).
So, when it come to the atmosphere, can any of the alarmists name the top three elements of the atmosphere, let alone the top three that make it up? I bet they come up with CO2 in the top two, let alone the top three – and it’s not even in that!
I meant to say, ‘name which of the top three elements of the atmosphere has cancer, let alone……!
“communication” is a large word, a spectrum of meanings…
https://youtu.be/_WUyZXhLHMk
I’ve been sticking my head out the window to sample the environment here in Texas for 68 years now, and aside for weather ups and downs, I can’t tell any difference today from what it was doing 68 years ago. Now there are a lot more people and structures today than there were 68 years ago, and some of the newer structures have been built in the path of storms like we’ve always had; whereas 68 years ago, no structures were in the path of said storms. So what is all this talk about climate change? I just don’t get it.
Yep, just stuck my head out the window again – it’s just like it was 68 years ago…
“Right now, we’re interpreting the noise in the global temperature signal to mean something catastrophic.”
“If you give us enough money and control, we’ll interpret the noise to mean something less catastrophic.”
“Deal?”
It is we who need to change to get our message across.
We need to teach people what the phrase “climate optimum” means, what photosynthesis is, and how focusing on regenerative agriculture gets greens brownie points no matter who is right about temperatures or economics.
Most of these shrieking alarmists think they are in favor of living organisms, when in fact, Earthly life has no greater enemies. But they can be shifted if we FINALLY have the minimum good sense to focus on where they are RIGHT (enriching soil) and focus on that.
The only reality is the weather. We can observe the weather wherever we are any minute or hour of the day.
Climate is just average weather over a period of time over a chosen geographic area. We can analyse the data for precipitation, heatwaves, droughts, storms, cold blasts etc and come to some sort of understanding of how the climate behaves in various locations.
But the climate is just derived data from observing the weather. Quite wet in winter, very dry in summer, breezy in autumn, mild in spring. It’s not actually real, it’s simply a general perception. So how can climate change be real? How can a severe hurricane or drought or flood effectively and significantly change a general perception? Sheeesh!
It’s about as meaningful as the global average temperature or the global average telephone number or the Keihl Trenberth Global Energy Budget Cartoon.
Cargo cult science at its worst.