Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen
Those of you who closely watch the media — newspapers, broadcast & streaming news, national magazines, national public radio — may have noticed that all the news about climate change is beginning to sound the same — regardless of outlet (there are a few sensible exceptions). This is no accident. In fact, it is an organized movement among American journalists.
I have written here before about the Editorial Narratives at the New York Times. Here’s the working definition I proposed for Editorial Narrative:
“Editorial Narrative: A mandated set of guidelines for the overriding storyline for any news item concerning a specified topic, including required statements, conclusions and intentional slanting towards a particular preferred viewpoint. A statement from the Editors of “How this topic is to be presented.”
In that essay, I quoted Michael Cieply when, in November 2016, he told the world about the NY Times’ Editorial Narratives:
“It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse [of that at the LA Times]. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: “We set the agenda for the country in that room.”
I don’t know how many readers took this bit of news seriously or how many readers realized the implications of the exposé. Personally, I was not surprised, as I had long suspected it. But the implications of this are quite disturbing. It means, in layman’s terms, that the news that you read has been pre-determined by the Editors and has little to do with actual events (real news) that happen in the real world. Those of you who have recently read Orwell’s 1984 will recognize some of the features of the Ministry of Truth (writ small at the NY Times’ “Page One meeting”). At the NY Times, the profession of journalism has been turned to the task of pushing the narratives of editors down the throats of the people. Newspeak is rampant.
While I found Cieply’s revelations unsettling, I find the following story truly frightening in its ability to threaten the very underpinnings of democracy.
The story starts earlier in the year with a conference planned and held at the behest of Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation (“along with partners such as The Guardian”). You can watch the conference online (YouTube). The outcome of that conference is a growing cabal of journalists and their editors: (in their own words):
“How does the media cover—or not cover—the biggest story of our time? Last fall, UN climate scientists announced that the world has 12 years to transform energy, agriculture, and other key industries if civilization is to avoid a catastrophe. We believe the news business must also transform.”
“The Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation assembled some of the world’s top journalists, scientists, and climate experts to devise a new playbook for journalism that’s compatible with the 1.5-degree future that scientists say must be achieved. We also held a town hall meeting on the coverage of climate change and the launch of an unprecedented, coordinated effort to change the media conversation.”
source: https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/climate-crisis-media.php/
Journalists around the world are being contacted by email by CJR with a message that includes this appeal :
“Our ask of you is simple: commit to a week of focused climate coverage this September. We are organizing news outlets across the US and abroad—online and print, TV and audio, large and small—to run seven days of climate stories from September 16 through the climate summit UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres hosts in New York September 23. The stories you run are up to you, though we can offer ideas and background information and connect outlets looking for content with content providers looking for outlets.
We’d be happy to schedule a phone call to discuss this further.
Sincerely,
What is their playbook? What’s the narrative they expect journalists to stick to?
It starts with this: “Transforming the media’s coverage of the climate crisis” and morphs into a “FAQ” titled “The media are complacent while the world burns” with these ideas and suggestions like these:
1. Climate is a crisis.
2. The Green New Deal is “a plan to mobilize the United States to stave off climate disaster and, in the process, create millions of green jobs.” and the GND has massive public support. [ NB: see Postscript at the end of this column. ]
3. Climate is the “biggest story of our time”.
4. Journalists should push the “….warning that humanity has a mere 12 years to radically slash greenhouse-gas emissions or face a calamitous future in which hundreds of millions of people worldwide would go hungry or homeless or worse.” and that “our civilization today faces the prospect of extinction”.
If this all sounds like a Climate Pragmatists Worst Nightmare, then you are starting to understand correctly. The CJR/Nation/Guardian cabal is working on a “handbook” to help news organizations “get the story right”. In other words, they are writing the Climate Journalism Narrative – a point for point list of what every climate story should say and how it should say it (and, remember folks, ”every story is a climate story”). They call on journalists to “Learn the science” suggesting that instead of actually reading anything containing the science of the climate, such as the real science sections of the IPCC AR5 report, they recommend that journalists read “Four recent books—McKibben’s Falter, Naomi Klein’s On Fire, David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth, and Jeff Goodell’s The Water Will Come—are good places to start.” — all of which are extreme climate alarmist propaganda.
Covering Climate Now movement is organizing:
“A focused week of coverage
We’ll work to organize as much of the news media as possible—large and small, national and local—to commit to one week of focused coverage of climate change this September. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, is convening a summit in New York on September 23, where nations are urged to show how they will limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. We propose a week of concentrated climate coverage in the lead-up to the UN summit, beginning September 16.” [ source ]
Don’t be fooled, they are not planning any real journalistic attempts to explain the complexity of the wicked problem called Earth’s Climate and the current controversies surrounding the issues involved. They are planning an intensive propaganda campaign across as many media outlets as they can convince (or shame) into signing on to participate.
I have laid out my position on the Climate Question here at WUWT ( here and here ). I encourage climate realists, especially those with a broader reach into mainstream media, to begin now to plan for their own counter-campaign to help neutralize the propaganda blitz envisioned by CJR/The Nation/The Guardian cabal for September 2019. We too are journalists, even if in just a small way. I for one will be following the Covering Climate Now propaganda campaign and will update the readership here with details from their promised propaganda ”handbook”.
The science is very plain on such issues as US wildfires, hurricanes (US and worldwide), US flooding, so-called heat waves and weather extremes. Opinion columns and essays in national newspapers and magazines (both print and online) and video commentary for broadcast and streamed news stations, laying out the simple truth, with graphs, numbers, and images, can and will help cut the ground from under the alarmist propaganda effort.
If we, the readers and contributors here, don’t make the effort to counteract this planned act of ideological sabotage of the American mind, who will?
# # # # #
POSTSCRIPT: One of the propaganda points that will be pushed by the Climate Journalists Cabal is: “Not only do most Americans care about climate change, but an overwhelming majority support a Green New Deal—81 percent of registered voters said so as of last December, according to Yale climate pollsters. Trump and Fox don’t like the Green New Deal? Fine. But journalists should report that the rest of America does.”
This is an example of how warped the journalism being promoted by the Covering Climate Now group is. It is true that a poll by “Yale climate pollsters” (in reality the activist department Yale Program on Climate Change Communication) found, in December 2018: “The survey results show overwhelming support for the Green New Deal, with 81% of registered voters saying they either “strongly support” (40%) or “somewhat support” (41%) this plan.” There’s the 81%.
What a great quotable quote!
The reality is a bit different. The pollsters asked this question:
“Some members of Congress are proposing a “Green New Deal” for the U.S. They say that a Green New Deal will produce jobs and strengthen America’s economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. The Deal would generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years; upgrade the nation’s energy grid, buildings, and transportation infrastructure; increase energy efficiency; invest in green technology research and development; and provide training for jobs in the new green economy. How much do you support or oppose this idea?”
And got this result:
Now that looks pretty definitive, doesn’t it? But here’s the real deal….the poll is taken in the first weeks of December 2018. The Green New Deal (in its current form) was announced the week following the November 2018 mid-term elections. So, less than 3 weeks after it is announced, put up on the web, taken down again, put up again (you remember the story), the climate advocacy group at Yale does a poll, preceded by a glowing recommendation of the GND, and then asks “How much to you support or oppose this idea?”
So, our Climate Journalist Cabal is not misrepresenting the poll…they are just misrepresenting the whole concept of public support for the GND.
The same poll also asked:
“How much, if anything, have you heard about a policy being proposed by some members of Congress called the Green New Deal?”
The resounding answer?
“Nothing at all”
The same poll, the same cohort (same people polled), a greater percentage than those purportedly “supporting” it had heard “nothing at all” about the GND.
For those that interpret polls, this means, bluntly, that the “supporters” were responding solely to the pollsters “introduction” about the GND — they really didn’t know anything at all about it.
What does the public really think about the seriousness of climate issues? The Pew poll of January 2019:
The Climate Journalist Cabal has already stated that it plans to use this near-total misrepresentation as part of its propaganda campaign. What they will do with other topics is not hard to imagine.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment Policy:
This is an Opinion column. It is my opinion alone, the opinion of Kip Hansen and may not represent the opinions of the editors, moderators, or owners of this website.
All are free to disagree with me — but I am unlikely to argue or try to change your mind if you do.
I am disturbed by this type of organized attempt to misrepresent the facts of the climate controversy.
I acknowledge that the authors at CJR, The Nation, and The Guardian may actually believe that they are doing something good by ramping up climate alarm. I strongly disagree — it is at best misguided and goes morally downhill from there.
# # # # #
That was a good example of how to cook a survey question. First, another question in the survey revealed that only 3% of those surveyed had significant independent knowledge of the subject. Second, the question itself was quite misstated the near certain consequences of the Green New Deal, leading to a favorable response to whether the naive subjects supported the GND.
Tom ==> Absolutely — a totally crooked cooked survey by the Yale advocacy group.
The “rest” of the survey results will be purposefully omittedin the propaganda blitz, as will real survey results on the climate issue.
My thing is I have traveled all over the globe. We have real problems crying for money that would help all of humanity. Instead we are throwing money down an F in rat hole.
It is far past time we grew the hell up and stopped waging stupid wars. Figure out Thorium reactors and maybe fusion. Help people in the third world stop polluting, not CO2 but real pollution. Like dumping trash in rivers, modern sewage treatment, clean coal and Natural gas. We could do these things for a fraction of the waste on a New Green Deal and NATO. It is a finite ball we live on, we are polluting it and destroying a lot of natural beauty.
There are so many of us now that we cannot escape the trash and air pollution of our neighbors anymore. It is far cheaper to help them not pollute than to pick it up after the fact.
What is their playbook? What’s the narrative they expect journalists to stick to?
Basically it’s based on bald-faced LIES, as indicated in the main points:
1. Climate is a crisis.
3. Climate is the “biggest story of our time”.
4. Journalists should push the “….warning that humanity has a mere 12 years to radically slash greenhouse-gas emissions or face a calamitous future in which hundreds of millions of people worldwide would go hungry or homeless or worse.” and that “our civilization today faces the prospect of extinction”.
I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice this, but the playbook now calls for the discussion about “climate” anything to be switched immediately to “environmentalism”. In other words, since they know that difficult to deal with issues like someone saying “parts per million” or “climate sensitivity” as this jerk (me) is wont to do, “climate” becomes plastic bags and clean water. One guy I try to have discussions with occasionally can’t get through his first sentence without use of the word “overfishing”. It’s pretty clear that they don’t know that “climate” in their world is about carbon dioxide. I can’t figure out how they got brainwashed so easily. These are people with an education. It’s getting pretty standard on the fake news channels too, so that probably answers my question.
philincalifornia ==> It is an unfortunate facts that many (most?) Americans are incredibly (literally, unbelievably) ignorant of even the basics of biology, chemistry, physiology, physics, weather, and nearly every scientific topic not discussed on Sesame Street.
It took me years to really understand this — I truly thought that people were putting me on or just being intentionally mentally lazy, not really interested in the science of it all.
i was wrong — They have just been uneducated and mis-educated — and understand almost nothing at the level necessary to really think about science topics.
Sorry to be so cynical —
But they do understand increasing taxes and higher prices, Kip!
Dave ==> Everyone except the mega-bucks people understand increasing taxes and higher prices. The aggressively advocating rich folks in California in all probability don’t really pay taxes in the same sense as a middle-class office worker does and don;t even know what their electric bills look like.
Kip, in the Western world there is a profound disconnect between elites/secure bureaucrats/entrenched academics and the real world consequences of “feel good” actions. That will continue until individual countries devolve into Venezuela-type socialist conditions.
It is a truism that people vote with their feet. Within the U.S., socialist States are losing people, industry and money to capitalist States. From without, mass illegal migration from failed socialist states is overwhelming the U.S. society and economy.
It is sad to note that all of the Democrat Party 2020 presidential candidates are socialists. If any were elected, one could expect the export of U.S. technology, commerce and industry to nominally capitalist countries.
Kip, I would agree with you totally, except some of the people who are surprised by the words “parts per million” and “climate sensitivity” are for example (I live in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills), a former lifelong and successful mathematics professor at UC Berkeley, and a former Stanford Chemist who has chaired Gordon Conferences in Physical Chemistry. On the latter, in discussing sea level rise, the guy had never heard of GIA. The first guy called me a jackass under his breath but decided we’d better talk about coral reefs instead of ppms. These are people who really should know better. Lazy is the word. Pompous is another one.
These days, surveys are used more to shape public opinion than to measure it.
Don ==> Certainly polls carried out by advocacy organizations like the Yale outfit.
The first problem the Green New Deal has is the wrong order of adjectives.
The more subjective adjective, “new”, should come first. You don’t describe a silly orange scarf as an orange silly scarf. It just sounds wrong.
There was a (at the time) very popular Federal Program called The New Deal back in the early 1930’s in response to the Great Depression. FDR’s “achievement”.
This is a ‘Green’ version of that.
So The Green ‘New Deal’ isn’t a Deal that’s new, but a ‘New Deal’ that’s Green.
Exactly what Baa said. If you watch documentaries about the Great Depression you can clearly the same thing happening now. Of course with exact hindsight.
I was aware of that. It doesn’t stop it from sounding dumb at the outset.
The New Deal prolonged the depression and featured crop burning in the midst of deprevation because it ‘interfered with interstate commerce’. Roosevelt was a total dickhead.
Trump should crank up a New Green Deal, in which people get to keep all of the green bits of paper they’ve earned.
Radical greens lie about anything and everything – lying is one of their core competencies.
17. Commentary concerning global warming and climate change catastrophes are typically political propaganda, not scientific reality.
The leaders of the radical greens typically know they are misleading the public. The Climategate emails provide irrefutable evidence of their misconduct. Their followers typically believe the falsehoods, and apparently do not have the education or the intellectual ability to do otherwise.
Reference: https://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/
Reference: https://www.thegwpf.com/climategate-a-scandal-that-wont-go-away/
Reference: http://www.theclimategatebook.com/about-the-book/table-of-contents/
18. We have known for decades that global warming alarmism was a false crisis, and that “green energy” schemes were not green and produced little useful (dispatchable) energy.
In 2002 we were confident in the following points, sufficient to publish them and sign our names to them:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Reference: APEGA’s “Debate on the Kyoto Accord”, published in the PEGG November 2002, reprinted by other professional journals, The Globe and Mail and La Presse
by Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson and Allan MacRae, November 2002
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
19. Science, governments, media and institutions have all been corrupted due to false global warming / climate change alarmism.
Enormously costly and destructive government policies have been adopted to “fight global warming / climate change”. Trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered, tens of millions of lives have been needlessly lost and delicate environments including tropical rainforests severely harmed due to environmental extremism.
Reference: “Hypothesis: Radical Greens are the Great Killers of Our Age”
by Allan MacRae, April 14, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
Reference:
“CO2, Global Warming, Climate and Energy”
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
pdf:
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-june2019-final-.pdf
Excel spreadsheet:
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-june2019-final.xlsx
I once spent some time researching Polls, how they were constructed and how to bias them (or in my case avoiding bias). Let me make this amusing so you can more easily spot false poll results:
1. Ask a question, then verify the answer; &
2. Check the validity of the polled person by asking them an ‘impossible question’.
The article above demonstrates Point-1 by finding that 81% of people support the GND and 82% of people polled have never heard of it, don’t know what it is – but strongly support it. These are known as Morons.
I first came across this phenomenon when people were polled as to whether or not they supported Margaret Thatcher’s position on the EU. She was continually “Trumped” & flogged by the MSM, so the 92% result who said they opposed her position was not surprising. The second question was a “LoL’ as it asked is MT supportive or against the EU. 55% said she was for it, 45% said she was against it and only 5% admitted they did not know. Goebbels would have wept as he was never able to establish that level of mind control.
The second point is designed to validate the subject’s opinion. I was asked to design a ‘VALIDATED Questionnaire’ as I had claimed some knowledge of how to do so.
Among the questions I added one (or more) ‘nonsense’ questions that the subjects were unlikely to be able to answer. If they answer anyway, then the rest of their opinions are suspect and should go in the bin.
For instance, I might ask “Should Climate Change scientists use Fermi’s Constant as a baseline against which to measure the detrimental effects of Climate Change?” The options are:
1. Absolutely, as it is a known constant;
2. Yes, but adjusted for the seasons;
3. No; &
4. Don’t Know (or no opinion)
I accept the opinions (whether I like them or not) of those who answer 3 or 4, but the moronic 90% who answered 1 or 2 can be discarded (though I was tempted to add “Can you define Fermi’s Constant?”
Unfortunately, we had to abandon this approach when the client accused us of biasing the results that looked like this:
Interviewed: 500 people
Discarded as Morons: 422
Yes: 51
No: 23
Don’t know: 4
78 people was below the threshhold of a reliable survey.
I have never been asked to design another survey
At first I thought you were implying that those who didn’t have knowledge of Fermi’s constant were morons…then I actually read what you wrote. I don’t believe 80+ % of people are morons however I fully agree that 80+ % of people will lie out of fear of being perceived as a moron.
People need to fully understand that “ignorance” != “stupidity” and there is nothing wrong with ignorance as long as you are willing to say “i don’t know” and willing to learn.
But 79 (or 76) was a sufficiently large cohort to determine the view of all the world’s scientists! /sarc
In 2008 Margaret Zimmerman asked two questions of 10,257 Earth Scientists at academic and government institutions. 3146 of them responded. That survey was the original basis for the famous “97% consensus” claim.
For the calculation of the degree of consensus among experts in the Doran/Zimmerman article, all but 79 of the respondents were excluded.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/10/an-oopsie-in-the-doranzimmerman-97-consensus-claim/
Tom & Kip,
Not so many years ago when I was learning about statistics I investigated polling and pollsters as an academic exercise. What had piqued my interest was a poll that predicted an election result with absolute certainty, but the ‘certainty’ was crushed in a landslide. Within hours the same people were able to explain the result with absolute certainty. Sounds like Brexit, Trump/Clinton & Morrison in Australia.
I was also interested to read an article about a poll (written by a journalist, who then failed to see the implications of his findings) about a poll taken concerning the unpopular British PM of the time, Margaret Thatcher. The first question was: “Do you support MT’s position concerning the EU?” 80% said “No”. Question 2 was a killer: “Is Margaret Thatcher pro- or anti- the EU.” 52% said she was pro- & 48% said she was anti-, with nobody admitting they did not know. This was not an ‘impossible question’ as they had a 50% chance of a correct guess.
I soon discovered the answer which I will describe in a moment(but which I have yet to see ever explained or even mentioned by any pollster).
I concluded that the opinions of the ‘pollee’ (credit me with a new word) had to be validated. My answer was to include one or more ‘impossible’ questions. Let me explain:
Let’s say we are polling people on whether or not the government economic policy on imposing tariffs to stimulate local manufacturing is a good thing or not. Like the figures above, 97% of those polled would be hard pressed to spell ‘tariffs’, but 70% say they are bad, 20% say they are good and 10% don’t know. So how do we ask an impossible question to validate those who have any clue and not just an opinion. I could then ask “Given your answer (that tariffs are bad {or good}) would you prefer that the government apply the Fermi Constant to regulate exchange rates as a better solution?” The choices offered are:
1. Yes
2. No
3. Don’t Know
4. No opinion
Everyone who answers 1 or 2 has their opinion incinerated
I was asked to design a short survey questionnaire about the performance of a hip new product that I was sure few people would yet have seen (so I managed to include two impossible questions, one being “Do you like the way Control ZZ takes you to a Secret Apps Screen?”, which it didn’t):
The results were:
Polled: 820 people
1. Yes = 680
2. No = 40
3. Didn’t Know it did = 100
I invalidated 720 pollee answers as they had opinions, but no knowledge of the subject.
I was never asked to run a poll again ..
Thanks, Kip. This is a powerful call to action, by a reasonable voice. There are many such voices from many disciplines and sectors: It’s time for us to unite!!!
I too want to be a member in the Internet of Everything Tabernacle Choir.
Historically, I have been a writer on subjects ranging from broadband and the US electricity grid, to environmental, regulatory and clean energy topics for the last 20 years. I have also a vocal advocate of the Internet of Everything, international economics, and global environmental issues affecting the third of our planet that still lives in abject poverty.
I want to provide a free service for dispensing objective information and commentary on the all-inclusive Internet of Everything to the world (Broadband, energy, electricity, natural gas, pipelines, economic development, health care, environment, big data, artificial intelligence, finance, emerging companies, energy politics, and energy regulation.)
Yes, but what action? Censorship? Much better to let this exploit run its course and have people learn to recognize bullshit. Just keep the truth out there.
The truth is not “out there,” pochas94. The media narrative has been implemented and there is no countervailing message getting out to the masses. WUWT posters are pissing in the wind.
Only the prospect of privation (significant tax increases on the masses) will move the narrative off “climate disaster.” Wife, where did you put my yellow vest?
Pochas94 ==> This action:
“The science is very plain on such issues as US wildfires, hurricanes (US and worldwide), US flooding, so-called heat waves and weather extremes. Opinion columns and essays in national newspapers and magazines (both print and online) and video commentary for broadcast and streamed news stations, laying out the simple truth, with graphs, numbers, and images, can and will help cut the ground from under the alarmist propaganda effort.”
The problem is that people don’t recognize the BS unless someone lays out the “ther side” of the story. . . . . in a reasonable voice explains the facts about the topics that will be propagandized.
Backing off and doing nothing is not a solution to organized propaganda.
pochas94 Well that’s what we have done so far…how’s it working out for you? Have you seen the massive benefits of doing nothing about the sociopathic left so far? And how do you keep the truth out there when the Lonny left are censoring you? You sound very much like Chamberlain.
Kip, commendable to say the least. Buy out Bloomberg and you’ve got a shot.
Stephen Heins ==> Thank you….great to have your support. Each of us should do what we can to be those reasonable voices speaking the real truth, factual information, even the bits that don’t support our personal views.
Go get ’em!
We sound a little like the Everley Brothers, Kip. Harmonies matter.
It is not journalism. It is blatant socialist propaganda. Similarly to #MeToo, this will get out of hand and bite the unaware do-gooders.
Early green-adopting nations are now pulling back because of the predicted costs to their peoples and the negative impacts on their energy systems. The rush is on to scare U.S. voters before the whole climate scam comes tumbling down.
‘It is not journalism. It is blatant socialist propaganda.’
Sorry, I don’t get your distinction.
Gamecock ==> Well, yes, in many cases this is the root of the problem….
It did in Australia they pushed it to far and then got shocked at the voter backlash.
LdB, it is sad that humans continuously fail to learn from known history. Every evangelical movement peaks, then fails at great cost to the bystanders. U.S. Prohibition, Fascism, Communism, eugenics, Germany’s Energiewende, ad nausea.
Hi Kip – I write as a former senior journalist based in the UK, where we have a similar problem. It is almost impossible to find any science-based articles about global warming in the media here but every DAY there are several stories and broadcasts about the coming catastrophe of ‘manmade climate change’.
The main culprit is the BBC – a state broadcaster which, appallingly, actually has an official editorial policy of NOT presenting balanced coverage on this issue. In almost every news bulletin, TV and radio broadcast the same insidious message is relayed to the nation. It appears in news bulletins, current affairs programmes, morning TV shows, even fictional drama. Every aspect of the BBC’s fact-free coverage is soaked in alarmist propaganda.
Every government department and private corporation vies with its neighbour to present itself as a ‘green champion’ helping to ‘save the planet’.
I do my bit. I never use the term climate change and always refer to global warming. Whenever I have the opportunity to respond to articles in national newspapers I ask these three questions (or variations on them):
1 – Which greenhouse gas is the most prevalent in our atmosphere and responsible for more than 90% of global warming?
2 – Carbon dioxide currently sits at 415ppm in our atmosphere. What is the CO2 ppm figure that will trigger the tipping point into catastrophic global warming?
3 – If all of the nations who are signed up to the Paris Agreement fulfilled ALL their obligations under the Agreement, what would be the reduction in the earth’s average temperature expressed in ºC?
My experience is that just about everybody out there is profoundly ignorant of the basic science. Even my intelligent friends do not want to discuss the actual science or even hear about interglacial periods and Milankovitch cycles. It’s depressing because it seems that the Neanderthals banging the rocks together are successfully drowning out factual science.
This is why Anthony’s blog is a constant source of information and encouragement. A bright light in a dark world.
John W. ==> “just about everybody out there is profoundly ignorant of the basic science.”
Yes, you’ve got it . . . . . that’s what I suggest those who know get prepared to put out there to counter-act the planned propaganda bvlitz.
“It’s depressing because it seems that the Neanderthals banging the rocks together are successfully drowning out factual science.”
I don’t think they are. Look at just about any poll and CAGW is way down the list, and not for lack of trying by the CAGW propagandists.
This new round of planned CAGW propaganda is to me just another sign that the propaganda of the past has not moved the needle very much and CAGW is still low on the list of priorities for most people. People look around and they don’t see this crisis the CAGW doomsters claim is here and getting worse. They don’t see it. Obviously.
The propagandists don’t have any new propaganda to add to the misery list so I don’t see this new effort accomplishing much with average people. It just more “crying wolf” when there is no wolf.
Well, the “wolf” is actually just weather and they are trying to make the wolf be “climate.” Part of the scam is to hype up every weather event and process as “proof” of their claims.
I ask a much more simple questions. Do you believe in catastrophic global warming caused by anthropogenic gases such as carbon dioxide and if so why? The response is generally a bit of sputtering. Occasionally I get something like “most scientists” believe. If it is this last one, I ask why do they believe “most scientists” believe and where did they get such information?
Again, this all represents not just a failure to teach science properly but a failure to educate at all.
The Media seems determined to destroy America …either by Marxist crap like the NGD … or via inciting civil war .
The fact that ‘The Columbia Journalism Review’ is openly endorsing abandoning journalism for this sort of engineered propaganda ought to prompt outrage amongst every alumni of that ‘school.’ It won’t, which indicates the depth of the rot in the profession.
Bork: Your comment hit the nail squarely on the head! Thank you.
Peddle the whole truth to your fellow citizens to benefit the evidence-based decisions that they will live by and, who knows, you could be the last true journalist standing. Quite an opportunity has opened up with the vocation-wide abandonment of that ambition by those wanting above all to “make a difference” by disingenuous manipulation of their fellows. Pursuit of the truth has always been real work, but pays dividends beyond every lazier alternative.
“I acknowledge that the authors at CJR, The Nation, and The Guardian may actually believe that they are doing something good by ramping up climate alarm. I strongly disagree — it is at best misguided and goes morally downhill from there.”
Kip, I cannot allow them even a “at best – misguided” label.
Doing what is morally right cannot be based on a Big Lie or a series of lies and/or intended misrepresentations. Those editors, publishers, reporters may think it is “end justifies the means” moral problem and thus okay to lie and deceive the public regarding climate change, but it is not. Because once they started down that path of lies, there is now no way for them to turn back to the truth. What the media is now doing with climate propaganda is the same general path that a select few in each case used to bring about every single genocide of the 20th Century.
And you are also correct in that this is behind the scenes coordinated propaganda machine. Vastly more organized and well-funded by wealthy “green” billionaires and foundations looking for more power and wealth secured for their families.
Their goal is clear: To make abundant fossil fuel-derived energy affordable (thus available) to only the wealthiest-elitists and the government via taxation and regulation. And the genocide that those fake climate change prescriptions of ending fossil fuel use in the West will bring will not be in some land distant from North Americans, but be right here. It will be our elderly on fixed incomes. It will be the poor, desperate for socialistic hand-outs, continuing to vote for the very government caused the mass misery that feeds them and gives them just barely enough to survive – Venezuela across all of North America. Except in our case, unlike educated and professional middle-class Venezuelans, there won’t be any place worth emigrating to. We’ll all be the new peasants if we let them get away with this.
Joel O’Bryan ==> You may be right — I am just working on this one publicly organized propaganda effort. Of course, there is someone(s) paying for it….donations to CJR, The Nation, and the trust that owns the Guardian.
Joel – you are correct. The false global warming / climate change scare was never about the environment.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/06/claim-judge-kavanaughs-adherence-to-rule-of-law-will-impede-climate-action/#comment-2482376
Here is how modern politics works:
The far-left is winning, especially in the developing world, where over 100 countries are pseudo-Marxist dictatorships, based on their leftist phony rhetoric, but are actually just military dictatorships, run for the ruling elite and their armed thugs – see Zimbabwe and Venezuela… and North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union countries and many more..
The left gains political power by promising imbeciles lots of free stuff. Then they destroy the economy, create widespread poverty and live like kings atop a ruined state – because you can’t be kings without lots of peasants.
It is really no different in the developed world. Get elected by lazy greedy imbeciles, destroy the economy with fake green energy and other crazy policies, and live like kings on top of a ruined economy, looking down on all the peasants.
Kip
I have been thinking lately that perhaps we should be considering a face-to-face meeting of some of us more vocal and articulate commenters to strategize on how to counteract the propaganda. Perhaps a Special Interest Group meeting at something like the next Heartland conference where we could also network with others and find out what others are doing.
In any event, I share your concern about what is becoming an obvious attempt at using the MSM to propagandize the general public. While their hearts may be in the right place, I’m afraid that their heads are not getting much sunshine.
The internet is a powerful potential tool. Unfortunately, something like WUWT seems to be a classic case of “singing to the choir.” There is a need to get to the ‘fence sitters,’ and those who know little about the debate other than what they read in the NY Times or see on Yahoo. Those like Nick Stokes are a lost cause.
Clyde Spencer ==> If you would be good enough to try your hand at a bit of organization for the 13th International Conference on Climate Change in July in Washington DC, I will pledge to attend.
Kip
Your link doesn’t work. For you and others that might be interested, the following link seems to work:
https://climateconference.heartland.org/
There isn’t a lot of time to to make plans and coordinate things, being only a month away. However, come Monday, I will explore what might be accomplished in the short time available. I’ll get back to you offline.
Clyde ==> Thanks, some kind of double-pasting error….
“link doesn’t work” – choose one of these –
https://www.google.com/search?q=13th+International+Conference+on+Climate+Change&oq=13th+International+Conference+on+Climate+Change&aqs=chrome.
Clyde & Johann ==> This link (tested and verifed:
https://climateconference.heartland.org/
for the 13th International Conference on Climate Change.
“The internet is a powerful potential tool. Unfortunately, something like WUWT seems to be a classic case of “singing to the choir.”
Well, the general public don’t place CAGW very high on their priority list despite a blizzard of CAGW propaganda thrown their way, so places like WUWT might actually make a difference. I think a lot more people than the choir read WUWT.
At least there are places like WUWT where both sides of the CAGW story are told. It is wonderful to watch the experts on WUWT shred the alarmist propaganda that is put out on a daily basis. And I guess it looks like there is going to be a lot more CAGW propaganda and a lot more shredding of it on WUWT in the near future. I look forward to it. 🙂
Tom Abbott ==> I used to think so — but as I have been writing here over the years, varied topics, the broad range of professional experience of readers has astonished me. Sure, there are the readers who comment to almost every item here whose names we recognize, and many of them are hard-line skeptics, but many many more are professionals from all walks of life, some active and some retired, as I am.
I write here,but other blogs re-blog my essays, and The Climate Team has attack dogs that help spread the word by attacking the stuff I write. I have seen graphics that I have created used in professional presentations and repeated in papers, and seen my essay quoted in published papers.
So, perseverance and diligence are rewarded.
The bad news is that state and national legislatures have been swayed by the climate alarm propaganda and are passing laws that will be not only destructive of society but impossible to actually implement — they will just create huge societal messes that will need to be cleaned up.
The “national legislatures have been swayed “, not so much because of the IPCC, but because other science institutions who should know better have jumped on board this train-wreck, without consent and even with opposition of their own members.
That is the real mystery.
Once you’ve got the IPCC and the science institutes all screaming that the sky is falling, what can a politician do?
Greg ==> They could do what Monckton did — dig in and educate himself.
see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley
**I have been thinking lately that perhaps we should be considering a face-to-face meeting of some of us more vocal and articulate commenters to strategize on how to counteract the propaganda.**
If you mean the ones pushing the fearmongering the problem is trying to get a meeting with them. i very rarely get a reply from the media when I send them a note. politicians are the same. I sent a letter to the (57) representatives in Manitoba and received 3 replies, two of which agreed with me. I sent an email letter to the over 300 Federal members in Canada and did not receive one reply. I expect most of them are intercepted by their secretaries or assistants,
Here in New Zealand our news outlets both TV and News papers are for ever running stories from overseas about the extremes of climate change.
Our national news papers print editorials and no one puts their name to them as most of them have been copied and pasted from overseas outlets .
It is a real problem as most of it is propaganda aimed at young people to mobilize them into climate emergency movements and to sway newly elected politicians .
Every night the 6 pm news on both major TV channels a climate scare story from around the world is screened to influence public opinion .
It is very hard work trying to counter these false stories as it is well documented that extreme weather is not
happening more often and that this weather that has been happening on this earth for millions of years .
Gwan ==> We can but try each in our own best way . . . . . there are outlets for us to write and speak.
I agree and TVNZ and the NZ HErald are particularly biased and ignorant. I am looking forward to the time I see those smirking news readers realise they have been advertising their ignorance physically and prominently for years. I do everything I can to point out the truth on this subject, but suspect they never read anything which contradicts their established beliefs.
I recall reading an article on stuff.co.nz back in 2000-ish. The author, a weatherman, stated there had been no warming in NZ for over 40 years. I don’t recall his name. A short while later, the article on stuff had been “disappeared”.
In New Zealand our biggest news media outlet last year went as far as openly and brazenly banning any comments from “climate change sceptics” on their website and in their printed publications. And their employed journalists, obedient little lapdogs as they are, meekly acquiesce. Look up their campaign “STUFF – Quick – save the planet”.
And never a pip-squeak of protest against this blatant breach of ethics from our local Press Council.
It’s not the so called “journalists” that decide the narrative. It’s the media owners and governments directed by the UN. The writers were given a job and are doing what they’re told. Step out of line and you’re replaced by someone compliant. Sleazy journalists? Yes. Paid journalists? Yes again. The real cabal starts at the UN who directs the AGW scam from the catbird’s seat using our money to undermine our societies. The rest are just useful idiots. We need to cut off the head of the snake.
Yep. The freedom of the press belongs to the guy who owns the press.
Jordan Peterson makes the point that the mainstream media are doomed. link YouTube and the other social media are where it’s at.
markl ==> Like many true ideas, “We need to cut off the head of the snake.” is not within our immediate power.
What is within our personal power is to speak out — using whatever outlets are available to us. Some reading here have access to pretty bully pulpits — Financial Times, etc.
“I acknowledge that the authors at CJR, The Nation, and The Guardian may actually believe that they are doing something good by ramping up climate alarm.”
This is clearly a case of Noble Cause corruption. A journalism school at a major US university gets outside funding (see the list on the CJRwebsite) to promote one side of a major global issue to journalists across the US and the world. They obviously don’t know when journalism ends and propaganda starts.
BoyfromTottenham ==> There is a real problem with “real believers” — the more they “believe” in their cause the more they are liable to step over the line of reporting the truth and nothing but the truth and fair representation of both sides of each story when there is a controversy, and instead resort to propaganda in support of The Cause.
Hi from Oz. Exactly, Kip. But the question is what should / can be done about it? Demand that CJR fairly present both sides of the controversy (as one would expect their University and their professional ethics to require)? Obviously we cannot expect that the main stream media to which they are appealing are going to fairly report both sides. IMO a direct appeal to President Trump to counter this propaganda represents your only hope. I recently described Trump as the prototype hero of Ayn Rand’s unwritten 3rd novel which I entitle ‘USA 1984’. Can someone please write it?
BoyfromTottenham ==> I am afraid that the leftist/progressive “journalists” at the CJR have no interest, and probably no belief or understanding, that are are two sides to the climate story. They do not bother to check the science — they firmly believe (intellectually) the IPCC SR15 report — though I doubt they are selling their vacation houses on Long Island and the Jersey Shore (that would be a sacrifice made necessary if SR15 was actually true) — they don’t believe that much.
Unfortunately, the CJR is much more than “a” journalism school.
During much of my lifetime it has been “the” journalism school.
It has always set the standards for the profession (and other schools); at one time it performed that job well.
Climate Journalists of the Globe Unite! Defeat the deni@lists who oppose us!!
Yeah, sounds like a junkyard dog press.
Mr Hansen, how deep is your knowledge?
Rush Limbaugh frequently plays montages of people saying the Lefty line. A broad spectrum of people saying THE SAME THING. It has to be coordinated. It can’t be coincidence. But with all his resources, Limbaugh has never said where the coordination lies.
Is it this Editorial Narratives at the New York Times? It would make sense.
Gamecock ==> This is a public effort — advertised by CJR and The Nation — they recruited me to “the team”. See the links in the essay.
It is being done out in the open, by appeal directly to journalists and news outlets.
This is not a hidden conspiracy — but it is the formation of a powerful propaganda cabal.
Alternative media “Amazing Polly”.
Globalists, Foundations & Controlled Journalism – Fact Checking, Fake News & Phony Philanthropy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC-fb5X3luw
Published on Feb 1, 2019
What a hilariously biased question from Yale. Why even bother to do the survey? They should just make up the results. The outcome would be just as legit.
That question was a bunch of “happy talk” and it’s no wonder a lot of people approved. What’s not to like based just on what is in the question? Nothing.
Polls are subject to manipulation, in the forming of questions, and in the interpretation of the answers. The Leftwing Media makes every attempt to manipulate the polls they take. I saw where even the Fox poll taken recently was oversampling Democrats by five percent.
So be careful about polls. Many times they are created not to understand public opinion but to form public opinion.
The Brainwashers are busy every day. Polls are part of their toolbox.
Polls merely measure the success or failure of current activist propaganda.
They also depend on the format and implications of the questions asked.
Shades of the late 1930’s.
Looks like these people got too much ozone and co2 from the dictator in China
and want everyone to kowtow to him, just like Hong Kong.
If the idea or theory you’re trying to promulgate cannot stand on its own two feet and requires constant lies and deceit to maintain it then that theory is inherently false. Just like Marxism – which this is in just another guise.
Don’t forget the monetary reward for pursuing the standard advocacy agenda line with the editorial mandate. Just don’t call it reporting or journalism.
To be cynical we have never enjoyed the supposed benefits of Democracy,
even back in the early days of Greece.
In Rome it was always the powerful figures in the Senate who ran things.
Coming up to modern times in he UK, the young Labour Party decided to
buy a newspaper “The Daily Mirror ” so that their socialist ideas were
being heard.
The best we can ever really hope for is a benevolent Dictatorship, and they are
rare. It is impossible to please all of the people at any one time. Perhaps
the likes of Trump is the nearest we will ever come to that.
The Romans had their “”Bread and Cicuses””.today we have the modern equivalent , as
per 1984.
MJE VK5ELL
For more info on the devolution of the ‘mainstream’ media, see “Unfreedom of the Press” by Mark Levin.
The C.arpet B.aggers C.onsortium (aka the CBC) seems to be the progressive Canadian version of this, fully in the coordinated pocket of, and financed by the Government, willing cheerleaders for “The Plan..” The olny thing missing are the STEM cells.
Kip,
Below is one of the ‘logics’ that such ‘journalists’ will surely be trolling out and emphasizing in this. Have a read of the link. It’s pure sophistry, and a shallow intellectual argument IMHO. It completely denies the validity of proportions and the actual observed effect, and the natural variability range, as well as ignores the massive official attempts to ‘warm’ the past, via endless campaigns of reductions interpolations of past met-record temperatures in an attempt to make NOW look even hotter than the warming cycle that’s just occurred actually delivered. And which warming cycle now appears to be flattening-out (against all expectations and model predictions).
Thus when the present won’t cooperate due the ‘hiatus’ phase, you have to cool the past just to make up for it and make it look like the warming never really ended. They also love to ignore the UHI impact on ground level data.
Why it doesn’t matter what the climate-models tell us about the global warming – by ‘Pavel Neuman’ (a day ago at Windy.com, where website owner Ivo and insider-crew seem to avidly support the CAGW myth but they then back-pedal to mere ‘precautionary principle’ fluff and sophistry when it’s challenged and rejected by many.
https://community.windy.com/topic/8734/why-it-doesn-t-matter-what-the-climate-models-tell-us-about-the-global-warming
(Btw, I deleted my account at Windy (and many of my posts) as a result of this unbridled CAGW nonsense coming out of the Windy.com site. I wan’t nothing to do with supporting or improving such delusion-spreading websites or apps.)
But then there’s this stark countering-data (which somehow gets ignored):
“A 1900-2010 Instrumental Global Temperature Record That Closely Aligns With Paleo-Proxy Data”
https://notrickszone.com/2018/05/03/its-here-a-1900-2010-instrumental-global-temperature-record-that-closely-aligns-with-paleo-proxy-data/
Which clearly displays in repeated instances how fake the ‘official’ govt met agency cooling of the past record is as even the rural or wilderness proxie-records still show RELATIVE is the reality of faked temperature changes being conjured-up by official govt agencies to pretend something unusual has occurred.
The parallel proxie record(s) from wilderness areas show that nothing particularly unusual has even occurred so far!
Climate-change is literally an urban myth, it has no real meet on its bones at all. Which means the 135 ppm rise in CO2 has been almost but not quite completely irrelevant to weather noise except that it has apparently moderated it (as several posters have recently calculated re sensitivity, and the failed hypothesis of C02 rise ‘driving’ climate variation – the proxies say forget-about-it, the ‘crisis’ is a brazenly concocted urban neo-religion).
The logic of the observed CO2 level changing (sans significant effects), and therefore saying we can’t take any chances with our only one earth, could be applied to the chemical industry, or to capitalism, or to human population, or to lifestyle, or to diet, or to modern industries, or to high technology.
It’s really just another sophists way of saying that “Conservation” means nothing should ever be allowed to change the planet, when any geologist, an actual science, can see that the planet is a record of continual small changes and episodic major changes. The Quaternary for instance.
But old fashions 1970s “Conservation-ism” is now masquerading as this latter-day “Precautionary Principle” dross, when the evidence is that a 135ppm CO2 rise has been NET beneficial for the entire planets biosphere.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/19/global-man-made-co2-emissions-1965-2018-bp-data/
But no, we must instead genuflect to some absurd “precaution” position?
Thus you get this CAGW propaganda barf instead:
https://community.windy.com/topic/8704/and-yes-we-can/21
WXcycles ==> If you can find a public outreach you can access, then presenting real agreed upon data to tell the truth about heat waves, floods, disasters, ‘extreme weather’, hurricanes, etc will go a long wa y to help defeat the lies.
One of the several distorted views with which the source of this scheme has from having a blatantly distorted cognitive political bias on this topic(and junk science understanding) is their insistence of a current “under” reporting of all the extreme weather today by the media.
As an operational meteorologist the past 37 years that spends much of the day analyzing global weather for use in agriculture and energy markets………..then watches reporting of that weather by the media, I have the exact, polar opposite impression.
News organizations over dramatize all the weather. Weather, that in the past was considered inclement, is now extreme and might qualify as the top story for that news segment.
Extreme weather that has happened as many as hundreds of times previously is portrayed as unusual and sometimes connected to climate change………..and might be the top story that day or longer.
Rare but previously occurring events(that are expected with natural climate change too) are frequently blamed on human caused climate change and the increase in CO2 and likely to be the top story for many days/that week.
Benefits of this climate optimum(which it is by all objective standards, like it was during the Holocene Climate Optimum that was warmer than this between 5,000-9,000 years ago and during the Medieval Warm Period that was around this warm, 1,000 years ago) are NEVER reported. This, despite the benefits massively outweighing the negatives.
The planet greening up is NEVER reported.
The big drop in violent tornadoes, likely the result of the decrease in the meridional temperature gradient associated with climate change is NEVER reported.
Crops like soybeans, that have experienced a doubling in yield over the past 30 years, not in spite of but because of climate change and atmospheric fertilization from the increase in CO2 NEVER get featured in stories that connect this indisputable relationship.
The big plunge lower in the amount of global deaths caused by extreme weather in recent decades NEVER gets reported.
Of course the media would never report that stuff and nobody would expect them too. That’s not who they are. They make a living by sensationalizing news, especially weather news. I was a television meteorologist for 11 years(1982-1993).
However, to see them as entities that are under sensationalizing extreme weather as the source of this scheme does is a quintessential example of distorted cognitive bias by the observer.
In my dream world:
1. The media would stop with the climate crisis narrative because its completely false and they would tell the objective truth about the weather and climate……..the best for life in the last 1,000 years(will never happen)
2. That people(viewers/readers) would do more critical thinking and basic homework and not just believe everything they hear/see or read reported by the media about the fake climate crisis. You will never get the other side, the good side of climate change from the media because that’s not who they will ever be. You/we must take responsibility for our own ignorance or for our own enlightenment. Either way, in this age of unlimited sources to be enlightened(if we choose) blaming the media on our own ignorance is a lame excuse for being lazy.
WUWT is the best place to read authentic science and information that will NEVER get reported by the mainstream media. There are plenty of other objective sources that have no motive(profit/political or otherwise) other than to provide the honest science.
You can read numerous discussions at the link below that relate to climate change, many of which were started by members at this site(where I’ moderator) that were convinced in the climate crisis. ………..and I provide the data/science/links to obliterate the climate crisis position. Once you are in possession of this knowledge, it should be a responsibility for you to pass the truth on to others still in the dark.
Not doing so, allows the darkness of the climate crisis deception to go unchallenged and brainwashing schemes like those described in this great article(thanks Kip) to spread like a scientific knowledge eating cancer in the brains of the targets.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/
This is the same as the, “97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change is yadda, yadda, yadda.”
More propaganda to create Climate Catastrophe Memes.
Mike Maguire ==> Thanks for your ongoing work at marketforum. I hope you can continue and/or step up into the public media in your town or area. Youare a professional with a story to tell that will helpt counteract thre climate propaganda cabal headed by CJR and others.
Good luck.
The media in New Zealand are the same. Almost impossible to get a letter published if it does not follow the AGW line. The nonstop calamitous scenarios are another nail in the coffin of youth hopelessness . Sadly we have the highest youth suicide rate in the Western World.
Peter Fraser ==> That’s where you can step in as a reasonable voice to break the onslaught of propaganda.
Try to get out the good news — there is no Climate Crisis!
Perhaps the time has arrived for the media to be taken through the courts for false reporting that is leading to youth anxiety and suicide.
So many of the vulnerable youth who have no understanding of the real world believe what they are told by the media and by the state broadcasters in particular.
The youth still think the state gives them a correct overview of matters, they believe their teachers who have bought into the climate change scam, they are innocents in a game with immediate dire consequences for those who are overwhelmed by the scare stories and the doom mongers.
The media need to be prosecuted for telling lies and forced to present their defence in court.
Let us see how many win and thus avoid punitive damages.
I suppose this UN climate conference in September will have Trump weighing in on the subject. That ought to be fun! 🙂
Tom ==> President Trump will probably not attend or speak — he will invariably “twit” — which is the world’s worst sort of communication on any subject. There will some controversy when US government employees who are Climate Alarm Advocates wish to appear in their professional roles but intend to spread their private opinions on climate. Look the the RealClimate crowd to try to get in on the UN Climate bonanza.
Kip, its “tweet.” And President Trump uses it to bypass the MSM filters; to great effect!
Additionally, I am sick to death of scripted politicians.
DF
I think “twit” is a more accurate description.
Dave & Clyde ==> I use the word “twit” to describe both the message sender and the message sent. I think the twit-iverse is an abomination and is causing a great deal of harm to society.
Other than that, I don’t have any strong opinions about it.
Kip, advancing technology always irritates some.
Clyde, do you think “twit” accurately describes our highly successful President?
Dave ==> I use the term “twit” to apply to ANY twit-verse user — without discrimination. for most people and under most circumstances, my advice is “Don’t be such a twit!” No politics are involved.
Much of my objection to the twit-iverse is esoterically philosophical — as are my reasons for avoiding all Apple products.
Don’t take it too seriously.
Kip, I don’t use Twitter but it does have a powerful impact on society, both for good and bad. I only use Facebook to keep track of distant middle daughter and niece, nobody else.
Apple developers are control freaks; I avoid their products. My interactions early-adopting Apple people left me with a bad impression because they were mainly socialists. I still refer to them as “Mac Attackers.”
Kip, I agree with you.
In Canada, we have the CBC which is hopeless. Since they passed a motion declaring a “climate emergency”, CBC has had a good number of “experts” pushing the agenda. They ignore any skeptics and i have yet to wee one interviewed. Most of the newspapers are the same.
Postmedia (Sun) will print some letters and some of their editorials write opposing the climate tax, but they will still not print the basics challenging whether emissions actually do cause a temperature increase.
Gerald Machnee ==> When the government/political parties take over or control the broadcast media, trouble brews and begins to spread like a fungus. These media outlets — PBS(US), NPR (US), CBC (Canada), BBC (UK) — are called PUBLIC tv/radio — bu they are actually politically controlled to a great degree — in the last US presidential election one would have thought the NPR and PBS were simply media outlets for the Democratic National Committee.
It is so bad here in the central Hudson Valley of NY that I refer to our local NPR (radio) station as ‘WDNC”.
The party leading the way for slavery reparations in the US is the party that at the very same time seeks to enslave everyone via the excuse of “climate change. Make no mistake, socialism is a form of enslavement and the first to be taken hostage is truth itself, by which then reality is then made plastic to be molded by ideology.
In addition to planning our own scientific intelligent counter-campaign to help neutralize their propaganda blitz, I would like to see a join-them-in-a-one-upmanship campaign that spreads such ridiculous claims about the “imminent CAGW apocalypse” that even the radical greenies will cringe from embarrassment – claims such as:
1) It will be hot enough to fry eggs on a sidewalk in Barrow, Alaska next summer.
2) By 2021, 50% of the ocean’s whales will experience chemical burns to their skin from the increase in ocean acidity.
3) etc. etc. (This shouldn’t be too difficult because who does sourcing anymore?)
…and include advertising for special survival hydration equipment since municipal water supplies will be drying up in the near future.
This tactic is akin to using chaff to jam true radar detection.
“noaaprogrammer June 22, 2019 at 8:22 pm
1) It will be hot enough to fry eggs on a sidewalk in Barrow, Alaska next summer.”
This was actually shown in new media in Australia last year, in the middle of summer on a typically hot day. Eggs cooking, rather slowly I might add, in a iron pan on the hood of a car that had been baked in the sun all day. This was proof the world was getting warmer due to climate change, and of course, our CO2 emissions.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/aliceworkman/we-get-it-australia-its-really-fucking-hot
Excuse the language, it’s not mine.
Patrick ==> If one places a black cast iron skillet out in thre direct sun on a summer’s day almost anywhere in the tropics, it will truthfully get hot enough to cook eggs — I have raised blisters on myself picking up dark colored tools and things off the deck of our sailboat in the Caribbean. Leaning against a dark painted car can really bean experience…..
Kip,
And in August in Phoenix (AZ) even the chrome handles on car doors get too hot to touch comfortably if the car sits in the sun. I found it impossible to work on a car in the Summer in Phoenix because even if I wore gloves, I’d inadvertently touch the frame of the car with some other part of my anatomy that I wanted to keep. Hence the joke about how you can tell the Phoenix native: He is the guy who parks his car at the far end of the parking lot to take advantage of the ‘shade’ from the light pole.
Clyde Spencer ==> Good one….you know that at sea, on a small vessel like our sailboat, shade is a treasured commodity, often simply impossible to provide for yourself if you are underway . . . . the ridiculous contraptions we have tried over the years. (we did have a scrap of shade under the bimini right at the helm — usually just shading one’s top half.) In side the cabin, it was often debilitatingly. hot as the sun beat down on the cabin top.
noaaprogrammer ==> I thought I saw those quotes in the Guardian…..
Not 1 reporter in 100 has ANY understanding of ANY science based issue as related in the media.
Ask 100 reporters, in their own words, the definition of the term “climate” or what makes up the “climate”
Not one will have the ability to clearly state the scientific basis for the term in their own words.
Ask 100 randomly selected reporters. What is the science basis for the term “global warming” and the approximate quantity of warming that is central to the issue.
Not one will be able to give a clear answer from their own understanding.
Ask them their level of understanding of any science based issue of their choosing, or the name of any science class they attended while in college, and what they learned in that one class, or their grade.
I’m sure the fumbling, incoherent babble that follows will be both laughable and profoundly saddening.
bwegher ==> Journalists should have sharp minds, good writing skills, good critical thinking skills and the ability to absorb new information and translate it into understandable prose for their readers. They should also be able to write dispassionately to explain both sides of a controversy.
CJR and other “schools of journalism” have come to believe that the world needs nothing but hard hitting “investigative” reporters to expose the world’s ill’s. Thus, there is no explaining of the differing positions and opinions on societal topics — journalists instead take a side (or are assigned a side by their editors), write a piece praising the approved side and vilifying the opposing view.
Ridiculing the alarmist narrative is easy. We need more Joshes. There is no crisis. Socialism is the problem not an answer.
I am laying on the beach chair with a drink containing CO2 that flowers near by desperately want. My thermometer shows daily min 5 C, max 35 C and current 22 C.
Alarmist propaganda office writes fake news describing warming from winter to summer and night to day as a crisis. Predicting that is block of Arctic ice will melt by August.
I am sure that you can draw better ones.
What was the reaction from Beijing and Delhi?
Burn more coal 🙂
Coeur de Lion ==> If I get some idea of the international acceptance of CJRs campaign, I”llpost it here at WUWT.
Kip, have you thought of creating or starting another media narrative web site to compete against CJR? One that pushes a “truth” narrative.
Brendan ==> There are almost TWO BILLION web site on the internet todat — another one won’t make much of an impact. WUWT gets far more traffic than any other climate related website — bar none- There is no comparable site on either side of the Climate Divide.
What appears here is talked about and re-blogged many times over.
Anthony Watts has done a terrific job and has made a deep impact (at great personal cost, btw).
What we (readers/authors) need to do now is reach out an translate success here into success in more mainstream media. Many of the authors here, “big names” do publish in mainstream media. Some appear on national television and some testify before US Congressional committees. Thjat’s the kind of reach we need.
Kip, if you are going to start some counter-initiative can I offer to you a document I spent many weeks working on last year and published on the web? It is a simple but easily comprehended graphical summary of the weather/climate in Ireland over the last 200 years based on records at Armagh Observatory since 1796. Any member of the public can read and understand it in around just 3 minutes. It has received a very good reaction from those who have read it and considerable alarm from some climate catastrophists who were deeply concerned at its inescapable conclusions particularly in the context of Ireland declaring a climate ‘emergency’. I have struggled to get it any publicity as you can see in the views of it. I tried to get it published here at WUWT but no one ever responded to me.
Just google: 200 years climate change Ireland scribd
Wasn’t able to give the link on my ipad. Some screen shots from it are below (and the link to the full doc):
And the document itself is here:
https://www.scribd.com/document/382781490/Climate-Change-in-Ireland-Over-the-Last-Two-Centuries
Joe ==> Thanks for the input — scribd wants my credit card number to download the paper. Can you please email it to me at my first name at the domain i4 dot net ? With a real world name as author, please?
Kip – emailed to you there now. Joe
The funny side of all this is the socialists agenda does not know where to draw the line.
In London England later this year there will be a no car day in the central area. An idea prompted by climate alarmists and supported by the London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The champions of the idea are using phrases like we “must take back our roads, we own the roads not the cars” The villains in this game play are clearly drivers of cars. The supporters are also gushing with their thoughts on social media and in the comments of papers carrying/promoting the event. One caught my eye among many with a common complaint. The writer demanded we should also ban bikers from riding through on that day to ensure there are less cyclist pedestrian incidents which are becoming common place on London streets these days. The new villains are now aggressive cyclists ignoring red lights riding on pavements overtaking buses not respecting pedestrian crossings and so on.
I wonder what the next campaign in London will be? Maybe banning aggressive walkers, you know the ones, they just want to get in front, they can’t amble around like the rest of us, always wanting to get somewhere.
By the way, it is all cars to be banned not just the usual fossil fuelled ones. All those hybrids, banned, all those full battery powered BMWs and Teslas’ anything with powered wheels will be banned.
I just hope they don’t have an emergency on the day and ask for an ambulance or police car….
“Rod Evans June 23, 2019 at 1:47 am
I wonder what the next campaign in London will be? Maybe banning aggressive walkers, you know the ones,…”
Yes I do. They are the ones who step on the cracks in the pavement (PC Savage skit, UK 80’s comedy TV Not the 9 O’Clock News).
Rod ==> What an absolutely mad idea — the result will be the same as a National Strike….no one will get to work, nothing will be accomplished other than a hit on the economy.
I think readers here (WUWT) in the UK should support the idea, and cheerlead for it — heck, expandit to the whole country. Then maybe the public and the government will realize just how important automobiles are to their society and economy.
Look at it from the bright side. The 95% has gone fown to 81%.
When it gets down to 48% then we will declare we have won…..won’t we? What could possibly go wrong….?
Too close to declare a win, another poll will be needed, a peoples vote….you get the picture the COGS don’t recognise defeat.
It’s a game without end, up the ladders and down the snakes.
Warren Buffet, who has invested in Newspapers in the past, believes that only a few papers will survive and that they will do this by going digital and serving a national audience, rather than just local. But a national audience means that you can appeal to a group that has particular political leanings. So you have The NY Times and Washington Post as left leaning outlets and the Wall Street Journal leaning right. So subscribers pick the political views they subscribe to. Add to that polling methods designed to convince rather than enlighten. What you end up with are media silos where there is no give and take of ideas, just self support of existing biases. No wonder political polarization is getting worse.
Perhaps a bigger problem is whose subscribing. Digital subscriptions aren’t cheap so the readership is mostly affluent. You’re likely not reaching 70% of the population.
Then there’s the issue of polling. How do you reach a broad cross section when media appeals to groups in political silos and phone polling in the cellular age competes with junk calls making up 90% of calls coming in.? In fact, even exit polling, where the problems of silos and cell screening don’t exist, can’t even get results right.
While I agree with many here that the CJR has become a propaganda tool, it only feeds certain liberal silos to support pre-existing bias in a wealthy demographic. As angry as conservatives may be, I’d suggest it leads to progressive policy positions out of touch with mainstream political desires that sound good inside the silos but not at the pols.
Sean ==> Digital newspaper and news outlets are out-competing newsprint papers by a large margin. The NY Times (much maligned by me) is doing pretty good at it (I myself am a subscriber and have been for many years.)
It is my understanding that the vast majority of people get their news from broadcast TV and digital press (and unfortunately, “late night comedy” shows). It says something about our Nation that so many actually believe late night comedy is a reliable source of national news.
Not only in the US, but a planetary scale propaganda.
Here is an example of exposed planetary editorial hipe pushed to the maximum idiotic nonsense :
Petit_Barde June 23, 2019 at 5:21 am
Not only in the US, but a planetary scale propaganda.
Here is an example of exposed planetary editorial hipe pushed to the maximum idiotic nonsense :
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
First chuckle of the day (-:
Petit_Barde ==> Yes,I’ve seen that graphic — it uses the propaganda technique of creating the impression that “everyone says so, so it must be true”. The is exactly what the CJT/TheNation/The Guardian cabal is trying to take advantage of by organizing an international propaganda blitz.
The truth of the matter may be much more prosaic. News outlets sell dramatic content because drama sells their product. ‘Man Made Climate change’ is a big, dramatic (Though mostly imaginary) problem requiring big, dramatic ‘solutions’. In lieu of a war or other global disaster this is what the news media sell to us.
No matter that the theory behind anthropogenic climate change is unproven and all the prognostications of doom, from sea level rise to ocean acidification and runaway warming, have failed to arrive as promised. No matter that the much touted climate ‘models’ consistently fail to match reality. Or as a ‘science’ the anthropogenic models have more in common with a newspaper astrologer. News media outlets will keep pushing this narrative because it keeps them afloat, especially in today’s much less profitable media marketplace.
Bill Sticker ==> Personally, I don’t believe that people buy newspapers, or tune into broadcast TV, to see the latest [ridiculous] alarming climate prediction. But there is no doubt that “the world is doomed” attracts the eyes and mind of a great many people –,most;y those who are doing so well that they have nothing to worry about — the young and restless youth of the middle and upper classes, university kids with no interest in the subjects they should be learning, young rebels without a cause worthy of their attention. I sympathize with the Climate Warriors….without the climate fight, they would be bored to tears and would drug themselves into oblivion. Unfortunate that their cause is misguided — there are so many truly worthy things they could be doing.
Who was it that said “That which the left accuse you of, is what they are themselves doing”?
The extremists push the narrative that Murdoch666 dictates to his minions, who dutifully “report” exactly what he tells them to and thereby somehow forces voters to elect politicians they don’t support to enact policies they don’t support. While he actually runs the most diversely opinionated teams, from strongly right wing to hard left socialist / alarmist.
Meanwhile, the NYT tells their writers what FakeNews to write each day. Climate hysteria, Russian Collusion hoax. And Trump666 = Hitler because he calls them out on it.
Here is some amazing propaganda about carbon dioxide capture. Sure the physical process works, but at $250/tonne, poor people will lose out. The justification parts of this are sickening. And all based on never questioning the carbon-is-bad meme.
https://youtu.be/XHX9pmQ6m_s
It all comes down to “follow the money”
Ad revenue supported agenda bias has been replaced by oligarch supported agenda bias. Truth, science, and fact checking of advocacy claims were never even on the road map.
Polls.
I don’t do polls or pay attention to them. (Except those like Anthony has put here at times regarding the functionality of WUWT.)
Anymore, whether for a product or politics, “poll” results are just fodder to sell a product or political view.
“4 out of 5 proctologists prefer our BS to their BS.”
From Wiki:
PS: I “appreciate all the support” too….
Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes
Italian Writer (1469 – 1527)
“Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.”
__________________________________________________________
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/niccolo_machiavelli
https://www.google.com/search?q=macciavelli+citations&oq=macciavelli+citations+&aqs=chrome.
The Narrative is also neing implemented in TV Shows – in the space of a month 5 different shows all had climate change come up (The Last OG, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, and I can’t recall the otehrs) but the shows are all aimed at the young adult market (Adult Swim showed most of them). It was an obviously blatant concerted effort with direction having come down from above to force it into the script. People think the world is headed for 1984 propaganda and control but it’s more like Brave New World’s version of population control
Those of you who closely watch the media — newspapers, broadcast & streaming news, national magazines, national public radio
It’s long past the time for everyone to stop doing just that. Find truthful sources — might not be easy, but they exist.
beng135 ==> It is NOT easy, as you already know. The hardest part is finding exacting sources on current events and controversial topics. (See my series on Modern Scientific Controversies — google “Kip Hansen” “Modern Scientific Controversies” ) and The Goog will list them for you.) In controversies, even what would appear to be definitive reliable sources can be entirely wrong — see the Salt Wars.
Readers might consider forwarding to local newspaper editors any articles that highlight news that works against the grain of the Global Warming propaganda.
For example, the recent Glacier National Park story; news about ski resorts staying open for more months this year; the delayed plantings of corn and soybeans in the Midwest; the risk of an early freeze this year, and so on.
Given the cool weather in the continental United States, this is a risky year for a September Global Warming push.
In their own words
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/24/cjr/
Chaamjamal ==> Thank you for this link! Terrific.
Kip
I just discovered why the September date was selected for a nationwide coordinated promotion of an existential climate catastrophe.
Check https://www.perspectives.cc/fileadmin/user_upload/Transition_pathways_for_the_CDM_2019.pdf
and go to page 42/79.
“During the meetings of the subsidiary bodies and the COP itself, stakeholders can act as observers to the UNFCCC and share their inputs and perspectives in so-called “side events”.
“In addition to the meetings of the subsidiary bodies and the Conferences of the Parties, the global conference “Innovate4Climate” (I4C, formerly “Carbon Expo”) organized by the World Bank since 2004 and the related regional “climate weeks”, can act as platform for various stakeholders to interact with negotiators. In 2019, the Africa Climate Week took place in March in Ghana, I4C was held in Singapore in June, the Latin-American Climate Week will be hosted in Brazil in August and the Asia-Pacific Climate Week will take place in September in China.
“The Climate Action Summit hosted by the UN General Secretary in September 2019 in New York aims to provide a general push to the negotiations.”
As the couple of pages prior to that quote indicate, there are problems in the transfer of existing carbon credits to the new Article 6 provisions of the Paris Accord. Poor countries are not happy with their slice of the carbon money pie.
There are two big meetings left to try to resolve it. Also check out P.A. Article 6.6 and ponder what it is there for and why all attention is drawn away from it.
Crispin in Waterloo but really in Johor ==> You do get around….
Yes, the whole idea is a massive, preferably worldwide, media propaganda blitz in support of the UN’s climate position.
Thanks for the link to the pdf – very useful.