Guest essay by Eric Worrall
De-Smog Blog co-founder James Hoggan seems to think people who oppose climate action are “bad actors”. My question – how is that confrontational approach working out for you, James?
The making of a one-of-a-kind climate change PR professional
A pioneering climate change PR professional describes in his own words his views on how to navigate through today’s hyperpolarized public square.
By James Hoggan | Thursday, March 25, 2021
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My own journey from corporate PR consultant to co-founder of a new media website investigating climate change disinformation was eye-opening. We launched DeSmogBlog in January 2006 to “clear up the PR pollution that clouds climate science.” We wrote about Darth Vader PR campaigns in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK, largely funded by the coal and oil industries. Finding myself in the midst of a nasty international dispute about the climate crisis, I realized the strategies used to mislead people with anti-science propaganda and anti-environmentalism are much more developed and robust than those used to educate people about science and the environment.
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Over time, I realized that environmentalists are not crazy or even radicals. They’re very often telling the truth: Humans are rapidly destroying the oceans, driving record levels of species to extinction, and dangerously overheating the climate. Environmental collapse isn’t just a future risk. It is well underway.
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The more I delved into the war on fact-based reality, the angrier I got. The disinformation was so blatant and shameless. And much of it involved ad hominem attacks. But the main source of my anger was the effectiveness of the tactics: They worked, at least somewhat. Toxic conversations like these stall our ability to think collectively, act in our own interests and solve the many dangerous environmental problems stalking everyone on Earth.
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There’s the “climategate,” when in late 2009 and just before the Copenhagen climate talks, an unknown hacker stole more than 1,000 emails from climate scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the U.K. The hacked emails were then used to dupe much of the free world’s media into writing misleading stories suggesting climate scientists were falsifying data, and raising the possibility that global warming was a hoax.
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It’s not just bad actors who pollute and polarize public conversations. Carol Tavris, author of the best-selling Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me, told me the moment we make a decision we begin to see all the reasons we are right about it.
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Empathy and evidence need to replace disinformation and division. This is a challenge. The science of how to mislead people about science is advanced and muscular. The well-funded propaganda machines fighting environmental regulation know far more about stoking division than environmental scientists know about persuading us to support science-based public policies to protect the environment.
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Read more: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/03/the-making-of-a-one-of-a-kind-climate-change-pr-professional/
James Hoggan said one positive thing in the midst of ranting about Climategate, and accusing people who oppose climate action of being bad actors. “The goal of argument and public debate should NOT be to crush someone who disagrees with you, but to bring forward the truth“.
Here’s a truth for you James. Most of the contributors who write on WUWT would have no problem with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, so long as it doesn’t cost us anything.
You might think you can persuade us and our fellow travellers that CO2 emission reductions are worth supporting, maybe even worth making some sacrifices to achieve – but how well has that persuasion strategy worked for you since 2006? How much impact has the efforts of DeSmog Blog and all your fellow greens had on the rise of atmospheric CO2?
If you genuinely want an end to division, if you seriously think the world is in danger if we continue to emit vast quantities of CO2, compromise a little. Most of us are fans of nuclear power, which happens to be a zero carbon energy technology. Join with us, join with former NASA GISS director James Hansen, join with Michael Schellenberger, and jump on board the nuclear bandwagon.
France proved by doing that mass produced nuclear power is affordable, so this satisfies most of our objections about not having to pay for it – all nuclear needs to be economically viable is a benign regulatory environment. Nuclear power is zero carbon, or very close to it, so by building nuclear capacity and retiring fossil fuel plants, you get your large scale CO2 emissions reductions.
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What a fat load of psychological projection. What he accuses his opponents of are precisely what he and his allies are guilty of.
“Finding myself in the midst of a nasty international dispute about the climate crisis, I realized the strategies used to mislead people with anti-science propaganda and anti-environmentalism are much more developed and robust than those used to educate people about science and the environment.
The more I delved into the war on fact-based reality, the angrier I got. The disinformation was so blatant and shameless. And much of it involved ad hominem attacks. But the main source of my anger was the effectiveness of the tactics: They worked, at least somewhat. Toxic conversations like these stall our ability to think collectively, act in our own interests and solve the many dangerous environmental problems stalking everyone on Earth.”
Who effectively uses anti-science propaganda and ad hominem attacks? Look in the mirror Mr. Hoggan.
Addition of nuclear OK but why buy into the need to reduce CO2?
I’m not – I’m just saying I don’t care about CO2. If going nuclear takes the heat out of the issue, and helps secure everyone’s electricity supply, kind of a win / win.
If going nuclear causes the end of the windmill and industial solar era then it would be a huge win for humanity and the creatues with which we share this world.
Windmills and industrial solar are a blight on the landscape. An affront to the senses. Let’s stop uglifying our world with these things.
“Windmills and industrial solar are a blight on the landscape.”
How true. I have NEVER understood how anyone who claims to “care about the environment” can look at one of those monstrosities and still say that it’s “environmentally friendly”. But I suspect that most of them have never done so.
“The goal of argument and public debate should NOT be to crush someone who disagrees with you, but to bring forward the truth“.
Trouble is I’m bombarded with conflicting truths-
‘Mr Cass said he expected the study to show clean technology was capable but would be expensive “like solar was 10 years ago”.’
Clean energy to solve grid security: study (msn.com)
whereas-
‘LNG imports and gas storage will be needed to cover peak demand.’
LNG imports push Australia’s projected gas supply gap out to 2026 (msn.com)
I had though Des Mog was the gentleman’s name.
The chappy is confused, he thinks visible air pollution is due to carbon dioxide.
I find it amusing that the vast majority of replies to this post are not discussing the rants/merits of the blog creator, but more concerned that young Eric believes that many of us would be happy to reduce CO2 levels.
GREEN THE PLANET! CARBON PLUS FTW! 😀
“environmental collapse.”
That itself is a piece of the noted propaganda strategies.
You make a series of claims. Extinction of species, warming oceans, etc.
Then you declare they all add up to an even bigger claim.
Then you point at the Boogeyman. The Bad Guy.
And your audience hopefully fails to examine the list of supposed threats, but simply decides surely at least a couple are valid.
Therefore Boogeyman.
Now, you could go back to the list. And examine each one. Until you figure out one by one that they are all made up or are nowhere as bad as claimed.
But by that time, the propagandist has added three more disasters!
“Environmental collapse” is not really a thing. It is the fictional price we pay for provoking or violating the rules of avoiding the Boogeyman.
We toyed with Nukular Energy. And got Godzilla.
Go watch “The Village” again. Follow the rules of the Elders or the Boogeyman will come out of the woods.
Well, quite independent of the question of how good it would be to use more nuclear power is the question what money spend on climate science and carbon reduction exactly is buying.
And in this regards the truth and fact loving James Hogan owes us readers an answer to the question what exactly is a Billion or a Trillion spend in USA exactly is buying in the case of India and China continuing to produce their electricity from increasing amounts of coal over the next 10years and the overall CO2 sensitivity being on the low end (which is kind of a worst case scenario for the case “use dollars to reduce future warming” he has to consider for this)
Hoggan wrote a book lamenting the “toxic rhetoric” and “divisive state of public debate.”
https://www.amazon.com/Im-Right-You%C2%92re-Idiot-Discourse/dp/0865718172
At the very same time, his DeSmogBlog site was (and is!) still doggedly defending Peter Gleick’s forged Fakegate “Strategy memo,” full of brazen lies, smearing Heartland.
https://sealevel.info/Peter_Gleick_DeSmogBlog_and_the_Fakegate_Scandal-Burton.html
Do you think Hoggan even knows how to spell the word hypocrisy?
James is really full of his own rightenousness isn’t he? Can someone open a window please.
I find it fascinating that Warmists like James Hogan all seek to accuse the sceptics of doing exactly what they do themselves although to a much greater extent; their misinformation being ubiquitous and encapsulated in the CAGW viral Meme, now at pandemic levels.
This is a standard left wing/Marxist tactic.
I personally DO have a problem with any n all of the co2 bullshit cleanups lowerings etc
its NOT a problem
cleaning up the long left serious pollution by toxic chem waste etc in legacy sites for eg
go for it
we could prob have sorted em all with the money wasted ON the warmists wet dreams
“The more I delved into the war on fact-based reality, the angrier I got. The disinformation was so blatant and shameless. And much of it involved ad hominem attacks. But the main source of my anger was the effectiveness of the tactics: They worked, at least somewhat. Toxic conversations like these stall our ability to think collectively, act in our own interests and solve the many dangerous environmental problems stalking everyone on Earth”……… for a brief moment I thought he’d seen the light, then I realised he was just projecting.
Eric writes: “Here’s a truth for you James. Most of the contributors who write on WUWT would have no problem with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, so long as it doesn’t cost us anything.”
I disagree with that statement and here’s why: To vilify CO2 as bad or a pollutant, etc. is to be against Life. CO2 is the essence of all life on this planet. Without a minimum level of around 150 ppm CO2, all plants die. This leads to all animals dying – extinction of all terrestrial life on this planet.
Hence anyone who supports, argues for or agrees with the notion of CO2 as bad – are themselves serving an evil purpose often under the guise of a misguided messiah complex* to save the world. (*which is a mental disorder but that’s another topic)
We humans are in fact internal combustion engines! We use hydrocarbons (carbohydrates) as fuel, combine then with oxygen and “burn” them, and the waste products are CO2 and water. You could conclude after some simple maths that every human on this planet by living, breathing and eating is equivalent to driving a car for 1,000 to 3,000 miles a year in terms of hydrocarbons consumed and waste products generated from that “burning”.
So where does this misanthropic crusade end? Does it end with banning fossil fuels? Or is the goal much more sinister? To cull the herd of talking apes by some drastic percentage?
Proponents of CO2 reduction are de facto against life, and as such no compromise, or acceptance of their diatribe should be acceded to.
For evidence of the pure evil nature of the “greens” in their many crusades see MacRae’s essay here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
They have already killed more than Stalin, Hitler, Mao et al combined with various green initiatives. This latest one involving the Climate Change Cult promises to up the ante considerably by eliminating cheap and relatively clean energy needed to sustain the herd of humans on this planet now.
There is an existential threat, but it’s not fossil fuels nor CO2. It’s the brainwashing that the essence of life is something bad and to be banned!
PR consultant professional–don’t forget down is up
And if you did not get at least 3 media hits per day in our campaign of the Climate Crusades we are not doing our job.
The degree of PR consultant drumbeats is really a clue as to the size of the money quest underpinning the Climate Crusades. For such a massive money undertaking, they need to keep awareness at a Pearl Harbor attack level all the time.
Da Smog Bog is the last place I would go for info. I haven’t been there in years.
His description of fake news fits him to a tee.
CO2 has been a massive benefit to huminity helping to boost food production and generally halting the likely slide into the next ice-age. So I like the fact that CO2 is rising and am very pleased at the failure of those who want it otherwise. It has no real down side and because cooling is the only substantial risk we face rising CO2 makes the only real risk we face less and less likely.