The Heartland Institute and climate deniers (sometimes a topic here) was the focus of a PBS special called “Climate of Doubt” this week. The episode is here.
•The documentary talks about how the tea party and climate deniers have hooked up create a political force. At political rallies, climate deniers are introduced like “wrestlers” to cheers from the crowd. It sounded like that too!
•It also talks about how “do it yourselfers” at home can pick their own endpoints and show a cooling trend downward with squiggly little lines. Scientists call this going “down the escalator,” it stated.
•It pointed out how skeptics touted thier Ph.D’s, but they were not in the science being discussed.
Does all this sound familiar?
No mention of the Heartland Institute gift store, which happily mixes politics with science. Here are some gift items:
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Interesting that the shirt says I love kickin’ status quo(‘s butt). Is that what they really mean? Ironic since the TP and deniers are really puppets of the gajillionaires who actually run the country, enlisted to defend the status quo and fight change at all costs. Maybe I’m misunderstanding? Or maybe they actually believe they are fighting against the status quo? Or maybe they just don’t know what status quo means?
Seems more important to focus on why they are motivated to deny the need for change, than on the associated numbers, facts, and figures. It’s a psychological question – not a numerical one. If your entire career, and therefore the ability to put food on your family’s table, and the career and livelihood of all your buds and their families, is all built upon a certain industry or lifestyle, and then you are presented with facts or figures that indicate that industry or lifestyle is ruining the world at a pace much faster than other industries or lifestyles, it comes across as a personal attack on your industry or lifestyle. Personal attacks trigger defensive reactions, and in the process they shut down any opportunity for rational and critical thinking that looks objectively at both sides of the story. It’s all just one big defensive reaction. When you look at it that way, the motivation to be part of the TP or to vote for Romney makes more sense. The psychology of the tea party is fascinating. The science – not so much.
I think Russ is a true believer that Global Warming isn’t happening. The only thing I can think of is deniers are generally anti government people and they believe governments around the world are going to take over our lives through measures to prevent Global Warming/ Climate Change from getting worse. I wish they would use that argument rather than denying it is happening. The bottom line is we have lost so much control over our government people have forgotten the government is owned by us. The view government as an other instead of our responsibility and have forfeited their power to the greedy to control it.
It is funny how they say angrily that it’s not happening at all, when what (we can only assume/project) they really mean is that “yeah I know the climate is changing – it’s always changing – the current trend is warmer on average but I’ll be six feet under before it becomes a serious problem anyway, so, I’d rather worry about the things that can be changed while I’m still alive. Every generation has its challenges and all that climate stuff is not my generation’s challenge. Defending personal attacks on my chosen industry/lifestyle is my generation’s challenge, and the best way to do that is to defend the status quo. And the best way to do that is to marginalize those who are insulting me. And the best way to do that is to act as a vocal climate-change denier.”
It sure seems like the deniers are winning. There hasn’t been any mention of global warming in this election cycle, even with another record warm year with droughts hammering the Midwest. Worse, not only are they winning with silencing global warming as a national concern, they seem to be pretty good at getting rightwing nuts elected who demonize evolution and women being able to control their own bodies.
How is this for a wingnut?
“Broun is a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee, of which Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) is also a member.
Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said last week that evolution and the big bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of Hell.”
“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” said Broun, who is an MD. “It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/06/paul-broun-evolution-big-bang_n_1944808.html
Steve,
Both the Democratic and Republican parties are captured by the fossil fuel industry. The fact Obama has thrown out clean coal multiple times is very disturbing to me.
The Commission on Presidential Debates is run by the leadership of both the major parties.
http://www.opendebates.org/theissue/
Not to mention the for profit news outlets who moderate the debates have tens of millions of advertising awaiting for them from the same industry.
Noam Chomsky wrote a good Op Ed about the black out on Global Warming/ Climate Change, it is called “Issues That Obama and Romney Avoid”
My understanding is that no one has thrown out coal. It just can’t compete with natural gas as of lately.
No doubt Ben, there is plenty of reason to be concerned with the Democrats acting like sled dogs for the industry sleigh. We really do need a progressive third party to be up on stage in the debates, if only to remind everyone some of the things the two parties have let slip by, like this thing we are headed for called the climate cliff.
Greg,
If you force the fossil fuel industry to retain the costs of cleaning up their pollution the industry becomes too expensive to afford. The way it has worked is our legislative and regulatory agencies have been captured by big business in every industry, which in turn has the government either ignore or pick up the external costs of doing business.
Nuclear is a perfect example of how an industry and its reps, US legislators and even the US executive branch will tout it as an viable inexpensive energy source. It is the most expensive energy source on the planet that is subsidized to the tune of trillions globally making it appear like a viable option. Without Price Anderson nuclear energy could not get insured in the US.
Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html
Is not the same true of the “clean coal” you seemed to indicate had merit?
Just for the record, I believe that conservation combined with renewable energy has the only hope for sustainability and perhaps not even possible there.
Greg,
Clean coal is a hoax and that is why it was disturbing to me to hear so called “liberal/ progressive” President Obama promote the idea.
Conservation and renewable energy is the way forward.
I watched the show last night on KVIE and was really amazed at the statements made by some of the non-believers that climate change / global warming is not occurring. However, a couple key points stood out for me in the program. First, Fred Singer, “Scientist”, is historically anti-everything and a non-believer of so many issues. Climate change is just another added to his list of issues. He apparently is making a good living writing books and selling his version of “the truth” at these small gatherings of his devoted followers. Hey, if the suckers are willing to line up and buy his books, tapes, publications, and other published nonsense, well, its their money to throw away. A fool and his money, etc.
Speaking of money, the itemization of the featured anti-climate change proponents in the program who have accepted and/or continue to accept financial contributions from energy companies (like Exxon specifically) to support their anti-climate change agenda spoke volumes and summarized the whole story well. As the old saying goes, just follow the money…..
Exxon began running advertorials (paid ads that look like editorial columns) questioning the need for cleaner exhaust emissions as early as 1985. They knew climate change was a problem long before the public and they have been “educating” the public with false information ever since. It’s no wonder that some people actually believe it’s a hoax. Some scientists now say it’s too late, that cutting carbon emissions will do little to stem the tide of change and we should focus our attention on dealing with climate change rather than trying to prevent it. Thanks Exxon, the truth might have made a difference 25 years ago.
I actually don’t think ‘the deniers’ are winning. They may have made climate change persona non grata at the Presidential election banquet, but all indications are that most Americans believe the climate is changing, that humans are the cause of most of the change we are experiencing, and that we have a responsibility to do something about it. Yale has been tracking climate change attitudes in the US public for more than a decade now, and the results show that those believing in AGW are on an upward trend. There was a brief downturn between 2007-2010 while we were focused on the economy and saw adaptation and mitigation strategies as a threat to our economic priorities, but that is waning in the last two years.
One significant factor in shifting peoples perception of AGW has been the clear evidence in our everyday lives. The US has experienced the hottest decade not just in recorded history, but according to a slew records, for the last several tens of thousands of years. And we see that actualized as heat waves, drought, reduced crop yield, scarcity of water in the west, increased risk of forest fire, flooding events, and human health impacts.
Dengue fever in Florida–is it a real possibility now? A return of malaria, what does that mean to our public health systems? Bringing mom at age 80 to the mountains because air quality at home is causing respiratory problems? Paying too much for food?
The next meme I expect ‘the deniers” to pull out is exactly what Joe day lighted (I know he was not using it as a meme); that it is too late. But it is not too late. Even though most scientists agree that temperatures will rise 2-4 degrees C, with catastrophic consequences, precisely what those consequences are and how much they will impact human and natural systems is largely unknown. And humans have shown a remarkable ability to adapt, mitigate impacts, survive, and thrive in precisely these sorts of situations.
What we really need though is the mind-set to believe that we can do something to reduce impacts, and my biggest fear is that as democracy, civic engagement, and social capital in the developed world diminishes, our social systems cannot support the types of action we need to take. To think that climate, poverty, economies, and democracy are not intricately linked, and that a declining predictability in our climate will not drive failed economies, increases in poverty, and threats to democracy, would be a huge mistake. These are inter-related issues. Th truth is that AGW is a threat to individual liberty and democracy, but the deniers don’t see that yet. It is our job to see it first, and drive the actions that reduce impacts so that the threat to liberty is met. In an ironic twist, we are actually the defenders of the rights that “the deniers” most fear losing. So be it.
P.J. O’Rourke has said–paraphrasing as best as I can remember–that many deniers aren’t really in denial, but just figure there really isn’t anything that we can do now that will make a difference. An ‘after me the deluge’ (literally) mindset.
I wonder how big a topic climate change is deep in impoverished countrysides of China, India, even our own Bible Belt. The world’s population will continue to grow, medical science keeps people alive longer, etc., thus there will continue to be increased demand for food and man-made products, regardless of the unhealthy/dangerous side effects of never ending “growth.”
So many poor people, subsisting at poverty levels, features of a good life that are taken for granted by the more affluent, are so out-of-reach, they might as well be on Mars. No money, no recreation, no real access to Fun, the hoi polloi resort to the one pleasure available; making more babies.
China’s Politburo–or maybe it was just Mao’s decree–recognized this and declare the one baby per couple law. Unpopular and often ignored where possible, the law recognizes that China was unable to provide for all those–and many more–hungry bellies. Why is it different for the Earth as a whole? Without industrial contributions–like fertilizers–millions would die, I would think.
Friends from back east tell me how rare it now is to see fireflies at dusk. When I was young, we’d chase after them and catch them in jars, yet it never made a dent in the flickering of light above the fields of uncut grass. And that is merely one example of change.
Deniers deny fanatically and who can persuade ones so obsessed.