Summary: This is the first in a new regular feature on the FM website showing the best of the propaganda headlines that fill our news. Today we have six headlines telling an important story about us and climate change. Post your thoughts about these in the comments. Get your favorite headlines posted (past or present, mocking Left or Right) by emailing them to PropagandaHeadline at G mail dot com (anti-spam spelling). Enjoy! {2nd of 2 posts today.}
When we again see the world clearly, we can start the reform of America.
Six years ago began a new chapter in one of the most incompetently run campaigns ever, the preparation for the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009. The following snippets show one theme from that massive bombardment of stories intended to arouse people’s fear and so create a stampede for far-reaching public policy measures to save the world. These headlines warned that the end was near and time was running out.
(1) “President ‘has four years to save Earth’” says climate scientist James Hansen in The Guardian, 17 January 2009.
(2) “Global warming has reached a ‘defining moment,’ Prince Charles warns” in The Telegraph, 12 March 2009. “The world has “less than 100 months” to save the planet.
(3) “‘We have hours’ to prevent climate disaster” by Elizabeth May (Member of Parliament and leader of Canada’s Green Party) in The Star (Toronto), 24 March 2009. This was run as news, not an op-ed.
(4) “Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles” in The Independent. 9 July 2009. “If the world failed to heed his warnings then we all faced the ‘nightmare that for so many of us now looms on the horizon’.”
(5) “Five years to save world from climate change, says WWF“, Australian Broadcasting Company, 18 October 2009 — Excerpt…
“Karl Mallon, a scientist with Climate Risk and one of the key authors of the report, says 2014 has been calculated as the point at which there is no longer enough time to develop the industries that can deliver a low carbon economy. ‘The point of no return,’ he said.
“‘If we wait until past 2014 or that’s what modelling shows, then simply put, it will be impossible for industries to grow to the scale that has to be achieved in the time that is available.'”
(6) “Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the “impasse”.“, BBC, 19 October 2009. Brown was the UK PM.
The result
It was a fantastic success — for the attendees, most of whom enjoyed an expense-account funded vacation with their peers in picturesque Copenhagen. Here’s the word salad they produced. Three journalists at the Guardian evaluated the Conference in terms of its accomplishments: Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure.
Typical results from one of the most incompetently conducted campaigns ever.
Flash forward to now
Six years later we’re still in the pause — the hiatus or slowing of the atmosphere’s warming (see papers about its causes) — with most forms of extreme weather at normal levels (details here, more here).
Doubling down on proven failed tactics, climate activists have began a fear bombardment to produce a stampede of panicked people into November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (Paris! No global climate conferences in Chicago or Birmingham, where events are cheaper). Each week brings new papers confidently predicting that climate change will produce new horrors (odd that it produces not one good thing).
As the cherry on the news we get “His Royal Highness {Prince Charles} warns that we have just 35 years to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.” in the Western Morning News, 18 July 2015.” Nice of Charles to grant us a reprieve from his original June 2017 deadline.
Conclusions
A parallel on the right to this campaign is the series of confident predictions since 1984 that Iran will have nukes in a few years. The common element of info ops by Left and Right: activists understand us. They know we care only for tribal truths, that we seldom learn from experience, and care not that our leaders lie to us.
When we change so that these things are true no longer then we will have begun to regain control of America. For more about this, see these posts about Reforming America: steps to new politics.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about information and disinformation, about The keys to understanding climate change, and My posts about climate change. Also, see these posts about…
- Propaganda about climate change from Left and Right.
- An example of the mad climate change debate, showing America’s dysfunctionality.
- Is our certain fate a coal-burning climate apocalypse? No!
- The 97% consensus of climate scientists is only 47%.
- How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
To help you better understand today’s extreme weather
To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change
