Summary: The climate campaign has begun a new phase, with an acceleration in the pace of activists’ propaganda. Will this succeed?
It’s the end times!
Climate activists have begun a propaganda barrage the likes of which the American public has seldom seen. Every day new studies about the present or future dooms, new interviews with activists, and new reports about the terror experienced by children told every day that the world is dying.
Several years ago I predicted that they would do something like this. During the past 30 years, climate activists have prudently and steadily penetrated key American institutions, especially journalism, academia, NGOs, and Hollywood. While “skeptics” chortled and deniers laughed about the “alleged greenhouse theory”, activists amassed funding and power.
Soviet analysts evaluated strength not in terms of who was right, but by the “correlation of forces.” That is, the sum total of each side’s power in its various forms: economic, political, social, and spiritual. (See this DoD paper for more about this powerful concept.) Activists have them all, to an overwhelming degree. Now, on the eve of the 2020 election, they strike.
This is a well-executed campaign, what John Robb calls an “open source insurgency” (in his 2008 books Brave New War
The climate change debate has entered what we might call the “Campfire Phase”, in which the goal is to tell the scariest story. /1
— Oren Cass (@oren_cass) July 12, 2017
RCP8.5: the worst-case business as usual scenario.
This the doomster’s holy grail: the worst-case scenario used by Working Group I in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. For political effect, it is often falsely described as the business-as-usual scenario (i.e., it assumes changes in important and long-term trends). In fact, it is either unlikely or impossible – as a good worst-case should be.
Scores or hundreds of papers show that it would be pretty awful. They do not show that it would exterminate humanity. See four dozen examples. But journalists uncritically and without context announce each new paper as the funeral tolling of a great bell.
Bogus stories
Another favorite of the doomsters’ propaganda is fake news. Such as Okjökull is dead. They say that we killed it. The story is bogus, as usual. None of the horde of journalists and climate activists running this story bothered to do a search for papers about this glacier. Ten minutes of research destroys the story. But my personal favorite is this example of activists’ propaganda driving people to hysteria: a comment at Naked Capitalism in reply to me citing the IPCC as an authority about climate.
“The North Pole is a frickin’ LAKE, you ass. You are either being paid well for these posts, or you are off your meds. I swear, these Baghdad Bobs are going to be crowing about the earth cooling right up until their proteins start congealing from the heat.”
The story of the lake at the North Pole was, of course, bogus.
The single study syndrome
Andrew Revkin described “single study syndrome” (e.g., here and here): when people ignore the consensus of scientists and focus on a single cherry-picked paper. It is another staple of climate activists. NBC recently gave a fine example: “Climate scientists drive stake through heart of skeptics’ argument.” All contrary papers are ignored because this better met the political needs of NBC’s journalists. No replication needed! {In the real world, science is in the midst of the replication crisis – making replication even more essential.}
Exaggerating the science
Another staple tool of activists is exaggerating the science. For example, see this by activists Eric Holthaus (a writer at Grist).
A new study confirms that global warming has triggered an irreversible collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which will alone raise global sea levels by 10 feet.
It’s still up to us to decide if that ice takes 500 years to melt, or 50.
We are in a climate emergency. https://t.co/gKxVL2E9O6
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) August 15, 2019
Neither of these statements is correct. The paper is more tentative than Holthaus says, and it says nothing about “melting in 50 years.” Details here. Nevertheless, this tweet went viral on the Left. It was featured in the daily links at Naked Capitalism; it got 7 thousand retweets and 16 thousand likes.
Also see “Uncertainty in forecasts of long-run economic growth” by economists: P. Christensen, K. Gillingham, and W. Nordhaus. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 14 May 2018. RCP8.5 is no longer scary enough for activists. This paper exaggerates it many fold. Here is a brief rebuttal by Justin Ritchie. To mention just one factor: estimates of recoverable fossil fuel reserves are far less than required for this scenario.
Another fine example is this new VICE article about climate change. It cites studies saying that climate change has already forced millions of people to migrate. It’s the ur-theory of the Left, combining two of their favorite causes: open borders and climate change. These claims are often made, and always disintegrate upon examination. Just as this one does.
Results
“And that, senorita, is the weakness of our Cause. Communications. Those goons were not important. But crucially important is that it lay with the Warden, not with us, to decide whether the story should be told. To a revolutionist, communications are a sine-qua-non.”
— From Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
The volume of activists’ propaganda is too large; it makes rebuttal almost impossible. Joining the doomster parade is the fast track to fame for those in the physical and social sciences. Journals in an ever-widening range of fields just wave through studies about the effects of climate change (a travesty of peer-review). This influence on America’s communication systems is power. It is tactical genius resulting from decades of effort.
But as the Germans learned in WWI and WWII (they had to repeat the lesson), tactical excellence cannot overcome strategic errors. Activists rely on doomster messages that are beyond the climate science consensus. This gets attention, might prove to be a strategic error. After generations of bombardment by doomster messages from scores of causes, the US public has become inured to them. “It’s an announcement that the end is nigh. It must be Tuesday.”
The use of doomster tropes goes back to the beginning of the Cold War.
“Mr. President, if that’s what you want there is only one way to get it. That is to make a personal appearance before Congress and scare the hell out of the country.”
— Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s advice to Truman about how to start the Cold War. On 12 March 1947 Truman did exactly that. From Put yourself in Marshall’s place by James P. Warburg (1948). Warburg helped develop our wartime propaganda programs.
Since then US elites have used fear as one of their top tools to manipulate the US. Especially the Left.
“The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.”
— “Looking Backward from 2000 A.D.” by Paul Ehrlich in The Progressive, April 1970 (gated).
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
— Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
“If current trends continue by the year 2000 the United Kingdom will simply be a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people, of little or no concern to the other 5-7 billion inhabitants of a sick world. …If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
— Paul R. Ehrlich speaking in London at the Institute of Biology, as reported “In Praise of Prophets” by Bernard Dixon in the New Scientist, 27 November 1971.
See some of the many failed predictions of climate doom. So what are the results of the climate campaign? A new WaPo story shows that they have scared children: “Most American teens are frightened by climate change“, based on a new survey. Activists have a terrified 16-year-girl as their spokesman. But adults are less easily influenced.
Time will tell if climate activists succeed in panicking the American people. More likely, the weather will decide who wins the climate wars. Activists have laid the foundation for a decisive victory, but only a spell of extreme weather will push the American people to demand action.
Perhaps if activists had not abandoned mainstream climate science, they would not need to rely on the weather for success.
For More Information
Ideas! See my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change. Also, see all posts about fear, about doomsters, and especially these …
- Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- Focusing on worst case climate futures doesn’t work. It shouldn’t work.
- Lessons from the failure of the climate change crusade.
- Why skeptics will lose the US climate policy debate.
- Scientists show us why the climate change campaign failed.
- Lessons from the failure of the climate change crusade.
Activists don’t want you to read these books
Some unexpected good news about polar bears: The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened
To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change
