The right-wing media machine is a large part of the reason why denial of climate change persists in the United States long after the rest of the world has acknowledged the problem. Over the past few days, I've gotten a close-up look at how the machine works, because I've been its target.
Last Tuesday, February 15, I went to Capitol Hill on a mission: to confront the climate cranks who still refuse to accept what virtually every major scientific organization in the world, starting with our own National Academy of Sciences, has concluded: man-made climate change is real, happening now and extremely dangerous.
I also wanted to highlight a fact I have often marveled at during my twenty years of writing about climate change in books and for leading publications around the world, including Vanity Fair, Time, The Nation and most recently Politico. That fact is: virtually every major political party in the world -- except for the Republicans in this country -- accepts this mainstream scientific conclusion.
Yet the average American would not know this is the case. Why not? Because discussion about climate change in the U.S. is dominated by how the issue is framed by politicians and the media in Washington. And inside the Beltway, denial of mainstream climate science is regarded as a legitimate opinion rather than as an unfounded oddity.
As I wrote in an opinion article for Politico that appeared the morning I visited Capitol Hill and that seems to have enraged the right-wing, "If one judged solely by recent [U.S.] media coverage, one would think that the deniers have a point. In an embarrassing display of political gullibility and scientific illiteracy, news organizations have repeatedly played into the deniers' hands: by implicitly endorsing the deniers' unfounded accusations of fraud against scientists whose emails were stolen, by portraying a single error within a thousand page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as reason to question the entirety of mainstream climate science, and then by abandoning the climate story over the past twelve months, even as mainstream scientists were turning out one landmark study after another clarifying the extreme peril facing civilization."
And here's why this journalistic failure matters so much:
"Despite having no more scientific credibility than the Flat Earth Society, the climate cranks have held our nation's climate policy hostage for decades now. One reason the United States has done so little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the past twenty years is that our government and media have listened as much to climate cranks as to real scientists."
So, accompanied by members of the Sierra Club and Generation Hot -- the two billion young people around the world who have been condemned to spend the rest of their lives coping with the hottest climate our civilization has ever known -- I went to Capitol Hill to call the cranks to account and urge my colleagues in the rest of the media to do a better job of presenting the scientific truth about climate change.
We spoke with a number of leading deniers, most notably Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Inhofe had no response when asked why his Republicans are the only major political party in the world that still denies the science behind climate change. Instead, he said his scientists knew better than the overwhelming majority of scientists who say climate change is real and dangerous. Later, a leading public relations official for energy companies told us "the science doesn't matter."
You can watch our video of the event here:
It didn't take long for the right-wing media machine to start its attack. Inhofe's office posted its own video of our encounter a few hours later, spinning it as "an ambush" of the Senator, a charge that was repeated when the video later appeared online on the Fox network. (I don't call it Fox News for the simple reason that it's not a news outfit; it's a propaganda operation.)
It's hilarious to hear the right wing describe our questioning of Inhofe as "an ambush," thereby portraying the Senator as a victim. Here's what actually happened.
Inhofe was in a committee hearing room in a Senate office building, along with other senators. Like countless reporters have done for countless years, I waited outside in the corridor, as did a reporter from a trade journal, hoping to buttonhole one or more of the Senators when they emerged. When Inhofe came out, I walked up to him, accompanied by the Sierra Club and Generation Hot representatives, and asked if I could ask some questions about climate science. To his credit, Inhofe agreed and spent about six minutes debating with us.
Memo to the right-wing media machine: that is not "an ambush." It's called journalism, though I'm hardly surprised the Fox TV crowd doesn't recognize the distinction.
Instead of engaging on the substance -- most especially, the grievous wrong being done to the young people of Generation Hot by the deniers of climate change -- the right wing machine has tried to shift the focus to my journalistic tactics. They complain that I ambushed and took advantage of Senator Inhofe -- as if the Senator is an innocent child rather than a veteran politician who is used to being asked tough questions by journalists.
They allege that I must have something to hide because I released an edited rather than unedited version of my encounter with Inhofe. Excuse me? Editing is a basic journalistic tool, used in virtually every news story ever published, and I'm happy to share the unedited video with anyone who asks. What's more, I have tweeted links to Inhofe's own video -- that's how little I have something to hide.
I did make one mistake. In the haste of introducing myself to Inhofe, I misspoke by saying I was "with Politico." I had intended to say I "write for Politico," which I had done just that morning in the form of the above-mentioned opinion article. My words came out wrong, which I regret. But I refuse to allow this small slip of the tongue to distract from the larger issue I was pursuing with the Senator: the terrible price our children will pay for Republicans' unfounded denial of mainstream climate science.
I take the right wing media machine's attacks as a badge of honor and a sign that we drew blood. I suspect they're trying to shut down the discussion about climate science and the impacts on our kids because they know it's a losing conversation for them. So they try to distract by talking about everything else.
Nice try, guys, but it won't work. No matter how nasty and deceptive you are, we're going to stay at this and stay at it until Americans are no longer being taken in by your disinformation campaign.
Meanwhile, it would be helpful if more folks who do care about fighting climate change would speak out as well, including by circulating our video of the confrontations. We need to keep the focus on the science and our kids; that seems to scare the hell out of the cranks. These people are bullies, and the only way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them.
Mark Hertsgaard is the author of six books that have been translated into sixteen languages, including HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.
February 22, 2011 by Lisa Zyga
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientific concepts such as climate change, nanotechnology, and chaos theory can sometimes spring up and capture the attention of both the scientific and public communities, only to be replaced by new ideas later on. Although many factors influence the emergence and decline of such scientific paradigms, a new model has captured how these ideas spread, providing a better understanding of paradigm shifts and the culture of innovation. “Even though our model is extremely simplified and does not deal with right and wrong, it explores the effect of herd mentality in the propagation of ideas,” he added. “Our model suggests that herd mentality makes a larger system less innovative than several smaller ones. In short, for innovation it’s better to listen to yourself than to others.” Overall, the model shows how new paradigms have a tendency to quickly rise to dominance, to decline slowly, and to quickly be replaced by other paradigms. The results could have implications for science philosophy and science policy, as the model suggests that scientific diversity may need special attention.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-scientific-paradigms-fall.html
Global food supplies will face “massive disruptions” from climate change, Olam International Ltd. predicted, as Agrocorp International Pte. said corn will gain to a record, stoking food inflation and increasing hunger.
“The fact is that climate around the world is changing and that will cause massive disruptions,” Sunny Verghese, chief executive officer at Olam, among the world’s three biggest suppliers of rice and cotton, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. “We’re friendly to wheat, corn and soybeans and bearish on rice.”
Shrinking global food supplies helped push the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization’s World Food Price Index to a record for a second month in January. As food becomes less available and more expensive, “hoarding becomes widespread,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at FAO, said Feb. 9, predicting prices of wheat and other grains are more likely to rise than decline in the next six months.
Corn futures surged 90 percent in the past year, while wheat jumped 80 percent and soybeans advanced 49 percent as the worst drought in at least half a century in Russia, flooding in Australia, excessive rainfall in Canada, and drier conditions in parts of Europe slashed harvests.
Source: “Climate Change May Cause ‘Massive’ Food Disruptions,” Bloomberg, Feb 15, 2011-02-23
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-15/climate-change-may-cause-massive-food-disruptions-olam-s-verghese-says.html
http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/22/how-we-know-recent-global-warming-is-not-natural/
I think we should protect the enviroment but we don't have to change anything because the one preaching the most (IE: Gore and GE) are the ones who will make the most money....
If this were Cheney talking about using more oil, the left would scream he is screwing us....
Well then, why don't you prove to us with your scientific data why it doesn't exist? You deniers are always claiming the data is bad but you never provide peer reviewed evidence that disproves what the rest of the WORLD accepts.
1) "All scientific bodies of national or international standing agree with the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
2) "At the 2008 Future in Review Conference, Harvard professor James McCarth, former co-chair of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), was asked how many of the world's top 1000 climate experts would disagree with the basic scientific consensus that the increase in green house gas concentrations over the last 50 years to levels not seen in 650,000 years is primarily anthropogenic and is the cause of an increase in global temperatures.
He replied, "Five."
http://www.davidbrin.com/climate2.htm
3) "an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers... show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the IPCC..."
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
4) "A 2004 article by geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change. She... analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003,... none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Maybe they're all wrong and you're right. I doubt it.
If you speak of "locally," that's not climate, it's weather. There is a difference. And note:
"A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-term trend of increasing global temperatures... Looking at high and low temperature data from recent decades shows that new record highs occur nearly twice as often as new record lows."
That means we are getting hotter, not colder. Learn about this here: http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-cold-weather.htm
JAY: "glaciers are now, and have been growing for at least the past three years.">>
Not true. This is denier canard #35:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing-intermediate.htm
"While there are isolated cases of growing glaciers, the overwhelming trend in glaciers worldwide is retreat. In fact, the global melt rate has been accelerating since the mid-1970s."
Lot's charts an pictures laying it all out for you. Well referenced too.
“Climate change is already having an effect on the safety of the world's food supplies and unless action is taken it's only going to get worse, a Michigan State University professor told a symposium at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.”
Source: “Climate Change Affecting Food Safety,” ScienceDaily, Feb 22, 2011
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110221101319.htm
“Bad news for—achoo!—those who sniffle, er suffer their way through ragweed—sniff, snort, itch—season: A team of researchers has found that increased warming, particularly in the northern half of North America, has added weeks to the fall pollen season.”
Source: “Climate Change Extends Allergy Season in North America: Pollen season is lengthening in proportion to warming observed in North America.”, Scientific America, Feb 21. 2011
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-extends-allergy-season
Source: “How does the Medieval Warm Period compare to current global temperatures?” by John Cook, Skeptical Science, Aug 30, 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm
False, as Badgesouth notes. Furthermore, even if it was warmer globally during the MWP, which it wasn't, what would that prove? Given that climate change has multiple causes, would it disprove anthropogenic global warming?
"When they had wine vineyards in the UK "
They still do. Over 400 of them. http://www.english-wine.com/
"The fact that it is manmade is disputed"
Not by real scientists, sorry. The consensus is overwhelming, on a par with evolution.
"the periods in which life expanded on the planet the most was when it was warmer than it is right now. "
We. our civilization, and our fellow living species are all adapted for the current climate, not the one of millions of years ago. If you are waiting for evolution to catch up to a warmer world, it's going to be a long, long wait.
And anyway, climate scientists predicted global warming 35 years ago based largely upon human Co2 production and their predictions have certainly been shown to be correct. Note:
"The National Climate Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just announced that for the entire planet, 2010 is the hottest year on record, tied with 2005. And the period 2001 to 2010 is the hottest decade on record for the globe... the hottest 10 years on record in order:
2010, 2005, 1998, 2003, 2002, 2009, 2006, 2007, 2004, 2001
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/the-graph-that-should-be-_b_808747.html
Ehrlich may have been way wrong, climate science got it right.
“Building on recent research, the study examines the relationship between global temperatures and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tens of millions of years ago. It warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago, when global temperatures averaged about 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.
“National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl said that global temperatures might gradually rise over centuries or millennia in response to the carbon dioxide. The elevated levels of carbon dioxide may remain in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years, according to recent computer model studies of geochemical processes that the study cites.”
Source: “Earth’s hot past points to drastic global warming,” TopNews Network, Jan 14, 2011
http://www.topnews.in/usa/earths-hot-past-points-drastic-global-warming-26826
You've got a dog that won't hunt!
"Some surprising results are already evident. For instance, the long-term trends of indices representing the North Atlantic Oscillation, the tropical Pacific Walker Circulation, and the Pacific–North American pattern are weak or non-existent over the full period of record. The long-term trends of zonally averaged precipitation minus evaporation also differ in character from those in climate model simulations of the twentieth century."
Here's a link...please read the study and let me know your scientific differenced with it.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/full
Nowhere in the article does it say this is counter-intuitive to anthropogenic forcing.
You sound like you're getting paid to type find smut and re-interpret it the way you please.
Can you imagine the Republicans supporting free health care and increasing the health budget, increasing the foreign aid budget, claiming to be "the greenest government ever", planning to measure the general well being or "happiness" of the country for the first time, keeping non time-limited benefits, cutting the defence budget whilst also raising capital gains tax and keeping the 50p top rate of tax?
Speaking as a labour supporter they don't seem that bad in comparison. :0
Speaking as a labour supporter