According to recent surveys, while up to 3 out of 5 Americans now accept global warming is human-caused (anthropogenic global warming ), a significant number still attribute the source to "natural causes." Or express uncertainty about the primary cause, i.e. the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere. Given the denier or climate change minimalist attacks have increased in recent years it is instructive therefore to examine some of the methods employed to grab media microphones and distort climate reality.
1) Sowing Uncertainty to Muddy the Climate Threat:
This is perhaps the biggest tactic in use and has to do with what has been called 'agnotology'. This term, derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty). Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends .
The agnotologist and his ilk succeed once the following trope is emitted and embraced by the power structure:
‘There is still so much uncertainty, we shouldn’t invest billions to solve an exaggerates climate problem,’
But this is egregious on so many levels that it boggles the rational mind. First, any modern scientific pursuit must include uncertainty. Uncertainty is acknowledged every time I perform a measurement - say of the solar diameter- and express it with plus or minus kilometer values. It signifies that final measurement cannot be presumed free of measuring error which is inherent in all our physics, astronomy etc.
The matter of "too much uncertainty" is also the wrong way to look at the issue for any scientific model or measurement, because they can as easily UNDER-estimate a potential threat or occurrence as over estimate it. Let's take the case of city -busting asteroids which were the topic for discussion on one CBS Early Show several years ago, with physicist Michio Kaku. Kaku reported that in fact we have had to readjust our estimates of asteroid impacts based on new observations. Where we once expected a city-buster (say one that could take out a city like New York) every 150 years, we now have to expect it such a killer every 30 years!
In a similar vein, the uncertainty attached to climate models could also be in the direction of under-reporting or under-estimating the full impacts. Thus, the uncertainty could well be such that the runaway greenhouse effect could erupt fifty to one hundred years earlier than previously thought. Or the rising of the sea level owing to melting Arctic (and Greenland) ice sheets could incept a 10m rise as opposed to a 3 m one. This is why uncertainties are expressed as plus and minus values at the end of the measurement.
My point is that the trope expressed above doesn't take into account that the uncertainty implies that the problem is more likely to be worse than expected in the absence of that uncertainty.
2) Using 'Affordability' To Claim A Higher Priority Over Climate Change:
This tactic has come more and more into vogue given how the affordability metric has attained so much prominence since the Covid pandemic. (Which naturally caused a spike in prices for sundry goods on account of supply chain problems.) A recent example is Greg Ip's recent WSJ climate piece ('The Climate Crisis Clashed With Affordability and Affordability Won)'. Ip writes:
"Why have climate alarmists suddenly gone quiet? The science and the economics haven't really changed. Carbon emissions are still rising and the climate is still getting warmer."
Ip isn't kidding on the matter of rising CO2 emissions and warming.. Over the past ten years, from 2015 to 2024, have been the hottest on record, with 2024 being the warmest year overall, according to scientific and weather organizations. This marks a significant shift, as all the warmest years in recorded history have occurred within this recent decade. So what gives? What's changed? Ip provides what he believes is an answer:
"What's changed is the politics. Climate warriors persuaded the public to take climate change seriously, but not to pay for it, especially after the cost of living shot up in the wake of the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The share of respondents calling climate and the environment their most important issue has dropped from 14% in early 2020 to 6% now according to Yougov. By contrast 25% describe inflation as the top priority."
But the point being missed here is that economics and pocketbook issues, pounded over and over in the media- no doubt aided by overemphasis and misalignment in many polls. Thus, affordability began to assume supremacy in Americans' minds over climate. Despite the fact climate onslaughts, i.e. floods, tornadoes etc. were driving much higher home repairs, fuel, food, other expenses.
The Yougov poll intentionally or not, has sown confusion, namely that higher prices and inflation trump climate instability. They do not. Hence cannot be a more important issue objectively - i.e. in objective reality.
Oreskes analyzed “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change.’” She found that 75 percent of papers accepted the consensus view “either explicitly or implicitly,” while “25 percent dealt with methods or paleoclimate,” and took no position on AGW. Remarkably, she found that none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Later studies have found a small sliver of dissenting views, but the more the consensus has been studied, the sturdier it appears, while the dissenting literature is dogged with repeated problems. For example, in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22 , P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24)
“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”
In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.
A 2010 paper, Expert credibility in climate change, reconfirmed the 97 percent consensus figure, and found that “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC [or AGW] are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.” A 2013 paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, examined “11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011” and found that “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position,” while a parallel self-rating survey found that “97.2 percent endorsed the consensus.”
Despite that, an actual Mensa member, writing in a prominent Mensa Bulletin piece in 2010, actually posed these questions:
- Why does the media imply that the IPCC report reflects the consensus of thousands of scientists, when – as reported by CNN – there are dissenting scientists, like Richard Lindzen of MIT?
- If there’s consensus, why on Dec. 20, 2007, did the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Policy issue a report that 400 scientists now believe the evidence doesn’t support that “consensus"?
Nemko interpreted “consensus” in these questions to mean 100% agreement, but this isn’t the case at all. A consensus in the accepted English definition means the concurrence of an overwhelming majority.
By confusing the meaning of "consensus" these objectors seek to try to make the public believe the issue isn't settled when it is. Our media needs to do much more to make this climate consensus known.
4) Adoption of Climate Change Minimalization Using "Adaptation" Distraction
This tactic has been epitomized by none other than Bjorn Lomborg
Bjorn Lomborg - he of the now discredited "Copenhagen Consensus" - has escaped a lot of media scrutiny. This is perhaps because he knows how to shovel the B.S. Namely offering "adaptation" as the "less costly" alternative to things like lowering fossil fuel consumption, say by using gasoline taxes. Because the latter is so tied in with the affordability issues noted earlier, it often works. But it's a fool's errand.
In one 2021 WSJ op-ed ('Climate Change Calls For Adaptation, Not Panic', Oct. 21 he more or less doubles down on his adaptation twaddle, writing:
"Adaptation doesn’t make the cost of global warming go away entirely, but it does reduce it dramatically. Higher temperatures will shrink harvests if farmers keep growing the same crops, but they’re likely to adapt by growing other varieties or different plants altogether. Corn production in North America has shifted away from the Southeast toward the Upper Midwest, where farmers take advantage of longer growing seasons and less-frequent extreme heat. When sea levels rise, governments build defenses—like the levees, flood walls and drainage systems that protected New Orleans from much of Hurricane Ida’s ferocity this year.
Nonetheless, many in the media push unrealistic projections of climate catastrophes, while ignoring adaptation. A new study documents how the biggest bias in studies on the rise of sea levels is their tendency to ignore human adaptation, exaggerating flood risks in 2100 by as much as 1,300 times. It is also evident in the breathless tone of most reporting: The Washington Post frets that sea level rise could “make 187 million people homeless."
Lomborg appears not to grasp adaptation to a post tipping point climate change world is a non-starter - for the simple reason human biology isn't designed to survive weeks without a reprieve from 120-130F day temperatures that only dip minimally at night. And for which most places do not have the luxury of air conditioning. e.g.
As I noted therein,
Lytton, B.C. reached a high of 49.6C (121.3F) on Tuesday, the day before its residents evacuated as raging wildfires devastated the town. In Portland according to one official:
“People were literally crawling to the Sunrise Center because it was so hot. They were vomiting, burnt and dehydrated,
And what of the power grid that supports it? We're informed now that the residents of Seattle and Portland are trying to get a/c for their homes - and orders are backed up. But as one official pointed out, 'Our grid is not designed for such intensive use of air conditioning. The grid will be overloaded.."
