Marketing 'Climate Change'

FROM-American Thinker


By Steve McCann

A good indicator that a movement ostensibly based on so-called scientific facts has run out of steam is when that crusade must openly resort to crass marketing techniques to sell a flawed product.  As with so many iconic beliefs of the left, it is not the message that is flawed, but the messaging.

Der Speigel, the paragon of leftist thinking in Germany, just published a lengthy article, entitled "Green Groups try to Sex Up Climate Change," chronicling the movement's efforts to recapture the public's attention, which has severely waned over the past two years.  

Editors at major German newspapers are openly stating that global warming is a "loser" in media terms.  The New York Times quoted one science filmmaker as calling climate research "bo-ho-ho-ring" and "quite possibly, THE most boring subject the science world has ever had to present to the public."

Surveys have shown that in the Netherlands, once the hotbed of global warming hysteria, only one in three Dutch people is concerned about climate change.  The number is half that in the United States.

The loss of credibility is attributed to two factors: 1) the mistakes made public around a year ago on the U.N.'s 2007 climate report and 2) the "Climategate" scandal involving e-mails from the researchers at the University of East Anglia.  Per Der Speigel, "[t]his leaked correspondence revealed trench warfare that caused scientists to withhold some data and defend their results at all costs."

As the primary media strategy up to that time was centered on the credibility of the scientists involved, the PR damage was significant, and it caused the public to begin seriously questioning the validity of the movement.

So now the environmental activists, not willing to give up on an enormous source of money from government grants and extortion, have come up with a myriad of approaches to try to make the climate change argument attractive.  Some ideas are:

1. Greater emphasis on emotional messaging using animals such as polar bears and whales and people suffering the results of weather catastrophes.  An old but tried-and-true PR strategy that has lost its luster, but it is very difficult to give up.
2. Another old but successful tactic: sex sells.  At a recent Global Media Forum working group on climate change, the motto was "Climate change is sexy."  However, there is some argument that the attention would be on the shapely figure of an attractive female researcher standing in front of a glacier rather than on the message.
3. Climate activists have begun funneling millions of dollars into training programs for so-called environmental journalists to encourage even more advocacy journalism.  Apparently all the rest of us were foolish to believe there was nearly nothing but advocacy journalism in the mainstream media throughout the world.
4. Climate change discussion must become less abstract and come down to the level of the average person.  In other words, make it relevant in the day-to-day life of the individual by simplification and promotion along with easily understood solutions.  Whether these are genuine solutions is immaterial as long as they are presented with all the fanfare of being so.
5. Stop being so vocal and causing a commotion about climate change.  Instead, emphasize restraint and the ability to quietly and respectfully listen to opposing views.  A bit of acting talent may be required, but that should not be a problem when reading from a fictional script.
6. The movement needs a new "Messiah."  Al Gore has become yesterday's newspaper in the bottom of the birdcage, so someone has to be found who can arouse the masses -- per Andreas Ernst from Kassel University, "[j]ust as Martin Luther King Jr. awakened the civil rights movement."  Comparing every political crusade to the civil rights movement has become transparent and threadbare, but this is apparently a strategy from which the left cannot emancipate itself.
7. Lastly, climate researchers have started setting up new organizations that will communicate climate data better.  Coordination of messaging will be the order of the day.  The accuracy of the messaging has not been discussed.

So there you have it: soon we who are agnostics when it comes to the religion of global warming (now renamed "climate change") will be subjected to the best marketing strategy the human mind can devise.  As Europe shivers in the coldest winter in over 125 years and we see the wealth of the country squandered in foolish regulations and laws ostensibly geared to save the earth, we can be comforted in knowing the best and brightest are on the job to save the planet from itself.  We were foolish enough to believe that only God could do that.

Heated discussions

FROM-Times Higher Education


The email conversations at the heart of 'Climategate' suggest a campaign to nobble journals, marginalise climate-change sceptics and withhold data from other researchers, says Andrew Montford

The leaking, or perhaps hacking, of hundreds of emails from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia late last year has thrown the already turbulent world of climatology into turmoil. The significance of the emails is hotly disputed, but sceptics of the so-called consensus position allege that they contain evidence of the undermining of the peer-review process, attempts to pressurise journals, the withholding of data and code from outsiders, and at least one episode of the manipulation of results.

The accusations and denials will fly for months to come. So far, no fewer than five inquiries have been announced into various aspects of what has come to be known as Climategate, and some of these will not report until the middle of the year. However, regardless of the outcome, the affair raises ethical issues that will be of interest far beyond the narrow confines of climate science. Some of the most important concern the world of academic publishing.

Among the most serious allegations to emerge in the wake of the leaked emails is that CRU scientists tried to "nobble" scientific journals that accepted papers from sceptics. There are suggestions in the emails that as many as four different journals may have had their normal procedures interfered with.

One particular series of emails dating back to 2003 is a case in point. The story unfolds in messages exchanged by some of the most prominent names in climatology, including Michael Mann, the author of the famous "hockey stick" paper, Phil Jones, the CRU director who has stood aside in the wake of the Climategate affair, and Mike Hulme, at that point the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climatic Change Research and now a prominent media commentator on climatology and its policy implications.

In the messages, the scientists discuss how to deal with the recent publication of a paper in the journal Climate Research by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, two prominent climate-change sceptics from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Mann and his team speak of encouraging colleagues to stop treating Climate Research as a valid publication for scientific findings, and of "getting rid of" both the paper's editor, Chris de Freitas, and the journal's editor-in-chief, Hans von Storch. Another plan involved trying to precipitate a mass resignation from the editorial board. In the event, four of the journal's editors did in fact resign in protest, including von Storch.

Clearly readers who object strongly to elements of the content of a journal have the right to protest - the readers of, say, the Journal of Evolutionary Biology could not be expected to accept the publication of articles about creationism. Few would see the submission of a letter of complaint to the editor as crossing any ethical boundaries in these circumstances. However, when more aggressive measures are adopted by unhappy readers, the nature of the protest and the circumstances that precipitate it must give journal editors pause for thought.

While intelligent design may be objectionable in a scientific journal, Soon and Baliunas' paper was clearly within the boundaries of the scientific method - a valid contribution to the literature, albeit perhaps a flawed one. In these circumstances, how should a journal editor respond to a letter of protest? A single letter may be shrugged off, but what about a campaign of letter writing? This may appear much more like an attempt to impose an orthodoxy than a valid protest. There are, after all, well-established approaches to dealing with the publication of flawed papers, namely the submission of formal comments and critiques.

There are other ways of registering a protest, too. Readers can simply threaten to take their subscriptions elsewhere, and perhaps their authored contributions, too. There is an interesting hint of this sort of behaviour elsewhere in the Climategate emails from 2007 onwards, where scientists discuss the possibility that the International Journal of Climatology might accede to sceptics' requests and force the disclosure of all research materials, including intermediate results.

A discussion ensues in which there appears to be an agreement that this would be unacceptable and that mainstream scientists should refuse to publish in the journal if such a policy were put in place. This brings us to another somewhat nuanced question: what is an ethical way to deal with a journal?

Clearly scientists are free to read whatever journals they like and to publish wherever they choose, but is there a difference between cancelling a subscription and organising a campaign of threats to do so? If it is valid to choose to publish in a different journal, is it still valid to inform a journal that the most prominent practitioners of the specialism it covers will shun it if it does not toe the line? At what point does valid protest elide into something more sinister?

In the case of the International Journal of Climatology, it appears that while the journal was approached regarding its policy, there is no evidence that any threats were ever made. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that at the time of writing, the journal has still to finalise its policy on data sharing.

Issues of the availability of data and computer code have been a constant bone of contention between sceptics and mainstream climatologists. While newspaper headlines have been dominated by what appear to be attempts by CRU staff and their associates in North America to delete correspondence requested under the Freedom of Information Act, the more important story in terms of the conduct of science in this country concerns the repeated refusals of CRU staff to release the data and code underlying their global-temperature index.

As far back as 2005, Jones rejected a request for the data, telling Warwick Hughes, a sceptic and self-described "freelance earth scientist" with several peer-reviewed publications to his name: "Even if (the World Meteorological Organization) agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

Similar obstruction is revealed in attempts by Steve McIntyre, a sceptic and the editor of the blog ClimateAudit.org, to obtain the data underpinning the famous Yamal tree-ring chronology, which was published by the CRU's Keith Briffa and became a critical ingredient in most of the important global-temperature reconstructions.

Having had a direct approach turned down by Briffa, McIntyre approached Science, the journal in which the series had most recently been published. It excused itself by saying that the chronology had been published earlier in a different article, and suggested that McIntyre approach the author of the earlier publication. With the author being Briffa, continued non-disclosure was a foregone conclusion. When the journal in question, Quaternary Science Reviews, also turned down a materials request, a dead end was reached.

Only in 2008, when a third journal finally enforced its own data policy and made Briffa release his figures, was it revealed that parts of this critical dataset were based on just a handful of trees, raising major questions over the data's reliability and role in important public policy decisions.

Is it valid to refuse to release research materials to opponents? It is known that the CRU temperature dataset was sent to a sympathetic researcher in the US just months before a request for the same data from a sceptic was turned down on the grounds that confidentiality agreements prevented their release. In this light, the CRU's claims that the data are confidential look far-fetched.

Sceptics are universally of the opinion that the scientific method requires all research materials to be released to friend and foe alike, but the Climategate emails suggest paranoia among some mainstream climatologists - a sense that sceptics were on a campaign to do them down. This appears to have enabled them to justify to their consciences a steadfast refusal to provide information to their opponents.

If, as the emails suggest, some scientists are in fact putting illegitimate pressure on journals, either to influence the peer-review process or to prevent the release of data, it is easy to see how editors may find it difficult to respond. In the face of a threat by the most prominent scientists in any specialism to shun a given publication, many would surely capitulate.

But given the centrality of replication to the scientific method and of climatology to political policy decisions, a way must be found to ensure that data and code are universally available. If journals were to present a united front on the issue of the availability of materials, it would be a valuable start.


Andrew Montford is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (2010), a history of some of the events between the publication of the Soon and Baliunas paper and the leaking of the Climatic Research Unit emails. He works in scientific publishing. More...

" another nail in the coffin "

FROM- mateoLCD Weblog

Douglass/Knox: Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance

This new paper (accessible through a paywall at ScienceDirect) by David H. Douglass and Robert S. Knox makes for a fascinating reading. It is well written, easy to understand and documents essentially two important happenings:.........
read entire article here

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A tanning booth for Al?

This kind of reinforces what everyone knows, as a general rule a warmer climate is better for life and biodiversity than cold weather.

FROM- Science Alert

Heat may speed up evolution

Mammal species living in the tropics are evolving faster than their counterparts living in cooler environments, according to research carried out by New Zealand researchers.

It had previously been assumed that rates of genetic change in warm-blooded animals were independent of climate.

The new study demonstrates that DNA evolution occurs substantially faster in mammal species living in warmer environments relative to those living in cooler environments.

Led by AUT University evolutionary biologist Len Gillman, the team was also made up of researchers from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland, including Dr Shane Wright, whose earlier work was highly influential in establishing differing evolution rates between plants in different climates.

In this and previous work, Wright’s research has been supported by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, the Māori Centre of Research Excellence.

Gillman says the rate of evolution was markedly different, and over prolonged evolutionary periods of time, this difference in evolutionary rate might account for the enormous accumulation of biodiversity in warmer areas like the tropics.

“The results show that species occupying warmer climates have almost 50 per cent more DNA evolution relative to those in cooler climates. These results come from pairs of species generally living in close proximity to each other so we would expect the effect to be far more pronounced over continental and global scales.”

Gillman’s research has also identified potential negative evolutionary consequences of scarce basic resources related to available energy supply.

Australasian marsupials in the study showed less significant increases in their rates of evolution when compared to their counterparts living in cooler climates and it is thought that this might be linked to the drought conditions in the warmer environments of Australia.

Gillman says there are indications that the slowed rates of evolution may be due to periods of hibernation or inactivity of animals living in cooler environments.

“Earlier research we carried out identified faster rates of DNA evolution in plants living in tropical regions but other scientists did not believe that climate could possibly have any bearing on mammal evolution given their constant body temperatures.”

“These results provide support for the hypothesis that high tropical species richness is caused by faster rates of evolution and speciation in warmer climates.”

The study, which is the largest of its kind, involved a comprehensive global data set that included 260 mammal species, from 10 orders and 29 families.

The research findings of Len Gillman and Shane Wright have today been published internationally in the Royal Society’s biological research journal Proceedings B.


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Climate change worse than North Korea!

Every week the mainstream media floods the newswires with perilous climate change predictions intended to spur the masses into taking drastic action either through fear or guilt. The actions suggested usually require massive amounts of money to be given as aid to developing nations to help them ‘cope with global warming’ and ‘develop green technologies’. Meanwhile, here in the so-called ‘rich nations’ we must concede generations of development and drastically change our lifestyle through voluntary measures suggested by guilt-ridden environmentalists, such as switching to a vegan diet or installing ‘green products’ into one’s home that are typically far too expensive for most low and middle income families budgets. And soon these changes will more-or-less be forced upon the populous as currently being drafted in congress is a climate change bill that would tax anything and everything that produces carbon emissions.

It is my belief that people cannot fully grasp the full breadth of what the green movement has become. They’re not about saving the rainforest or the polar bears, per say, as much as they are in the business of installing a new word order. A socialistic world government full of entitlements for the many that have never strived for achievement given to by the few that have. The green movement has manipulated their way to prominence using fear of calamity and guilt of consumption with the media perpetrating their every word. For example, a google news search on ‘climate change’ yielded 42,972 articles over the last one week period but ‘North Korea’ yielded a mere 39,765. Please keep in mind that North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb this week and launched -‘tested’- half a dozen surface-to-air missiles that take flight paths over Japan. They also renounced a 50+ year old treaty and threatened war. There are many other examples of factions coming to power through trepidation of the people and manipulation of the press, but they usually result in totalitarian dictatorships that generations of free people fought, and died, against but ultimately defeated.


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With 42,972 articles circulating the web over the course of one week I figured that I would highlight those getting the most coverage and dissect them in a weekly review. Usually most global warming articles follow the same sequence; it’s bad, worse than previously thought, actions must be taken immediately, the poor will suffer the most, we will all pay dearly for our foul behavior of improving our lives. But looking a bit deeper one can find all the subtle hints of socialism, all the bias to advance ideology, all the spin to promote calamity and that’s what I look forward to pointing out.

This article to be featured is quintessential climate change reporting on a new study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum. The tone is set in the first sentence.

Climate change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million by 2030.

The article doesn’t elaborate how they come up with this figure or how the GHF makes the determination of whether the number of deaths from a flood is from climate change or just the natural course of events that have surely occurred a million times over before and will again. Do people living in a flood plain that die in a flood get counted as deaths from weather disasters due to climate change? Do people living below sea-level that die in a hurricane’s storm surge get lumped in there as well? Or how many deaths from sickness and starvation, problems mainly in developing nations, is caused by oppressive regimes, the antedecent conditions, overpopulation, hygienic practices, etc. rather than climate change and how is that determination made?

"Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The first hit and worst affected are the world's poorest groups, and yet they have done least to cause the problem."
- Kofi Annan, former U.N. secretary-general and GHF president

I’m not surprised by the guilt nor am I surprised by who’s spreading it, our once dear head of the UN, Kofi Annan. I’m further not surprised that he is now the president of an organization spreading global warming alarmism, as Annan went on to say

"Copenhagen needs to be the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated. The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness."

If you remember, Copenhagen is that little pet project the UN, amongst the many minions, is working on intent to financially punish carbon intensive nations and redistribute this wealth to those nations that can’t just seem to get it together. No matter the billions in aid already sent to such nations which is squandered through government corruption carried out by tyrannical leaders, never making it to the people of these nations, we must put previous generosities aside and be forced into paying international carbon taxes to be given to these countries reparation-style.

"Funding from rich countries to help the poor and vulnerable adapt to climate change is not even one percent of what is needed. This glaring injustice must be addressed at Copenhagen in December."
- Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam in Britain and a GHF board member.

Previous to this statement the article noted that international funds, specific to climate change, pledged annually by the so-called ‘rich nations’ is over 400 million dollars. But this is an injustice. I take it we’re supposed to fund every infrastructure project designed to hold back nature in poor countries, despite having yet mastered that art here in the rich countries.

But this begs the question, just how are we faring in the rich countries. We’re currently in the midst of deep recession that doesn’t show too many signs of ending any time soon. In the US, unemployment has likely passed 9% since the last report, though some will argue it’s closer to 16% when accounting for those not on the unemployment rolls and those who’ve had hours severely cut. One in eight are in danger of losing their home to foreclosure and what people forget about this number, it no longer includes those that have already lost their homes due to foreclosure, of which there are many. The poverty rate continues to linger around 15% but will likely grow as the recession begins to take its toll. The bailout bubble looms which promises to devalue our currency, with ramifications in the commodities market understood, while sending inflation into overdrive. Government is growing beyond the control of the people and is spending more money than it takes in. Funny, I didn’t know having negative dollars was considered being rich?!

The Catlin Arctic Fraud (2)

More than two weeks before the scheduled end of the insurance company sponsored Catlin Arctic Survey the trio of explorers are resting comfortably in Resolute, a small hamlet in the Nunavut province in northern Canada. In an attempt to call attention to global warming and to secure a climate accord in Copenhagen this December, arctic explorer Pen Hadow teamed up with Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley to embark on a 100 day mission to measure how fast the arctic sea-ice was melting by hiking to the North Pole.

During the early stages of their trek across the arctic sea-ice they endured biting cold temperatures of lower than -50°F, rendering state-of-the-art ice measuring equipment, such as the SPRITE, useless as the wiring became brittle and snapped like dry twigs. The extreme cold also caused members of the team to suffer bouts of hypothermia and frostbite, which compounded the fact that it was too cold to fly in supplies.

As the sun climbed higher in the arctic sky through April and temperatures warmed, though still remaining below zero, massive blizzards would sweep across the landscape. Once again the team would be forced to hunker down and ration food supplies as it became too dangerous to fly in resupplies to the team due to zero visibility in heavy snow.

Despite all the set backs, all the fights for survival, all the climbs over pressure ridges and the one and only swim across a lead, this expedition has some how become new poster child of global warming. Environmental groups have claimed the Survey to be one of the greatest pioneering efforts to call attention to climate change in the Arctic, but why?

The team failed not only to make it to the North Pole, their intended destination, but failed to reach the halfway point. Temperatures encountered on the mission ran below normal during most of the time, the extreme cold was punctuated only by intense blizzards.

“It’s mostly first year ice”, the team exclaimed, seemingly mystified by the lack of multi-year ice. Truth be told, satellite data beforehand showed their route as consisting of mostly first year ice so what’s so astonishing? Considering they couldn’t make it to the field of multi-year ice which lie in wait past the halfway point to the pole it comes as no surprise that they hardly found any. Traveling across what were once leads later frozen would help to ensure that caveat as well.

Discussed previously was this teams’ questionable supporters, radical environmental groups with political agendas; their sentiment for this mission, “to secure a solution" in Copenhagen; and their funding sponsor, Catlin, an insurance company in the market to profit from global warming. Now that they’re off the ice and the ‘data’ has been collected one still must consider their motives and question the statements coming from this group.

For example, upon reaching Resolute the expedition leader, and most vocal member regarding climate change, Pen Hadow, said that the teams’ decision to end their mission was due to “an earlier than expected start to the summer melt season”. One must wonder how Pen didn’t come to the same conclusion in 2003 during his solo mission to the North Pole when sea-ice extent was over a quarter million square kilometers less than the same date this year.

This misinformation will undoubtedly spur on more dire predictions of how soon it will be until ice in the Arctic completely melts away. The latest coming within hours of the team being plucked from the ice, "By 2013, we will see a much smaller area in summertime than now; and certainly by about 2020, I can imagine that only one area will remain in summer." Or so says Peter Wadhams, head of the polar ocean physics group at the University of Cambridge.

Meanwhile, readers can continue to watch the latest ice extent data in the “2009 Arctic sea-ice watch” located on this page. Currently, this date in 2009 places highest in extent over the time period covered over the previous 7 years, as seen below.