A lot of people think climate change is a big fuss over nothing.
People they trust are doing a masterful job persuading them. A close look at a Fox News article:
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| Click: Fox Website |
Politicians, activists, and observers will rarely get a clearer example of persuasive technique. The article minimizes, doubts, belittles, and accuses. It assures readers there is nothing to worry about as far as climate is concerned, and that the real issue is that our team is under attack by dangerous, manipulative people.the
Close your mind. Close our ranks.
Here is how it is done:
1. Set the stage with a headline, shown above. Opponents are emotionally wrong ("alarmists,"), factually wrong ("deny science"), and morally wrong ("misrepresent.")
2. Position yourself as reasonable and open minded. The first words of the article are: "There is no doubt that climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed and addressed." See? Aren't we fair? We agree to discussion.
3. Immediately define your opponents as emotionally and morally flawed, citing in the second sentence "alarmist headlines and personal agendas." This is the textbook definition of begging the question, the logical fallacy where one assumes the truth of an argument or proposition to be proved, without arguing it.
4. Diminishment. The article sets the frame and context. "First, many have mistakenly called it the hottest month ever recorded. What the report actually said is that it was the hottest June ever recorded, not the hottest month. Second, technically speaking, yes, it is the hottest June "ever recorded." But recordings are only officially recognized back to the 1880s. During the Hadean period billions of years ago, Earth had a surface temperature of 450 degrees Fahrenheit." After all it is only the hottest June, and we have been keeping records for only 130 years, and the heat is nothing compared to earth's early history. Warming is no big deal compared to molten lava.
5. Raise doubts about the data. The article's next section gives readers an opportunity to throw up their hands and doubt all data, citing "margin of error" and "plus or minus" and uncertainty of past predictions by supposed experts and "variation is the spice of life."
6. Say the available data is irrelevant. "Whether 2017 was warmer or cooler than 2015, or 2014 or 2013 really doesn’t prove anything. The only way to see a pattern is to look at long-term temperature changes spanning hundreds of years, along with many other measurements." We would need hundreds of years of data, to have data worth considering, so forget about data. We don't know anything, so relax.
7. Describe the opponents' climate position as so unimportant it can be conceded, without weakening the article's proposition. This part is cynical and brilliant. It switches the climate change argument to be about the bad morality of climate activists, not about whether climate is an issue of concern. It is about tribe, about sides. Those wacko alarmist environmentalists against us. They can concede climate facts because what is important is them. Here is how the article does it: "Yes, the trend is warming. Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know its concentration has increased drastically since the industrial revolution. Yes, we know it is harmful. But if we are so desperate to get our points across that we embrace alarmism, we demean the real science."
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| Log Truck rally in Oregon |
8. Redefine the issue into an accusation of immorality and zealotry. Those crazy climate activists are mean-spirited liars, making false accusations, so our team needs to stay outraged. We don't know about the science, but we do know who are enemies are and what they are doing: "Climate change zealots vilify climate change deniers for denying science."
The Fox News ecosystem is tight, and on message. The message has consequences.
This is how the climate message is being described to Republican, socially conservative Americans. People in the Fox ecosystem don't see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a brave woman speaking truth to power. They think climate change is a hoax, or over-hyped at the very least, and that it is a self interested power grab by AOC and other out of touch urban elites.
This happens even in Democratic, environmentalist Oregon. Twelve GOP state senators in Oregon shut down a cap-trade-rebate bill by mobilizing rural people, and defining the issue as Portland liberals running roughshod over the lumber industry, loggers and log truck drivers, and rural people generally. They didn't see climate as an issue about wildfires, drought, and the country we leave to our grandchildren, i.e. about climate. They see it as an issue of bad people lying so they could implement an unfair tax targeted at rural people.
Articles like this Fox one show where that frame comes from.
4 comments:
The fact of human exacerbation of climate change, and the science behind it, is no longer much an issue. The Democratic Party's science issue of human causes has been overtaken by the Republican Party's political issue of unfair and ineffective solutions. Why should Oregon cut emissions when Texas does not, hurting only Oregon companies when total Oregon emissions are statistically irrelevant? Why should the US cut emissions and hurt the US economy when India and China make much smaller efforts, given that if the US cut all emissions-- total economic standstill-- it would still not stop or reverse global warming? Jay Inslee's climate change initiates were twice rejected by even liberal Washington voters. That's why the Green New Deal has gone nowhere, Democrats are not going to push expensive fixes that lack qualities of fairness and equal burden. The GOP now dominates the entire debate against defensive Democrats.
Hopefully this issue, ignored in the last election, will be at the forefront in this one.
What cynics are missing is that it's not necessarily a matter of stopping or reversing climate change, it's likely too late, but adapting and surviving. We don't know the full effects, though it's pretty certain Miami will become our Venice.
Work on your gondola rowing skills.
The impact of climate change has had and will continue to have increasing negative economic consequences on communities, infrastructure, agriculture and human health. Computer modeling using increasingly common simulation tools by firms like https://resilient-analytics.com/ are being used by banks, insurance companies and governments to quantify financial risk related to climate, and include it in their underwriting requirements: I.e. lend or don’t lend?, insure for how much or don’t insure? Raise taxes to pay for accelerated infrastructure end-of-life. We’ll all pay for it one way or another. The arc of time and complexity on this topic is too great for short-term ways of thinking and as long as the Fox propaganda machine keeps telling their audience what they want to hear. Postmodernism is alive and well.
The really sad thing about the Republicans killing the cap-and-trade bill is that it was originally a Republican idea. It was promoted by the Reagan white house. It uses markets to do its work - Republicans are supposed to like that. But apparently, if Democrats decide it's a good idea, it must suddenly become pretty awful.
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