It’s a simple narrative to grasp. You say ‘Skeptic scientists first claimed global warming is not happening, then they said it is happening but is not man-made, then they caved in and said it is man-made and is either good for plants, or too expensive and too late to fix’. This makes them look foolish, and you look like a really smart, reasoned person with full knowledge of the topic. Mention those skeptics are funded by ‘big coal & oil’, and you’ll gain more adoration as someone who exposes sinister hidden truths. However, you better hope nobody notices how the skeptics have consistently said this entire time that the IPCC has not conclusively proved human-induced CO2, an otherwise harmless greenhouse gas, is the main driver of what little global warming we’ve seen over the last century. Continue reading
Category Archives: Repeated talking points
The ‘television editor told me “We did. Once.”’ Problem
My 11/8 blog piece recapped six problems seen with a single paragraph written by Ross Gelbspan in a 2005 Mother Jones article, and went on to tell about another of his major narrative derailments. But I mentioned there was one more big problem that needed a separate blog piece to examine it. That’s what this piece will cover. Continue reading
‘Industry PR Campaign sways US Opinion’; except practically nobody saw it
Ross Gelbspan’s “Snowed” article in the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones magazine described how a ‘misguided application of journalistic balance’ and ‘a decade-long campaign of deception, disinformation, and, at times, intimidation by the fossil fuel lobby’ was causing the media not to properly warn us about the perils of global warming. Accept his narrative without question, and it’s a rallying cry to solve the problem. But notice the errors in his article’s 5th & 6th paragraphs, and it makes you wonder how much more he gets wrong.
‘Public Paralyzed by, Denies, Global Warming Peril’. Today; 2007; 2000.
The idea that a large swath of public reacts with an automatic denial defense mechanism against the ‘too-large-to-comprehend’ global warming crisis is not a brand-new analysis today. It dates to a speech Ross Gelbspan gave over a decade ago. Continue reading