3.10.2011

ZOMG!!1! Teh greatest science conspiracy EVAR imagined!!!!

Yawn.
But he did delete emails after receiving Jones’ request. He says he deleted the emails cited in the request that Mann forwarded to him from Jones. In response to Jones’ request that Mann ask Wahl to delete emails. But — and here’s where us non-scientists are missing the boat, it seems — Jones’ request was to Mann. You see? To, well, to ask Wahl to do what Wahl did. In response to which Mann forwarded the request. From Jones.
Via Memeorandum.

We've been here before, and we all know how this is going to go: Chris Horner, Charles Watts, Steve McIntyre et al. will keep posting about this until the story is breathlessly picked up by larger conservative websites, who will continue the ZOMG!!!1! Scientists deleted e-mails!!! meme. Eventually, Mike Morano will call up Fox News and schedule an interview with Sen. Inhofe who will then describe the grave consequences of scientists deleting e-mails. Eventually the serious faces of Hannity and Rush and O'Reilly that Tom Tomorrow so accurately displays will come around asking why the mainstream media is not reporting this?!? Why, it's a conspiracy, of course! And the discussion will be on their terms: e-mails, vague innuendos of conspiracies, gazillions of dollars spent on climate legislation that will bring the world's economy to its knees, and not about the facts that the effects of global warming are already measurable and that other countries are already successfully diversifying their electricity and transportation infrastructure and that the world economy was already brought to its knees without US climate legislation, thank you very much.

A little while back, Alex Steffen tweeted a serious of tweets that ended with "...we've built the wrong environmental movement." Indeed we have. Time has a piece attempting to address the question of what to do now? in light of the vast number of primarily conservative Americans who steadfastly refuse to accept the science of global warming.
What's the answer for environmentalists? Change the message and frame the issue in a way that doesn't trigger unconscious opposition among so many Americans. That can be a simple as using the right labels: a recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that Republicans are less skeptical of "climate change" than "global warming," possibly because climate change sounds less specific. Possibly too because so broad a term includes the severe snowfalls of the past winter that can be a paradoxical result of a generally warmer world. Greens should also pin their message on subjects that are less controversial, like public health or national security. Instead of issuing dire warnings about an apocalyptic future — which seems to make many Americans stop listening — better to talk about the present generation's responsibility to the future, to bequeath their children and grandchildren a safer and healthy planet.
Meh. I'm not sure that will do the trick. Just a brief perusal of conservative blogger's opinions on the piece will show why:
Gee, the nonstop gloom and doom scenarios have people tuning out? Crazy how that is. Maybe if even a single dire prediction had ever come true people might listen to the scaremongers.
The people responsible for messaging the need for action were sort of forced into describing the worst-case scenario as to what humans can expect and to make that scenario seem far more imminent than it is. Yes, if we keep doing what we're doing, our children will likely live in an entirely different world than we do and have no options of reversing the ever-worsening trend. But the messaging had to be Inconvenient Truth style, glossing over the timeline and emphasizing the worst case scenario because the other side made an effective case by saying "Who cares if some bugs or worms are dying now, we have an alarmist interpretation of our skewed economic model that predicts millions of deaths if we reduce carbon emissions, so you need to come up with at least an equally alarmist interpretation of your climate models to convince people to act." Once Al Gore came up with that, all they needed to do was wake up every morning and ask "did your home get washed away by rising sea levels yet?" And they'll keep saying that because these changes are going to be relatively gradual outside of the storm-of-the-century happening more frequently than every century and the city of Atlanta having to make plans to evacuate its citizens because it only had 2 weeks of water supply left in the reservoir. But those events can be easily brushed aside in the minds of some by a senator building a snowman in DC.

What to do? Over time, this blog will attempt to address this question, hopefully while re-gaining some of its readership, and maybe even some more. We'll continue to have some snarky humor every so often as well. But first, to those who remain--or rather those who have re-discovered that I'm posting again--we'll look forward to a guest post I will put up tomorrow.