Fundamentally altering the Earth’s climate isn’t a reason to go around alarming people. (cc photo Dave S)
The Breakthrough Institute is a group that “has dedicated the resources of their organization to trying to kill prospects for climate and clean energy action in this Congress and to spreading disinformation about Obama, Gore, congressional leaders, Waxman and Markey, leading climate scientists, Al Gore again, the entire environmental community and anyone else trying to end our status quo energy policies,” according to Climate Progress‘ Joe Romm (6/17/09).
Or, as the New York Times described it when it gave the group’s leaders the prime spot on the op-ed page (4/9/14), it’s “an environmental research organization.”
The column by Breakthrough’s Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus is a good example of what’s known on the Internet as “concern trolling”—shedding crocodile tears over the prospect that climate advocates they have done their level best to undermine might not be getting their message out effectively. And what’s the problem with their messaging? Well, they’re too downbeat:
There is every reason to believe that efforts to raise public concern about climate change by linking it to natural disasters will backfire. More than a decade’s worth of research suggests that fear-based appeals about climate change inspire denial, fatalism and polarization.
As one example of this research, the op-ed offers this: “In a controlled laboratory experiment published in Psychological Science in 2010, researchers were able to use ‘dire messages’ about global warming to increase skepticism about the problem.” But as Romm (11/22/10) has pointed out, both messages tested in that study contained frightening, factually accurate information about climate change’s contributions to heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires and sea-level rise. (Sample: “The past decade has seen record breaking heat waves all across the world, including a major heat wave that killed at least 35,000 people in Europe in 2003.”)
Climate change and natural disasters: Don’t ask, don’t tell? (cc photo: H Dragon)
These are the kind of things that Shellenberger and Nordhaus suggest climate advocates should keep to themselves. Yet what that study actually found to be ineffective was following up such facts with messages like “We fear it may be too late” and “It is just too big of a problem for science to grapple with,” whereas the same alarming information about the impacts of climate change did not increase denial when coupled with messages like “it is not too late to act” and “human ingenuity can overcome this mammoth obstacle.” Turns out fatalistic pessimism is a tough sell; who knew?
Shellenberger and Nordhaus agree that climate advocates should stress solutions—so long as they are their preferred solutions:
The rejection of technologies like nuclear and natural gas by environmental groups is most likely feeding the perception among many that climate change is being exaggerated. After all, if climate change is a planetary emergency, why take nuclear and natural gas off the table?
Why? Well, aside from the very real safety issues and the inevitability of nuclear weapons proliferation, nuclear technology is just not an economically efficient way to replace carbon-based energy. As physicist Amory Lovins (Inside Nova, 3/18/11) has pointed out:
Each dollar spent on a new reactor buys about 2–10 times less carbon savings, 20–40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the cheaper, faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and uneconomic: efficient use of electricity, making heat and power together in factories or buildings (“cogeneration”), and renewable energy.
As for natural gas, it’s not clear that it reduces greenhouse emissions at all, given that methane, which is released by gas drilling and especially during fracking, is a more powerful heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide. But in a “planetary emergency”—which climate change certainly is—burning slightly less carbon is not a solution, any more than switching from whiskey to beer is a cure for alcoholism.
Well, if the Breakthrough Institute is claiming that Obama, Gore, “congressional leaders” and not a few prominent groups in “the environmental community” are truly “trying to end our status quo energy policies”
And not simply playing politics with the end of the world as we know it
Then they are most certainly “spreading disinformation”.
Yet more lies paid bought and paid for by the oil industry and dutifully published by the NYT! I attempted to express my objections on the Times website, but my efforts were not posted, no reason given.
I was afraid FAIR would miss this one, and I am grateful it did not. FAIR is about all we have left, folks.
I don’t want us to pussy foot around on this grave matter to let it slowly make the non believers of mass extinction headed our way to change their minds. We have to go full tilt to renewable energy NOW!. What would possibly halt this insanity of nastiness humans have done to the EARTH would go a long way to detoxifying IT, HER, HIM to hopefully forgive us and maybe we can squeak by to save the ecosystems and maybe save a few ethical/moral humans and no psychopaths. Otherwise let the humans go extinct; Earth needs vengeance and a rest from us!
For starters: Earth The Operators Manual.org; Last Hours.org(short one), Arctic News(Large tonnage of methane is being released now many years early than predicted by the harshest predictor scientists), 350.org and a number more.
Germany has proven a lot toward solar to decommission 6-8 nasty nuke plants and plan to shut most of them down eventually. And they have a bad solar index! What about a train derailment of a couple thousand solar panels? Think of the repercussions compared to nasty oil, spent fuel rods etc.
Too much to post here. Got to slap it in their minds until they understand what’s going on if they are capable.
“Nuclear Energy Causes Global Warming”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/nuclear-energy-causes-global-warming/20231
As I often say….there are one or two ways to end global warming (if you believe in the theory)Forget the USA.Doing a great job.Meeting all the protocols as laid down in the accords even though we were the only ones not to sign it.So take us off the table for now.Move your discussion to China,India for instance.In my eyes the only way to get them to comply is invasion.You first
Oh and your description of the breakthrough institute is nonsense.It is NOT who they are,
or what they do.
This is another example of what we progressives / science consumers do so often: tell the truth. The Right makes strong, absolute statements, admitting no ambiguity, and they sell. We qualify, confess a lack of total certainty (97%? Leaves room for doubt) and often seem unsure of our facts. “Global warming” sounds a lot like spring. “Climate change” could be any season. The Right would be (if this were their belief) shouting “OMyGodWe’reAllGonnaFry!!!” And everybody would agree.
Jerry it IS the left that is yelling we are all gonna fry.(And no we dont believe them because the models are proving otherwise,and they always lie for political gain).They also have zero attention to anything but their own voices when they say the science is closed.Problem for them is the earth is cooling.So if there is global warming-maybe we are not doing enough to stop the cooling trend that a growing number of scientists believe is a mini ice age.
@michael e: Got a source for these “growing number of scientists” who think we’re “going through a mini ice age”?
What is the upside of climate change? I don’t thinkl there is one.
It is hard to believe any rational person could hold such ignorant opinions as those expressed here frequently by michael e. Now he tells us the earth is cooling, but that we should start a war with China over global warming.
His objective, obviously, is to disrupt this site and divert its focus to himself, and he has succeeded.
The corruption of the American news media over the last two decades is worthy of serious discussion, but thanks to michael e, it appears here less and less.
We deal at length with these confusionist claims here:
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/how-an-inconvenient-truth-contributed-to-partisan-polarization-on-climate
John……I am saying the earth is going through a rapid cooling after a general warming that ended in 1995.I am saying that if you are nuts enough to believe that we must immediately do something to stop “global warming due to C02 emission or we will all die……Than China is where you must set your compass for.Not here.And I also said you have zero chance of changing the way they do business short of war.I think i have been pretty clear.
@ michael e: So no source then?