Well, it was inevitable: US politicians are using the recent blizzard in Washington DC as proof that global warming doesn’t exist. I’m going to pass over this for now, save to mention in passing the strong resemblance between climate change denialists and creationists in their tendency to seize on any evidence against the other position as being fatal while insisting that their position is valid despite the total lack of evidence for it.
No, what I’m more interested is in how the whole idea came about that unusually cold or stormy weather disproves climate change, and I think fundamentally it’s a matter of branding. The abortion debate is a good example of how choosing the right term to describe your position can be essential in framing the debate: who would want to be anti-life or anti-choice? In light of that it’s significant that in this issue, the denialists haven’t attempted to even come up with a name for their position, never mind reframing the debate. The fact that they’re perfectly happy with the terms the other side uses show just what a problem those terms are.
Let’s start with the most common name for the phenomenon, “global warming.” It’s easy to see why the term was first used: it’s a clear and accurate description of what’s happening, as temperatures gradually rise worldwide. The problem, as we’re now seeing, is that while that may be the overall trend, not everything that’s caused by global warming is going to result in warmer weather. Nor is it necessarily going to have a stronger effect than more local weather effects; in other words, you can still have a snowstorm while the Earth is getting warmer. But by calling it “global warming,” scientists and activists created the impression that the world will get warmer, point blank — which is why cynical politicians can now take advantage of a blizzard to score points on CNN. Another problem is that for many of us who live in cold climates, the notion of global warming sounds like a positive thing rather than a negative one, and the generally positive connotations of the word “warming” don’t help. (You’ve never heard of anyone being “warmed to death.”)
The main competitor to “global warming” has been simply “climate change,” but it’s easy to see why that didn’t catch on: it’s too vague, and at any rate sounds too neutral to be any kind of rallying cry. There was an attempt a few years ago to rebrand it as “global weirding,” to reflect the fact that rising temperatures will lead to more extreme weather, but this depends too much on already knowing the term “global warming,” and has the added disadvantage of sounding like a theory to explain the popularity of Lady Gaga.
What’s my suggestion? If it were up to me I would go with “catastrophic climate change,” which opens the gates wide enough to include all of the severe weather effects that may be caused by a rise in temperature and, more importantly, sounds like an unequivocally bad thing. Most likely, though, it’s too late: at this point we’re almost certainly stuck with “global warming”, and as many people are learning, it doesn’t matter how good your data is if you don’t brand it right.
Related Articles
27 users responded in this post
The problem with “catastrophic climate change” is that it then becomes an issue of what defines catastrophic which, in turn, could lead politicians to claim that if a natural event isn’t catastrophic enough, then its proof against “catastrophic climate change”.
This could also keep Republicans from declaring states of emergency as an attempt to keep scientists from using potentially devastating events as evidence of “catastrophic climate change”
Climate disruption.
It’s changing, but it’s changing faster and harder and grossly outside any natural cyclic parameters, because we’re doing stuff to mess it up.
“Disruption” captures both “out of the norm” and “it’s pretty much our fault”, but doesn’t imply a specific change happening everywhere equally.
It’s not just this snow storm that disporves ‘global warming’.
The fact is if you look at a graph there has been a significant cooling trend across the United States starting in September with temperatures falling each and every month. So put that in your ‘global warming’ pipe and smoke it.
Good God I hope that was sarcasm Kid Kyoto.
Darkseid is.
nice segway
Kid Kyoto is probably quoting something Aasif Mandvi said on The Daily Show.
Although, I think Mandvi messed up the “and smoke it” part and said “… global warming pipe and eat it” instead.
Anyway, as a creationist, I feel tempted to say very bad things because of being lumped in with idiots like Rush Limbaugh and the blond guy from Fox and Friends. But I can’t, because it’s against the rules.
Personally, I feel that comparing these guys to holocaust deniers is a more accurate low blow.
Let me just say that if you’re a Christian who takes the Bible the least bit seriously, “God did it” counts as pretty persuasive evidence.
Yes I swipped from the Daily Show. I am so ashamed…
Dumas: I have no problem whatsoever with creationists who simply say they believe “God did it”; If that’s your bag then go to it. My point was relating to those creationists who try to argue it from a scientific and not a religious point of view, by seizing on any blank spots or seeming inconsistencies in evolutionary theory and making those out to be killing blows, while never presenting any scientific evidence of their own.
Re: the coldest war – Curse you I want closure!
Re: the article – How about one of these:
Scorched earth
Nutkicking the future
Fukken-kooken (tagging on to the Volkswagen ads of the 90s and all the stupid tee-shirts that followed)
To be fair the whole “oh look it’s cold in winter TAKE THAT AL GORE!!!11!!” shenanigans suddenly disappear when the summer heat waves kick in or during the ridiculously mild winters like we had a year ago.
So the simplest trick would be to use their own short attentions spans against them and so only try to get climate change initiatives through during the summers and milder winters, when they (due to their natural self consistency) will obviously agree that global warming is real because, like, omg!? It’s really hot in summer!!??.
The thing is… You don’t have to go looking very hard for inconsistencies in evolutionary theory. Piltdown Man and several other proposed “missing link” hominids turned out to either be deliberate hoaxes or really dumb mistakes.
Nebraska Man is perhaps the classic example. About five years after the discovery of this early ape or proto-human in 1917, legitimate scientists proved it was bogus because the only evidence they had was a tooth from a pig-like animal. But it took another five years for people to stop arguing that Nebraska Man was legit and some folks were still debating this issue well into the 1950s.
Just based on what you can read on Wikipedia, it doesn’t take much to start seeing anthropologists as being basically science fiction writers.
They will find a skull cap they couldn’t identify right away (or some equally flimsy evidence) and start authoritatively speaking about a newly discovered race of early hominids that lived 180,000 years ago, considered the lima bean to be sacred, worshipped the sun and spent most of their time peacefully trying to invent farming techniques.
And then about twenty years later, another scientist who is better at using her lab equipment will figure out that Lima Bean Man was the incomplete skeleton of a Saxon peasant who died in 325 A.D. and some teeth from a cow.
I’m exaggerating for effect… but not by much.
With global warming, there was that guy who got caught trying to make his data sound more scary than it really was… But that guy doesn’t really count because there is so much other evidence out there that it’s real.
I find human evolution to be something based almost as much on faith as your average religion. Global warming, on the other hand, can be observed right now. They’re not the same thing at all.
So, I still find your line about creationists kind of offensive. Especially since the “science” you like so much often boils down to things like reconstructing a skull the wrong way or a famous Neanderthal “expert” telling blatant lies because he wouldn’t admit that he didn’t know how to use his carbon dating machine.
Seriously, you might as well believe that Lovecraft was right and the Great Old Ones had something to do with it. That’s about as accurate as anthropology.
“Just based on what you can read on Wikipedia…”
Credibility: GONE.
The thing I see is that this is just a continuation of the dumbing down of information. In an effort to bring things down to the simplest denominator, we forget that some concepts can’t be reduced to a 2 word sound bite.
A well researched look at the information on global warming will show you it’s not warming that’s the issue. It’s the overall climate change. Which means growing seasons are altered, food production disrupted, and in general a range of environmental issues. The thing is, that’s not sexy information. You can’t give that to people in a 10 second sound bite.
It’s a bit like the old commercial from the 80s in the US about drug use. This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs. While the visual of a frying egg was startling, it wasn’t an accurate description of what really happens. Kids try drugs, find the brain doesn’t fry like an egg, voila, why pay attention to the warning?
Health care reform boiled down to the government sentencing grandma to death. Abortion boils down to have your child or you may kill the next Tim Tebow. Climate boils down to it’s snowing almost 5 feet in a week in Washington DC. What global warming?
You miss the deeper discussion of why health care reform must happen. You miss the reality of what you do with unwanted children. You miss that IT IS NOT NORMAL to have 5 feet of snow in Washington DC.
The media and politicians pander to the lowest denominator.
Dumas: I should know better than to argue with creationists, so this is my last word on the subject:
First, you’re wrong. Those frauds don’t disprove evolution in the slightest: they disprove the particular claims of those scientists. None of the examples you give were important evidence for evolution, and nobody today talks about a “missing link.” The fossil record is well-populated with our ancestors, not to mention the evolutionary lineages of plenty of other animals and plants, and there is plenty of other evidence aside from fossils to support evolutionary theory (DNA evidence, for instance.) Also, I should note that your most recent example is from 1925.
Second, your argument is a perfect example of what I’m talking about when I say creationists, like climate change denialists, want to have it both ways. You raise (spurious) arguments against evolution, but you don’t offer any scientific evidence in favour of creationism. It’s fine to say that evolution should be judged as a science and creationism as a faith, but if you do that you’re implicitly saying that scientific arguments have no merit (since they’re trumped by arguments of faith), so why bother making them at all?
Third, the examples you give aren’t examples of science being done badly but of science done well: hoaxes were discovered, cherished theories abandoned when the evidence showed they were wrong. The strength of science as a way of understanding the universe is its ability to self-correct: there are plenty of examples of scientists throwing out theories that were long considered true because new evidence contradicted them. Consider the abandonment of phlogiston theory, which held true for most of the 19th century, or the replacement of Newtonian mechanics — which had been the foundation of physics for hundreds of years — with the theory of relativity, which became universally accepted within a decade thanks to Einstein’s proof.
Well, I can’t add too much to what you’ve said and I agree that “global warming” is a misnomer of a sort. What it means, as you said, is that the global average temperature is increasing, not that all local temperatures will increase evenly. The *effect* of that global increase is what sets it all off, though. Solar radiation causes weather by way of Hadley cell which is created by the rising of warm air at the equator. The warmer the air, the more extreme the motion of the cell which affects the jet stream as well as generating cyclones and tornadoes.
The best parallel I can think of would be a car that has no top speed. The longer you hold down the pedal, the faster it goes until eventually the engine components break down, or the wheels shred, or the car runs into a wall. Hopefully humanity can make it through global warming with just a few pieces of engine breaking down.
Dumas, your post on evolution is so ridiculous that I don’t even know where to begin. Bringing up Piltdown Man to discredit modern science? Anthropologists as Sci Fi writers? Really?
If you really think human evolution is as based on faith as religion, I question if you actually understand it. Yes, there are gaps in our understanding. Yes, theories will have to be changed in the future to accomodate new discoveries. Yes, there have been hoaxes and mistakes. But that doesn’t mean the science is hogwash, just that it’s imperfect. No credible anthropologist would ever say our understanding or theories are perfect, just that we have a pretty good idea of what happened.
Comparing anyone to Creationists is pretty low. That’s quite an insult. However, *both* sides of the Climate Jihad are equally entrenched, foaming, wild-eyed and utterly close-minded.
And the award for “total inequivalency of the day” goes to Blaze. Hooray!
Okay,
I agree with you.
Having said that, i have to say; i live in Magallanes, Chile. I live in a place where, in summer, temperature ranges from -5 to 14 degrees Celsius. In winter it goes as low as -20 but its usually in the range of -12 and 7 degrees Celsius, with winds usually between 90 km/hr and 130 km/hr sometimes reaching 150 km/hr and having reached 200 km/hr.
So i live in a cold place.
Every 5 or 7 years, a big winter comes and we are up to our armpits in snow. Literally. That winter has yet to come, after 8 years since the last one.
We have Glaciers, penguins and other cold-related stuff.
Every year, we see less and less of that. Every year, the glaciers are smaller. Every summer, the rivers are smaller. The ponds have a bit less water. The lakes are a bit less cold.
Global Warming means cold places get hotter and hot places get colder.
I know this makes me sound like a prick, but when I hear Washington or LA or New York are having “cold weather”, and are being trampled by snow, getting killed by cold, i say “good riddance”. You had it coming. Today, my valleys are drying up, my glaciers are receding and cutting off my rivers, my cattle is dying of thirst, bad springs and summers that don’t nourish them properly, followed by our usual winters, and you people are “discussing if Global Warming is an issue or not, how should we call it?”
You should call it “We fucked up. We fucked up majorly and THE WHOLE WORLD is paying the price. The “civilized world” of Europe, The US + Canada, And Japan fucked up the world and people we don’t even know about are paying the price”. Thats what you should call it. And stop TODAY, your absurd amount of carbon emissions.
Every year our winters get shorter and our summers get warmer. I’m not making this up. My grandpa tells me so, my uncle tells me so, my grandma tells me so. And we had nothing to do with it. Our carbon emissions as a country are rather green compared to your Ford and GM giant truck cars of doom.
So yeah, get a clue. Stop being “the critical eye who posts cool stuff on blogs” and start being “the critical guy who does something to help out”.
Me, as a Chilean who was already pretty green emission-wise, have made some changes in my lifestyle, have made some work of my own to change other people’s view on the matter; but no matter what we Chileans do, the final word is still in you, “civilized countries” who have a real input on the matter. So what the hell is it gonna take for the rest of you to shut up and DO something about it, instead of just ranting about it on the web?
Maybe you, yourself, are super green, and im being super unfair, but im angry and frustrated and this is my rant. So yeah, try to understand. Or not. Just do something.
Matthewv Johnson: Thanks for that post. I was trying to remember that argument but the stupidity of Dumas’ argument made me too angry for my brain to work.
Too bad you haven’t actually provided any. All you have shown is that scientists proved that hoaxes were, in fact, hoaxes.
“Seriously, you might as well believe that Lovecraft was right and the Great Old Ones had something to do with it. That’s about as accurate as anthropology”
Holy fucking shit!
You don’t have to go looking very hard for inconsistencies in evolutionary theory. Piltdown Man…
In this sentemce I have a typo. If we use your dippy creationist “logic”, the English language isn’t real.
I just want to point out that I am sad that Slarti stole my joke.
Clara:
You dumb things down for the lowest common denominator b/c they’re the people who’re gonna get it done. Change their minds and you change the nation/world.
OR
You can sit around impressed with how smart you are, and how well-evolved you are compared to those other apes then continue to be stymied when no one is as impressed as you are with yourself.
Which is exactly why Tea Baggers are out there protesting initiatives designed to save their life or at the least improve it’s overall quality while you snort smugly at the inaccuracy of a Superbowl ad.
Is the truth more complex than a two second sound bite? Obviously. But you better come up with one, or you’ll be the smartest asshole on the spit of Flotilla XR799 while Jebediah and Chastity puzzle over why the ocean is so angry.
–M
Global Climate Change is a plot to take away the right to bare arms in short sleeved shirts in the middle of winter from hard working white americans by the evil black kenyanslamic cabal that bakes the blood of christian babies into their bread – that’s the tact you want to take if you want the almight force of the teabaggers on your side.
Because a small obstructionist astroturf campaign is the people you want on your side. Apparently.