London, 6 December 2009. Photo by Franck Robichon/EPA.
By Larry Kummer. Posted at the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Can the Left effectively oppose Trump, making arguments that mobilize public opinion? Their actions since the election suggest not. Climate change is both the Left’s signature initiative and its greatest failure (28 years with no change in the US public’s policy priorities about climate). How (or if) the Left changes their climate advocacy will show if they can adapt to the Trump era.
Astronomer Phil Plait writes at Slate, one of the Left’s better-known climate propagandists. His recent columns at Slate show why the Left has failed to mobilize public opinion — and that they have learned nothing from the election.
There were no questions about climate change in the presidential debates. Clinton said little about climate change during the entire campaign. Accordingly, Gallup found that environmental issues were not in the top 12 issues people associate with Clinton. There are good reasons for this. Climate change has consistently ranked near the bottom of the US public’s major policy concerns. Gallup asks people “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” In October only 3% listed an environmental or pollution-related issues (including climate); economic issues were #1, totaling 17%.
His November 28 column at Slate, Plait discussed Trump’s plan to get NASA out of climate change research. He played the same song climate activists have sung for a decade. He began by invoking the consensus of climate scientists, which he should state (but doesn’t). As expressed by the IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I…
“It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.”
This is important. But the relevant public policy question concerns future warming: what are the odds of various amounts of warming during different time horizons of the 21st century? There is no easy answer to this, let alone a consensus of climate scientists about it. So climate activists either ignore the research (such as the 4 scenarios described in AR5) or focus on the worst of these (the truly horrific RCP8.5), ignoring its unlikely assumptions.
Plait skips all these vital complexities, going from the consensus about past warming to boldly assert that “Climate change is already one of if not the biggest threat our species has faced.” He gives no evidence for this because there is so little. There is little evidence of a consensus of climate scientists about future warming. More broadly, has any scientist compared the various future warming scenarios to past threats, such as the Toba supereruption 75,000 years ago that might have almost exterminated humanity or WWIII starting during the Cold War?
Such a speculative assertion is an absurdly weak basis to justify spending trillions and imposing far-reaching regulations — let alone restructure our economic and political systems (as proposed by Naomi Klein
and Pope Francis).
Plait often pulls this bait-and-switch. In his May 30 column about Trump’s ignorant statements denying California’s drought, Plait slides from discussion of the drought to implying it results from climate change. But centuries-long droughts are a natural part of the southwestern US climate. NOAA reported that “The current drought is not part of a long-term change in California precipitation, which exhibits no appreciable trend since 1895.” Many other peer-reviewed papers came to similar conclusions. See the research here.
Even more outrageous is Plait’s multi-year crusade to conceal from the public climate scientists’ research about the pause, the debate about its causes, and predictions of its duration — research that continues today. Plait ignores these scientists work, insisting that the “pause” (aka “hiatus”) is a lie by denialists.
Conclusions
The vast investment by the Left in its 28 year-long climate change campaign has had a trivial impact on the public policy priorities of the US public. It is one of the largest public relations failures in US history. See why the climate change debate broke and its lessons for the future. Plait’s behavior is typical of climate activists, and has helped poison the public debate. They earned their failure. Depending on how the climate changes, we might all pay for it. It might be difficult to restart the debate if evidence appears suggesting the worst-case scenarios are happening.
Looking ahead, will climate activists learn from their mistakes? Will they abandon their reliance on doomster forecasts, and again build on the work of climate science and the IPCC (once they called the “gold standard” of climate science, now they say it is “too conservative”)? If they cannot adapt, can the Left as a movement adapt to the Trump era?
The road back to reality will be long for climate activists
“You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
— Part of a tirade by “Zach” to Donna Brazile, interim leader of the Democratic National Committee, at a staff meeting. Reported by the HuffPo.
“I can’t see humans existing within 10 years. We can do nothing to stop the planet becoming too hot to grow food and support life. It is already happening and we have less than a decade left.”
— Guy McPherson (Prof of Biology, U AZ, retired). Reported by the New Zealand Herald. His website is “Nature Bats Last – Our Days Are Numbered“.
For More Information
For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate changeand these posts about the Left’s climate change campaign…
- Science into agitprop: “Climate Change Is Strangling Our Oceans”.
- Ignoring science to convince the public that we’re doomed by climate change.
- A leaked memo about climate change explains why we’re unprepared.
- The 5 stages of grief for the failure of the climate change campaign.
