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Climate Campaign Hasn’t Worked, But The Fearmongers Keep Trying
Global warming has been the most extensive public relations campaign in history. The 25 years of political and cultural pressure includes most governmental agencies, the public school system, the universities, celebrities, think tanks, and well-funded environmental groups. Yet, despite all the fear-mongering, over the 25-year-long campaign, there’s been no significant change in the public’s concern level over global warming.
Based on new polling data from Gallup, the number of those who “worry greatly” about global warming has actually dropped.
Americans aren’t that stupid after all. We can smell a rat.
It isn’t that we don’t believe the climate changes; it does, has, and always will. But “there is a difference in believing climate change is real and believing that climate change is calamitous.”
In his post at TheFederalist.com, David Harsanyi continues: “As the shrieking gets louder, Americans become more positive about the quality of their environment and less concerned about the threats.”
25 years of intense political and cultural pressure hasn’t won over the public. But they haven’t stopped trying. With the huge investment of time and money, the fear-mongers keep trying—believing, somehow, they’ll get different results.
On March 6, “a documentary that looks at pundits-for-hire,” Merchants of Doubt, was released. It aimed to smear the reputations of some of the most noted voices on the realist side of the climate change debate. But nobody much wanted to see it. In its opening weekend, BoxOfficeMojo.com reports Merchants of Doubt took in $20,300.
A week later, former Vice President Al Gore, as reported in the Chicago Tribune, called on attendees at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX, to “punish climate change deniers”—which is the tactic being used now.
We’ve seen it in the widely publicized case of Dr. Willie Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who “claims that the variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent Global warming.” The New York Times accused him of being tied to funding from “corporate interests.”
Similar attacks, though less well known, have been made on many others who’ve dared to speak up.
Even Senator Edward Markey and Congressman Raul Grijalva recently joined the crusade. They sent a letter to institutions that employ or support climate change researchers whose work strays from the crisis narrative. The lawmakers warn of potential “conflicts of interest” in cases where evidence or computer modeling emphasizing human causes of climate change are questioned—but no such warning is offered for its supporters.
Somehow, only those who may receive some funding from “fossil fuel companies” are suspect. The anti-fossil fuel movement has been vocal in its funding for those who support its agenda—most notably billionaire Tom Steyer, who promised to fund candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and supports lobbying efforts for renewable energy.
In a Desmog post titled “Climate Deniers Double Down on Doubt in the Defense of Willie Soon,” the author states that Soon’s supporters “circled the wagons.”
In a Scientific American story about the Merchants of Doubt, Andrew Hoffman, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies the behavior of climate skeptics, says that “tit-for-tats between mainstream and contrarian researchers tend to raise the profile of skeptical scientists.”
Because of the failure of the manmade climate-crisis campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the average American—who, after all, isn’t that stupid—we can expect the Gore-ordered attacks to continue.
Like the mythical Hydra, when one “skeptic” is cut down, supporters “double down”—two more grow to take its place. The attacks draw attention to the fact that there is another side to the “debate.”
This post originally appeared on Western Journalism – Equipping You With The Truth
Source: http://www.westernjournalism.com/climate-campaign-hasnt-worked-but-the-fearmongers-keep-trying/
