Would Better PR Be Beneficial In Getting The Message Across To The General Public

[stewfox]

Going around in circles. Why do we have 0.003% of the population signed up to the Green Party after 20 yrs of Educating them on Global Warming ?

[knocker]

Perhaps the Green Parties lack of policies in other spheres has something to do with it.

[stewfox]

In the Daily mail today it says fairwell to hedgehogs. Nos down from 36m in 1950 to 1m today. Due to warmer winters flowers spring arriving early. I appreciate we have had a early start to growing season but come on. A classic example from the warmest PR camp.

[Methuselah]

Why not just blame the Daily Mail for what the Daily Mail publishes? If it just happens that what they say is true then so be it...Unless 'Warmists' have started anti-hedgehog vigilante groups...

[Gray-Wolf]

From what I see on the roads the 'Fossil Fuel ' industry can have a number of our deceased Hedgehogs placed at their door never mind the CO2!!!

 

From what I have witnessed many 'Deniers' are just 'Malcontents' . Every century has had them and ours is no different. Think of Jack Dee and you get the idea!!! All the Fossil Fuel Blogs do is give them an excuse to say "There!, told you so!" without having to bother themselves with 'the science'. 

 

Along with the 'Malcontents' we have the 'relapsed dreamers' who have had the harsh reality of life knock the stuffing out of their Dreams. Being in so much pain they decide to 'share' it around. You can find these folks sniping at every 'proof' for AGW that arrives. The use terms like "Have us all living in Caves" or "you wouldn't say that if you 'walked the walk" 'cos you'd have no computer in yer cave.....".

 

Finally you have the 'lack of scalers' who have no notion of the sizes involved . They expect any increase in CO2 to be met with instant Sea level hikes and global temp increases. They have no notion how big Arctic ice was and so see no problem now that it is tiny, they cannot credit a 'trace gas' with any harm and find 3 mm year sea level rise laughable.

 

Somewhere in the middle lies the puppet master. He's been here before (in the 60's and 70's with the tobacco industry) and knows he's doing a fine job for his paymasters but that , in the end, the evidence will be too clear to muddy.

Edited May 10, 2013 by Gray-Wolf

[stewfox]

From what I see on the roads the 'Fossil Fuel ' industry can have a number of our deceased Hedgehogs placed at their door never mind the CO2!!!

 

From what I have witnessed many 'Deniers' are just 'Malcontents' . Every century has had them and ours is no different. Think of Jack Dee and you get the idea!!! All the Fossil Fuel Blogs do is give them an excuse to say "There!, told you so!" without having to bother themselves with 'the science'. 

 

Along with the 'Malcontents' we have the 'relapsed dreamers' who have had the harsh reality of life knock the stuffing out of their Dreams. Being in so much pain they decide to 'share' it around. You can find these folks sniping at every 'proof' for AGW that arrives. The use terms like "Have us all living in Caves" or "you wouldn't say that if you 'walked the walk" 'cos you'd have no computer in yer cave.....".

 

Finally you have the 'lack of scalers' who have no notion of the sizes involved . They expect any increase in CO2 to be met with instant Sea level hikes and global temp increases. They have no notion how big Arctic ice was and so see no problem now that it is tiny, they cannot credit a 'trace gas' with any harm and find 3 mm year sea level rise laughable.

 

Somewhere in the middle lies the puppet master. He's been here before (in the 60's and 70's with the tobacco industry) and knows he's doing a fine job for his paymasters but that , in the end, the evidence will be too clear to muddy.

 

What has all this frantic rhetoric got to do with good PR ?

 

I grab Joe Public and say stop what your doing "don't you know sea levels have risen 3mm,  there is less sea ice in the artic 2000 miles to your north.

 

You 'fools' don't you know that a trace gas can do you harm. .

 

Before they carted me off I would call them relapsed dreamers ?

 

Unfortunately we have had this sort of talk for the last 20yrs and it hasn't worked. 

 

Good PR is to educate and encourage change. No riots occurred when a charge on plastic bags was introduced the 'reasons' were made fairly clear. Usage dropped.

Edited May 10, 2013 by stewfox

[Methuselah]

True Stew. The first thing folks need to learn is just why trace gases do have the disproportionate degree of influence that they do...

 

The physics is simple. And differentiating a logarithmic equation is not the monumental task that some would have us believe it to be, either.

 

So peeps: go online and see for yourselves. And don't be intimidated by the word 'calculus'!

[Devonian]

 

Good PR is to educate and encourage change. No riots occurred when a charge on plastic bags was introduced the 'reasons' were made fairly clear. Usage dropped.

 

I'm only ordinarily intelligent (I don't for example have a degree) but my lifelong interest in all the meteorology and my reading of a few good books and articles 1, 2 several decades ago led me to be pretty sure the science about AGW/CO2/climate change and the rest as taught is broadly right.. Why that same evidence doesn't convince others a decade or more after I first followed this subject via the internet is something I'm still finding vastly more difficult to understand. Perhaps you can help people like me with that? Because it is clear there are people who simply wont have it that what I know to be broadly right is right, or anything like right.

 

There is a gulf between people like me and people like that. Perhaps I'm naive? Perhaps I'm gullible? Perhaps all those people I read and understood are con artists? And it's the so called AGW sceptics who have the science right, who understand the GH effect better, who know the atmosphere better, those bloggers and political activists, perhaps they're right and the academics wrong? But, sorry, I just can't believe that. That is why there is a gulf. Why there is a problem getting the message across. Imo, some people simply don't want to be believe what is, broadly, right, is right.

 

So, how is that to be addressed? This thread asks for better PR, but other threads  accuse scientists of propagandising. I don't know what 'we' should do. But I think it's to keep telling it how the science is.  I can't see what else to do.

 

I'm not going to scare people by saying the evidence indicate we'll fry because it doesn't say that. But the evidence does say we're likely to see ~2-4C warming by 2100 and I'm convinced that will change the world around us. But, since we,as a species, effectively  do nothing about over fishing, or over population, or the Arctic ice vanishing, or finite fossil fuel reserves I'm in little doubt we'll do nothing about AGW for some long time yet.

 

For me, that reality is a triumph of the PR and propaganda of others....

Edited May 10, 2013 by Devonian

[pottyprof]

I think I've just found the next ring for the LHC.............

[Gray-Wolf]

It has become a thing of attrition P.P. The truth will win out but until that point here we go again!

 

Disaster has it's own P.R. and the very tool the 'deniers' use to spread confusion and dis-information is also bringing 'News' on the escalating costs of climate shift.

 

Come summer the Papers will again be full of wildfires,floods and drought, more roundups of the 'costs' of such events and more news ft of how rare/unusual the events are.

 

Surely a piece on "your all being Duped by climate scientists" next to reports and images of the latest Weather catastrophe's sets folks minds thinking?