Tag: global warming

Hide and seek – getting warmer

Don’t you hate it when you misplace something important? It’s a great relief when you find it, right? Well, not always. For the last decade or so, climate scientists have been searching for some missing heat. Climate models had suggested a certain rate of warming in the atmosphere based on our increasing rate of carbon emissions, but measurement showed a lower rate of warming over the past decade than predicted. Clearly some heat had gone missing.

Found it. A recently published underwater scene with bubbles and sunraysstudy has confirmed that the missing heat was actually not missing at all, but simply absorbed by the deep ocean – below 1,000 feet. In fact, according to the study, global warming hasn’t slowed over the past decade, but actually accelerated over the past 15 when the heat absorbed in the deep oceans is factored in.

This makes sense, in that the Earth is mostly covered in water so you’d expect the oceans to act as a heat sink for the atmosphere given the contact area involved. Apparently, budget issues have been limiting heat mapping of the oceans to its upper layers, but recent low-cost robotic deployments (described here) have started to paint a fuller picture of the ocean heat sink effect on atmospheric warming. This will help climate scientists build better informed models and projections. A recent article in The Economist touches on why finding the missing heat is so important – its absence raises numerous questions about the sensitivity of the overall climate system to the introduction of increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

There’s another nice piece outlining the study’s salient points here that leads off with a mention of why this new study is so important to the ongoing struggle for popular understanding of the urgency of our climate problem. The missing heat, you see, has been more than a scientific head scratcher.

It’s also been an asset to those seeking to discredit and undermine the case for anthropogenic global warming. The ocean cycles and interacts in dynamic ways with the atmosphere that we don’t yet fully understand. Nature, unfortunately, really does not care about your politics, PR or stock portfolio. The system continues on its way, not waiting for our understanding of it to catch up. Heat absorbed in the deep ocean is not likely to stay there. The effects of this deep ocean heating are likely already playing out, leaving me to wonder what we will we find next?

Today’s forecast: changing climate views

We had a blizzard up here the other day, the second biggest in our history. Yet a few days before that, the thermometer was pushing 60 degrees. This certainly feels like global weirding.

IcebergAlthough I’m generally concerned about climate change, I worry more about the fate of this planet on days when the temperatures don’t match the season. When it’s balmy in February, that’s troubling.

On the other hand, when the snowbanks tower over my head, warming doesn’t seem to be an issue. Doubts chip away at my climate change convictions, notwithstanding the statements of NASA, NOAA, the United Nations, 34 science academies and countless other credible agencies.

I’m not the only one who’s fickle on climate.

A University of British Columbia study found a strong connection between weather and climate attitudes over the past two decades “with skepticism about global warming increasing during cold snaps and concern about climate change growing during hot spells.”

The University of New Hampshire came up with similar findings, especially among independent voters in the state. “Interviewed on unseasonably warm days, independents tend to agree with the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change,” said researchers Lawrence Hamilton and Mary Stampone. “On unseasonably cool days, they tend not to.”

Why do our attitudes change like this? Because despite what we know, we just can’t deny what we see and feel. Yes, sensory experiences do play a big role in what’s relevant to us, maybe more than we think. You can see it in our new Conversational Relevance study. Although hotel guests value location and recreational facilities for the kids, these highly rational concerns are only part of the mix. Guests also chatter online about water pressure in the shower and the view from the room, and about abstractions like a hotel’s culture and cachet.

The bottom line? When it comes to decision-making, whether it’s a hotel room or the destiny of the human race, logic is overrated. Think about it. Rationally, if you can.

Frontline does a deep dive on climate doubt

A quick one to add to your “must see” list is a new Frontline special, “Climate of Doubt,” looking at the machine behind climate change denial and doubt. You may recall my post, “The Sensible Center,” earlier this year that looked at the same topic based on a terrific book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt.

The special is online in its entirety so head on over to the Frontline site to watch it and view other, related material they’ve posted to buttress the episode.

It’s great to see this getting wider exposure, as it might help push more people to understand that the science of anthropogenic climate change is not in doubt and that action is needed, because things are really heating up out there in the real world.

Getting warmer on warming

In a prior post, The sensible center, I noted that those seeking to de-rail or delay policy addressing man-made global warming aimed to not simply deny the phenomenon or its cause, but to seed uncertainty among the populace so as to encourage doubt and inaction.

With that in mind, I read with interest media coverage of a recent polling showing that some solid majorities of the U.S. population now believe that global warming is indeed a real and currently occurring phenomenon (and with the bake and burn most of the country experienced this past summer you might expect an uptick in that perception).

So, progress, right?

Well, kind of. See recent polling also shows that, while a majority believes the climate is warming, only a minority believe human activity is the cause. Worse, that belief in a cause divide seems to break down solidly along political party identity lines.

So, yeah, more work to do to get the message through. Maybe a push on the appeal-to-authority front, but where to find an authority? In PR, leaning on the expert opinion of an authority to buttress a claim is a time-tested technique for swaying opinion. It’s why 4-out-of-5 dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum. Those opposing action on global warming know this is an effective technique and made delegitimizing the most basic authorities – climate scientists – a top priority in their ongoing campaign of doubt and deceit. The scientists are all lying and conspiring about this global warming stuff so that they can get more government study grants and keep their cushy jobs in the ivory tower….or something.

But what about the insurance companies? Just this week, a very large re-insurance company (essentially, an insurance company for insurance companies) called Munich RE issued a report stating that North America has seen a dramatic increase in weather-related claims over the past decade and that “it is quite probable that changing climate conditions are the drivers. The climatic changes detected are in line with the modeled changes due to human-made climate change.”

Catch that last part? The multi-billion dollar international business entity said that climate change is real and likely being driven by human activity and, BTW, it’s costing you money – lots of money. It will be interesting to watch the deep-pocketed vested interests arrayed against the CO2 regulation battle to delegitimize the deep pocketed interests, such as large insurance companies, whose business models are jeopardized by an increase in CO2 levels and the costly extreme weather events it spawns. Oh, and the Pentagon, too – that’d be an interesting fight.

 

Good (and bad) to the last drop

Wildfires and heat waves have me thinking about peak oil, climate change and the efforts to convince folks that oil supply is not an issue. Here’s why. Across the Pond at the Guardian, George Monbiot, a British writer well known for his environmental activism, has recently declared Peak Oil a dead letter, lamenting that there is still enough in the ground to fry the climate. True, but also wrong.

Beyond the basic flaw of interpreting “Peak Oil” as shorthand for “imminently running out of,”others have done a detailed job rebutting not only Monbiot’s misunderstandings, but also the study that was his inspiration. My interest, however, is on the “boom” in oil production he mentions and this lament toward the bottom of the piece: “Twenty years of efforts to prevent climate breakdown through moral persuasion have failed…”

And I suspect that failure will continue. While some people are moved to change by the havoc wrought on the environment in pursuit of unconventional sources of fossil fuel, the vast majority aren’t – or are willing to look the other way.

The destruction Canada is doing to pristine wilderness in Alberta isn’t a secret, but it’s only increasing. That Macondo well blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico a couple years back is still showing up in the coastal environment, but that hasn’t prevented large oil companies with spotty safety records from receiving permission to drill in even more hostile and environmentally sensitive places, like the Arctic.

But, humans are risk and change averse. We will stay with what we know, even if it’s got problems, rather than risk a radical change. Oil has proven it has the power – quite literally – to transform life from a nasty, brutish and short struggle for survival into a comfortable, convenient and extended tussle for entertainment. Moral persuasion is unlikely to make headway against that perception. People like comfort and convenience, not to mention entertainment.

The vast majority of “consumers” are not interested in going back to a mythically bucolic future. Even “country folk” like their gas-guzzling pick-up trucks, bass boats, chain saws and ATVs. They make life easier and more fun.

The challenge for those who care about our environment, and the affect fossil fuel use is having on it, is to care about our current lifestyle; what it offers and what it doesn’t.

Green and sustainable are, at base, moral persuasion arguments and they’re not working. Can your alternative, sustainable, greener offering make daily life more comfortable, convenient, secure or safe? Can it help a business be demonstrably more profitable, or insulate it from uncertainty in a key area?

If so, then that’s your lead message because for most consumers the only alternative they’re eager to embrace, especially in times of uncertainty, is one that improves their life.

The sensible center

Often, PR is about driving consensus. Other times, it’s definitely not. Sometimes controversial issues are controversial by design. You want a “rational discussion” on climate change? So does ExxonMobil.  How else to ensure that everyone reading, watching, etc., this rational discourse understands first and foremost that there is much to debate and, therefore, the best course of action is to do nothing.

IClimate Changef you have not, you really must take the time to read Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s excellent book, Merchants of Doubt. It does a first rate job of detailing the parallels in strategy, tactics, language, funding, organizations and even individuals between the efforts of tobacco companies to obfuscate the link between smoking tobacco and cancer and the efforts of certain industries to promote doubt about human-caused climate change.

Big Tobacco was never interested in proving that smoking cigarettes wasn’t addictive or didn’t cause cancer. Yes, they made statements to that effect, issued studies and paid for “science” on these topics, but the goal never was to “prove” anything.  The goal was to provide another “side” to the story. Providing a veneer of credibility for that other side by funding studies, scientists and other “experts” fed an ongoing debate which, in turn, justified holding off on doing, well, anything. As the debate churned on, the cigarettes churned out and the toll in health and lives added up. Funding the ongoing rational debate was just a cost of doing business.

Today, the same tactics that kept Big Tobacco in escalating quarterly profits for decades after serious medical concerns were first expressed have been adopted by industries with a lot to lose if an enlightened public were to rationally engage with the well documented science behind anthropogenic global warming. And those tactics are likely to be just as successful.

Why? Because people typically respond to uncertainty with inaction. Why upend the entire economy and Our Way of Life if the science isn’t sound or settled? Better to do nothing, than make the wrong decision. Want to paralyze a population? Gin up a rational public debate.

The experts involved in studying climate change believe in the clarifying power of rational debate and the media love to cover a debate (seriously, how many Republican primary debates are we up to now?).  Both likely see this process as the best – and necessary – way to get at the truth of the matter. The parties driving this process, however, aren’t concerned with getting at the truth of the matter.

But by all means, insist on a rational debate to hear “both” sides of the climate change issue. ExxonMobil would appreciate it.