Is climate change actually a 'climate crisis'? Some think so
British newspaper takes lead in reframing climate change discussion
You should know before you start reading my comments below, that I was for many years responsible for collecting, quality controlling and archiving climate data for Environment Canada, for British Columbia and the Yukon.
You should also know that I left EC on less than ideal terms because I was infuriated by relentless pursuits of the national office to reduce the amount and the quality of data collected in Canada. I have no confidence in data collected in the past 15 years and I am confident that those data are being massaged in ways that I might find very questionable.
Bryan Labby · CBC News
Scientists say that wildfires, such as this one near Sioux Lookout, Ont., are exacerbated by climate change. (Bernie Hawryluk)
What's in a word? Or a phrase? A lot. Take a quick scan of your social media or news feed and it's clear that words matter. They can affect our actions and how we feel.
The debate over the environment and climate change can be especially heated. (Heated?) Seriously?
The British newspaper the Guardian triggered a discussion recently after it announced changes to the way it describes climate change in its reporting. The nearly 200-year-old publication updated its style guide, and now refers to what's happening to our planet as a "crisis."
Triggered is a good word here. It usually implies violence and even death.
"'Climate change' is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the situation; use climate emergency, crisis or breakdown instead," reads the updated guide.
The Guardian's editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, explained that it was also time to do away with such niceties as "global warming," which is being replaced, in most instances, with "global heating."
'Climate change' is kind of useless, I have to admit, because the climate is always changing.
'Global heating' means virtually the same thing as 'global warming'; heating is just a more vulgar word.
In May, London's Guardian newspaper posted this story explaining why it was changing the language it uses to describe climate change. (theguardian.com)
Initially, I thought this photo was taken in the 1960's in Churchill, Manitoba
"We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue," said Viner. "The phrase 'climate change,' for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity."
First of all, there is no 'precise' when it comes to atmospheric sciences. The science that has been predicting disaster for 30 or so years, has been almost completely wrong.
The arctic sea ice has not disappeared
The glaciers have not disappeared
Only about 3 tiny little islands have disappeared in this century while new ones are actually rising above the surface of the seas
No cities have been destroyed by rising sea levels except those built where they should never have been built in the first place, or where dikes have not been maintained, or where they are literally subsiding
Seas have risen about 210 mm., that's about 8 inches, in the past 140 years. Where's the crisis?
It's something Sean Holman, a Calgary journalism professor, has been thinking about for a while. He wrote an open letter to editors and journalism associations chiding reporters for failing to properly report on the "crisis" shortly after the Guardian made the change.
"This letter is aimed at basically us, you and me, journalists across the country whose job it is to provide the public with the truth more than anything else," said Holman. "We know that climate change, the climate crisis, is causing a lot of what we are seeing now and we need to be clearer with our audiences about that, because, really, no one else will."
Crisis? Emergency?
The Guardian's move prompted some discussion at the CBC, and an eventual decision to clarify the public broadcaster's language on the issue. The public broadcaster said use of the words "crisis" and "emergency" may be used "sometimes," but caution needs to be exercised.
"We never suggested that anyone shouldn't use the words, but we never really articulated their use," said Paul Hambleton, the CBC's director of journalistic standards.
The climate crisis and climate emergency are words that have a whiff of advocacy to them
- Paul Hambleton, Director, CBC Journalistic Standards
"The 'climate crisis' and 'climate emergency' are words that have a whiff of advocacy to them. They sort of imply, you know, something more serious, where climate change and global warming are more neutral terms."
'Whiff" - that statement has a whiff of understatement in it!
Hambleton said the public broadcaster needs to guard against "journalism that crosses into advocacy."
Mr Hambleton needs to examine the CBC's breathtaking endorsement of Justin Trudeau to know that CBC crossed that line a long time ago.
Tell it like it is
While journalists may open themselves up to criticism, one Calgary communications expert believes there is room to use a bit more aggressive language when reporting on the environment.
"It can't be business as usual," said David Taras, a communications studies professor at Mount Royal University.
"Journalists have misrepresented the crisis in a lot of ways. And journalism has to change, and it has to change because the reality is changing."
No! Reality is not changing nearly as much as the perception of reality is changing. And the perception is over-hyped beyond all reason.
David Taras, a professor at Mount Royal University, believes news organizations need to do a better job reporting on issues related to climate change and global warming. (Bryan Labby/CBC)
Taras said that journalists need to report "the facts as they really are," but they also have an "obligation" to "make their audiences understand that ... we are in a global emergency."
Reality is, again, already very much over-torqued by 'scientists' who come out every week with a new prediction of disaster and catastrophe. Each new 'study' outdoes the previous study in its level of alarmism. This is how 'scientists' get their research money.
I strongly believe that most of these terrifying findings that 'scientists' come out with are predetermined results and the 'science' is made to produce those results. If they don't, the 'science' is re-worked with new filters, new estimates, new assumptions. Atmospheric computer models do not produce 'facts'. They are built based on theories that are not much more than guess-work. That's why most computer models are not available for other scientists to critique. That would be real science.
He said news organizations should be open and transparent with their audiences, similar to the Guardian.
"The question is whether journalists will form their judgments and frame their stories in accordance with scientific facts." he said. "This is the only question that really matters."
Again, what are facts? The media pours out 'scientific concepts as 'facts', when those same 'scientists' have been consistently wrong, consistently overstating, and consistently alarming the public unnecessarily. Now the media wants to take alarmism to the point of hyper-alarmism. Is that in the public's interest? Is that responsible?
Have you not seen the children leaving schools to protest global warming? You probably think this is a good thing. But some those children will be sorely affected by the erroneous idea that the world is coming to an end because of global warming.
I was in my early teens when the Cuban crisis occurred with Kennedy and Khrushchev. The way people were talking about it just left me with the notion that there was no point in trying to accomplish anything with my life as the world was so precarious, my life would not likely be long enough to succeed at anything. This is what we are doing to another generation of kids.
Isn't the news media supposed to avoid being alarmists? Yet, here they are making a decision to be deliberately so. It's PCMadness! Kids have enough stress in their lives, they really don't need a man-made, deliberate stressor added in.
Satellite Data
Check out the UAH satellite observations of global temperatures since 1979:
But for the two strongest El Nino events - 1997-98 and 2015-16, there has been a rise in global temperature of 0.3 or 0.4 degrees in 35 years. This is easily within normal, climatological, cyclical patterns.
Satellite data removes most of the data massaging and data collection changes. Although, the UAH data initially showed a cooling trend in the first decade, a number of 'corrections' and 'revisions' 'fixed' this problem.
Computer models are supposed to remove the 'heat-island' effect of growing cities on climate data. UAH data does not! Yet, the UAH data shows considerably less warming than surface data. I would call that surface data suspect, at best.
Chris Westbury, a research psychologist whose work focuses on understanding the cognitive structure and neurological underpinnings of language, said changing the words used to describe climate change could impact the way we think about the issue.
The University of Alberta researcher likened it to a U.S. study done in the 1970s that asked people to look at car crash footage and estimate the speed of the vehicles involved in the collision. The speed estimates changed based on the language researchers used to describe the crash. "Collide," "bump," "contact" or "hit" resulted in lower speed estimates, while the verb "smash" resulted in higher estimates.
Westbury said there could be a similar reaction to the way climate change is described.
"What I would suspect is that if we all started using more negative terms, then we would all start thinking about climate change more negatively, and presumably that would make us do something about it," he said.
Or, it might make the next generation throw up their hands and give up! Since when does negative talk produce positive results?
Language shapes our emotions
University of Calgary cultural studies expert Jan Suselbeck believes the emotions we feel, such as anger, happiness and sadness, are "constructed," or triggered in the moment, and are not biologically hardwired in our brains. He said the language we use constructs or shapes those emotions.
"Language influences how we feel, so if we change the terms we use about certain things, this makes an emotion appear or vanish," he said. "This is why language matters."
This wildfire burned in the High Level Forest Area in Alberta on May 18, 2019. (Government of Alberta/Canadian Press)
Suselbeck supports the Guardian's move, and suggests other news organizations follow its lead. But he said journalists should still provide facts and context when presenting information on the state of the environment.
"People must realize that this is indeed connected to scientific findings," he said. "It's not just a random thing, so these data have to be used."
But those scientific findings need to be examined themselves and not accepted as fact because someone who was paid $100,000 to produce a report, produced a report that met the expectations of those providing the funds.
Predictions need to be presented in historical context. The great number of alarmist forecasts that have been completely wrong, need to be presented, or you are not being honest, and you are being advocates for politically-induced 'science'.
While U.S. President Donald Trump is one of the biggest climate change skeptics, Suselbeck said journalism organizations might learn something from his political style — namely, the power of repetition.
Most of us have heard Trump's repeated assertions over allegations that his campaign conspired with Russia in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. He has tweeted or uttered the phrase "no collusion, no obstruction" hundreds of times.
Suselbeck said repeating the same messages over and over again makes people focus on those statements, "and this shifts the public perception of what really matters or not."
My last point is that climate alarmism is itself a construct of politically powerful people to divert attention away from the really alarming horrors that go on in this world -
The spectacular corruption in governments and business.
The fact that many western economies are based on arms manufacturing.
Which requires that there be wars, or rumours of wars, or fears of wars, ever-present.
The fact that trillions of dollars are spent on munitions when millions of people are starving and even selling their children into sexual slavery in order to survive.
Child sexual abuse is the single most horrific atrocity the world has ever seen and it gets worse by the day. An entire generation of children are being seriously messed up, many of which will never fully recover. This is what we should be alarmed about.
Yes, the climate needs attention. But single-use plastics are a much worse environmental tragedy.
Climate change alarmism is 99% diversion. Print that!
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