We’re living in a time of records. More renewable energy came on stream in 2015 than ever — 147 gigawatts, equal to Africa’s entire generating capacity — and investment in the sector broke records worldwide. Costs for producing solar and wind power have hit record lows. Portugal obtained all its electricity from renewable sources for four straight days in May — the longest achieved by any country — and Germany was able to meet 90 per cent of its electricity needs with renewable power for a brief period. Clean energy employment and job growth now outpace the fossil fuel industry by a wide margin.

That’s just a portion of the good news. Oil prices have fallen so low that some more damaging activities are becoming unprofitable, a record number of coal companies are going bankrupt or filing for bankruptcy, and fewer coal mines are operating in the U.S.

But are the good records enough to help us deal with the bad? Global average temperatures are hitting record highs every recent month and year, and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are rising steadily, to levels unheard of in human history. Arctic sea ice is vanishing at unprecedented levels, mass bleaching is killing the Great Barrier Reef, and record-setting droughts, floods, heatwaves and extreme weather are happening around the world.

As Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research told the Guardian: “These are very worrying signs and I think it shows we are on a crash course with the Paris targets unless we change course very, very fast. I hope people realize that global warming is not something down the road, but it is here now and is affecting us now.”

The Paris Agreement, accepted in December by most nations, offered hope that world leaders are aware of this serious problem and know that unless we quickly employ a range of solutions — from renewable energy to reducing consumption to changing dietary and agricultural practices — humanity is at risk.

Despite overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change, the fossil fuel industry continues to employ shady people and organizations to fool fearful and apparently blind followers into believing the problem doesn’t exist or isn’t serious enough to worry about. Their messaging follows a pattern: Spread a simplistic lie until it becomes so discredited that few people accept it and then move on to another simplistic lie.

The most recent from Canadian industry propagandists like Patrick Moore, Tom Harris (of the misnamed International Climate Science Coalition) and their pals at organizations like the U.S. Heartland Institute is that CO2 is not a pollutant, just a benign or beneficial gas that stimulates plant growth. It’s true CO2 is good for plants. So is nitrogen, but when it runs into waterways and the oceans, it pollutes them. Overwhelming scientific evidence proves that increased atmospheric CO2 is a major cause of global warming. The profound effects of that warming are already here, and new and frightening aspects are also coming to light, such as ocean oxygen depletion.

Recent bankruptcy filings for Peabody Energy showed the U.S. coal company owes money to a range of deniers and their organizations, including the also misnamed Calgary-based Friends of Science. It claims the sun and not human activity drives climate change (and that the world is cooling, not warming), a ridiculous assertion, often repeated by coal companies, that real scientists have thoroughly debunked. Extensive research shows coal, oil and gas interests have pumped huge amounts of money into these denial campaigns, all the while knowing that human-caused climate change is real and dangerous.

It’s good that deniers’ voices are being drowned out by evidence and rational arguments and that solutions are becoming better, cheaper and more readily available daily. But we no longer have time to allow compromised politicians, greedy industrialists and dishonest organizations to stall progress. We need record numbers of people to do all they can — develop solutions, write letters, sign petitions, talk to politicians, vote and take to the streets — to demand that governments, industry and society treat climate change with the seriousness it deserves.

Humanity’s fate depends on the choices we make today. We can’t let a polluting sunset industry and its minions block progress to a cleaner, healthier future.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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By Charles Mandel for the National Observer.

A Canadian climate change denial group has popped up in a U.S. coal giant’s bankruptcy proceedings that have lifted the curtain on the funding of a sophisticated continent-wide marketing campaign designed to fool the public about how human activity is contributing to global warming.

A document, nearly 1,000 pages long, lists the Calgary-based Friends of Science Society as one of the creditors expecting to get money from the once-mighty coal company, Peabody Energy.

Climate scientists and environmentalists have long suspected that the so-called “Friends” group was a front for fossil fuel companies trying to block government action to reduce carbon pollution, but Friends of Science members always declined to reveal their source of funding.

The bankruptcy documents show that the coal giant — known for aggressively lobbying against environmental regulations — had some kind of financial arrangement with their “Friends” from Calgary. But when asked, the Calgary group’s spokeswoman said she wasn’t aware of the connection.

“That would be news to us,” wrote the Friends’ communications manager, Michelle Stirling, in an email response to a query about the funding from National Observer.

The document does not show the amount of funding provided, what it was for, when it was given, but only lists creditors.

Stirling said she would need to review the document, which she believes was filed by a party other than Peabody, and said the filing could be a “spurious attempt” to connect the Friends of Science to the coal company: “Until I review the full document and check the source I can’t say much more.”

Coordinated effort to attack climate science, says Greenpeace

Keith Stewart, head of Greenpeace Canada’s energy campaign, said the documents provide proof of what industry has been trying to do to manipulate public opinion.

“There has been for decades a coordinated effort to attack climate science as a way to delay action on climate change,” Stewart said.

Peer-reviewed scientific evidence has demonstrated that human activity, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels and land-use changes, have largely contributed to warming temperatures on the planet in recent decades. Governments from around the world have also accepted that the science shows humans must move off fossil fuels in the coming decades to avoid irreversible damage to ecosystems and life on Earth.

Friends of Science is made up of a core group of earth, atmospheric, solar scientists and engineers, as well as citizens “who challenge the catastrophic view of climate change.”

The Friends group says it has spent a decade reviewing a broad spectrum of literature on climate change “and have concluded that sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide.” The group was created more than a decade ago, using “research” accounts from the University of Calgary to finance its operations, including trips, wining and dining, for several years. But the university, which was issuing tax receipts to donors, later decided to shut down the accounts following an audit.

They created their organization, kickstarted by a $175,000 donation from Talisman Energy — another fossil fuel company — to lobby against the Canadian government’s decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2002.* Friends of Science also ran a sophisticated public relations campaign, including advertising in the 2006 federal election that challenged the Liberal government’s position.

A Friends of Science advertisement that appeared on public billboards. Image: Friends of Science

The court document also revealed that Peabody Energy owed money to many Americans groups that cast doubt on whether humans are responsible for the recent warming observed on Earth.

The Centre for Media and Democracy reported in mid-June that Peabody gave funds to a “network of individuals, scientists, non-profits and political organizations espousing climate change denial and opposition to efforts to tackle climate change.”

Other recipients included Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer who argues sun spots and not CO2 is causing climate change, and who has previously received funding from ExxonMobil; and The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), whose recent film, Climate Hustle, contains misleading information about climate change.

“Derail the science and you stop the train”

The centre noted that the filings “demonstrate for the first time that Peabody Energy has financial ties to a very large proportion of the network of groups promoting disinformation around climate change.”

Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center and one of the researchers who uncovered Peabody’s links to the U.S. climate denial groups, told National Observer: “Peabody’s funding of groups like Friends of Science and others like CFACT shows a clear intent by the company to intervene in the climate public policy debate by casting doubt on the science. They know full well that science is the engine that drives environmental policy; derail the science and you stop the train.”

​The revelation around Peabody’s funding of climate denial groups has sparked outraged reaction among Canadian scientists and environmentalists.

Danny Harvey, a professor of geography at the University of Toronto, said: Peabody’s funding of the Friends of Science confirms that the latter group was in a conflict of interest and could not be believed. “It confirms what we knew all along. It’s not surprising at all.”

Harvey, who is a past Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author, noted that ExxonMobil is currently in hot water for climate change denial after covering up what it knew about the disastrous effects globally of an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.

“I sort of suspect they would be doing something dirty like that,” he said of Peabody.

Stewart, from Greenpeace Canada, added that the Peabody bankruptcy proceedings show that the coal industry is in decline because they failed to embrace the science and plan for the future by developing more renewable forms of energy.

“The coal companies didn’t see this coming in time and they went bankrupt,” he explained. “What we need to do now is make sure that oil companies in Canada see this so that we can begin the orderly transition to a climate-friendly economy rather than lurching in that direction through a series of bankruptcies and rearguard political actions like funding Friends of Science.”

Competition Bureau Proceeding with Friends of Science Probe

At the same time, National Observer has also learned that the Competition Bureau is moving ahead with an inquiry into a complaint against the Friends.

The complaint cited the Friends for propagating false and misleading representations related to several billboards, website representations and a poster made available as a free download on a website. It also included The International Climate Science Coalition and the Heartland Institute.

Ecojustice, on behalf of a group of prominent Canadians (one of whom was Danny Harvey), filed the complaint with the Competition Bureau in December 2015. Charles Hatt, a lawyer with Ecojustice, said the bureau’s decision “validates the thrust of the application,” something he finds particularly gratifying given the “push-back” the application received.

Michael Osborne, a partner in the Toronto-based legal firm of Affleck Greene McMurtry LLP, wrote a withering opinion piece in the National Post.

“Ecojustice’s complaint not only is not within the ambit of the Competition Act, it is a blatant abuse of the Act’s six-resident complaint provision and an invidious attempt to deprive people of freedom of speech, which is not just protected by our constitution, but lies at the very core of our democratic system,” Osborne opined.

Hatt noted the Competition Bureau’s inquiry doesn’t come with a specific timeline and that it is conducted in private.

* This article previously stated Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2003 rather than 2002. It has been updated to reflect the correct year.

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We’re only a minute into watching a brief low-budget video — one that begins by alleging U.S. President Barack Obama is a bully because he suggests that climate change deniers should be “called out” — when Ezra Levant sits down in the chair next to me.

The Rebel Commander himself.

According to organizers, he’s the reason attendance of tonight’s $45-per-head fundraiser in Calgary — casually titled “Climate Leadership Catastrophe: Carbon Taxes, Job Loss, Freedoms Denied” and organized by the so-called “Friends of Science” — spiked from 200 to 445 people after he was announced as its keynote speaker.

And he’s the same intensely controversial pundit who I met in late November at another Calgary event called “Generation Screwed” which I covered for Vice Canada while wearing a “Dreamy Trudeau” sweater.

“Hey James,” he says, reaching out his hand to shake mine.

We briefly chat as the video moves on to clips of testimonies from human-caused climate change denying scientists like Roy Spencer and Willie Soon (the latter took $1.25 million from fossil fuel companies and lobby groups for his research). Levant relays a hilarious and self-deprecating story to me about his flight from Toronto to Calgary during which another person fell asleep on him.

I scribble a few observations in a notepad. He scrolls through his phone, probably Twitter mentions given he sports almost 50,000 followers.

After a few minutes he gets up to leave. I remind him that I tweeted at him a while back about how the Alberta NDP was elected on Karl Marx’s birthday, which seems like crucial information to include in his vehemently anti-NDP and pro-capitalist online show.

We opt to “follow” each other on Twitter. He wanders off.

The whole interaction seemed tense. But also, well, profound; Levant has a disposition that makes one feel strangely a part of something, even if you’re ideologically opposed to him.

It’s awfully disconcerting.

Little has happened in the interim. The slides that greeted each attendee as they walked in and had their tickets scanned by an enthused 15-year-old boy before moving to the buffet tables set the tone for the evening: “Say No To Climate Co2ercion,” “$WINDle,” “Climate — Change Your Mind.”

The video, itself backgrounded with close-up shots of the stars of the American flag, features a bizarre graduation of presumed rights from “freedom of thought,” to “freedom of rational dissent” to “freedom to expose the 97 per cent consensus propaganda.”

Such pun-inspired sayings seem hokey at best. But as the remainder of the night proves, dismissing such sloganeering is as dangerous as ignoring what makes Levant a genuinely enjoyable human to interact with.

For denial of human-caused climate change has very little to do with facts or data (which is why they can argue that CO2 has nothing to do with increased average temperatures and, minutes later, point out that forest fires produce far more emissions than human activity which seems to acknowledge the relevance of CO2 to the discussion).

Many climate change psychologists have observed that one’s views on the issue depend heavily on factors such as in-group biases, pre-existing political leanings and personal connections to carbon-intensive lifestyles.

As a result, it seems deeply naive to chalk the existence of groups like Friends of Science up to a lack of info. Pushing facts like the 97 per cent tidbit will likely only further alienate this kind of audience, fostering a martyr complex.

Take the night’s first presentation. The speaker, John Harper, has worked as a petroleum geologist for the likes of ConocoPhillips and Shell Canada. It’s unclear why he was picked as the person to deliver the technical lecture as opposed to, say, an actual atmospheric or climate scientist.

“What are the rocks telling us?” serves as his mantra for the talk, despite the fact the Geological Society of America agrees that “human activities … are the dominant cause of the rapid warming since the middle 1900s.”

The levels of carbon as measured by parts per million are nothing compared to previous eons, he says, “and the earth is still here” (a curious notion given there’s no way humans could exist in such conditions). He suggests global warming is inevitable. The real problems are population growth and human excrement. Blame the sun.

The trap that believers in human-caused climate change fall into is they rely on interpretation instead of actual assessment of the data, Harper says; he doesn’t know what politicians pushing for policy to address climate change even mean by “evidence-based.”

This statement is made entirely unironically.

Most attendees seem fairly disinterested. Ringtones keep going off.

The only truly captivating part of the entire presentation is an illegible graphic that spastically bounces up and down to demonstrate the fluctuations in average temperatures across the millennia.

The science presented is near impossible to follow.

But it doesn’t matter what Harper says. The point isn’t that he says the right things but that he is the right person: someone who the crowd can trust (former director of energy at the Geological Survey of Canada) and presenting in the right place (after a tasty meal and while sitting among people who look and think like you).

Levant — the star of the event — is announced as someone who’s been deemed by various publications as the “most irritating” and “talking head you’d most like to silence.” Each “achievement” is greeted with a raucous applause. The emcee, Michelle Sterling, clarifies that “I didn’t write this, by the way, they gave this to me.”

Of course she didn’t. Levant is a perfectly composed character. It’s very tricky to discern what he actually believes and what he plays up for a profit.

Either way, his intro as a “rebel” perfectly serves his cause: he’s an iconoclast representing the few who refuse to believe in human-caused climate change (just because a vast majority of scientists happen to).

Levant has no specific focus in his sermons. There’s certainly a thematic goal though: building a staggeringly convincing enemy-oriented narrative by pointing out the hypocrisy, insensitivity and alleged anti-Albertan nature of government and environmental organizations.

In the span of half-hour, he hops from slamming Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi for the Uber debacle, to ridiculing hemp rope bags, to noting that forest fires are natural, to linking environmental efforts with energy poverty, degrowth and deindustrialization (which inevitably led to a Unabomber comparison), to charting foreign donations to Canadian environmental non-profits.

Anyone who has seen Levant speak before knows the drill.

A standing ovation serves as a brief punctuation between his speech and Q&A session. Two mid-life-crisis-aged men in the washroom exchange thoughts about how “our governments are crazy,” “they’re a waste of our time and the country’s time” and how “Ralph Klein’s sacrifice” is being forgotten.

Levant’s responses to questions from the audience such as “why can’t Albertans oust the NDP?” and “why won’t governments stand up for Canada” hones in on hyper-specifics. The mainstream environmental movement’s take on GMOs is ridiculed. We’re made of carbon, we eat carbon, we exhale carbon.

He makes a fart joke (“I buy carbon credits for when I toot”). The “dairy cartel” isn’t taxed as the oil industry is even though its product — cattle — emit massive amounts of methane.

Et cetera.

It’s a spellbinding performance. The crowd occasionally responds to Levant with applause and to the targeted enemies with boos (for an ostensibly tax-averse crowd, they take the reduction of the province’s firefighting budget very, very seriously). The energy in the room can be described as nothing less than spiritual in nature.

There’s an unshakable sense of unity and drive, which likely has something to do with the fact everyone’s: a) white; b) rich; and c) feel persecuted by people concerned about climate change.

But it’s a force that must be acknowledged by climate change activists.

It’s not enough to dismiss Levant and the so-called Friends of Science as fringe groups that simply misconstrue data and graphs and decontextualized policy decisions to suit their mandates.

Of course, they do indeed do that. But such entities also tap into very powerful and deep-seated emotions — trust and pride, anxiety and anger, hyper-awareness of environmentalists who also fly around the world in private jets.

Good luck beating those back with facts. 

Image: The Rebel/Facebook

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By Charles Mandel. This article originally appeared on the National Observer.

Ecojustice, on behalf of a group of prominent Canadians, filed a complaint Thursday with the federal Competition Bureau, asking it to investigate false and misleading representations made by climate change denier groups.

In their application to the Commissioner of Competition, the group called for “a thorough rigorous inquiry of the denier groups and their climate science misrepresentations.”

The group is also pressing for the commission to refer their application to the Attorney-General of Canada for criminal charges against the denier groups.

Ecojustice filed the complaint of behalf of Stephen Lewis, the former Canadian Ambassador to the UN and chair of the 1988 World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere; Tzeporah Berman, author and adjunct professor at York University; and Thomas Duck, an atmospheric scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Other complainants are David Schindler, the Killam Memorial professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, and Danny Harvey, an University of Toronto professor and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author.

The complaint cites The Friends of Science, The International Climate Science Coalition and the Heartland Institute for misleading billboard advertisements, website representations and a poster made available as a free download on a website.

“These groups attempt to discredit the established scientific consensus that global warming and climate change are real and caused by human activity,” Duck said in a statement. “The reality, causes and consequences of climate change are well understood.”

Canada’s Competition Act prohibits the making of materially false or misleading representations for the purpose of promoting any business interest such as fossil fuel development.

Friends of Science billboard in Ottawa, 2014. Photo: Friends of Science

In its application, Ecojustice states that it believes the case should be referred to the Attorney General as a criminal matter. Potential prosecution can take place if it can be demonstrated that there’s clear and compelling evidence that accused knowingly or recklessly made false or misleading representations to the public.

The competition bureau must also be satisfied that criminal prosecution would be in the public interest.

The application notes that two Friends of Science billboards were the subject of 96 complaints to Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) during their display in Montreal in 2014. The council reviewed the billboard ads against the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards and determined they were false and misleading advertising.

The Friends of Science appealed the ruling, but it was upheld. Just months after the decision, the Friends of Science put up a new video billboard making climate science misrepresentations in Montreal and in November 2015 put up more billboards in Edmonton and Calgary.

The application alleges that the Friends of Science’s continued display of climate science misrepresentations after numerous consumer complaints and a former censure by the ASC is clear and compelling evidence that the group knowingly or recklessly made such misrepresentations.

“When combined with the overwhelming public importance of the context in which the climate science misrepresentations are made — including the effect of climate change on the Canadian economy, and the negative effects of climate science misrepresentations on competition in key markets for stimulating the transition to a low carbon economy in Canada — we believe the Commissioner’s inquiry should proceed on the criminal track,” the application states.

Ecojustice and the individuals it represents allege that the climate change denier groups misrepresent climate change science to promote their own business interests and those of their anonymous funders.

“While the denier groups do not publically disclose the identities of their funds, available public information suggests their funding comes at least in part from individuals and corporations with business interests in the production and use of fossil fuels,” the application to the Competition Bureau alleges.

Friends of Science video billboard on display in Montreal in 2015. Photo: Friends of Science

The application states that Talisman Energy Inc., a Calgary-based oil and gas exploration and production company, donated $175,000 to Friends of Science in 2004 to fund the production of a specific video and other activities.

Mike De Souza, an environmental journalist then with the Ottawa Citizen, wrote in 2012 how the energy company, contributed to a pair of trust accounts at the University of Calgary in 2004 to produce a video and engage in public relations, advertising and lobbying activities against the Kyoto Protocol and government measures to restrict fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The accounts were formed at the request of Friends of Science, whom de Souza described as “retired oil industry workers and academics who oppose the Kyoto Protocol and reject the validity of peer-reviewed science on the causes of climate change observed in recent decades.”

In an earlier submission to Alberta’s Privacy and Information Commissioner, Talisman said that an university audit turned up nothing to suggest that the school was aware of its own funds “being used for political purposes,” De Souza reported.

A Talisman spokesperson told De Souza that “the donation was a decision made by the company’s former president, who had ‘different views on climate change science.’

“Today, Talisman’s position is quite different and Talisman does believe that [greenhouse gas emissions] pose a significant risk to the industry,” the spokesperson said.

In its application, Ecojustice states that climate science misrepresentations are inherently harmful to the proper functioning of markets in Canada. “The confusion they sow makes low-carbon technologies less competitive and distorts capital investment toward high-carbon industries, risking a carbon bubble.”

The Competition Act gives the commissioner investigatory powers to examine witnesses and order the production of documents, such as lists of donors, to advance an inquiry. If the information gathered by the commissioner shows the act has been violated, the matter may be referred to the Attorney General of Canada for prosecution or civil proceedings before the courts.

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Much of the country is understandably pre-occupied with Monday’s federal election. But while we have all been watching the national drama unfold, something monumental happened in Alberta.

In a nutshell: big coal is pushing for renewable energy and big oil is re-iterating its push for a carbon tax.

Close to 500 individuals (including at least one alien — more on that to come), companies and NGOs submitted proposals to Alberta’s Climate Change Advisory Panel (chaired by University of Alberta economics prof Andrew Leach) about the kind of policies they think the new government should introduce to address spiking greenhouse gas emissions.

The significance of this for Alberta’s climate politics cannot be overstated. After years of stalling or stifling meaningful conversations, the province has now pulled off one of the country’s most important and interesting climate consultation processes.

The submissions, now accessible online, largely consist of the classic combo of recommendations from the usual suspects: phasing out coal-fired power plants, incentivizing renewable energy sources and introducing a proper carbon tax.

But there were also some fairly surprising sources of support for such recommendations.

Major electricity providers TransAlta and ATCO backed immediate caps on coal-fired electricity and energy companies like Suncor and Shell reiterated calls for an economy-wide carbon tax (CNRL, on the other hand, issued an ostensibly veiled threat: “If we make investment in our province un-economic, the jobs and investment dollars will go elsewhere”).

Premier Rachel Notley seemed thrilled with the responses, saying to reporters: “The quality of the conversation has just improved so dramatically in just such a short time.”

It’s true. The conversation about climate change solutions has come a long way in Alberta in the past six months.

But looking through the comments posted online, there were some pretty far-out ideas coming courtesy of private citizens. Many such comments may in fact offer an intriguing window into how and what Albertans think about the issues of climate change.

Such esoteric suggestions arrived in three distinct forms: hyper-paranoid forecasting, well-meaning but unpopular social changes and outright climate change denial (we’ll let you decide which one is the more concerning of the bunch).

Aliens, Famines and Predictions of Apocalypse

The most overtly out-there suggestions of the bunch were the two that addressed aliens. Yeah, you read that correctly.

In one case, a person only referenced as “Aaron” announced that humans can’t possibly understand “broader thermodynamic processes” and the “offspring of the few humans who do miraculously survive extinction, despite failing to comprehend these limits, will nicely make pets for my offspring.” He later signed off as “the ancestor of the future benevolent overlords of your few surviving offspring.”

There was also “Michael,” who suggested there’s “UFO technology that would eradicate all pollution relating to energy production and general transportation worldwide” (linking to a radio show on the subject which has been listened to over 400,000 times).

Many other suggestions took a less extraterrestrial approach but exemplified an equal level of paranoia: someone identified only as “a terrified and terrorized citizen” warned of coming famines and suggested that Canada starts to ration food and incentivize the rapid construction of windmills by exchanging “work for full meals.” Some writers appeared to fall asleep on their keyboards, way overusing exclamation points (“Albertans should be outraged!!!!!!”). A dozen consecutive commas were issued in one bizarre entry, which also featured vaguely Biblical references and all-caps sentences like “THEIR [sic] WILL BE EMPTY (GAS_TANKS _ ).”

Keep in mind that someone had to sort through all of these. The real kicker is that the posts came with a disclaimer that “submissions will be reviewed for appropriateness before posting to the library.” It’s certainly an interesting thought experiment to imagine what kind of entries didn’t make it past such gatekeepers.

Dramatic Social Changes Proposed

Then there was the class of loftier, more cerebral pitches.

Take, for example, the notion of “Enviro-Wednesday,” which would “close” the province once a week with the exception of essential services such as hospitals and police. Only emergency services would be permitted to drive vehicles, with a “fleet of hybrid taxis” available to transport sick people to hospitals. “Enviro-Wednesday” would allow us to “relax and catch our breath in the midst of all of life’s crazy hustle and bustle and to reawaken ourselves to the priorities in life” by effectively trapping us all at home.

Another entry suggested alterations in societal values, with significant reductions in airline travel and bans on lawn-mowing and recreational road trips. A prohibition on driving trucks was also recommended.

The issue of “unchecked population growth” inevitably reared its head, as did banning GMOs. Which, of course, are legitimate concerns, but perhaps a tad beyond the powers of the Alberta panel.

Climate Change Deniers Arrive in Full Force

Rounding out the pack of entries from private citizens were those who simply don’t buy into the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. There was a staggering number of those. Many seemed convinced that climate change is being harnessed by politicians to generate more revenue for government coffers via mechanisms like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade arrangements.

“Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming has been a solidly falsified theory by now,” one person wrote with impressive confidence. Another contended that “CO2 is not a problem as anyone who has studied the real science knows.”

One Albertan dubbed wind farms “bird slicers” and photovoltaic panels “solar cookers.” The phrase “social engineers” was slung around a few times, usually accompanying the volcanoes-produce-emissions-therefore-human-action-is-irrelevant refrain.

Friends of Science, the controversial Calgary-based organization that suggests climate change is being caused by the sun, made five submissions. The most intensely worded of the climate-denying bunch proclaimed: “Time will come you and your panel of shills shall be exposed. Treachery as this carries massive consequences.”

Climate Change Panel Report Coming Soon

All strangeness aside, hundreds of Albertans did what no one 12 months ago would have believed: that is, have a meaningful engagement with the issue of climate change and what the province can do to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Hats off to you, Alberta.

The hundreds of submissions received by the panel supplement the two public open houses that were hosted in early September: the government reports that close to 1,000 people showed up to those.

Next up is the actual formation of the climate action plan, which will be presented to cabinet prior to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. It’s unknown how many of the submissions will be seriously considered by the panel.

Image: Premier of Alberta

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

Brothers Charles and David Koch run Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company in the U.S., behind Cargill. They’ve given close to US$70 million to climate change denial front groups, some of which they helped start, including Americans for Prosperity, founded by David Koch and a major force behind the Tea Party movement.

Through their companies, the Kochs are the largest U.S. leaseholder in the Alberta oilsands. They’ve provided funding to Canada’s pro-oil Fraser Institute and are known to fuel the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, which claims a 1992 UN non-binding sustainable development proposal is a plot to remove property rights and other freedoms.

Researchers reveal they’re also behind many anti-transit initiatives in the U.S., in cities and states including Nashville, Indianapolis, Boston, Virginia, Florida and Los Angeles. They spend large amounts of money on campaigns to discredit climate science and the need to reduce greenhouse gases, and they fund sympathetic politicians.

In late January, 50 U.S. anti-government and pro-oil groups — including some tied to the Kochs and the pro-oil, pro-tobacco Heartland Institute — sent Congress a letter opposing a gas tax increase that would help fund public transit, in part because “Washington continues to spend federal dollars on projects that have nothing to do with roads like bike paths and transit.”

The letter says “transportation infrastructure has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” an argument similar to one used by opponents of the transportation plan Metro Vancouver residents are currently voting on. Vancouver’s anti-transit campaign is led by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation — a group that doesn’t reveal its funding sources and is on record as denying the existence of human-caused climate change — along with Hamish Marshall, a conservative strategist with ties to Ethical Oil.

American and Canadian transit opponents paint themselves as populist supporters of the common people, a tactic also used against carbon pricing. Marshall told Business in Vancouver, “I love the idea of working on a campaign where we can stand up for the little guy.” The U.S. letter claims the gas tax increase “would disproportionately hurt lower income Americans already hurt by trying times in our economy.” Both fail to note that poor and middle class families will benefit most from public transit and other sustainable transportation options.

Although many organizations that promote the fossil fuel industry and reject the need to address climate change — including the Heartland Institute, International Climate Science Coalition, Ethical Oil and Friends of Science — are secretive about their funding sources, a bit of digging often turns up oil, gas and coal money, often from the Kochs in the U.S. And most of their claims are easily debunked. In the case of the U.S. Heartland Institute, arguments stray into the absurd, like comparing climate researchers and those who accept the science to terrorists and murderers like the Unabomber and Charles Manson!

In some ways, it’s understandable why fossil fuel advocates would reject clean energy, conservation and sustainable transportation. Business people protect their interests — which isn’t necessarily bad. But anything that encourages people to drive less and conserve energy cuts into the fossil fuel industry’s massive profits. It’s unfortunate that greed trumps the ethical need to reduce pollution, limit climate change and conserve non-renewable resources.

It’s also poor economic strategy on a societal level. Besides contributing to pollution and global warming, fossil fuels are becoming increasingly difficult, dangerous and expensive to exploit as easily accessible sources are depleted — and markets are volatile, as we’ve recently seen. It’s crazy to go on wastefully burning these precious resources when they can be used more wisely, and when we have better options. Clean energy technology, transit improvements and conservation also create more jobs and economic activity and contribute to greater well-being and a more stable economy than fossil fuel industries.

To reduce pollution and address global warming, we must do everything we can, from conserving energy to shifting to cleaner energy sources. Improving transportation and transit infrastructure is one of the easiest ways to do so while providing more options for people to get around.

Those who profit from our continued reliance on fossil fuels will do what they can to convince us to stay on their expensive, destructive road. It’s up to all of us to help change course.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada ranks among the world’s countries least likely to agree that climate change is a result of human activity, according to recently released Ipsos MORI research. The study, “Global Trends 2014,” posed a number of survey questions to individuals in 20 countries and discovered agreement with climate science is lowest in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Russia, Poland, Japan and Canada, respectively.

Agreement with climate science was highest in China, of all the countries surveyed, a fact that Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos MORI, attributes to high environmental concerns in China as a result of alarming environmental pollution in the country. “In many surveys in China, environment is top concern,” he said. “In contrast, in the west, it’s a long way down the list behind the economy and crime.”

Science and political journalist Chris Mooney, points out the survey results show an interesting correlation between climate denial or skepticism and speaking English.

He writes: “Not only is the United States clearly the worst in its climate denial, but Great Britain and Australia are second and third worst, respectively. Canada, meanwhile is the seventh worst. What do these four nations have in common? They all speak the language of Shakespeare.”

Mooney outlines two possible explanations for the pattern: political ideology and media ownership.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Sowing seeds of climate denial

A recent study published in Climatic Change showed the U.S. hosts a surprisingly high number of organizations that actively deny or dispute climate science.

This “climate change counter-movement” is comprised of 91 different groups including oil and gas-funded think tanks like the Heartland Institute (which hosts the world’s most established climate denial conference each year), astro-turf groups, and trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce.

In total, these groups bring in more than $900 million each year, some of which is used to cast doubt on the science of climate change.

Naomi Oreskes, history professor at Harvard and author of Merchants of Doubt, a book outlining the history, strategies and organizations behind climate denial, says denier groups are winning in the U.S. and beyond.

In her book, Oreskes made a strong connection between the individuals, groups and ideologies behind the attack on not only climate science, but also the research linking tobacco to cancer, pollution and acid rain and the role CFCs played in creating the ozone hole.

Even after ‘outing’ these groups and their tactics, Oreskes recently told The Guardian things haven’t really changed.

“There are some new faces on the horizon, but recruiting ‘fresh voices’ has been a tactic for a long time. So even the things that may look new are in fact old,” she said.

“The Heartland Institute has become more visible, and the George Marshall Institute a bit less, but the overall picture continues: these groups continue to dismiss or disparage the science, attack scientists, and sow doubt.”

“They continue to try to block action by confusing us about the facts. And the arguments, the tactics, and the overall strategy has remained the same. And, they’ve been extremely successful. CO2 has reached 400 ppm, meaningful action is still not in sight, and people who really understand the science – understand what is at stake – are getting worried.”

Recently in Canada, long-time skeptic group Friends of Science bought billboard space in Calgary to display posters claiming global warming is due to the sun, rather than human activity like deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels (as the majority of the world’s scientists agree).

As Oreskes points out, politicians have done the public a disservice by parroting climate skeptic lines, or linking back to anti-science organizations like the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation.

Last month the Prime Ministers of both Canada and Australia publicly announced their countries wouldn’t take steps to prevent climate change at any cost to the economy. Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Prime Minister Tony Abbott disparaged the carbon tax.

Weeks later, Abbott announced Australia would repeal the carbon tax.

Media does matter 

The media, as DeSmog Canada pointed out after Harper and Abbott’s meeting, is no help in the matter. Harper’s suggested conflict between the environment and economy, for example, was met with zero pushback in traditional Canadian media coverage.

And the English-speaking world, as Mooney points out, is at a particular disadvantage with major media outlets linked together by Rupert Murdoch, a media magnate with an apparent tendency towards climate skepticism.

Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia are all home to Murdoch-owned news outlets NewsCorp and 21st Century Fox.

Mooney writes:

In the US, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal lead the way; research shows that Fox watching increases distrust of climate scientists. (You can also catch Fox News in Canada.) In Australia, a recent study found that slightly under a third of climate-related articles in 10 top Australian newspapers "did not accept" the scientific consensus on climate change, and that News Corp papers—the Australian, the Herald Sun, and the Daily Telegraph—were particular hotbeds of skepticism. "The Australian represents climate science as matter of opinion or debate rather than as a field for inquiry and investigation like all scientific fields," noted the study.

And then there's the UK. A 2010 academic study found that while News Corp outlets in this country from 1997 to 2007 did not produce as much strident climate skepticism as did their counterparts in the US and Australia, "the Sun newspaper offered a place for scornful skeptics on its opinion pages as did The Times and Sunday Times to a lesser extent." (There are also other outlets in the UK, such as the Daily Mail, that feature plenty of skepticism but aren't owned by News Corp.)

Mistrust runs deeper than climate

Although Canada is among the surveyed nations least likely to agree climate change is the result of human activity, Canadians still expressed some concern over the environment.

Canadians largely agreed (79 per cent) that companies do not pay enough attention to the environment and agreed (66.9 per cent) that society at large needs to change its bad habits if we are to avoid evironmental disaster.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Yet Canadians along with many other nationalities expressed concern that governments are using environmental issues to raise taxes. Canadians were also basically split over the issue of whether scientists really even know what they’re talking about when it comes to the environment.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

And interestingly the majority of Canadians report being okay with the "fuss" being made about the environment. The only countries that did express this majority green-fatigue were Brazil, India and Poland.*

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

The general problem of fatigue and mistrust is something scientists, policy-makers, environmental advocates and climate change communicators are growing more aware of.

Recent research from the Environics Institute shows the majority of Canadians, although convinced of man-made climate change, are not convinced governments will do anything about it. In this situation Canadians believe governments bear the responsibility for taking climate action but – for political or ideological reasons – will not. If Canada’s absence of climate legislation is any indicator, Canadians have every reason to retain their skepticism about the current federal government’s climate capabilities.

Without a government prepared to make meaningful progress when it comes to emissions and fossil fuel consumption, society really finds itself between a rock and a…hot place.

*An earlier version of this post stated the majority of Canadians were 'tired of the fuss' but has since been corrected.

Image Credit: Prime Minister Stephen Harper attends the Calgary Stampede from the Prime Minister of Canada press gallery.

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It is always difficult to know what to publish on Earth Day. It’s been around for 34 years, which means that much of what’s worth writing about has already been covered. Then there’s the question of whether to inform your readers with facts, inspire them with positive stories about solutions or just overwhelm them with the beauty and wonder of nature.

Despite the challenge, it’s still a little perplexing why one of Vancouver’s two major newspapers published, on Earth Day, a column about climate change that is so poorly written, so haphazardly argued, so lacking in any genuine concern for the truth, that had a freshman submitted it in one of the university courses I teach, I would have given it an F.

The column to which I refer, “Earth Day is cult indoctrination,” was published by The Vancouver Sun on April 22 as a “guest editorial” by Michelle Stirling-Anosh. Nothing I read in the mainstream media shocks me anymore, and most of it doesn’t even deserve a response, but Stirling-Anosh’s contribution to the climate change debate is worth some critical attention, if only as a warning to others.

Although she did cobble together a few of the selective and decontextualized “facts” commonly used by climate change deniers, Stirling-Anosh’s real currency is fear. Earth Day, she claims, is nothing but an insidious opportunity to “bombard” us with treacherous “appeals to protect the earth for our children.”

This may seem like a laudable goal to most of us — I’d certainly like my daughter to enjoy a planet at least as healthy and livable as the one my parents bequeathed to me — but Stirling-Anosh is quick to point out this irresponsible barrage of dangerous information is part of a campaign of “agenda-driven indoctrination” to brainwash our children “that would make Stalin proud.”

To support her claim equating climate scientists and activists with mass-murdering dictators, she cites a report, published by a UK non-profit with close ties to fossil fuel companies and the climate denial community, which reached the terrifying conclusion that “global warming/climate change propaganda has infiltrated every aspect of education.”

Apparently, the 'Climate Change Cult' has convinced universities not to push students into “hard sciences like petroleum engineering (sic) or geosciences” (you’d never know it from a stroll around the University of Calgary). Elementary schools, too, “have successfully destroyed the basics of scientific inquiry in children,” though she forgot to provide a reference for this ‘factoid.’

Putting aside the factual inconsistencies, you’re just left with the vague and nefarious “they” who are out there in our schools, terrorizing children with the terrifying consequences of climate change, inducing in them a psychological state, similar to Stockholm Syndrome, that leaves them bereft of critical thinking skills and “unable to liberate themselves from their tormentors.” Which, of course, then allows the ‘Climate Change Cult’ to tell them how they “should live, as well as … what they should think.”

Who would spend the time and energy writing such a hopeless piece of drivel? According to her byline, Stirling-Anosh is communications manager for Friends of Science. Ah ha. Five minutes of research on the Internet indicates that she is, as one might have deduced by now, an ideological soldier in the legions of faithful climate change deniers.

Friends of Science is a controversial public relations project, funded by Big Oil through the University of Calgary, whose raison d'être is to cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific evidence that indicates human activity (namely, burning fossil fuels and levelling forests) is causing the temperature of the planet to rise dangerously high. (In case you missed it: 97 per cent of the world’s climate scientists agree that manmade global warming is real and that the burning of fossil fuels is a significant factor.)

She is also a research associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, another think tank that goes out of its way to debunk reputable climate science. On LinkedIn, she calls herself a “creative writer,” not in the realm of novels and poems but in the dark art of “corporate communications.” 

(Read more background information on the Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy)

Perhaps most enlightening is her blog, DarkGreenDevils, dedicated to the “dense network of interests keen to manipulate markets and make you, the taxpayer, pay for ideological dreams of ‘free’ and ‘clean’ energy.”

To quote from one among many paranoid rants, Stirling-Anosh argues that, “Self-important artists pose a threat to life as we know it. Such as using their advanced communications skills to advocate for eco-causes, the science of which they know nothing about, they are killing industry and causing global warming through all their hot air.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on Stirling-Anosh. In a way, I almost feel sorry for her. It’s as if she’s the one who has been indoctrinated into a cult, the Cult of Free Market Extremism, where ideologues dispense with imagination and critical thinking and gather together to worship at the altar of the mythical “free” market. It is this unassailable belief, rather than the falsity of the causes and costs of climate change, that makes the notion of regulating greenhouse gas emissions out of existence (and creating a clean energy economy) such a heresy.

But none of this explains why The Vancouver Sun would publish this column at all, never mind on Earth Day. When I first read the headline “Earth Day is cult indoctrination,” I thought the paper was putting us on, a late April Fool’s joke of sorts. Or perhaps the editors were aware of just how absurd it is and were trying to be ironic. But then I discovered the Sun’s sister newspaper, The Province, published a similar column by Stirling-Anosh two weeks earlier.

The Province column is another attempt to convince us that “global warming stopped before [the] Kyoto [Protocol] was even implemented,” and that, the “overall benefits of ‘carbon’ far outweigh the alleged social costs.” Both of which are patently untrue.

In a democracy where freedom of speech is sacrosanct, there’s little to be done about voices like Stirling-Anosh. But the editors of the Sun and the Province should know better. Please don’t insult the intelligence of your readers by printing baseless propaganda written by PR hacks lurking in the darkest corners of the oil industry. Climate change is too dangerous and we’ve already dithered for too long. Leave what little space you have for climate coverage for those with more honorable intentions.

Jeff Gailus is the author of Little Black Lies, about the use of propaganda in the war over the future of the tar sands. Originally from Alberta, he now lives in Missoula, Montana. 

Image Credit: Edward Musiak via Flickr

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A couple weeks back, I found myself enmeshed briefly in a local debate here in Calgary regarding the validity of the argument that a continent-wide spell of frigid weather raised a serious challenge to the scientific foundations of anthropogenic climate change. In the depths of the cold snap, a rookie city councillor, Sean Chu, tweeted:

I replied:

The exchange and other snarky dismissals of Chu’s line of reasoning got picked up by the Calgary Herald, which ran a news item on its blog and a follow-up piece defending Chu against “anthropogenic global warming religionists” on the op-ed page.

As we were engaged in our local rhetorical joust, climate change deniers continent-wide were re-enacting the same little drama on stages big and small, eventually inspiring one of those killer rapid-fire round-ups of TV news talking-head idiocy on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. “Apparently decades of peer reviewed study can be, like a ficus plant, destroyed in one cold weekend,” Stewart concluded.

In itself, any given one of these minor foofaraws (or are they argle-bargles?) is barely worth wasting the pixels contained in this sentence. But as a whole — as a tenaciously consistent, recurring pattern of discourse — they actually illustrate a singular challenge to concerted and sustained climate change action. So if you’ll stick with me, let’s unpack the mess a bit and take a look.

Now, the phrase “Hot enough for you?” is a cartoon cliché, a bit of glib small talk placed in a character’s mouth as a signifier for “obnoxious person.” I’d argue that its 21st century reboot should go like this: If global warming is real then why is it cold? This sentiment, the current iteration of which was parodied by Stewart, is trucked out by right-wing critics of action on climate change with such seasonal regularity that it has inspired its own Tumblr.

The line is especially notable for its tone, which is usually hyper-confident and self-congratulatory, freighted with the assumption that there’s not a climate scientist in the world who can possibly explain cold regional short-term weather on a warming planet. In Stewart’s clip round-up, the Fox commentators invoking the line sound like they’re dismissing the ravings of flat-earthers (as opposed to, you know, being flat-earthers).

Never mind that the argument backing the phrase is logically identical to the argument that the arrival of night proves the sun has been extinguished forever. Never mind indeed that the very moment this latest round of witty rejoindering swept frozen North America, Australia was sweltering under a record-breaking heat wave. No, your typical deployer of the If global warming is real then why is it cold? trope is not just convinced he’s right but delighted by the certainty he’s just sprung a logical trap on you that will have you stuck in a snowbank till the next summer heat wave.

The tendency among climate change advocates, in the face of such braying nonsense, is to fire back with a barrage of facts, footnoted arguments, citations and links. There’s even a whole subgenre in this vein, an online chapbook of bullet-pointed lists tallying the 8 ways to prove you’re right or 14 ways to debunk your right-wing uncle or 27 LOLCAT gifs that are more complex and nuanced than the baseless argument behind the question If global warming is real then why is it cold?

The hitch, though, is that the assertion, the line of thinking and the whole vast culture propping it up are not sustained by insufficient access to facts. They are sustained by a mistrust of the sources of those facts — and, moreover, the disseminators of them. In other words, it’s not them, it’s you. It’s us.

Let’s dissect another local case in point, which arrived in my Twitter feed hot on the heels of that city councillor’s musing on the connection between cold weather and climate change. It was a link to an ad in the Calgary Herald, touting the latest line of denial — that cosmic rays are largely responsible for climate change — from Friends of Science, an astroturf “public interest” group funded through the office of arch-conservative University of Calgary professor Barry Cooper.

I’d seen this line of reasoning already awhile back, when Friends of Science’s under-read Twitter feed sent me a link to the source of this paradigm-shifting scientific breakthrough in response to something or other I’d posted about climate science. Thus did I learn that Friends of Science has a new pet dissenter, an astrophysicist named Nir Shaviv who co-authored a paper in a journal called GSA Today arguing that “cosmic rays” were a bigger factor in climate change than anything people had ever done, and so “a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man.”

Now, GSA Today is a legitimate scientific journal. This is a genuinely remarkable finding. It invites further consideration. And here’s where those of us in the consensus camp — which includes more than 97 per cent of climate scientists, the vast majority of Canadians and pretty much all of Europe — part ways.

You or I might consult a valid source — RealClimate.org, for example, which is written and curated by climate scientists — and we might discover in less time than it takes to tweet that Shaviv’s paper has been considered, responded to and determined not to actually bring the entire climate change consensus down into a pile of rubble.

Indeed, Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt reported at RealClimate.org that the claims in Shaviv’s paper “were subsequently disputed in an article in Eos by an international team of scientists and geologists … who suggested that Shaviv and Veizer’s analyses were based on unreliable and poorly replicated estimates, selective adjustments of the data (shifting the data, in one case by 40 million years) and drew untenable conclusions, particularly with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations on recent warming.” So then: Just lousy science. Happens all the time. Move along.

But Mann and Schmidt go even further. They speculate on the impact of the study if cosmic rays had in fact done all the stuff Shaviv and his co-author said they did. “Even if the conclusions … had been correct,” they write, “this would be one small piece of evidence pitted against hundreds of others which contradict it. Scientists would find the apparent contradiction interesting and worthy of further investigation, and would devote further study to isolating the source of the contradiction. They would not suddenly throw out all previous results.”

There’s a really significant point there. Did you miss it? THEY WOULD NOT SUDDENLY THROW OUT ALL PREVIOUS RESULTS. (If net etiquette still allowed it, I’d have made the previous sentence blink like a late-’90s Geocities post.)

Friends of Science, however, has no qualms with throwing out all previous results. I’d speculate they uncovered Shaviv and Veizer’s paper on a needle-in-a-haystack hunt for something to use for the expressed purpose of throwing out all previous results. Convinced there must be a magic bullet, Friends of Science found one. They discovered a single data point against a thousand others and reckon they’d found Galileo in the pages of GSA Today. (Friends of Science’s Twitter feed actually cites Galileo in reference to Shaviv.) It’s a very slightly more highfalutin version of If global warming is real then why is it cold?

To come back to my point: there is no amount of contradictory data that you or I or RealClimate.org could assemble, no PowerPoint TED-exy talk we could deliver, no infographic so incontrovertible and compelling that it would convince the Friends of Science or anyone else peddling this line to reconsider their position in any fundamental way. The data doesn’t count. The accumulated facts don’t matter. This is about culture and social trust and a kind of tribalism. You’re wrong — or at least I am — because I’m One of Them.

The motivation here is explained in significant measure by a fine old Upton Sinclair line: “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” But it’s not just the financial investments or the near-term rewards; Friends of Science and their brethren on Fox News and on Calgary City Council are invested culturally in climate change being something other than primarily human-caused. They are invested culturally in the idea that Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann and thousands of other climate science PhDs are no more likely to know the truth than Nir Shaviv or Barry Cooper or anyone who just stepped outside into an abnormally chilly morning.

There’s a name for this, and (to amble finally to my main point) it is a vital concept for climate change communicators, climate scientists and anyone else with skin in this game to understand. The name is cultural cognition. It comes to us from Dan Kahan of Yale University and his colleagues, whose 2010 paper in the Journal of Risk Research is an essential read for the tribe David Roberts at Grist once dubbed climate hawks.

Cultural cognition, Kahan and his colleagues write, “is a collection of psychological mechanisms that dispose individuals selectively to credit or dismiss evidence of risk in patterns that fit values they share with others.” Subjects in Kahan’s study were divided into those holding “hierarchical and individualistic outlooks” and those holding “egalitarian and communitarian outlooks” — conservative and progressive, more or less. They “significantly disagreed on the state of expert opinion about climate change.” And they did so, the paper argues, due to the “polarizing effect of cultural cognition.”

Put more plainly, people tend to trust information only from sources and outlets they’ve already identified as their sort of people — sharers of common cultural values, members of their tribe. To reach those who reject the consensus on climate change, the paper concludes, “communicators must attend to the cultural meaning as well as the scientific content of the information.”

It’s not enough to be right. To put it in Colbert Nation’s terms, it has to feel truthy. The message has to come in the right frame, through the right kind of channel.

Among the tools Kahan et al. innumerate to do so are these:

1) “Identity affirmation” (a framework in which accepting the consensus leads to an outcome you already like — in the climate change context, perhaps energy independence or an entrepreneurial boom).

2) “Pluralistic advocacy” (emphasizing that experts from a range of backgrounds are involved — clergy and right-wing political icons like Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger as well as your Al Gores).

3) “Narrative framing” (stock characters, familiar arcs — maybe farmers and tradespeople and CEOs instead of activists and progressive policy wonks, engaged not in saving the planet but renewing the economy).

None of this is wholly new, of course. Climate hawks and other progressives have been talking about getting the frame right for years, playing up the entrepreneurial angle of green energy and cleantech, making a hero of Texas natural gas baron T. Boone Pickens. So why does the counterfactual denialist/hoax message persist? One possibility, very funnily illustrated in a little Socratic dialogue I found via Metafilter, is the “crazification factor” — the argument, based on the number of votes Alan Keyes got when he ran against Barack Obama in the 2004 Illinois Senate race, that there’s some core group of dug-in, dead-ender partisans who will never move on some issues.

In the case of Obama v. Keyes, the number was 27 per cent. Polls suggest Canada’s denialist base is much smaller — in a 2012 survey, for example, 86 per cent of Canadians agreed that humans were at least partially responsible for climate change, and only two per cent flat-out denied it was happening.

The voice of the If global warming is real then why is it cold? contingent, however, seems much louder in the public discourse than a 1/50 share. Which leaves me wondering: Could part of the problem be that the engagement of this argument on any level — and particularly one of just-the-facts rebuttal — amplifies it well beyond its actual constituency? Might climate change advocates themselves be way off in their perception of the size and scope of opposition to their point of view? And if so, might it not be best to carry on as if everyone in the room already agrees that the guy making the “Hot enough for you?” joke is just being obnoxious for its own sake?

Image Credit: Polar Vortex wind currents on January 7th, 2014 from earth.nullschool.net and featured on the Washington Post.

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