Michael Mann On Kinder, Gentler Denialism, Now The Flat-Out Lies Aren't Sticking Any More

[hatrack]

EDIT

This year marks a decade since news coverage of what many news outlets called “Climategate.” What gains have journalists made in their coverage of climate science and global warming since then?

We’ve seen a pretty dramatic move away from the false balance that we used to see, where every news story about climate change had to have a contrarian, a climate-change denier, representing the other side—as if there’s equal weight on the side of science and science denial.

At the same time, I think there are other problems that we’re seeing crop up in media coverage of this issue. [Franzen’s piece is] emblematic of a trend toward doomist framing; my worry is it leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness and inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as outright climate-change denialism.

We’re also seeing a tendency to emphasize personal responsibility and choice over systemic change. The New York Times, in the space of a month or two, had a half-dozen articles touting the importance of individuals. The problem is us and our eating habits, our travel habits. Again, I think this may not be intentional, but it is actually playing into a deflection campaign that is being used by fossil-fuel interests, trying to emphasize the role of individuals to take the pressure off regulation of industry and systemic changes.

It’s impossible now to deny that climate change is happening. The fossil-fuel industry has essentially give up on their campaign to deny the reality of climate change. So instead they’re focused on this kinder, gentler form of denialism. This is the new climate war, and we need to recognize that it’s being waged and understand that it’s every bit as dangerous as the old climate war—the old-fashioned, outright denial of the science. In some ways, it has the veneer of credibility. It seems reasonable to many people. And that makes it, to some extent, even more pernicious.

EDIT

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/09/21/michael-mann-climategate-deniers-franzen

[Boomer]

1. So Mann thinks alarmists are overexaggerating....

"I don’t think it’s accidental that the errors that I’m talking about, the misrepresentations of the science, are systematically in the direction that paints an overly sort of gloomy, doomist picture. It’s exactly what climate-change deniers do in the opposite direction. They always cherry-pick the model projections and observations to understate the threat of climate change. Here, the doomists, in my view, are doing the same thing in the opposite direction."

He appears to have missed the "faster, sooner" trend that I've been seeing for the past 20 years.

[hatrack]

2. He's right and he's wrong in the same article . . . .

He's dead on target with Big Oil's pivot and the attendant stink-tank tactics, but facing up the reality of the situation isn't necessarily a call to inaction.

The reality of the situation (as you mention) is that models have substantially underestimated the pace and power of warming and all that comes with it. But acknowledging that reality doesn't mean you stop trying to make the greatest change you can.

Even "success" will mean living in a diminished, mutilated, harder world for members of our species that make it to 2100. But that's infinitely better that Permian 2.0.