Today I was reading the June 29th issue of the New Yorker and came across an article by Elizabeth Kolbert entitled "The Catastrophist." In a nutshell, the article is about Jim Hansen, who has been spending the better part of the last 40 years understanding the changes in the earth's climate system, and half of that time trying to warn the world by dealing in the facts. Unfortunately, as compelling as they are, the facts continue to get drowned out in a chorus of loud, agenda-driven messaging about how climate change is not a problem, that it's really reversing, and it's all a big hoax anyway.
This was brought home to me clearly this morning when C-Span had a call-in program on the subject of climate change. The Waxman-Markey legislation to cap CO2 is about to go to the floor of the House for debate. Listeners were invited to call three numbers, one for Democrats, one for Republicans, and one for Independents. All the calls were against support for Waxman-Markey. Consistent carefully crafted messages abounded about how global warming was not a problem, and that Waxman-Markey would kill jobs. An email from a climate activist put it this way "I'm getting a ton of messages saying that we're getting killed on C-span this morning. We are trying to generate calls into C-Span while discussion is happening around the bill. Opponents have mobilized effectively to swamp all 3 party call lines. It's 100% against with same talking points."
In the movement to get climate change legislation enacted will mobilized talking-points win out over scientific facts?
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