It is interesting to note that not only is the campaign a clone, but it is in part headed by the same people [1] who were involved in the tobacco business.
And FWIW, Burson-Marsteller has been the lead ad agency.
"Keep the pressure on."
"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
"The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
"If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside"
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
From Saul Alisky’s Rules for Radicals.
These are precisely the tactics being used against climate skeptics. Rather than actually caring about debating the science, the alarmist side instead uses phrases like “virtually none of the climate-change deniers have a clue about the underlying science.”
The whole debate stopped being about science years ago and it has instead become a battle of economic ideology. It’s impossible to have a rational debate when the leadership of the debate engages in ad hominem attacks as a matter of tactics.
We talk about “science,” yet hold up an Inconvenient Truth as some sort of inflatable prophesy, as if Al Gore were Moses holding the Ten Commandments. Despite all sorts of debunked aspects of that film, to call it into question means we are somehow intellectually inept. One would be intellectually inept to not call it into question! As far as realizing how we have been manipulated — that manipulation cuts both ways: many people actually think the debate is still about the climate. It’s not. It’s about economic systems and the means of production.
I’ve stopped caring about the debate and just quietly vote for candidates with whom I agree. There is an expression about wrestling pigs that comes to mind when I think about the climate debate..
I agree. The scientific consensus is strong, and the models are robust. So the only "debate" left involves dueling PR campaigns. And the side that's funded by the fossil fuels industry has consolidated its political control. They still have no hope of winning the scientific debate, but now they can impose their agenda regardless.
Anyway, I could be upset about our situation. Maybe I would be, if I were a few decades younger, or had children and grandchildren. But I don't. So mainly I'm cynically amused. And I'm becoming more and more confident that I'll get to see some lulzy shit before I die.
I am not sure why you are discussing a film. I would caution you against assuming that most people, particularly in this forum, are deriving their knowledge from a single film, as opposed to peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, or the IPCC reports. Personally, I consider this topic to be fairly important, especially given that I grew up in Alaska: climate change is an undeniable feature of the landscape there. I would agree that a lack of high-quality information on this subject is a problem. This is a resource that I would recommend:
The Discovery of Global Warming
https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htmYet the linked post doesn't employ it.
> "Keep the pressure on."
This is the same as be vigilant, be persistent. Fight for what you believe in. This has nothing to do with skeptics, it's about engaging those who similarly do so. Thus it's an active discussion. The pressure is obvious because of the high stakes nature of the topic.
> "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
The threat of a fucked up Earth for our children seems a lot more terrifying for us than for them. They are born into it, we see the change.
> "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
This simply applies to people who are either science communicators by occupation or paid shills for fossil companies.
> "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside"
That's why climate change denialists continue to deny full force, clinging onto the slightest thing. Fighting straw men.
> "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
That's again why denialists muddy up old things, like the Al Gore movie. Which has nothing to do with the science.
> the alarmist side instead uses phrases like “virtually none of the climate-change deniers have a clue about the underlying science.”
And? It seems to be true. It's not a smear phrase, it's the truth laid bare. Denialists are not sophisticated scientists proposing alternate models that explain the data better. Their level of argumentation is very simple, and very much not in good faith.
> It’s impossible to have a rational debate when the leadership of the debate engages in ad hominem attacks as a matter of tactics.
I don't know who you identify as the "leadership", but there are millions of people who think there's man made global warming and they regularly try to convince other people of this without following any sort of leadership.
Oh please. Inconvenient Truth was released 12 years ago. Of course the science is outdated, and in this year 2018, the only people who bring up Inconvenient Truth are those people who have no interest in what scientists have been doing in the past 12 years and instead try to refute an imagined straw man.
So much for respecting the other side of debate.
Second, there's support from public relations firms, also clearly funded by fossil fuels industries. It grew out of the "smokers rights" campaign in the early 80s, which was funded by the tobacco industry. And indeed, the "climate-change denial" campaign is basically a clone of that. Involving the same firms, but with much broader funding.
So basically, virtually none of the climate-change deniers have a clue about the underlying science. So "intellectually engaging" with them is pointless. You could maybe help them see how they've been manipulated. But that too is probably pointless, because they're up to their noses in a smothering meme swamp.