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Climate Change and the Magnificent Achievements of Eco-Propaganda
Jan 31, 2014 | Global Research | James F. Tracy
Today a good deal of what qualifies as propaganda is much more
subtle than overt. When an entire civilization or way of life is to be
significantly altered the tried-and-true method of “repeating a lie
until it becomes truth” needs to be done over a period of many years and
in a multitude of varying ways to take hold and change the very
assumptions and beliefs of a people.
This process is especially vital for reaching a given society’s more
elite demographic—the opinion leaders who perceive themselves as
“smarter than the average bear” and thus impervious to simple appeals
and indoctrination.
A
case in point is the agenda backed by powerful global elites and
recognizable under names such as “climate change” and “sustainability.”
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth
Assessment Report, released on September 27, 2013, came replete with an
assemblage of legitimizing features along these lines (“scientific,”
“scholarly,” “authoritative,” “peer reviewed,”). Also termed the
“Climate Bible,” journalists and policymakers alike regard it as
“authoritative” and “the gold standard” of climate science. The public
is told that the official body’s findings are now clearer than ever:
“human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming
since the mid-20th century.”[1]
Among the most vociferous agitators for the IPCC’s climate change
orthodoxy are the foundation-funded, tax-exempt, progressive-left media
that sit alongside the bevy of similarly tax-exempt, foundation-funded
environmental organizations that together uphold and publicize the
theory of CO2-based anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change
(ACC).[2] Self-professed as “independent,” “investigative,” even
“educational,” the so-called “alternative media” turn a blind eye to
seriously scrutinizing the highly questionable IPCC’s “scientific”
review of the climatological literature and its implications for the
array of ambitious programs and policies stealthily introduced
throughout the industrialized world, many of which are seldom subject to
popular plebiscite. Think “smart grid” and “smart growth.”
Logical questions from such apparently independent organs might
include, “How does the IPCC produce its findings?” and “Who benefits?”
Instead, there is an almost knee-jerk response on behalf of
progressive-left editors and readerships to trust and support the UN
group’s purportedly objective and meticulous review of the peer-reviewed
climatological literature.
Between August and December 2013 such progressive outlets published
dozens of articles and commentaries whole-heartedly touting the IPCC
report. For example, Truthout.org posted 25 articles, Alternet.org ran
40, MotherJones.com circulated 38, and DemocracyNow.org featured 11.
These were often presented with bleak headlines accenting the urgent appeals found in the IPCC publicity. For example, “
International Scientists Warn Climate Deniers Are Enabling Earth’s Suicide” (Truthout, 9/13/13),
“6 Scary Conclusions in the UN’s New Climate Report” (Mother Jones, 9/27/13), “
Greenhouse Gas in Atmosphere Hits New Record: UN,” (Alternet, 11/1/13), and “’
Africa is Being Pushed Closer to the Fire’: Africans Say Continent Can’t Wait for Climate Action” (Democracy Now! 11/22/13).
Uncritical advocacy of the IPCC’s anthropogenic (human-caused) global
warming extended beyond headlines to media criticism. In December, for
example, the progressive Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
observed that corporate controlled network newscasts routinely failed to
link “extreme weather” to “global warming.” “In the first nine months
of 2013,” FAIR observes,
there were 450 segments of 200 words or more that covered
extreme weather: flooding, forest fires, tornadoes, blizzards,
hurricanes and heat waves. But of that total, just a tiny fraction–16
segments, or 4 percent of the total–so much as mentioned the words
“climate change,” “global warming” or “greenhouse gases.[3]
What is left unmentioned is that fact that all of these “extreme
weather” incidents have one common denominator that FAIR and corporate
and progressive media alike consistently overlook: the sun. As
University of Winnipeg climatologist Dr. Tim Ball explains (
here
at 35:00), the IPCC’s “terms of reference” through which the body
proceeds to generate its findings exclude the sun and its many
demonstrable atmospheric effects as factors in the warming and cooling
of the earth’s climate. It is thus no wonder that at best fringe or
nonexistent causes of “climate change”–such as minuscule alterations in
atmospheric gases–are pointed to with great alarm by the IPCC and its
proponents.
Despite far more unambiguous and compelling scientific explanations
the notion that “carbon emissions” are the foremost cause of natural
climactic events has become something of a religion, and this is
especially the case on the progressive-left, where adherents
mechanically accept the curious agenda and its ostensibly “scientific”
basis while vehemently condemning non-believers as “climate deniers.”
As Canadian journalist Donna LaFramboise has documented in her important
2011 exposé,
the IPCC’s scholarly personnel is in fact heavily weighted toward what
are often third-or-fourth-rate scientific talent whose eco-political
stances are strictly in accord with the IPCC’s “research” agenda pushing
anthropogenic climate change. IPCC authors often include climatology
graduate students and even environmental activists from organizations
such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund—indeed, figures with
little-if-any scientific training but with clear agendas to promote.
LaFramboise further found that one third of the literature reviewed
and cited by the IPCC in its 2007 report was–contrary to IPCC chief
publicist Ragendra Pachauri’s pronouncements–not even peer-reviewed, and
in many cases included citations of promotional literature devised and
distributed by environmental activist organizations.
These unethical and compromising relationships are not difficult to
explain if one is to recognize the IPCC for what it in fact is—a
powerful political organization with the overarching objective of
manufacturing consent and achieving transnational policy harmonization
around the largely discursive construct of anthropogenic carbon-centric
climate change.
The fact that the IPCC is capable of forthrightly carrying out one of
the greatest scientific frauds in human history, setting long range
governmental policies while enlisting allegedly intellectual
sophisticates and “progressive” news media as its most devoted foot
soldiers, is no small-scale feat. It is, rather, an immense achievement
in modern propaganda and thought control that only hints at the powerful
forces behind a much more far-reaching agenda.
Notes
[1] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “
Human Influence on Climate Clear: IPCC Says,”
Geneva Switzerland: World Meteorological Organization. The notion of “a
97% consensus” has itself become a common mantra for climate change
fear mongering and grounds for labeling someone a “climate denier.” Yet
there is limited evidence of any such consensus concerning ACC among
climatologists. The oft-cited 2009 American Geophysical Union survey
alleging a 98% consensus among scientists on ACC cannot sustain even
modest scrutiny. See Larry Bell, “
That Scientific Global Warming Consensus … Not!”
Forbes.com, July 7, 2012. Another study held up as “proof” of
scientific consensus, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” asserts
only carefully qualified claims along these lines. “A broad analysis of
the climate scientist community itself,” the authors point out, “the
distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to
agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top
climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC
discussions.” The brief paper assesses “an extensive data set of 1,372
climate researchers” to conclude that the scientific expertise and
prominence of those who accept the IPCC’s ACC tenets surpass those who
remain “unconvinced.” This begs the question, To what degree are the
requisites of foundation funding related to espousing IPCC/ACC opinion?
William R. L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H.
Schneider, “
Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010.
[2] James F. Tracy, “
The Forces Behind Carbon-Centric Environmentalism,”
Global Research, November 12, 2013.
[3] “
TV News and Extreme Weather: Don’t Mention Climate Change,”
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, December 18, 2013. It might be
added that corporate media and progressive-left counterparts uniformly
fail to consider other possible causes of such unusual weather events,
such as geoengineering and similar “environmental modification
techniques” acknowledged by the US military and undertaken in many
industrialized countries. See, for example, Michel Chossudovsky, “
Climate Change, Geoengineering, and Environmental Modification Techniques,”
Global Research, November 24, 2013.