[Ben Santer, Climate Scientist] As a scientist, you're trained to defend the science that you do. What you don't expect is to have people ...
threaten you with all kinds of dire consequences ...
for continuing to do the research that you do.
I was contacted by the IPCC to act as convening lead author ...
for one chapter of the second assessment report.
That final sentence, "The balance of evidence suggests ...
a discernible human influence on global climate" ...
was finalized at the end of November, 1995.
I had no idea that my life would be so dramatically changed by that one sentence.
These are a few emails from a large number of emails that I received.
"Yeah, you -- You arrogant, fucking piece-of-crap con man. I hope you are hung by your pathetic, little neck. I'd love nothing more than to beat you with a large stick, you shit-eating Yank. Go die."
[Subject: dirtbag; Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010; From: DrDetail; To: Santer, Ben: Ya you you arrogant fuckin peice of crap conman, I hope you are hung by you pathetic little neck, because of cunts like you , the world suffers,i,d love nothing more than to beat you with a large stick you shit eating yank.Go Die] [Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] It's possible I posted Santer's email in the early days of Climate Depot.
He's far from the only one I've done that to.
UNREPENTANT: not sorry for having done wrong <she was unrepentant about selling her ex-boyfriend's prized guitar>. Synonyms impenitent, shameless, unashamed, unrepentant. Related Words: compassionless, cruel, merciless, pitiless, ruthless, unmerciful; evil, immoral, iniquitous, nefarious, reprobate, unregenerate, unrighteous, vicious, vile, villainous, wicked; callous, cold-blooded, hard-hearted, heartless, inhuman, inhumane, obdurate, soulless, unfeeling.
-- Unrepentant, by Merriam Webster Dictionary
[Michael Mann, Climate Scientist] "You're an effing terrorist, you and your colleagues ...
ought to be fed to the pigs, along with your whole families."
"How come no one has beat the living piss out of you yet? I was hoping I would see the news and you committed suicide."
[Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist] "You stupid bitch. I would like to see you convicted and beheaded. If you have a child, then women in the future will be even more leery ...
of lying to get ahead when they see your baby crying next to the guillotine."
[Subject: Slimey-cunted Nazi Bitch Whore Climatebeche. You stupid bitch, You are a mass murderer and will be convicted at the Realitly TV Grand Jury in Nuremberg ... eugenical scam. It was ... thing as radiative forcing. There is a fake solar constant in the models, ignoring so ... numercially by ten orders of magnitude, the NIMBUS satellite data was fudged according .... the 2000s. The glaciers are not melting abnormally, the ice pack at the poles is just about ... through lack of refrigerators. IPCC admits there has never been a single measurement of ... see you convicted and beheaded by guillotine in the public square, to show women that if ... the men do when they get caught. If you have a child, then women in the future will be even more leery of lying to get ahead when they see your baby crying next to the guillotine. Stan in Seattle. Comment today on Tom Nelson blog. I am the supposed culprit. I read how horrified she was that people were calling climate ... do every day. My usual litany includes, "When the Grand Jury is done with you, I'll enjoy ... not a death threat. It's an effective counter-propaganda tactic, thank you very much. Stan Lippmann Ph.D. (radiative transfer in ionized gases, 1989) J.D. 1998]Sometimes it's one a week. When your email address ...
gets posted online at Morano's website, it's 200 or more in a day.
[Ben Santer, Climate Scientist] Well, I think the most disturbing emails and letters were ones that ...
suggest there will be harm to you, direct physical harm, to you and your family.
[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I don't know what his complaint is. I'll give you the philosophy behind it.
[Robert Kenner] Yeah, that's more important.
[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Is he ready? This is one of my favorite topics.
In fact, I got on ABC Nightly News just because I posted emails.
I did a whole segment.
[Marc Morano, ABC News.com] The public is appropriately angry at these scientists. No one's advocating violence, but it is refreshing to see these scientists hear from the public.
[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I think people should be thanking me. I was doing a service.
People go, "Oh, your death threats." I get death threats. I enjoy them.
It was one of the healthiest things that could have happened in the climate debate.
I make no apologies. I still do it. I enjoy doing it.
[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Every time we see the world beginning to act on the science,
we see some kind of attack designed to undermine it.
In 1995, the IPCC comes out with its second assessment report that says ...
"Yes, there's climate change." What do we get?
A massive attack on Ben Santer, who's the lead author of the key chapter.
In the second case, before the run-up to the Kyoto negotiations,
when it looked like the world was going to agree,
we had the Oregon Petition. It's a completely discredited document.
Nevertheless, it did a lot of damage.
New light on the putative value of intelligence dossiers issued by Tony Blair’s office in Number 10 Downing Street was not long in coming. In September 2002, Blair published amid great fanfare his dossier purporting to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq currently possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was entitled “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,” and it was clearly crafted to provide a pretext for waging unprovoked and aggressive war against Iraq. This dossier was exposed as a fraud in two distinct waves of demystification. The first exposure took place in February 2003, when it emerged that entire sections of this report, which had been billed as the most up-to-date evaluation that could be offered by the very formidable capabilities of MI-6 and the rest of the British intelligence machine, had simply been lifted, plagiarized without attribution, from older documents in the public domain. The Iraq dossier had been concocted by Blair and his media guru Alistair Campbell, a figure who combined the worst of image-mongers like Michael Deaver and Karl Rove, using materials provided by British intelligence. Parts of Blair’s dossier had been stolen from articles written by Sean Boyne of Jane’s Intelligence Review, who was horrified by the nefarious use to which his work had been put. “I don’t like to think that anything I wrote has been used as an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war,” complained Boyne. Another source from which Blair had lifted material verbatim was a thesis entitled “Iraq’s Security and Intelligence Network,” published in September 2002 by a graduate student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, a California resident. Al-Marashi was equally indignant, commenting that “this is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the government if it is up to this sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish now with a lot of skepticism from now on.” And not just from now on; it is our contention here that this disbelief in regard to Tony Blair’s work product should also be applied retrospectively.
The British Parliament was appalled by Blair’s mendacity, which was so crude that the coded titles of the Microsoft Word documents that made up the dossier had been allowed to remain visible on the Number 10 Downing Street web site. Many pointed to Alistair Hamilton as the dervish of spin behind the entire sordid operation. Former Labour Party Defense Minister and current Member of Parliament Peter Kilfoyle observed that Blair’s deception merely “adds to the general impression that what we have been treated to is a farrago of half-truths. I am shocked that on such thin evidence that we should be trying to convince the British people that this war is worth fighting." Labour MP Glenda Jackson added “It is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament. And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying.” (Daily Mirror, February 8, 2003)
Blair’s nonchalance in cribbing together dossiers on subjects of vast importance also attracted the barbs of British wits. AheadOfNews.com spoofed Blair’s plagiarized Iraq dossier by writing that “a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged recently that the report, ‘Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,’ had been cobbled together from a variety of sources, including old term papers, Readers Digest, and several tabloids. John Miller, Undersecretary for Cutting- and-Pasting, explained that ‘plagiarized’ sections of the report included spelling errors, such as ‘weapons of mass distraction,’ and ‘Untied States’ found in the originals. 'Our deceptions might have succeeded,’ he said, ‘except for our bloody incompetent proofreaders.'” (February 12, 2003) Blair’s Iraq dossier was an international laughingstock, but that had not prevented Colin Powell from praising it in his infamous speech to the United Nations Security Council.
But Blair’s dossier was in the end no laughing matter: it contributed to the deaths of perhaps 15,000 people in Iraq within a year. It also brought tragedy to one of the British intelligence officials who had collaborated in its creation.
In June, 2003, when the Iraq war had already begun to go badly for the aggressors, BBC News broadcast a story by correspondent Barnaby Mason reporting that Blair and Campbell had personally supervised the concoction of the Iraq WMD dossier, sending proposed drafts back to the Joint Intelligence Committee “six to eight times” to be “sexed up” through the addition of more lurid and sensational details. One of these details was thought to be Blair’s fantastic claim that Iraq had WMD which could be launched within 45 minutes. Blair delivered this warning in such a way as to suggest that Iraq would be capable of striking the UK within 45 minutes, despite the fact that Iraq possessed no delivery systems capable of doling this.
The response of the Blair regime to this report was to promote a witch-hunt to ferret out the source inside the government who had leaked such embarrassing material to Barnaby Mason. Officials of the British Defense Ministry allowed journalists to read them lists of persons suspected of being the leaker, and were willing to confirm the identity of their prime suspect as soon as the journalists mentioned his name. In this way, the Defense Ministry in effect betrayed one of its own employees, Dr. David Kelly. A few days later Kelly was found dead in a forest near his home, with his wrists slashed. His death was quickly ruled a suicide. After Kelly’s death, a UN diplomat recalled that he had asked Kelly back in February 2003 what would happen if Tony Blair went through with his plan to join Bush in attacking Iraq. “I will probably be found dead in the woods,” was Kelly’s prophetic reply.
--
9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley
Third time, Copenhagen. Finally, we're gonna get an agreement.
The U.S. is on board. Obama has gone to Copenhagen.
[Brian Williams, MSNBC] A new scandal that's burning up the Net these days, that began with emails that were stolen --
[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Suddenly, we see this release of stolen emails.
Lines taken out of context to make it seem as if ...
scientists were involved in nefarious activities.
People started saying, "What's going on in Copenhagen?"
[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] This is the upper echelon of the U.N. It's been exposed as the best science that politics and activists can manufacture.
[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] My initial reaction with the Climategate, I thought, "Okay, mm, gosh, I hope I didn't flip at the wrong point there. Maybe this is all baloney."
When you actually read the emails in context, you go, "Oh. Okay, he's not actually saying what Rush Limbaugh said he was saying."
There's been three investigations into Climategate where they had ...
independent committees go through every email. There was nothing.
[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] They were trying to find yet new ways to weaken ...
this growing international accord.
All they have to do is slow down action.
[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has. That's all you really want. There's no legislation we're championing.
Gridlock: the stoppage of free vehicular movement in an urban area because key intersections are blocked by traffic. 2. the blocking of an intersection by vehicular traffic entering the intersection but unable to pass through it. 3. any situation in which nothing can move or proceed in any direction: a financial gridlock due to high interest rates.
-- Gridlock, by dictionary.reference.com
We're the negative force, just trying to stop stuff.
This raises the question of the violent revolt against the universal homogeneous state, which is what Strauss regards as inevitable and desirable: "Yet there is no reason for despair as long as human nature has not been conquered completely, i.e., as long as sun and man still generate man. There will always be men (andres) who will revolt against a state which is destructive of humanity or in which there is no longer a possibility of noble action or of great deeds." (Strauss 209)
When the real men revolt against too much peace, progress, and prosperity, what will be their program? Strauss: "They may be forced into a mere negation of the universal and homogeneous state, into a negation not enlightened by any positive goal, into a nihilistic negation. While perhaps doomed to failure, that nihilist revolution may be the only great and noble deed that is possible once the universal and homogeneous state has become inevitable. But no one can know whether it will fail or succeed. (Strauss 209, emphasis added)
What can be understood by nihilistic negation and nihilist revolution? In the nineteenth century, nihilism was an ideology of terrorism; the crazed bomb-throwers who assassinated statesmen and rulers across Europe and America (including President McKinley) were atheists, anarchists and nihilists. In the twentieth century, the nihilist revolution was synonymous with some of the most extreme factions of fascism and Nazis. "Long live death!" was a slogan of some of them. With these lines, Strauss has opened the door to fascism, murder, mayhem, war, genocide, and most emphatically to terrorism. And he is not shy about spelling this out.
--
9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley
[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] It's all about distraction, it's all about confusion.
It's about preventing you from looking where the action really is, which is in the science.
Friends,
There are times when words are hard to come by, and when you find them they feel inadequate.
I’m writing you from France, with a heavy heart. Following Friday's attacks in Paris, the mood here is tense. People are angry, and many are afraid. Many of our staff members are in Paris to get ready for the climate talks in a couple of weeks, and they are feeling the pain of this moment sharply.
I am heartbroken -- for the lives lost in Paris, and for those lost in Beirut and Baghdad, which also suffered devastating attacks late last week. Clearly the world is hurting in many places right now.
As we’ve struggled to find the right words and the right response to Friday night’s attacks, one thing rises to the top for me:
The upcoming Paris Climate Summit is, in a sense, a peace summit -- perhaps the most important peace summit that has ever been held.
We need global solidarity more than ever right now, and that is, really, what this movement is all about. Even as climate change fans the flames of conflict in many parts of the world -- through drought, displacement, and other compounding factors -- a global movement that transcends borders and cultural differences is rising up to confront this common existential threat.
Let’s hang on to that solidarity and love. Let’s learn from it. Especially at a time like this.
Friday night’s events were horrific, and we must clearly and unequivocally condemn such violence. Their aftermath has also been frightening though, and we should stand in equal condemnation of the instinct to meet violence with more violence. It is a cycle as old as it is ugly: after tragedy comes the rush to judgement, the scapegoating, the xenophobia and Islamophobia, the blame.
There is a real danger here that those already impacted by both the climate crisis and the wars that are so intimately bound up with it -- migrants, refugees, poor communities, and communities of color -- will be further marginalized.
If there is a thing we must resist, it is our own fear and short-sightedness. No government should use a moment like this to increase the burden of hatred and fear in the world -- sowing suspicion, calling for war, and reducing people’s civil liberties in the name of security. This is a mistake we've seen too often before, compounding tragedy with more tragedy.
The Paris Climate Summit, scheduled to begin in just a couple of weeks, will proceed. The government is promising heightened security measures, which is understandable but also worrisome.
We don't yet know what Friday night's events mean for our work in Paris. The coalition on the ground is committed to working with the French authorities to see if there is a way for the big planned march and other demonstrations to safely go forward. We fully share their concerns about public safety -- just as we fully oppose unnecessary crackdowns on civil liberties and minority populations.
We do know that this global movement cannot and will not be stopped:
The Global Climate March -- a worldwide day of action scheduled for November 28th and 29th -- will also proceed, no matter what. We can think of few better responses to violence and terror than this movement's push for peace and hope.
We hope you’ll join us at the end of the month.
There couldn't be a more important time to work for climate justice, and the peace it can help bring.
With love and determination,
Nico and team at 350.org
--
Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer - 350.org
[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] Misdirection is the use of the little lie to sell the big lie.
The big lie and the floating lady -- the classic levitation illusion --
is the mechanism that's used to make the woman rise.
The little lie is the passing of the hoop.
The floating raises your skepticism. There must be a wire. There must be threads.
There must be something.
And then the hoop is used to specifically undo that. Cancel that.
So really, misdirection is about focus. It's not so much about directing away, or misdirecting,
it's about direction.
It's about bringing your attention to something that engages you. And then, you don't see anything else in the frame.
["Swing the question over to the freedom-of-choice issue."] [Stanton Glantz] The tobacco companies knew they have to appeal to something more ...
[FREEDOM] basic than this intellectual pursuit of science. How do you do it? Do it with freedom.
[Man] That's the way freedom dies. Today it's smoking. But what will they try to regulate next?
[Man] What will they try to regulate next? What we can say? What we can read?
[Woman] I don't want Big Brother breathing down my neck telling me what to do.
[Man] Not just for smokers, but for nonsmokers,
and all others who want to live their lives ...
making their own decisions, not having them made for them by the benevolent bureaucracy of Washington wisdom, or these other --
[Stanton Glantz] By turning it into an abstract issue of freedom,
[BRING BACK THE SMOKING SECTION] and moving it away from their corporate interests,
[SMOKERS ARE CUSTOMERS TOO] they can get people behind it. Who can possibly be against freedom?
What happened was, these other companies, and other industries realized, like: "Hey, this is a pretty good idea."
[Boy eats ice cream]
[Man takes ice cream away from boy] [Man] Everywhere you turn, somebody is telling us what we can't eat.
[FUNDED BY FAST FOOD INDUSTRY] [Man] Do you ever feel like you're always being told what not to do?
[FUNDED BY FAST FOOD INDUSTRY] [Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com] These people tell us where to work,
how many children to have, how much energy to use, how much water we can ...
[PRES. OBAMA SAYS ELECTRICITY RATES WOULD SKYROCKET UNDER CAP-&-TRADE] [Stanton Glantz] On global warming, you see the same thing happening.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] For literally decades, David Koch has been just a tireless defender of our economic and individual freedoms. I'd like to introduce to you David Koch,
our chairman at the Americans for Prosperity.
[David Koch]
[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] Koch Industries is heavily invested in coal, oil, and tar sands. They are some of the biggest polluters in the country,
[and have] received the largest fines.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE][Stanton Glantz] They needed an army of people to fight against regulation ...
in the name of freedom.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Good afternoon, fellow freedom fighters!
[Reporter 1] The group, Americans for Prosperity, is holding a nationwide,
hot-air balloon tour.
[GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM: LOST JOBS; HIGHER TAXES; LESS FREEDOM] [Reporter 2] They're spreading a message of global warming alarmism, lost jobs, higher taxes, and less freedom.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Over eight years ago, we launched Americans for Prosperity. And the goal behind it was to provide grassroots support at the local and state level to push free-market policies.
And we have just over two million people who've taken action.
We now have an army too.
[Robert Kenner] Do you try to figure out if the science is real or not?
Or you don't even think of that?
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] No. We're on the economic side.
Howdy.
We study what they'll do to American people in the name of global warming.
They won't drill for oil. Guys, let's get moving here.
Come on, it's not a really hard -- Not a really hard decision. Let's --
For a long time it was just, hey, An Inconvenient Truth,
and all these polar bears that seemed to be drowning, and horrible things that seemed to be happening. A lot of Americans said: "Gosh. That seems like a bad thing." But then, through the education efforts of a lot of groups ...
like Americans for Prosperity and others, Americans began going, "Wait, I'll pay more for everything. It means a little bit less freedom."
I think the American public has moved our way. The polls confirm that.
[WE WANT FREE ENTERPRISE, NOT SOCIALISM TAKEOVER] We want to make sure that both parties know we'll hold them accountable. Republicans too, absolutely.
***
[Robert Kenner] Should I think of you as a liberal, a conservative, or ...?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Pretty conservative is how you should think of me. Ninety-three American Conservative Union Rating, 100 percent Christian Coalition, National Right to Life.
[1992] With your help, we can reclaim the Congress.
I represented the 4th District of South Carolina, which is probably the reddest district in the reddest state in the nation.
When I was first in Congress, I was a complete denier.
I said, "That's hooey, absolute nonsense. Al Gore's imagination."
I just knew that if it was coming from the other team, it had to be wrong.
I got on the science committee, and had the opportunity to go to Antarctica -- twice, actually.
I saw the evidence in the ice core. You can pull it up and examine the CO2 levels.
They were really stable.
And then, coinciding with the industrial revolution, there's an uptick.
The chemistry is real clear, that you're changing the chemistry of the air.
So I decided, really right then and there,
I'm gonna go back, and I'm gonna do something.
Madam Speaker, what I'd like to say tonight ...
is that there is a need to act --
and to come together to find a solution that breaks our addiction to oil, that creates new energy jobs, and that cleans up the air.
That was to my great peril, with the Tea Party coming, and the great Recession happening.
[CROWD SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
[WE ARE TAX POOR!!!
AMA DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US!!!
STOP THE MARCH OF SOCIALISM
SENIORS! VOTE OUT DEMOCRATS IN 2010] [News Anchor] Tim Phillips is helping to organize some protest parties.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] It's a genuine grassroots uprising. Groups like Americans For Prosperity, we're organizing.
[Speaking Indistinctly]
[SPENDING DOES NOT EQUAL INVESTMENT
JUST SAY NO TO SOCIALISM] [Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] There's a tide of doubt that comes out of the Great Recession,
where we started to doubt every institution, you know.
Along comes some people that see the opportunity ...
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Coming up next is a global warming tax. It's a pretty cold night in April here, right?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Americans For Prosperity has been amazingly effective.
They're able to organize that discontent.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] In the name of Al Gore-ism. And by the way, can we just talk about Al Gore for a moment?
[CROWD BOOING] [Robert Kenner] If you see Republicans becoming sympathetic to carbon tax, do you view it as your job to knock those guys out?
[GLOBAL WARMING MY ASS] [Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Well, we hold both parties accountable.
[Nancy Pelosi, 2008] We don't always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?
[Newt Gingrich] No, but we do agree our country must take action to address climate change.
[John McCain] The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention.
[CNN = POLITICS. MCCAIN SLAMS PRES. ON ENVIRONMENT WON'T "SHIRK ... MANTLE OF LEADERSHIP"] [Rep. John Boehner, (R) Minority Leader] We have had climate change.
Clearly, humans have something to do with it.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] I remember in the mid-2000s, so many Republicans,
they had a lot of the same tenets of faith that Democrats still many have today.
[Mitt Romney] Well, I think the risks of climate change are real.
I think human activity is contributing to it.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Those days are over. Few Republicans play that game. A lot of Democrats bailed too.
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] You have Newt Gingrich at the beginning of '08 on the couch with Nancy Pelosi.
And by the end of 2008 ...
[Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Anchor] Do you believe in man-made global warming?
[Newt Gingrich (R), Presidential Candidate] I don't think we know.
[Music] C-c-changes [Mitt Romney] My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet.
[Rep. John Boehner, (R) Minority Leader] George, the idea that carbon dioxide is harmful to our environment is almost comical.
[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] We've run TV ads in Republican states with Republican senators, like South Carolina.
[People shouting indistinctly]
[SOUTH CAROLINA][Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Sit down!
[SHOUTING CONTINUES]
[PEOPLE BOOING] [Robert Kenner] What happened in your election?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Well, it wasn't even close.
[Michael Cogdill, WYFF4.com News Anchor] Bob Inglis ran into a buzz saw of voter frustration with incumbents.
Inglis lost every county in the district. He is a seasoned congressman going down to a huge defeat tonight.
[Two years after defeat] [Man] Are we --? Is there not cell phone reception? Where are we? Um ... Can you hear me now?
Did Price brief you on the climate views on this radio show?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] No.
[Man] All right. Well, we better find that out, huh?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We can turn on the radio, see what he's saying.
[Paul Gallo] [Over Radio] Everyone knows this country is being flushed right down the drain.
The ACLU and liberals is where I place --
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We're after -- the target audience is red-state Republicans. And so I think we found some in Mississippi.
[Radio Announcer] From SuperTalk Mississippi --
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] 8:02. We go on at 8:06.
Paul Gallo, a shining example of the Fairness Doctrine as it should be.
The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the Commission's view—honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the Doctrine in 1987, and in August 2011 the FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine.
-- Fairness Doctrine, by Wikipedia
[Paul Gallo] You think polar bears are in trouble? No, they're not in trouble.
In some cases, we've got more polar bears than we've ever had.
We got polar-bear problems out there in some cases.
[Indistinct chatter] Former South Carolina GOP Representative Bob Inglis ...
is urging conservatives to stop denying humans are contributing to global warming.
I don't understand. How do you come up with this? Because to me, every fiber in my body is saying you're a conservative. You can't believe this, that conservatives -- you're asking me as a dyed-in-the-wool native-born Mississippian -- will die here and blessed to do so -- to believe that humans are responsible for global warming, and we must admit that? Mic's yours, sir.
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] The challenge here is it's a conversation started by liberals.
What we're used to, as conservatives, is they gin up hysteria, and then they drive through regulations and tax increases and grow government. And so it's natural that we respond with, "No, we don't wanna do that."
Consider for a moment just how terrifying it must be to live life as a true believer on the right. Reality is scary enough, but the alternative reality inhabited by people who watch Glenn Beck, listen to Rush Limbaugh, or think Michele Bachmann isn't a joke must be nothing less than horrifying.
Research suggests that conservatives are, on average, more susceptible to fear than those who identify themselves as liberals. Looking at MRIs of a large sample of young adults last year, researchers at University College London discovered that “greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala” ($$). The amygdala is an ancient brain structure that's activated during states of fear and anxiety. (The researchers also found that “greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex” – a region in the brain that is believed to help people manage complexity.)
That has implications for our political world. In a recent interview, Chris Mooney, author of The Republican Brain, explained, “The amygdala plays the same role in every species that has an amygdala. It basically takes over to save your life. It does other things too, but in a situation of threat, you cease to process information rationally and you're moving automatically to protect yourself.”
The finding also fits with other data. Mooney discusses studies conducted at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in which self-identified liberals and conservatives were shown images – apolitical images – that were intended to elicit different emotions. Writing at Huffington Post, Mooney explains that “there were images that caused fear and disgust -- a spider crawling on a person's face, maggots in an open wound -- but also images that made you feel happy: a smiling child, a bunny rabbit.” The researchers noted two differences between the groups. The researchers studied their subjects' reactions by tracking their eye movements and monitoring their “skin conductivity” – a measure of one's autonomic nervous system's reaction to stimuli.
Conservatives showed much stronger skin responses to negative images, compared with the positive ones. Liberals showed the opposite. And when the scientists turned to studying eye gaze or "attentional" patterns, they found that conservatives looked much more quickly at negative or threatening images, and [then] spent more time fixating on them.
Mooney concludes that this “new research suggests [that] conservatism is largely a defensive ideology -- and therefore, much more appealing to people who go through life sensitive and highly attuned to aversive or threatening aspects of their environments.”
--
Why is the Conservative Brain More Fearful? The Alternate Reality Right-Wingers Inhabit is Terrifying, by Joshua Holland
But what if we had a different conversation?
It's all about economics. You're taxing something you want more of, which is income, and you're not taxing something you maybe want less of, which is CO2.
[Paul Gallo] Why do we need to be talking about the global-warming tax again?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Because if you believe in taking care of this part of Eden that's left, and if you believe in creation care --
[Paul Gallo] Now you're confusing me.
Now you're saying you do believe that we are, as humans, creating global warming. We are part-and-parcel responsible?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Yes.
[Paul Gallo] I don't believe that humans are creating this, because -- and neither do, apparently, a vast majority of climatologists out there.
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] I was tracking --
[Paul Gallo] That humans --
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] I was tracking with you until that last part. You're wrong on that last part.
[Paul Gallo] Good luck to you. It was good meeting you.
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Good to talk with you.
[Paul Gallo] Lots to do ...
in the final two segments coming up next.
Okay, lots to do in the final two segments ...
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We'll put you down as undecided.
[Paul Gallo] Sorry?
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We'll put you down as undecided.
[Paul Gallo] I don't think so.
[BOTH LAUGHING] [Paul Gallo] Okay, Perez, we are ready to roll.
[Caller] And as for climate change, we're in the middle of it right now. It's called winter into spring.
For him to say that we need to change the conversation ...
is to cave in to these liberals and their way of thinking. When they're wrong, they're wrong.
[Man] I can't take this. Can we get out of here?
It's so easy to fall back into the: "The weather always changes."
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Yeah.
[Man] It's a battleship, Bob. It takes a while to turn around.
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] That's right.
I mean, it's not just a head thing. This is very much a heart issue.
It's not the science that's affecting us.
I mean, the science is pretty clear.
It's something else that's causing this rejection.
Many conservatives, I think, see action on climate change as really an attack on a way of life.
The reason that we need the science to be wrong ...
is otherwise, we realize that we need to change.
That's really a hard pill to swallow,
that the whole way I've created my life is wrong, you're saying?
That I shouldn't have this house in the suburb?
I shouldn't be driving this car that I take my kids to soccer?
And you're not gonna tell me to live the way that you want me to live?
And along comes some people sowing some doubt. And it's pretty effective, because I'm looking for that answer.
I want it to be that the science is not real.
[News Anchor] Top U.S. oil company ExxonMobil,
and Russia's Rosneft, have signed a deal ...
to develop oil and gas reserves in the Russian Arctic.
[TALKING INDISTINCTLY][John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] One of the reasons this deal is now possible ...
is the human-induced global warming that has rolled the ice back.
It's warmer in the Arctic than it's been in at least 40,000 years.
And yet, there's ExxonMobil looking at that,
thinking they can drill more.
The very thing they paid groups to tell us wouldn't happen, has now benefited them.
[Rex Tillerson, CEO, ExxonMobil] We could be into the hundreds of billions of dollars over the life of developing all of the potential prospects up there.
[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] We now know they were using climate change ...
as a source of insight into exploration.
There's a point at which you realize you are part of the losing end of a hustle.
HUSTLE: transitive verb. 1a : jostle, shove; b : to convey forcibly or hurriedly; c : to urge forward precipitately; 2a : to obtain by energetic activity <hustle up new customers>; b : to sell something to or obtain something from by energetic and especially underhanded activity <hustling the suckers>; c : to sell or promote energetically and aggressively <hustling a new product>; d : to lure less skillful players into competing against oneself at (a gambling game) <hustle pool>
-- Hustle, by Merriam Webster
And it can make you feel very sad.
And I know many environmentalists who feel very sad.
[Senator] Each of you solemnly swear that ...
[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] But at some point, the public catches up with you. The legal system catches up with you.
[Diane Sawyer] An extraordinary punishment for the country's big cigarette companies. A federal judge said they lied, and they have to take out ads and admit it publicly.
Specifically, they have to say they deliberately deceived the American public ...
about the dangers of cigarettes, and they designed them to be addictive.
[PHILIP MORRIS INTERNATIONAL] [Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] We know the truth about the harms of tobacco. And the tobacco industry has been prosecuted for its illegal activities.
So that's the good news, right? The truth has come out,
and people who deserve to be punished have been punished.
The bad news is that it took 50 years.
If we look at the case of climate change, we can imagine that eventually people will come to understand the scientific evidence. But the problem is, we don't have 50 years.
Climate change is happening. It's underway, and it's not reversible.
As sea level rises, and hurricanes become more intense, people get killed.
Their houses and communities get destroyed.
Think about heat waves and droughts that ruin agricultural communities.
These are problems that it will require government intervention to address.
The great irony of the story to me ...
is that people who don't like big government, are going to get more of it.
And we're gonna see more money being spent ...
on dealing with the aftermath of these disasters.
There will be billions of dollars in real-estate losses.
But more than that, people will die.
That's why it matters.
That's why this is meaningful for us,
not just for polar bears, or people in Bangladesh.
That's why so many people in the scientific community ...
are really starting to talk in very worried tones.
There's a growing sense in the scientific community ...
that we're running out of time to prevent a train wreck.
[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Our parents did not know the things they were doing ...
were going to have major consequences for young people ...
and future generations. But we cannot say that. We can only pretend that we don't know.
If we warm up the planet a few degrees, we're talking about eventual sea-level rise of tens of meters,
which would wipe out all the coastal cities.
[MIAMI]
[NEW YORK]
[LONDON]
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[SHANGHAI]
[HOUSTON]
[MUMBAI]
[SYDNEY]
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[SHENZHEN]
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[BANGKOK] [James Hansen, Climate Scientist] If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate,
then by that time you've passed a tipping point,
so that it's -- you're going to get consequences that are out of our control.
I've been arrested, I think, four times.
We should be going and beating on the president's desk.
[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] You don't have to accept things the way they are. There are things we can do to change.
The lie is that we can't do it, that we can't innovate.
We gotta keep relying on petroleum, coal.
We gotta have just those things.
Why? To be in this situation,
where those fossil fuels are imperiling our future and future generations, and we're not accountable for that,
that really becomes a moral problem.
We're leaving our children and grandchildren a legacy of people who failed to lead.
People who, when it came their time to be awakened,
they slept.
We didn't have enough faith in the future that could be brought about, so we just gave up.
We couldn't rise to higher things.
I don't wanna be a part of that. I wanna be a part of saying:
"No, we did rise to it. You bet we did."
DON'T LET THEM STACK THE DECK
go to takepart.com/doubt
