Climate propaganda – health scares next?
Concern over climate change is cooling with the public. What is an alarmist to do? Some researchers have a suggestion. A letter in the journal Climatic Change , titled “A public health frame arouses hopeful emotions about climate change,” suggests promoting global-warming related health scares to engage the public.
The paper abstract reads:
Communication researchers and practitioners have suggested that framing climate change in terms of public health and/or national security may make climate change more personally relevant and emotionally engaging to segments of the public who are currently disengaged or even dismissive of the issue. To evaluate these assumptions, using a nationally representative online survey of U.S. residents (N = 1,127) conducted in December, 2010, we randomly assigned six previously identified audience segments on climate change to one of three experimental conditions. Subjects were asked to read uniquely framed news articles about climate change emphasizing either the risks to the environment, public health, or national security and the benefits of mitigation and adaptation-related actions. Results show that across audience segments, the public health focus was the most likely to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Findings also indicated that the national security frame may possibly boomerang among audience segments already doubtful or dismissive of the issue, eliciting unintended feelings of anger. (See full paper here and some commentary on it here.)
Notice the goal of the paper is to elicit emotions rather than rational thinking. The researchers studied the best way to shape global warming propaganda to produce alarmist concern, in other words, how to best manipulate your thinking.
If the propagandists take the advice of the study, we will see more global warming health scare stories in the future. It’s all about perception rather than science. And remember, there is much money, and many academic and bureaucratic careers resting on your emotional perception of the issue.
See also:
The Case Against the IPCC and Proponents of Dangerous Anthropological Global Warming
A Basic Error in Climate Models
Climate Model Projections vs Real World Observations
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Comments
the skeptical inquirer
hasn't joined in
with their antithetical
stupidity
even their racist bigoted
photographer
andie skolnick
could probably be pointed out
for stupidity
What this really means is that those who died during the heat wave were about to die anyway and there is no direct link between the heat wave and their demise. It's just a convenient statistic which the scaremongers can use to their advantage to convince the public that global warming is to blame for those who died.
If only 8 died during the week for any of a variety of health conditions, I posit that heat may actually be beneficial, since the prevalence of some other weather condition during the period would surely have witnessed more deaths related to health. We already know that the cold weather of Winter kills many, many more people anyway.
Again, a warmer world is generally a good thing. Why fight it? We couldn't change it anyway?
Leftists love to lie. The oft repeated fatality lie of the left that refuses to die, is that the US leads the world in infant mortality. The fact is that the US is the only country that accurately records infant deaths. Most countries do not list infants that die during childbirth, and often not until the child is at least 18 months old!
Geesh!