Playing Defense is a Losing Strategy
I have a new post up at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media that suggests Vice President Gore and like-minded allies are fighting their battle from a “defensive crouch,” which won’t get them where they want to go.
Nor am I the only one wondering if Gore’s recent 24-hour mediathon is the right approach. See Tom Zeller’s take and Leo Hickman’s critique, who asks:
Is Al Gore now a help or hindrance to the global warming cause?
Go have a read of my Yale Forum post and let me know over there what you think. Be polite!
UPDATE: In a related post at Dot Earth, Andy Revkin writes:
Will this [Gore’s] effort silence or sideline professional naysayers/deniers/skeptics and the many people who, for all kinds of reasons unrelated to money, reject calls to make cutting greenhouses a prime priority?
I doubt it. Our polarized politics and buffet-style media menu “” in which anyone with a strongly held position can validate it with the touch of a remote control or mouse “” guarantee persistent, even sharpening, divisions on greenhouse gases.
Will the project entice those not already engaged to seek reality on climate science? I doubt that, too. The effort to cast the climate challenge as green-energy Davids versus fossil-fueled Goliaths has come with substantial oversimplification.
Yeah. Even my hard core enviro circle thought the whole thing was preaching to the choir.
And there are times that’s valuable. But I didn’t think that was the goal.
I hunted around for posts discussing the gore-a-thon after the bell. I’ve had trouble finding any on the funded or more heavy traffic AGW activist blogs. Nothing on RC, GRIST, ROMM, Rabett, OIT-Gold etc. I did find a post at Tamino’s blog.
Some announced a the opening, or had interviews during. But unless I missed anything, I’m not seeing much after. The lack of posts summarizing the highlights in what might be seen as the “pro-Gore” camp may tell us more about the utility of this endeavor than anything written places that were going to cover it no matter what (NYTimes, Nature), the ‘Gore -neutral’ sites or the “anti-Gore” sites.
I’m also still wondering what the real viewership was. The <a href=”http://www.ustream.tv/user/climatereality/info-stats”>ustream.tv stats</a> suggests much lower numbers than shown during the videocast. I don’t know enough about these various tallies to interpret the discrepancy.
I visited the website but it didn’t do anything very interesting so I soon left. Defensive: well maybe, but offensive won’t work at the moment either. The truth is out there, and has been for a long time. People don’t want to know it, and will inevitably find whatever excuses they require.
2 lucia – WUWT had marvellous coverage of the Gore-a-thon, and it showed it all due respect.
Josh did cartoons that appropriately illustrated that 24 hours of laughable fearmongering.
I hope the AGW Crisis Industry keeps using Gore as their spokesman as long as possible. Buffoons like him are rare, and his effect is very helpful to ridding ourselves of this mass delusion.
I am Soooooo glad Gore is on the warmist side. Make life much easier. 🙂