How to lose friends and not influence people
A popular genre of climate alarmist journalism is the roundup of ways to convince your skeptic neighbour or MAGA uncle he’s all wrong
You could try, for instance, kindergarten science with a sponge, data not included though government funding is.
Or patronizing tendentious summaries involving “THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS”.
Or “Climate Change is Severely Impacting the US and Here are 10 Points to Prove it” via MSN.
We can’t help thinking one way to prove such claims would be not to have the same news aggregator on the same day, namely Jan. 15, report that “More widespread snow hits Ontario ahead of coldest conditions in years” lest it cause talk.
Of course one way to try to silence ol’ Unk is to say that of course snow and cold are proof of runaway warming and only rubes ask questions. Thus on Jan. 12 MSN offered up a Canadian Press rant “How a week of weather extremes upended the lives of millions of Americans” that, after blaring “It was a week of fire and ice” beneath one of those classic red-tinted photos of the LA fire, complete with blazing car, blew hotly cold with:
“It began with millions of people across the U.S. shivering amid blizzard conditions and frigid air that lasted for days, thanks to a jet stream that slips out of its usual path more often these days.”
Not that there’s any evidence that it does so, since we don’t have historical data showing how rarely the jet stream wandered horribly about in days of yore. But never mind. We also had fires, and “major weather monitoring agencies confirmed 2024 as the hottest year in global history” which is appallingly ignorant bunk.
Hotter than the Cretaceous? Hotter than the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum? Hotter than the Hadean? Or do you just know nothing and not do online searches because your editors wouldn’t know a fact if it hurtled blazing through the newsroom?
No but see ‘experts’ said. As in:
“Welcome to one wild week of the climate crisis, scientists say. There will be more.”
If that doesn’t shut the deplorables up, how about:
“Are We Overreacting to Climate Change? Are we really overreacting, or just waking up to reality? 🌍 It’s time to take a closer look at the signs all around us. Let’s spark a meaningful conversation about our planet’s future!”
Yes! Let’s! Meaningful! With emojis 😊. And stand by for “the scientific consensus on climate change, the fragile balance of our ecosystems, and the economic implications of both action and inaction”. If it doesn’t persuade, it may at least anaesthetize.
Something called Climate Cosmos, which evidently impressed MSN, offered “10 Heroes in the Fight Against Climate Change” starting, sure to mollify Uncle, with “Greta Thunberg: The Voice of a Generation”. And of Hamas.
But let’s not judge too harshly. Next is David Attenborough, tosser of walruses (accompanied by a photo of Michaelangelo’s “David” but maybe they were in a hurry). Then Jane Goodall and then, oh brother, Al Gore (shown with John Kerry, to make it worse). You’re getting desperate.
By the time we get to “Christiana Figueres: Architect of the Paris Agreement” we think someone was racing to meet a deadline not persuade the undecided. But “Elon Musk: Innovating for Sustainability” woke us up.
Wangari Maathai put us back to sleep even if “Her advocacy for social and environmental justice has left a lasting impact on global conservation efforts.” Bill McKibben was presumably just pulling our leg, or filling a panic-inducing blank.
We’ll also pass on “Naomi Klein: Critic of Capitalism” despite the originality of zzzzzzzz. And we don’t even like Leonardo DiCaprio’s movies, let alone his documentary. That all you got?
Not exactly. Two months back Heatmap offered “How to Speak Republican”. And we’re pretty sure “How about that Christiana Figueres” wasn’t in the lesson. It turns out subsidies were, though. Great.
There was also this “Talk Like a Human” campaign by the “Potential Energy Coalition” that said to use terms like “extreme weather” and “over heating” instead of the dreaded “climate change” or “warming”.
Also say “enjoy” not “sacrifice” and, one actually useful one, don’t try to sow over-the-top panic among people not already panicking of their own free will. Evidently millions went into this one… but Uncle didn’t say uncle.
Earlier the New York Times “Climate Forward” had asked “Is inequality the key to the climate change debate?” No. And to avoid that terse response Heatmap in late December asked whether “2024 was the Year the Climate Movie Grew Up”? before conceding that “Whether you agree probably depends on how you define ‘climate movie’ to begin with.”
We go with “things we wouldn’t even watch in a dentist’s waiting room”. But presumably things like An Inconvenient Truth and Before the Flood qualify… don’t they? Apparently so do Dune: Part Two and “Even Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a flop that most people have already memory-holed” whereas we never heard of it.
You must try harder. And not with Euronews’s “New year, new reads: Here are my favourite climate-related books from 2024” the first of which was the hot-off-the-remainder-list “Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, 1992.”
Uncle never got past the subtitle “Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman” and neither did we.
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Header image: Macleans.ca
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