This is not a frivolous question. I do not know how we would cope with the climate situation if all of humankind were to suddenly wake up and see the urgency. I have serious doubts that we have many options. That question is on the verge of being silly. It is that because we can see the situation before us as we watch the "opposition" marshall its forces for the shoot out in November. I just started reading The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by Michael Mann as part of my ongoing efforts to keep up on the struggle. The struggle has meaning here in Mathews County, Virginia because we have been bombarded with the efforts of the organized deniers to increase the momentum they think they gained from "Climategate" and other propaganda efforts they staged. I used their frame here because it has become a relatively successful meme in spite of the fact that it is a dishonest fiction. I fast forwarded to the Chapters on this episode because I am engaged in the struggle locally and I have been a spokesperson for the reality of Global Warming and Climate Change. I am very glad that I did that last night because I was able to fill in some missing pieces as to what has been going on around here. If you think what happens in our little rural county (second smallest in Virginia. We have not even ONE stoplight!) is not indicative of what is going on elsewhere think again. The deniers have clearly been an integral part of the rise of the Tea Party here. That group has basically taken over the republican party here and in nearby counties. Read on below and I'll explain why the relationship between the climate issue and the ascendancy of the Tea Party is important.
It goes back to my motivation for my title for this diary. I was a member of the County Democratic Committee up until a few months before the Obama campaign in 2008. I left the party and worked for Obama through the Gloucester County Office. I worked hard as did my wife.
My field is a combination of complexity theory and neuroscience. I say that only to warn you that as I go on and follow through my question about the capabilities of the human mind, I want you to realize I come to the question as a researcher as well as a political activist.
I have written here many times trying to expand on the ideas of George Lakoff and especially on the interface between his thoughts on causality and the ideas that we have developed in our particular "school" of complexity theory.
Lakoff intersects with our work in many places and his ideas are consistent with what I wrote in my last diary: Another book in the growing paradigm change! Philosophy of science enters the modern age. I provide the link because these diaries are all related and will be a part of a book being written by Jim Coffman and I.
Lakoff has said that democrats have a communication problem (if I may take the liberty of using his words to suit my purpose here). It has to do with a very strong reliance on the success of the 18th century enlightenment to address minds that have no idea what we are talking about. I'm not going to repeat the very sophisticated case he makes for it is really not necessary in the context of the climate wars. They are evidence of the strongest kind for his case yet the lessons he teaches are largely ignored as the climate scientists get their collective and individual butts kicked.
The propaganda campaign was rolled back only after every possible mistake Lakoff warned us about was made repeatedly! The lasting damage is of consequence. Not only that but the deniers have succeeded on putting the people telling the truth about a very serious threat to us on the defensive rather than having them lead the struggle for the changes we need.
Why we make it so easy for them is part of the question my own research is struggling to answer. I'll have more to say on this if I figure that out better. I have already laid some groundwork above.
Our local situation is a good example of evidence for the huge loss of ground we have experienced. Over the past year or so the Tea Party has used a technique I see them using elsewhere. Large hand painted sturdy wooden signs announce meeting that all citizens are urged to attend. They preceded our local elections in November. The last version was after that and they told our populace to come to a meeting to learn the truth about Climate Change, Global Warming, and Sea Level Rise.
I did not attend their meeting because I would not have behaved well there. I have gathered plenty of information from those who were there. Meanwhile, the Tea Party has its people who populate these meetings, candidates forums, and also keep a steady stream of letters ranting in the local newspapers.
In their well honed manner the lies are repeated and propagated. In this case the entire discredited agenda of the "Climategate" hoax was put forward by "Dr." Fred Singer the hack for the deniers. He was advertised as the author of "many" books and having special credentials and titles at George Mason University. (Lots of irony here: George Mason disclaims all this. I have been referred to as "Dr." because like Singer I have a Ph.D. I also am the author of books.) There will be no one who will do the research on these issues to find the facts. The entire content of Singer's presentation was almost word for word the propaganda shown to be the product of manipulation and distortion in "Climategate". So the fact that the British science organizations, our NSF, various universities and so on have done very thorough investigations and blown the "swift boaters" out of the water has no meaning here. If we finally make that clear it will be at the expense of time and energy we could have spent telling the real story.
The human mind seems to be rational on rare occasions if at all. As we watch the next round of election theater unfold, this will probably not be an issue of major importance. From my vantage point this is because the propagandists have won the framing game and the damage the illegal hacking and subsequent rewording of the stolen e-mails, etc have become "truth". And so it goes. Yet we really do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind is really blowing do we? We are indeed strange creatures.