The reviews are in on the CEI's ads: Ha ha ha ha ha. Here's a small selection:
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Andrew Sullivan: I'm not going to knock CO2. And when you watch the ad, you'll find it comes out of your lungs in short, sharp bursts of laughter.
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Seed's Daily Zeitgeist: Ha! This is great. Let's apply their logic to fecal matter: We excrete it out, plants take it in as fertilizer. So why not dump it everywhere? Some call it "crap." We call it life!
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nicteis: It's finally happened. Someone has actually managed to underestimate the intelligence of the American people.
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Fruitbat I particularly liked the footage of glaciers calving, which was then stopped and run in reverse. Ooh! Glacier all better now!
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Alykhan: Some friends of mine and I actually had lunch not too long ago with Iain Murray, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where we chatted about British conservatism. Really, anyone working at CEI should be embarrassed that such awful ads have gone out under their name.
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Jim Ross: I spent some time as a corporate public affairs consultant and I would have to deal with ideas like this one from the Competitive Enterprise Institute on a regular basis. Maybe I have been hanging out with the dope smoking hippies in San Francisco for too long but this is so transparent and ineffectual that it is almost funny.
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Andy: Colin (who has an absolutely amazing eye for cross-cultural similarity) notes that one of the commercials is just a rehashing of LBJ's famous "Daisy" commercial for the 1964 Presidential Election.
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Ryan Sager: While I agree with everything the Competitive Enterprise Institute is saying in these ads, they are almost too stupid to comprehend.
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J: The ads are a testament to the contempt that advertisers can have for the intelligence of their audience - they basically assume the viewers are to stupid to have paid attention to anything they learned in 6th Science class or maybe are to drunk to remember.
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Pam When Blender Wes emailed me about this, I thought he was kidding. After I watched the two commercials, I have to believe that the folks in this outfit are insane.
Publius proved that the ads weren't beyond parody and Wadard came up with a counter-ad.
While everyone else was rolling around the floor laughing, there was one man who took the ads seriously. Come on down, Ron Bailey!!
The first ad, titled "Energy," properly reminds viewers that fossil fuels "freed us from a world of back-breaking labor" and are used "to create and move the things we need." The ending voiceover declares, "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution; we call it life." The second spot entitled "Glaciers" points out the scientific uncertainties about how global warming is affecting glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. The "Glaciers" spot also makes the point that the media tend to headline findings that portend doom, while overlooking less alarming scientific results.
What's worse, if you actually read the two Science papers that the CEI uses in one of their ads to try and induce doubt about global warming, you'll find that both papers say that their results are consistent with and expected by global warming.
While the ads deserve hoots of laughter, remember that large proportions of the target audience believe in creationism and the coming of the apocalypse. The positions put out by the CEI will make their way into the mass media and will indeed become talking points for many journalists and commentators. CEI knows quite well that they are wrong, but that is not the point; they want to spike any regulatory action aimed at their sponsors. If they succeed in confusing the public, they will have achieved their goal. So laugh all you want, I'm sure CEI doesn't give a damn.
Kevin Drum's readers also have a couple of good lines.
Hey, good to see you David. David points out an important standard assumption of the contrascientists: their audience doesn't check the refs.
I agree with richard to a point - it is important for CEI to continue to obfuscate the matter, but as an effective tool to convince fence-sitters, well, it ain't. If you are only playing to those already convinced, why waste the money on such expensive adverts?
Best,
D
As David points out, the ads misrepresent -- egregiously -- even the science cited in the ads themselves. I've pulled some excerpts and posted them here. At first glance, an amateur job. Or is it? I am constantly amazed at the ignorance of such issues in the general public. So don't be surprised if the CEI produces some polls drawn the limited market (14 cities) in which the ads are running showing a shift in opinion. I hope not, but just because a bunch of well-educated bloggers are ROTFL doesn't mean everyone will share in the joke.
"but as an effective tool to convince fence-sitters, well, it ain't. If you are only playing to those already convinced, why waste the money on such expensive adverts?"
Perhaps you are right, but anyone fence-sitting at this point would have to be classed as a dolt. The ads are aimed at dolts, and may thus be an effective investment.
Ah. Agreed, sir. The ads are dolt-worthy.
D
The point is not to convince, but to manufacture doubt. For that purpose it doesn't matter how dumb they are.
Tim, you should check out the CEI's "Cooler Heads Initiative"- the ones behind http://www.globalwarming.org
It really is an astounding level of mendacity.
Yeah, the ads are funny, and the Myron Ebell types and his apologists like the "climateaudit" gang are pretty pathetic. But what's scary is that they COULD actually convince people in the US. I mean, they were able to convince the general public that Saddam was behind 9/11 (85% of US troops in Iraq still say that's "why we're here"). Money & power are what matter; how else could people be convinced "Bush & Cheney have restored honor & integrity to the White House!"
Tim: You invited me to come on down, so here I am a bit late (you really should email those invitations to me rather have me google them). Anyway, CEI's spots are not subtle and not effective and yes, they do lend themselves to parody. Sigh.
David Appell: Just curious. Doesn't "consistent with" mean essentially that the studies do not falsify the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis--not that they confirm that hypothesis?
Ron: Well, the full quote from Dr. Appell is consistent with and expected by global warming. The word expected does add strength to the statement and shows that the papers do indeed add confirmation to the hypothesis.
Regards,
John
I used to read Reason magazine. I used to be registered Libertarian. Several things distanced me from the libertarians, and one such thing was people like Ron Bailey embracing pseudoscience like global warming denial. "Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death" is the kind of garbage I expect from Ann Coulter or Michael Savage.
In my experience Libertarians are just Republicans who just aren't into "Creationism" or "intelligent design." On any real Libertarian thing they quickly waffle (i.e. legalizing drugs) when given even a whiff of power. Like Republicans, they always start with a position (unrelated to science) of "we must defend rampant US-style capitalism at all costs!" You can see this "selective inquiry" from the Cato Institute/CEI policy people (err "scientists) on down through the Steve McIntyre's.
"In my experience Libertarians are just Republicans who just aren't into "Creationism" or "intelligent design"
Far as I can see, Libertarian has degenerated into a synonym for "gun nut".
In my experience Libertarians are just Republicans who just aren't into "Creationism" or "intelligent design."
I don't see Repubs having search bots that allow them to flood comment boards any time there's a whiff of any threat to a perceived "property right".
Other than that, no difference in my view.
Best,
D
Do Libertarians do that? It sounds more Republican, i.e. the Freeper-sheeple of "freerepublic.com" who beg their readers to "freep" online polls so that (for example) it looks like people just love George Bush & the Iraq war etc.
Their ideal: "limited government, individual liberty" (Cato's banner)
The practice: "limited liberty, individual government" -- the Bush executive supremacy.
I am something of a Libertarian, and I think that you misrepresent the properly libertarian position on this issue.
All that Libertarianism really means is that government should not use physical force (or threat thereof) to achieve change.
The reason that most libertarians have a knee-jerk reaction to deny global warming claims is that the only mass-proposed solution in that of major government interference.
How about we propose instead that suppliers band together and refuse to supply the most CO2-heavy producers? How about we embrace social movements that disgrace heavy emitters? How about we pursue the possibilities of removing CO2 from the atmosphere? How about we dump iron shavings in the ocean, increasing plankton growth, which decreases CO2 and increases fish stocks?
There are many solutions that don't necessarily require government interference, but those who are the biggest alarmists propose little besides complete lifestyle sacrifice or mass coercion by government (or both!)
We need to approach solutions realistically, searching for a new politics and a new discourse of voluntarily change.
I'm not sure whether or not I support the practice of commenting on 11 month old posts but supposing AdamP is here in good faith: people nowhere pay taxes voluntarily so coercion has been used under every system of government. Further, it's unfair to ask those with the understanding of the urgent need for us to reduce fossil fuel burning to act voluntarily while their competitors remain able to freeload and undercut them.
Libertarians who understand the problem with our fossil fuel economy and who are rational enough to agree that some taxes must be levied by the minimal degree of government that we cannot do without ... will be arguing real soon now for a carbon tax to replace worse taxes (such as income tax).