“Believe me, once you get the hang of deceit, you’ll wonder how you ever got through a day without it!”
A substantial number of people don’t understand what “deceit” is, or think that what constitutes deceit isn’t a lie. Deceit, which I used to joke was the official language of Washington, D.C. until it was changed officially to Blatant Mendacity, is when a statement is literally true, but stated in such a way or in a context intended to make the reader or listener believe something that is not true at all. The fact that the statement may have been factual in a pure sense does not diminish its unethical character as a lie. Its intent is to deceive. It is a lie, just a particularly insidious one, aimed at the trusting, unwary, undiscerning and gullible.
I am always looking for a good example of this peculiar form of deception, and they don’t come much better than this.
Drexel University professor Robert Brulle performed a study he eventually called “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations,” and it was subsequently published in Climatic Change. Brulle identified 91 organizations that oppose anti-climate change policies, and added up the annual operating budgets of these groups, many of which are active in many issues and that devote a small percentage of their funding to climate change matters at all. He then characterized the resulting total of about $900 million per year from 2003 to 2010 as representing the resources dedicated to blocking the regulation of greenhouse gas production. Brulle’s study also treats foundation grants to these organizations if every dollar given is earmarked for climate policy opposition. Taking the hand-off from the study’s framing, The Guardian headlined its findings, “Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change.” Notice the “up to,” which would apply if every cent given to organizations like the American Enterprise Institute, The Reason Foundation, The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the Hudson Institute and many others were only expended or intended to be spent on anti-climate change position papers and advocacy. This isn’t just a gross exaggeration: it’s a lie, intended to be misleading.
Let’s pick one of those organizations at random, say The Reason Foundation. It lists its areas of policy study and activity as
- Criminal Justice Reform
- Culture & media
- Drugs ( industrial hemp, medical marijuana, police raids and militarization)
- Economy and Economics (bailouts, stimulus and debt, banking regulation, finance and markets, consumer credit and borrowing)
- Housing, Mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- Monetary Policy and Federal Reserve
- Trade and Globalization
- Education (charter schools, No Child Left Behind, school choice, school violence and shootings, universal preschool,weighted sudent formula)
- Energy ( electricity, ethanol, hydrogen and hybrid vehicles, oil and gas)
- Environment ( air quality, climate change , endangered species, oceans and fisheries, parks and recreation, recycling and waste, water and wastewater
- Government Reform (California, earmarks and transparency, innovators in action, occupational licensing, pension reform, tax and budget policy
- Health Care (children’s health aare and SCHIP, Universal Health Care )
- Immigration
- Individual Freedom (alcohol, censorship and media, guns, obesity , smoking bans and tobacco
- Politics, Parties, Political History, Political Philosophy, Privatization ….
…well, you can read the rest. The point is that climate change is one of nearly a hundred policy areas the Foundation works in, yet to Brulle and The Guardian it’s just an anti-climate change group, and all the money in its budget either goes to that objective or “could” be devoted to that effort, ein the same way the entire budget of the United States “could” be devoted to the National Parks. And if you give a donation to the Reason Foundation, say, to support its work against marijuana laws, Brulle and the Guardian want the public to believe that you just gave money to oppose climate change.
It isn’t just the Guardian , either. ThinkProgress’s headline is this: “Conservative Donors Pump $1 Billion A Year Into Climate Denying Groups, Study Finds.” Factual, but a lie. The Republican Party opposes climate change policies; it also opposes abortion. By ThinkProgress’s logic, the Republican party is accurately described as a “climate denying group,” though, in fact it does do a lot of other things (and nobody denies the climate…but I digress.) Clean Technica followed the tactic; so did Boing Boing. Here’s Salon’s deceitful spin: “The campaign to fight action on climate change is backed by $1 billion a year in covert donations.” Ah, now that entire billion, is “backing” the fight against climate change, since it supports groups that may do a lot or a little in the area. But you never know—the Heritage Foundation might just chuck its mission and go all in against carbon emissions control—you know, like the U.S. might decide to hand over the Treasury to the U.N.
Salon not only ran a deceitful headline, it engaged in a backtrack and double switch. Writes Salon editor Lindsay Abrams in the article’s very last paragraph (that is, the one least likely to be read),
“Of course, not all of the money was being directly channeled into anti-climate efforts, as many of the organizations funded have multiple focuses. But if climate denial represents one leg of their operations, it’s not hard to guess where the rest of the money goes (hint: it’s not Planned Parenthood*).”
I wait…I thought the headline said that the billion backed opposition to climate change, not “multiple focuses”? My bad—I guess I just misunderstood.
This is why deceit is so insidious. “Oh, you just misunderstood!” is always the defense set up by the tactic. Of course we misunderstood, because you wanted us to.
Writes Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy,
“The Brulle study will serve its purpose, and the “$1 billion per year of climate denial” factoid will soon become a regular claim in the climate policy debate.”
Exactly.
* Interesting that she mentioned Planned Parenthood, which conservatives often misrepresent as an abortion-providing group only, and speak about as if its entire budget was devoted to abortion.
___________________________________
Pointer and Source: Volokh Conspiracy
Sources: The Guardian, Clean Technica, Salon
Ethics Alarms 
I have said it before, you climate-change idiots, and I will say it again…
If your models, using all available data, are unable to accurately predict last year’s weather, then your entire system is flawed and should never be the basis for any policy.
And no. They can’t predict last year’s weather.
Ehhhhh… that sound like those political cartoons that say, “Where’s Global Warming?” when some guy’s shoveling snow.
As it is, in any field of science, deception must be anathema. If it exists anywhere in any legitimate field of science, it must be rooted out and repaired.
“And if you give a donation to the Reason Foundation, say, to support its work against marijuana laws, Brulle and the Guardian want the public to believe that you just gave money to oppose climate change.”
This is Kafkaesque. Opposing climate change would be trying to make the climate stay the same, by opposing the forces of nature and man which make it vary constantly (see science of chaos systems). I think that opposition is exactly what Brulle etc want.
What is extra deceptive about it is the headline is based on question begging. It assumes as a premise that the climate change (if it even is as dire as claimed) CAN be reversed. This is not proven and the very groups that “oppose efforts to fix the problem” are really just opposing efforts they think are either futile or unnecessary.
Which would actually be a good thing to oppose. So there are multiple levels of the deceit in the headline.
It can be reversed by detonating the world’s entire nuclear arsenal in a single day. See the various studies on nuclear winter, one of the most important scientific theories since General Relativity.
That’s not reversal. That’d be like telling someone with a knife stuck in them that the solution is to push a knife through their body from the other side to dislodge the stuck one.
Tex, you do remember back in the middle 70’s, when the hysteria was that the world was cooling and a “New Ice Age” was coming? Some dingbat thought it would be a really good idea at the time to spread carbon-black over Antarctica to melt some of the glaciers.
It was not a coincidence that this cooling stopped when above-ground nuclear testing stopped.
Actually, Michael, you might want to check out this link, I would say that there is no obvious relationship between the two.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/atest00.html
I believe that the Test Ban Treaty was signed sometime back in the mid-1960s. Irrelevant, in any case.
I imagine the same might be said about the CRS.
“May 18, 2012 · The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on ‘“climate change activities.”’
$70 Bill to study a science we’ve been repeatedly told is “settled?” And guess how the gravy train is funded.
The funding behind advancing Global Warming makes the funding of evil deniers seem like pocket change.
*The criminal taxpayer-funded UNIPCC,
*corrupt governments (forgive the redundancy) shelling out dough realizing they have to ‘prime the pump,”
*the 100’s of million$ in free alarmist advertising that GE-owned NBC sees fit to air
*the poor, submerging Maldives do what with the half a BILL in ‘Climate Reparations’ they pried loose from some hand-wringing suckers?
http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/maldives-scores-five-hundred-million-dollar-floating-golf-course/story-e6frfqai-1226046884558
And from WI’s own Spencer Black; the evil Koch Brothers contribute $67 million to Climate Change Denial groups.
http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/column/spencer-black/spencer-black-tide-is-turning-against-climate-change-deniers/article_69965225-adaa-565d-9d71-750362f58ffd.html
The Koch Brothers do have a clear position in Natural gas, don’t they”
From Warmista Anti-Christ (Marc Morano):
‘The Sierra Club took $26 million from natural gas and Michael (Brune of the Sierra Club) has the audacity to try to imply that skeptics are fossil-fuel funded.’
Any possibility that any of that $67 million got commingled with the $26 million the Sierra Club accepted?
I fight to keep an open mind, because that would be both hypocritical AND an Ethics Alarm!
“up to” “could” and other such political weasel words drive me nuts.
Especially in headlines.
Also, despite ThinkProgresses’s blurb, there’s a difference between opposing certain policies regarding climate change and denying climate change. Just because you think the Kyoto protocol or cap-and-trade are bad ideas doesn’t mean you deny climate change.
I’m wondering if I missed this somewhere. Where are the posts about the many egregious deceptions perpetrated by the climate science denial industry every day?
You didn’t look very hard, obviously. Here’s one–it took me 10 seconds to find it. There are others. But that’s irrelevant—it is the climate change lobby that is advocating massive and futile spending and over-hyping its claims, while demonizing anyone who argues for some perspective and honesty. Check the Rules and rationalizations before you pull the “Yeah, well THEY do the same thing and you never criticize THEM” trick, which I abhor. The usual answer is 1) yes, I do and 2) that’s not a defense.
The “deniers” aren’t trying to cost me money and freedoms.
I forgive a lot when you aren’t trying to steal from me…
No, they are only TRYING TO DAMN YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN TO AN APOCALYPTIC WATERWORLD HELL!!!
I am at the association’s laundry facility, and just freaked out the one other person here by laughing out loud at that.
This just in!
Global Warming, and its active ingredient COULDIFMAYMIGHT, is now thought to cause and possibly exacerbate uproarious laughter in shared laundry facilities.
More research is recommended.
And if you didn’t use the ‘cold’ cycle, you couldifmaymight be contributing to…well you get the picture.