Recently Talk Show host Conan O’Brien played a compilation of TV news people all making essentially the same comment. They were using a phrase prepared by some central PR agency, something like their subscription to a news agency like Associated Press (AP).
It’s orchestration of a message using artificial words or phrases to control and promote misinformation and deception. A good example was the use of the word “glitch” in reference to the abject failure of the Affordable Care Act web site. Sometimes the words are created, to marginalize and denigrate a group; “birther” is a person who questions the President Obama’s resume. Climate has two prime examples; Global Warming Skeptic and Climate Change Denier. They are forms of collective personal attacks, if that isn’t a contradiction.
Manufactured terminology appeared in climate in conjunction with its use as a political vehicle. Catch phrases appeared that created false, but threatening images such as the Greenhouse Effect (Artificial Heat) or the Ozone Hole (Leaking).
Mechanisms of climate change were presented as something new even though they were well known and in the literature for decades. The idea that they were “new” played into the deliberate attempt to link them to human causes. I recall when El Nino first appeared in the public forum because it moved north and impacted California in 1983. Most thought it was a new phenomenon, therefore caused by humans.
The common denominator of most environmental and climate science of the last 40 years is the determination to find a human cause for everything. The IPCC ensured this because the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) limited their research by definition to human causes of climate change.
The latest example of phrase creation is the resurrection by Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren of the term “polar vortex”. It’s resurrected because the term was used by Time magazine in 1974 when they explained global cooling as follows,
“Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds — the so-called circumpolar vortex — that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world.”
In January 2014 they said
“It may well be that global warming could be making the occasional bout of extreme cold weather in the U.S. even more likely. Right now much of the U.S. is in the grip of a polar vortex, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a whirlwind of extremely cold, extremely dense air that forms near the poles.”
Notice the first says “circumpolar vortex” and the second “polar vortex”. Holdren attributed the recent cold spell to his invented term of “Polar Vortex” and took the unusual step of producing, a two minute video. It only served to illustrate his ignorance. He is a master at changing terminology such as his introduction of “climate disruption” as adjectives ‘warming’ and ‘change’ lose their effect. Disruption implies it is anomalous or new. It doesn’t matter if the term or the explanation is wrong, the goal is to get a headline and imply a human cause; with Polar Vortex it worked well.
Originally the Circumpolar Vortex (CV) was the middle latitude wind that blew around the Poles from west to east. The faster moving segments with speeds above 30 m/sec (108 kph), were designated as Jet Streams. Over time the entire circulation became the Jet Stream. The CV is also called the westerlies referring to the overall direction of flow of winds and weather systems in the middle latitudes (35 to 65°). The CV is a strong wind at altitude first identified by pressurized US B29 (Flying Fortress) bombers going to bomb Japan.
Link to Full Extremely Interesting Article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/13/i ... eceptions/
