The phrases “climate change” and “global warming” have become all but taboo on Capital Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena, and have been since 2010. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) SAID on October 13th, 2011, “It has become no longer politically correct in certain circles in Washington to speak about climate change or carbon pollution or how carbon pollution is causing our climate to change.” Why?
President Obama spin and reelection teams are redefining the neo communist decades of involvement in critical events. Not only is there political re-identification of global warming, the Obama team is presenting errors, omissions, distortions, and word games, by government departments and internet site/PC hacking that are rewriting history and redefining America’s future. By using many different words to describe a intentionally poorly defined global warming event, President Obama’s teams avoid public awareness of the increasingly great risks posed to all who are now under the age of 30-years.
The administration has clearly responded to increasing hostility (on one end of the political spectrum) towards the effort to address climate change, scrubbing out words like global warming, cap-and-trade, and climate change from agency communication. The media alters their articles and programing to match President Obama’s climate change in “terms and rhetoric.”
Although global warming life-terminal implications were known in the 1990s CE, U.S. political leadership decided to continue expansion of U.S. hydrocarbon (coal, oil, natural gas) economies; the global warming event was minimized by U.S. political leadership, and so it remains. U.S. and global clean nuclear energy expansion was withheld to assure that energy increases would be satisfied with national hydrocarbon expansions. Around 2005 CE, there was a push by political criminals and their special interests to promote “alternative renewable green energy.” Promotion of alternatives to energy was successful for politicians and political special interests; taxpayers payed US$ 100s of billions in alternative-renewable energy projects and paper while increases in global warming greenhouse gases continued.
The fate of global temperature increase is determined. Around 450 ppm carbon level, Earth’s atmospheric carbon results in Earth becoming a source of carbon with increased human carbon releases and increased Arctic Region methane release — sometime around 2050-2099 CE Earth temperature regulation enters Modern Global Warming Era thermo runaway; human races end shortly thereafter.
It is the now under 30-years who are sure to die from global warming.
The ratio of the administration’s usage of “climate change” versus “energy” has changed significantly since Obama’s 2008 campaign days. “Climate change” rhetoric saw its brief heyday in 2009, thanks to the popularity of the President, the streamlined message of the unified European-U.S. neo communist party government, and the hope for legislative action before the United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. The ratio of energy to climate rhetoric has steadily increased, and the phrase “climate change” is routinely omitted in favor of clean energy-related diction. President Obama at Copenhagen, Denmark, December 2009 (COP15), redirected global warming responses to neo communist schemes for global transfers of wealth. President Obama and left Democrats have set back valid global warming responses by more than a decade.
President Obama and left Democrats are avoiding their responsibility in global warming temperature increase with a coordinated attempt to nationally and internationally politically redefine the Modern Global Warming Era physical events. To confuse the public and avoid responding to global warming temperature increase, President Obama’s teams are dividing global warming solutions into many different divergent thoughts.
There is power in how language is deployed, and people setting policy agendas know this well. These political choices of word and thought are also reflected with unusually rapid changes in news coverage around the world. Now it is politicians who dominate what is said and when it will be said within the news media:
"A dangerous shift in Obama’s ‘climate change’ rhetoric"
By Maxwell T. Boykoff
Published: January 27, 2012
Washington Post
What happened to “climate change” and “global warming”?
The Earth is still getting hotter, but those terms have nearly disappeared from political vocabulary. Instead, they have been replaced by less charged and more consumer-friendly expressions for the warming planet.
President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was a prime example of this shift. The president said “climate change” just once — compared with zero mentions in the 2011 address and two in 2010. When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.” By contrast, Obama used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” nearly two dozen times.
That tally reflects a broader change in how the president talks about the planet. A recent Brown University study looked specifically at the Obama administration’s language and found that mentions of “climate change” have been replaced by calls for “clean energy” and “energy independence.” Graciela Kincaid, a co-author of the study, wrote: “The phrases ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ have become all but taboo on Capitol Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena.” [Brown University research project LINK: Climate and Development Lab - RUNNING FROM CLIMATE CHANGE: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S CHANGING RHETORIC, December 22, 2011]
In 2009, the Obama administration purposefully began to refer to greenhouse gas emissions as “carbon pollution” and “heat-trapping emissions.” This change is evident in statements from top officials such as White House science adviser John Holdren, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. Lubchenco told a reporter that the choice of those terms “is intended to make what’s happening more understandable and more accessible to nontechnical audiences.”
These choices are also reflected in news coverage around the world. My colleague Maria Mansfield and I monitor 50 major newspapers in 20 countries, and we documented that explicit mentions of “climate change” and “global warming” dropped by more than a third from 2010 to 2011. [CSTPR LINK: MEDIA COVERAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING - World Media Coverage; 2004-2011 World Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change of Global warming]
There is power in how language is deployed, and people setting policy agendas know this well. In 2002, Republican political strategist Frank Luntz issued a widely cited memo advising that the Bush administration should shift its rhetoric on the climate. “It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming. . . . ‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming,’ ” the memo said.
Luntz was not alone in wanting to change the terminology. The nonprofit group EcoAmerica issued a report in 2009 arguing that the terms “global warming” and “climate change” both needed re-branding. In their place, the group recommended the phrase “our deteriorating atmosphere.”
But what do we lose when global warming and climate change get repackaged as clean energy? We wind up missing a thorough understanding of the breadth of the problem and the range of possible solutions.
To start, talking only about clean energy omits critical biological and physical factors that contribute to the warming climate. “Clean energy” doesn’t call to mind the ways we use the land and how the environment is changing. Where in the term is the notion of the climate pollution that results from clear-cutting Amazon rain forests? What about methane release in the Arctic, where global warming is exposing new areas of soil in the permafrost?
“Clean energy” also neatly bypasses any idea that we might need to curb our consumption. If the energy is clean, after all, why worry about how much we’re using — or how unequal the access to energy sources might be?
And terms such as “carbon pollution” ignore that climate change isn’t just a carbon issue. Some greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide, do not contain carbon, and not all carbon-containing emissions, such as carbon monoxide, trap heat.
When the president moves away from talking about climate change and talks more generally about energy, as he did in the State of the Union, calling for “an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy,” the impact is more than just political.
Calling climate change by another name creates limits of its own. The way we talk about the problem affects how we deal with it. And though some new wording may deflect political heat, it can’t alter the fact that, “climate change” or not, the climate is changing.
Maxwell T. Boykoff is an assistant professor in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the author of “Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change.”
NOTES:
1. “Climate” included the phrases Climate Change, Changing Climate, Climate Negotiations, Climate Bill, and Global Warming.
2. “Energy” included Clean Energy, Renewable Energy, Green Energy, Energy Economy, Energy Technology, Energy Independence, Energy Dependence, Energy Efficient, Energy Efficiency, Energy Security, Energy Capacity, Energy Supply, Energy-Saving, Energy Plan, Energy Policy, Energy Bill, Energy Jobs, Energy Industry, Energy Production, Energy Use, Energy Grid, Energy Future, Energy Development, Energy Revolution, Energy Prices, and Energy Needs
Fin
How can President Obama not know of global warming temperature increase when his administration is changing thoughts involving multinational decisions, trillions of energy dollars, and the lives of 9 billion people in 2050-2099 CE.
The president’s intentions are revealed by his weak rhetoric and avoidance of anything tainted with the terms climate change or global warming. Unfortunately, the atmosphere doesn’t understand our delicate sleights of tongue, only the gases that continue to belch from our cars and smokestacks.
Carbon budget refers to the contribution of various sources of carbon dioxide on the planet. Carbon budget has nothing to do with political agendas, climate change legislation, carbon controls, carbon storage, economic, or geopolitical carbon footprint. Carbon budget is a physical event. Infrastructure coal plants and oil extraction methods in countries of China, India, Europe, Canada, the U.S., and other nations are rapidly being constructed right now. Hydrocarbon infrastructures are going to last another 50 years plus, at least. Nations are now “locking-in the global carbon budget.” International Energy Agency’s (IEA) found we are about five years away from building enough carbon-spewing infrastructures to lock-in a hydrocarbon infrastructure and make it extremely difficult — if not impossible — to avoid greatly exceeding 450-ppm carbon dioxide. The point of global warming no-return comes around 2017 CE.
World Leaders must establish the intent to save human races 2050-2099. This identification of intent is a Modern Global Warming Era temperature reduction goal. A greenhouse gas-reduction statement must contain identified results over time, carbon dioxide and methane atmospheric levels, units of measurements, Earth temperatures, consider all global warming forces, probabilities of achieving events, stated starting levels, and goals. Modern Global Warming Era starting goal for greenhouse natural and human gas reduction is 1750 CE historic carbon dioxide peak levels (~280 ppm) and methane peak levels (~700 ppb). The political and physical goal is to achieve human survival well past 2100 CE. Tempus Fugit.
