August 03, 2006: On "Climate Porn"

The BBC News Web site ran an interesting story about the Institute for Public Policy research accusing the mass media of indulging in "climate porn" in their presentation of environmental issues. (The above captioned image comes from that article.) In light of my recent attempt to address the problem of communicating the issues of global warming to the general public, this story piqued my interest. I certainly found it interesting as an attempt to analyze the ways in which the media are handling the global warming issue. On the other hand the story was also interesting for what it did not say: It did not really get into the difficulties inherent in reporting scientific results to a lay audience. This is a complex story that requires sorting out concrete evidence, interpretations of the evidence, and the extent to which conclusions can be said to be based on evidence, interpretations, or some combination of the two. That stuff just does not fit into a sound bite the way a shot of a lone polar bear floating on a small island of ice in the middle of nowhere does.

In other words, much as we would like to believe otherwise about the manipulation of mass media to warp the minds of the general public, the global warming story is just plain hard to report. Too much reasoning needs to be applied to evgen the most indisputably concrete data. Not only is the general public loath to engage in such a laborious effort (can you blame them?); but also the details of the argument are so intricate that it is easy for opponents to find plenty of nits to pick, regardless of how significant those nits may be to the overall thrust of the argument. In other words, no matter how sound and significant the argument may be, it is just too vulnerable to attack, regardless of the limited rationality of the attack.

Having said all that, I have to admit that I am not yet sure of my own position (on how to report about the environment, since I am pretty confident that there is genuine cause for alarm over global warming). I agree that there is something sensational (if not pornographic) about images and language more directed at seizing the attention than guiding it; but that has been a problem at least since Plato had Socrates complain about it in "Gorgias." Also, I dislike the strategy of fighting fire with fire, even when the fire comes from the likes of Congressman Roy Blunt, who has declared that, if he holds on to his seat in the House, he will make sure that there will be no action on global warming for the entire 110th Congress. On the other hand I also feel strongly that ignoring the climate problem (as Blunt is determined to do) is not going to make it go away and will probably make it worse. So, as the old joke goes, perhaps you really do have to whack the mule on the head with a two-by-four "in order to get his attention."

(Note: I would not presume to imply that Blunt or any other member of the Congress is a mule; as another old joke goes, that would be an insult to the mules!)

July 12, 2006: Why Irrationality?

Reading Jim Hansen's report on global warming in the July 13 New York Review left me wondering why it should be so hard to communicate such a painfully clear message. My reflex was to resort to a comment by Herbert Agar (which I used to associated with James Reston): "The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." This is what makes the title of Gore's lecture/book/film so appropriate: the inconvenience of it all. On the other hand, Antonio Gramsci may have come closer to the mark with his theory of ideological domination. Here is how Randall Collins explained it in his Theoretical Sociology text:

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, writing a few years later in his Prison Notebooks (1928/1971), however, argued that the working class is most afflicted by the power of the dominant class’s ideology. If not deceived by outright illusions, their minds are subject to ‘contradictory consciousness,’ with confused and fragmented judgments on the nature of the world they inhabit. This is because the ruling class is hegemonic: controlling not only property but—even more importantly—the means of producing beliefs about reality. These include religion, education, and more recently, the mass media. Thus the working class is severely crippled in its ability to revolt against the dominant order, or even think critically about it. (For modern examples, see Gitlin [1979] on the power of television, or the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s [1984] theory of the stratification produced by differences in personal taste and styles of entertainment, which he calls ‘cultural capital.’)

In other words, in less elevated langauge, what we prefer to hear is what the media tell us we prefer to hear.