In a new paper published in the Journal of Social Marketing,
Dr. Erik L. Olson spotlights the “Fakegate” scandal as a salient
example of the unethical and deceptive practices used by those who
promote dangerous anthropogenic global warming (AGW) — a“difficult-to-sell” cause. It is suggested that the ethically questionable tactics employed by AGW “marketers” (i.e., falsely hyping “the severity, immediacy and certainty of AGW threats”) have failed and should be resisted.
Image Source: ResearchGate.net, BI Norwegian Business School BINBS
Three years ago, an unheralded paper was published in
The International Journal of Geosciences entitled “
Climate Change Science & Propaganda”
(Nelson, 2015). The author, a retired chemical engineer, openly and
brazenly characterized the United Nation’s Inter-governmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) as an “undisputed” distributor of propaganda.
“Propaganda is a manipulation tool focused primarily on emotions. It has little to do with truth or facts and everything to do with persuasion and motivation.
Whether that is good or bad, depends on whether you feel science should
be boringly independent and often ignored, or entertainingly deceptive
but viewed by many. If the initial reaction is emotional, it’s probably
propaganda.”
“The IPCC members are obligated to uphold, maintain, and implement
its principles and promote its products, and act in accordance with the
manifesto (IPCC, May 2011 p. 24). They must proactively communicate with the media and correct any incorrect representations that may be damaging (IPCC, May 2011, p. 33). Bureau members must not express any views beyond the scope of the reports (IPCC, May 2011, p. 36). All members, including all lead authors (IPCC, Nov 2011, p. 16) must sign a conflict of interest form (IPCC, Nov 2011, p. 19), which indirectly obligates them to uphold the IPCC principals and products.”
“It is undisputed that not only does the IPCC recommend propaganda, it teaches and promotes it.” — Nelson, 2015
In a new paper (detailed below), Dr. Erik L. Olson — a professor of
marketing at BI Norwegian Business School (BINBS) — further derides the
current marketing of an imminent human-caused climate threat.
Olson targets the tendency for the purveyors of dangerous AGW
to utilize deceptive and unethical tactics in an effort to garner the
public‘
s attention and to “
sell”
governmental policies that promote costly emissions mitigation.
He analyzes the public’s response to the “Fakegate” scandal — an instance in which an activist climate researcher named
Peter Gleick admittedly stole documents and deceptively posed as a
Heartland Institute member in a failed attempt to undermine climate change skepticism.
The results of the analysis reveal that AGW advocates (or, as Olson
calls them, “believers”) tend to justify the unethical conduct of those
on their side as long as the transgression is deemed to have been for a
“good cause”.
Noting that the AGW paradigm is “difficult-to-sell”, Olson warns that the utilization of
deceptive headlines, the unethical practice of manipulating temperature data to “
hide the decline”, stealing documents and faking authorship . . . are
not effective selling points when it comes to persuading an already skeptical public.
Instead, as a marketing tool, the utilization of deceptive and unethical tactics are destined to fail.
“[O]pinion polls and other research show a public that
frequently perceives climate science and associated AGW threats as
complicated, uncertain and temporally and spatially distant (Anghelcev
et al., 2015; Bennett et al., 2016; Gordon et al., 2011). Thus climate
scientists, celebrities, public policymakers and other AGW social
marketers face a daunting task in convincing a lackadaisical and often
skeptical public to support AGW mitigating behaviors and policies. The
difficulty of this marketing assignment has also led to the utilization
of ethically questionable tactics that hype the severity, immediacy and
certainty of AGW threats (O’Neil and Nicholson-Cole, 2009; Rogers, 1975; Rosenberg et al., 2010).”
“For example, the past 25 years have witnessed a large number of greatly exaggerated predictions
regarding the speed and scope of temperature increases and AGW dangers
from a variety of AGW “endorsers,” which have fortunately proven to be
false alarms (Bastasch, 2015; Grundmann, 2011; Michaels, 2008; Newman,
2014). Another ethically questionable example is provided by the Climategate scandal
involving members of the climate science community and their attempts
to increase public certainty regarding the methods and predictions of
“mainstream” climate models by blocking the publication of research not supportive of the AGW paradigm (Curry, 2014; Grundmann, 2011).”
“[C]ommercial marketers are widely criticized and
distrusted because they frequently resort to ethically questionable
tactics when the marketing assignment involves uncompetitive or unsought
products that are difficult to honestly sell (Holden and Cox,
2013; Olson, 1995). .. [T]he use of ethically questionable persuasion
techniques by social marketers is more likely to occur when the promoted
cause is “difficult to sell” owing to definitional disputes between the
marketer and target regarding the “greater good” implications of the
promoted behaviors and public policies (Hastings et al., 2004; Holden
and Cox, 2013; Spotswood et al., 2011; Von Bergen and Miles, 2015). Yet
despite these philosophical discussions on social marketing ethics in
the literature, there has been relatively little empirical attention
given to the ethical dilemmas that social marketers face when tasked
with difficult-to-sell causes such as the AGW paradigm (Freeman, 2009; Pang and Kubacki, 2015).”
“The Fakegate scandal that is the focus of the current research is different than other AGW scandals and ethical missteps, however, because the
protagonist publicly admitted to the intentional use of ethically
questionable tactics for the purposes of favorably influencing public
opinion regarding the AGW cause. Fakegate started with the
theft of internal strategy and donor documents from the Heartland
Institute, a libertarian think tank and dangerous AGW “competitor” owing
to their efforts to educate the public regarding climate model
uncertainties and the high economic and political costs of AGW
mitigation (Hoffman, 2011). … An analysis of the writing style, content
details and errors in the fake document led several bloggers to
speculate that the thief and fake document author was Peter Gleick,
a climate researcher, environmental think tank president, chairman of a
scientific association ethics committee and frequent blogger on climate
science and AGW threats (Greenhut, 2012). These publicly discussed
suspicions led Gleick to confess and apologize for his use of
deception in posing as a Heartland board member to acquire and
disseminate the internal documents.”
“Failures provide valuable learning
opportunities, and the Fakegate failure demonstrates that social
marketers who are unwilling or unable to honestly and persuasively
debate the scientific validity and “greater good” of their cause, should
not resort to ethically questionable persuasion tactics if they hope to
win widespread and lasting trust and support for their social marketing
objectives.”
