Cedar Rapids Flood
Public discussions about climate change are closely connected with sales.
Anyone who has taken professional sales training knows creating doubt about a competitor is a key tool used to gain favorable consideration from prospective clients. If there is a legitimate way to point out flaws in a competitor’s product and create a value proposition for a customer, a sale can be made.
A cottage industry has grown up around creating doubt about the reality of climate change, with money flowing from the hydrocarbon business community to fund politicized scientific thought. Unfortunately, it has proven to be effective as was noted in Tuesday’s post.
Most professionals know that in sales, the truth will out and the consequences for future sales depend on a faithful representation of the value proposition. During my recent time with former vice president Al Gore, he displayed an acute awareness of the need to use language in a way to convey truth and not hyperbole. If a salesperson makes false statements about competitors to make sales, or misrepresents the value of his own product during the sales process, the prospective customer will eventually discover the deceit and reject the purchase, and future sales.
Brooke Alexander
The hydrocarbon industry has been very effective in creating doubt about the science of climate change, putting the best face on a dirty source of energy. Most T.V. viewers are familiar with the American Petroleum Institute’s Energy Tomorrow campaign featuring former beauty queen, soap opera star and spokesmodel Brooke Alexander. The value proposition has varied over the years but recently has been safe extraction of natural gas through hydraulic fracturing, jobs, energy security and tax revenues to build infrastructure and fund public employees like teachers, fire fighters and law enforcement officers. It all sounds pretty good until we consider the fact that burning fossil fuels adds tens of millions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere like it was an open sewer every day. This directly contributes to global warming and a changing climate, putting infrastructure, jobs and energy security at risk. Ms. Alexander doesn’t mention that in the ads.
One business group that has no doubt about the climate crisis is the re-insurance industry, companies who insure catastrophic loss. Check out why Munich Re and Swiss Re support reduction of CO2 emissions in the New York Times article, “For Insurers, No Doubt on Climate Change.”
To learn how the hydrocarbon industry borrowed from the tobacco industry’s 1960s sales campaigns to create doubt about the fact that tobacco use causes cancer, to create doubt about climate change, view the five-minute, 12 second video below. While those of us fighting for climate action believe the truth will out, we also hope it will be told and understood before it’s too late.
~ This is part of a series of summer posts on climate change.
Blog For Iowa 
97% of the world’s scientists have condemned the planet to a “potentially” catastrophic climate crisis yet in 28 years of intensive research they have never said their own crisis was as inevitable as they love to say comet hits are. So what has to happen now for science to finally agree it “will” happen not just might happen instead of “might” happen?
“Climate change is real and is happening and “could” lead to unstoppable warming.” is the scientific consensus yet they have never said anything past “could” be a crisis.
Science can instantly end this costly debate to save billions of helpless children by finally agreeing it WILL be not “might” be a real crisis. What’s stopping them? They have doomed kids as well.
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Thank you for reading my post about climate change on Blog for Iowa.
I’m reminded of the song by Cat Stevens, “But I might Die Tonight.” We would all like certainty about our lives, but we don’t know with much assurance what our future might be, individually or as a species.
The thing about scientists and scientific method, is there is rarely, if ever, certainty. Wikipedia has a standard definition of scientific method, “the scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: ‘a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.'”
The vast majority of scientists, as you point out, and every one of the national academies of science, agree about global warming and its relationship to climate change. If you are waiting for someone to say something will happen, with absolute certainty, with regard to climate change, it will be a long wait. We must take action now.
Think about a person whose stomach hurts. If they had access to 100 physicians of all types, and 97 of them said, “you are sick, it’s urgent and you had better seek treatment immediately,” and three percent said, “no worries here, just go on living,” What would you do? For me, I’d seek treatment. So it is with climate change.
Thanks again for reading and commenting. Follow this link for more thoughts about doing something now about climate change.
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Creating doubt is highly effective. i was in sales for 20 years. it was what i learned over that time that i have been able to utilize in my fight against doubt. The science is sound. the doubt and confusion come from Big Oil and Big Coal. they are creating doubt so they dont lose profits. Climate change is already happening today. How much the climate warms in the future is up to us. http://clmtr.lt/cb/wiB0bJd
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Climate change is already happening today. How much the climate warms in the future is up to us. http://clmtr.lt/cb/wiB0fx
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