The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive!

These myths are so deeply ingrained in the environmental and progressive political community that when we finally had a serious shot at a climate bill, the powers that be decided not to focus on the threat posed by climate change in any serious fashion in their $200 million communications effort (see my 6/10 post “Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?“). These myths are so deeply ingrained in the mainstream media that such messaging, when it is tried, is routinely attacked and denounced — and the flimsiest studies are interpreted exactly backwards to drive the erroneous message home (see “Dire straits: Media blows the story of UC Berkeley study on climate messaging“)

The only time anything approximating this kind of messaging — not “doomsday” but what I’d call blunt, science-based messaging that also makes clear the problem is solvable — was in 2006 and 2007 with the release of An Inconvenient Truth (and the 4 assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and media coverage like the April 2006 cover of Time). The data suggest that strategy measurably moved the public to become more concerned about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study here).

You’d think it would be pretty obvious that the public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why they should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast literature on advertising and marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated messages have any chance of sinking in and moving the needle.

Because I doubt any serious movement of public opinion or mobilization of political action could possibly occur until these myths are shattered, I’ll do a multipart series on this subject, featuring public opinion analysis, quotes by leading experts, and the latest social science research.

Since this is Oscar night, though, it seems appropriate to start by looking at what messages the public are exposed to in popular culture and the media. It ain’t doomsday. Quite the reverse, climate change has been mostly an invisible issue for several years and the message of conspicuous consumption and business-as-usual reigns supreme.

The motivation for this post actually came up because I received an e-mail from a journalist commenting that the “constant repetition of doomsday messages” doesn’t work as a messaging strategy. I had to demur, for the reasons noted above.

But it did get me thinking about what messages the public are exposed to, especially as I’ve been rushing to see the movies nominated for Best Picture this year. I am a huge movie buff, but as parents of 5-year-olds know, it isn’t easy to stay up with the latest movies.

That said, good luck finding a popular movie in recent years that even touches on climate change, let alone one a popular one that would pass for doomsday messaging.  Best Picture nominee The Tree of Life has been billed as an environmental movie —  and even shown at environmental film festivals — but while it is certainly depressing, climate-related it ain’t. In fact, if that is truly someone’s idea of environmental movie, count me out.

The closest to a genuine popular climate movie was the dreadfully unscientific The Day After Tomorrow, which is from 2004 (and arguably set back the messaging effort by putting the absurd “global cooling” notion in people’s heads! Even Avatar, the most successful movie of all time and “the most epic piece of environmental advocacy ever captured on celluloid,” as one producer put it, omits the climate doomsday message. One of my favorite eco-movies, “Wall-E, is an eco-dystopian gem and an anti-consumption movie,” but it isn’t a climate movie.

I will be interested to see The Hunger Games, but I’ve read all 3 of the bestselling post-apocalyptic young adult novels — hey, that’s my job! — and they don’t qualify as climate change doomsday messaging (more on that later).  So, no, the movies certainly don’t expose the public to constant doomsday messages on climate.

Here are the key points about what repeated messages the American public is exposed to:

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Mayan ruins

Large parts of the arable and populated land of the world faces sharp increases in aridity and dust-bowlification thanks to human-caused climate change. “It is well established that the [Mayan] civilization collapse coincided with widespread episodes of drought, their nature and severity remain enigmatic,” notes a new study in Science.

That study, “Collapse of Classic Maya Civilization Related to Modest Reduction in Precipitation” (subs. req’d), finds that the drought was, well, “modest.” It was comparable to what is projected for the “near future” thanks to global warming — and mild compared to the combined droughts and temperature extremes that are coming on our current CO2 emissions path (See NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path).

“The warning is clear,” the lead author explained, “What seems like a minor reduction in water availability may lead to important, long-lasting problems.”

Here are excerpts from the news release from University of Southampton in the UK:

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By Jessica Goad

A new report by Stratus Consulting and commissioned by The Wilderness Society released Friday morning shows that 23 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from oil, gas, and coal extracted from federal lands and waters.  As the report states:

In 2009, the most recent year for which total U.S. GHG emissions data are available, the ultimate downstream GHG emissions from fossil fuel extraction from federal lands and waters by private leaseholders could have accounted for approximately 23% of total U.S. GHG emissions and 27% of all energy-related GHG emissions.

The study was commissioned because of deficiencies in the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s first-ever “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory for the Federal Government” report released in April 2011.  Under Executive Order 13514, all federal agencies were required to “report and reduce greenhouse gas pollution,” which included items such as energy use, fuel consumed by government fleets, and methane generated by landfill waste.

But, land management agencies like the Interior Department were not required to report emissions from activities that “are under federal agency control but are conducted by private entities,” which includes energy development on public lands.  This allowed for CEQ’s analysis to vastly underestimate the emissions coming from the federal government’s activities.  As Stratus states: “This analysis suggests that ultimate GHG emissions from fossil fuels extracted from federal lands and waters by private leaseholders in 2010 could be more than 20-times larger than the estimate reported in the CEQ inventory.”

This morning’s report demonstrates that energy development on public lands has major impacts when it comes to climate change.  This is because approximately 44% of coal, 36% of crude oil, and 18% of natural gas produced in this country are extracted from public lands, which combined create an astounding amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.

That fact is critically important as our government considers strategies to reduce emissions over the coming years.  Federally-managed lands and waters provide a unique opportunity in this process due to their extent and geographic diversity.

This study should serve as an important wake up call for President Obama and the leaders in his administration, both of which have made serious commitments to addressing the climate crisis and making the United States the world leader in clean energy development.  Not only has the president pledged to reduce emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stated in Copenhagen that “carbon pollution is putting our world—and our way of life—in peril.”

– Jessica Goad is manager of research and outreach on the public lands team at the Center for American Progress.

AP Photo

by Jonathan D. Moreno

Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum has declared that:

“(w)hen it comes to the management of the Earth, they [the Democrats] are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment.”

Until recently in America, science hasn’t been far down the list from motherhood and apple pie. At one time a candidate for office would have been sorely tempted to kiss Albert Einstein’s balding pate along with that of an infant. So why does Rick Santorum feel compelled to assure us that he is pro-science? And why now?

As I’ve noted before, the idea that one would be for or against science is something new in America. In the 19th century, physics, engineering, and chemistry were regnant, and biology was still largely observational rather than experimental, so the great debates about evolution and the origins of life were yet to come. Partly for this reason, conservative religious beliefs were quite compatible with a cohesive moral vision through the late 19th century. Ministers and naturalists could agree on their beliefs about nature. Santorum would have been quite comfortable with many pastoral sermons about the importance of science in American churches in the 1880s. He surely would have wanted to greet John Glenn on his return from orbit 50 years ago.

What has changed this American sensibility? Why does a cultural conservative feel the need to announce he is pro-science?

The answer lies in the advent of experimental biology and modern genetics, which has stimulated political controversies like those over cloning and stem cells and invoked old images of Dr. Frankenstein instead of Dr. Einstein. Similarly, the modern environmental movement pits scientific “experts” against … opponents of government regulation. Science has become a cultural wedge issue, so that a candidate like Rick Santorum feels compelled to recapture science from the secular elite.

Underlying this conflict, therefore, is a mistrust of scientists themselves, of their perceived hubris. When the National Academy of Sciences supports human embryonic stem cell research and 97 percent of scientists say that climate change is caused by humans, a cultural divide is opened up that is not only new for American, it is worrisome. Keep going down that list of American tropes — mom, apple pie, and science, and very soon you reach opportunity and progress. In my book The Body Politic I argue that without a fundamental sense that the innovators can be trusted it’s hard to see how a nation musters the will to lead the world in an era in which leadership in science is not optional.

Jonathan D. Moreno is a Senior Fellow at American Progress, where he edits the magazine, Science Progress. This piece was originally published at the Huffington Post.