NOTE TO U.S. MEDIA: Please don’t fall for this Administration’s final climate trick — don’t ignore these important studies.

Normally, when an administration wants to bury bad news — such as a government report it doesn’t like — the story gets released Friday afternoon. That ensures minimal media coverage. For news it really doesn’t like, the Friday of a three-day weekend is ideal.

So what subject matter is so abhorrent it would motivate the Bush administration to release multiple reports simultaneously the Friday before the four-day weekend that culminates in their loss of power, when they can be certain the media will be focused on other matters?

Answer: The impact of human-caused global warming on Americans — arguably the single most taboo subject in the entire Bush administration. For 8 years they have avoided their statutory obligation to detail the impacts of climate change on this country. And they have systematically muzzled government climate scientists from discussing those impacts with the public or the media (see “Climate Science Muzzling Meets the House“).

It was easier to find people in the Bush administration to talk about torture or warrantless wiretaps, than it was to get someone to speak on (or off) the record or on the likely impact of Bush’s policy of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions on Americans.

On Friday January 16, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program actually released four major Synthesis and Assessment reports. You may remember the last report the CCSP released — US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections, SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050. I was told by scientists knowledgeable about the CCSP process that all of the major impact reports were slowed down in the review process to make sure they came out after the election.

So what are the reports the Bushies have tried to bury? From the CCSP website:

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A. No.

The NYT reported yesterday on tonight’s two big “Green Galas”:

The first gala is being held by Al Gore, the former vice president and Nobel laureate. His event is also joined by a no-compromise crowd long frustrated with the Bush administration. Among them, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council….

[No, I'm not attending. I'm going to the "traditional" energy & environmental inaugural ball tomorrow.]

The second gala is being held by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, comprising the goliaths of international and animal wildlife conservation like the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Federation.

[Note to NYT, on climate at least, WWF is more no-compromise than NRDC (see "NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan)."]

Inexcusably, “Exxon Mobil is a prominent sponsor of the event.” The oil giant has spent millions of dollars over the years as a principal sponsor of the global warming disinformation campaign aimed at stopping efforts to conserve a livable climate — even after they said they stopped such funding. Chris Mooney has an excellent piece on ExxonMobil‘s two-decade anti-scientific campaign (see also posts on Heritage and CEI and AEI).

It is simply unconscionable for any major conservation-based event (or group, for that matter) to take money from them. ExxonMobil is one the world’s greatest enemies of conservation for three reasons:

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The celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday today is doubly poignant coming one day before the inauguration of Barack Obama. In my unpublished book on rhetoric, I discuss King’s most famous speech, mainly to illustrate the rhetorical principle of foreshadowing. On this one day, at this one point in history, it is on topic.

As a theatrical device, the essence of foreshadowing can be found in Anton Chekhov’s advice to a novice playwright: “If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.” Create anticipation and then fulfill the listener’s desire.

Foreshadowing is related to the figure of speech ominatio (Latin for omen), which, one Renaissance rhetoric text explains is “when we do show & foretell what shall hereafter come to pass, which we gather by some likely sign, and in ill things we foretell it, to the intent that heed may be paid, and the danger of avoided; and in good things to stir up expectation and hope.”

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has a soothsayer famously and futilely warn Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March”–a foreshadowing ominatio that Caesar famously and fatally ignores: “He is a dreamer,” shrugs Caesar. “Let us leave him.”

Bob Dylan’s tragic “Like a Rolling Stone” heroine is similarly warned, and by many: “People’d call, say, ‘Beware doll, you’re bound to fall’ “–which she also unwisely pays no heed to: “You thought they were all kiddin’ you.”

Dramatic foreshadowing has an even more important rhetorical counterpart. The golden rule of speechmaking is “Tell ‘em what what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell ‘em; then tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” The first part of that triptych is the rhetorical foreshadowing of the main idea of your speech, the introduction of the dominant theme of your remarks.

I HAVE A DREAM
I can think of no more remarkable combination of dramatic and rhetorical foreshadowing in a modern public address than the opening lines of Martin Luther King’s keynote address at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (video above and text here).

The speech is often presented without his introductory sentence, which is unfortunate since it is an essential element of his message. King began, “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” This opening line foreshadows that the intellectual focus of the speech will be “freedom,” a word that, with its partner “free,” King repeats twenty-four times in his 1500-word oration. As we will soon see, it also anticipates his optimistic message.

King uses the word “history” twice in this simple prefatory line, foreshadowing that he will be taking a historical perspective, which he does from the start.

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See also “Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan and “An introduction to the core climate solutions.”