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A lexicon for creating doubt about climate change

A lexicon for creating doubt about climate change. Mai Kuha Ball State University. Signs of awareness in mainstream discourse about climate change: use of the expression “climate crisis” has increased in proportion to the total amount of text in Google Books.

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A lexicon for creating doubt about climate change

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  1. A lexicon for creating doubt about climate change Mai Kuha Ball State University

  2. Signs of awareness in mainstream discourse about climate change: use of the expression “climate crisis” has increased in proportion to the total amount of text in Google Books.

  3. Climate change counter-movement books dealing substantially with alleged deception

  4. The publishers Encounter Books (4) WND Books (3) Stacey International Publishing (3) Regnery Publishing (3) Howling at the Moon Publishing (2) New Lenox Books (2) Cato Institute The Heartland Institute Canterbury Publishing Stairway Press MPS Publishing CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Taylor Trade Publishing Moonshine Cove Publishing

  5. How influential might these books be?Rank on Amazon

  6. Rank on Amazon, continued

  7. Rank on Amazon, continued

  8. In what ways is it problematic that these books use terms such as these?

  9. Frame semantics

  10. Relevant frames and expressions that evoke them

  11. Core elements in a key frame

  12. “…these facts are generally ignored by agenda-driven researchers guilty of purposely concealing this historical climate record and coercing the naïve…” (Sussman 2010:25)

  13. Who is constructed as the “victim”? • the American people • the public • the ignorant

  14. Who is constructed as the “deceiver”? • Al Gore • Michael Mann • James Hansen • Rachel Carson • the media • Orwellian politicians parading as patriots • scientists • bureaucrats and politically active scientists in the IPCC • reviewers for scientific journals • Marxist elites • green pressure groups • the renewable energy industry • fossil fuel companies “pandering to public’s environmental anxieties” • whiners (!)

  15. Less direct allegations of deception “agenda” “narrative” An account of a series of events, facts, etc., given in order and with connections established between them A representation in which a sequence of events has been constructed into a story in accordance with a particular ideology a plan of action arising from a set of underlying principles or motives  the underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group Oxford English Dictionary

  16. “spade”

  17. spade

  18. Experiment The gardener dug with a spade. ace Is the meaning of this word relevant to the sentence?

  19. Response time, msec Gernsbacher & Faust 1991

  20. plan of action “agenda” hidden political motives

  21. In both Google Books and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, use of the expression liberal agenda is growing faster than use of the expression conservative agenda.

  22. Pacific Research Institute blog post: “The EPA and the Alarmist Narrative” Forbes editorial: “…Global warming alarmists often misrepresent the peer-reviewed literature, claiming that virtually no peer-reviewed studies call the alarmist narrative into question. In order to make such a claim, they water down their narrative…”

  23. After mentioning people who regretted not standing up to Hitler: “do we have any excuse for not confronting those promoting this shameful scam of man-caused global warming?” (Sussman 2010:217).

  24. Main points • By using words such as “hoax”, “scam”, and “fraud”, the climate change counter-movement evokes the Intentional Deception frame, reinforcing the claim that scientists and activists are deceivers. • Since this claim is implicit, not explicit, arguing against it is difficult. • Although “agenda” and “narrative” seem less accusing, they can have a similar effect, because their use activates the negative meaning for readers. • Readers with lower levels of education might be particularly susceptible to the influence of the negative connotations of these words.

  25. Climate change counter-movement books Alexander, Ralph B. 2012. Global Warming False Alarm, 2nd edition: The Bad Science Behind the United Nations' Assertion that Man-made CO2 Causes Global Warming. Canterbury Publishing. Ball, Tim. 2014. The deliberate corruption of climate science. Stairway Press. Carter, Robert M. 2010. Climate: The Counter-Consensus - A Palaeoclimatologist Speaks (Independent Minds). Stacey International. Delingpole, James. 2013. The little green book of eco-fascism: The left’s plan to frighten your kids, drive up energy costs, and hike your taxes! Regnery Publishing. Fishman, Philip M. 2013. A really inconvenient truth: The case against the theory of anthropogenic global warming. MPS Publishing. Goreham, Steve. 2010. Climatism!: Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century's Hottest Topic. New Lenox Books. Goreham, Steve. 2012. The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania. New Lenox Books. Horner, Christopher C. 2007. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism). Regnery Publishing. Horner, Christopher C. 2008. Red hot lies: How global warming alarmists use threats, fraud, and deception to keep you misinformed. Regnery Publishing. Inhofe, James. 2012. The greatest hoax: How the global warming conspiracy threatens your future. WND Books. Isaac, Rael Jean. 2012. Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted the Western World. The Heartland Institute. Michaels, Patrick J. 2011. Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives. Cato Institute.

  26. More climate change counter-movement books Montford, Andrew W. 2010. The hockey stick illusion: Climategate and the corruption of science. Stacey International Publ Montford, Andrew W. 2012. Hiding the decline: A history of the Climategate affair. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Paltridge, Garth W. 2010. The Climate Caper: Facts and Fallacies of Global Warming. Taylor Trade Publishing. Robinson, G. Dedrick. 2012. Global warming-alarmists, skeptics and deniers: A geoscientist looks at the science of climate change. Moonshine Cove Publishing. Spencer, Roy W. 2010. The great global warming blunder: How Mother Nature fooled the world’s top climate scientists. Encounter Books. Spencer, Roy. 2008. Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor. Encounter Books. Spencer, Roy. 2010. The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama’s Global Warming Agenda. Encounter Books. Sussman, Brian. 2010. Climategate: A veteran meteorologist exposes the global warming scam. WND Books. Sussman, Brian. 2012. Eco-tyranny: How the left’s green agenda will dismantle America. WND Books. Vahrenholt, Fritz & Sebastian Luning. 2013. The neglected sun: How the sun precludes climate catastrophe. Stacey International. Wishart, Ian. 2010. Air Con 2010: Need the facts on climate change? Howling at the Moon Publishing. Wishart, Ian. 2011. Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming. Howling at the Moon Publishing. Zubrin, Robert. 2012. Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism. Encounter Books.

  27. Sources Brulle, Robert J. 2014. Institutionalizing delay: Foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations. Climactic Change 122. 681-694. Fillmore, Charles J. & Colin F. Baker. 2010. A frames approach to semantic analysis. In Bernd Heine & HeikoNarrog (eds.) The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 313-340. New York: Oxford University Press. FrameNet https://framenet2.icsi.berkeley.edu/fnReports/data/frameIndex.xml?frame=Intentional_deception Gernsbacher, M.A. & M. E. Faust. 1991. The mechanism of suppression: A component of general comprehension skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 17. 245-262. Hoggan, James. 2009. Climate cover-up: The crusade to deny global warming. Greystone Books. Nerlich, Brigitte. 2010 “Climategate”: Paradoxical metaphors and political paralysis. Environmental Values 19(4). 419-442. Nerlich, Brigitte & NelyaKoteyko. 2009. Compounds, creativity and complexity in climate change communication: The case of ‘carbon indulgences’. Global Environmental Change 19(3). 345-353. Oreskes, Naomi & Erik M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of doubt. Bloomsbury Publishing. Roser-Renouf, Connie, et al. Forthcoming. Engaging diverse audiences with climate change: Message strategies for global warming’s six Americas. In Anders Hanson & Robbie Cox (eds.) The Routledge handbook of environment and communication. Stibbe, Arran. Forthcoming (spring 2015). Ecolinguistics: Discourse, ecology and the stories we live by.Routledge. Stocking, S. Holly & Lisa W. Holstein. 2009. Manufacturing doubt: Journalists' roles and the construction of ignorance in a scientific controversy. Public Understanding of Science 18(1). 23-42. Traxler, Matthew J. 2011. Introduction to psycholinguistics: Understanding language science. John Wiley & Sons.

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