Here is a list of the soundbites I brainstormed:²

1. Scientists can’t predict the weather, how can they predict the climate?
2. The Earth is cooling, not warming.
3. The hockey stick graph is bullshit.
4. Everything is made of oil.
5. You drive a car, so don’t be a hypocrite.
6. We can’t stop climate change so there is nothing we can do.
7. Scientists don’t all agree about global warming.
8. The Earth might be warming but there is not enough evidence linking it to human activity.
9. Getting oil from Alberta is more ethical than getting it from Iraq or Iran or Nigeria.
10. Getting coal from Alberta is more ethical than getting coal from Columbia.
11. Alberta keeps Canada in the black.
12. If we don’t keep increasing oil production, and consumption, humans will starve.
13. Mitigating climate change is a waste of money.
14. We’re better off spending money to end world hunger.
15. Lethbridge will become like Arizona, which is a good thing.
16. The world is better off being warmer.
17. Climate change is a socialist conspiracy.
18. Only hippies care about climate change.
19. The oil industry meets and exceeds all industry regulation.
20. It is not government’s role to regulate free markets.
21. The IPCC is corrupt
22. The market will correct itself.
23. Only the free market can solve climate change.
24. Coal is clean.
25. We file a report if we spill a single drop of gas when we fill up our trucks.
26. We regulate ourselves and we set the standard worldwide.
27. We use coal to make clean energy.
28. Alternative energy sources are not enough so we need to expand oil production.
29. One word: China.
30. Volcanoes cause climate change, not Albertans.
31. Solar flares cause climate change, not Albertans.
32. The Earth’s orbit causes climate change, not Albertans.
33. God will keep us safe from climate change.
34. The Earth will always bounce back.
35. The sky isn’t falling.
36. Anyone who cares about climate change is an alarmist.
37. Consumer choices will solve climate change.
38. Government officials can’t be trusted to solve climate change.
39. Ocean ice is an obstacle to trade.
40. Don’t threaten our economic recovery with environmental regulation.
41. Don’t threaten our economic stability with red tape.
42. Our economy is an island of peace and security. Don’t put it at risk.
43. Let Stephen Harper take care of it. He is making a green plan that is custom made for Canada.
44. We have to wait and see what the U.S.A. is going to do.
45. Global temperatures have always been this way from time to time.
46. The oil industry is committed to habitat restoration.

I thought I had done pretty well making a list of public relations soundbites designed to stifle action to mitigate climate change. Then I discovered that some others have already done a better job. This guy even organized the arguments and included basic, intermediate and advanced counter arguments. But as well organized as these guys are, there are seriously hundreds and maybe thousands of websites out there, some well funded and some not, espousing climate denial.

And fascinating it is. It is perhaps the greatest epistemological challenge ever devised by an evil genius. Place billions of humans in a finite space. Give them different worldviews, disparate access to wealth and power, and widely ranging systems of knowing. Give the folks with more access to wealth and privilege a vested interest to keep the other guys confused about a pressing issue. Add in folks that think they are entitled to the resources without acknowledging the finite constraints of said finite space or their impact on the social and political fabric of said space.

It reminds me of the kind of puzzle presented to me when I speak to someone that believes the Earth is only six thousand years old. It’s the same kind of interpersonal puzzle I face when I talk to someone that believes there is a white man in the sky that killed his son on everyone’s behalf. It’s a puzzle. And I don’t know the answer.

Anyway, here it is: http://www.whatthefuckismyalbertaoilstrategy.com/

But no longer. I wrote about Rex Murphy last year. Anyone that follows me on Twitter will know that I have posted some of my challenges with Rex Murphy there. And, crucially, I committed to writing a post defending and footnoting my claims. This is it. Here are six of my tweets and their reasons. ¹

But first, I will express one point of admiration. Rex Murphy is a curmudgeon. For this I admire him, in part, because I am somewhat of a curmudgeon. And curmudgeon-ness is a power. It’s a virtue. But it’s not enough. And his defects are many.

My challenges with Rex Murphy: #2 he is ignorant about climate change.

This is a big one. It’s his job to understand the significant issues of our day. But most of what he is on record saying about climate change works to:

1. undermine public confidence in the science of global warming
2. undermine public opinion of the policies Canada and other countries have tried to initiate to mitigate climate change

He succeeds at undermining the legitimacy of the conventional wisdom of global warming by being, well, confusing about his claims. He uses obfuscatory language when discussing the facts and he casts doubt at every turn on the scientist that purport the facts. He speaks mostly in derogatory and demeaning ways about environmentalists and climate change activists. And while some of his individual criticisms are defensible, the nature and direction of his criticisms is patterned.

Take, for example, his televised rant on the so called climate-gate emails: http://youtu.be/lgIEQqLokL8 He casts a number of aspersions on the scientists studying climate change and casts a number of aspersions on the activists and advocates trying to make social and cultural change. He uses the following language (partial list): “alarmism,” “manipulation,” “destroying the data,” “unprofessionalism,” “ideology,” “dishonest science,” “stink of intellectual corruption,” “lack of neutrality,” “lack of good science,” “partisan.”  But he has never returned to the issue to retract his claims. He simply has never bothered to follow up.

It’s not rocket science. Just go to a real newspaper online and see what they say.

The thing is that there are real and important issues around climate change. And we need curmudgeons asking questions and pushing for a better analysis. But when every soundbite you issue works to confuse the electorate, support the oil industry interests, and undermine public opinion about global collective action, then you deserve biting criticism.

It’s worth doing a search on the DeSmog Blog for “rex murphy.” And just in case you think it’s all old news, just check out his recent soundbites at the National Post as of April 16 2011.

Remember this the next time someone says that the science of global warming is “settled,” for many environmentalists are inspired not by science, but by spirituality — Andean and otherwise. – Rex Murphy

It’s worth noting here that many of his individual points are defensible. Most of the best propaganda is, after all, true. But the article’s logic is invalid. You cannot argue from some hand picked examples of environmentalism (no matter whether they are actually examples of fuzzy thinking or not) to the general conclusion that “environmentalism rots the mind.” That’s a bullshit argument. And it’s a fancy piece of rhetoric that fits a larger pattern in which his columns and soundbites are continually critical of certain issues, in this case climate change, and never critical of others.

My challenges with Rex Murphy: #4 he complains about expedience in electoral communications, but he is, himself, a master sophist.

Take, for example, his recent article of April 16, 2011. The first sentence is a question. It’s the question which frames everything he says in the article. He asks the question, because he can deny asserting it, in the next sentence. Here’s the full first paragraph:

Does environmentalism rot the mind? I am beginning to believe that the more feverish and agitated greens are suffering from a morbid condition. There is, it appears, no intellectual folly to which they are immune, no frenzied leap off the pier of reason they will not joyfully execute, in their reliably bizarre efforts to horrify the rest of us into supporting their cause.

Anyone can ask a question. I could ask some about Rex Murhpy. Does Rex Murphy eat kittens? Does Rex Murphy have actual friends? Is Rex Murphy getting senile? These are just questions. I’m not asserting that he is senile. I don’t know that. I have no evidence. wink wink It’s a slick move. In the very next sentence, once he’s already planted the framework and subtext for the rest of the article, he says something very safe. Actually, if you read the second sentence carefully, it’s practically a tautology. He basically asserts that he is beginning to believe that the more agitated greens are mindless. Well, that’s a very carefully constructed sentence. It’s a highly defensible sentence.

This device works like this. Is Rex Murphy a jackass? I’m beginning to think so, because sometimes he acts like a jackass.

There is a second rhetorical device that Murphy employs in this first paragraph. His argument structure is to find some people that identify as environmentalists and then argue that their ideas are crazy. And maybe the people in his examples have crazy ideas. Most people will think so and that is why Murphy picked these examples. But the move is to then argue that all environmentalists are crazy. That’s what the article is about. He’s not informing us of the national green mvoement of Bolivia. Not really. He’s actually informing us about the nature of environmentalism here. But he paints all environmentalists with the same brush. It’s a tremendous leap of inductive logic. Were it not so cleverly hidden in his well penned prose it would be laughable. But it somehow passes.

Both of these techniques are very strategic acts of communication. Murphy somehow thinks that he’s allowed to do this but that politicians aren’t. We should expect more from politicians. But we should also expect more from journalists.

Interestingly, the article, which I thought was editorial is listed under NEWS. Here’s a screenshot.

My challenges with Rex Murphy: #5 he doesn’t want an election but then proclaims that the election is “unwanted, unwarranted and unwelcome”.

Rex Murphy doesn’t like this election. That’s fine, that’s his opinion. He says so here: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/pointless+campaign/4587006/story.html

He says so again on March 26 here: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/03/26/rex-murphy-liberals-hope-to-sell-a-civics-lesson-as-a-campaign-theme/

And he says so again on March 25th. He uses the language of “unwanted, unwarranted and unwelcome” on March 25: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/03/25/rex-murphy-if-nothing-else-the-election-will-mean-the-last-of-familiar-faces/

It’s a classic fallacy of reasoning. It goes something like this:

premise: I think that x.
premise: I'm important.
conclusion 1: Therefore, everybody thinks that x.
corollary: If everybody thinks x, then x is the case.
conclusion 2: Therefore, x is the case.

Rex Murphy makes a lot of money. His work, on the radio and on television and as an author, all adds up to him making a healthy paycheck. I say this because he has the time and resources to get clear on issues and educate himself. Generally speaking, scholars have moved beyond the arcane “objective” language of the 1970′s in which every opinion was stated as objective fact. If you want other people to think the election is unwelcome, just say so. If you think the election is unwelcome just say so. But don’t use the term “believe” to discuss the likelihood of an election, and then just pass off “unwanted, unwarranted and unwelcome” as fact.

For the record, I want, and welcome, the election.

My challenges with Rex Murphy: #6 he considers the prorogation of parliament, by Harper, a “great non-controversy.”

Murphy says so on August 7 of 2o10, “The Perils of Question 32B”: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/08/07/rex-murphy-the-perils-of-question-32b/

My challenges with Rex Murphy: #9 he has been, by and large, a Barack Obama detractor and an admirer of Sarah Palin.

See “When crisis strikes the world, Obama falls silent” and “Mid-terms touch on American despair.”

And, almost unbelievably, see April 10, 2010 “Understanding the Sarah Palin effect.” The National Post seems to have taken this article down. They do a terrible job of archiving their content. But I found a cached page of this troubling article here.  ²

But there she is, in all her roughness and candour, and her spiky wit and ability to irritate her self-nominated betters. She also happens to be the most naturally charismatic politician at the moment in the United States. She is the one major figure who can claim authenticity without morally choking on the word. That makes her the populist rallying point of a nascent rejection of the fervid partisanship and Washington insiderism that is eroding the consent on which American politics is founded

It’s not the first time Murphy applauds Palin. On November 20 of 2009 Murphy praised Palin’s capacities at length.

My challenges with Rex Murphy: #10 he doesn’t understand human rights. And he repeats too many #cpc talking points.

On April 03, 2010, Murphy wrote “Please don’t call it ‘human rights’” and in this article (article here), he claims that:

By some crude osmosis, or just from the luxuriant carelessness of our pampered lives, we have overturned one of the great concepts of all human law. The concept of human rights, as experience and history inform us, is protection from the state’s power, not oversight, interference and punishment by the state’s power.

The core concept of human rights is the protection of the irreducible safety and dignity of the individual from the massive and arbitrary power of the state. Not, the state wandering in, with its apparatus and procedures, its boards and tribunals into the doings, or speech, of the individual. This is what the Guy Earle case, in its triviality — it’s about heckling, remember — upends. It perverts the name of “human rights,” earned in blood and suffering in circumstances of utter consequence and unspeakable misery.

This is flatly wrong. The core concept of a human right is not the protection of an individual from the state. Our human rights are entitlements in toto; they protect us from churches, individuals, companies, organizations, families, corporations and states. And for the record, most human rights that are actually protected, are protected by the state. Only a wealthy libertarian would claim that the core concept of a  human rights protects us from the state. I have some complicated thoughts and feelings about states and governments myself. Some days, I even drift towards anarchy. But I also understand that the state also occasionally affords the protection of our human rights. And so should Murphy.

And this is one of the problems with Rex Murphy. He seems all to happy in his job at the National Post to reflect and amplify the soundbites of the Conservative Party of Canada (#cpc). Just browse the string of headlines found at http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/author/rmurphynp/

What you will find, is a string of articles that:

1. frame the election as unnecessary and dangerous
2. condemn politics as a waste of time
3. frame detractors of the Conservatives as time wasters
4. disparage environmentalism
5. undermine public confidence in climate change science
6. promote the role of the oil sands in Canada
7. are critical of Michael Ignatief
8. abuse the notion of human rights

On January 15 2011, Rex Murphy titled his articled with the very metaphor that Harper himself uses to characterize his leadership and economic policies: “Harper didn’t move mountains — but he kept our seas calm.” Rex Murphy, and the National Post, should have a duty of disclosure.

Just admit who you’re voting for and who you want others to vote for.

It’s more honest.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to convince me of his points of view and eventually he said, “Meteorologists can’t predict the weather next week, how can scientists claim to predict global warming?” Now when he said this, some kind of alarm bell starting to ring deep down in my brain stem. Maybe he was just a little too slick. Or maybe, since I was so often speaking from a script, I was in a heightened state of script awareness. So at that point, I fell out of my own script and stuck out my hand and introduced myself. And he introduced himself. His name was Tim Ball.

We had an animated conversation about peer reviewed publishing, the dimensions of relative objectivity in science, global cooling, and socialism. Actually he accused me of being a socialist. And that was when my moment of glory came to pass in the form of a question I would ask in return. See, when he accused me of being a socialist I was provoked first to a moment of confusion – it just struck me as a non sequitur. But after the confusion, came clarity. And I asked him, “Do you work for the Fraser Institute?”

I still remember that moment and I remember exactly where we were standing – corner of Government and Yates in front of Eddi Bauer.

His eyes widened a little and he stepped back. Pointedly, he said no. I told him that equating concern for global warming with socialism sounded like something the Fraser Institute or the Heritage Foundation might do. He mumbled something and walked away. I quickly made some notes about the exchange, including writing down his name and went on with my day.

But that night I did a name search online for ‘Tim Ball’. Then I did a name search for ‘Tim Ball’ on the Fraser Institute website. And maybe he wasn’t an employee but I did find his name on lot’s of their communications. I was so excited! I met an important person who was clearly a hired gun for climate change denial and made his cover on one try! It was easy.

But unfortunately, many reporters and journalists have found him convincing over the years. Unfortunately, many so-called journalists continue to find him interesting. As of today, he’s still listed on the Fraser Institute website:

This is how his bio reads on the Fraser Institute website:

Dr. Tim Ball, one of the first Canadians to hold a Ph.D. in climatology, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of London (England) using the remarkable records of the Hudson’s Bay Company to reconstruct climate change from 1714 – 1952. He has published numerous articles on climate change and its impact on the human condition. Dr. Ball has served on numerous committees at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels on climate, water resources, and environmental issues. He was a professor in the geography department at the University of Winnipeg before retiring. He has written a regular column on weather in the agricultural magazine. Country Guide, for 14 years. He is currently working as an environmental consultant and public speaker based in Victoria and has written, with Dr. Stuart Houston, 18th Century Naturalists on Hudson Bay, a book on the science and climate of the fur trade (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003).

But this is how he’s described in James Hoggan’s recent book, Climate Cover Up, The Crusade to Deny Global Warming:

There are few “skeptical scientists” with as little actual expertise and as much ambition as the Canadian geography professor Dr. Timothy Ball. Never a climate scientist per se, Dr. Ball quit his position as an associate professor at the University of Winnipeg in 1995, apparently ending an academic career that featured a lifetime output of just four peer-reviewed journal articles, none of which addressed atmospheric science. Yet ten years later, Ball-the-climate-expert seemed to be everywhere – on the radio, in the newspapers, on the lecture circuit, even testifying before a committee in the Canadian parliament.

Turns out that Tim Ball is paid by the Friends of Science that is funded through the University of Calgary Science Education Fund, set up by Barry Cooper who is friends with Stephen Harper, which is funded by the Oil patch. He’s also connected to the National Resources Stewardship Program, Tom Harris with APCO Public Relations, High Park Advocacy Group, Canadian Gas Association and the Canadian Electricity Association. He’s effectively a paid mouthpiece with fewer credentials than he and the Fraser Institute claims he has. But I met him and he’s quasi famous and so I guess I met an almost famous guy! And I made him. That was my moment of glory.