Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (9 page)

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MANGLING THE LANGUAGE
Making doubt reliable and science unbelievable

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately
have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence
of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause,
reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an
intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink
because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely
because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening
to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our
thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes
it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

GEORGE ORWELL, “ POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE”

T
here must have been people before George Orwell who recognized and deplored the use of language to hide meaning— to divert, deceive, or confuse rather than to illuminate. But when Orwell wrote the words above in 1946, he identified a tactic that offended both his thirst for clarity and his lust for justice. Orwell complained about the increasing popularity of the euphemism, which the second edition of the
Oxford English
Reference Dictionary
defines as “a mild or vague expression substituted for one thought to be too harsh or direct.” In the same essay, Orwell offers these as examples:

Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called
pacification.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called
transfer of population
or
rectification
of frontiers.
People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called
elimination of unreliable
elements.
Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

In this age of Peacekeeper missiles and collateral damage, Orwell likely would be complaining more bitterly than ever. And seeing the emerging corporate appetite for newspeak words like “downsizing” and “outsourcing,” he wouldn’t be able to help noting that the manipulation of language had spread from the political to the corporate sphere. He might even be angered that the people who practice this manipulation today have gained some of their insight and honed their skills from reading the works that Orwell himself wrote in good faith, in an effort to root out, rather than encourage, campaigns of misinformation.

One of Orwell’s big fans in America today is the Republican pollster and spin doctor (a descriptor I use advisedly) Frank Luntz. In a January 9, 2007, interview with Terry Gross on the National Public Radio show
Fresh Air,
Luntz said that “the average American assumes that being Orwellian means to mislead,” almost assuredly a reference to Orwell’s depiction in novels such as
Nineteen Eighty-Four
of the intentional and misleading rewriting of history. But pointing to what he referred to as “Orwell’s essay on language,” likely “Politics and the English Language,” Luntz said that “to be ‘Orwellian’ is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening . . . and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever.”

That honors Orwell’s memory more than it reflects the accepted meaning of the word. Wikipedia, for example, says as of April 29, 2009, that “Orwellian describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past.” And while Luntz says that he would prefer “Orwellian” to mean something else, the way he uses the language often invokes the darker and more widely accepted definition.

Consider, for example, something else Luntz said in the same interview. He rose to defend the use of the term “energy exploration” to refer to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He then gave a brief description of what he imagines “energy exploration” looks like. Noting that “98 percent of exploration happens underneath the ground,” Luntz pointed out that when this “exploration” is over, if no oil is discovered, the only remaining evidence is a couple of feet of pipe sticking out of the ground. Thus, he said, using the term “exploring” is “more precise, more 21st century. It’s cleaner, more careful.” To affirm this view, Luntz said that he gathered focus groups and showed them photographs of drilling operations. He asked participants if those photos suggested “energy exploration” or “oil drilling,” and 88 percent of them said “energy exploration.” He wrapped up his point by saying, “Therefore, I’d argue that it is a more appropriate way to communicate . . . If the public says after looking at the pictures, ‘that doesn’t look like my definition of drilling; it looks like my definition of exploring,’ then don’t you think we should be calling it what people see it to be, rather than adding a political aspect to it all?”

Luntz’s ability to nudge the language for his own purpose and on occasion to get people to agree with his manipulations calls forth Orwell’s comment that “our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” It also makes you wonder what Luntz was showing people in those photos.

Luntz also said in an interview on the C-SPAN book-review show
After Words
that “deep-sea energy exploration” is a more precise term than “oil drilling” because “drilling suggests that oil is pouring into the ocean. In Katrina, not a single drop of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico from the rigs themselves. That’s why deep-sea exploration is a more appropriate term.”
¹

Again, that’s an interesting bit of spin that would be compelling if it was true. Det Norske Veritas, the firm that conducted the final appraisal of oil-related damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, showed that there were 124 offshore spills that contaminated the ocean with 743,700 gallons of oil, of which 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs, and pipelines and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs.
²

Luntz’s most famous linguistic manipulation, however, is the
Straight Talk
memo that he wrote in 2002 as part of a major briefing package preparing the Bush White House for the coming elections. Titled “The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America,” the paper displays a mastery of Orwellian language, both by Luntz’s preferred definition (the language is clear and precise) and by the more conventional sense of Orwellianism: it is shameless but incredibly creative in the way it counsels Republican candidates to distract or misdirect public attention while talking about the environment.

Luntz begins this overview by saying, “The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general— and President Bush in particular—are most vulnerable.” He then proceeds through sixteen pages of advice that suggests that the problem is not the Republican record of dismantling environmental protections and fighting international treaties, but rather the language that Republicans have used to describe these actions.

For example, this is Luntz’s opening comment on climate change (I have retained all of the underlined, italicized, and boldfaced emphasis that Luntz included in the original):

1.
The scientific debate remains open.
Voters believe that there is
no consensus
about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore,
you need to continue to make
the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate,
and defer to scientists and other experts in the field.

In 2002 the statements in this paragraph were all, strictly speaking, correct: a majority of voters really did believe there was no consensus about climate change in the scientific community. Of course, there was overwhelming scientific consensus, but Luntz was not commenting on reality, he was giving the Republicans guidance about perception. And the perception created a clear opportunity for the Republicans to continue using this public confusion to their advantage. Luntz even pursued this line on the next page, saying,

The scientific debate is closing
[against us]
but not yet closed.
There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.
Americans believe that all the strange weather that was associated with El Niño had something to do with global warming, and there is little you can do to convince them otherwise. However, only a handful of people believes the science of global warming is a closed question. Most Americans want more information so that they can make an informed decision. It is our job to provide that information.

At no point does Luntz urge that the information should be correct, up-to-date, or broadly supported in the scientific community. Rather, he says,
“You need to be even more active in
recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more
active in making them part of your message.”

The memo is also filled with little breakout boxes enshrining what Luntz calls “Language That Works” (a precursor, perhaps, to the book that he was working on,
Words That Work
). One such box suggests that Republican candidates should be saying things like this:

Unnecessary environmental regulations hurt moms and dads,
grandmas and grandpas. They hurt citizens on fixed incomes.
They take an enormous swipe at miners, loggers, truckers, farmers—
anyone who has any work in energy intensive professions.
They mean less income for families struggling to survive and educate
their children.

“Moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas.” The cynicism in this is surely, darkly Orwellian. But at every turn Luntz shows that he has based his advice on careful research. He has tested his messages in focus groups and through opinion polls, any one of which would have strained the resources of the environmental groups that were at the time trying to balance this presidential information source with accurate countercom-mentary. Drilling (or maybe we should say “exploring”) further into the language, Luntz says:

1.
“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming.”
As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.

2.
We should be “conservationists,” not “preservationists” or
“environmentalists.”
The term “conservationist” has far more positive connotations than either of the other two terms. It conveys a moderate, reasoned, common sense position between replenishing the earth’s natural resources and the human need to make use of those resources.

Thus we have moderate, reasoned, and commonsense language to describe immoderate, unreasonable, and insensible government policy. A year after President George W. Bush asked the National Academy of Sciences to report on the risks of climate change—which is to say, a year after the academy assured the president that the risk was real and increasingly severe— one of the cleverest linguistic manipulators in the country provided talking points that would enable the president to convince Americans to adopt a “commonsense” position based on ignorance and self-interest.

Perhaps the defining statement in Luntz’s commentary— and the one that links it most closely to its tobacco-era roots—is this: “The most important principle in any discussion of global warming is your commitment to
sound science
.
” I would have put “sound science” in boldfaced italics if Luntz hadn’t done so already. He is not referring, in the clear and precise way that Orwell himself might have preferred, to science. Not peer-reviewed science. Not reliable science that is supported by the overwhelming majority of climate experts in the United States and around the world. It’s something else. It is “sound science,” and “sound” is obviously a well-tested adjective. Orwell might have shuddered at the usage.

Mind you, Orwell probably would have shuddered just as violently about the corresponding standard of concision and clarity in the scientific writing. The scientists in the IPCC are appropriately, obsessively precise, but sometimes that doesn’t make their work any easier to understand. For example, the IPCC’s
Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report
, available at
www .ipcc.ch
, includes a five-hundred-word essay on the “Treatment of Uncertainty. ” Here’s an example of their version of absolute clarity:

Where uncertainty is assessed qualitatively, it is characterised by providing a relative sense of the amount and quality of evidence (that is, information from theory, observations or models indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid) and the degree of agreement (that is, the level of concurrence in the literature on a particular finding). This approach is used by WG III through a series of self-explanatory terms such as: high agreement, much evidence; high agreement, medium evidence; medium agreement, medium evidence; etc.”

You might argue that if terms are indeed self-explanatory, they shouldn’t need a five-hundred-word essay to explain them, but such is the gap between the scientist and the public relations professional. In the same section, the IPCC does a slightly clearer job of defining what it means by certainty and uncertainty in another paragraph:

Where uncertainty in specific outcomes is assessed using expert judgment and statistical analysis of a body of evidence (e.g. observations or model results), then the following likelihood ranges are used to express the assessed probability of occurrence: virtually certain >99%; extremely likely >95%; very likely >90%; likely >66%; more likely than not >50%; about as likely as not 33% to 66%; unlikely <33%; very unlikely <10%; extremely unlikely <5%; exceptionally unlikely <1%.