Also, this just in — a few weeks ago I took part in a conference call about global warming with the folks at The Nature Conservancy which they transcribed and posted (it starts on page 8 in their Science Chronicles publication). Interestingly they chose as their climate scientist the feisty Dr. Judy Curry.

And lastly, I’m up to my neck in pulling together over 50 old black and white photos from the decade 1937-1947 that my crazy mother, Muffy Moose, has unearthed in preparation for the talk she is going to give next weekend when we’re in Wichita. She has so many photos of her with different boyfriends during the war years that I’m thinking maybe it’s time for me to get a DNA test to make sure my father really is my father.

A few years ago, when she starred in my movie, “Flock of Dodos,” she had fun telling everyone, “It took me 83 years to become a movie star!” Now she can add to that — it took her 86 years to become a public speaker — this is going to be the first public presentation of her life!

Das Benshi shall be on hiatus for a couple weeks, probably resurfacing on or around September 15. Happy Labor Day!

Catastrophic events often bring about change. For example, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused FEMA to clean up their act. The evidence of this was on display two years later when the catastrophic San Diego wildfires hit. FEMA did a flawless job responding, desperately trying to show they had gone through a “Never Again” moment with the mess they made out of Katrina.

Interestingly, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta — the world reknown CDC — actually had their own sort of “Never Again” moment, and not that long ago.

I learned this last Thursday as I spent all day as a guest at the CDC where I spoke with several groups of communicators. I also gave a talk to the entire community, filling a 250 seat hall (almost all of whom were professional communicators, not scientists!) with the overflow crowd watching a live feed in another room, plus being broadcast to several of their other locations. It was one of the most fascinating days I’ve ever had in all this communications stuff.

Here’s the first major impression I got of CDC — they have amazing communications personnel and resources. This is not an organization that sees the public as a nuisance. To the contrary, their entire mission is about the public, as in “public health.” And you can see it reflected everywhere around the 45-building campus, from their Visitors Center to their Museum to their broadcast facilities.

But it wasn’t always that way. In 2001 they received a major wake up call.

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CAUGHT OUT BY ANTHRAX IN 2001

You may remember when 9/11 happened there was also the anthrax scare. All eyes were turned to the CDC, but guess what — they were completely unprepared for the enormity of the media attention. They didn’t even have a press conference room, much less broadcast facilities. The result was so much calamity that the next Director made it one of her top priorities with a sort of “never again” attitude.

Today they have a major broadcast studio, a press conference room, huge numbers of communications personnel and a media production team. They gave me a tour of all the facilities at the end of the day. It’s incredibly impressive — several Avid editing suites, a large high ceiling studio with several stages and permanent green screen set up. They are complete professionals when it comes to interfacing with the media and the public in general.

But still … 2001 wasn’t that long ago. Clearly they learned a great deal and implemented change.

So now let’s talk about the climate science community …

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CLIMATEGATE: NEVER AGAIN? (again?)

Has there ever been a bigger crisis for the climate science community? Basically, no. You can maybe dig up some overturned tenure decision somewhere or re-structuring of a science organization perhaps, but there’s never been anything to compare with Climategate. In fact, has there ever been such a covert operation at such a scale conducted against any discipline within the field of science? Has anyone ever broken into the Smithsonian to steal a bunch of top secret emails about whether the sea squirt family Didemnidae should be split or lumped?

It was a powerful event. It scored enormous media coverage. Whether you believe the polls or not, you’re foolish if you don’t think it damaged the public image of the climate science community. Jon Stewart ended up laughing at the incompetence of climate scientists. It doesn’t get much worse than that these days. And it so enraged major climate scientists, they did the thing the world most fears of them … they published an angry letter in Science saying, “cut it out, you guys” (does anybody remember the old Black Bart joke – where the cowboy walks up to Black Bart and says, “Are you Black Bart, the man who stole my cattle, burned my barn, raped my wife, and killed my kids?” Black Bart nods yes. The guy says, “You better watch that shit.”).

Anyhow, I don’t see it. I don’t see the creation of a Rapid Action Communications Plan in preparation for the next time the climate skeptics pull off another totally humiliating stunt like Climategate. Hopefully, it’s happening under so much secrecy that small timers like me don’t even get to know it’s happening. I really hope so, because there’s nothing worse than hearing people say, ”Never Again,” again.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL? The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta

Today I’m spending what promises to be an absolutely fascinating day at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The folks in Public Affairs apparently read my book and thought to themselves, “Hmmm …’don’t be such a scientist’ … who do we know that might benefit from such a message?” (hint: most research scientists) This is the same thing we went through last spring at NASA Goddard Flight Center. Basically wherever you find research scientists you’ll find communications folks dealing with the always-challenging interface between science and the public.

As part of my preparation I insisted on having phone chats with six key people at CDC including the Chief of Media Relations, Deputy Director of Communications, and the Deputy Director of the entire CDC (the #2 person). One of the interesting things they said is that whenever there is a breaking story — like a flu outbreak — the people the media most want to talk with are the scientists not the media spokespersons. Apparently the media love to hear the information from the mouths of the experts. Which is cool. But also a burden/challenge for the scientists themselves.

Also, with every visit I do to universities and research institutions I go with the goal of learning as much or more from them as they learn from me. This one is set to be the best ever.

I’ve always been fascinated by epidemiology. I think it might be the storytelling elements that are so inherent in the field which connect with my communication interests. After all, epidemiology is basically trying to “tell the story” of diseases — searching for the beginning, middle and end of a disease.

I’ve had a longstanding interest in the subject. In the mid-80′s, as I waded through the depths of the Reagan Era job drought as a marine biology postdoc I gave serious thought to doing a Masters in Public Health. A friend of mine had left his academic position in entomology and gone to medical school where he was seeing the start of the AIDS/HIV epidemic. His story intrigued me and in my first two years at UNH I became deeply involved in working with AIDS patients as part of AIDS Response of the Seacoast, a support group at the Portsmouth Regional Hospital.

And then a few years later, when I was teaching the Intro Bio course at U.S.C., I became infatuated with Carl Zimmer’s incredibly well-written book “Parasite Rex”, which I used for my “Disease of the Day” feature in my lectures (the book actually makes you a fan of parasites!).

So this is kind of a dream come true — to be invited to Mecca for the study of disease.

And the last thing to note is how amazing those phone calls were last week. These are the point people for the worst health crises that befall our country. They were kind of intimidating to speak with, and eventually I was forced to ask the inevitable question — “Are you guys sure you need to hear what I have to say?” Which drew the same laughter and response from each person — “Oh, yeah, even the CDC needs help with communicating science.”

Last week was the 6th year in a row that we have run the intensive 3 day videomaking workshop for the students in the 12 week orientation course that all the new graduate students in the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography must take in their first summer. What started as an experiment in the summer of 2005 has become an integral part of the course, with the students putting a great deal of thought and effort into the projects.

This year, more than any previous year, we saw a lot more attention and detail paid to the actual structure of the stories told. All of the filmmakers (with the exception of the Old Spice film, which is unusual) were able to say very clearly, “My film is a story about …” and actually tell a good story with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Part of it might be a result of the publication of my book (which they all had to read), and the fact that each year I’ve gotten clearer on what it is that we’re looking for in these videos. In the first year it was kind of just, “give us 60 seconds of stuff.” These days the students are given a lot of coaching on three act structure, arouse and fulfill, and the standard structure of television commercials. The advancement of sophistication shows in this year’s films.

So the general assignment for the students is to come up with an idea for a one minute film that conveys the research subject of a faculty member. Ideally the film stars the faculty member as well. This year three of the stories featured individual characters as the focus (Sealander, Pervert, and Sturgeon General). A fourth told an action/adventure story about corals and bacteria (Coral-Bacteria Love Story), and the fifth … well, it got the strongest audience response I’ve even seen in any of these student videomaking workshops, so I ‘ll save it for last.

“STURGEON GENERAL”      Director: Sara McPherson    Crew: Ariana Merlino, Kristian Gustavson, Zach Caldwell, Carolina Bonin

This video shows how much can be done by going with a very simple situation — just a single interrogation room and three actors. It’s fun, snappy, and if you keep in mind that the actors are students and faculty, and none of the crew even knew how to turn on the video camera at the start, it’s a pretty impressive piece of work -- reasonably smooth editing and a complete story.

“SEALANDER”     Director: Jaclyn Fowler    Crew: Ali Redmnan, Jade Delevaux, Roxy Carter, Brigitte Roth-Tran

It sort of helps to be familiar with the movie “Zoolander” in order to grasp the full depth of this film. I love the low key performance turned in by the scientist who, by the time of his last line, had fully embodied the character.

“PERVERT”      Director: Karen Geisler    Crew: Alexis Rife, Katy Seto, Susana Cusatti, Jonathan Mark

This film owns the award for most amazingly rapid pitch in history. Karen had a different idea for her pitch built around the fact of how hard it is to observe leopard shark mating. We made a simple suggestion to her based on her one line, “really hard to see then having sex.” Twenty minutes later she was giving a brilliant performance in front of the class, playing out the two roles as part of her pitch, which ended up being hugely popular. Also, what’s really nice in this one is the mini-documentary about leopard shark tagging embedded in the middle.

“A CORAL-BACTERIA LOVE STORY”      Director: Levi Lewis    Crew: Dominique Cano-Stocco, Robin Yeager, Tim Ray, Daniel Gonzales-Paredes

This project began with the teaching assistant, Steve Ting, overcoming his lifelong phobia of green screen. As soon as that happened, he was able to assist this group in making a amazing film that appears to be inspired by everything from “The Wizard of Oz,” to “Jerry Maguire,” to your basic Jean-Claude Van Damme action flick. Here’s to hoping Andi Haas figures out how to save the corals.

“OLD SPICE”      Director: Tessa Pierce    Crew: Carolina Behe, Melissa Yuen, Cotton Rockwood

This is a fascinating film that is unique in the 6 year history of the course — this was the first time a crew has done a “one shot” video. There was virtually no editing involved. It’s all one shot. As a result, almost ALL of the crew’s energy went into the filming. They spent all day figuring out how to get the actor’s shirt to fly off, collecting the props, and rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing with the actor who did a brilliant job of getting his lines down. And I have to say, this one got THE BIGGEST audience response I’ve ever seen. It seemed to be a combination of everyone recognizing the commercial it was parodying, but more importantly, there seemed to be an element of performance where the longer it went, the more exciting it felt that he was hitting all his marks and nailing the lines. And of course the pay off at the end brought the house down. One final note. You can see the lighting is terrible. They were hoping to shoot at sunset and get the beautiful light of “golden hour,” but they ended up needing to quote my favorite line from ”Titanic,” where the Scottish guy in the rowboat says, “We waited too long!” They did, and you can see what they ended up with — pretty dark. AND YET … the overall execution is sooo good, it’s able to overcome this.

ONE LAST ELEMENT: THE AMAZING STEVE TING FROM NEW ZEALAND

This year there was an extra element added to the mix — brought in fresh from New Zealand. Last spring 25 yr old filmmaking sensation Steve Ting had contacted me about his excellent “Science Camp” video, plus his 25 minute thesis film, “1080″ — a documentary about the consequences of government poisoning programs for introduced possums in New Zealand. We brought him over for the week to serve as the teaching assistant, but given his filmmaking background he ended up being so much more. Clearly he was another key factor leading to the excellence of this year’s films.

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“POLITE CONVERSATIONS PRODUCE POLITE RESULTS” -- that’s a little rule we learned from our friends at Deloitte this past spring. And it’s true. This is a polite PSA about plastic bags that will produce polite results. Which is great for the painfully-polite PBS crowd.

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I’ll tell you. It plays to the PBS crowd. In the first ten seconds (which is about how much time most people give a piece of media -- read Gladwell’s book, “Blink”) it clearly has the tone and style of a PBS production. Which means the PBS crowd will say, “Oh, goodie, here’s someone having fun with our type of media!” But that’s about it.

And then ask yourself where the vast majority of plastic bags that clog the waterways of Los Angeles (just for example) come from. Brentwood? Beverly Hills? Westwood? Ah don theeenk so.

Diversification. It’s a weak point for environmental media, which tends to be consistently white bread — especially when it comes to the terrifying subject of humor in relation to the environment. Not easy reaching those other demographics. And not within the scope of the PBS voice. But not impossible. Just requires an interest in that old thing called innovation. And by the way, now that the climate communication effort has officially failed, don’t you think it would be a nice time to try some new approaches?

It seems to be a period of at least some retrenchment and contemplation. I was just invited to an event this fall involving a bunch of climate leaders planning to spend a day trying to figure a pathway for the future of the climate issue. Which is a good goal, but it does beg the question of, “What’s it gonna be — lemmings or leadership?”

Here’s the two options:

LEMMINGS - many prominent environmentalists have fretted that the ONLY thing that will ever bring about major legislation to address climate problems will be the eventual “stimulus-response” situation where, like a pack of lemmings, a massively painful stimulus (such as heat waves causing thousands of deaths) is applied to the population, producing the response of changed behavior to address the problem. The announcement in Russia by Medvedev last week that their heat waves causing thousands of deaths must be related to human alterations of the planet appears to be exactly this. Presumably such a situation will eventually happen in the U.S. (though not right now in California where the summer has been about ten degrees colder than normal).

LEADERSHIP - this is what ought to be expected of a species of primates whose birth canals have had to widen over the ages to make space for enlarged crania. One would hope that before there are mass die offs, the smarter folks would be able to persuade the less informed masses to do something about the impending doom. This is what Mr. Gore valiantly attempted, but then was forced to grind out his frustrations with a book aptly titled, “The Assault on Reason”.

A friend sent me an article today titled, “Thou Shalt Study Science,” which seems like a reasonable essay at first glance. The author is saying that science is our best hope for the future, and thus we need to find ways to connect it with people’s hearts since that’s the level at which most mass movements are driven. But I think he reveals he’s as much a part of the problem as the solution in his second of three “messages,” when he says you should only, “Accept arguments on the basis of evidence alone (not on the basis of who presents them).”

That sounds great and admirable, at least in principle. But it’s not realistic in the complicated world of science-based issues. At some point there has to be trusted leadership. When the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta says there’s an outbreak of a flesh eating bacteria and everyone should evacuate the town in which it has occurred, you don’t want every person saying, “I’m not doing anything until you show me the evidence so I can make up my own mind.”

This is why we have leaders. It’s called civilization. At some point we put our trust in those with that stuff called “knowledge.” Like the IPCC. It’s not perfect, but it’s our best shot at avoiding the lemmings scenario.

In this period of rethinking for the climate crowd, it’s my hope they will reaffirm that leadership is the only viable solution. And that effective leadership takes courage. And courage involves taking risks. And that’s what it all comes down to. Al Gore’s crowd took a lot of risk. They didn’t solve the leadership challenge. They made plenty of mistakes, but they also accomplished a lot. The only thing needed is more of the same. It’s called “trial and error.”

There simply have to be more trials.

WES SKILES — he produced the most amazing movies of cave diving and was the best Conga Line dancer I’ve ever seen.

WHY THIS HIT SO HARD

One night in 2002 I drove out to Hermosa Beach to meet legendary cave diver Wes Skiles at a bar to talk about our newly created Shifting Baselines project. I hadn’t seen him since an insane night in Chicago a decade earlier (details on that in a minute). I walked up to him, he smiled, and revealed a mouth full of horribly crooked teeth — so bad that a bolt of shock ran through me and I tried my best to not show any visual reaction. I hadn’t remembered him having such a mess for a mouth. It was very awkward. Poor guy.

We talked for a full minute about what we had been up to, with him spraying saliva everywhere until he finally burst into hysterics and took the fake teeth thing out of his mouth. What an asshole. What a brilliant and hilarious asshole. And what a night we had with him in Chicago in June of 1992 in what turned out to be one of the most AND least memorable (thanks to the alcohol) nights of my life.

THE CHICAGO HYATT WAS NEVER THE SAME

It was the Our World Underwater Diving Convention. I rented a booth at the dive trade show to sell my Prairie Starfish videos. In preparation, I flew to Kansas City, rented a van and a lobster costume (of course), grabbed my two brothers, Eric and Mike, my life long best buddy Ed Leydecker, and the four of us drove to the Chicago Hyatt. There we met my graduate student at the time Geoff Trussell, one of his college buddies, and a UNH undergraduate who gamefully agreed to wear the lobster suit at the convention (along with cigar in mouth and cocktail in hand) to help promote the booth where we were selling my Prairie Starfish videos (which turned out to be a rather lame idea for a diving convention).

By Saturday afternoon my group had met a whole gang of characters at the event. That evening there was an amazing amazing film festival.  I showed my barnacle music video, which went over great, but the highlight of the evening unquestionably was this wildman, Wes Skiles, showing these truly unbelievable movies of his where they descended deeper and deeper into frighteningly cavernous caves in Florida aquifers – it was like an underwater “Blair Witch” movie — truly terrifying. The ballroom was packed with 1000 people, all hushed with fear. My two brothers will tell you to this day it was one of the most amazing films they have ever seen.

After the screenings, there were two parties — one for the masses, and a smaller V.I.P. party just for the filmmakers. Being an aspiring schmuck, I abandoned my brothers and friends to “network” among the filmmakers. There was a ton of free alcohol in the V.I.P. room and after a couple hours of boring conversations there were only a few filmmakers left, with cases of alcohol going to waste. But then all of a sudden, and I swear this is the truth, the doors to the room burst open and there was a conga line of AT LEAST 100 people, singing and doing the conga line thing — all having exited the other party to the beat of the music over there, being led by Wes Skiles and, in the second position, my buddy Eddie.

“WHY AM I IN BED WITH BOZO?”

Honest to goodness, they came in, took over the place, raided the bar, and then SOMEBODY discovered a room in the back that was packed with costumes and stuffed animals. I have no earthly idea why that room existed in the Hyatt Hotel, I only know that in an instant everyone was in pirate costumes and cowboy costumes and viking costumes, and throwing HUGE stuffed animals (like a six foot giraffe and a huge stuffed Bozo) around the room and playing Whiffle Ball, and knocking over chairs and tables, and then some of the members of the band from the other room came in with their horn section and everyone was doing shots of tequila and the horn players were playing along with the boom box that was already going and the party spilled out into the lobby where a crowd of people were now playing Whiffle Ball and the ringleader of it all was Wes Skiles and a whole bunch of other crazy things went on that night, especially in the costume room, that I cannot put into print but Wes with his howling laughter was in the middle of it all, and all I know was I woke up in the room of a stranger the next morning and called one of the members of my group (who will go unnamed), woke him up, and the first thing he said was, “Why am I in bed with Bozo?”

The four of us spent the whole next day driving back to KC (actually Eddie slept the whole way in the back), trying to make sense of the night, and laughing our asses off at one thought after another, and at the center of it all was the crazy cave diver, Wes Skiles.

That’s about all I knew of the man, except that he was ALWAYS so full of energy and life and enthusiasm in every email and phone call we ever traded. He died on July 21 in a diving accident in Florida. The world is a less fun place without him. He will live on forever in my mind as the guy at the front of that Conga line. Bless you Wes Skiles for all the happiness you radiated to others.

P.S. – for a more reverential account of Wes Skiles, this is really good.

Grist Magazine blogger David Roberts (Left) squares off against Steve Everley of American Solutions (right) in a "debate" in a bar "moderated" by "rock star" Mark McGrath.

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I managed to do a brief interview this morning with David Roberts of Grist Magazine who was the pro-climate action side of last Thursday night’s Lexus “Darker Side of Green” debate-in-a-bar show in Chicago. I’ve been a fan of his blogging for a while and while I generally have advised against people taking part in these potential kangaroo events, he seemed to me to be one of the few skillful and potentially aggressive spokespersons for climate action who actually should be up on the stage if there has to be someone doing it.

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RO: So was anybody listening?

DR: It was a big, cavernous room, with about 100 people. Of those, about 50 to 60 were facing the stage and seemed to be listening. More people listened than I expected.

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RO: Did they have any audience questions?

DR: No, it was obviously designed to be slam-bang and over quick. The moderator had a series of questions, we each got 60 seconds for each.

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RO: In the organization of this event, did you get any sense of the ”voice of Lexus” — meaning the people who dreamed up these “debates”?

DR: I talked to the girl at Lexus whom I think concocted the whole idea and pitched it to the higher ups. She wanted to do something edgy. She’s a very nice person, but obviously not a scholar. She just wanted to find a way to market their new hybrid car that was edgy and different. To her credit, she wanted to get people involved that were real — not just celebrities talking about it — but to mix celebrities with real people of substance.

In the meanwhile, I’ve read all this anguished on-line discourse in the science and environmental community about what it all means – what Toyata is trying to do, what they are saying. My impression is that the people at Lexus weren’t saying anything beyond, “Buzz! Young! Edgy! Whatever.” They haven’t thought about it much more than that.

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RO: There certainly are plenty of bloggers who think that Lexus is up to evil things with these debates.

DR: Yeah. I’m guessing the people at Lexus who are arranging this will never even see those blog posts. The whole thing is like – this whole question about what it even means to have a debate – whether you’re validating the other side by even having a debate – it’s all so far beyond the people at Lexus who are organizing this stuff. If anything, I think that who they ended up with is a reflection of the cultural debate — not any sort of nefarious plot to sway the debate one way or the other, or make any grand “meta-points.”

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RO: And were there any grand meta-points made?

DR: (laughter) I made some grand meta-points at extraordinarily brief length! I expected the questions to be goofy and shallow, but clearly the questions had been written by someone who did have some familiarity with the issues. They were relatively sharp. If anything, the questions seemed slightly biased in the favor of, “Why shouldn’t we clean up the world?”

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RO: And you felt Mark McGrath was sympathetic in that direction?

DR: Well … clearly he didn’t write the questions. I don’t know that he had any particularly deep thoughts about it. I’m sure if you asked him he’d be in favor of “cleanness” and against pollution, but I doubt you’d get any deeper than that.

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RO: So the overall tone of the debate was relatively fair?

DR: Yes. Some of the questions even seemed to be phrased to put Steve Everley in the position of, “Why are you standing in the way of this?” Apparently one of the guys for Lexus, Patrick who is a publicist for the debates, has written on Andrew Breitbart’s website about Climategate. That came up, but Steve Everley is not a climate denier so he didn’t feel like arguing about it, so that issue passed by without significance.

Steve Everley works as Newt Gingrich’s protege at American Solutions. If you really push them on it, they’re kind of elusive – they agree that climate change is happening and man made, but they just sort of play down how bad it is, and play up the economic disaster that’s going to happen if we disturb industry — they’re kind of corporate apologists. But Steve’s a really nice guy — born and raised in Kansas.

Our event was pretty benign. A lot of the critiques of the other events are where you have a blowhard like Phelim McAleer on stage, really just blatantly lying about the scientific facts. For our event, I would be interested to hear some survey of the people who were there to see if they even took anything away from it at all.

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RO: I think the most interesting thing is the title they chose – ”The Darker Side of Green.”

DR: I think that is meant to be a reference to “dark green” meaning more serious and deep as opposed to “lite green.”

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RO: Really, I read it as the evil side of green.

DR: No, this is from my conversation with the Lexus woman — the idea is most hybrids are sold to the casual consumer, but Lexus wanted to go deeper and dig into the deeper side of the issues.

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RO: But they could have titled it “A Deeper Shade of Green,” instead of “darker.”

DR: I think it was ham-handed and poorly done, but my impression was that its about deeper rather than evil.

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RO: In that case it really was poorly done because “going to the dark side” means evil.

DR: Yes, but keep in mind in the marketing and p.r. worlds, these are long standing demographic terms — like “lite green vs. dark green” crowds — the Grist marketing team talks about this all the time — the lite green casual consumer who will buy organic versus the dark green consumer who really cares about the depth of the issue.

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RO: How did they choose Steve Everley as your opponent?

DR: Originally they wanted to put me up against Marc Morano. He’s really good at the sixty second exchange. I didn’t want to get involved in the, “He tells a big lie, then I spend sixty seconds trying to unpack his lie,” so I said how about this Steve guy where we could focus more on policy and energy stuff, and not so much on the climate hoo-ha, and they were receptive to that.

And I do think that Steve, as wrong as he is — at some level he cares about the substantive issues and has genuine opinions about the merits of the various policies, so we were having an actual exchange of views and not just a contest of who can do better propaganda.

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RO: Do you think Steve is a Libertarian?

DR: No, not consistently. I think American Solutions (his organization) and Newt Gingrich — they favor retaining gigantic fossil fuel subsidies, and their favored energy policy is just another batch of tax subsidies — its not like they have some reverence for markets. Basically they are just pro-fossil fuel.

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RO: A fellow was just telling me yesterday his opinion that all climate skeptics are Libertarians.

DR: That’s false. I wish people would stop saying that. This is one of the points I was going to try and make in the debate (though once I saw how it was playing out I realized there was no way to make any point that needs more than a few seconds). These people say they are Conservatives and talk like Libertarians sometimes, but they’re in favor of these grotesque market distortions that favor fossil fuels. There’s no Libertarian principle about it. Newt Gingrich is not pro-market — he’s pro-business. He’s all for intervening and meddling in markets as long as the outcome favors the fossil fuel industry.

Its sort of the same thing with Steve. It’s hard to tell how much of it is bullshit/opportunism versus how much of it is sincerely felt. I guess you’d have to talk to their psychotherapist about it in the end. Newt is about 98% opportunism, but Steve seems like a more substantive guy.

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RO: If they were going to do more, would you have any thoughts for them?

DR: I would try and find subjects for debate that didn’t involve the basic science of climate change so that they aren’t involved in propagating the notion that there is any serious debate about that. I’d actually like a debate on, “what’s the best way to address this?” which is sort of the debate that Steve and I had in the end.

This week they are getting ready for the next installment — this time in Chicago, moderated by noted academician Mark McGrath of the once hot band, “Sugar Ray,” (of “Spread Your Wings and Fly,” “fame”).

THIS WEEK’S LEXUS CLIMATE “DEBATE” LINE UP FOR CHICAGO: For the climate community, David Roberts of Grist Magazine, for the skeptics, Steve Everley of conservative group American Solutions, and moderating the whole mess, Marky Mark McGrath.

Climate blogger Joe Romm has already uncorked his critical skills on the absurdity of the “debates,” and I largely agree, though there is one bright side to this event.

The pro-climate science side will feature one of the rising voices of the environmental world, David Roberts of Grist Magazine. I am of the general opinion that given the clownish nature of the climate skeptics (particularly when they feign concern for the poor who will supposedly be neglected by too much carbon worry) and given the clownish nature of the venue (a cacophonous bar with a drunken mob, as was the case in L.A.), I can really only recommend that the climate science crowd devalue the event by offering up a stand-up comic who knows the basic talking points (and there are plenty of these, starting with people like Bill Maher and Dana Gould).

But if there has to be a legitimate climate voice (and you know that given the lure of all expense paid travel and hanging with celebrities they would eventually find someone), I think David Roberts is the best shot. I’m hoping to talk a couple of Chicago friends into attending and giving me their take which I will relate here if they do.

AROUSAL, DISCONNECTED FROM FULFILLMENT, IS DANGEROUS.  As Shirley Sherrod learned the hard way — “arousal” is a key part of effective communication, but if you decide to push things with it, you run the risk of someone (i.e. Breitbart) taking your arousal part out of context.  And yet … I don’t think she’s complaining about the power and attention she is now reaping with all the national fame.  You wanna win big with communication, you have to take risks.

SHIRLEY SHERROD AROUSED AND FULFILLED HER ORIGINAL AUDIENCE

One of the major recurring themes of my book and here on The Benshi is the simple “Arouse and Fulfill,” couplet I learned from USC Communications professor Tom Hollihan (who in my interview with him attributed it to a slew of communications theorists over the ages). It’s a powerful and fundamental principle for effective communication — PARTICULARLY with tough crowds — in order to achieve the elusive goal of PERSUASION.

In her talk to the Georgia NAACP audience in March of this year she did something very bold. Her message — the “fulfill” part of what she had to say — was simple — basically “we all need to get beyond race and realize this stuff is about poverty.” Had she just stood up there and said that to her African American audience, all of whom are the product of generations of racial discrimination, she would have gotten a lot of, “yeah, whatever” responses, as in, “we know that — we’ve heard it since kindergarten.”

But she was smarter than that, and more skilled as a communicator.

Instead, she knew instinctively how to begin by “arousing” her audience and, more importantly, by opening a channel of communication through common ground. She began by entering into this taboo, forbidden territory of racial discrimination by offering up her confession of how she herself discriminated against the white farming couple.

Instead of cautiously starting her presentation with the politically correct message — cutting to the chase, as literal minded people would prefer — she took this politically incorrect side trip which clearly opened up everyone’s channels of communication — you can hear on the tape the audience members openly agreeing with her.

Then, and only then — once she had established her COMMON GROUND — did she take a turn in her story to offer up her testimonial of seeing the error of her ways, which eventually led to her message of it being about poverty not race.

The result was that instead of speaking to a glazed over, unmoved audience, she managed to engage them in her own story of revelation. And that is the goal of PERSUASIVE communication. But the tough thing is, YOU HAVE TO TAKE RISKS. She took the risk, benefitted in the short term (before the Breitbart flap), suffered in the medium term (the flap), but now that she’s had her job offered back to her and become the focus of national attention, you have to conclude she’s scored big time in the end.

Moral of the Story: Don’t dream about scoring big with communication if you’re not willing to take risks.

ASK AL GORE ABOUT RISK TAKING

A lot of environmentalists are so thin-skinned (and they really are — they’re famous for it) that all they have to hear is me saying one critical word about their hero Al Gore and they shut down.

In light of this, I did a very delicate and detailed job in my book of not saying a single critical comment about him or his movie, which then threw some people when I later began offering up my critique of the movie. But I stick with EVERY word I’ve said and written about him and the movie, and here is the bottom line: Overall, Al Gore is the greatest environmental hero of modern times.

TAKING RISKS: Something that hasn't happened for the mass communication of global warming since 2006. Why?

Of course, he also took part in a lousy movie (thus my critique), but here’s why he is a true hero — because he and his movie are THE ONLY HIGH RISK PROJECT launched for the mass communication of global warming that has registered on the national mass communication radar screen.

They spent a lot of money, and I heard the distributors ridiculing them in 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival, saying his movie would be a complete dud because, “Who wants to go watch a wonky Powerpoint presentation on film?”

They opened the movie in only 2 two theaters in NY and LA. That’s how nervous they were about their big gamble. It eventually made $50 million worldwide, rocketed global warming to the top of the news, and changed the course of the national discourse. It wasn’t a perfect movie (again, thus my critique), but it at least had an impact. It scored brilliantly on the awareness side, though failed on the persuasion element.

YOU NEED TO “GET OVER THE GORE MOVIE”

So in a recent discussion with a group of environmental communication folks, they turned on me for my repeated critical comments about “An Inconvenient Truth,” and said, “You need to let it go.”

Well, I’m sorry, but, no, I don’t, and we don’t. That sort of thinking is the very source of the problem. It’s called a lack of follow through. Major projects need to be looked back on for detailed critical analysis. THAT IS HOW WE LEARN.

That’s the entire point of my video a couple months ago about the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. All the knowledge to prevent the recent Gulf spill was right there in that 1969 event, but so few people are willing to expand their perspectives beyond the here and now that a lot of potential learning never happens. This is part of the reason we study HISTORY — to learn from the past.

And it’s also my message about the Pew Oceans Report in Chapter 2 of the book — that a big study was conducted, poorly promoted, then swept under the carpet. People have said the same thing to me about that story — “just let it go, dude.”

It is crucial that we NOT let the Al Gore movie go. There are things to be learned about the down side of it (it was not a persuasive piece of media — he failed to do the brave thing that Shirley Sherrod did — he failed to open the channels of communication for the unconverted part of his audience).

But equally important, we have to look at what was brilliant and successful about the project — that they TOOK A RISK.

And even more importantly, that movie isn’t one of 20 landmarks in the history of the mass communication of global warming in the U.S. To the contrary, it is about the ONLY landmark and is 95% of all meaningful accomplishments to date when it comes to reaching the public. If you stop your average person on the street and ask them what they know about global warming, that movie (whether they saw it or just heard the buzz) is the ONLY thing about all of them will have in common. It isn’t just one part of the story, it IS the story.

And yet … in the 4 years since it there have been no further large scale “experiments” attempted.

THE PROBLEM WITH GLOBAL WARMING MASS COMMUNICATION TODAY

And this is the problem today with the entire issue of the mass communication of global warming. There are no other Al Gores around. Everyone else is stuck in the ditch of cautiousness. Climate legislation has now crashed and burned, there is widespread agreement the science has not been communicated well, yet there is no evidence of anyone saying, “we need to start taking some risks in our communication.”

And by the way — where did the financing come for the Al Gore movie? Did it come from any of the major science agencies (as it should have) or from the big environmental groups (as it should have) or from any university coalition (as it should have)? No. It came from Hollywood.

Now you know why I left academia and moved to Hollywood. People actually still take risks here.