{"id":353645,"date":"2024-12-09T18:01:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T17:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=353645"},"modified":"2024-12-09T18:01:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T17:01:45","slug":"joe-romm-vs-climate-thugs-civil-war-within-the-climate-fringe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=353645","title":{"rendered":"Joe Romm vs. Climate Thugs: Civil War Within the Climate Fringe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Master Resource<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Bradley Jr.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSo, all you are left with days later is people remembering what a shocking and senseless thing somebody who did is associated with the climate movement\u2026. this is a terrible messaging strategy.\u201d (- Joe Romm, below)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday\u2019s post<\/a> highlighted the civil war within the climate activist camp on the usefulness of civil disobedience in revving up the public into climate action. Michael Mann warned, \u201cthe damage done by deeply misguided individuals who in principle would seem to be on the side of climate action but are instead dividing the community and playing right into the agenda of the forces of inaction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph Romm<\/a>, the perennially errant climate intellectual, similarly warned<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUST STOP ALREADY! Why, why, why is our side so \u2026 senseless???

In case it wasn\u2019t obvious, this tactic is self-defeating and senseless. We actually did polling research at UPenn on activist attacks on famous paintings.

From the 2022 AP article: \u201cRepublicans, Democrats, independents: In every case, people reported that these actions made them less likely to support climate action,\u201d Michael Mann, a professor of earth and environmental science at Penn and a co-author of [Public Disapproval of Disruptive Climate Change Protests<\/a>, November 13, 2022], told Yahoo News. \u201cPeople are turned off by it, and as a result they\u2019re less likely to support the cause of the people doing the protests.\u201d

Yes, these counterproductive tactics do get media attention. And that gets the activists\u2019 message in a news article. But, sadly, nobody actually reads articles much past the headline as I learned from blogging at Climate Progress. Indeed, I quickly realized that blog are mainly \u201cheadline delivery systems\u201d (something the right wing figured out a long time ago). Typically, 20 times as many people read the headline as read the article\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0And those that \u201cread\u201d the article don\u2019t read very much of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romm continued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, no number of words can match the memory imprint of the visual image. When they say a picture is worth 1000 words, they are wrong. Because you can\u2019t remember 1000 words and you can\u2019t even remember 100 words that you just read. But you can remember a picture you saw for a few seconds\u2013particularly one that is already linked to one of the most famous and memorable images in the world: Stonehenge.

So, all you are left with days later is people remembering what a shocking and senseless thing somebody who did is associated with the climate movement.

And it is senseless because what exactly does Stonehenge have to do with climate change? It is modern humans who are the ones destroying the climate. Not the people who built Stonehenge. Or the people who created famous works of art.

The activists appear to be in the school of \u201call press is good press.\u201d This is Donald Trump\u2019s strategy, but it has (mostly) worked for him is because he has been positioning himself as the reality show villain. As he learned at the Apprentice, they are a major reason people watch reality shows\u2026.

And, you know, those of us who care about climate change are not the reality show villain. The deniers are! And climate change isn\u2019t a reality show. It\u2019s reality. And in the real world, the data shows what common sense tells you \u2014 this is a terrible messaging strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Romm is losing\u2013badly. The data does not support his exaggerated doom-and-gloom. The natural, effortless, self-interested \u201cenergy transformation\u201d to dilute, intermittent, fragile wind\/solar has resulted in wounded grids, rate inflation, and spawl. And now all the bullying that Romm did for his many years at Climate Progress has gone to naught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear Joe<\/strong>: consumers matter, taxpayers’ matter, fiscal deficits matter. Despoiling the living space with machinery that operates at a fraction of capacity is the ultimate inefficiency. The benefits of CO2 deserve a second look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSo, all you are left with days later is people remembering what a shocking and senseless thing somebody who did is associated with the climate movement\u2026. this is a terrible messaging strategy.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":353648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691829997,691818056,691831877],"class_list":{"0":"post-353645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-carbon-dioxide-co","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-climate-progress","12":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/01569636276111.jpeg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1tZX","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":411942,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=411942","url_meta":{"origin":353645,"position":0},"title":"Joe Romm: \u201cEven Gates was fooled\u201d (Doomism at Penn)","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"07\/11\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Doomism is alive and well at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s\u00a0Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, despite Michael Mann\u2019s\u00a0advice to the contrary. It exists in the person of Joe Romm, Mann\u2019s colleague. 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(re Southern California fires)","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"14\/01\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Just add \u201cpolicy\u201d in two places in Romm\u2019s quotation above, and substitute \u201cinaction\u201d for \u201caction\u201d at the end, and his conclusion can be fixed. But who is Joe Romm? And what is his track record? I have tangled with Angry Joe for decades (I am a \u2018sociopath\u2019 to him) and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0be41ea85-1.8.25-la-fire6.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0be41ea85-1.8.25-la-fire6.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0be41ea85-1.8.25-la-fire6.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0be41ea85-1.8.25-la-fire6.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0be41ea85-1.8.25-la-fire6.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":391392,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=391392","url_meta":{"origin":353645,"position":2},"title":"Joe Romm Soldiers On (remnants of a failed crusade)","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"29\/07\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cJoe Romm soldiers on in a futile, quixotic crusade against energy and climate reality. 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To all climate alarmists and forced energy transformationists, check your premises for mid-course correction. Climate anxiety not.\u201d","rel":"","context":"In \"climate alarmism\"","block_context":{"text":"climate alarmism","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-alarmism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ChatGPT-Image-24.-Juni-2025-10_28_29.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ChatGPT-Image-24.-Juni-2025-10_28_29.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ChatGPT-Image-24.-Juni-2025-10_28_29.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ChatGPT-Image-24.-Juni-2025-10_28_29.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=353645"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353650,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353645\/revisions\/353650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/353648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=353645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=353645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=353645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}