Global Warming Camps Trade Hardnosed Plays

To say that plays are being run in the debate on global warming is a little like saying there are skinned knees in rugby. It's obvious.

This week's advertising salvo by the free-market NGO Heartland Institute gives us fresh cause to review the influence strategies at play in this full-throated debate on greenhouse gases climate change and the like.

Take note of the Preempt so skillfully employed in the Heartland ad (shown at right or click here). The headline Un...Scientific Method and supporting copy chalk out what Heartland supporters feel is bad science by science-proud proponents of global warming theory. The play is a preempt because bad science is core to the critisisms that have rained down on the global warming doubters from Al Gore to this week's White House climate change report.

The effect of the ad is to claim to be stronger in areas where the rival is thought to be superior.

This is hardball. Heartland's Preempt is an attacking play found at the extreme high-engagement edge of the table of influence strategies. Accordingly the play is high-risk because it forces Heartland to bet its credentials against studied opponents.

What accounts for such pointed playmaking? Consider the corrosive play that is run repeatedly on the doubters of global warming. They've been Labeled as deniers a very hard tag to peel off not only because one who denies must show he or she is not blind to facts but because the denier sound-bite connects so easily to another class of ridiculed doubters -- those who deny the existence of the Holocaust.

The implication that global warming doubters are as irrational and hateful as Holocaust deniers is toxic. But the connection is made not by way of an overt Label by the way but of a more subtle Screen.

The Label is a middle-of-the-road strategy in our table. A simple framing play joined by the likes of the more diplomatic Recast Filter and Screen. But when well-run it has all the power of the most attack-minded stratagem. That's surely what has contributed to Heartland's pugnacious Preempt.

Posted by Alan Kelly