Advice to Exxon – please don’t whine

by | Apr 29, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity

Avaaz must be delighted with this spoof of Exxon’s climate change ads.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ql38W-vduM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Not only has it raised enough money to show its spot on CNN ($110k at time of publication), it’s already managed to provoke this self-pitying response from Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers:

They seem to be critical of our desire to communicate our positions on climate change, which we don’t understand. If someone chooses to use our approach as a way to generate revenue or to make a point, I guess they’re free to do that.”

Memo to Jeffers: limping around like a harpooned walrus won’t make anyone love you.

Crap journalism – swine flu, risk communication

by | Apr 29, 2009 | Influence and networks, UK

In the New York Times, think tanker, James Jay Carafano (areas of expertise: homeland security, defense, military affairs, affairs, post-conflict operations, and counterrorism) gets hot under the collar about “news stories [that] play fast and loose with terms like ‘outbreak,’ ‘epidemic,’ and ‘pandemic.'”

His advice: “We should all just wash our hands and go to the doctor if we have flu symptoms.” Er, wrong. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (area of expertise: public health):

If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

CDC is happy for people to contact their doctor if they need advice, but it only recommends adults seek emergency medical treatment if they have: (i) Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath; (ii) Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen; (iii) Sudden dizziness; (iv) Confusion; (v) Severe or persistent vomiting. (The advice for children is similar – the list of warning symptoms different.)

In the UK, health authorities are even more explicit about the fact they don’t want people with flu sitting around in doctor’s waiting rooms. “If you have flu-like symptoms and have recently travelled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who has, stay at home and contact either your GP or NHS Direct on 0845 4647,” advises the NHS. Treating people without requiring face-to-face contact with healthcare professionals is at the heart of of the UK’s pandemic flu plan.

Carafano’s sins are minor compared with this preposterous Guardian article by Simon Jenkins (core expertise: frothing at the mouth).  According to Jenkins, swine flu is “a panic stoked in order to posture and spend” – with the public too moronic to resist having the wool pulled over its eyes:

We appear to have lost all ability to judge risk. The cause may lie in the national curriculum, the decline of “news” or the rise of blogs and concomitant, unmediated hysteria, but people seem helpless in navigating the gulf that separates public information from their daily round.

The government was “barking mad” to convene its emergency planning committee, Jenkins argues, while the World Health Organization is not really worried – it’s just making a pathetic bid to shore up its funding. Attention-whore doctors, health and safety hysterics, and rapacious drugs companies are all in on the plot, while ‘professional expertise’ (presumably from shrinking violent newspaper columnists) is being completely ignored.

BSE, SARs and avian flu, meanwhile, provide cast iron assurance that no pandemic is on the way. (more…)

100 days of not Sarah Palin

by | Apr 29, 2009 | North America

Just think, if it had all gone a bit differently – well, a few million votes differently – we’d be celebrating 100 days of McCain/Palin.  As it is, the Wasilla Frontiersman (the paper of record in Palin’s erstwhile hometown) keeps us up-to-date on the not-veep’s activities:

Gov. Sarah Palin is encouraging Alaskans to sign up again this year for a six-week physical activity competition, and win it again.

Starting this Friday, adults and children can sign up for the National President’s Challenge, sponsored by the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.  Alaska had 2,868 people participate last year. That was the highest participation rate per capita among all the states. Alaska took top honors.

Recent surveys show that about 65 percent of Alaska adults are overweight or obese.

Keep up the good work, Governor.  In the meantime, as we’re unlikely to be returning to the  Frontiersman soon, here’s a quick run-down of its top stories right now:

Ah, the Palin Nation we so nearly were…

Shhh… don’t tell anyone (hopefully they won’t notice)

by | Apr 29, 2009 | UK

Obama has apologised, so too have officials. It’s still not clear why US agencies acceded to an FAA request to keep details about the photo op in which a Presidential Boeing 747 flew low around the statue of Liberty followed by two US Air Force Fighters,  given the potential for concern and a public relations disaster. As The Times reports:

CBS TV reported last night that it had obtained a memo which made clear that the Federal Aviation Authority knew that the low altitude flyover could cause panic and demanded secrecy from the New York Police Department, the FBI, the Secret Service and the mayor’s office.

“The Public Affairs posture for this effort is passive. No media or press releases are planned,” said the memo, which was signed by James Johnston, an FAA security official.

It added: “Due to the possibility of public concern regarding DOD aircraft flying at low levels, coordination with Federal, State and Local law enforcement agencies, emergency operations centres and aviation units has been accomplished.”

Risk Communication. Difficult at the best of times, made worse by idiots. As Amanda Ripley suggests:

Perhaps the most alarming thing about the Air Force One fiasco was that it was planned and announced in advance to several agencies–with an order to keep it SECRET. This, to me, stinks to holy hell. I have talked a lot in the past about people in charge not trusting the public–and the devastation that follows. This is a classic bureaucratic move.