This is from the ABC's News24 channel this morning.   The ABC cut off another presentation, broke into programming and took this live announcement about the unfolding climate catastrophe.

It's helpful to ask why reports like this one are treated with such urgency and importance at places like the ABC.   It would be logical to use "break into programming" urgency if the predictions of catastrophe were true.   And that's the point with the climate change industry and its boosters - they  believe and that's that.   Nothing shakes the core belief - man's activity is interfering with the climate and we'll be doomed unless we bend to the new order.

There's bigness about the climate change industry.   It looks solid and sounds authoritative.  It's a multi-billion dollar multinational concern with academics, researchers, publicists and countless true believers pushing the barrow every day.   Countless  people rely on climate change funding for their jobs.   It's hard to make someone question something when their livelihood depends on them believing it.  So it's no surprise that young journalists and ABC types believe too.

Belief is at the heart of the climate change industry.  Super-powered belief, sincere belief, the kind of belief that the churches call faith.  People go to war based on that sort of faith.

The Climate Change Nicene Creed is recorded in the IPCC's reports - temperatures are going up and  rich countries made it happen.   Adherents believe it.   Further climate change work flows not from questioning the IPCC hypothesis, but from a re-statement of the IPCC  core belief applied to some other area of academic pursuit. In countries like Australia,  that means applying the IPCC temperature rise projections to work out the damage that will hit an area of industry, society or whatever  (the effects of climate change are always a nett negative  - good effects like growing more food aren't reported).  

Dr Owler in the video above is a neurosurgeon.   He knows a lot about medicine - and he believes strongly in the climate change industry and its mantra.   But it's a little discomforting when he mixes his professional knowledge about the health profession with his belief in climate change.   He says hospitals are already feeling the effects - "we are already seeing more severe weather events linked to climate change" and thus more people get hurt and go to hospital.   QED.   It must be difficult for him to separate his professional knowledge about his work from his belef system.  And I'm sure he believes in climate change like I believe the sun will come up tomorrow.   The IPCC can be very convincing.

While the temperature data might not be helpful to the climate change industry, 20 odd years of well orchestrated PR campaigns have been.  Climate Change is a huge brand, and its marketing has delivered outstanding results for the climate change industry. Everyone knows what climate change stands for.   Horrible things will happen unless we take urgent action.

The climate change industry achieved its results with two energising and simple messages (beyond the stultifying esoteric theories about the CO2 effect on heat retention).   Climate change is always  "worse" than we thought and we should do "more".  Always.

Every report, media release, interview or speech includes these two messages.   People logically have questions about the issue and those two messages answer them.

How bad is climate change?  What should we do about it?

The product of continual "research" flowing from the IPCC fundamental message is that climate change is "worse" than we thought and therefore we must  do "more".  More research, more "new" stuff in the news and it just builds and builds and builds.  On sand.

 So how does it work in practice?

Climate change is worse than we thought - we're bombarded with it constantly.   It's always on the news.   Most days we'll hear reports about a new and impressive body of peer-reviewed academic research into the effects of climate change on [insert area of interest].   Inevitably the new research concludes that IPCC defined climate change will cause a nett negative effect on humanity through its impacts on the area covered by the new report.  The more likely the area of research is to get publicity, the more likely it is to be funded.  That means research grants are often made to research things we'll feel a strong connection with - and news directors like to balance their reports with those sorts of stories.    All Australia's universities fund climate change research and there are only 250 odd business days for the news reporting industry each year.   It doesn't take much to get that "new story every day" feel.

One sentence at the start of an academic research report gets the climate change "science" out of the way.  "The IPCC expects global temperatures to rise by at least 2 degrees by..." with a footnote.   Then the expensive new research works out how much that will hurt whatever it is that's being looked into.

Academics and universities are masters in PR.   They want their research work reported in the media and they're very successful in getting coverage.  There are a lot more research projects delivering reports than time available on the news to report them - so if it seems that you hear a "new" report about "climate science" every other day, that's  because you probably do.

Most of the PR follows the Climate Change mantra.  "A new report has calculated that the effects of climate change will hit [insert area of endeavour] harder than scientists thought".  It follows that we must do more to save it..  The effect from a marketing perspective is very powerful on the masses, the cumulative effect of those messages is very persuasive.   It's worse today than it was yesterday.  This afternoon new research will reveal it's even worse than we thought before lunch. It will be worse again when we look at it later on  after dinner.  

So if that's the case, what should we do?  It's infuriatingly obvious, why don't some people get it?  Our government must do more.   M-O-R-E.  When you don't know what "do more" actually means, "do more" translates into spend more money. Which is what the climate change industry is all about, spending other people's money.

There are a few secondary messages flowiong from "worse" and "more".  

Who will be hardest hit by climate change?  The poor - in particular poor countries.   There's no government grant money in doing work to look after the rich so it's not funded.   Researchers follow the money and that's mostly available for research into the needy.

What will be hardest hit?   Things we like.  Climate change only hurts things we like.   It helps things we hate. Take the Climate Change Google challenge.   Google "cliamate change" and butterflies or something else most people like.   Check the results - disaster looming.

Now try things you hate like jellyfish, pests and stuff.

Dr  Owler is the head of the AMA.   He's a learned man, a skilled professional and the  quintessence of the genre casting directors might call the gravitas-laden scientific-presenter.   It was the combination of  gravitas, credentials, experience and Bruce's passion for the cause that led to the RTA putting Dr Owler in these fabulous road safety ads.

Dr Owler brought that same gravitas to a cause he believes in - climate change.   Same passion, same belief, same gravitas. Here he is speaking for Tim Flannery's Climate Commission during the halcyon Gillard days, June 2013

It's one thing to believe.   It's quite another to mix professional credentials in a profession with a belief in something like climate change.  I'd defy anyone to produce a  data set tracked over the past decade which gives a global rise in temperature as the sole cause for some increase in activity at a hospital.   Dr Owler is a neurosurgeon who speaks with immense authority on medical matters.   But he is not an atmospheric scientist and he cannot know the unknowable.   He believes in climate change and he knows from the data things are busier in the hospitals.   QED.  

To the climate change industry everything is an opportunity because everything will be affected by climate change.  So if there are no data linking climate change to hospital activity yet - well someone better fund a new round of grants, pronto.

Climate change - did you know it's worse than we thought?  We really should do more.