Climate Hustle 2: Showcasing a Thinning Roster of Climate Science Deniers (excerpt): DeSmog

 

 

Climate Hustle 2: Showcasing a Thinning Roster of Climate Science Deniers

— By Ben Jervey (11 min. read) —

When written histories remember 2020 as the year that America’s anti-science obsessions completed their evolution from dangerous to deadly, the premier of 'Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy', will be deserving of at least a footnote. 

The film, produced by CFACT, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and starring Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, was originally set to be released on April 21, before the coronavirus pandemic shut down theaters and much of American life. 

In the five months since, climate-fueled wildfires have torched the Western U.S., the World Meteorological Organization ran out of hurricane names in the overheated Atlantic, the Arctic ice cap contracted to a nearly unprecedented minimum, and polar scientists announced that Greenland’s ice sheet has melted “past the point of no return.”

Undeterred by these physical realities, tonight CFACT will release its paean to climate denial, pledging to “rock the climate change debate,” a debate that has long been settled by the 97% or more of actively publishing climate scientists who agree that current warming trends are manmade. 

Who is Funding CFACT's Climate Hustle?

The film is being released by CFACT, a free market organization with a history of taking corporate money to deploy its PR tactics against public interest and environmental advocates. When it launched in 1989, CFACT approached the Chemical Manufacturers Association for “corporate involvement and support.” The CMA described CFACT at the time as being “established to fight the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) and Ralph Nader-type organizations.” 

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 Related: Revealed: Most Popular Climate Story on Social Media Told Half a Million People the Science Was a Hoax (excerpts): DeSmog

 

 

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Revealed: Most Popular Climate Story on Social Media Told Half a Million People the Science Was a Hoax (excerpts): DeSmog

 "The most popular climate change story across social media in the past six months used a debunked survey from the late 1990s to claim that “tens of thousands of scientists” had declared global warming a “hoax”, a DeSmog analysis has found.

 

Fake News example

Published on YourNewsWire, the story was shared, clicked or “liked” 557,000 times on social media, with 555,000 of those engagements from Facebook. The story's author worked for many years with UK conspiracy theorist David Icke.

DeSmog used the social media analytics tool BuzzSumo to find the most popular climate stories globally over the last six months, using the search term “climate change”.

The YourNewsWire story appears on a site mixed with stories about aliens, conspiracy theories, and anti-Clinton rhetoric together with some serious news. The story was shared on Facebook three times as much as the second most popular article, published by the LA Times.

The LA Times article, from November, reported the comments of California Governor Jerry Brown, who warned President-elect Donald Trump his state would not walk away from its climate change commitments."

Pic from a Change.org petition about Fake News

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"Debunked Oregon Petition

The YourNewsWire story ran under the headline: “Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax” and is a mish-mash of old debunked talking points together with content from other websites also claiming climate change is a hoax.

The intro to the story reads: “A staggering 30,000 scientists have come forward confirming that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the elite in order to make money.”

The story only briefly references the source for the “30,000 scientists” claim which is, in fact, a survey released 18 years ago known as the Oregon Petition.

An analysis of the petition has found only 39 of the 31,000 signatories actually had a relevant climate science qualification.

Much of the content of the YourNewsWire story was cut and pasted from an article published three days earlier on the website Natural News.

That story, shared more than 80,000 times, ran with the headline: “Over 30,000 scientists say 'Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming' is a complete hoax and science lie.”

 Go to the complete DeSmog article

Related: European Thinktanks Repeating ‘Well-worn’ US Climate Denial Tropes (excerpt): DeSmog

 

 #fakenews,fake news,climate change deniers,Facebook page,climatescience,#fossilfuelcompanies,climate change disinformation,

 

Facebook's climate of denial (excerpts): Heated

 "Time is running out to prevent a climate catastrophe. The summer of 2020, with its devastating wildfires and climate-fueled extreme weather, is a preview of the world's apocalyptic future — unless decisive steps are taken to reduce carbon emissions. The public’s need for accurate climate change information could not be greater."

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 "Scientists and climate advocates, however, have panned Facebook's initiative because it does nothing to address the massive distribution of climate disinformation on Facebook. Further, Facebook's Climate Science Information Center contains no information about the primary reasons the climate crisis exists: polluting companies, policy obstruction, and unchecked climate denial."

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"Facebook’s Climate Science Information Center ignores systemic solutions and emphasizes individual solutions like turning off the lights and buying local produce. Cook calls this approach “disturbing” because it's the same tactic fossil fuel companies have used to delay climate action for years. “Facebook’s new page buys into that framing,” he said. “It pushes an unhelpful narrative that distracts from what is necessary to solve climate change.”

Marlon Weems @GeekTrader

TIL British Petroleum hired a PR firm to create and popularize the term “carbon footprint" in order to shift responsibility/blame for killing the planet away from oil companies onto individuals The Carbon Footprint ShamA ‘successful, deceptive’ PR campaignin.mashable.com

September 7th 2020

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Stone said Facebook “spoke to a number of leading climate science organizations as well as academics in different countries” to inform what was on the page, but declined to say which organizations or academics were involved. 

He added that Facebook is “looking to expand the types of actions featured and are working with partners on that now.” In the meantime, climate disinformation continues to spread on Facebook at an alarming rate."

 Go to this article By Emily Atkin and Judd Legum

Related: European Thinktanks Repeating ‘Well-worn’ US Climate Denial Tropes (excerpt): DeSmog

 

climate change disinformation,#fakenews,climate change deniers,climate change,global heating,#jailclimatecriminals,

 

As QAnon Conspiracy Spreads on the Far Right, Climate Science Deniers Jump Aboard (excerpt): DeSmog

QAnon signs at a Trump rally

(Photos added by this blog)

"Back in December 2019, two conspiratorial worldviews collided as, for the first time, QAnon’s Q suggested his followers should question anew a topic that, by now, has been considered, and reconsidered, for decades: climate change.

QAnon sign at a Trump rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on August 15, 2019. Credit: Marc Nozell, CC BY 2.0

“The Paris Agreement on Climate is Another Scam to Ripoff Taxpayers and Enrich the Politicians,” the Q-Drop (the term QAnon followers use to refer to messages they believe come from some sort of government insider who signs messages with the letter Q) claimed, labeling climate action a “con.”

Wikipedia says

In May, a second Q-Drop riffed on climate change, with a link to a snarky tweet about science and the Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg by a would-be House Republican who’d lost her primary race in March.

Both of those Q-Drops were picked up by a report commissioned by a coalition of environmental groups and conducted by the research firm Graphika, which found that a group of vocal climate science deniers began using QAnon hashtags in May — and they haven’t stopped since.

“The QAnon movement hasn’t traditionally covered climate change, but in May, when an influential QAnon account tweeted about climate denial, there was a notable and sustained increase of QAnon content shared within the climate denial group,” Michael Khoo, an advisor on disinformation for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, and Melissa Ryan, CEO of CARD Strategies and author of the Ctrl Alt-Right Delete weekly newsletters, wrote in an article published today on Medium."

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Trump says QAnon conspiracy theorists are people who 'love our country' - National | G

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"Clutching at Q’s Coattails


Not only is QAnon taking up climate denial, but prominent climate deniers have been taking up QAnon.

“The other thing we see is that the right needs QAnon more and more to amplify their messaging,” said Ryan.

Take, for example, Naomi Seibt, a young German YouTuber who has questioned climate science and who has worked with the Heartland Institute, a U.S. think tank and notorious promoter of climate science denial.

“So do you want a beautiful planet that you can stare at but that’s it? It’s just like looking at a TV screen,” the Express, a UK newspaper, quoted Seibt as saying in May. “As a climate realist, I don’t deny that we don’t have some negative impact on the planet. But I don’t think that it’s related to CO2 emissions.”

Seibt briefly rose to broader prominence following a Washington Post article about her in February — though she remains far less well-known than Greta Thunberg, the young environmental activist who the Heartland Institute has sought to compare with Seibt. “She reportedly chose not to renew her contract with [the] Heartland [Institute] in April 2020 after facing potential fines from a regional broadcasting authority,” DeSmog’s profile on Seibt notes.

QAnon

In addition to speaking about climate, Seibt has publicly spoken about her views on race and religion. “Seibt’s rise as the young face of climate skeptics has drawn scrutiny of her past remarks. 

On Friday, video circulated of Seibt’s remarks after a shooting at a German synagogue,” Bloomberg reported on February 28. “'The normal German consumer is at the bottom, so to speak. Then the Muslims come somewhere in between. And the Jew is at the top. That is the suppression characteristic,' she said in comments first reported by The Guardian.”

In July, the trial of that synagogue shooter, charged with murdering two people and the attempted murder of dozens more, began with the accused shooter stating that he felt he was “on the bottom rung of society” and that he was “superseded,” as he sought to justify horrific crimes.

As in Germany, white supremacists in the U.S. have increasingly engaged in racially motivated “mass shooter” armed attacks on unarmed people. And QAnon followers have also begun committing violent acts. 

“I think it's also important to remember that the FBI has declared QAnon a domestic terrorism threat,” said Ryan, “and QAnon has inspired kidnappings, it has inspired at least one murder, it has inspired arson, there is a real danger from these folks who are drawn to this and become just embroiled in it.”

Go to the complete DeSmog article 

Related: Coronavirus doubters follow climate denial playbook: Yale Climate Connections


QAnon, Trump, conspiracy theorists, #fakenews, fake news, climate deniers, Paris Agreement, terrorism, #jailclimatecriminals,  

The Unraveling of America (excerpt): Rolling Stone

*Photos added by this blog.

Elizabeth Warren: Storm is Coming

 "Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era"

"Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science."

"At the root of this transformation and decline lies an ever-widening chasm between Americans who have and those who have little or nothing. Economic disparities exist in all nations, creating a tension that can be as disruptive as the inequities are unjust. In any number of settings, however, the negative forces tearing apart a society are mitigated or even muted if there are other elements that reinforce social solidarity — religious faith, the strength and comfort of family, the pride of tradition, fidelity to the land, a spirit of place.

But when all the old certainties are shown to be lies, when the promise of a good life for a working

"...as a buffoon of a president.."

family is shattered as factories close and corporate leaders, growing wealthier by the day, ship jobs abroad, the social contract is irrevocably broken. For two generations, America has celebrated globalization with iconic intensity, when, as any working man or woman can see, it’s nothing more than capital on the prowl in search of ever cheaper sources of labor.

For many years, those on the conservative right in the United States have invoked a nostalgia for the 1950s, and an America that never was, but has to be presumed to have existed to rationalize their sense of loss and abandonment, their fear of change, their bitter resentments and lingering contempt for the social movements of the 1960s, a time of new aspirations for women, gays, and people of color. In truth, at least in economic terms, the country of the 1950s resembled Denmark as much as the America of today. Marginal tax rates for the wealthy were 90 percent. The salaries of CEOs were, on average, just 20 times that of their mid-management employees."

Five climate change science misconceptions – debunked: The Conversation excerpt

#Cambioclimatico

"The science of climate change is more than 150 years old and it is probably the most tested area of modern science. 


However the energy industry, political lobbyists and others have spent the last 30 years sowing doubt about the science where none really exists. The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly-owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200m each year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate-motivated policy.


This organised and orchestrated climate change science denial has

contributed to the lack of progress in reducing global green house gas (GHG) emissions - to the point that we are facing a global climate emergency. And when climate change deniers use certain myths – at best fake news and at worse straight lies – to undermine the science of climate change, ordinary people can find it hard to see through the fog. Here are five commonly used myths and the real science that debunks them. " The Conversation

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