Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (excerpt): Smithsonian Mag

Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists, international governmental bodies, relevant research institutes and scientific societies are in unison in saying that climate change is real, that it's a problem, and that we should probably do something about it now, not later. And yet, for some reason, the idea persists in some peoples' minds that climate change is up for debate, or that climate change is no big deal.

Click to enlarge

Actually, it's not “for some reason” that people are confused. There's a very obvious reason. There is a very well-funded, well-orchestrated climate change-denial movement, one funded by powerful people with very deep pockets. In a new and incredibly thorough study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle took a deep dive into the financial structure of the climate deniers, to see who is holding the purse strings.

According to Brulle's research, the 91 think tanks and advocacy organizations and trade associations that make up the American climate denial industry pull down just shy of a billion dollars each year, money used to lobby or sway public opinion on climate change and other issues. (The grand total also includes funds used to support initiatives unrelated to climate change denial, as explained in a quote Brulle gave to The Guardian: “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”)

“The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative

billionaires,” says the Guardian, “often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change.”

“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hire people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy.

Go to complete Smithsonian Magazine article

 

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

 #climateaction,#climate crisis,climate deniers,#jailclimatecriminals,global heating,political party donations from corporations,role of media,

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

Organisations promoting climate science denial and anti-environmentalism in Europe share the same rhetoric, narratives and right-wing links as their US counterparts, new research has found.

 

The paper published in the journal Climatic Change examines publications from eight of the most prominent contrarian thinktanks in six EU countries over 24 years from 1994 to 2018, and argues the organisations enjoy a “remarkable” level of political influence for their size.

These include the UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), as well as the German Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie (EIKE), the Austrian Economics Centre (AEC), Institut Économique Molinari (IEM) in France, Instituto Juan de Mariana (IJM) in Spain and the Liberales Institut (LI) in Switzerland.

The researchers found an increase in environmentally-focused activity

From DeSmog

by these organisations in Europe after 2007 and again between 2015 and 2018.

The publications echoed the arguments put forward by US thinktanks, with a fifth denying climate science outright. Of those which accepted that the planet is warming, many downplayed the role of people in causing it, were sceptical about policies to tackle the problem, or argued that climate change was actually a good thing.

As well as openly contesting climate science, many of the critiques were aimed at environmental campaigners, politicians or journalists.

“Well-worn climate change counter-frames” spread by US thinktanks are being “consistently circulated” by European organisations, too, the research concludes.

Go to complete DeSmog article By Isabella Kaminski • Thursday, September 17, 2020

 

Related: How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine

A season of climate-fueled disasters (excerpt): NYT

Wildfires are still scorching the West as a hurricane hits the South

"It’s pretty scary out there these days. There are wildfires in the West and a hurricane causing  More severe climate fires  “catastrophic” flooding in the South. And the destructiveness of those disasters is being aggravated by climate change.

All of that is keeping those of us on The Times climate team very busy.

For decades, climate journalists focused on the science of climate change, which proves the planet is warming and forecasts the consequences. That goes back at least to 1988, when The Times published a front-page article about the NASA scientist James Hansen, who testified in the Senate and warned in an interview that “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”

The government, as we all know, continued to waffle. And here we are. Now, to an ever increasing degree, being a climate reporter is all about catastrophes, reported in real time.

And so, we do what we do. We cover the news. More severe hurricanes In the West, more than 5 million acres have now burned, and fire season still has months to go. Our coverage has focused heavily on the links between wildfires and climate change.

.........................."

By John Schwartz    (Images from this blog)   Read complete NYT article

 Related: How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine

 Related: The exhausted Raccoons of the Resistance are running an Antifarsonist self care workshop

#climatefires,#climatechange,#climateaction,#climate crisis,hurricanes,floods,science,

Scottish green hydrogen scheme gears up to fuel ferries, buses and trains (excerpt): The Guardian

"Scottish Power’s wind and solar farms will soon help produce green hydrogen to run buses, ferries and even trains as part of a pioneering strategic partnership to develop the UK’s nascent hydrogen economy.

Wind and solar farms will produce the gas alongside Scottish Power,

The renewable energy company, owned by Spain’s Iberdrola, will work alongside companies that specialise in producing and distributing the zero-carbon gas. Hydrogen is expected to play a major role in helping the UK to meet its climate targets.

Scottish Power will use the clean electricity generated by a major new solar farm planned for a site near Glasgow to run an electrolyser, owned by its project partner ITM Power, which will split water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules."..............

Go to complete The Guardian article

Related: HYDROGEN The once and future fuel? Opinion

  hydrogen,clean energy,energy,#renewables,

Australia's government channels government green funds away from renewables towards subsidies for fossil fuels.

(Pics by this blog)

ARENA to get $1.4 billion as Coalition channels funds to CCS, hydrogen and pubs (excerpt): RenewEconomy

The federal Coalition government has finally decided to extending the funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but will – as predicted – push both ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation away from wind and solar into other “low emission” technologies, including carbon capture and storage.

 

ARENA and CEFC have played critical roles in advancing Australian renewable, storage and other critical enabling technologies since their creation in 2012, and despite repeated attempts by the Coalition government to dismantle them, and severe cuts to ARENA’s original budget.

ARENA – which is now nearly exhausted of funds, and had its board recently stacked with Coalition favourites – is to be given “guaranteed baseline funding” of $1.427 billion over the next 10 years, and will be given extra allocations in the annual budget. For 2020/21, that will amount to $191 million.

This is part of a $1.9 billion package to the two green funds that will include money for CCS, a regional hydrogen hub, along with many of the project identified by a group led by former Origin Energy CEO Grant King, and even some money for pubs to upgrade their refrigeration systems.

 

The government will change the mandates of both ARENA and the CEFC so they can more or less follow the government’s Technology Roadmap which is to be finalised in the next couple of weeks, and which looks at technologies beyond wind and solar, including gas, hydrogen and CCS.

 

The push to broaden the mandate into “low emissions” technologies will require parliamentary approval – rejected by the Senate when the Coalition first tried to scrap the bodies – and comes just days after the unveiling of a major gas package, and the government’s extraordinary ultimatum to build a 1GW gas plant in the Hunter Valley.

 

Go to Renew Economy's complete article by Giles Parkinson

 

Related: Compromised: Genie Energy and the Murdoch media’s climate denial (excerpt): Michael West Media

PM Morrison,#Australia,#methanegas,coal mining,gas,ARENA,#fossilfuelcompanies,role of media,

 

 

Body count: How climate change is killing us: Paddy Manning's Book

"True stories of loss and courage from people at the frontlines of Australia's worst climate-fuelled disasters - bushfire, heatwaves, flash-floods, disease outbreaks and now the latest in a new age of pandemics. 

What are the health risks of climate change, why weren't we warned and what are Australian governments doing about it?"

   About The Book

"Suddenly, when the country caught fire, people realised what the government has not: that climate change is killing us.

But climate deaths didn’t start in 2019. Medical officers have been warning of a health emergency as temperatures rise for years, and for at least a decade Australians have been dying from the plagues of climate change – from heat, flood, disease, smoke. And now, pandemic.

In this detailed, considered, compassionate book, Paddy Manning paints us the big picture. He revisits some headline events which might have faded in our memory – the Brisbane Floods of 2011; Melbourne’s thunderstorm asthma fatalities of 2016 – and brings to our attention less well-publicised killers: the soil-borne diseases that amplify after a flood; the fact that heat itself has killed more people than all other catastrophes put together. In each case, he has interviewed scientists to explore the link to climate change and asks how – indeed, whether – we can better prepare ourselves in the future.

Most importantly, Manning has spoken to survivors and the families of victims, creating a monument to those we have already lost. Donna Rice and her 13-year-old son Jordan. Alison Tenner. The Buchanan family. These are stories of humans at their most vulnerable, and also often at their best. In extremis, people often act to save their loved ones above themselves. As Body Count shows, we are now all in extremis, and it is time to act.

 

Climate Fires in the USA

Respected journalist Paddy Manning tells these stories of tragedy and loss, heroism and resilience, in a book that is both monument and warning.

‘A climate emergency tour de force.' Dr Bob Brown

'True stories of heroism and unimaginable loss...Body Count is a brilliant exposition of why we must deal with the climate problem now.' Ross Garnaut

'Climate change kills. … Through the accounts of people who have lost so much, Paddy Manning drives home the deeply personal impact of climate change. Governments continue to ignore the impact on climate change on human health at OUR peril. The future of our planet and our future generations depends on everyone playing their part, today.' Professor Kerryn Phelps

'A stunningly powerful call to political leaders everywhere who hear the warnings of the devastating impacts of climate change on health but fail to act.' Dr Helen Haines, independent member for Indi

‘Moving stories of heroic courage and tragic loss. A pause to reflect on the lives lost and how urgently we need change.’ David Pocock, former Wallabies captain"

To order the book 

 

Children Face Unique Health Threats Due To Climate Change

Related: How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine

#climate crisis, #climateemergency, #Australia, #California, Oregon, #climatefires, #USA, smoke, infectious diseases, #foodsecurity, water security, #heatwaves,  

How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine

(Pics by this blog)

Hurricane Michael left this

" ....... I wanted to know if this was beginning to change. Might Americans finally be waking up to how climate is about to transform their lives? And if so — if a great domestic relocation might be in the offing — was it possible to project where we might go? To answer these questions, I interviewed more than four dozen experts: economists and demographers, climate scientists and insurance executives, architects and urban planners, and I mapped out the danger zones that will close in on Americans over the next 30 years. The maps for the first time combined exclusive climate data from the Rhodium Group, an independent data-analytics firm; wildfire projections modeled by United States Forest Service researchers and others; and data about America’s shifting climate niches, an evolution of work first published by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last spring. (See a detailed analysis of the maps.) "

Sea rise and no planned retreat

"What I found was a nation on the cusp of a great transformation. Across the United States, some 162 million

people — nearly one in two — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. For 93 million of them, the changes could be

particularly severe, and by 2070, our analysis suggests, if carbon emissions rise at extreme levels, at least four million Americans could find themselves living at the fringe, in places decidedly outside the ideal niche for human life. The cost of resisting the new climate reality is mounting. Florida officials have already acknowledged that defending some roadways against the sea will be unaffordable. And the nation’s federal flood-insurance program is for the first time requiring that some of its payouts be used to retreat from climate threats across the country. It will soon prove too expensive to maintain the status quo. "

........................

Some predicted sea rise may be too conservative

"Let’s start with some basics. Across the country, it’s going to get hot. Buffalo may feel in a few decades like Tempe, Ariz., does today, and Tempe itself will sustain 100-degree average summer temperatures by the end of the century. Extreme humidity from New Orleans to northern Wisconsin will make summers increasingly unbearable, turning otherwise seemingly survivable heat waves into debilitating health threats. Fresh water will also be in short supply, not only in the West but also in places like Florida, Georgia and Alabama, where droughts now regularly wither cotton fields. By 2040, according to federal government projections, 
extreme water shortages will be nearly ubiquitous west of Missouri. The Memphis Sands Aquifer, a crucial water supply for Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana, is already overdrawn by hundreds of millions of gallons a day. Much of the Ogallala Aquifer — which supplies nearly a third of the nation’s irrigation groundwater — could be gone by the end of the century."

Go to complete, extensive New York Times Magazine article

Related:  Trump baselessly questions climate science during California wildfire briefing (excerpt): CNN

#America, #climaterefugees, #extremeheat, #searise, #USA, climate migration, water security