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24 ORGANIZATIONS AND EXPERTS CALL ON GOOGLE TO STOP AMPLIFYING AND PROFITING FROM CLIMATE DENIAL CONTENT

May 3, 2024

24 ORGANIZATIONS AND EXPERTS CALL ON GOOGLE TO STOP AMPLIFYING AND PROFITING FROM CLIMATE DENIAL CONTENT

Climate groups and academics call on Google to extend its climate disinformation policy, demonetize and stop amplifying climate denial content, and collaborate with NGOs and academic experts to update its policies.

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In a letter to Google’s CEO Mr. Sundar Pichai, 24 organizations and academics call on Google to demonetize and stop amplifying climate denial content.

Organization signatories:

The Center for Countering Digital Hate
Association québécoise des médecins pour l’environnement (AQME)
Centre for Citizens Conserving Environment & Management (CECIC)
The Climate Coalition
ClimateMama
Équiterre
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth (England, Wales & Northern Ireland)
Global Action Plan
Kairos Fellows
One Earth Sangha
Stand.earth
Texas Campaign for the Environment
TIAA-Divest!
QuotaClimat
The Working Class Climate Alliance
350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley

Individual signatories:

Constantine Boussalis, Trinity College Dublin
John Cook, University of Melbourne
Marie-Eve Carignan, Université de Sherbrooke / Chaire UNESCO en prévention de la radicalisation et de l’extrémisme violents
Mirjam O. Nanko, University of Exeter
Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge
Stanley Rothbardt, Climate Reality Project
Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol

Warnings of Doom, Amid a Smokescreen of Denial and Distraction

December 6, 2018

Warnings of Doom, Amid a Smokescreen of Denial and Distraction

Photo Source reurinkjan | CC BY 2.0

The Trump administration predictably tried to bury the dire warnings contained in the fourth National Climate Assessment by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving, when many people would be distracted by the mass consumption frenzy known as Black Friday. It didn’t work, of course, since the findings were nothing short of warnings of doom if humanity doesn’t radically reduce the production of greenhouse gases caused primarily by burning fossil fuels.

Equally predictable was the response from the Climate Denier-in-Chief that he simply “didn’t believe” the findings. The rays of hope are that, thanks to the Mueller investigation, indictments and convictions, as well as the recent election that erased the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, Donald Trump’s “reign of error” on the environment is coming to an end — and not a minute too soon for our nation and the planet.

Considering that the congressionally mandated Climate Assessment was put together by more than 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies, there are plenty of good reasons to heed its assessments and predictions, summarized right up front in the report as: “Climate change creates new risks and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in communities across the United States, presenting growing challenges to human health and safety, quality of life, and the rate of economic growth.”

Here in Montana, the “risks and vulnerabilities” are particularly acute as a warming climate produces longer and more extreme wildfire seasons, less snow and drought-caused water shortages, rivers warming beyond the tolerable limits for our world-famous wild trout fisheries, and a host of impacts to a wide variety of businesses from agriculture to recreation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

COP24: Climate Science Denial, Disinformation and Fake News at the UN Climate Talks

December 5, 2018

COP24: Climate Science Denial, Disinformation and Fake News at the UN Climate Talks

James Taylor of the Heartland Institute at COP24

And in Katowice, Poland, where the UN climate talks — known as COP24 — are underway, it was no different. A small group of climate science deniers tried to grab attention by hosting an event on the fringe of the conference, claiming to “present the science that debunks UN alarmism”.

But this year, very few were paying attention.

Year after year, climate science deniers have attempted to use the climate talks as a platform to undermine the global climate negotiation process.

The election of Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, two populist politicians who denounced climate change as a political plot to stifle economic growth and want to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, may have given these fringe groups some semblance of credibility.

Jesse Bragg, spokesman for the NGO Corporate Accountability, told DeSmog UK that although climate science deniers’ tactics haven’t changed over the years, “what has changed is the hubris with which these deniers trot their junk science out but just because Trump makes these deniers feel confident”.

“But that doesn’t mean they actually have cause or that support for them is growing,” he added.

Inside the UN conference, climate science denial voices have traditionally been ignored. Both Trump and Bolsonaro’s election were a blow to the UN’s climate negotiations process but those denying the scientific consensus of climate change have not — at least yet — managed to crush the momentum behind the Paris Agreement.

Isolated Deniers

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Change Bites Big Business

August 14, 2018

Climate Change Bites Big Business

“Electoral politics is not the solution to the Earth-threatening problems we face.”

– Jeffrey St. Clair, 10 August 2018, Counter Punch

There is now no non-violent way to reverse climate change. Even with morally unrestrained action, it is probable that there is now no physical possibility of reversing climate change. The time for action was 1973-1979, the time of the two oil embargoes (the post Israeli War – against Egypt and Syria – Arab Oil Embargo of 1973; and the related-to-the-Iranian-Revolution vengeful price gouge oil embargo of 1979). This was the period of the Watergate-climax finale of the Nixon Administration, the Ford Administration, and the Carter “energy crisis” Administration. Politically, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 killed the possibility of US climate change action.

From Reagan through Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama to Trump, the mentioning of climate change – as one of government’s highest priorities, as one of corporate America’s foremost concerns (to be addressed, not suppressed), and as one of mainstream media’s primary and continuing focuses and leading stories – was minimized if not altogether absent. If anything, climate change denialism was heavily promoted by corporate and partisan (right wing) media, and by legions of corporate agents, flacks and factotums masquerading as elected representatives in federal and state governments. That has now changed.

Climate change is now all over the front pages of the newspapers and is the headline story of the mainstream mass media, primarily because of the massive fires in California whose smoke has even reached New York City. Why this new overt and blaring mainstream news attention to climate change, a subject that was officially hush-hush, trivial and fake news so recently in the past? Obviously because climate change has begun costing big money to major sectors of American capitalism.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Remember What the Climate War Is About

June 8, 2018

Remember What the Climate War Is About

Lately, I’ve been wondering if the battles being fought to maintain federal energy and environment policies and programs are clouding the nation’s collective understanding of what the war being waged against the Trump administration is really about?

Before suggesting what it—the metaphorical war of which I write–should be about, let me say it is not about The Donald. At least, it is not only about him, much as he would probably like it to be. Trump is but the current poster boy for climate deniers. Granted he has a lot to do with the current disheveled state of federal climate affairs. The Big D, however, is merely the intellectually slavish embodiment of the nation’s much more significant problem—the lack of an integrated, stable, long-term energy and environment policy.

The problem pre-dates Trump. Although, #President-Lie-Baby can truthfully claim credit for plumbing new depths of the off-again portion of the feast and famine cycle that characterizes federal clean energy and environmental programs and policies. His is not the first administration to dismiss clean energy technologies as fitting subsidiaries of the Rube Goldberg Industrial Empire.

As Trump is not the actual problem, he offers little hope of being the solution. When was the last time Congress—any Congress—enacted or even considered a national energy and environment policy? The answer is not in the lifetime of most anyone who might be reading this article.

Federal decisionmakers have not considered and acted on energy and the environment in the context of an integrated national policy at least since the efforts that led to the creation of the US Department of Energy in 1977. Even then, the consideration of the environment was incidental to the energy portions of the organization effort. The connection, however, was at least made.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Crisis Clobbers Trump Denials

May 14, 2018

Climate Crisis Clobbers Trump Denials

Harken! A Trump appointee agrees that climate change is not a hoax. Granted, that is unimaginable, but it is the real thing. An ongoing climate crisis in America’s Southwest brings this rare specimen into the limelight.

The climate crisis star of the year is Brenda Burman, commissioner of The Bureau of Reclamation, a division of the Department of Interior, who, in her confirmation hearings said: “I believe that climate change is not a hoax.” After all, in her youth she did serve as a park ranger at Grand Canyon National Park; she’s an outdoorsperson.

She comes to the forefront via an ongoing dire ultra scary southwestern drought. According to The Bureau of Reclamation (Trump’s Bureau) it’s the worst drought in over 1,200 years. (Source: Eric Holthaus, Look! A Federal Agency is Pushing for Urgent Climate Action, Grist.org, May 10, 2018)

There is plenty of concern and compelling issues/dangers supporting Burman’s push for a solution to water shortages for one of the country’s major regions, and it is a pressing issue for the near future, involving (1) the livelihood of 40 million people, (2) growth of major cities, like Phoenix, and (3) saving America’s breadbasket.

Here’s what Commissioner Burman says about the climate crisis: “We need action and we need it now… We can’t afford to wait for a crisis before we implement drought contingency plans,” Ibid.

She specifically references the Colorado River System, which has been in crisis mode for some time now, which has everything to do with too much anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.

One answer to Commissioner Burman’s plea of “we can’t afford to wait for a crisis before we implement drought contingency plans” is for Trump to quit goosing up exploration of fossil fuels at the expense of installing renewable energy throughout the country, coast-to-coast. That’s one implementation that can be started overnight with his signature.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ignorance and Greed: Trump’s War on the Environment

March 5, 2018

Ignorance and Greed: Trump’s War on the Environment

Under Donald Trump, the environment has been the hardest hit of any sector of society, carried out by executive actions, the overturning of Obama-era regulations, and the enactment of new rules via cabinet review. This assault is occurring just as NASA reports that we’ve just had another near-record year of global warming. It’s insanity, and a classic example of willful ignorance. Trump, EPA director Scott Pruitt, and other officials simply choose not to inform themselves lest their position on climate change, which is based entirely on self-interest, be undermined. Since these people only know what Fox News and the fossil fuel industry tell them, they probably are unfazed about portents such as the three-year drought that has brought Cape Town, South Africa, to “Day Zero” when the water pipes will be shut off and water strictly rationed.

Behind the rules changes lies a telling fact: Trump does not have a science adviser—a director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House. But since he has no interest in science, he evidently sees no reason to learn from or defer to anyone who does. The president’s science adviser typically advises on everything from outbreaks of disease to global warming and nuclear weapons. By leaving empty a position all previous presidents have filled, Trump is sending a message that he is not merely a climate-change denier but also a science denier. Only one person sits in the OSTP office: a Silicon Valley financier.

As has been widely reported, the resignations, retirements, and constraints placed upon government scientists crimp the executive branch’s preparedness for what is to come. As just one example, geologists in the interior department are being systematically constrained from presenting their research at major conferences.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

May 29, 2016

The faux insurgency of the climate change deniers and the need for closure

Climate change deniers like to style themselves as latter-day Copernicuses and Galileos, lone visionaries bucking the established wisdom of the ages embodied back then in the teachings of the Catholic Church.

There is a certain appeal to imagining oneself as isolated and embattled but unbowed. The analogy, however, is specious on its face. For neither Copernicus nor Galileo had giant international oil and coal companies supporting them with tens of millions of dollars of annual public relations expenditures and scores of fake think tanks which would have provided them comfortable and profitable sinecures while shielding them from the attacks of the church.

No, the climate change deniers actually work for the established church of our age, wealthy corporate interests opposed to doing anything to mitigate the ongoing carnage of climate change–the very interests that continue to have a stranglehold on the legislative bodies of the world to such an extent that relatively little has actually been done to address climate. The most compelling evidence is the steady march upward of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels measured at the world’s best known measuring station, the Mauna Loa Observatory.

To hear the deniers one would think that we are already groaning under the weight of carbon taxes across the globe. The reality is that only a handful of countries and jurisdictions have bothered with such taxes, and one of them, Australia, repealed its tax. Yes, yes, there are cap-and-trade emissions schemes in the European Union, northeastern United States, California and Quebec. None of these jurisdictions has collapsed economically as a result. In fact, all are becoming leaders in a technological revolution that is moving us away from dependence on finite, climate-changing fossil fuels.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Think Facts Matter? Try Attending a Friends of Science Event Headlined by Ezra Levant

May 16, 2016

Think Facts Matter? Try Attending a Friends of Science Event Headlined by Ezra Levant

We’re only a minute into watching a brief low-budget video — one that begins by alleging U.S. President Barack Obama is a bully because he suggests that climate change deniers should be “called out” — when Ezra Levant sits down in the chair next to me.

The Rebel Commander himself.

According to organizers, he’s the reason attendance of tonight’s $45-per-head fundraiser in Calgary — casually titled “Climate Leadership Catastrophe: Carbon Taxes, Job Loss, Freedoms Denied” and organized by the so-called “Friends of Science” — spiked from 200 to 445 people after he was announced as its keynote speaker.

And he’s the same intensely controversial pundit who I met in late November at another Calgary event called “Generation Screwed” which I covered for Vice Canada while wearing a “Dreamy Trudeau” sweater.

“Hey James,” he says, reaching out his hand to shake mine.

We briefly chat as the video moves on to clips of testimonies from human-caused climate change denying scientists like Roy Spencer and Willie Soon (the latter took $1.25 million from fossil fuel companies and lobby groups for his research). Levant relays a hilarious and self-deprecating story to me about his flight from Toronto to Calgary during which another person fell asleep on him.

I scribble a few observations in a notepad. He scrolls through his phone, probably Twitter mentions given he sports almost 50,000 followers.

After a few minutes he gets up to leave. I remind him that I tweeted at him a while back about how the Alberta NDP was elected on Karl Marx’s birthday, which seems like crucial information to include in his vehemently anti-NDP and pro-capitalist online show.

We opt to “follow” each other on Twitter. He wanders off.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Groups Hand 360,000 Signatures to Justice Department Calling for “Exxon Knew” Probe

November 21, 2015

Groups Hand 360,000 Signatures to Justice Department Calling for “Exxon Knew” Probe

Exxon social license revoked

With the hottest October in world history recorded recently, a slew of advocacy groups have delivered 360,000 petition signatures to the U.S. Department of Justice, calling for a probe of petrochemical industry giant ExxonMobil’s history of funding climate change denial despite what the company knew about climate science.

The groups ranging from 350.org, Food and Watch Watch, Climate Parents, Moms Clean Air Force, The Nation, Sierra Club and others have asked DOJ to investigate what ExxonMobil knew about climate change and when the company knew it, juxtaposing that insider knowledge, exposed by both InsideClimate News and The Los Angeles Times, with the climate change denial campaign it funded both in the past and through to the present.

“That’s right: decades before climate change became a hotly debated political issue, the biggest oil company in the world was doing cutting-edge research into just what was causing it and how dangerous it might be,” reads the petition, pointing back to the research the company did on climate change dating back to the 1970’s and 1980’s.

“But Exxon chose to protect their profits over the planet, and proceeded to cover up their findings for nearly forty years.,” it continues. “They hid the work of their own scientists, while financing an elaborate network of climate-denial think tanks, organizations, and politicians.”

“Might Get Away With It”

The petition also says that while it’s unsurprising ExxonMobil committed such a deed, what’s scary is that in the legal sphere “they just might get away with it.”

That concern by the groups does not arise out of a vacuum.

Case in point: coal giant Peabody Energy recently got off the hook in the aftermath of a New York State Attorney General Office investigation by merely amending some line-items in its corporate securities filings with the U.S.Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exxon: We knew climate change was a real threat (but we didn’t want you to)

November 2, 2015

Exxon: We knew climate change was a real threat (but we didn’t want you to)

One of the big complaints about climate change deniers is that they don’t fund any genuine primary scientific research into climate change.

We are used to deniers extracting out-of-context passages from existing legitimate climate research and pretending those passages support the denialist position. But wait…we now know, thanks to recent coverage by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, that at least one climate change denier did fund a great deal of legitimate climate research.

And, what did that research show? It showed that climate change is real, is caused in great measure by human activities and has the potential to disrupt human society significantly. To be fair, when Exxon Corp. (now Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company) engaged in this research in the 1970s and 1980s, it was genuinely trying to understand the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. During that time Exxon scientists collaborated openly with prominent academic and government researchers and were even praised for their commitment and professionalism.

But, as we all know, that openness did not last. As the scientific findings became more alarming, the company began to see the findings from climate research as a threat to its business. Exxon launched a public relations offensive to dispute what climate researchers around the world were discovering, an offensive that lasted until 2008 when the company announced that it would end its support for the vast network of climate change denial organizations it had helped to build. (Whether the company did, in fact, end that support is disputed.)

You can read all the gory and disturbing details concerning this turnabout at the sites linked above. Some might consider this old news. Those who keep up on climate news are certainly familiar with the large denialist apparatus of front groups, fake think tanks and public relations firms supported by Exxon and others.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fiorina: the next line of defense of climate denialism

August 22, 2015

Fiorina: the next line of defense of climate denialism

The recent Republican entrant to the US presidential race gave an interview on Yahoo where she spoke about several issues, including climate change. It is an extremely interesting clip to understand what we could call a “moderate” position in the Republican field. Ms. Fiorina’s statements on climate change are in this clip and are summarized in text form on Vox, with the title “everything she said was wrong” I think it is worse than that.

In my opinion, Ms. Fiorina is expressing what will be the next line of defense of climate denialism. She does not flatly deny climate change, as many of her colleagues do, even though she states that it is a minor problem in comparison to others, such as terrorism. But, yes, she admits that it is a problem. So, what should be done about it? Here, Ms. Fiorina puts forward a series of lies and half truths to push for the idea that we wouldn’t/shouldn’t/can’t/ do anything. Why? Because, you know, coal is too important for us, and even if we fight it, China won’t. And, without coal, the economy can’t work; don’t you see how many jobs are being lost because of these silly environmental regulations? It is much better to work at making coal cleaner, isn’t it? Besides, renewables don’t work because, you know, wind turbines kill birds, they are ugly, and solar plants need a lot of water, etc…

I think that with this interview we have a glimpse of the future of the debate on climate change. As the evidence becomes undeniable, deniers will shift back to admitting that, yes, it exists and even that it may be human caused. But they will propose to do nothing about it because it is impossible/too expensive/will cause jobs to be lost, etc…. And we’ll be back to square one: we’ll keep doing nothing, for one reason or another.

So, the fight is still long and hard. And I am afraid that if we don’t change our strategy, we are not going to win it.

Chicken Little Meet the Friends of Science

June 29, 2015

Chicken Little Meet the Friends of Science

Canada’s leading climate conspiracy theorists, the Friends of Science, are out this week with a critique on climate change that would make even Chicken Little blush.

In a press release issued Thursday, the Friends of Science state that if plans proceed to move our country away from carbon-intensive fuel sources like oil and coal, “Canada would have to be completely shut down in order to reach the emissions reduction targets, leaving millions of Canadians unemployed.”

The Friends of Science are no stranger to hyperbole, which is on full-display on the homepage of their website promoting all sorts of pseudo-scientific climate science conspiracy claims.

The FOS is also no stranger to controversy.

Many longtime DeSmog readers will know that a few years ago this group was outed in an investigative piece by the Globe and Mail for its ties to the Alberta oil patch and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I am reluctantt to address these latest Chicken Little claims by the Friends of Science, because arguing back at them is exactly what they want and could be mistaken for a sliver of a legitimate place in the debate about how to solve the issue of climate change and transition the world from polluting fossil fuels to clean energy.

And quite frankly, as I pointed out last week, a group like the FOS who still readily claim that climate change is “big green propaganda” and nothing to be concerned about, has no place in a debate about how to deal with a problem they don’t .

Exclusive: Major Climate Denial Funders Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund Handled $479 Million Of Dark Money

May 13, 2015

Exclusive: Major Climate Denial Funders Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund Handled $479 Million Of Dark Money

More than $470 million of cash flowing into a key funding arm of the climate science denial movement in the United States is untraceable, a DeSmog investigation has found.

Sister organisations Donors Trust (DT) and Donors Capital Fund (DCF) declared an income of $511 million between 2005 and 2012, tax records show.

But a DeSmog analysis of the sources of DT and DCF income finds that some $479 million of the income is “dark money” coming from individuals or groups who do not have to declare their donations.

The amount of untraceable cash moving through DT and DCF is likely to be increasing substantially. In 2013, the two groups had their biggest year to date with a combined income of $152m and cash assets of $138m. Donors Trust itself saw income more than double from $46m in 2012 to $103m in 2013 even though the value of grants it handed out remained stable at about $40m each year.

While the role of DT and DCF in financing the climate science denial movement has been known for several years, DeSmog’s investigation reveals for the first time the true scale of untraceable money flowing through the two funds, which share an address in Virginia.

DeSmog’s investigation found just $32 million of donations to the two conservative-aligned funding arms originated with other non-profits that make tax records and details of donations available in public documents.

Both DT and DCF have funneled money to high profile advocacy groups that campaign against regulations to cut greenhouse gases and promote fringe and discredited views on climate science.

While Greenpeace analysis reviewed by DeSmog shows DT andDCF have given $170m over the years to fund other groups blocking climate change action, the source of the Donors’ network income remains largely hidden.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Charles Koch Admits Climate Change is Happening, Then Denies the Problem

May 5, 2015

Charles Koch Admits Climate Change is Happening, Then Denies the Problem

As the nation warily watches every Republican presidential candidate kiss the ring of billionaire donor Charles Koch for a shot at his network’s $300,000,000 pool of presidential cash, Charles Koch did something unusual. Last week’s USAToday interview with Charles Koch noted his shifting opinion on what he calls climate change “hysteria:”

For the record, Koch says this of climate change: “You can plausibly say thatCO2 has contributed” to the planet’s warming, but he sees “no evidence” to support “this theory that it’s going to be catastrophic.”

Wait…Charles Koch just accepted that the planet is warming? Hold your applause.

Clearly, Mr. Koch still denies that there’s a problem – which means he’s missing the entire point of discussing climate change. But any movement from Charles on the 5 Stages of Climate Denial–from #1 down to #3–is a big deal. This is the same guy who has poured $80 million into organizations that have misrepresented climate change science to the public and advocated against any viable solutions to the problem.

Koch’s Right-Hand-Man: “Charles is ahead of me on this.”

Last June, leaked recordings surfaced from Koch’s regular meeting of millionaires and billionaires who are coordinating $889 million in spending around the 2016 election. Charles’s Koch top strategist Richard Fink indicated that we may see a shift in Koch’s rhetoric on climate change. Fink, aka “Charles Koch’s Brain,” told attending prospective donors what they wanted to hear: donate to us, and we’ll fight the crazy commie hippies and their pesky science. From the Undercurrent

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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