{"id":20638,"date":"2016-05-16T10:56:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T15:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20638"},"modified":"2016-05-16T10:56:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T15:56:29","slug":"think-facts-matter-try-attending-a-friends-of-science-event-headlined-by-ezra-levant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20638","title":{"rendered":"Think Facts Matter? Try Attending a Friends of Science Event Headlined by Ezra Levant"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmog.ca\/2016\/05\/15\/think-facts-matter-try-attending-friends-science-event-headlined-ezra-levant\">Think Facts Matter? Try Attending a Friends of Science Event Headlined by Ezra Levant<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re only a minute into watching a brief\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2slCFJMHIRw\">low-budget video<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 one that begins by alleging\u00a0U.S.\u00a0President Barack Obama is a bully because he suggests that climate change deniers should be \u201ccalled out\u201d \u2014 when Ezra Levant sits down in the chair next to\u00a0me.<\/p>\n<p>The Rebel Commander\u00a0himself.<\/p>\n<p>According to organizers, he\u2019s the reason attendance of tonight\u2019s $45-per-head fundraiser in Calgary \u2014 casually titled \u201cClimate Leadership Catastrophe: Carbon Taxes, Job Loss, Freedoms Denied\u201d and organized by the so-called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/friends-of-science\">Friends of Science<\/a>\u201d \u2014 spiked from 200 to 445 people after he was announced as its keynote\u00a0speaker.<\/p>\n<p>And he\u2019s the same intensely controversial pundit who I met in late November at another Calgary event called \u201cGeneration Screwed\u201d which I covered for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_ca\/read\/i-spent-the-day-with-albertan-conservatives-who-think-we-are-generation-screwed\">Vice Canada<\/a>\u00a0while wearing a \u201cDreamy Trudeau\u201d\u00a0sweater.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey James,\u201d he says, reaching out his hand to shake\u00a0mine.<\/p>\n<p>We briefly chat as the video moves on to clips of testimonies from human-caused climate change denying scientists like\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/roy-spencer\">Roy Spencer\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/willie-soon\">Willie Soon<\/a>\u00a0(the latter took\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/feb\/21\/climate-change-denier-willie-soon-funded-energy-industry\">$1.25 million from fossil fuel companies and lobby groups<\/a>\u00a0for 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\u00a0him.<\/p>\n<p>I scribble a few observations in a notepad. He scrolls through his phone, probably Twitter mentions given he sports almost 50,000\u00a0followers.<\/p>\n<p>After a few minutes he gets up to leave. I remind him that I\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/james_m_wilt\/status\/728277033923452928\">tweeted<\/a>\u00a0at him a while back about how the Alberta\u00a0NDP\u00a0was elected on Karl Marx\u2019s birthday, which seems like crucial information to include in his vehemently anti-NDP\u00a0and pro-capitalist online\u00a0show.<\/p>\n<p>We opt to \u201cfollow\u201d each other on Twitter. He wanders\u00a0off.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think Facts Matter? Try Attending a Friends of Science Event Headlined by Ezra Levant &nbsp; We\u2019re only a minute into watching a brief\u00a0low-budget video\u00a0\u2014 one that begins by alleging\u00a0U.S.\u00a0President Barack Obama is a bully because he suggests that climate change deniers should be \u201ccalled out\u201d \u2014 when Ezra Levant sits down in the chair next [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3306,141,992,5317,13837,6820,13836],"class_list":["post-20638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-barack-obama","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-denial","tag-desmog-blog","tag-ezra-levant","tag-friends-of-science","tag-james-wilt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20639,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638\/revisions\/20639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}