{"id":49764,"date":"2019-11-22T08:51:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49764"},"modified":"2019-11-22T08:51:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:51:34","slug":"enviros-tools-of-russians-the-weird-conspiracy-theory-firing-up-kenneys-inquiry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49764","title":{"rendered":"Enviros Tools of Russians? The Weird Conspiracy Theory Firing up Kenney\u2019s Inquiry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Enviros Tools of Russians? The Weird Conspiracy Theory Firing up Kenney\u2019s Inquiry<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

SPECIAL REPORT: Alberta\u2019s \u2018anti-energy\u2019 probe makes a debunked US report its must-read.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"LamarSmith.jpg\"\/
Texas Republican Lamar Smith, a noted climate denier and big recipient of oil and gas political donations, led a House committee that produced a report suggesting environmentalists are manipulated by the Russian government.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Russian Attempts to Influence U.S. Domestic Energy Markets by Exploiting Social Media<\/em> was produced by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which at the time was led by a climate change-denying Republican from Texas named Lamar Smith. Upon its release in 2018, Democratic Congressman Ra\u00fal Grijalva described the report as \u201canother round of unsupported conspiracy theories,\u201d and it received little traction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the report is officially required reading for Alberta\u2019s inquiry, explicitly included in its terms of reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why would that be? Answers were not forthcoming from Inquiry Commissioner Steve Allan, who didn\u2019t respond to The Tyee\u2019s interview request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is very little the commissioner can share with the media at this time that is not contained on this website,\u201d\u00a0reads<\/a>\u00a0the Alberta Inquiry website. The commission\u2019s terms of reference also\u00a0explain<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cAs part of the inquiry, the commissioner shall examine the work completed by other investigations in other jurisdictions into similar activities or alleged activities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New York-based journalist who wrote<\/a> an article about the Republican-produced report was surprised Alberta is paying attention to its claims of Russian intrigue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is unexpected,\u201d said John Timmer, senior science editor for the media outlet Ars Technica. The report \u201cdidn\u2019t pick up very wide coverage perhaps because it was rather strange to begin with… It just didn\u2019t really hold up to a critical analysis very well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a bizarre compilation of allegations that feeds a conspiracy theory,\u201d said Devon Page, the executive director of Ecojustice, about the report\u2019s inclusion in the Alberta inquiry\u2019s terms of reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enviros Tools of Russians? The Weird Conspiracy Theory Firing up Kenney\u2019s Inquiry SPECIAL REPORT: Alberta\u2019s \u2018anti-energy\u2019 probe makes a debunked US report its must-read. Russian Attempts to Influence U.S. Domestic Energy Markets by Exploiting Social Media was produced by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which at the time was led […]<\/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":[3,4,5,6],"tags":[1082,27808,2370,12878,25592,10789,694,27809,827],"class_list":["post-49764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-alberta","tag-anti-energy-probe","tag-conspiracy-theory","tag-geoff-dembicki","tag-jason-kenney","tag-lamar-smith","tag-russia","tag-steve-allan","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49764","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=49764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49765,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49764\/revisions\/49765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}