Australia Oz 2 bak

capt 818

owens visa 10 25

bak 120

see sep NZ esp shooter

---

Jeremy-Walker-CCS-27-Sept-2023

Silencing the voice of Indigenous Australia: The fossil-funded Atlas Network and the Vote No disinformation campaign against the referendum on constitutional recognition Jeremy Walker Climate, Society & Environment Research Centre (C-SERC), University of Technology Sydney, Australia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0789-3457

Abstract: On the 14th of October 2023, Australians will vote in a referendum on a minimalist constitutional amendment to finally recognise the First Nations of Australia in its 1901 Constitution and to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. A year ago, polls suggested the referendum proposal of the Uluru Statement enjoyed over 60% support. Since the Vote No campaign was launched, polling suggests the Yes vote has declined to around 40%. This article argues that the Vote No operation is being organised on behalf of self-interested fossil fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back more than half a century. They don’t want Indigenous Australians to gain this long overdue constitutional recognition because they believe it will contribute to reining in the polluting industries that are driving us toward climate and ecological collapse.

Led by pop-up campaign unit Advance Australia, the No campaign is coordinated across the the Australian branch of the little-known, highly influential global infrastructure of the Atlas Network of ‘free-market thinktanks’– which includes the Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs and Liberty Works.

Based on publicly available evidence, I examine the role of oil companies and key actors in this highly integrated network of organisations, demonstrating that the No campaign shares the same aims and methods as the longstanding disinformation campaign against climate policy operated by the Atlas Network: to immunise transnational business profits from democratic parliaments.

---

===

gmail 12 25 icc

Climate deception starts young.Over the past decade, a Shell subsidiary has paid the Queensland Museum in Australia _millions of dollars to fund children’s educational programs_ that do not identify fossil fuels as a primary driver of climate change.

===

an 10 25

Politico reports Australia’s highest court has refused to grant MAGA influencer Candace Owens a visa, claiming she failed a “character test” according to that nation’s standards.

The Australian Constitution does not explicitly protect free speech, reports Politico, and High Court Justices Stephen Gageler, Michelle Gordon and Robert Beech-Jones jointly ruled that implied freedom of political communication “is not a ‘personal right,’ is not unlimited and is not absolute.”

In its unanimous decision, the court added that Australia’s Migration Act, which covers temporary and permanent visas, protects the Australian community from visitors who might “stir up or encourage dissension or strife on political matters.”

“Ms Owens’ … submissions should be emphatically rejected,” High Court Justice James Edelman said in a separate judgment.

Owens, who has claimed the wife of French leader Emmanuel Macron is a man, among other assertions, applied for a visa to enter Australia last year as part of a speaking tour. However, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke rejected her application through the character requirements clause of the country’s Migration Act.

IFrame Content

Owens petitioned the country’s High Court to reverse Burke’s rejection, arguing that Burke’s determination went against the Australian constitution.

Politico reports that Australia’s Department of Home Affairs defines “good character” as showing “enduring moral qualities of a person.” And in his decision, Burke said Owens had made “extremist and inflammatory comments towards Muslim, Black, Jewish and LGBTQIA+ communities which generate controversy and hatred.”

“In the current environment where the Australian community is experiencing heightened community tensions, as per the advice of Australia’s security apparatus, I find that there is a risk that [Owens’] controversial views will amplify grievances among communities and lead to increased hostility and violent or radical action,” Burke said, according to Politico.

Read the full Politico report at this link.

---

6 25 nhk japan

no lnx pix grf

Fighting falsehoods: the online battle over climate truth

Friday June 20, 2025

Global temperatures keep breaking records, and sea levels are rising. Reports from a United Nations climate panel say the science is settled, but it doesn't always seem that way online, where climate denial is thriving. Japan's Environment Ministry says that's undermining efforts to act, so it's fighting back with a new website that tackles myths and misinformation with cold, hard facts.

The global average temperature in 2024 was the warmest on record.

Climate change skepticism spreads

British news website Tortoise analyzed social media content from climate-related influencers. It says there was an 82 percent jump in the number of climate skeptic posts on the X platform from 2021 to 2024. It also says there was a 43 percent jump in the number of YouTube videos with that stance.

The United Nations Development Programme, which is working on measures to mitigate climate change, says there are two main motives behind the spread of disinformation on the topic.

One is to attract attention for profit. The UNDP says controversial views create followings that bring advertising revenue and political support.

The other reason, it says, is to protect vested interests. Delaying measures against climate change can protect the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry.

NHK spoke with Marc Morano, a former political aide and now an influential climate skeptic who disputes the link between global warming and human activity.

Marc Morano is a prominent climate skeptic.

Morano claims that the United Nations, governments and private companies stand to benefit from measures to limit carbon dioxide. He calls the issue of climate change "a clear fraud campaign" that has nothing to do with science.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change disagrees. It says there is no doubt human activity has caused global warming, and says global temperatures have risen faster in the past 50 years than at any other point in at least 2,000 years. The panel also says climate change can be contained if we act in time.

Disinformation disruption in the real world

Climate disinformation isn't just a theoretical danger. It turned a civil debate into chaos in one Australian city. The council of Onkaparinga was planning to declare a climate emergency in 2023, but the meeting was swarmed by protestors fueled by false ideas.

Residents of Onkaparinga flocked to the city council to protest a climate declaration.

Opponents of the declaration had whipped up alarm with false statements on social media, including a claim that only electric vehicles would be permitted after the declaration was issued.

The meeting had to be suspended, with the mayor and assembly members forced to evacuate.

Ika Trijsburg, a disinformation expert at the Australian National University, says climate change issues are ideal fodder for those who disseminate falsehoods, especially in a divided society.

Ika Trijsburg

Climate myths surging on social media

Claims without scientific evidence are gaining traction in Japan, too. Environment ministry officials say they've seen a surge in misleading online posts since late last year, including claims that global warming is not happening, or that human activity plays no role in greenhouse gas emissions.

An analysis by NHK found a sharp rise in Japanese-language posts on the social media platform X that question the reality of climate change or criticize decarbonization efforts.

In 2020, around 60,000 such posts were recorded. That number grew steadily year after year, reaching 220,000 in 2024. The increase was particularly pronounced after November when Donald Trump, a vocal critic of the Paris Agreement on climate change, won the US presidential election.

Japan government tackles misinformation

Japan's Environment Ministry has launched a new web page aimed at tackling climate change misinformation by presenting clear scientific information about global warming.

The site, which went live Friday, compiles information from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, drawing on the latest scientific research to explain the causes and impact of global climate change. UN reports attribute it mainly to greenhouse emissions caused by human activity.

The page also offers domestic data that show a rise in the frequency of extreme weather such as heatwaves and torrential rain — events that scientists attribute to climate change.

Speaking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting on Friday, Environment Minister Asao Keiichiro voiced concern over the rise of baseless claims online. He warned that such misinformation could undermine efforts by the government, businesses and the public to combat climate change. He said the ministry will continue efforts to ensure people are well-informed about the issue.

Fighting misinformation and disinformation

The spread of climate misinformation and disinformation has become a global concern, prompting the United Nations to act.

The UNDP in Asia and the Pacific has announced the launch of Una, an AI-powered chatbot designed to talk about climate initiatives.

AI character Una can answer questions regarding climate change in multiple languages including Japanese, English and Chinese.

Melissa Fleming, UN Undersecretary for Global Communications, says the planet faces an existential crisis with climate change, and the UN is "in an information battlefield" trying to convince people of the facts.

Fleming says the fight is against special interests who want to convince people that climate change is a hoax or that renewable energy is unreliable or too expensive, so they would have to give up their lifestyle. She says none of this is true.

Melissa Fleming

Fleming says the UN sees this as "one of the biggest risks of our time." She says every player needs to play its role: digital platforms can reduce the flow of falsehoods; advertisers and PR companies can stop funding disinformation; and media-literate people and governments can play a constructive role in the information environment.

---

an 12 24

The Australian Information Commissioner today announced a settlement with tech giant Meta over its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The settlement will see Meta establish a A$50 million ($32 million U.S.) payment program for Australian Facebook users who had their personal data harvested by the British political consulting firm.

The commissioner, Elizabeth Tydd, said:

Today’s settlement represents the largest ever payment dedicated to addressing concerns about the privacy of individuals in Australia.

However, details of the payment scheme remain uncertain. And it’s not yet clear whether it will send a strong enough message to other organisations to be more careful when handling sensitive personal information.

What was the Cambridge Analytica scandal?

Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm founded in 2013.

Five years later, it became an infamous household name, thanks to revelations it harvested the personal information of tens of millions of Facebook users. The firm then used this data to target messaging for political campaigns, including the 2016 US presidential election, won by Donald Trump.

The firm harvested sensitive data of Facebook users through a third-party app called This is Your Digital Life, created in November 2013 by Aleksandr Kogan, a professor at Cambridge University. It was enabled to do this by Meta, which three years earlier had changed its software to allow third-party apps to access Facebook users’ personal data.

Only 53 people in Australia installed the app.

However, Australia’s information commissioner estimates that an additional 311,074 Facebook users who were Facebook “friends” of people who installed the app may also have had their personal information compromised.

How will the payment scheme work?

The payment scheme is the culmination of a protracted legal battle between Australia’s privacy regulator and Meta, which have been locked in court proceedings in Australia since 2020. As part of the agreement, the regulator has dropped proceedings against Meta in the Federal Court.

The payment scheme will be set up by Meta but administered by an independent third party. It will be open to people who:

had a Facebook account between November 2 2013 and December 17 2015
were present in Australia for at least 30 days during that period
either installed the This is Your Digital Life app using Facebook login or were Facebook friends with an individual who installed the app.

People can check whether they are eligible on a help page on the Facebook website. The information commissioner anticipates those who are eligible will be able to submit applications “in the second quarter of 2025”.

According to the undertaking, it could take two years for eligible claimants to receive a payment from Meta.

Several uncertainties

Several aspects of the payment scheme remain uncertain. This is because a number of elements will be determined by “scheme instructions” to be given by Meta or left to the absolute discretion of the third-party administrator.

For instance, we don’t yet know:

the set amount that will be paid to any eligible person who experienced “a generalised concern or embarrassment”, or
what will be regarded as sufficient evidence that such a person also experienced “specific” loss or damage that entitles them to further compensation.

If the administrator decides on a total amount of compensation for eligible claimants which is less than A$50 million, the remaining funds will be paid to the Australian government’s consolidated revenue fund.

Long overdue

Australia’s privacy commissioner Carly Kind has called this settlement “groundbreaking”. But such enforcement action is long overdue.

When the information commissioner originally brought these proceedings in 2020, it was the first time the regulator had sought a civil penalty order under the Privacy Act. But it has had that power since 2014.

The commissioner was also following in the footsteps of privacy and consumer protection regulators in other countries that had already taken action against Meta over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

For instance, the UK privacy regulator fined Facebook the maximum £500,000 (A$997,167). The US Federal Trade Commission also settled with Meta on a record-breaking US$5 billion (A$7.86 billion) payment.

These precedents help in understanding the limited deterrent effect the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner case is likely to have on Meta. When the US$5 billion settlement was announced in 2019, Facebook’s share price increased.

The settlement between Meta and the Australian information commissioner represents roughly 0.02% of the tech giant’s US$130 billion global revenue for 2023.

A Meta spokesperson said the company had settled on a “no admission basis” and that the allegations “relate to past practices no longer relevant to how Meta’s products or systems work today”.

However, this is far from the only privacy breach by Meta, with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission last year reaching a A$20 million settlement with Meta companies over claims that its Onavo VPN service misled users about how their data would be used.

Katharine Kemp, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law & Justice; Lead, UNSW Public Interest Law & Tech Initiative, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

---

https://boingboing.net/2023/02/08/australia-chooses-the-great-barrier-reef-over-a-coal-mine.html

sidney aus flood 4x in 16mos?! murdoch news? coal export?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/pain-climate-change-too-great/

an 1120

a shocking legacy’: Malcolm Turnbull slams News Corp reporter to his face for aiding Murdoch's 'enormous damage to western democracy'

Alex Henderson

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, during a panel discussion on climate change, slammed Australian journalist and News Corps employee Paul Kelly for refusing to stand up to Rupert Murdoch's climate change denial.

Turnbull argued, "The company that you work for and its...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/radicalized-right-wingers-uniting-online-many-inspired-by-trump-threaten-democracy-overseas/

cmn dr

no twt pix lnx

australian researchers published a study this week mapping the online activity of right-wing extremists in New South Wales, concluding such individuals—many of them inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump—pose an "insidious" threat to the country's democracy.

The study, Mapping Networks and Narratives of Online Right-Wing Extremists in New South Wales, was conducted by researchers at Macquarie University and Victoria University, who analyzed the Facebook pages of 30 extreme right-wing groups and tens of thousands of tweets from over 3,300 users in the southeastern state.

The researchers found that on numerous social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Gab, 4chan, and 8chan/kun—communities of mostly young men are uniting over "the theme of white identity under threat."

Anti-semitism, Islamophobia, and far-right conspiracy theories like QAnon are common narratives used to engage and recruit young men into extremist groups, the study found. Trump plays a significant role in the conversation, according to Macquarie University researcher Julian Droogan.

"Trump is really held up as an example of a defender of white identity by many in this extreme subculture," Droogan told The Guardian. "However, we also see it being presented in a distinctly Australian way."

The researchers found that right-wing extremism fueled by social media poses a serious threat to Australian democracy.

"The propagation of extremist narratives online serves to polarize political debate, and to undermine trust in institutions and democracy," the study asserts. "Social media is playing a key role in the rise of right-wing violent extremism."

As an example, the authors cite the Christchurch terror attack, in which a Trump-supporting Australian white supremacist livestreamed his massacre of 51 Muslims worshipping in a New Zealand mosque last March.

The researchers call on Australian leaders to work to safeguard the nation's political system "from these very insidious and ongoing threats."

[.@ASIOGovAu have repeatedly made clear the real, growing, and dangerous threat right-wing extremists pose in Australia.

In fact, almost half of ASIO’s counter-terrorism work is focussed on right-wing extremists (and COVID has played a role in that).]

The rise in right-wing extremism is reflected in statements from the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, Australia's domestic spy agency, which recently revealed that up to 40% of its counter-terrorism cases now involve far-right extremism.

1020 tom d

In an all-too-literal fashion, The Donald is indeed proving to be history's "fire and fury" president.

And don't for a moment think that there was no warning about the over-the-top burning now underway in this country. After all, in 2019, parts of Australia were singed to a crisp in a way never before seen, killing at least 25 humans and possibly more than a billion animals. And that country, too, was headed by a climate-change denier, a man who once brought a piece of coal to parliament and handed it around while soothingly telling other legislators, "Don't be afraid, don't be scared."

https://yyy.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this

In addition, in recent years, the Arctic (of all places) has been smoking and burning in an unprecedented fashion, heating its permafrost and releasing staggering amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Oh, and this June, the temperature in a small town in Siberia crossed the 100-degree mark for the first time.

By the way, Russia, too, is run by a leader who until recently was a climate denier.I mean, what is it about the urge of so many of us in such a crisis to support those dedicated to quite literally destroying this planet as a livable place for... well, us? (Hey there, Jair Bolsonaro!)

4/20

1 in 10 Children Affected by Bushfires Is Indigenous. We’ve Been Ignoring Them for Too Long

an 220

On a knife edge’: Experts warn of new signs the Great Barrier Reef is at severe risk Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

desmog 220

Edward Cavanough. This story originally appeared in The Nation and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

The country is paying a deadly price for its conservative politicians’ climate denialism.

sci am? 1/20? marine mammals will be hit hard

ew 120

Australian Supreme Court has stepped in to put an immediate halt to a logging project in east Victoria while it waits for cases about the health of native species to be heard in court, according the Brisbane Times.

Fox News prime-time avoided covering record Australian bushfires until a Murdoch paper (wrongly) minimized the role of climate change.
In the wake of the Australian fires, climate crisis denialism reportedly got a big boost from Facebook.

ref

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahryan/facebook-australia-bushfires-climate-change-deniers-facebook

Numerous experts have linked the vast scale of Australia's bushfires to climate change, noting that unprecedented heat and drought created conditions for fires to flourish.

But as Australians choked on smoke and discovered their homes had been destroyed this summer, a different message was spreading on Facebook.

Counter-theories gained traction online that blamed the fires on arsonists, failed hazard reduction policies and even lasers designed to clear a path for a high-speed railway. These theories are untrue or misleading, and have been used to undermine the mainstream consensus on the role of climate change.

And Facebook — the platform conspiracists are using most effectively to muddy the waters or straight-up deny climate change — is doing little to stop the spread.[pix roos]

Australia's federal opposition leader Anthony Albanese, who has previously called out Facebook for failing to take down a doctored image of himself, criticised the platform's failure to police false information.

"What Australians dealing with the bushfire crisis need is information and support," Albanese told BuzzFeed News in a statement. "What they don’t need is rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories being peddled by far-right pages and politicians."

A BuzzFeed News analysis using social media tool CrowdTangle shows that during the worst of the fires, far-right, fringe and conspiratorial Facebook pages were enjoying unusual success by spreading content that misdirected blame away from climate change.

BuzzFeed News assembled a list of almost 100 Facebook pages that were sharing misleading information about climate science in the height of the bushfire crisis. Crowdtangle data shows that engagement for those pages escalated significantly just as the worst hit, on New Year's Eve.

1/20 sum of us?

eenage climate activists around the world need your help.

They’re furious with Siemens. The massive engineering company likes to promote itself as green and clean -- but it just decided to help build agiant coal mine in Australia that would kill any chance of saving the planet from climate chaos.

Greta Thunberg has called for protests and teenagers have been showing up outside Siemens offices across the world. Together we can get engineering giant Siemens to pull support from the mine, and stop it from being built.

And here's the plan: The Siemens’ shareholder meeting is less than two weeks away. Young climate strikers want to turn it into a PR nightmare and force Siemens to do the right thing -- but first they have to get there. Can you rush funds to hire a fleet of buses to bring school kids to the Siemens shareholder meeting?

format

In the wake of the Australian fires, climate crisis denialism reportedly got a big boost from Facebook.

ref

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahryan/facebook-australia-bushfires-climate-change-deniers-facebook

Numerous experts have linked the vast scale of Australia's bushfires to climate change, noting that unprecedented heat and drought created conditions for fires to flourish.

But as Australians choked on smoke and discovered their homes had been destroyed this summer, a different message was spreading on Facebook.

And Facebook — the platform conspiracists are using most effectively to muddy the waters or straight-up deny climate change — is doing little to stop the spread.[pix roos]

BuzzFeed News assembled a list of almost 100 Facebook pages that were sharing misleading information about climate science in the height of the bushfire crisis. Crowdtangle data shows that engagement for those pages escalated significantly just as the worst hit, on New Year's Eve.

120 ew

Ashutosh Pandey

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg is returning to the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the 2020 World Economic Forum with a strong and clear message: put an end to the fossil fuel "madness."

Thunberg's missive is aimed at, among others, U.S. President Donald Trump, who in the past has mocked the Swedish environmental campaigner, saying she has an "anger management problem." Trump, who is among the most prominent climate change skeptics, is returning to Davos after giving it a miss in 2019 due to a government shutdown.

It's the first time Trump and Thunberg would be present at the same event since last year's United Nations climate change summit in New York, where the teenager could be seen staring down the U.S. president as the two briefly crossed paths.

Later, Thunberg — named TIME magazine's Person of the Year 2019 — told the BBC that she "wouldn't have wasted [her] time" talking to Trump about the climate crisis at the UN event.

"Honestly, I don't think I would have said anything because obviously he's not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me," she said.

[vid]

'State of Emergency'

Thunberg, who famously told Davos participants last year that "our house is on fire," has, however, found support among the organizers of the World Economic Forum, including its81-year-old founder Klaus Schwab, who said the world is facing "a state of emergency."

"We do not want to reach the tipping point of irreversibility on climate change," Schwab told reporters on Tuesday. "We do not want the next generations to inherit a world which becomes ever more hostile and ever less habitable — just think of the wildfires in Australia," he said.

An annual risks survey published by the WEF on Wednesday put climate and other environmental threats ahead of risks posed by geopolitical tensions and cyberattacks. It's the first time that the survey found the top five long-term risks were all environmental, from extreme weather events to businesses and governments failing to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Stakeholder Capitalism

Sustainability is the main theme at this year's Davos meeting, taking place at a time the world is grappling with global warming which is threatening to become worse because of growing divisions among nations and businesses on how to tackle it.

The meeting, which will see over 50 heads of state and government, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, descend on the Alpine resort, seeks to give concrete meaning to "stakeholder capitalism" — a concept that businesses should serve the interests of all society rather than simply their shareholders.

"Business has now to fully embrace stakeholder capitalism, which means not only maximizing profits, but use their capabilities and resources in cooperation with governments and civil society to address the key issues of this decade," Schwab said. "They have to actively contribute to a more cohesive and sustainable world."

Davos 2020 by the Numbers

About 3,000 participants from nearly 120 countries. One in four participants is a woman
53 heads of state and government
Nearly 1,700 business leaders, including CEOs from 8 of the 10 most valuable companies in the world
Over 350 sessions and workshops
88% of the cars used by the WEF are electric or hybrid

Greta Thunberg to Davos Elite: Act Now on Climate to 'Safeguard ... ›

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/australias-climate-carnage-is-an-urgent-warning-to-america-and-the-world/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/world/australia/fires-murdoch-disinformation.html

no lnx

News analysis

How Rupert Murdoch Is Influencing Australia’s Bushfire Debate

Critics see a concerted effort to shift blame, protect conservative leaders and divert attention from climate change.

By Damien Cave

Published Jan. 8, 2020

Updated Jan. 13, 2020

WOMBEYAN CAVES, Australia — Deep in the burning forests south of Sydney this week, volunteer firefighters were clearing a track through the woods, hoping to hold back a nearby blaze, when one of them shouted over the crunching of bulldozers.

“Don’t take photos of any trees coming down,” he said. “The greenies will get a hold of it, and it’ll all be over.”

The idea that “greenies” or environmentalists would oppose measures to prevent fires from ravaging homes and lives is simply false. But the comment reflects a narrative that’s been promoted for months by conservative Australian media outlets, especially the influential newspapers and television stations owned by Rupert Murdoch.

And it’s far from the only Murdoch-fueled claim making the rounds. His standard-bearing national newspaper, The Australian, has also repeatedly argued that this year’s fires are no worse than those of the past — not true, scientists say, noting that 12 million acres have burned so far, with 2019 alone scorching more of New South Wales than the previous 15 years combined.

And on Wednesday, Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp, the largest media company in Australia, was found to be part of another wave of misinformation. An independent study found online bots and trolls exaggerating the role of arson in the fires, at the same time that an article in The Australian making similar assertions became the most popular offering on the newspaper’s website.

It’s all part of what critics see as a relentless effort led by the powerful media outlet to do what it has also done in the United States and Britain — shift blame to the left, protect conservative leaders and divert attention from climate change.

“It’s really reckless and extremely harmful,” said Joëlle Gergis, an award-winning climate scientist at the Australian National University. “It’s insidious because it grows. Once you plant those seeds of doubt, it stops an important conversation from taking place.”

News Corp denied playing such a role. “Our coverage has recognized Australia is having a conversation about climate change and how to respond to it,” the company said in an email. “The role of arsonists and policies that may have contributed to the spread of fire are, however, legitimate stories to report in the public interest.”

Yet, for many critics, the Murdoch approach suddenly looks dangerous. They are increasingly connecting News Corp to the spread of misinformation and the government’s lackluster response to the fires. They argue that the company and the coalition led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison are responsible — together, as a team — for the failure to protect a country that scientists say is more vulnerable to climate change than any other developed nation.

Editors and columnists for News Corp were among the loudest defenders of Mr. Morrison after he faced blowback for vacationing in Hawaii as the worst of the fire season kicked off in December.

In late December, the Oz, as the News Corp-owned paper is known here, heavily promoted an interview with the government’s energy minister, Angus Taylor, warning that “top-down” pressure from the United Nations to address climate change would fail — followed by an opinion piece from Mr. Taylor on New Year’s Eve.

Other News Corp outlets followed a similar playbook. Melbourne’s Herald Sun, for example, pushed news of the bushfires to Page 4 on New Year’s Eve, even as they threatened to devastate towns nearby and push thick smoke into the city.

Days later, residents in a town nearly flattened by the fires heckled and snubbed Mr. Morrison during a visit to assess the damage. A new hire for Mr. Murdoch’s Sky News channel, Chris Smith, branded them “ferals” — slang for unkempt country hobos.

[The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: Why Australia Is Burning

As firefighters battle flames across the country, Australia’s prime minister is fighting to keep climate change out of the conversation.

transcript

0:00/28:11

Listen to ‘The Daily’: Why Australia Is Burning

Hosted by Michael Barbaro; produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Annie Brown, Adizah Eghan, Eric Krupke, Neena Pathak and Sydney Harper; with help from Daniel Guillemette; edited by M.J. Davis Lin and Theo Balcomb

As firefighters battle flames across the country, Australia’s prime minister is fighting to keep climate change out of the conversation.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today: The prime minister of Australia is calling for a high-level investigation into how the country’s government has responded to the devastating wildfires there. My colleague Livia Albeck-Ripka on the events that led up to this moment. It’s Monday, January 13.

...

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

As is often the case at Murdoch outlets around the world, there have been exceptions to the company line — an article about the Australian golfer Greg Norman’s declaration that “there is climate change taking place”; an interview with an international expert who explained why this year’s fires are unique.

But a search for “climate change” in the main Murdoch outlets mostly yields stories condemning protesters who demand more aggressive action from the government; editorials arguing against “radical climate change policy”; and opinion columns emphasizing the need for more backburning to control fires — if only the left-wing greenies would allow it to happen.

The Australian Greens party has made clear that it supports such hazard-reduction burns, issuing a statement online saying so.

Climate scientists do acknowledge that there is room for improvement when it comes to burning the branches and dead trees on the ground that can fuel fires. But they also say that no amount of preventive burning will offset the impact of rising temperatures that accelerate evaporation, dry out land and make already-arid Australia a tinderbox.

Even fire officials report that most of the off-season burns they want to do are hindered not by land-use laws but by weather — including the lengthier fire season and more extreme precipitation in winter that scientists attribute to climate change.

Still, the Murdoch outlets continue to resist. “On a dry continent prone to deadly bushfires for centuries, fuel reduction through controlled burning is vital,” said an editorial published Thursday in The Australian. It went on to add: “Changes to climate change policy, however, would have no immediate impact on bushfires” — a stance that fits hand in glove with government officials’ frequent dismissals of the “bogey man of climate change.”

It’s that echoing between officialdom and Murdoch media that has many people so concerned.

“Leaders should be held to account and they should be held to account by the media,” said Penny D. Sackett, a physicist, astronomer and former chief scientist for Australia.

Timothy Graham, a lecturer at Queensland University of Technology who conducted the study of Twitter accounts exaggerating the role of arson in Australia’s fires, said media companies also needed to be cognizant of the disinformation ecosystem and stop contributing to the problem. That includes mainstream outlets, like ABC News, sharing inaccurate maps that exaggerate the reach of the fires.

But in the case of the arson issue, he said, scores of bots and trolls — many of which previously posted support for President Trump — have joined conservative media like the Murdoch outlets in promoting the idea that Australia’s fires are not a “climate emergency” but an “arson emergency.”

“Maybe 3 to 5 percent of fires could be attributed to arson, that’s what scientists tell us — nevertheless, media outlets, especially those that tend to be partisan, jump on that,” Dr. Graham said.

Of course, it is often hard to know just how much influence any media company has. Gerard Henderson, a columnist for The Australian, said he didn’t think there was much need to address climate change because it was already a focal point across the rest of the media.

“It’s hard to distract from climate change because it’s spoken about constantly,” he said.

But there are signs that the Murdoch message is making headway — at least in terms of what people make a priority. Many firefighters working the smoky hills south of Sydney hesitated to state their views on climate change this week (some said senior leaders had told them to avoid the issue). But they were quick to argue for more backburning.

Similarly, in Bairnsdale, Tina Moon, whose farm was devastated by the fires, said she was mostly furious about the government’s failure to clear the land around her property.

“I don’t think it’s climate change,” she said.

Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting from Bairnsdale, Australia.

1/20 new

Australia is struggling to cope with deadly infernos and faces losing nearly a billion animals in the terrible bushfires — but in the midst of those tragedies, authorities are also battling hoaxes and misinformation, including false reports of widespread arson. Many of the claims seek to suggest that arson, not climate change, was a key driver of the historic fires.

The hashtag #ArsonEmergency began trending shortly after the new year. Queensland University of Technology researcher Timothy Graham says heidentified troll and bot social media accounts that tried to shift the narrative about the fires as being the work of dozens of criminals.

"We studied about 300 Twitter accounts driving the #ArsonEmergency hashtag to identify inauthentic behavior," Graham said Friday in an essay for The Conversation, which he co-wrote with fellow researcher Tobias Keller.

"We found many accounts using #ArsonEmergency were behaving 'suspiciously,' compared to those using #AustraliaFire and #BushfireAustralia," they said. "Accounts peddling #ArsonEmergency carried out activity similar to what we've witnessed in past disinformation campaigns, such as the coordinated behavior of Russian trolls during the 2016 US presidential election."

As for who mounted the social media campaign to push the arson narrative, Graham and Keller say that while software tools allowed them to identify bots and trolls, they weren't able to trace the bogus accounts to any specific people or entities.

While arson has historically been one of the causes of Australian wildfires, the country is facing an unprecedented bushfire disaster. Since September, fires have now consumed an area larger than the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined. And a new "megafire" was created Friday when two blazes joined — covering nearly 1.5 million acres, as NPR's Scott Neuman reports.

The #ArsonEmergency campaign seems to have peaked around Tuesday, when thousands of tweets used the hashtag, Graham and Keller say.

Around the same time the bot campaign hit its crescendo, news stories about the wildfires also touted a police report in hard-hit New South Wales, where authorities recently announced that they have taken legal action against more than 180 people for fire-related offenses. But only a small fraction of those people face charges that might be construed as arson, and the figure also spans a period that began in late 2019.

The NSW police said that while 24 people were charged with deliberately lighting bushfires, 53 faced legal actions — which include a warning — for not complying with a statewide ban on fires. And the overall number also includes 47 people who were accused of not properly disposing of lit cigarettes or matches.

Conservatives in the U.S. also picked up on the arson thread, with President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., retweeting a post about the arrests in New South Wales.

WORLD

Enormous 'Megafire' In Australia Engulfs 1.5 Million Acres

Documenting a further convolution in the narrative, Australia's ABC reports, "Some of the misinformation includes the idea left-wing 'ecoterrorists' are behind some fires."

On Friday, an employee of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in Australia raised concerns about the company's coverage of the wildfires, accusing the publisher of newspapers such as The Australian and the Herald Sun of carrying out an irresponsible "misinformation campaign."

"I find it unconscionable to continue working for this company, knowing I am contributing to the spread of climate change denial and lies," Emily Townsend, a commercial finance manager at News Corp, wrote in an all-staff email. She added that the newspapers' angles of coverage were "not only irresponsible, but dangerous and damaging to our communities and beautiful planet."

Townsend told The Sydney Morning Herald she doesn't regret that her email was leaked to the wider press. And a News Corp executive told the newspaper that Townsend was already in the process of leaving the company, having resigned in December.

Beyond arguments over the impacts of climate change, Australia's wildfires do have a real political aspect: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has frequently been criticized for his approach to the disaster, from his interactions with affected states to his recent vacation getaway to Hawaii as the raging fires destroyed communities back home. On Friday, protesters vented their anger at Morrison and the government by holding a large demonstration in Sydney.

SCIENCE

Australian Fires Prompt Questions About Protecting Houses From Embers

Experts say the intense and widespread effects of Australia's wildfires are related to a number of factors, from the destructive nature of wind-borne embers — which swirl high into the air and help fires spread rapidly and unpredictably — to building standards that allow houses to be constructed out of flammable materials and planning regulations that don't enforce enough of a buffer zone around houses built in vulnerable areas.

Australia's fires are spreading more quickly and ferociously because of prolonged drought and hot weather — both of which are exacerbated by climate change — are providing copious dry fuel.

WORLD

Australia Wildfires Have Claimed 25 Lives And Will Burn For Months, Officials Say

According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, most of the bushfires that are started by arson burn only around five hectares — a little over 12 acres of land. The government crime agency says most arson fires are started by young people in disadvantaged areas. The AIC lists these patterns:

"Communities with a high propensity for arson often have a high proportion of children under 15 and lower education levels, employment rates and household income than the national average (Muller 2009). Unfortunately, communities with this demographic profile are common on the outskirts of cities where there are opportunities for bushfire arson near at hand and consequently, the bulk of bushfire arson ignitions occur in this context."

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/01/09/these-climate-science-deniers-are-spreading-misinformation-about-australian-bushfires

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has doubled down on his refusal to strengthen his administration’s approach to climate policy as his country burns. While Morrison acknowledges that climate change is one factor driving the fires, he is unwilling to consider reversing his government’s poor record on climate action to help prevent similar disasters happening again.

In recent days, Morrison’s position has been bolstered by a group of fringe climate science deniers pushing conspiracy theories and misinformation about the relationship between the fires and climate change.

Alex Jones’ NewsWars

An article on the alt-right website NewsWars makes the false claim that “authorities in Australia are working on the premise that arsonists and lightning strikes are to blame for bushfires that have devastated numerous areas of the country, not ‘climate change’ as many global warming alarmists have claimed.” Independent factcheckers from Climate Feedback judged the article to be “misleading”, saying the claim's “flawed reasoning misunderstands that fires are exacerbated by hot and dry conditions and Australia is currently facing a severe drought amidst increasing temperatures.”

NewsWars is published by Alex Jones, who has been described as “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit which tracks hate groups.

Jones has interviewed numerous climate change deniers on his InfoWarsradio show including Lord Christopher Monckton, Marc Morano, John Coleman, and James Delingpole. Jones has promoted the idea that the United Nations seek a “global government” and has described the UN as “the founders of the global tyranny” when criticizing the 2009 Copenhagen climate change negotiations.

Jones’ material has been variously banned or suspended from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for violating the sites’ respective guidelines around abusive behaviour and hate speech.

Myron Ebell and Patrick Michaels

Two stalwart climate science deniers and fossil fuel industry promoters published an article in the Washington Examiner arguing that, “it’s very convenient for alarmist greens to blame the fires of Australia and California on global warming. In reality, the policies they themselves advocate are the culprits.” In other words, they claim that only poor land management is to blame — not decades of rising emissions and global temperatures.

Myron Ebell is the Director of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). In 1998, Ebell was a member of the “Global Climate Science Communications Team” (GCSCT) assembled by the American Petroleum Institute (API), which worked on a plan to convince the public that climate change was uncertain. In September of 2016, Myron Ebell was selectedto lead Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency transition team, though he later admitted he had never actually directly spoken to the President.

CEI has received over $1.5 million from the oil giant ExxonMobil. It has also received a combined total of over $6 million from the secretive DonorsTrustand Donors Capital Fund, groups used by organisations including the industrialist billionaires the Koch family to funnel funds to conservative causes.

Patrick Michaels is a relatively recent recruit to the CEI, having previously been director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the energy industry to spread misinformation on climate change.

Tony Abbott

In an interview about the fires, Australia’s former Prime Minister Tony Abbott told radio in Israel that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions were “not the only, or even main factor” in driving climate change, the Guardian reports. In the same interview, he said the world was “in the grip of a climate cult”.

Abbott gave the annual lecture for the UK’s principal climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), in 2017. In the speech he said rising carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning could be “beneficial” and compared acceptance of human-caused climate change to religion. University of Melbourne climate scientist Dr Benjamin Henley said at the time that the lecture was “full of falsehoods, miscomprehension, and basic untruths.”

The GWPF has recently promoted at least seven articles trying to play down or counter the message that the fires were related to climate change.

Christopher Monckton

Not to be outdone, Viscount Christopher Monckton, a man who once rode into the annual UN climate talks on a camel felt the need to “nail the childish myth that global warming caused the bushfires in Australia” in a long blog post.

A journalist by trade and former advisor to the Thatcher government, Monckton’s assertions on the causes of climate change have been widely discredited. He has also been reprimanded by the House of Lords for falsely claiming to be a sitting peer and warned not to use official imagery on his presentations.

Roy Spencer

Another fringe blogger arguing that climate change has less to do with the fires than credible scientists suggest is Roy Spencer, a research scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. On his blog, he argues that population rises and natural variability can explain the raging fires.

Spencer is an advisor to the Cornwall Alliance, formerly the Interfaith Steward Alliance (ISA), an evangelical Christian group that claims environmentalism is “one of the greatest threats to society and the church today.” He has done work with other religious groups denying climate change including the Evangelical Climate Initiative.

Murdoch media

Australia is home to one of the world’s most influential media moguls, Rupert Murdoch. Yet his outlets “continue to spread climate denial, attack other outlets providing lifesaving coverage, and ignore local fire threats,” according to a report from nonprofit watchdog Media Matters for America (MMFA).

MMFA points to multiple commentators on Sky News Australia who refer to those saying climate change is driving the fires as having “joined a cult” and “been brainwashed.” One commentator, Andrew Bolt, reportedly called the “big global warming scare” a “con” when discussing the fires. Bolt is one of many conservative-leaning commentators to attack youth activist Greta Thunberg, calling her “deeply disturbed”.

The Murdoch-owned The Australian has also published multiple opinion pieces attacking the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for its comprehensive coverage of the fires, the Guardian reports, including its reports linking them to climate change.

Bots

Multiple reports have also pointed to the role of social media bots helping to spread conspiracy theories to counter the claim that climate change is driving the fires.

Analysis by Queensland University of Technology senior lecturer Dr Timothy Graham found a “current disinformation campaign” on Twitter’s #arsonemergency hashtag due to the “suspiciously high number of bot-like and troll-like accounts”, the Guardian reported.

Analysis by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation found “some of the suspicious accounts were amplifying unproven suggestions arson had been the overwhelming cause of Australia's disastrous bushfire season.” These claims have been contradicted by official statements from Australian police.

Reputable sources

In contrast to the misinformation, a large number of climate scientists have been busy talking to the mainstream media to explain the links between climate change and the bushfires.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, told Time that Australia’s record high temperatures and droughts have both driven the fires, and that both have “well-established” links to climate change.

Likewise, Australian National University climate scientist Dr Imran Ahmed, University of Sydney ecologist Glenda Wardle, and Richard Thornton, the chief executive of the Bushfires & Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre, all told the BBC that climate change was “exacerbating” conditions that drive the fires.

So contrary to what climate science deniers, unqualified commentators and bots would have people believe, there is a large body of research showing the bushfires are “undeniably” linked to climate change.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/01/08/australian-fire-conspiracy-theories-alex-jones-murdoch

desmog 120 1/8

no lnx

Debunked Australian Bushfire Conspiracy Theories Were Pushed by Alex Jones, Murdoch Media

By Justin Mikulka • Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - 18:29

As unusually intense and widespread bushfires have ravaged a drought-ridden Australia, bots and trolls have begun pushing climate science denial across the internet in the form of conspiracy theories about the fires. Thanks to climate change, exceptionally hot, dry drought conditions have worsened and lengthened Australia's typical fire season.

Two of the main conspiracies about the fires are based on the false ideas that they are caused by a spate of arson and they have been worsened by the Green Party's supposed efforts to stop controlled burns as a fire management and reduction measure.

Dr. Timothy Graham from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) did an analysis of the online activity and concluded there was a high level of bots involved in spreading these conspiracies. As ZDnet reported, Graham is “at least confident” that that this was some type of disinformation campaign.

Sites like NewsWars — which was founded by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones who falsely claimed the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax — are already pushing these conspiracies.

Notorious climate deniers Patrick Michaels and Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute promoted the same conspiracies in the Washington Examiner. And the discredited extremist science denier Lord Monckton also weighed in.

However, it isn’t just fringe sites pushing these ideas. The New York Times reports that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has also been instrumental in publishing these debunked claims (and others claiming that these fires are no worse than normal).

Despite multiple sources clearly discrediting these myths, CNN’s top story in its World News section today, which is also featured in its website's top stories banner this morning, included the misleading headline, “Police in Australia are accusing 24 people of deliberately setting bushfires” — reinforcing the work of conspiracy theorists' messaging.

Police and Firefighters Debunk the Myths

A common theme in these myths is that the Australian police and firefighters are the source of these purported claims about the wildfires, which has been strongly refuted by none other than the police and firefighters.

The Guardian reported that a spokeswoman for the Victoria police said, “There is currently no intelligence to indicate that the fires in East Gippsland and the North East have been caused by arson or any other suspicious behaviour.”

That same article notes that according to a Rural Fire Service spokesman, “The majority of the larger fires in the state [of New South Wales] were caused by lightning, and that arson was a relatively small source of ignition.”

Members of the New South Wales fire brigade have also dismissed the idea that the fires are due to efforts by the Green Party to stop fire management practices.

unusually intense and widespread bushfires have ravaged a drought-ridden Australia, bots and trolls have begun pushing climate science denial across the internet in the form of conspiracy theories about the fires. Thanks to climate change, exceptionally hot, dry drought conditions have worsened and lengthened Australia's typical fire season.

icn 120

in Australia's Burning Forests, Signs We've Passed a Global Warming Tipping Point

BY: BOB BERWYN

"Nobody saw it coming this soon, even though it was like a freight train," one scientist said. "It’s likely the forests won’t be coming back as we know them.

As extreme wildfires burn across large swaths of Australia, scientists say we're witnessing how global warming can push forest ecosystems past a point of no return.

Some of those forests won't recover in today's warmer climate, scientists say. They expect the same in other regions scarred by flames in recent years; in semi-arid areas like parts of the American West, the Mediterranean Basin and Australia, some post-fire forest landscapes will shift to brush or grassland.

More than 17 million acres have burned in Australia over the last three months amid record heat that has dried vegetation and pulled moisture from the land. Hundreds of millions of animals, including a large number of koalas, are believed to have perished in the infernos. The survivors will face drastically changed habitats. Water flows and vegetation will change, and carbon emissions will rise as burning trees release carbon and fewer living trees are left to pull CO2 out of the air and store it.

In many ways, it's the definition of a tipping point, as ecosystems transform from one type into another.

The surge of large, destructive forest fires from the Arctic to the tropics just in the last few years has shocked even researchers who focus on forests and fires and who have warned of such tipping points for years.

The projections were seen as remote, "something that would happen much farther in the future," said University of Arizona climate scientist David Breashers. "But it's happening now. Nobody saw it coming this soon, even though it was like a freight train.

"It's likely the forests won't be coming back as we know them."...

https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/us-broadcast-news-coverage-australian-fires-largely-fails-connect-crisis-climate

corp news fail connect fires to age, plus

:{Amid raging bushfire, Rupert Murdoch's Australian media empire turns a blind eye to climate crisis:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:flex;height:1.5em;margin-right:1em;width:1.5em"):}:01/06/20 3:32 PM EST

pm heckled

[talkies 2010 drought russia lost 1/3 wht crop --> arab spring?!]

jet stream oscillation dry out CA --> wildfire?

Australia welcomes in 2020 — and shows the world the devastating effects of the climate crisis

Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

Many times on New Year’s Eve, people in the United States are treated to pictures of revelry in Australia as the peculiarities of the International Date Line officially usher in the next year many hours in advance of the ball drop in Times Square.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/everything-is-burning-australian-inferno-continues-choking-access-to-cities-across-the-country/

abc has to do news outside b/c smoke alarms canberra, record hi temps, fires

Australia Protesters Pitch Tents Outside PM House over Climate Crisis

rhet media 2019

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1177083X.2018.1503605

11/21

https://time.com/5735660/sydney-bushfires/

The US newspapers had the largest number of articles in percentage terms (34%) which contained skeptical voices over the period examined, and nearly double the next country which was the UK at 19%. The Chinese newspapers came next with 7% of all articles, although the figures were taken from a low base. India and France followed with roughly 6%, with Brazil last at 3%. So, despite the high number of articles in the Indian and Brazilian press covering the issue, a very low percentage of these included skeptical voices.

So did the political leaning of a newspaper influence its coverage? It’s actually a very mixed picture. When factoring in non-opinion articles, the researchers actually found slightly more articles quoting climate skeptics or deniers in left-leaning newspapers than in right-leaning papers. But when looking at opinion pages, the articles tend to fall within traditional ideological camps — with far more right-leaning publications featuring “uncontested” skeptical voices than left-leaning ones. While France and the U.K. experienced a similar trend, the U.S. was the leader in this area as well:

In conclusion, we can say that from our sample, there is little evidence for much difference in the percentage of articles containing skeptical voices between left-leaning and right-leaning or centrist newspapers in Brazil, France and India. However, in the USA and the UK, where skeptical voices generally appear in much higher numbers, the differences are more marked. The strongest evidence for a distinction between left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers can be found in the opinion pages in France, the UK and the USA, where right-leaning newspapers are much more likely to include uncontested skeptical voices.

So what kind of voices are being published in these papers? The findings here are also mixed. The researchers break down skeptics into three categories: Those who completely deny the planet is warming (trend skeptics); those who accept that the planet is warming, but question if it’s caused by humans (attribution skeptics); and those who falsely claim that increasing CO2 emissions and a warming planet will be a good thing (impact skeptics).

In Brazil, China, France, India, and the U.K., we see a mix of skeptics in the second and third categories who accept that the planet is warming, but question the cause and impact. In the U.S., we see a different trend: a much greater number of deniers who believe that there is no evidence that the planet is warming. (The researchers attribute this to the prominence of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the most outspoken climate denier in Congress, who often appears in news stories).

Such results would support the view that the USA is particularly notable for the presence of skeptics who question the need for strong climate change policy proposals.

The study, while only covering newspapers and only looking at two short time periods, shows that American climate denial is unique and more prevalent than in other countries, and that ideology does influence how the topic is covered. From the report’s conclusion:

There is some evidence for arguing that there is a strong correspondence between the political leaning of a newspaper and its willingness to quote or use uncontested skeptical voices in opinion pieces. The distinction between news pages and opinion pages is important as much of the skepticism in found in the latter category. In right-leaning newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph, there is very little uncontested skepticism in their news reporting.

There is also evidence for seeing a greater presence in the US media of the sort of skepticism which strongly attacks the scientific legitimacy of climate change policy proposals compared to all the other five countries (with the notable exception of the U.K.).

Along with the U.K., Australiais another country seeing American-style climate denial in the press. A recent analysis from the Australian Center for Independent Journalism found that 73 percent of articles and opinion pieces published in 2011 on a proposed carbon price were negative.

When a tree-planting advocate receives threats of sexual assault and violence against her children, it is perhaps a red flag that the practice of healthy discussion has gone terribly awry.

In the heat of a carbon pollution tax debate, Australia’s top climate change scientists are facing an attack that has led some to go into hiding.

Over 30 researchers across Australia told The Canberra Times that they are being harassed with abusive emails. The violent threats haven't just targeted the scientists, but their families as well.

Why are people so angry? AFP explains that a debate is raging over Prime Minister Julia Gillard's plans to reduce pollution through a tax on carbon emissions. The goal is to tax polluters with a fixed price levy, and then move to an emissions trading scheme within the next five years. Reuters reports that Australia is the highest emitter per capita due to its reliance on coal (providing 80 percent of the nation’s power.)

The seemingly excessive anger towards scientists was fueled a few weeks ago when a new ad campaign featuring Cate Blanchettlaunched, advocating for the carbon tax. The ad suggests that big companies should pay for their pollution. The carbon tax proposal would result in more jobs, better health for children, and, as Blanchett says, “finally do something about climate change.” The ad appears to be rather understated (there is literally a singing birds sound cue), and yet the clip further enraged some people. As Gristwrites, “Positivity + babies + gorgeous actresses seems like a pretty good recipe for getting people to, if not agree with you, at least not want to KILL YOU.”

The Guardian reports that Tony Abbott, the conservative opposition leader who once described man-made climate change as “crap,” critiqued the advertisement and actor, stating, "People who are worth $53m have a right to be heard �� but their voice should not be heard ahead of the ordinary working people of this country.”

One recent poll found that 58 percent of the 500 voters questioned were against the tax. The proposal’s opposition argues that the carbon tax would damage the economy.

Meanwhile, Treasurer Wayne Swan argues "Our economy will continue to grow solidly while making deep cuts in carbon pollution," according to a speech excerpt provided by Reuters. According to Australia's ABC News, the debate comes on the heels of a new report commissioned by the Federal Government, predicting that by the end of the century, thousands of buildings could be destroyed with $226 billion worth of assets at risk due to climate change.

The problem is that this debate has in some cases materialized into serious anger.

According to *The Canberra Times*, The Australian National University moved high-profile climate scientists into secure buildings after they received explicit threats.

Scientists from other universities have been threatened as well. One scientist told The Canberra Times, ''If you want to find me, it's impossible unless you make an appointment, sign in with some form of photo identification, and are personally escorted to my door… That's directly as a result of threats made against me.''

One researcher told the paper of an instance where her photo appeared in an article promoting a community tree-planting day -- she then received threats of sexual assault and violence against her children. Another scientist received death threats and was advised by police to install a ''panic button'' in his office.

Many have changed their home security systems, deleted social media accounts, and switched to unlisted phone numbers after receiving threats to their homes.

Australia's new chief scientist, former ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb, denounced the threats, stating, ''These hurtful attacks are intended to intimidate scientists, to scare them off and stop them from participating in public discussions on climate change. They are the antithesis of democratic debate.”

Christine Milne, Australian Greens deputy leader, said the emails were ''an orchestrated, extremist anti-science campaign attempting to threaten and intimidate people into silence.''

Professor David Koroly from the University of Melbourne tells Australia's ABC News that he receives threats every time the media interview him. Yet, he argues, "It is still very important that climate scientists present the best available information to the community, to the business community and to politicians and that we seek to protect our individual safety, but that we still provide the best available climate science."

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-06/witness-protection-scientists-australian-climate-researchers-moved-secure-location-after-threats

Australian climate scientists receive death threats

Universities move staff into safer accommodation after a large number of threatening emails and phone calls

Oliver Milman
The Guardian, Monday 6 June 2011 10.09 EDT

Australian marine scientists examine coral cores at Clerke Reef, Western Australia. Climate scientists have recently received death threats, universities say. Photograph: Ho/Reuters

A number of Australia's leading climate scientists have been moved into safer accommodation after receiving death threats, in a further escalation of the country's increasingly febrile carbon price debate.

The revelation of the death threats follows a week of bitter exchanges between the government and the opposition in the wake of a pro-carbon price TV advert featuring actor Cate Blanchett.

The Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra said that it has moved a number of its climate scientists to a secure facility after they received a large number of threatening emails and phone calls.

Ian Young, ANU's vice-chancellor, told ABC national radio that the threats had worsened in recent weeks.

"Obviously climate research is an emotive issue at the present time," he said.

24 February 2010

clive hamilton more: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/clive-hamilton-27800.html

Think tanks, oil money and black ops

The army of denialist bloggers and cyber-bullies is sometimes accused of being the tool of fossil fuel companies. Although there is certainly a concordance of interests, that is as far as the relationship goes. The bloggers are motivated not by financial gain (indeed, their activities may have a financial cost) but by political grievances and an anti-elite worldview at odds with the mainstream.

Nevertheless, it is true that the raw material that feeds their anger is generated overwhelmingly by a network of right-wing think tanks and websites in part funded by Big Carbon. These links, which have been heavily documented, are close enough to provoke the Royal Society to take the unprecedented step of writing to Exxon Mobil asking the company to desist from funding anti-science groups.

Yet the funding continues, often through foundations that in effect launder oil and coal money to make it more difficult to trace to its sources. One of the more important conduits is the Washington-based Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Atlas supports financially a network of some 200 libertarian think tanks around the world, including (according to an investigation by US magazine *Mother Jones*) the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia.

Atlas co-sponsored the Heartland Institute's climate sceptic conference in Washington last June attended by a number of prominent Australian skeptics. The Heartland Institute has received funding from Exxon Mobil and earlier received funding from Philip Morristo campaign against smoking restrictions. It has superseded Frontiers of Freedom and the Competitive Enterprise Institute as the foremost US "think tank" working to discredit climate science and stop action on climate change.

Black ops

The deployment of think tanks and sceptic websites to attack climate science has been a carefully planned strategy that was developed in the United States in the mid-1990s. It was refined with the advice of political consultant Frank Luntz who in 2002 urged the Republican Party to undermine the credibility of climate science by commissioning "independent" experts to "make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate". The strategy is comprehensively exposed by former PR insider Jim Hoggan in his recent book *Climate Cover-Up*.

The strategy's use of operations that fall into the "grey area" of political campaigning - such as the creation of fake citizens groups to advance the interests of fossil fuel companies - is well-known and continuing. Only now is light being shone on a far more sinister campaign of black operations.

The hacking into computers at the Climatic Research Centre at the University of East Anglia is only part of a more extensive campaign of black ops organised by elements of the denial industry in the run-up to the Copenhagen meeting. Others include break-ins to the offices of climate scientists, an attempt to infiltrate the computer system at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria by two people posing as technicians, and industrial espionage directed at US green groups.

The think tanks

Although Australia does not have the proliferation of well-funded conservative think tanks that have been so influential in US politics, local counterparts have served effectively as conduits for the stream of anti-science pouring out of their kindred organisations in the United States. They have also been instrumental in publicising and promoting the work of Australian sceptics such as Ian Plimer and Bob Carter. There are three established think tanks and a new one emerging.

Lavoisier Group:Perhaps better described as an advocacy group than a think tank, the Lavoisier Group was founded in 1999 by Hugh Morgan, then CEO of Western Mining Corporation and a former president of the Mining Industry Council, and his long-time political operative Ray Evans. Its board consists mostly of mining industry figures. Evans has close links with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for some years the most active denialist think tank in the United States.

Evans, with Morgan's backing, had created a string of organisations promoting conservative causes, including the anti-union H.R Nicholls Society (with which the Lavoisier Group shares a postal address) and the Samuel Griffiths Society, committed to defending states' rights

��

The Lavoisier Group brings together leading sceptics at its conferences, promotes sceptics' books, and publishes material such as "Nine Lies About Global Warming", penned by Evans and parroted by sceptical columnists in the newspapers. A book edited by Evans was last year launched by Senator Barnaby Joyce, now the shadow finance minister.

Institute of Public Affairs: The oldest think tank in Australia, and with close links to the Liberal Party, the IPA took up the denialist cause early. The IPA is coy about its funding sources, but is known to have received the bulk of its income from mining, resource and tobacco companies. In addition to promoting the work of Australian sceptics like Ian Plimer, the IPA has hosted international visitors such as Bjorn Lomborg and Mark Steyn, events attended by Liberal Party heavyweights.

The IPA also sponsored the visit to Australia of President Putin's former adviser Andrei Illarianov who fulminated against "fraudulent science" and described the Kyoto Protocol as a "death pact", "an interstate Auschwitz", "a sort of international Gosplan, a system to rival the former Soviet Union's", an argument bizarre even in the world of climate denial, but reasonable enough to be reproduced by *The Australian*.

Centre for Independent Studies: The CIS projects itself as a more moderate conservative think tank, but has not been able to resist promoting climate scepticism. After struggling in its early years, it was reprieved by a major funding boost from six mining companies, a rescue facilitated by Hugh Morgan. Among its board members is Sir Rod Eddington, a senior business adviser to the Labor Government. It has hosted a string of climate sceptics from overseas and Australia.

��

Brisbane Institute: The Brisbane Institute has for some years been a middle-of-the-road think tank but appears to have been taken over by climate sceptics. Some of its followers were shocked to hear that the Institute would host the Brisbane leg of Christopher Monckton's Australian tour.

Last year the Brisbane Institute hosted a public lecture by Dr Jay Lehr, Science Director of the Heartland Institute. As we saw, the Heartland Institute is now the most active climate denialist organisation in the United States. Lehr was presented by the Brisbane Institute as an "internationally renowned" scientist, which is simply untrue; he has been heavily criticised for distorting and misrepresenting climate science. He is better known for spending three months in jail for defrauding the US Environmental Protection Authority in 1991.

The Brisbane Institute is perfectly entitled to take the denialist road. The puzzle is why the University of Queensland, the Institute's primary sponsor, would support an organisation that promotes anti-science. Paying for Monckton and Fehr to trash climate science in Brisbane does not seem compatible with the University's aim "to achieve internationally-acknowledged excellence in all forms of research".

Several scientists from the University serve as authors or reviewers for the IPCC, a body attacked as fraudulent by Monckton and Lehr. The University of Queensland appears unconcerned about linking itself with climate denial. In 2008 it accepted a donation of $350,000 from a climate change sceptic, channeled through the IPA, who wanted it to be spent on funding doctoral research on climate change. Of course, the University said there would be no strings attached.

These think tanks are at the heart of the denial movement in this country. They provide funding and organisational capacity, they convene conferences and private meetings, they commission sceptical scientists to write papers, they publish and promote sceptical papers and books, they supply "experts" to the media and they lobby at every opportunity.

Every sceptical scientist, no matter how independent he starts out, is sooner or later drawn into the web formed by these think tanks. In Australia, Bob Carter is a favourite of the Heartland Institute and the Lavoisier Group, Ian Plimer is an associate of the Institute for Public Affairs and an adviser to Nigel Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation, and William Kinninmonth (the Australian sceptic with perhaps the strongest claims to being a climate scientist) allowed his book to be launched by the Lavoisier Group.

The links of these sceptics to political organisations with strong ideological agendas stands in sharp contrast to the vast assemblage of legitimate climate scientists who have no political connections. Yet it is the latter who are accused of being politicised.

Backlash against the 60s

Despite their financial support from Big Carbon, it would be wrong to believe that the conservative think tanks operate solely at the behest of the fossil fuel industries. Their objectives are principally ideological and they would still be campaigning against climate science without funding from Exxon Mobil and others; they would just be less effective. In the United States and Australia, it is probably true that they have received more funding from right-wing foundations with no links to Big Carbon than from oil and coal companies (although some, like the Scaife Foundations, owe their wealth to oil).

So, in the end, their motives are political rather than commercial. The arms of the denialist war on climate science - the bloggers and letter writers; the right wing columnists like Andrew Bolt, Christopher Pearson and Miranda Devine; the Murdoch broadsheets; and the conservative think tanks - are united by one factor, a hatred of environmentalism. Environmentalism is variously seen to be the enemy of individual freedom, an ideology of smug elites, an attack on capitalism and consumerism, and the vanguard of world government.

This antagonism towards the real or assumed ideas of environmentalism is spiced with a loathing for "green culture" represented by the image of the long-haired tree-huggers who want to impose their ascetic lifestyle on others.

Politically, climate denialism represents a backlash against the advances begun by the social movements of the 1960s and their destabilisation of traditional social structures and beliefs, including those of the right of humans to exploit the natural world, which helps explain why its activists are overwhelmingly older. Raging against climate science fits perfectly with the worldview, style and audience demographic of populist shock-jocks like Alan Jones, Australia's answer to Rush Limbaugh.

To turn back the tide of denialism, perhaps the most significant step would be for those conservative leaders who accept the science to speak out loudly and clearly about the need to take action. It is in their hands to break down the belief that global warming is somehow a left-wing cause.

Tomorrow: How to manufacture a scientific scandal.

>Part 1: Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial

Two years ago the Labor Party won a decisive election victory in part by riding a public mood demanding action on climate change after years of stonewalling.

The new Government promised to spearhead world efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today it's on the run, retreating from a surge of militant anti-climate activism that believes climate science is a left-wing plot aimed at promoting elites, wrecking the economy and screwing the little man. What happened?

insert: [Julia Gillard faces the challenge of holding together Australia's first minority Labor government in nearly 70 years after she won the support yesterday of two independent MPs to become the country's first elected female prime minister.]

Part 1: Climate cyber-bullying

Australia's most distinguished climate scientists have become the target of a new form of cyber-bullying aimed at driving them out of the public debate.

In recent months, each time they enter the public debate through a newspaper article or radio interview these scientists are immediately subjected to a torrent of aggressive, abusive and, at times, threatening emails. Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features - it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated.

The messages are typically peppered with insults. One scientist was called a "Loudmouth, arrogant, conceited, ignorant wanker".

The emails frequently accuse the scientists of being frauds who manipulate their research in order to receive funding, such as this one to Ben McNeil at the UNSW:

"It's so obvious you are an activist going along with the climate change lie to protect your very lucrative employment contract."

They often blame the recipients of being guilty of crimes, as in this one received by Professor David Karoly at the University of Melbourne:

"It is probably not to (sic) extreme to suggest that your actions (deceitful) were so criminal to be compared with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. It is called treason and genocide.

"Oh, as a scientist, you have destroyed peoples trust in my profession. You are a criminal . Lest we forget."

Receiving emails like these is unsettling and at times disturbing, which of course is the point. They become worrying when they cross the line to personal threats, such as these sent to Professor Andy Pitman at the UNSW:

"There will be a day of facing the music for the Pitman type frauds... Pitman you are a f**king fool!"

And this one:

"If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you."

When Pitman politely replied to the last, the response was more aggressive:

"F**k off mate, stop the personal attacks. Just do your science or you will end up collateral damage in the war, GET IT."

All threats have to be taken seriously, and at times warrant calling in the police. The police are able to trace anonymous emails to their sources and take action against those who send them. The police are now advising those who received abusive and threatening emails to resist the immediate urge to delete them and keep them in a separate folder for future reference.

Climate campaigners have also noticed a surge in the frequency and virulence of this new form of cyber-bullying. The following was received by a young woman (who asked that her name not be used):

"Did you want to offer your children to be brutally gang-raped and then horribly tortured before being reminded of their parents socialist beliefs and actions?

"Burn in hell. Or in the main street, when the Australian public finally lynchs you."

Another campaigner opened her inbox to read this:

"F**k off!!!

"Or you will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f**king neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!

"F**k you little pieces of sh*t, show youselves in public!!!"

Greens Senator Christine Milne told me that senators' inboxes are bombarded every day by climate deniers and extremists, so that now they are running at least10 to one againstthose who call for action on climate change.

She describes it as a "well-organised campaign of strident, offensive and insulting emails that go well beyond the bounds of the normal cut and thrust of politics".

It was widely reported that in the days before the Liberal Party leadership challenge last November, MPs were blitzed with emails from climate deniers. Some MPs were spooked into voting for Tony Abbott, the only one of the three contenders who had repudiated climate science. Australia's alternative government is now led by climate deniers.

Journalists hit

Journalists too have become the victims of cyber-bullying. I have spoken to several, off the record, who have told of torrents of abusive emails when they report on climate change, including some sufficiently threatening for them to consult their supervisors and consider police action.

One was particularly disturbed at references to his wife. Another received the following from someone who gave his name and identified himself as medical representative at major pharmaceutical's company:

"You sad sack of s**t. It's ok to trash climate change sceptics yet, when the shoe is on the other foot, you become a vindictive, nasty piece of s**t not able to face the fact that you're wrong about climate change and you're reputation is now trash."

Anonymous emails are usually more graphic.

"Your mother was a goat f**ker!!!!!! Your father was a turd!!!!!!! You will be one of the first taken out in the revolution!!!!!!!! Your head will be on a stake!! C**t!"

Few of those on the receiving end of this hatred doubt that the emails are being orchestrated. Scores of abusive emails over a few hours are unlikely to be the product of a large number of individuals spontaneously making the effort to track down an email address and pour forth their rage.

While some individuals act alone, increasingly the attacks are arranged by one or more denialist organisations. It's fair to assume operatives in these organisations constantly monitor the media and, when a story or interview they don't like appears, send messages out to lists of supporters, linking to the comments, providing the scientist's email address and urging them to let him or her know what they think.

One or two of the cyber-bullies have hinted at the level of organisation, with one following an abusive rant with the comment:"Copies of my e-mails to you are also being passed out to a huge network for future reference."

��

Net rage and free speech

The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate or to change what they say. While the internet is often held up as the instrument of free speech, it is often used for the opposite purpose, to drive people out of the public debate.

Unlike the letters pages of newspapers, on the internet anonymity is accepted and the gate-keepers, where they exist, are more lax, so the normal constraints on social discourse do not apply. On the internet, the demons of the human psyche find a play-ground.

��

If a group attempts to have a considered discussion about climate science on an open forum it is very soon deluged with enraged attacks on climate science, sometimes linking for authority to well-known denialist websites. Most scientists long ago stopped attempting to correct the mish-mash of absurd misrepresentations and lies in web "discussions".

Is the new campaign of cyber-bullying working? Receiving a large number of offensive emails certainly wears most people down. Some scientists and journalists probably do change what they say or withdraw from debate. Others have strategies for dealing with the abuse-never replying, deleting without reading or swapping loony emails with colleagues, and cultivating a thick skin.

The effect of the cyber-bullying campaign on some scientists-including those I have mentioned-is quite opposite to the intended one. The attempts at intimidation have only made them more resolved to keep talking to the public about their research. Their courage under fire stands in contrast to the cowardice of the anonymous emailers.

Tomorrow: Who is behind the cyber-bullying campaign?

>Part 2: Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?

The floods of offensive and threatening emails aimed at intimidating climate scientists have all the signs of an orchestrated campaign by sceptics groups. The links are well-hidden because mobilizing people to send abuse and threats is well outside the accepted bounds of democratic participation; indeed, some of it is illegal. And an apparently spontaneous expression of citizen concern carries more weight than an organised operation by a zealous group.

Without access to ISP logs, it is difficult to trace the emails to a source. However, it is clear that hard-line denialists congregate electronically at a number of internet nodes where they engage in mutual reinforcement of their opinions and stoke the rage that lies behind them.

Those who operate these sites retail the "information" that reinforces the assertions made by their followers. They often post highly personal attacks on individuals who speak in favour of mainstream science and measures to combat global warming, knowing from experience that they will stimulate a stream of vituperation from their supporters.

The posts on these sites often provoke an outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and vilification of individuals. There is no restraining influence and, in the middle of one of these frenzies, it would be a brave sceptic who called for caution and moderation in the ideas expressed or the language used.

In Australia, a handful of denialist websites stand out. They include the blog of Herald-Suncommentator Andrew Bolt, Bolt's stable mate Tim Blair at the Daily Telegraph, the website operated by sceptic Joanne Nova (a pseudonym for Joanne Codling), and the community forum site operated by the Queensland farmers' organisation��Agmates. Denialists also flock to the e-journal Online Opinion.

On these sites discussion of the "global warming conspiracy" seamlessly segues into a hodge-podge of right-wing populist grievances and causes, including defending rural property rights, the martyrdom of farming hunger-striker Peter Spencer, the errors of the Club of Rome, blood on the hands of Rachel Carson for causing DDT to be banned, the evils of Al Gore, the plan by the United Nations to dominate the world, and the need to defend freedom and democracy from these threats. Sceptics are explicitly or implicitly portrayed as freedom fighters battling attempts by scheming elites to shore up their power or impose a world government.

Recently, this stew of paranoia has been given a boost by the media exposure granted to Christopher Monckton in his recent Australian tour. Monckton propounded his extraordinary theory about climate change being a conspiracy by communists - assisted by the Hitler Youth and a craven scientific establishment - to seize power through a world government hidden in a climate treaty. A few months ago a fantasist like Monckton would have attracted only eye-rolling from news editors.

I am not suggesting that the individuals and organisations I have mentioned are responsible for organising the cyber-bullying attacks on scientists and others. However, they do create an environment that encourages them. The effect of these sites is three-fold.

They supply the ammunition that confirms and elaborates on climate deniers' beliefs.
They provide a forum in which deniers can participate in a like-minded community that reinforces their views.
And they identify the individuals responsible for promoting climate lies, stimulating participants to make direct contacts with "warmists".

Andrew Bolt's blog deserves special mention both because it has become the most popular meeting place for deniers in Australia and because it is sponsored by a mainstream media outlet, Melbourne's Herald-Sun, a Murdoch tabloid.

Bolt specialises in posts of angry ridicule directed at climate scientists and any others who publicly accept the science. Recent targets have included Ove Hoegh-Guldburg, Andy Pitman, and the CSIRO as a whole.

Bolt has admitted that his posts bad-mouthing climate scientists have incited his readers to send abusive emails to them.

Mainstreaming denial

It might be thought that vilification of climate scientists and others engaged in the climate debate is confined to the nether-world of the Internet. In truth, the most influential source of misrepresentation and ridicule resides in the "heritage media" in the form of the Murdoch broadsheet, The Australian. I will consider its long-running war on science later, but here it is important to draw attention to its role in identifying hate figures for deniers and fueling their aggression.

As an illustration of the newspaper's tactic, at the Copenhagen conference in December an Australian named Ian Fry, representing the Government of Tuvalu, made an impassioned intervention from the plenary floor that captured the mood and made headlines around the world. Fry is a shy man who has for many years devoted himself to representing the tiny island state for minimal financial or reputational reward.

The day after his intervention The Australian published a story ridiculing his "tear-jerking performance" and suggesting he is a self-seeking hypocrite because he lives a long way from the sea. The story appeared on the front page alongside a photograph of Fry's house.

At a time when climate campaigners were receiving grisly death threats, the editors of the national daily decided to expose Ian Fry and his family to danger by publishing information about where he lives that enabled people to work out his address. When challenged, the journalist responsible for the story showed no understanding or remorse.

In 2005 The Australian��used the same tactic on Indigenous leader Mick Dodson, publishing a photo of his house under a headline claiming he lived comfortably in the suburbs while depriving other Indigenous people of the opportunity to own a house. Dodson, already the subject of death threats, said he feared for the safety of his family.

The Australian's grubby tactic was unwillingly revealed by one of its journalists, Caroline Overington. During the last election campaign, a Labor candidate decided he did not want to be interviewed and photographed, so she threatened to send a photographer around to stake out his house. She sent the following text message

"Either you say yes to a photograph smiling and happy and out campaigning, or we stake you out at ... Bondi Junction, and get you looking like a cat caught in a trap, in your PJs. Your choice."

What drives denial?

What motivates the legion of climate deniers to send hate-mail? In recent years a great deal of evidence has come to light linking fossil fuel corporations with organisations that promote climate denial, but it would be a mistake to believe that the army of sceptical bloggers is in any sense in the pay of, or directly influenced by, the fossil fuel lobby.

Climate denialism has been absorbed by an older and wider political movement, sometimes called right-wing populism. Emanating from the United States, and defined more by what it fears than by what it proposes, the movement's enemies were helpfully listed in a 2004 TV ad attacking Democrat Howard Dean, whose supporters were characterised as a:

"tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show."

Although the targets are adapted to Australian conditions, in both countries the movement is driven by feelings of angry grievance. Those who identify with it see themselves as anti-liberal, anti-elitist and anti-intellectual. They are resentful of their exclusion from the mainstream and at the same time proud of their outsider status.

Since the mid-1990s, anti-climate forces associated with the Republic Party and oil-funded conservative think tanks have successfully linked acceptance of global warming and the need for greenhouse policies with those groups despised by right-wing populism.

In more recent years, the denial movement has been joined by some hard-line conservative Christian groups, including the notorious Catch the Fire Ministries and its witch-hunting pastor Danny Nalliah. According to��Paul Colgan, these groups were heavily involved in the lobbying to have Tony Abbott elected as Liberal Party leader.

As this suggests, becoming a denialist does not follow from carefully weighing up the evidence (that is, true scepticism) but from associating oneself with a cultural outlook, taking on an identity defined in opposition to a caricature of those who support action on climate change. It is the energy in this wider movement that has seen climate denialism morphing into a new form of political extremism.

Some active climate deniers possess a distinct "mindset" comprised of a certain worldview, including a narrative centered on secretive forces - variously encompassing elected leaders, scientists, scientific organisations, environmental groups and the United Nations - that are using climate science and climate policies as a cover to accumulate power with the objective of creating a world government that overrides national sovereignty and deprives citizens of their rights.

Those who hold to this worldview often feel marginalised and persecuted. It attracts the unstable and fanatical as well as those with more legitimate political grievances. For political leaders so inclined, the energy being mobilised by climate denial is a golden opportunity. Although it remains necessary for these leaders to evince a concern for the environment, and even to pretend to accept climate science, they can speak to the denialist minority using dog-whistling techniques to signal that they are really on their side.

This explains the decision by new Opposition leader Tony Abbott to meet Monckton when even one of the country's most conservative columnists wrote of the dangers of associating with his extreme views. Although he had been forced to repudiate his pre-leadership claim that climate science is "absolute crap", in meeting Monckton Abbott sent the message that his real views have not changed. Of course, he can respond to accusations of giving succour to denialism with the dog-whistler's device of "plausible deniability" - he is happy to hear all views.

A more subtle message was sent by Abbott earlier this month when he gloated over the recent recall of the Toyota Prius; for him and others hostile to environmentalism, the tarnishing of a green icon is a reason for celebration.

Tomorrow: The Exxon-funded think tanks that feed climate denial.

Kesten C. Green is a Senior Research Fellow with the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit at Monash University, Australia. He began his master's studies in Management Science at Victoria University, and received a doctoral degree from Victoria Management School at Victoria University of Wellington. ^[1] A 2004 announcement of his joining Monash staff described Green's research as "challeng[ing] conventional methods of predicting outcomes of conflict situations including industrial disputes, boardroom battles and war with terrorists." ^[2]

Green is a speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009) organized by the Heartland Institute think tank. ^[3]

Contents [hide]

On global warming

"Forecasts of global warming and of the extinction of polar bears are not derived from scientific forecasting methods and are not credible," Green's CV states. ^[1]

According to his Heartland Institute profile, "Green became interested in climate forecasting when he realized the dire predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others might result in policies that would cause great harm to people." ^[4]

Contact information

Website: http://www.kestencgreen.com/

Articles and resources

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 "Curriculum Vitae (pdf)," Dr Kesten C Green website, accessed March 2009.
↑ Press release, "Conflict forecaster joins faculty," Monash University, August 18, 2004.
↑ "Speakers," Heartland Institute website, accessed January 2009.
�� "Personnel details: Kesten Green," Heartland Institute website, accessed March 2009.

External resources

External articles

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Categories:

Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism, Green Books, Devon, UK, 1997

Sharon Beder, 'The Big Bucks of Business Back Attack on Greens', The Age, 3rd November 1997, p. A15.

Sharon Beder, A SLAPP in the face of democracy, Democratic Audit of Australia, December 2004 (pdf).

Sharon Beder, 'Corporate Discourse on Climate Change', in The Propaganda Society: Promotional Culture and Politics in Global Context, edited by Gerald Sussman, Peter Lang, New York, 2011, pp. 113-29.
Sharon Beder, Drowning in Greenwash, alive Australia, Spring 2009, pp. 58-61.

what was that book I read from ucsc on attacks on greens in aus and NZ

One particularly nasty outcome of the front-group-led denial campaign has been the abuse of climate scientists.

The Scientific American191, George Monbiot in the Guardian192 and Clive Hamilton blogging on Australia’s

ABC website193 have all written recently about the storm of abuse climate scientists are getting.

The target of sceptic attacks for some years, Kevin Trenberth, told Scientific American, ��In science there's a

whole lot of facts and basic information on the nature of climate change, but it's not being treated that way.

It's being treated as opinion.’194

‘In recent months, each time they enter the public debate through a newspaper article or radio interview these

scientists are immediately subjected to a torrent of aggressive, abusive and, at times, threatening emails.

Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features - it is mostly anonymous

and it appears to be orchestrated,’ writes Clive Hamilton195.

Hamilton authored ‘Scorcher – the dirty politics of climate change’196, a book where he outlines the decade-long,

coal-industry funded campaign in Australia to deny climate science and its close relationship with then Prime

Minister and climate sceptic John Howard who refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

He tells of a respected climate scientist, Professor David Karoly at the University of Melbourne, who received

these emails. ‘It is probably not to [sic] extreme to suggest that your actions (deceitful) were so criminal to be

compared with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. It is called treason and genocide’ and ‘Oh, as a scientist, you have

destroyed peoples trust in my profession. You are a criminal. Lest we forget.’197

Comments across the blogosphere follow a similar vein, such as this, posted on a Chicago Tribune blog

explaining the robustness of the climate science conclusions:

‘Global warming is a genocidalist scam to kill us all by 2050. There is no scientific basis for climate science,

there is no such thing as radiative forcing. This hoax is bringing down the US government and the rest because

we see by their going along with this $45 trillion scam, they are just lining their own pockets. Both the Clintons

and Obamas are personally involved in this mass murder ring worse than Hitler's Nazi Germany, in fact this plan

is Nazi in origin, like the original Green Movement.’198

Stan_Lippmann (03/03/2010, 4:30 AM)

Woodard, Colin "After Death Threats to Climate Researchers, Australian Universities Take Tough Protection Measures" Chronicle of Higher Education June 9, 2011 http://chronicle.com/article/After-Death-Threats-to-Climate/127870/

In Australia, the climate for climate-science researchers has deteriorated to an alarming state.

At least a dozen university climate scientists have in recent months received messages threatening death or violence against themselves and, in some cases, their families. The threats—which came as Australian lawmakers prepared to debate imposing carbon taxes in an effort to discourage the emission of climate-altering greenhouse gases—appear considerably more serious than those against researchers at American universities, and Australian authorities have reacted accordingly.

Scientists at several Australian universities have been moved to secure buildings after security personnel concluded the threats were credible enough to warrant heightened protection. Their names have been removed from telephone and online directories, as well as from signs outside their office doors. They reportedly can meet only students and visitors who have made appointments, shown photo identification to security guards on the premises, and been escorted through the building door to door.

Australian National University "takes the safety and well-being of staff very seriously," Vice Chancellor Ian Young said in a written statement, adding that climate research had become "an emotive issue" recently. "It's completely intolerable that people be subjected to threats like this."

��

The affected researchers work at four universities spread across the country: Canberra-based Australian National, the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, and the University of Queensland, in Brisbane. Faculty and administrators were reluctant to provide many details, and it is unclear if they believe the threats are being made as part of an orchestrated campaign or if they might come from a single source.

��

A public-affairs officer at Australian National said the death threats there had occurred over the course of three years and had escalated in recent months. As a result, nine scientists were "moved to a more secure location that requires card access." The added security, the officer continued, "means students may have to plan ahead to make an appointment to see these researchers and general staff."

Australian media accounts suggested these robust security measures had been taken recently, and that the threats had escalated in response to the continuing parliamentary debate on carbon taxes and a television advertisement in support of them featuring the Australian actress Cate Blanchett, which was broadcast last week. Online publications in the United States—including The Atlantic Wire and Grist—have framed the threats to researchers as coming in response to Ms. Blanchett's ad, which itself has been the subject of heated criticism from climate-change deniers in the Australian Parliament and punditocracy.

But university sources say they took the actions earlier this year, long before the ad existed.

'Offensive and Abusive'

One of the scientists who received death threats is David J. Karoly, a professor of meteorology at the University of Melbourne and a lead author of recent assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who has appeared regularly in the Australian media to convey the current scientific consensus on the issue. He says he started receiving "an increased number of offensive and abusive e-mails" following media appearances in connection with the release of the panel's 2007 report, escalating to a death threat "in the last 12 months." The intensity and volume of the threats appeared to him to be "closely related to scientists like myself appearing on the media."...

The Lavoisier Group is a global warming skeptic organisation, based in Australia. It argues that the evidence for global warming is based on inexact science and that any policy responses, such as signing the Kyoto Protocol, would be too expensive for Australia's industry.

The group is closely associated with the Australian mining industry, and was founded in 2000 by Ray Evans, then an executive at Western Mining Corporation (WMC), who was also involved in founding the HR Nicholls Society and the Bennelong Society. Hugh Morgan, former WMC boss and head of the Business Council of Australia until 2005, delivered the group's inaugural speech.

WISE USE COINTELPRO

��

Forest Protection Society (Australia)

��

Throughout the 1980s the Australian timber industry was targeted by ecological campaigns and direct action. In response the industry spawned a new front group,the Forest Protection Society, with start-up money from the Forest Industry Campaign Association[47].

Employing Wise Use-style rhetoric, the FPS got itself listed as an environmental protection organisation in the Directory of Australian Associations. It promotes a ��balanced useâ of Australiaâs forests and claims that the best way to protect forests is to extract the wood and sell it. From the start the FPS aimed to build a large âgrass-rootsâ membership to suggest an independent standpoint[48]. The FPS involves itself in as many forest campaigns as it can, fighting for the rights of local communities to exploit the forests, and of course the for the timber industry. By April 1998 the FPS had 56 local branches across Australia[49].

Amongst other tactics the FPS has used include taking over local environmentalist meetings, with the result that they became distracted from their ongoing campaign[50]. Like many groups associated with the American Wise Use movement, the FPS is a client of Burson-Marsteller.

The ripple effects of the U.S. campaign to 'defund the left' have been felt around the world. A U.S. mining company succeeded in having USAID funding for an Indonesian community group pulled. [2] A Fulbright scholarship to the U.S., helped the Senior Fellow at the Australian Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Gary Johns develop a good working relationship with the American Enterprise Institute and escalate their emphasis on curtailing the activities of public interest groups.

The IPA themselves have targeted public interest groups in Malaysia and those working on issues in Indonesia. In mid-June 2004 the conservative Australian government released a consultancy report by the IPA's Gary Johns and John Roskam proposing the first steps to reduce the access that non-government organisations have to government decision making. [3]

In May 2002 Canadian PR consultant Ross S. Irvine, who approvingly cites Johns views in his articles, was a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand. In his presentation Irvine identified "charitable organization legislation", now before parliament, as one of the key focal points to consider in New Zealand.

In August 2004, the New Zealand Greens Green MP Sue Bradford warned that the proposed charities legislation "poses a real threat to one of the cornerstones of our democracy - the ability of people to come together and advocate for all manner of social, economic and environmental causes. Freedom of speech would be clouded because organisations that speak out on political issues would risk being deregistered by the Charities Commission." [4]

In early September 2004, the Director General of the New Zealand Health Ministry, Karen Poutasi, sent a draft instruction to health and disability NGOs revealing that it was proposed that "the Ministry does not fund lobbying activity and such activity will not be included in any contracts". The instruction, however, did not propose that organisations would be excluded from government funding if funds raised from other sources were used for lobbying. See Intimidating democracy/New Zealand Health Ministry memo to NGOsfor the full text.