HACKS 2

917 age of trump, pruitt (all initially nom for SAB)

see tag and primary

Scientists

American and New Zealand climate scientist Kevin Trenberth has published widely on climate change science and fought back against climate change misinformation for decades.^[241] He describes in his memoirs his "close encounters with deniers and skeptics"—with fellow meteorologists or climate change scientists. These included Richard Lindzen ("he is quite beguiling but is criticized as "intellectually dishonest" by his peers"; Lindzen was a professor of meteorology at MIT and has been called a contrarian in relation to climate change and other issues.^[242]), Roy Spencer (who has "repeatedly made errors that always resulted in lower temperature trends than were really present"), John Christy ("his decisions on climate work and statements appear to be heavily colored by his religion"), Roger Pielke Jr, Christopher Landsea, Pat Michaels ("long associated with the Cato Institute, he changed his bombastic tune gradually over time as climate change became more evident").^[241]: 95

Sherwood B. Idso is a natural scientist and is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 1982 he published his book Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe?, which said increases in CO₂ would not warm the planet, but would fertilize crops and were "something to be encouraged and not suppressed".

William M. Gray was a climate scientist (emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University) who supported climate change denial: he agreed that global warming was taking place, but argued that humans were responsible for only a tiny portion of it and it was largely part of the Earth's natural cycle.^{[243][118][244}]

In 1998, Frederick Seitz, an American physicist and former National Academy of Sciences president, wrote the Oregon Petition, a controversial document in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed that "We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. [...] This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution".^[165] In their book Merchants of Doubt, the authors write that Seitz and a group of other scientists fought the scientific evidence and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time, like the harmfulness of tobacco smoke, acid rains, CFCs, pesticides, and global warming.^[128]: 25–29

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REF

E AND E POL

Meet the scientists Trump could tap to undermine climate regulations

:{By Scott Waldman, Zack Colman | 03/19/2025 :

Some downplay the threat of global warming. Others question the efficacy of climate policy. All could be of interest to the new administration.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has made it his mission to destroy what he calls the “holy grail” of U.S. climate policy.

But President Donald Trump’s EPA chief can’t do it alone. To smash the holy grail, Zeldin needs help from a rare kind of scientist — the kind who believes climate change isn’t that bad or might even be good for humanity.

Those scientists aren’t easy to find. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the burning of fossil fuels is heating up Earth, and the planet’s rapid change is putting people at risk for a wide range of calamities — from more extreme storms to rising sea levels to more intense heat waves.

Those threats underpin what’s known as the “endangerment finding” — Zeldin’s holy grail. The 2009 declaration by EPA made clear that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are the root cause of climate change, and that EPA has the authority to regulate them under the Clean Air Act because they can harm human health.

The endangerment finding has empowered EPA to establish landmark climate regulations, including limits on the emissions produced by cars or power plants. Rolling back these regulations — and the endangerment finding itself — would require an attack on the climate science that serves as their foundation.

Enter the climate naysayers.

The Trump administration is looking to recruit scientists who could cast doubt on climate science or climate policy, or who view global warming as either a small inconvenience or a boon to humankind.

Once selected, these scientists could add their perspective to a bedrock climate report that comes out every few years, known as the National Climate Assessment. Their contributions to the report, in turn, could be cited as evidence in future efforts to undermine the endangerment finding — all of which would make it easier to quash climate regulations.

The scientists even could help author a second endangerment finding. A Trump-era endangerment finding might, for example, selectively highlight areas of doubt in climate science or tout the perceived benefits of global warming.

To do that, a Trump-approved body of climate findings would center around future scenarios based on lower carbon scenarios than the world is currently experiencing.

It also could emphasize less severe climate trajectories than those envisioned in the original finding, said Roger Pielke Jr., a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Being able to tease out signals of human-caused climate change in extreme weather — which everybody cares about — are going to be much more challenging with a lower emissions trajectory than a higher one,” said Pielke Jr., who is not involved in any of the efforts and has questioned how scientists can link human-driven warming to specific extreme weather events.

There is a relatively small pool of researchers who could — or would be willing to — engage in such an effort because it would misrepresent decades of climate science by the world’s top science agencies.

“It’s a very small group of people. It’s the same people who have been there for the last 20 years,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “It’s this endlessly recycled group of people who have been making the same arguments that are unable to convince anybody in the scientific community.”

The White House has not announced its plan yet nor the researchers who might be involved, and it did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, an EPA spokesperson said that as “part of this reconsideration process, EPA will leverage the expertise of the White House Budget Office, including the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other relevant agencies.”

Here are some of the scientists who have spent years downplaying climate risks or criticizing climate regulations, and could be tapped by the Trump administration to help Zeldin destroy the “holy grail” of U.S. climate policy.

David Legates

David Legates (second from right) appears at a 2016 event in Washington. | Kris Connor/AFP via Getty Images MORANO

Legates likely would be a key leader. He has worked with Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on a series of proposals to tear down NOAA and to recruit industry and think tank researchers that oppose climate rules to write a government science report.

The two men authored a key chapter outlining their plans in the Project 2025 conservative policy playbook.

Legates, who was the former state climatologist for Delaware until he was asked to step down, served as a top NOAA official in Trump’s first term. He was also detailed to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, but was later removed from that position after attempting to publish a series of research memos that distorted climate science.

For years, Legates has turned a partisan lens to research, claiming that climate change will benefit humanity while climate policy will hurt people. He is affiliated with the Cornwall Alliance, a group of conservative Christian scholars “dedicated to educating the public and policymakers about Biblical earth stewardship.”

Legates declined to comment for this story.

Steve KooniN

Koonin, a New York University physicist and former top scientist at BP, has long pushed to conduct a “red team, blue team” review of climate science, which would pit two groups of scientists against each other to debate a scientific report, such as the National Climate Assessment.

One group would defend the report while the other would highlight its alleged scientific weaknesses. Koonin worked on putting together the effort during the first Trump administration, but the project was eventually scuttled by the White House because some officials were concerned about Trump’s reelection chances.

Koonin said he would prefer to take on the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to highlight areas of doubt.

“Anything that I can do to help make the science more transparent, you know, that’s been my goal, and remains my goal, for a long time,” he said.

Richard Lindzen

The retired Massachusetts Institute of Technology atmospheric scientist told POLITICO that he would “of course” help the Trump administration challenge the endangerment finding. Lindzen was dismayed that the red team, blue team exercise to publicly debate established climate science never took off during Trump’s first term.

A longtime critic of accepted climate science, Lindzen applauded Zeldin for calling “bullshit” on a “fake issue” of the severity of rising temperatures. But he acknowledged there may be little upside given how much the scientific community has supported the conclusion that human activity is driving climate change, even if he disagrees with it.

Lindzen argued the courts may offer the most direct route, where he said EPA should argue there “was never any evidence in the first place” to suggest greenhouse gases meet a legally defined standard of dangerous.

“I have no idea what they’re going to do,” he said. “But I think it’s pretty obvious when Trump is running on the issue of ‘Drill, baby drill,’ that he is not going to pay any attention to what is claimed to be the science.”

Ryan Maue

Maue has not had any communication with the Trump administration about serving in any science advisory or agency role, he wrote in a text message. But the libertarian meteorologist would be a natural fit: He served at NOAA and the Office of Science and Technology Policy in Trump’s first term.

Maue agrees that humans are warming the planet, but he has pushed back against stringent government policies to rein in greenhouse gases.

He has often used his large social media following on X to dispute the connections between climate change and specific extreme weather events. He has repeatedly cautioned that the world is not following the worst-case scenario climate trajectory, calling it “highly implausible” — a view that could align with Trump administration thinking to emphasize less dire forecasts.

Judith Curry

Curry said she would help the Trump administration reconsider the endangerment finding if she could work from home, but noted there’s been no outreach from Trump’s team.

The Georgia Tech professor emerita argued the original endangerment finding was “politically driven,” and that its reliance on worst-case climate scenarios compelled more drastic policy than necessary. Despite U.S. greenhouse gas reductions falling 17 percent below 2005 levels, the nation is still off-track of the U.S. share of reductions needed to stabilize global temperatures.

An additional 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by 2100 — which is aligned with current trajectories — “isn’t a big deal because it’s what we’ve seen over the last 100 years, and we’re doing just fine,” said Curry, who is now president of consulting firm Climate Forecast Applications Network.

Scientists have said such increases have brought and would bring massive biodiversity loss, more intense extreme weather events, deadlier heat waves and economic harm through natural disaster damage, lost labor productivity, food insecurity and deteriorating health.

While Curry said there are “plenty of reasons not to like fossil fuels” and that clean energy investment is needed, she claimed “policy isn’t going to help here.” An endangerment finding that reflected less severe consequences for failing to deal with climate change “takes away the urgency for doing all of this” through government policy, she said.

John Christy

Christy is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former lead IPCC author. He has questioned whether humans are driving the observed warming trends in recent decades — something the world’s top science agencies have long confirmed.

He opposed the endangerment finding in 2009 and has questioned the climate models on which it was based in congressional testimony. He is also a longtime proponent of applying a red team, blue team exercise to climate science.

Christy said he believed he could identify weaknesses in the first endangerment finding and that he could use research from the last 15 years to further his argument if the Trump administration pursued a second endangerment finding.

“I would like to see a very clear demonstration that climate models are not capable of telling us about the future of climate to the level of the CO2 forcing that is occurring in the atmosphere,” he said.

In fact, climate scientists have tested the models on which they rely and have found a notable amount of accuracy, particularly the latest versions, which are far more sophisticated than the models of the past.

Will Happer

Happer was part of Trump’s National Security Council in the first term, who mostly worked on classified military projects. He is a professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University, though not a climate scientist.

Happer is one of the few scientists who have given Trump a briefing on climate research, though his views are not supported by the world’s leading science agencies. Happer has long cast doubt on the role humans play in driving global warming and has been a vociferous opponent of climate policy.

In Trump’s first term, Happer worked on the effort to conduct an adversarial review of climate science with Koonin. After that effort was torpedoed by White House officials, Trump told Happer that he wanted to bring him back for a red team, blue team effort in his second term. Trump even discussed a potential nationally televised science “debate,” Happer told POLITICO.

“If I see an opportunity to help, I will,” Happer said. “I think it’s long overdue.”

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john-clauser-nobel-climate-denial

He won a Nobel Prize. Then he started denying climate change.

John Clauser shared the Nobel in physics last year. Now he’s a self-described ‘denier’ of the overwhelming scientific consensus on a warming planet.

By Maxine Joselow

:{:{November 16, 2023}:

Physicist John F. Clauser last year at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif. Clauser jointly won a Nobel Prize in physics with two other scientists. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

:{:{}:

BALTIMORE — At a fiery news conference at the Four Seasons hotel here Tuesday, speakers denounced climate change as a hoax perpetrated by a “global cabal” including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and many leaders of the Catholic Church.

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It might have seemed like a fringe event, except for one speaker’s credentials. John F. Clauser shared the Nobel Prize in physics last year before declaring Tuesday that “there is no climate crisis” — a claim that contradicts the overwhelming scientific consensus.

The event showcased Clauser’s remarkable shift since winning one of the world’s most prestigious awards for his groundbreaking experiments with light particles in the 1970s. His recent denial of global warming has alarmed top climate scientists, who warn that he is using his stature to mislead the public about a planetary emergency.

Clauser, 80, who has a booming voice and white hair he often leaves uncombed, has brushed off these concerns. He says skepticism is a key part of the scientific process.

“There was overwhelming consensus that what I was doing was pointless” in the 1970s, he said in an interview after the news conference. “It took 50 years for my work to win the prize. That’s how long it takes for opinions to change.”

Tuesday’s event was organized by the Deposit of Faith Coalition, a group of more than a dozen Catholic organizations that argues that “those pushing the anti-God and anti-family climate agenda need to be called out and exposed.” Clauser, who is an atheist, needed some convincing to be the keynote speaker, a coalition spokesman acknowledged.

The other speakers included Marc Morano, a former Republican congressional staffer who runs a website that rejects mainstream climate science, and Alex Newman, a journalist for right-wing media outlets who has called for exposing the “climate scam.” Both men took multiple jabs at former vice president Al Gore and his 2006 documentary about the dangers of climate change.

Clauser, who wore a gray blazer with black jeans and Teva sandals, appeared buoyant as he took the stage. He cycled through a PowerPoint presentation that began with the exclamation: “Great news! There is no climate crisis!”

“Much as it may upset many people, my message is the planet is not in peril,” Clauser told an audience of roughly a dozen people in the hotel conference room and others watching online. “I call myself a climate denier,” he added. “I’ve been told that’s not politically correct. So I guess I’m a climate crisis d-word person.”

Clauser bragged that he met privately with President Biden in the Oval Office last year, when the 2022 Nobel Prize winners were invited to the White House. He said he criticized Biden’s climate and energy policies, to which he said the president replied: “Sounds like right-wing science.”

The Washington Post could not confirm this account; a White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘Pure garbage’

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that global warming will have catastrophic consequences for current and future generations. They warn that heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end if humanity does not rapidly reduce emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

The influence of climate deniers has waned over the past several decades, as the science has become clearer and the impacts of global warming have become starker. But a small group of vocal skeptics — including several prominent physicists — has persisted.

Clauser, who has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change, has homed in on one message in particular: Earth’s temperature is primarily determined by cloud cover, not carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. He has concluded that clouds have a net cooling effect on the planet, so there is no climate crisis.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that argument is “pure garbage” and “pseudoscience.”

The “best available evidence” shows that clouds actually have a net warming effect, Mann said in an email. “In physics, we call that a ‘sign error’ — it’s the sort of error a freshman is embarrassed to be caught having made,” he said.

Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, agreed.

“Clouds amplify warming,” Dessler said in an email, adding, “The scientific community has spent the last century studying [climate change] and, at this point, virtually everything that’s happening has been predicted. John Clauser and his ilk ignore this because they are not advancing serious scientific critiques.”

But Anton Zeilinger, an Austrian physicist who shared the Nobel Prize with Clauser last year, said in an interview that he has “very high respect” for Clauser’s scientific rigor, although he cautioned that he is not an expert on climate science.

In 1972, Clauser conducted groundbreaking experiments on quantum entanglement, a process in which two or more particles are coupled so that any change in one particle triggers a simultaneous change in the other, even if they are separated by vast distances. The experiments confirmed a phenomenon that Albert Einstein had famously referred to as “spooky action at a distance.” They also paved the way for technologies such as quantum computers, which can solve problems too complex for classical computers.

“Einstein, when he proposed his ideas, was considered crazy and an outsider,” said Zeilinger, a professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna. “It has happened in science that the majority was dead wrong. I have no idea if that is the case here, but science has to be open to debate.”

‘A skeptical streak’

Some physicists have made crucial contributions to the world’s understanding of climate change. In 2021, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to scientists Syukuro Manabe of the United States and Klaus Hasselmann of Germany for work that laid the foundation for current climate models.

Others have made a name for themselves as climate contrarians.

William Happer, a professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University, has argued that global warming is good for humanity. Under President Donald Trump, Happer served as a senior director on the National Security Council, where he oversaw a controversial initiative to reassess the federal government’s analysis of climate science.

Richard Lindzen, a retired MIT physicist, has similarly criticized what he has called “climate alarmism.” And Steven E. Koonin, a physicist who served as the Energy Department’s undersecretary for science under President Barack Obama, wrote the best-selling book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”

“There is a skeptical streak in the physics community regarding climate science,” Nadir Jeevanjee, a research physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote in a recent critique of Koonin’s book.

In an interview, Jeevanjee said that while climate science is based in physics, not all physicists are experts in climate science. But that hasn’t stopped some distinguished physicists from portraying themselves as experts and sowing doubt, he said.

“When they talk, people listen,” said Jeevanjee, who emphasized that he was speaking on behalf of himself and not NOAA. “It stokes the flames of denial.”

Some physicists who reject the scientific consensus on climate change have received funding from fossil fuel companies. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, an astrophysicist who claims that variations in the sun’s energy have caused most global warming, accepted more than $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry from 2005 to 2015 while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most scientific papers.

Clauser said he does not receive any money from oil, gas and coal interests.

“If I go to Asia, I get a huge honorarium for giving talks,” he said in the interview after Tuesday’s event. “But this conference hasn’t given me an honorarium for coming here. The best I get is airfare and hotel. I’m just living off savings.”

In June, Clauser gave the keynote address at a conference on quantum information science in Seoul, telling the audience that “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis.” The speech came a month after he joined the board of directors of the CO2 Coalition, a group that contends carbon dioxide is beneficial for the planet.

Climate deniers ejected from teachers conference for pro-carbon comic

In search of an audience

Clauser has not been welcomed everywhere. In July, he was scheduled to deliver a seminar on climate models to the International Monetary Fund’s Independent Evaluation Office, but then the event was “summarily canceled” with no explanation, the CO2 Coalition said in a statement at the time.

On Tuesday, Clauser said he was initially told the event would be reformatted as a debate with an author of a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But that idea “never went anywhere,” he said.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the office declined to comment on the record and did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the event might be rescheduled.

Clauser’s message also may be reaching a limited audience. Of the roughly dozen people at the news conference in Baltimore, two were journalists and several others were members of the Deposit of Faith Coalition.

Asked about the smaller crowd, Clauser, who has emphysema caused by smoking cigarettes in his younger years, took a puff of his inhaler and shrugged.

“I get a reasonable amount of fan mail, some of which comes from people who claim to be climate scientists,” he said. “Most of it is very positive.”

LNX

William Happer, a professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University, has argued that global warming is good for humanity. Under President Donald Trump, Happer served as a senior director on the National Security Council, where he oversaw a controversial initiative to reassess the federal government’s analysis of climate science....

Richard Lindzen, a retired MIT physicist, has similarly criticized what he has called “climate alarmism.” And Steven E. Koonin, a physicist who served as the Energy Department’s undersecretary for science under President Barack Obama, wrote the best-selling book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”

“When they talk, people listen,” said Jeevanjee, who emphasized that he was speaking on behalf of himself and not NOAA. “It stokes the flames of denial.”

Clauser said he does not receive any money from oil, gas and coal interests.

Climate deniers ejected from teachers conference for pro-carbon comic

...

Clauser has not been welcomed everywhere. In July, he was scheduled to deliver a seminar on climate models to the International Monetary Fund’s Independent Evaluation Office, but then the event was “summarily canceled” with no explanation, the CO2 Coalition said in a statement at the time.

Nobel Laureate (Physics 2022) Dr. John Clauser was to present a seminar on climate models to the IMF on Thursday and now his talk has been summarily cancelled. According to an email he received last evening, the Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, Pablo Moreno, had read the flyer for John’s July 25 zoom talk and summarily and immediately canceled the talk. Technically, it was “postponed.”

Dr. Clauser had previously criticized the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize for work in the development of computer models predicting global warming and told President Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies. Dr. Clauser has developed a climate model that adds a new significant dominant process to existing models. The process involves the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds that cover, on average, half of the Earth. Existing models greatly underestimate this cloud feedback, which provides a very powerful, dominant thermostatic control of the Earth’s temperature.

More recently, he addressed the Korea Quantum Conference where he stated, “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis” and expressed his belief that “key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times.” Dr. Clauser, who is recognized as a climate change skeptic, also became a member of the board of directors of the CO2 Coalition last month, an organization that argues that carbon dioxide emissions are beneficial to life on Earth.

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Climate deniers ejected from teachers conference for pro-carbon comic

At a meeting of science teachers, the CO2 Coalition handed out comic books depicting carbon as good for the planet. They got kicked out.

By Maxine Joselow

:{Updated April 11, 2023

Students measure a tree at Farragut State Park in Idaho to learn about the effects that trees have on the environment north of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on May 18, 2017. (Rajah Bose/For The Washington Post)

To science teachers attending a recent convention, the comic books titled “Simon the Solar-Powered Cat” seemed unremarkable at first. Their story began with Simon, an orange-and-white cat, begging for more food in typical feline fashion.

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But on Page 5, the story took an unusual turn: A “friendly scientist” explained that Simon subsisted not on kibble, but on carbon dioxide. The scientist concluded that CO2 was a “miracle molecule” that fueled all life on Earth by helping plants turn sunlight into food.

That message and the comic book were the brainchild of the CO2 Coalition, a group that rejects the scientific consensus that carbon emissions are causing catastrophic climate change. The group claims that it distributed about 700 comic books to teachers at the National Science Teaching Association’s convention in Atlanta last month before being kicked out of the event.

“We were overwhelmed by the positive response from the teachers at the convention,” Gregory Wrightstone, executive director of the CO2 Coalition, said in an interview. “In fact, by the second day, we had handed out all of the comic books we had brought.”

The episode, details of which have not previously been reported, raised concerns among scientists and education experts that the teachers could spread climate misinformation to their students. It comes as states take divergent approaches to climate instruction in public schools, with New Jersey requiring students to learn about climate change in nearly every class and the Texas Board of Education calling for science textbooks to emphasize the “positive” effects of fossil fuels.

A large majority of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming by emitting massive amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Humanity must rapidly reduce these emissions, scientists say, or face catastrophic consequences such as dramatic sea level rise over the next few decades.

A page from a comic book from the CO2 Coalition, titled “Simon the Solar-Powered Cat.” (CO2 Coalition)

“By focusing 100 percent on this idea that plants need CO2, they’re intentionally misleading people by avoiding the real problems of CO2, which they didn’t talk about at all,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “It’s kind of like if you’re talking about cigarettes, and all you talk about is how cool they make you look.”

The influence of climate denial groups has waned over the past several decades, as the science has become clearer and the impacts of global warming have become starker. But the Virginia-based CO2 Coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has persisted in spreading its message.

Members of the coalition, which has received money from far-right organizations and donors with ties to the fossil fuel industry, ran a booth at the National Science Teaching Association’s convention. They spent the first day distributing three comic books and accompanying lesson plans to some of the roughly 6,500 attendees.

All of the comics featured three young sisters named Sophia, Ariana and Elyssa — the owners of Simon the cat — and their neighbor, a scientist named Mr. Gordon. In a book titled “Once upon a time: A true story about the miracle molecule — carbon dioxide,” Gordon tells the sisters that CO2 has net benefits for the planet.

“Everything green in our very green world owes its existence to carbon dioxide,” Gordon says to them. “And every person and every animal … are built from the carbon in CO2, which we get from eating vegetables and meat.”

A character named Mr. Gordon touts the benefits of carbon dioxide in a comic book titled “Once upon a time: A true story about the miracle molecule — carbon dioxide.” (CO2 Coalition)

While it is true that CO2 helps plants grow, its accumulation in the atmosphere will have net negative effects for plants and people alike, Dessler said. Telling kids they need CO2 to survive, he said, “is like telling a drowning person they need water to survive. It’s not helpful.”

On the second day of the convention, an official with the National Science Teaching Association asked members of the CO2 Coalition to stop distributing their materials or leave, according to a uploaded by the coalition.

Global carbon dioxide emissions hit new highs last year, says IEA report

“You can take down your literature or you can go home — it’s your choice,” NSTA chief operating officer Ryan Foley says in the video. When Wrightstone refuses to comply, Foley responds, “All right, then you’re being kicked out. You should pack up and get out.”

Jakob Namson and Sarah Morris, with their class from Lake City High School, measure a tree at Farragut State Park in Idaho to learn about the effects that trees have on the environment north of Coeur d'Alene in 2017. (Rajah Bose for The Washington Post)

When coalition members requested a booth at the convention, they signed a contract certifying that their materials were consistent with the association’s position statement on the teaching of climate science, NSTA Executive Director Erika Shugart said in an email. But then they violated the contract, she said.

In addition to the comic books, she said, coalition members circulated a pamphlet that criticized the position statement, which recognizes the “overwhelming scientific consensus” that the “Earth’s climate is changing, largely due to human-induced increases in the concentrations of heat-absorbing gases” such as CO2.

Debating the science

The CO2 Coalition does not disclose its source of funding, and it declined to do so for this story. But in 2017, the coalition received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute, according to tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, a watchdog group.

The Mercer Family Foundation — financed by New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and directed by his daughter Rebekah — has also helped finance the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that has denounced climate science as rigged. Heartland in 2017 mailed some 200,000 teachers books titled “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming.”

It remains unclear whether the Mercers have continued to fund the coalition. Wrightstone said in an email that although “we cannot release details on our funding sources,” the “vast majority” of donors are individuals making small contributions. While the CO2 Coalition paid an artist to create the comic books, the members of the group’s Education Committee are unpaid volunteers, he said.

These volunteers include William Happer, a physicist at Princeton University who has challenged the idea that carbon dioxide could damage the planet. Under President Donald Trump, Happer served as a senior director on the National Security Council, where he oversaw a controversial initiative to reassess the federal government’s analysis of climate science.

Physicist William Happer in 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Sharon Camp, a retired high school science teacher, designed the lesson plans accompanying the comic books. One lesson encourages teachers to use beads, Legos or Styrofoam balls to help students visualize CO2 molecules.

Camp, who taught Advanced Placement environmental science at Walton High School in Marietta, Ga., for 15 years, said students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions about climate science. “This is the only branch of science where you are not allowed to debate, you are not allowed to question,” she said in an interview. “Science is not supposed to work that way.”

Climate in the classroom

The coalition’s efforts come as some states have failed to update their standards for teaching climate change in public schools, leaving students at risk of learning incorrect ideas.

How teachers are getting it wrong on climate change

In a 2020 report, the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund graded all 50 states on their standards for teaching climate change. The groups examined whether the standards helped students understand that climate change is real, caused by humans, and already affecting nature and society, among other criteria.

Twenty-seven states scored a B+ or better. Of the rest, 20 scored a C+ or lower. In the coal state of West Virginia, the standards require students to debate climate change in their science classrooms, despite little debate among scientists. Those standards received a D. And in Alabama, which received an F, the standards suggest that human activity “may have caused” a rise in global temperatures, similarly downplaying the scientific consensus.

In March, the Republican-dominated Texas State Board of Education altered its internal guidance to say science textbooks should emphasize the “positive” aspects of fossil fuels, a leading cause of global warming. As a result, the state would probably still score an F if the report were conducted today, said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education.

Some Democratic-led states have moved in the opposite direction. New Jersey in 2020 became the first state to adopt learning standards obligating teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects.

In one state, every class teaches climate change — even P.E.

Shannon Falkner, an English teacher at Chatham High School in Chatham, N.J., said her freshman English students have written climate fiction, or “cli-fi.” Some students have penned dystopian tales about flooded cities, while others have offered more hopeful stories about the nation’s transition to renewable energy. Falkner said the reaction from students has been largely positive, and no parents have complained about the assignment.

There is evidence that climate instruction is popular. About 77 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “schools should teach about global warming” in a 2021 poll by Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication; about 22 percent disagreed.

“It’s actually one of the most supported policies we have measured,” said Tony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale program. Both the CO2 Coalition and conservative policymakers, he said, “are standing in front of the tide of public opinion and trying to hold it back with a piece of cardboard.”

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happer wapo

4 yrs ago

The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three senior administration officials.

The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The group would not be subject to the same level of public disclosure as a formal advisory committee.

The move would represent the Trump administration’s most forceful effort to date to challenge the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive global warming and that the world could face dire consequences unless countries curb their carbon output over the next few decades.

Is extreme weather related to climate change?

2:21

Extreme weather, like the polar vortex, is becoming more common as the Arctic continues to be disrupted by climate change. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

The idea of a new working group, which top administration officials discussed Friday in the White House Situation Room, represents a modified version of an earlier plan to establish a federal advisory panel on climate and national security. That plan — championed by William Happer, an NSC senior director and a physicist who has challenged the idea that carbon dioxide could damage the planet — would have created an independent federal advisory committee.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act imposes several ground rules for such panels, including that they meet in public, are subject to public records requests and include a representative membership. The new working group, by contrast, would not be subject to any of those requirements.

While the plan is not finalized, NSC officials said they would take steps to assemble a group of researchers within the government. The group will not be tasked with scrutinizing recent intelligence community assessments of climate change, according to officials familiar with the plan.

From deadly wildfires to debilitating hurricanes: White House releases major climate report

2:50

The Trump administration released on Nov. 23 a long-awaited report outlining that climate change impacts "are intensifying across the country." (Video: Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)

The National Security Council declined requests to comment on the matter.

Champion of new White House climate group calls CO2 ‘not a pollutant’

During the Friday meeting, these officials said, deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman said President Trump was upset that his administration had issued in November the National Climate Assessment, which must be published regularly under federal law. Kupperman added that congressional Democrats had seized upon the report, which is the product of more than a dozen agencies, to bolster their case for cutting carbon emissions as part of their Green New Deal.

Attendees at the session, which included acting interior secretary David Bernhardt and senior officials from throughout the government, debated how best to establish a group of researchers that could scrutinize recent federal climate reports. More than one participant suggested they might face a challenge establishing an independent outside panel that would question central findings of the National Climate Assessment and other landmark federal reports, said one official familiar with the discussion.

Happer, who headed an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition before joining the administration in the fall, has challenged the scientific consensus on climate change inside and outside of government.

Public records show the coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has received money from far-right organizations and donors with fossil fuel interests.

In 2017, according to federal tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, the group received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute.

One senior administration official said the president was looking for “a mixture of opinions” and disputed the National Climate Assessment, a massive interagency report, in November that described intensifying climate change as a threat to the United States.

“The president wants people to be able to decide for themselves,” the aide said.

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Several scientists, however, said the federal government’s recent findings on climate change had received intense scrutiny from other researchers in the field before they became public.

Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute who served on the National Academy of Sciences review panel for the scientific report that formed the basis of last year’s climate assessment, said the committee met several times “to do a careful, page-by-page evaluation by the entire report.”

“The whole review process is confrontational from the very get-go, but it’s based in scientific credibility, in a traceable chain of evidence through publications,” said Field, an earth system science and biology professor.

Trump officials had weighed the idea of conducting a “red team-blue team” exercise on climate change, an idea espoused by Scott Pruitt, who was then the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, during the early months of the administration. White House aides, including then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, blocked the idea, and at one point discussed whether to “ignore” the climate research being conducted by federal scientists.

Government researchers in a range of disciplines have identified climate change as a serious threat for the past two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations.

In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report to examine how an abrupt change in climate would affect the country’s defense capabilities: Its authors concluded that it “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.”

Last year, a military-funded study warned sea level rise and other climate impacts could make more than a thousand low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean “uninhabitable” by midcentury, including an atoll where a missile defense site is located.

Just last month, the national intelligence director delivered a worldwide threat assessment that “climate hazards” including extreme weather, wildfires, droughts and acidifying oceans are worsening, “threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”

Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech climate scientist whom Republicans have sought to testify on climate change because she often highlights the uncertainties that remain, said in an email that she backed the idea of an independent assessment of government climate reports as long as the participants reflected a range of perspectives and are not activists on either side of the debate.

But retired Rear Adm. David Titley, who served as oceanographer of the Navy and chief operating officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the new initiative could imperil national security by clouding “truthful assessments of the risks stemming from a changing climate.”

“I never thought I would live to see the day in the United States where our own White House is attacking the very science agencies that can help the president understand and manage the climate risks to security of today and tomorrow,” said Titley, who sits on the advisory board of the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan group focused on climate-related risks. “Such attacks are un-American.”

Several experts questioned whether the White House’s plan could undermine decades’ worth of science pointing to a warming planet. One federal climate scientist, who asked for anonymity to avoid possible retaliation, said agency researchers had pursued and published their research in the past two years without meaningful resistance.

Camilo Mora, a geographer and environmental professor at the University of Hawaii, said in an email that a single task force could not alter the findings of scientists across the globe.

“When it comes down to climate change, we are talking about thousands of independent papers, from everywhere, finding exactly the same thing: that the climate is changing, that we are doing it and that most often than not, the impacts are pretty bad,” Mora said.

White House prepares to scrutinize intelligence agencies’ finding that climate change threatens national security

Major Trump administration climate report says damage is ‘intensifying across the country’

Gap continues to widen between Trump and intelligence community on key issues

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https://www.citizen.org/article/foxic-fox-news-networks-dangerous-climate-denial-2019/

really good sum analysis:

belated post 2x?

Foxic:

in 2018,myriad extreme weather events wreaked havoc across the globe. Dire, authoritative reports were released, confirming unequivocally that the climate crisis is happening, that it’s driven by the burning of fossil fuels and that it requires immediate and bold action.

The first half of 2019 has already delivered more of the same undeniable climate chaos.

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But dangerous climate denial still persists in our political institutions, funded by Big Polluters and fed to large parts of the populace by right-wing media, further contributing to ongoing and deadly inaction.

In the face of a crisis that threatens our very existence, the most watched cable news network in the country — the Fox News Network — is still promoting climate misinformation and deploying tactics to distract from the urgency of the climate crisis, ensuring that its viewers’ understanding of the issue is based on deliberately distorted facts and distractions.

The millions of Americans who tune into Fox News are regularly bombarded with messages intended to undermine climate science, cast climate advocates as hysterical and frame climate policy as dangerous and un-American.

A review of Fox News programs for the first half of 2019 reveals that the network continues to give ample airtime to long debunked climate myths and fringe deniers. Among Fox’s roster of contributors on climate issues, not one is a climate scientist, and none has appeared on any other major network to talk about climate during the period reviewed.

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Methodology

For this analysis, we searched Fox News Network television transcripts from the first six months of 2019 that mentions of “climate change” or “global warming.”

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Key Findings

From January through June 2019, Fox News Network programs mentioned climate change or global warming 391 times, which amounts to roughly 65 mentions per month.
Of those mentions, 247 involved considerable discussion of the issue. The remaining 144 mentions were brief.
Of the 247 segments, 212 or 86% were dismissive of the climate crisis, cast warming and its consequences in doubt or employed fear mongering when discussing climate solutions.
Two programs, “Special Report With Bret Baier” and “Fox News @ Night” together accounted for 24 of the 35 segments that were neutral when mentioning climate change or discussion of climate solutions. And four of the five segments on “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace were neutral.
Fox News’s three top-rated programs for the first quarter of 2019 account for 35% of segments. They are “Hannity” (3.12 million total viewers on average), “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (2.98 million viewers) and “The Ingraham Angle” (2.43 million viewers).
Fox News’s three top-rated programs ran 25 more segments, or four more per month, than MSNBC’s three top-rated programs. “The Rachel Maddow Show” ran 15 segments, “The Final Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” ran 10 and “All In With Chris Hayes” ran 36.
In absolute terms, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” ran the most climate denial segments with 41 or approximately seven per month, followed by “Hannity” with 32 and “The Five” with 29.
Fox News programs had 10 contributors who commented on climate related issues at least twice during the six-month period. None of these contributors is a climate scientist and none has appeared on another network.
The Green New Deal, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the Democratic primary were the main drivers prompting discussion of the climate crisis on Fox programs in the first six months of 2019. Combined, they provide the context for 62% of the 247 segments.
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Denial Is Alive and Deadly on Fox News

With 391 mentions of climate change or global warming on programs airing from January to June, Fox News Network is far from silent on climate.

In fact, Fox News three most-viewed programs are discussing climate more than their liberal counterparts at MSNBC. From January through June 2019, “Hannity,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” and “The Ingraham Angle” collectively mentioned climate change or global warming in 86 different segments. During the same period, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “The Final Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” and “All In With Chris Hayes” ran a combined 61 segments discussing the climate crisis.

Overall, the right-wing network ran 247 segments. The vast majority — 212 or 86% — were dismissive of the climate crisis, cast its consequences in doubt or employed fear mongering when discussing climate solutions. A mere 35 segments were neutral on the issue or represented straight reporting on the climate crisis or solutions absent editorializing.

Two programs, “Special Report With Bret Baier” and “Fox News @ Night,” accounted for 71% of segments that were neutral when mentioning climate change or global warming.

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Fox Whistles: Top Three Messages Used by Fox News to Undermine Climate Action

A common tactic Fox News uses to undermine climate science, action and advocacy is to frame the climate crisis as a political construct. In these cases, the host or guest assigns values to climate that are misaligned with the network’s largest demographic — those who identify as conservative and Republican. These commentators rarely, if ever, address the body of scientific evidence or climate events directly, but rather project the issue through a political lens. Viewers are left to form opinions about the issues in the absence of facts and evidence.

In the past six months, the following three messages have been invoked repeatedly, in some form, across the majority of Fox News programs, but were highly concentrated in the network’s most popular opinion programs. They are intended to elicit a negative response to the climate crisis and those who advocate the changes needed to address it.

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Message 1: Climate Change Is a Vehicle for the Democrats’ Radical Big-Government Agenda

Seventy-two segments discussing the climate crisis (34%) suggested that responding to climate change, especially through policies like a Green New Deal, will result in government control over our lives.

“Hannity” had the most segments featuring this message with 18, or 56% of total segments, followed by “Tucker Carlson Tonight” with 13 (32%) and “The Five” with 12 (41%).

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Message 2: Responding to the Climate Crisis would Kill Our Economy and Send Us Back to the Stone Age

Closely associated with the “Big Government” message and often used in the same breath is the suggestion that climate action would mean extreme individual sacrifice and the demise of prosperity. Fifty-five segments (26%) equate climate action, including the transition to a clean-energy economy, with economic collapse.

“Hannity” leads again, using this message 11 times (in 34% of segments on climate), followed by “The Five” using the message 10 times (34% of climate segments). “Fox News @ Night” uses the message six times (26% of climate segments).

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Message 3: Concern About the Climate Crisis Is Liberal Hysteria

Rounding out the top three messages is one intended to undermine the urgency of the climate crisis by painting climate advocates or climate scientists as “alarmists”, “hysterical”, “chicken littles” and a “doomsday climate cult.” These labels not only deepen the political divide; they send a clear message to viewers to interpret the latest science on climate as exaggerated and to view scientists and advocates with distrust. Twenty-six segments, or 12% of discussions on the climate crisis used this form of name calling or used the terms “hysteria” or “alarmism” when referring to climate science.

“Hannity” used these labels eight times or during 25% of segments on climate. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” used them six times or during 15% of segments and “Fox News @ Night” used them five times or during 22% of segments.

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Fox Fallacies and Tricks

In addition to these partisan signals, Fox News Network employed a number of other false arguments and tricks to keep climate denial and doubt alive during an era when climate catastrophe is becoming increasingly apparent to Americans.

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Ad Hominem Attacks

In the past six months, those who advocate climate action have been subjected to personal attack by Fox News hosts.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has served as a regular punching bag for Fox News hosts and their guests. In one exchange between Sean Hannity and former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile, she jabs the network for its obsession with AOC, joking that programs have mentioned ”AOC well over 3,000 times.” For Ocasio-Cortez’s acknowledgment of the climate crisis and support for the Green New Deal, Fox News has accused her of “capitalizing on a fear” and “pushing doom and gloom day and night.” She’s been called a “radical nut job”, “Scary-o-Cortez” and “dumb and totally ignorant of everything.”

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While Ocasio-Cortez is by far the most vilified and attacked climate advocate, she is not the only one. Another example is provided by science communicator Bill Nye. After appearing on John Oliver’s HBO program, “Last Week Tonight,” Nye was Hannity’s “Villain of the Day.” A guest on “The Ingraham Angle” suggested that calling Bill Nye a scientist was akin to referring to “George Clooney as a doctor or Harrison Ford as an archaeologist.” Tucker Carlson suggested that Nye’s appearance was just a stunt to get his own Netflix series.

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Red Herring

A favorite distraction tactic used by Fox News hosts is to pivot any discussion about warming to the “hypocrisy” of “elites” and “liberals” who advocate climate solutions. The argument is that, if climate change is an existential crisis, then climate advocates would reduce their own carbon footprints to zero. But because climate champions like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) fly on private jets and Ocasio-Cortez uses Uber instead of public transportation, the crisis must not be real or very urgent.

The hypocrisy argument takes many forms, but on at least 11 occasions in the past six months, Fox News hosts have referenced the use of air travel to discredit those concerned about climate or to question the reality of human-induced warming, like this example from Tucker Carlson on January 14:

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Elites love to impose gas taxes on everyone else while flying private to conferences in Switzerland, where they worry about melting ice caps. That’s obviously a scam. Let’s just be honest about it.

Whether or not driving or using other forms of private transportation is hypocrisy is not the point. In reality, while individual action on climate is important, it is wholly inadequate for addressing the scale of the climate crisis. The crisis requires, above all, systemic policy responses that can be implemented only by governments.

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Slippery Slope

Another oft-repeated argument directed at climate scientists is that “they have been wrong before, so they must be wrong now.” The most common version of this argument is the myth that climate scientists predicted in the 1970s that there would be a dramatic period of global cooling. As Sean Hannity said in a typical segment, “Look at that, the big freeze, the next Ice Age is coming.” That’s what they told us in the ’70s. That then evolved into, uh-oh, the world has a fever, as Al Gore said and scaring people.” The reality is that a small pocket of scientists suggested the Earth could enter a new ice age in the next few centuries. At the time, 62% of climate scientists predicted warming. Forty years of observation and analysis have brought that number up to 97% of climate scientists agreeing that human beings are causing global warming.

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In the past six months, Fox News has not once referenced the scientific consensus around the climate crisis. According to recent polling, one in four Americans (25%) think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening, and a mere 17% understand that there is a scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is happening. This lack of public understanding cannot be pinned solely on Fox News, but the media plays a role in public perception and understanding of issues. And no other major media outlet is pushing out climate doubt, to so many viewers, as often as Fox News.

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Cherry-picking

Frequently during the first half of 2019, Fox News hosts latched on to singular comments by Democratic politicians and what they deemed to be extreme responses to the climate crisis. These topics were brought up and mocked repeatedly in an attempt to deny the climate crisis, discredit policymakers and vilify climate policy.

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The most common use of this tactic is the repetitive mention and mocking of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we do not address climate change” (a claim she later deemed “dry humor + sarcasm”). The comment was made in reference to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, which asserts that global temperature warming will likely reach 1.5°C by the year 2030.

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Fox News hosts referenced Ocasio-Cortez’s world-ending comment 56 times in the first six months of 2019. Out of 56 references, the IPCC report was mentioned only five times. On only two occasions did the network discuss the staggering conclusions of the report that informed Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks. A premade video segment from correspondent Peter Doocy identified that the report “doesn’t call for the end of the world in 12 years, but rather irreversible damage to the planet in a decade if emissions aren’t quickly curbed” and was aired on two seperate programs immediately following Ocasio-Cortez’s comment.

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The video clip of Ocasio-Cortez’s claim was played eight times during the remainder of January and continued to be replayed 12 more times, with the last showing on June 4.

Sixteen references to the world ending in 12 years did not reference Ocasio-Cortez. These mentions were used to mock advocates of climate policy, deny the climate crisis and criticize Democrats’ attempts to enact climate policy.

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Fox News Climate “CON”tributors

Assisting Fox News Network in climate denial and misinformation is a roster of long discredited climate contrarians whose views are solicited only by Fox News. None of the following men have appeared on other major television news networks to speak on matters related to climate.

When discussing climate change in the first half of 2019, the Fox News Network repeatedly featured and legitimized contributors whose climate views contradict the consensus of the climate science community. Many of these contributors have ties to the fossil fuel industry and have been criticized for spreading misinformation about climate change. Notably, none are climate scientists. The following contributors each appeared on the Fox News Network to discuss climate change at least twice in the first six months of 2019.

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Joe Bastardi is a meteorologist and a climate skeptic. He is currently the chief forecaster for WeatherBell Analytics LLC. He also works as a senior advisor at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (formerly known as American Tradition Institute), a group denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributing to an “environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas.” Bastardi insists that carbon dioxide is not a major player in determining global temperatures: “I believe the sun, ocean cycles and stochastic events play a much more significant role.” He has been a contributor on Fox News Network for more than a decade.

In March, while appearing on “Hannity,” he suggested that human activity is not “controlling the climate,” which is effectively contrary to the conclusion of nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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Justin Haskins is an editorial director and a research fellow at the Exxon Mobil and Koch Foundation-funded Heartland Institute. With a background in communication and political science, Haskins is largely involved in publications and productions by Heartland. In 2017, he published a piece detailing six reasons he was a climate skeptic and was criticized for the falsehoods they presented.

In April 2019, Haskins told a Fox Business reporter that he saw “no evidence that modest warming is creating any sort of a [sic] environmental crisis.”

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Chris Horner is a senior legal fellow for theEnergy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal). Horner formerly served as a senior fellow for Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), one of Washington, D.C.’s top conservative think tanks. CEI has received at least $2.1 million from fossil fuel giant Exxon Mobil. Bankruptcy filings for Alpha Natural Resources in 2015 exposed Horner’s deep financial ties to the coal industry and work he has done on behalf of big polluters.

In March, he went on “Hannity” to revive the debunked argument, intended to discredit climate scientists, that the same scientific community that is predicting warming predicted global cooling in the 1970s.

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Rush Limbaugh is a conservative political commentator and host of the radio talk show “The Rush Limbaugh Show.” He does frequent segments on his radio show pushing his conspiracy theory that climate change is the creation of agenda-driven scientists who develop computer models that exaggerate scientific findings in efforts to prove climate change. He has proclaimed himself as “an expert in debunking this whole leftist political argument in man-made climate change.”

In February, he appeared on “Fox News Sunday” again asserting that climate change is a hoax. “Climate change is nothing but a bunch of computer models that attempt to tell us what’s going to happen in 50 years or 30,” Limbaugh stated. “Notice the predictions are never for next year or the next ten years. They’re always for way, way, way, way out there, when none of us are going to be around or alive to know whether or not they were true.”

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Bjorn Lomborg is a political scientist, author, and the founder and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. Lomborg has published three books that downplay the risk of climate change, despite having no background in climate science. Lomborg has frequently asserted that the risks of climate change are not great enough to justify large-scale policies to reduce carbon emissions, instead arguing that “drastic carbon cuts would be the poorest way to respond to global warming.” Claims made by Lomborg in his books have been frequently criticized. His first book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” drew criticism for failing to “meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis” and his second book, “Cool It,” for being “riddled with small inaccuracies” and “displaying a pervasive bias in its coverage and evaluations of climate issues.” Lomberg has ties to both the Heartland Institute and CEI and received an award from CEI in 2003.

In April, Lomborg appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and stated, “They’re telling us global warming is a problem. But it’s also a moderate one…”

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Steve Milloy is the founder and publisher of junkscience.com and self-described as exposing “faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special interests and hidden agendas.” In addition to spreading doubt about the science of the climate crisis, he is a senior policy fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and former director of internal policy and strategy at Murray Energy, the largest privately held coal producer in the U.S., and the co-founder of “Burn More Coal.” Milloy has financial ties to the tobacco, chemical and oil and gas industries, having gotten his start as a denialist for the tobacco and chemical industries in the 1990s. In 1998, he helped write the American Petroleum Institute’s strategy to challenge climate science. Milloy previously served as an adjunct scholar at both the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and currently serves as a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute.

In February 2019, Milloy appeared on “Special Report with Bret Baier” and claimed that climate change was just the Democrats’ pretext for advancing radical political agendas. “We always knew climate was a stalking horse for socialism, communism, totalitarianism, whatever you want to call it,” Milloy said.

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Patrick Moore is a nuclear energy advocate and the founder of Greenspirit Strategies, a PR company that works “with many leading organizations in forestry, biotechnology, aquaculture and plastics, developing solutions in the areas of natural resources, biodiversity, energy and climate change.” Moore self-identifies as a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization has denied this claim, stating that Moore “often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental ‘expert’ or even an ‘environmentalist,’ while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance.” Greenpeace also identified him as “a paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries for more than 30 years.” Moore denies the role of carbon dioxide in climate change and has previously encouraged the celebration of carbon, stating, “carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the stuff of life, the currency of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth.”

While a guest on “Fox News @ Night” in March, Moore claimed a lack of evidence that carbon dioxide in contributing to climate change, stating “the climate crisis is not just fake news, it’s fake science.”

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Marc Morano is the front man of the anti-climate-science websiteClimateDepot.com and author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.” Morano has no scientific training nor educational background in climatology. The website is a fabrication of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a conservative and anti-regulation think-tank based in Washington, D.C., where Morano works as thecommunications director. CFACT receives funding from the Koch Brothers, ExxonMobil and Chevron, and gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations associated with dirty energy tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife. Morano was in Rolling Stone’sarticle, “The Climate Killers,” listed as one of “17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming.”

In May he appeared on “Special Report With Bret Baier” attempting to discredit the United Nations’ climate reports, claiming their sole interests reside in politics and not science. He called the U.N. “a self-interested lobbying organization.”

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Mark Steyn is a Canadian author and columnist of SteynOnline.com. Steyn attended the King Edward’s School in Birmingham, U.K., leaving in 1978 when he was 18 years old. Steyn is often a featured speaker at climate denial conferences hosted by groups such as the CO2 Coalition, The New Criterion and the Heartland Institute. These events, with titles such as The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 Is Good for the Earth and the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change, are funded by Exxon Mobil, DonorsTrust and the Koch Brothers. He is infamously known for attacking Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” graph, which predicted a sharp rise in global temperatures as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increased. He went on to call Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science” and claim he “has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and the planet.”

While a guest on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on April 22, Steyn deflected the climate crisis while claiming Democrats merely use it as a platform to appeal to voters. “Climate change is essentially a boutique issue, it’s almost like an accessory for Western liberal politicians to flaunt how much they care while actually doing nothing about the people and the jurisdictions for which they’re actually responsible.”

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Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power the Future, an energy advocacy organization that supports the fossil fuel industry. Despite its focus on energy, the nonprofit has no official stance on climate change. However, Turner previously told climate change campaigners in a blog post that if they “are so anti-energy, don’t use it.” Turner is an alumnus of the Charles Koch Institute and previously worked for the Koch-tied non-profit, Generation Opportunity. After earning a degree in Philosophy, he went on to specialize in communications and public affairs. He is also an affiliate of the Heartland Institute.

During a June appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Turner criticized Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden’s announced climate plan which aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, calling it “nonsensical.” He went on to claim that “every proposal that involves climate change, usually enriches their donors and their donor base, or it takes away individual rights and individual liberty.”

Conclusion

This year we experienced the hottest June ever recorded. In India, deadly temperatures reached and stayed above 120 degrees for days. France experienced its most brutally hot day in recorded history, at nearly 115 degrees.

The rapid overheating of our planet from the burning of fossil fuels is a clear and present threat. There is no debate that the climate crisis is now.

One should be hard pressed, in this era of climate catastrophe, to find climate denial in legitimate media sources. In fact, the presence of regular deniers and dissemination of misinformation about the climate crisis should disqualify a news outlet as a fair and balanced source of information – and most importantly, should not be trusted.

The Fox News Network and its hosts, with few exceptions, are peddling climate denial to millions of Americans on a regular basis.

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This review began with the hypothesis that Fox News Network might be using newer, more nuanced and sophisticated forms of climate denial to keep audiences doubting the reality playing out before their eyes. This hypothesis was wrong. This review shows that Fox News’ denial handbook has not been updated. The misinformation the network is pushing out and the deniers it gives a platform to are long debunked and well exposed. The tactics they use, from naming calling to mockery, are transparent and inflammatory.

More than that, denial, like our rapidly warming climate, is becoming increasingly dangerous. By keeping doubt alive and deniers in business, Fox New Network is contributing to U.S. climate inaction.

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https://www.desmog.com/**2012/02**/23/what-passes-brain-trust-heartland/

Has beens, also-rans, deniers-for-hire on retainer at “think tank”

Update: 13th scientist disavows Heartland connection (See: Watkins at bottom of this post)

The Heartland Institute maintains a stable of 13 scientists on retainer for the express purpose of attacking the work of the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to budget information released last week in the Heartland document dump.

The scientists, ranging from one of the world’s least credible deniers-for-hire (Dr. S. Fred Singer) to a sessional lecturer on the evolution and history of the domestic dog (Susan Crockford), include no top climate scientists currently publishing in the peer-reviewed literature.

The best paid “expert” on the Heartland list is Craig Idso,a former Director of Environmental Science at Peabody Energy (the largest coal company in the world). Heartland pays Idso $11,600 a month through his Center for the Study of CO2 & Global Change, which like the Heartland Institute, has charitable status and therefore operates with an effective subsidy from the American taxpayer. (Funny how quick libertarians are to fleece old Uncle Sam when THEY get to kick the money back to their rich friends.)

Coming in at $5,000 a month is Idso’s principal partner in the regular IPCC attack, Fred Singer, who for the last 20 years has denied pretty much any health threat with a corporate sponsor: the health impacts of second-hand smoke; coal’s role in creating acid rain; the danger of asbestos; or DDTCFCs in creating the ozone hole; and, of course, the human cause and potential consequences of climate change. (See Naomi Oreskes excellent book, Merchants of Doubt for the full, devastating story ot Singer’s lucrative denial business.)

Together, Idso and Singer developed what they call the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which Heartland funds as “the most comprehensive and authoritative rebuttal of the United Nations’ IPCC reports.”

Number 3 on the list of Heartland’s beneficiaries, at $1,667 a month, is the Australian Robert Carter, a geologist at James Cook University in Queensland and a staff member for theInstitute of Public Affairs, an Australian think tank which, like the Heartland Institute,takes funding from the tobacco and oil industries.

The fourth, fifth and sixth experts on Heartland’s anonymous donor dole, all at $1,000 a month, are Madhav Khandekar, Indur Goklany andRobert Ballin**g. Khandekar is another think-tank double-dipper, a retired Environment Canada researcher who also shows up on the experts list at the Canadian think tank, the Fraser Institute, which subsidized an earlier IPCC attack called the Independent Summary for Policymakers. Khandekar has also been an “expert” on other discredited climate change denial organizations, includingFriends of Science and the Natural Resources Stewardship Project.

Goklany, a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Interior Department, is currently under scrutiny over whether the funding he has accepted from Heartland violates U.S. law against federal employees taking payments that could put them in conflict with their governmental duties.

And Robert Balling is a geography professor at Arizona State who turns up as an expert on several industry funded(taxpayer subsidized) policy hothouses masquerading as “think tanks” and educational organizations. Balling was a trendsetter among climate-change deniers for hire, working as early as the late 1990s for the coal barons of the Western Fuels Association on its Greening Earth Society project.

Coming in with a lower profile and a lower monthly retainer ($750 a month) are Anthony Lupo, and Canadian “Terrestrial Animal” specialists Crockford (the dog expert from the University of Victoria) and Mitch Taylor, a contract lecturerat the Lakehead University who has argued that polar bears are in no danger from climate change.

The weather forecaster Joe D’Aleo gets just $500 a month, (kid-stuff compared to the $88,000 that Heartland is kicking over to D’Aleo’s meteorological colleague Anthony Watts). D’Aleo, co-founder of The Weather Channel, predicted in the 2008 Farmers Almanac that the world was entering a cooling phase. (No word whether he updated that prediction after 2009 was the second hottest year on record and 2010 tied for the hottest.)

It must be disappointing to be Willie Soon, at just $125 a month. Soon is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But his credibility has sustained a series of terrible blows. It was reported last year, for example, that he took took more than $1 million in funding from oil and coal companies, including the Koch Foundation, Southern and Exxon. He’d earlier been reportedly taking money from the American Petroleum Institute and he and Sallie Baliunas had a paper discredited in the journal Climate Research (it was so bad, the editor resigned in protest).

Also budgeted at $125 a month are Craig Loehle, a pulp and paper industry scientist, and David Watkins, who appears to be a water resources specialist in the civil and environmental engineering department at Michigan Tech. There being no obvious public record of Watkins having said anything embarrassingly silly about climate science, it’s not immediately clear what his name is doing on the Heartland list.

Update: David Watkins, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director at Michigan Tech contacted the DeSmogBlog today to say:

I have had no contact with the Heartland Institute, have not received [nor have been offered] any funding from them, and have no idea how I ended up in their 2012 budget. M(y) university administration is trying to contact Heartland to find out how this misuse of my name occurred.

Apologies to Dr. Watkins for any embarrassment we might have caused him by repeating the erroneous, and potentially damaging, contention that he was accepting money from Heartland. Read the official response from Michigan Tech University.

---

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/abs/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2021

Laura D. Young

Open the ORCID record for Laura D. Young[Opens in a new window]

and

Erin B. Fitz

Despite 97 per cent of scientists agreeing on anthropogenic global warming, the remaining 3 per cent play a critical role in keeping the debate about climate consensus alive. Analysis of climate change contrarians from multi-signatory documents reveals 3 per cent of signees to be climate experts, while the remaining 97 per cent do not meet expert criteria and are also involved with organizations and industries who make up the climate change countermovement. The data also reveal most contrarians to be aged sixty-five or older. As a result, we explore other factors (for example, collective memories and ideological views) that may have also contributed to expert and non-expert views.

...

:{:{}:

Dunlap, RE and Jacques, PJ (2013) Climate change denial books and conservative think tanks: exploring the connection. American Behavioral Scientist 57, 699–731.CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

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who made up list? how many made it? how many still there?

The skeptics who could snag science adviser slots

Scott Waldman, E&E News reporter

Climatewire: Thursday, September 14, 2017

Climate skeptics may soon join a key science advisory panel at U.S. EPA.

A number of people who reject the findings of mainstream climate science are being considered by the Trump administration for spots on EPA's Science Advisory Board, a voluntary but influential panel that reviews science used in environmental regulations.

At least one nominee hopes to use a position on the board to challenge the science undergirding many environmental regulations. One has said in a statement that the world must "abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade." Another compared people concerned about climate change to "Aztecs who believed they could make rain by cutting out beating hearts."

EPA has submitted 132 names for public comment as possible members of the panel. About a dozen of them have made comments rejecting mainstream climate science. Many have connections to the fossil fuel industry or conservative think tanks, and some have received funding to attack the findings of mainstream scientists that humans are warming the globe at an unprecedented pace through the burning of fossil fuels.

The selection of any of those researchers would be the beginning of a very different advisory board that would bear the hallmark of the Trump administration's position on climate change, said Steve Milloy, an attorney and longtime EPA foe who worked on President Trump's transition team for the agency.

"Had some other Republican won the presidency and a swamp creature taken over the EPA, this would not be happening," he said, "but thank God for Scott Pruitt that he's got the courage to do this."

The Heartland Institute — a Chicago-based free-market think tank that pushes alternative climate science — nominated many of the current prospects.

Heartland Institute spokesman Jim Lakely said in an email: "We applaud any effort by Administrator Pruitt to bring qualified non-alarmist scientists onto the EPA's advisory boards. There is a vigorous debate over the causes and consequences of climate change, and it's vital that EPA acknowledge that fact and have a more balanced approach to the agency's rule-making."

The long list of nominees — identified by EPA staff members who oversee the advisory board — also includes mainstream climate scientists who have extensive experience working with the United Nations and EPA on climate change. Former top Obama EPA science official Paul Anastas made the list.

The deadline for public comment is set to expire Sept. 28. After that, EPA boss Pruitt will have final approval on the candidates. The board has 48 member slots, 15 of which expire at the end of the month. It's not clear how many positions will be filled.

The SAB, created in 1978, is tasked with "independent advice and peer review on the scientific and technical aspects of environmental issues to the EPA's Administrator." An EPA spokesman has said the agency wants industry to have a greater role than it has had previously in evaluating the science used by EPA to craft regulations.

Traditionally, most of the SAB members are from academia, though some have also come from industry and environmental groups.

The SAB is essential to the functioning of EPA because it is chartered by law to ensure the agency is using the best available science for regulations, said Peter Thorne, the board's current chairman and director of the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center at the University of Iowa. He said the SAB has a wide range of tasks that touch on almost every aspect of EPA's functioning. He said it's not just EPA that draws on its work — it's also state governments, nongovernmental organizations and private companies.

"The EPA Science Advisory Board needs to have people who are well-versed in the science that underlies the decisions that EPA makes, so if there are people who end up on the board who have views that are not grounded in solid science, then that is a problem," Thorne said.

Pruitt's prospects

Here are some of the skeptical nominees under consideration:

Joseph D'Aleo, a certified consultant meteorologist and co-founder of the Weather Channel: He has run climate skeptic websites and has appeared as a speaker at Heartland conferences. D'Aleo said his priority on the board would be attacking the endangerment finding, the legally binding document that holds that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases harm human health and must be regulated by the executive branch. He said he wants to challenge the finding because it could otherwise be used later to build back Obama-era environmental regulations.

Edwin Berry. edberry.com

"We're going to push for reconsideration, start from scratch and put together the best science," he said. "If CO2 is not a serious pollutant, let's focus the attention of the EPA on other issues."

Edwin Berry, a meteorologist and atmospheric scientist: He has funded his own climate research and says human carbon dioxide emissions do not cause climate change. He has compared those who believe in human-caused climate change to "Aztecs who believed they could make rain by cutting out beating hearts and rolling decapitated heads down temple steps." On his Twitter account, he has called Islam "a death cult" and has encouraged motorists to drive into protesters.

Berry, in an email to E&E News today, described his tweet as a joke and said he does not advocate violence.

"Clearly, my tween says to slowly drive to not hurt anyone," Berry said in the email, misspelling "tweet."

brn

Kevin Dayaratna. Heritage Foundation

Berry, who confirmed that he and a number of other skeptics were nominated by Heartland, said he wants to use his position on the board to show that humans barely contribute to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which he claimed are mostly driven by natural factors.

"Let's get over this whole thing about climate change being an important thing, because in fact we humans have a negligible impact on climate," he said. "And if we had the Paris Agreement and everything else, it wouldn't do any good anyway."

Alan Carlin, a retired EPA employee who is affiliated with Heartland: He fought the agency's crafting of the endangerment finding. Carlin, an economist, was at the center of a political firestorm under Obama after he produced a widely criticized 93-page report comprising cherry-picked scientific data and blog entries concluding that regulating carbon dioxide was "the worst mistake that EPA has ever made."

Kevin Dayaratna, a statistician at the conservative Heritage Foundation: His report was cited by Trump as a reason to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. It claimed that the agreement could shrink U.S. gross domestic product by $2.5 trillion within two decades (though Trump stated the impact as coming within a decade). The report was criticized by some as being misleading, because that amount is less than 1 percent of the aggregate GDP over that period and the report did not account for the cost of taking no climate change action. Dayaratna was invited to attend Trump's withdrawal announcement in June in the White House Rose Garden.

Craig Idso, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute: He has researched the benefits of atmospheric carbon dioxide. His work has centered on highlighting how increased carbon dioxide will benefit plants.

Paul Driessen, a senior policy adviser at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a libertarian environmental think tank: His organization handed out leaflets at a climate protest this year in Washington, D.C., that said, "CO2 is not the 'control knob' of the climate." He also co-founded Climate Exit, or "Clexit," which criticized the science behind the Paris climate agreement and holds that spiking levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide benefit the Earth. "The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade," the group stated in its founding statement. "Man does not and cannot control the climate."

Gordon Fulks, a physicist and adviser to the Cascade Policy Institute, an Oregon-based libertarian think tank: He has denied that net sea ice melt is occurring and that the Earth is warming. He has said those who express concern about climate change are like a "societal pathogen that virulently spreads misinformation in tiny packages like a virus."

Anthony Lupo, another founding member of Clexit: He has received support from the Heartland Institute and helped in the unsuccessful fight against the endangerment finding in court.

Leighton Steward, a former energy company executive and a founder of groups that promote the rise of carbon dioxide as a benefit: He has also encouraged the United States to drop out of the Paris climate accord and says that natural warming is raising the temperature of the Earth.

David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware: He has denied that human-caused climate change could have catastrophic consequences and has co-authored climate research claiming polar bears are not harmed by human-caused climate change that was quietly funded, at least in part, by Koch Industries Inc.

Critics want to boot EPA 'cronies'

---

12 21

a massive outbreak of tornadoes left scores dead across eight states this weekend, and given that this weather arose in a warmer, changed climate, President Biden, his FEMA Administrator, numerous news outlets:{, } $_{climate}_$ :{ }:scientists:{ and }:meteorologists:{ }:discussed:{ how such an extreme event could be influenced by climate change.}:

Despite all that qualified nuance, the right (predictably) went nuts. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Fox News were very mad but didn’t exactly have anyone on hand who knew the science well enough to offer any science to the contrary

For their attempted refutation, Breitbart cited Steven Koonin, who in turn cited now-quite-outdated reports and their wishy-washy trend observations (which aren’t the point!). Town Hall cited Steve Milloy, as did the Daily Caller, because apparently defending Big Tobacco gives you climate expertise to answer questions actual scientists are still working out.

In an email to supporters, Climate Depot’s headline claimed a “Meteorologist calls Biden’s tornado climate link ‘utter bullsh*t,’” quoting and linking to Chris Martz, who is in fact not only not a meteorologist, but not even a college graduate, having just completed his first semester at Millersville University. (Though Chris did note that geophysics PhD and American Meteorological Fellow Michael Mann “oversimplifies the issue” and “isn’t a trained meteorologist.”)

Marc Morano’s email also cites an old post by climate satellite mistake-maker Roy Spencer, followed by a reference to Roger Pielke Jr., who is making good use of his cramped office by tweeting quotes from the IPCC as though the consensus view of tornado trends has a bearing on this specific event’s conditions. (Generous of Jr. to stop publicly airing his weird daddy issues long enough to give his opinion on tornadogenesis!)

After Pielke is our favorite climate-, covid-, Sandy Hook- and Obama birther-conspiracytheorist: Tony Heller. He excerpted a bunch of old newspaper clippings to prove that, since tornadoes happened in the past before climate change, that means climate change must not be changing the climate in which they form now. (Makes sense, right?)

But Pielke Jr.’s appearance in Morano’s email alongside his apparent peers Chris Martz (class of ‘25) and Tony Heller (no class at all) is just the warm-up, the paltering of what past trends may or may not mean for a current situation.

And others in conspiracy-land are offering their opinions and asking some “legitimate” questions, and it’s pretty entertaining, in the dark and depressing way this sort of thing is amusing.

As Media Matters reported, Alex Jones, fresh off his court losses regarding aforementioned Sandy Hook school shooting conspiracy theories, told his InfoWars audience that the Biden administration “officially” ordered Texas to turn off the power last February. Which means “the question is did [President Biden] use weather weapons to cause the tornadoes? That’s a legitimate question to ask.”

It’s not like this is the first time an InfoWarrior has offered some creative explanations for extreme weather. Remember back in 2018 when Jones’s co-conspiracy-theory-conspirator suggested thatJohn Kerry saved Hawaii from a hurricane with an energy beam fired from Antarctica? (Or is that not a legitimate question to ask? We’re unsure of the meaning of the phrase at this point.)

Even that’s not the craziest take though! Remember the Wobble prediction that aliens are controlling the Earth’s movement — the real cause of climate change — and are soon going to wobble us so hard it reveals the mystery planet Nibiru?

Well, since Tony Heller’s banned from Twitter he’s taken to Gab, and his fellow poster there ROGTruth1 has an update for us on The Wobble we discussed the other day: It’s what actually caused the tornadoes, and a bunch of other events!

“The temporary wobble in the earth’s axis has been superseded by a severe wobble. So, the regular disturbances which have been a true cause of climate change are now manifesting as more significant events.” From an earthquake in Peru on November 28th, to cold in Europe, earthquakes in Japan, windstorm in Turkey and tornadoes in the US, the wobble’s just getting started.

Apparently “soon” in December, a “Massive New Madrid Adjustment (unzipping) will occur over a period of 3 weeks” leading to the “entire region west of the Mississippi” to “sink” and “shift Southwest,” causing “major disruption through the Ohio valley and up through the St. Lawrence Seaway.” After that 3 week cataclysm but also still in “December soon” will be a 150 foot tsunami that “will hit the UK and Western Europe,” while “backwash of up to 50’ will hit the Eastern seaboard of the USA.”

If you’re as concerned as we are, rest assured that while there will be “no warnings from the elite that are fully briefed and aware,” the good news is that “half of humanity has been subliminally contacted.”

Those of you who have been contacted already, you know the plan. Those that haven’t? Sorry, we can’t say anything further, but you should consider listening to the “experts” cited here if you’re worried, they seem to have things pretty well figured out.

---

https://books.google.com/books?id=APDGDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

after oreskes, kocks, darren wood ceo exxon promised 180 eboy trump

defectors

fear of lawsuits (B/c of discovery eg tobacco files?)

https://www.c-span.org/video/?469372-1/the-triumph-doubt

The Triumph of Doubt

Former Obama and Clinton administrations official David Michaels talks about the use of “science for hire” in the creation of public policy.

oxford up oct 2020

well-heeled American corporations have long had a financial stake in undermining scientific consensus and manufacturing uncertainty. In The Triumph of Doubt, former Obama and Clinton official David Michaels details how corrupt science becomes public policy -- and where it's happening today.

Opioids. Concussions. Obesity. Climate Change.

America is a country of everyday crises -- big, long-spanning problems that persist despite their toll on the country's health. And for every case of government inaction on one of these issues, there is a set of familiar, doubtful refrains: The science is unclear. The data are inconclusive. Regulation is unjustified. It's a slippery slope.

Is it?

The Triumph of Doubt traces the ascendance of science-for-hire in American life and government, from its origins in the tobacco industry in the 1950s to its current manifestations across government, public policy, and even professional sports. Amid fraught conversations of "alternative facts" and "truth decay," The Triumph of Doubt wields its unprecedented access to shine a light on the machinations and scope of manipulated science in American society. It is an urgent, revelatory work, one that promises to reorient conversations around science and the public good for the foreseeable future.

About the Author

David Michaels, PhD, MPH, is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. He served as Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, the longest serving administrator in the agency's history. Prior to that, he served under President Bill Clinton as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety, and Health, charged with protecting the workers, community residents and environment in and around the nation's nuclear weapons facilities.

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.

---

also enstrom

The skeptics who could snag science adviser slots

Scott Waldman, E&E News reporter

Climatewire: Thursday, September 14, 2017

Climate skeptics may soon join a key science advisory panel at U.S. EPA.

"Had some other Republican won the presidency and a swamp creature taken over the EPA, this would not be happening," he said, "but thank God for Scott Pruitt that he's got the courage to do this."

The Heartland Institute — a Chicago-based free-market think tank that pushes alternative climate science — nominated many of the current prospects.

Heartland Institute spokesman Jim Lakely said in an email: "We applaud any effort by Administrator Pruitt to bring qualified non-alarmist scientists onto the EPA's advisory boards. There is a vigorous debate over the causes and consequences of climate change, and it's vital that EPA acknowledge that fact and have a more balanced approach to the agency's rule-making."

Traditionally, most of the SAB members are from academia, though some have also come from industry and environmental groups.

Pruitt's prospects

Here are some of the skeptical nominees under consideration:

Edwin Berry. edberry.com

"We're going to push for reconsideration, start from scratch and put together the best science," he said. "If CO2 is not a serious pollutant, let's focus the attention of the EPA on other issues."

Berry, in an email to E&E News today, described his tweet as a joke and said he does not advocate violence.

"Clearly, my tween says to slowly drive to not hurt anyone," Berry said in the email, misspelling "tweet."

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Kevin Dayaratna. Heritage Foundation

Anthony Lupo, another founding member of Clexit: He has received support from the Heartland Institute and helped in the unsuccessful fight against the endangerment finding in court.

HACKS 2

Scientists

Meet the scientists Trump could tap to undermine climate regulations

David Legates

Steve KooniN

Richard Lindzen

Ryan Maue

Judith Curry

John Christy

Will Happer

At a meeting of science teachers, the CO2 Coalition handed out comic books depicting carbon as good for the planet. They got kicked out.

Methodology

Key Findings

Denial Is Alive and Deadly on Fox News

Fox Whistles: Top Three Messages Used by Fox News to Undermine Climate Action

Fox Fallacies and Tricks

Fox News Climate “CON”tributors

Conclusion

Has beens, also-rans, deniers-for-hire on retainer at “think tank”

The skeptics who could snag science adviser slots

Pruitt's prospects

Critics want to boot EPA 'cronies'

About the Author

Alex Jones’ NewsWars

Myron Ebell and Patrick Michaels

Tony Abbott

Christopher Monckton

Roy Spencer

Murdoch media

Bots

Reputable sources

The skeptics who could snag science adviser slots

Pruitt's prospects

Critics want to boot EPA 'cronies'...