DENIAL3

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SEE FOUR 10 24

see CRM conserv rtwing media

see Fox / bad trinity

see DAF funding

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bak 3 23

see 15 min agenda 21 reboot /gt reset davos BS

rogan tiktok escalator boost amplify conspiracy clickbait

see evang prophet end times

SEE ROBERT MURRAY COAL DENIAL FUNDER

mma tag r

Climate deniers | Media Matters for America

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site/ tool:  https://www.climateofdenial.org/

pols

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great gop posters

https://www.hrothstein.com/the-cost-of-denial

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DESMOG

March 31, 2020

Robert Murray was included in a list by Rolling Stone in an article titled “Climate Enemies: The Men Who Sold the World.” According to the magazine, “bad actors are not only failing to address the crisis, they’re actively exacerbating it.” The list includes “America’s worst offenders, from fossil-fuel industry magnates, to investment gurus, to the president himself.”⁶³

“Murray’s influence extends beyond his floundering dirty-energy company,” the article states. “For years, he pumped money into a diverse portfolio of conservative groups that continue to push disinformation about the climate crisis. Murray also had an oversize influence on Trump’s climate policy, donating $300,000 to his inaugural committee before handing the president a literal wish list of rollback requests, many of which were dutifully carried out by the administration.”⁶⁴

December 17, 2019

Murray Energy bankruptcy filings revealed that the energy company, even while undergoing bankruptcy, had continued to fund a wide range of climate change denial groups. That included theInternational Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), a group that has closely guarded its funding sources, which received $60,000. Other groups named included the Heartland Institute ($130,000), the Competitive Enterprise Institute ($200,000), and Government Accountability & Oversight ($300,000). Murray’s company also donated $60,000 to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, making it one of the group’s largest donors. See related reporting from The Intercept, Energy and Environment News*, and *The New York Times.⁶⁵ ^66 ^67

Other groups funded by Murray Energy include FreedomWorks, the Cato Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and Judicial Watch. As The New York Times noted, Murray continued to fund climate change denial even as his company was going bankrupt.

May 31, 2018

Based on a draft Department of Energy (DOE) memo obtained by Bloomberg,the Trump administration was making plans to bail out coal and nuclear plants. This followed more than a year of lobbying by Murray for President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry to bail out struggling coal plants. *Bloomberg*was the first to report:⁶⁸ ^69

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truthout 12 24

after the hottest summer in recorded human history — along with Hurricanes Helene and Milton, flooding and wildfires — why isn’t there a greater push for action on climate change?

One reason is that big oil, gas and coal companies — and their allies in Congress — block the urgent action that’s required. They do this in part by denying basic climate science, and in many cases, they receive enormous,publicly subsidizedtax benefits to do it. And in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, millions in charitable donations poured into policy development at the Heritage Foundation, producing the Project 2025 Blueprint for the incoming Trump administration.

It’s true. Wealthy donors and fossil fuel corporations regularly make “charitable” donations to nonprofit organizations that deny science, sow doubt about the urgency of climate change and run out the clock for timely action. When they deduct those contributions from their tax bill, they’re effectively being subsidized by you — the taxpayer.

Many of these donors have built their fortunes in the oil, coal and gas industries or in the industries that support them, like banking and insurance. They have a vested interest in ensuring the world’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels. These include the Koch family of private energy giant Koch Industries, and the Scaife family, heirs to the Mellon oil and banking fortune.

Here’s how it works, according to a new report I’ve co-authored for the Institute for Policy Studies and Climate Accountability Research Project: Through U.S. charitable giving tax laws, donors like the Kochs and Scaifes reduce their taxes when they give to qualified, tax-exempt nonprofit charities. The wealthier the donor, the greater the reduction in their tax bill. Byone estimate, for every dollar a billionaire gives to charity, taxpayers chip in up to 74 cents in lost tax revenue.

Related Story

...

A US nonprofit funnels money from billionaires like Home Depot’s co-founder to effectively subsidize Israeli troops.

By Derek Seidman , TruthoutDecember 2, 2024

> From 2020 to 2022, U.S. nonprofits that deny basic climate science received $5.8 billion in tax-deductible donations.

Our report identified 137 nonprofit tax-exempt organizations that actively spread climate disinformation, working effectively to confound public opinion and delay urgent action on climate.

For example, theCompetitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) received $21 million in charitable contributions from 2020 to 2022. CEI boasts that it’s been “instrumental” in stalling climate action, both in blocking ratification of the 1997Kyoto Protocol and in pressuring former (and now incoming) President Donald Trump to withdraw from the 2016Paris Climate Agreement.

In 2013, Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in Pennsylvania,predicted that $500 million was given to organizations devoted to undermining the science of climate change. We estimate that figure has risen into the billions: Over three years, from 2020 to 2022, U.S. nonprofits that deny basic climate science received $5.8 billion in tax-deductible donations. Some $219 million went to groups that primarily work on climate disinformation.

The rest went to multi-issue organizations that include climate denial as part of their work — groups like The Heritage Foundation, which developed the extremist Project 2025 blueprint that would, among other things, roll back environmental regulations and cancel billions of dollars’ worth of investments in green jobs. Other recommendations from Project 2025 include the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (OCAA).

Conservatively, we estimate that somewhere between $219 million and $1 billion flowed directly to climate disinformation, all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, during our study period between 2020 and 2022.

Even though these are effectively our tax dollars at work, we don’t know the precise figure. That’s because many donors give through vehicles called donor-advised funds (DAFs), which mask the identity of donors and their recipient organizations. Roughly 16 percent of all donations to climate disinformation groups come through DAFs. Many billions more may have come through private individual donations as well.

If we want to save the planet, we need transparency reforms to reveal this web of secret donations.

The fossil fuel industry has harnessed our charitable system for their self-serving, harmful disinformation campaigns — and they do it largely in secret. We know the oil, gas and coal industry has been funding disinformation for almost half a century, even as their own internal research documented the harms from carbon and methane emissions. So what can we do about it? One simple step is to improve transparency, so the public has more accurate information about where these taxpayer-subsidized donations are going.

Currently, DAF sponsoring organizations — like Schwab Charitable or Fidelity Charitable — are only required to disclose total grants to nonprofits from their sponsoring fund, not from each DAF account, so we don’t know the individual donor who gave the funds. Our report urges lawmakers to pass legislation to require grants from DAFs to be reported on an individual account basis.

We’re also calling to close another DAF loophole. Private charitable foundations, which are required by law to distribute 5 percent of their assets each year, are increasingly giving funds to DAFs and counting that toward their payout requirements. That loophole, which can conceal the actual grant recipients, should be closed.

U.S. taxpayers are likely subsidizing billions of dollars of donations to climate misinformation organizations. If we want to save the planet, we need transparency reforms to reveal this web of secret donations.

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We unraveled the $122 million web of climate denial, political extremism, and Trump ties to Project 2025

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 - DeSmog

As scrutiny of Project 2025 continues to grow, defenders of the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which would reshape federal governance and give the next Republican president unprecedented new powers, say it’s the criticism — not the 922-page plan itself — that’s too extreme.

In a piece published last month, Fox News cited prominent conservatives who feel there’s “nothing radical” about the endeavor. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has accused detractors of “panic-mongering” and tried to reframe Project 2025’s sprawling “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint as more boring than scary — a milquetoast white paper that simply “melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups.” This echoes Heritage’s insistence that Project 2025, while conservative, is anything but fringe.

But the findings from DeSmog’s recent investigation into Project 2025’s funding sources tell a very different story. Our wide-ranging analysis of public financial disclosure forms found that the groups on Project 2025’s advisory board — whose experts largely helped to draft the plan — are heavily funded by just six family fortunes. Since 2020, foundations linked to these billionaire families have contributed over $122 million to Project 2025 groups, including at least 290 individual donations to 49 nonprofits that contributed to the Mandate for Leadership documents or are on the initiative’s advisory board. We’ve mapped the funding ties between the billionaire families and the Project 2025 individuals and organizations in an interactive graphic, below.

Groups that received funds from the six family fortunes are far from the political mainstream, according to DeSmog’s analysis, including entities that actively deny the science of anthropogenic climate change — as well as organizations that have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. DeSmog’s review also uncovered additional ties between the six families and the Trump/Vance ticket, though both candidates have tried to distance themselves from the initiative in recent months. Indeed, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein — the billionaire founders of the Uline packaging company, whose charitable donations tie them closely to Project 2025 — are among the former president’s biggest donors.

Project 2025 styles itself as populist, moderate, and far from the politics of Washington. Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts hails it as a plan for the perennially downtrodden, hard-laboring folks “who shower afterwork instead of before.” Its funding sources — elite, extreme, and closely tied to the Trump campaign — suggest exactly the opposite.

The Donors

Though the Mandate pledges to “prioritize the economic prosperity of ordinary Americans” and pry influence away from “America’s corporate and political elites,” the funding that produced it comes from the upper echelons of the billionaire class.

And not just any billionaires. The six family dynasties providing significant support to Project 2025 — Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — all have long histories of fighting for financial and environmental deregulation. Three of the six families have promoted climate denial consistently enough to appear in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks the people and organizations doing the most to undermine decarbonization efforts.

They include oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his Koch Family Foundations; the Scaife Family Foundations, which tap vast wealth from the Mellon aluminum, oil, and banking fortune; and chemicals-and-electronics industrialist Barre Seid, whose recent, record-setting $1.6 billion gift to a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard A. Leo has been a major source of Project 2025 money.

While the Heritage Foundation suggests a diverse conservative coalition gave rise to the Mandate for Leadership, the six family fortunes’ giving patterns were remarkably similar. Of the 49 Project 2025 groups, 37 percent received funding from at least three of the six families. 70 percent of the 49 groups received funding from at least two of the families. (In a few cases, the donations were to sister 501(c)4 lobbying arms that share offices and staff.) The average donation was over $420,000.

*Related:See DeSmog’s coverage of Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn’s Plan That’s More Extreme Than Project 2025

Links to Climate Denial

For decades, oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his late brother David fought vigorously for environmental deregulation, including by supporting groups that sow doubt about the science of manmade climate change. Foundations linked to Koch gave at least $9.6 billion to 15 Project 2025 groups since 2020. But four of the lesser-known families — Bradley, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — gave even more, and all six family fortunes helped to fund Project 2025 groups that have denied the science of manmade climate change.

Of the 10 groups that the six families funded most heavily, seven are in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database. That includes more than $11 million to the Heritage Foundation; $8.3 million to Turning Point USA, which has provided a platform for well-known climate deniers like Alex Epstein; and $4.6 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which in 2015 published an op-ed claiming warming is “obviously not initiated by the burning of fossil fuels”. In total, foundations linked to the six families gave to 15 Project 2025 groups with entries in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database.

That wasn’t the only form of extremism DeSmog uncovered. Four Project 2025 organizations that received donations from the six billionaire fortunes since 2020 are classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a leading civil rights watchdog group. These include the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ group that received over $1.6 million in donations from Bradley and Koch; The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant group that received $650,000 from Scaife; Eagle Forum, an anti-government and anti-immigrant group that received over $100,000 from Koch and Uihlein; and Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group that received $25,000 from Seid.

Of the six billionaire families, only Coors-linked foundations — run by heirs to the Coors brewing fortune — did not donate to at least one SPLC-designated hate group.

Links to the Trump Campaign

For months, Donald J. Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, claiming to know nothing about the initiative. That stance conflicts with subsequent media reports, including resurfaced video of the former president and current Republican presidential nominee saying, as a keynote speaker at a 2022 Heritage Foundation event, that Heritage would “lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The Washington Post reported that Trump flew in a private plane to the event with Heritage President Kevin Roberts.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has also been the subject of intense scrutiny for numerous ties to Project 2025 — including writing the foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book. DeSmog’s investigation also uncovered numerous ties between Vance and Project 2025 advisory groups, including a previously unreported 2017 keynote speech at a Heritage event.

But while the candidates continue to downplay any Project 2025 connections, one link is unavoidable: a billionaire family that heavily supports Project 2025 groups is among their campaign’s biggest donors, according to Federal Election Commission data.

In May, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the founders of the Uline packaging company, each donated $5 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump’s reelection. That’s not including the more than $48 million Richard contributed to Restoration PAC, a pro-Trump political action committee, last quarter alone. Restoration PAC has spent over $12.9 million this year on political advertising, including ads supporting Trump and attacking his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since 2020, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, which is run by the Uihleins and named in honor of Richard’s father, has donated at least $13.4 million to 13 different Project 2025 groups.

The map below is interactive. Click on a donor to see the groups it funded with dollar amounts, or a nonprofit to see which of the six family fortunes made donations.

[GFX]

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an the conv 10 24

as TVs across Florida broadcast the all-too-familiar images of a powerful hurricane headed for the coast in early October 2024, people whose homes had been damaged less than two weeks earlier by Hurricane Helene watched anxiously. Hurricane Milton was rapidly intensifying into a dangerous storm, fueled by the Gulf of Mexico’s record-breaking temperatures.

Many residents scrambled to evacuate, clogging roads away from the region. Officials urged those near the coast who ignored evacuation warnings to scrawl their names on their arms with indelible ink so their corpses could be identified.

The two hurricanes were among the most destructive in recent memory. They are also stark reminders of the increasingly extreme weather events that scientists have long warned would be the consequence of human-driven climate change.

Still, many people deny that climate change is a worsening threat, or that it exists at all. As its impacts grow more visible and destructive, how is this possible? Views of Hurricane Milton’s damage across Florida.

One answer lies in a unique facet of human psychology – specifically, in how people manage the fear aroused by existential threats. For many people, denying the existence of a climate crisis is not only convenient, but may feel psychologically necessary.

Terror management theory

The Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Ernest Becker put it this way: “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else … to overcome it by denying it in some way is the final destiny for man.”

In plain terms, he was saying that most people struggle to accept their mortality and take pains to distort their perception of reality to avoid confronting it.

In the 1980s, social psychologists developed “terror management theory,” showing the lengths people go to deny death. Hundreds of experiments have tested its implications. In a common method, participants reflect on their own death, while control groups consider less threatening topics, like dental pain. The key question: What does death awareness do to people?

After writing about death, people tend to quickly move on, pushing thoughts of it from consciousness with distractions, rationalizations and other tactics. Health care professionals see this every day. For example, people often dodge screenings and diagnostic tests to avoid the frightening possibility of discovering cancer. Skidmore College psychologist Sheldon Solomon discusses Ernest Becker’s ‘The Denial of Death’ and terror management theory in the context of humanity’s history of brutal behavior.

But here’s the rub: Terror management theory suggests that when people are not thinking about death, it nevertheless holds influence. The unconscious mind lingers on the problem even after people have used strategies to quiet the fear by pushing it from awareness.

Social psychology experiments show that people often cope with the specter of death by attaching themselves to cultural ideologies, such as religious, political or even sports fandom. These worldviews imbue life with meaning, values and purpose. And that can ease the terror of mortality by connecting people to an enduring and comforting web of ideas and beliefs that transcend one’s own existence.

When people are made aware of death, those systems of meaning become even more critical to their psychological functioning. Existential threats make us cling even tighter to the meaning systems that sustain us.

Climate denial as a defense mechanism

Much like a terror management lab experiment – or the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic – natural disasters like hurricanes Helene and Milton trigger death anxiety.

Rising sea levels, warming oceans and intensifying storms – all tied to global warming fueled by human actions – represent an existential threat.

From our perspective, it is not surprising that climate-related disasters disappear from the public consciousness almost as soon as they have passed. Google Trends data exemplifies this: Incoming storms instigated an uptick in searches for “climate change” and “global warming” in the days before Hurricane Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, 2024, and Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9, 2024. Then those searches quickly declined as people shifted their focus away from the threat.

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Unfortunately, climate change isn’t going away, no matter how hard anyone tries to deny it.

While climate denial allows people to protect themselves from feelings of distress, terror management theory suggests that denying death is just the tip of the iceberg. For some people, accepting the reality of climate change would necessitate reevaluating their ideologies.

Terror management theory predicts that individuals whose ideologies conflict with environmental concerns may ironically double down on those beliefs to psychologically manage the existential threat posed by climate-related disasters. It’s similar to how mortality reminders can lead people to engage in risky behavior, such as smoking or tanning. Hurricanes may reinforce denial and commitment to a worldview that rejects climate change.

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A path forward: Building new worldviews

Although denial may be a natural psychological response to existential threats, the U.S. may be getting to a point where even deniers can’t ignore the existential threat associated with climate change.

Again and again, Americans are gobsmacked by the devastation – from hurricanes to severe flooding, wildfires and more.

A terror management analysis suggests that overcoming this crisis requires weaving a solutions-focused narrative into the ideologies that people rely on for comfort. As psychologists who work on terror management, we believe the fight against climate change should be framed not as an apocalyptic battle that humanity is destined to lose, but as a moral and practical challenge that humanity can collectively overcome.

[vid] Tampa, Florida, meteorologist had the right idea as the two hurricanes headed for his community: His fact-based social media updates eschew partisan critique, encourage neighbors to support one another and emphasize preparedness and resilience in the face of incoming storms.

As Milton approached, Phillips told residents to remember his Rule #7: Don’t freak out. That doesn’t mean do nothing – it means evaluate risks without letting emotion interfere, and take action.

Shifting the narrative from helplessness to collective empowerment and action can help people confront climate change without triggering the existential anxieties that lead to denial – offering a vision for a future that is both secure and personally meaningful.

Jamie Goldenberg, Professor of Psychology and Area Director, Cognitive, Neuroscience and Social Psychology, University of South Florida; Emily P. Courtney, Assistant Professor of Instruction, University of South Florida, and Joshua Hart, Professor of Psychology, *Union College

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

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Climate denial fuels right-wing attacks on vice presidential debate moderators

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Research contributions from Ilana Berger

Published 10/04/24 mma

CBS' October 1 vice presidential debate put climate change front and center, breaking from recent debates that sidelined the issue. In the wake of Hurricane Helene's devastating path across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan pressed candidates on specific climate plans and reinforced the scientific consensus on climate change's role in intensifying hurricanes.

This approach promptly drew criticism from right-wing media figures and online influencers who argued that CBS had overemphasized climate at the expense of covering issues like the economy and immigration. These critics, many of whom have previously questioned climate science, disregarded both the context of Helene's destruction and increasing public concern over climate impacts. Their responses often employed familiar narratives of climate skepticism and attempted to challenge the scientific information presented by the moderators, illustrating right wing media's ongoing resistance to substantive climate discussions.

• ## Hurricane Helene's climate signals and public concern contradict right-wing media claims about climate change's relevance to the debate

* Hurricane Helene made landfall as the strongest storm ever to hit Florida's Big Bend region, with top sustained winds of 140 mph. This continues a trend of increasingly powerful storms, with Helene being the eighth Category 4 or 5 hurricane to hit the U.S. in the past eight years. The storm underwent rapid intensification fueled by “exceptionally warm” Gulf waters, 1-2°C above average.

Researchers estimate that this warming, largely attributed to climate change, increased Helene's destructive power by 40-50%. Helene set new storm surge records along Florida's west coast, breaking records set just last year. An attribution study found that similar cyclones are up to 20% wetter and 7% windier in the present climate compared to the past. Yale Climate Connections, [9/27/24; Grist, 9/26/24; The Washington Post, 9/28/24; World Weather Attribution, 9/30/24]

• • The 2024 debates occurred against a backdrop of escalating climate-related disasters, highlighting that the next president will be a climate president. The year 2023 was the hottest on record, with 2024 experiencing record-breaking heat as well. Hurricane Helene devastated the southeastern United States just before the vice presidential debate, starkly demonstrating the brutal reality of climate-fueled extreme weather. The mounting climate crisis ensures that whoever wins the election will face critical decisions on climate policy. Grist, [10/2/24; Media Matters, 6/25/24]

• ## Fox News, among other conservative outlets, attacked CBS' debate moderators for asking climate questions and highlighting the proven connection between hurricanes and climate change

• • Fox host Lawrence Jones criticized the moderators for focusing too much on climate change instead of other voter priorities. “They spent way more time on climate change than the number one issue on voters' minds. I wanted to hear the response. Let's have a back and forth. Sometimes you got to go off script. I know they wanted to get all the questions in, but something so important on the top of voters' minds, maybe spend a little more time on that and not climate change.” Fox News, *Fox and Friends*, [10/2/24]

• • Fox's Greg Gutfeld falsely accused the moderators of assuming there is a link between climate change and hurricanes without evidence. He also suggested that the moderators were uninformed about climate issues: "'Overwhelming consensus on climate change,' that's as much as Norah O'Donnell has ever read about the climate, and she doesn't believe there is any expectation that she has to read more about anything." Fox News, *The Five*, [10/2/24]

• • Fox's Sean Hannity claimed the moderators were biased and prioritized climate change over more pressing issues. “Two very liberal, left-wing, arrogant, pompous moderators who were clearly trying to tip the scales in Tim Walz's favor. Almost every question tainted with Democratic talking points. There was a question about climate change before any mention of the economy or illegal immigration.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [10/2/24]

• • Matthew Continetti dismissed the proven connection between climate change and hurricanes and criticized moderators for making it. “But climate change, that is not a primary or secondary issue in my mind in concern to this devastation brought by the hurricane. But that's what the moderators did on question two. And so, from that point on, I said, 'Well, it's three on one.'” Salem Radio Network, *The Hugh Hewitt Show*, [10/3/24]

• ## Right-wing media figures reacted poorly on social media to accurate climate questions in vice presidential debate

• • Former Fox News producer Kyle Becker called climate change questions a waste: “Three questions in and we're already getting VP debate questions about the Climate Hoax. Public opinion polling shows that virtually zero Americans think this is a priority. Waste of a question.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Daily Wire host Matt Walsh dismissed climate change as a debate topic: “It’s ridiculous to waste time in a debate talking about ‘climate change.’” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Will Cain criticized the focus on climate change: “People are suffering…still missing in NC…wondering who is coming to help…wondering about their government…and the debate here is whether climate change is a hoax!?” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

* Sinclair host Sharyl Attkisson accused moderators of bias: “Once again, moderators taking the biased position regarding climate change as if there is no debate.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Right-wing radio producer and podcast host Duane Patterson decried supposed moderator bias: “Norah O'Donnell jumps in with the fact-check/editorializing comment to reinforce the left's view of climate change. it will be a 3-1 debate, apparently.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Meteorology student and social media figure Chris Martz disputed climate change's real impact on hurricanes: “FACT-CHECK = FALSE. They need an actual meteorologist on that debate stage. This is awful. @NorahODonnell: ‘Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.’ There is absolutely zero evidence that climate change makes hurricanes larger in size (i.e., diameter).” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Right-wing account Oilfield Rando falsely claimed climate change is a low priority for voters: “‘Climate change’ consistently ranks in the bottom of voter concerns and yet it’s a direct question in every single debate because Narrative.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly questioned the timing of the climate change question: “Did she really just turn Helene into a CLIMATE CHANGE Q & ask it on the SECOND q of the debate?” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Former Trump official and meteorologist Ryan Maue disputed CBS News' climate reporting: “Fact check: CBS News. No evidence in a trend either way of hurricanes become larger due to climate change. CBS News is not where you should go for accurate or authoritative information on climate change.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Conservative journalist and Truth in Media founder Ben Swann called the climate questions “ridiculous”: “JD Vance just delivered a MASTERCLASS on how to handle the corporate media in response to CBS’ ridiculous question on ‘climate change.’” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Media Research Center's Curtis Houck accused CBS of ignoring hurricane victims: “Insane question from CBS' Norah O'Donnell casting aside the suffering in North Carolina and the American south due to #HurricaneHelene to INSTEAD make it ALL ABOUT climate change in the #VPDebate:...” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

* Power the Future founder Daniel Turner denied the existence of the climate crisis: “JD Vance flips the script on CBS and their attempt at a climate change gotcha question. There is no climate crisis. #VPDebate.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Conservative website Townhall.com mocked CBS' climate change stance: “CBS News: OF COURSE climate change is real!” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Right-wing commentator John Cardillo called CBS' climate commentary “weird”: “CBS adding commentary on bogus ‘climate change’ was just weird.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Conservative podcast host Keith Malinak (“Just Keith” on X) criticized CBS' fact-checking: “Holy shit, CBS! You just ‘fact checked’ with a climate change disclaimer like we see under YouTube videos. Please do, suck it.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam suggested CBS misrepresented voter priorities: “Americans: ‘Climate change is our 18th priority.’ CBS: ‘LeTs mAkE iT tHe sEcOnD qUesTiOn!’” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Popular conservative troll account Catturd accused CBS of blaming hurricanes on climate change: “OMG - CBS is blaming the hurricanes on climate change - F.U.C.K CBS You evil demons.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

w hy We Need to Fight Disinformation About Climate Change

Core Pathways

http://corepathways.georgetown.edu › portfolio › clima...](http://corepathways.georgetown.edu/portfolio/climate-deniers-why-we-need-to-fight-disinformation-about-climate-change/)

Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Marc Morano, and Fred Singer are some of the most prominent climate deniers of this century.

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Project 2025's Kevin Roberts to speak at NY Times’ Climate Week NYC event

Roberts has referred to environmentalism as a “pseudo-religion” and called for unleashing our “vast reserves of oil and natural gas”

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

:{Published 09/06/24 mma

The New York Times announced the speakers for its September 25 “Climate Week NYC” discussion, an annual event coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly session in New York City that promises to “bring together some of the world’s most engaged climate voices as part of a community focused on change.” The event’s lineup notably includes Kevin Roberts, the president of right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation who has led the Project 2025 initiative — the controversial conservative transition plan of policy and staffing proposals for a potential second Trump presidency.

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As detailed in its nearly 900-page policy book, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, Project 2025 rejects climate science and dismisses efforts to reduce planet-warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy in favor of serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry. Overseen by Roberts, who wrote the book’s foreword, the Heritage plan for a future GOP administration seeks to gut or hamstring federal agencies working on renewable energy deployment, climate science, and environmental safeguards while opening up state and federal public lands for oil and gas extraction.

In Project 2025’s policy book, Roberts attacked environmentalists, the U.N., and the Environmental Protection Agency, calling for the unfettered use of oil and gas

In the foreword of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership policy book, Roberts sets the tone for the plan's hostility toward climate action and wholesale endorsement of fully extracting our oil and gas reserves, a path scientists have warned would be catastrophic.

• Roberts calls environmentalism a “pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.” He claims that those who suffer most from environmental policies are the “aged, poor, and vulnerable.” Roberts continues, “At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human” because it promotes “population control and economic regression” by “regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.” Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023]

• Roberts attacks global elites and calls for abandoning international organizations like the United Nations. Claiming that “global elites” and organizations like the United Nations are making decisions on climate change that are insulated “from the sovereignty of national electorates,” Roberts argues, “International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty should not be reformed: They should be abandoned.” Additionally, Project 2025 demands that “the next conservative Administration should withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.” Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023]

• Roberts claims the EPA “quietly strangles domestic energy production,” later adding, “The next conservative President should go beyond merely defending America’s energy interests but go on offense, asserting them around the world.” Roberts goes on to claim that “America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth. American dominance of the global energy market would be a good thing: for the world, and, more importantly, for ‘we the people.’” Under Roberts’ leadership, Project 2025’s section on energy production was reportedly written by the oil and gas industry and provides a blueprint for how the next president can turn “drill, baby, drill” into federal policy. Notably, the industry is already producing record amounts of oil and gas under the Biden-Harris administration, all while holding thousands of unused drilling permits. Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023; Media Matters, 8/8/24; Vox, 3/13/24; PolitiFact, 3/29/22]

*:{Update (9/9/24):The Times replied to this piece with the following statement: “Climate Forward is a live journalism event that has a history of bringing together newsmakers who seek to influence climate and political policy for a day of rigorous, challenging interviews. We anticipate the same for this year's event.”

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mma 7 24

google demonetized The Heartland Institute in June. Here are 4 more channels that appear to violate its misinformation policy.

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 07/31/24

• Even after demonetizing the YouTube channel of climate-denial think tank The Heartland Institute in June, other large channels still contain climate-denial content that seemingly violates the platform's policies. We found four examples.

• ## YouTube demonetized the Heartland Institute after it frequently posted climate denial videos

• • On June 14, Heartland wrote that YouTube demonetized its channel because it posted videos that were harmful to viewers, violating community guidelines. As climate journalist Dave Vetter explained in another thread on X (formerly Twitter), this means that Heartland can no longer earn revenue from its YouTube videos. Twitter/X, [6/14/24, 6/14/24]

• • The decision comes after years of researchers and journalists pointing out that Heartland’s content amplifies climate deniers.The think tank is known for lobbying against climate legislation while receiving funding from the oil and gas industry. Heartland started its YouTube channel in 2007. The Washington Post, [2/23/20; Grist, 2/6/23; DeSmog, 8/6/18; YouTube, accessed 7/25/24]

• • After the announcement, Heartland still had an ad running on at least one of its videos. As of July 3, at least one video from the Heartland Institute was still being monetized by YouTube. The ad from Pacific Rim Athletics, a company that provides strength training programs, appeared on a January 19 video from Heartland attacking climate scientist Michael Mann. YouTube[, accessed 7/3/24]

• • Google announced in 2021 that YouTube would prohibit “ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” but researchers have found large channels that violate this policy.A 2023 study from the Climate Action Against Disinformation Coalition identified 100 different videos amplifying climate disinformation that have ads, including videos from Heartland. The Verge, [3/2/23; Google, 10/7/21]

• ## Channels run by Tony Heller, PragerU, John Stossel, and Jordan Peterson are still being monetized while seemingly violating YouTube’s misinformation policies

• Tony Heller

• • Like the Heartland Institute,Tony Heller regularly posts YouTube videos that attempt to delegitimize scientific consensus on climate change. In January 2024, the Center for Countering Digital Hate published a report that highlighted Tony Heller as one figure still promoting the false narrative that Arctic sea ice isn’t melting. Since CCDH published its report, which analyzed videos from January 1, 2018, to September 30, 2023, Heller has posted well over 100 videos, many of which promote the idea that the warming we are currently experiencing is not being driven primarily by burning greenhouse gases. For example, Heller posted the documentary Climate: The Movie, which promoted “more than 2 dozen long-debunked myths” according to Skeptical Science, a blog that was launched by academic and disinformation expert John Cook. One such myth is that climate change is caused by the sun; in fact, the sun’s energy has decreased while the Earth warms. Heller also relies on an outdated theory suggesting that a warming period that occurred around 6,000 years ago debunks the idea of man-made climate change. Skeptical Science, [3/23/24; YouTube,,[7/25/24;](https://youtu.be/ktLIUVEaaQ0&t=1s)7/25/24;Center for Countering Digital Hate, 1/16/24; NOAA,10/21]

• • Media Matters found a pro-Trump election ad featuring Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance running on a May 11 video from Heller.The video included a clip of comedian Bill Maher mocking adult film actress Stormy Daniels and was posted during Trump’s New York hush money trial, where he was ultimately found guilty on 34 felony charges. YouTube,[, accessed 7/30/24]

• • According to Social Blade, Heller’s estimated monthly earnings from YouTube are $33 to $528.Social Blade, accessed [7/25/24]

• PragerU

• • PragerU videos receive millions of views, and the channel has a history of posting videos that feature climate change denial.Media Matters recently identified six videos on PragerU’s website that dismiss the scientific consensus that the changes we are currently experiencing are primarily being driven by burning fossil fuels. These videos can also be found on PragerU’s YouTube channel, and they have over 14.7 million views combined. Media Matters, [4/16/24; YouTube,,,,,,]

• • Recently, PragerU uploaded a video in which the narrator claims that it’s unclear whether climate warming is “larger than natural climate variability.” In an April video, a scientist who reportedly does climate forecasting for fossil fuel companies Judith Curry suggests that humans may not not be causing the rapid warming we have been experiencing in the 21st century, saying we don’t know “how much warming is associated with our emissions.” According to a Carbon Brief summary of the International Panel on Climate Change’s 2023 report, humans have likely caused “100% of the long-term global warming to date.” Curry concludes that “we can’t predict the future climate. It’s simply not possible. … We can’t control the climate.” PragerU, [4/15/24; Carbon Brief, 3/23/23; DeSmog, 5/15/23]

• • On June 28, PragerU posted a video claiming that the June heat wave impacting the mid-Atlantic and central U.S. was “nothing out of the ordinary'' and that heat waves are not becoming more frequent. The video shows a clip of meteorology student Chris Martz saying temperature data collected by NOAA contradicts the claims that “these events are becoming more frequent and more common here in the United States.” Meanwhile, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory website, “Heat waves like the June event have become more frequent in the United States in recent decades, according to researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.” YouTube,[; X/Twitter, accessed 7/26/24; NASA, 6/19/24]

• • According to Social Blade, PragerU’s estimated monthly earnings from YouTube are $7,000 to $112,700.Social Blade, accessed [7/25/24]

• Jordan Peterson

• • While Peterson does not post videos about climate change denial as often as other influencers or organizations devoted entirely to the topic, his videos have a much larger reach than Heartland’s, amplifying their impact. After the Center for Countering Digital Hate released a report about YouTube climate deniers, Peterson uploaded an interview with climate denier Dr. Patrick Moore, who falsely claims to be a co-founder of Greenpeace. The April 11 video is titled Climate Lies, referring to Moore’s views on the scientific consensus on climate change. The video has over 253,000 views, far more than the 10 most recent videos from the Heartland Institute combined. Greenpeace, [7/6/10; YouTube,, accessed 7/25/24]

• • According to Social Blade, as of July 16, Peterson’s estimated monthly YouTube earnings are $5,700 to $91,500.Social Blade, accessed [7/25/24]

• John Stossel

• • Former Fox Business host John Stossel sued Meta after it said that two of his videos about climate change were missing context.In 2021, Stossel sued Meta (then Facebook), claiming the company defamed him by adding a fact-checking label to these videos. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed and the court found that Facebook’s labels were protected under California’s anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) statute. One of the videos included excerpts from an event Stossel moderated at the Heartland Institute. This video can also be found on YouTube. In it, one climate denier on the panel claimed that climate change is not causing sea level rise because “water has been rising for approximately 20,000 years and probably will continue.” He also claimed that hurricanes are not becoming more intense. E&E News, [9/28/21; Courthouse News, 10/13/22; Climate Change Litigation Databases, 10/11/22;YouTube,]

• • Stossel has been involved with the Heartland Institute for years. In addition to moderating the 2019 panel, Stossel has participated in Heartland Institute benefits, including one in September 2023. Heartland Institute, [9/8/23, 2/3/04]

• • On May 24, Stossel posted an interview with Judith Curry in which she said there is no “true scientific consensus” on climate change and called it a “manufactured consensus.” While Curry admitted that fossil fuels are warming the planet, she also falsely said that “we still don’t know” how “much of the recent warming is caused by fossil fuels” or if a warming planet is dangerous for humans. YouTube,[; NASA, February 2021]

• • At least two of Stossel’s videos related to climate change, including his interview with Curry, had ads as of July 30.Media Matters found an election campaign ad featuring presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris running on Stossel’s video with Curry and an ad for SunValue, a solar project developer, running on his video titled “Juice: Why Wind and Solar Make Our Power Grid Less Reliable.” YouTube, [7/30/24, 7/30/24]

• • On May 24, Stossel also posted an interview with pro-fossil fuel activist Alex Epstein, who suggested it’s not “all bad” or “catastrophic” that fossil fuels are driving global warming.“You have to admit it leads to a lot of greening, because CO2 is plant food,” Epstein said. “And you also have to admit that warming is generally desirable in the world.” He also complained that “people do not acknowledge that today we are masters of climate and that any negatives of rising CO2 have been totally overwhelmed by the benefits of fossil fuels.” YouTube,[]

• • According to Social Blade, as of July 25, Stossel’s estimated monthly YouTube earnings are $395 to $6,300.Social Blade, accessed [7/25/24]

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mma Project 2025 partners join right-wing media and climate deniers to celebrate SCOTUS decision overturning Chevron deference

06/28/24

On June 28, the Supreme Court upended 40 years of precedent by overturning Chevron deference, a decision that will restrict federal agencies' regulatory abilities that will also make it easier for corporations to challenge environmental protections, climate action, and rules that protect workers and regulate drugs and financial practices, among other issues.

Undoing Chevron deference has been a central goal of the conservative legal movement and corporate lobbyists for decades, with right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation arguing that “the modern administrative state creates a pervasive system of consolidated power that weakens the checks and balances carefully constructed by the United States Constitution.”

Now, Heritage has joined with over 100 other conservative organizations to organize Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan to guide the next GOP presidential administration with policy proposals and staffing recommendations. In response to the Supreme Court ruling finally overturning Chevron deference, multiple Project 2025 partners joined right-wing media figures and climate deniers in celebrating the decision.

What is Chevron deference and why overturning it matters

• • Chevron deference was a legal principle that required courts to defer to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes they administer. Chevron deference, established in the 1984 decision Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., required courts to defer to federal agencies' “reasonable interpretation” of ambiguous statutes they administer when Congress had not directly addressed the issue. It applied to agency interpretations with the force of law, such as those from formal adjudications or notice-and-comment rulemaking. Cornell Legal Information Institute, accessed [6/28/24]

• • The overturning of Chevron deference will significantly shift power away from federal agencies to the courts, potentially impacting a wide range of public protections and regulations. This shift could undermine decades of established policies and practices across many areas of governance. Without Chevron deference, courts may now substitute their own interpretations for complex technical and scientific issues ranging from financial regulations to environmental protections. This could reduce agencies’ ability to respond effectively to evolving challenges, such as the climate crisis, and weaken the government’s ability to implement laws as Congress intended. Natural Resources Defense Council, accessed [6/28/24]

• • In her dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the majority decision upends the balance and separation of power and will impact decision-making around all major issues. “It gives courts the power to make all manner of scientific and technical judgments," Kagan wrote. “It gives courts the power to make all manner of policy calls, including about how to weigh competing goods and values. (See Chevron itself.) It puts courts at the apex of the administrative process as to every conceivable subject—because there are always gaps and ambiguities in regulatory statutes, and often of great import. What actions can be taken to address climate change or other environmental challenges? What will the Nation’s health-care system look like in the coming decades? Or the financial or transportation systems? What rules are going to constrain the development of A.I.? In every sphere of current or future federal regulation, expect courts from now on to play a commanding role. It is not a role Congress has given to them, in the APA or any other statute. It is a role this Court has now claimed for itself, as well as for other judges.” Supreme Court, *Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo*, [6/28/24]

• • Legal expert Neal Katyal argued on MSNBC that overturning Chevron deference is “going to impact you and me every single day of our lives.” “This is a massive game change to the way our government is going to operate,” Katyal said. “Justice Kagan's dissent at the very last lines say how dangerous this is, how this shows that this court has no respect for the role of precedent, for stare decisis. She points out that the Supreme Court has relied on this principle of deference, Chevron deference, over 70 times since 1984. Lower courts have relied on it more than 18,000 times. And yet the court blew past all that and totally changed the law in a way that's going to impact you and me every single day of our lives.” MSNBC, *Ana Cabrera Reports*, [6/28/24]

Project 2025 partners celebrate court’s decision to overturn Chevron and the demise of the “administrative state”

• • Heritage senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “SCOTUS overrules the judicially created Chevron doctrine - which has for years given federal executive agencies authority never congressionally delegated to them. … This is a massive shift in judicial dynamics that will curb the advances of the administrative state.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • The Center for Renewing America, headed by former Trump Cabinet official Russ Vought, posted a clip from War Room with a quote from CRA senior fellow Jeff Clark saying, “The Deep State wanted to create a 4th branch of government who would rule over the American people … the Supreme Court wiped that away today.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Texas Public Policy Foundation executive Chuck DeVore posted on X that “Chevron Deference is dead. … Now Congress will have to do its job, not simply passing vague laws and then letting unelected bureaucrats do their dirty work.” DeVore also claimed that former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointments “made it happen.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice posted: “Today was a good day for limiting the power of the federal bureaucracy. Chevron is overruled. The Supreme Court limits federal agency power. Citizens have rights in court that federal agencies can’t take away.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • The Job Creators Network released a press statement from its CEO saying, “The Supreme Court’s decision to overrule the Chevron precedent is a major victory for American small businesses. It finally reins in out-of-control regulators and bureaucrats who have for too long acted as unelected and unaccountable enemies of Main Street.” The group posted a similar message on X, adding, “Overregulation is one of the biggest challenges small businesses face, and this ruling is transformational in diminishing this threat and regulators’ power.” Job Creators Network, [6/28/24, 6/28/24]

• • Competitive Enterprise Institute President Kent Lassman posted: “It’s morning in the Imperial City. Big changes demand long-term vision and a steady application of the correct combination of tools. Today radical and necessary changes to the regulatory state took big steps forward toward the light of liberty.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Heartland Institute policy adviser Jeff Stier responded, “Don’t believe the headline ‘SCOTUS guts regulators’ power to protect the environment & public health. The end of Chevron Deference is a win for the constitution & We the People. Elected representatives must clearly delegate any power it wants to delegate.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Former Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson of the American Cornerstone Institute wrote, “This is a huge victory for limited, constitutional government and reining in the unelected administrative state.” Carson added that his group “urged the Supreme Court to reach just this conclusion in the amicus brief we submitted. We are proud to have played a part in this monumental win.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Former Trump DHS official and Center for Renewing America senior fellow Ken Cuccinelli wrote that “we have another part of our constitution back … Chevron deference is GONE!”Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Horace Cooper of the National Center for Public Policy Research posted that “Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal agency power in Chevron case.” He added, “Make no mistake, having a majority of constitutionalists on the Supreme Court ultimately does protect the American people.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• ## Right-wing media figures and climate deniers cheer on the Supreme Court decision overturning 40 years of legal precedent

• • Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Justice Neil Gorsch and president of the Article III Project, told Steve Bannon on War Room that the doctrine was unconstitutional and the decision “means a lot for real Americans and real America.” Davis said. “This just shows you how important elections are and how consequential Trump's first term was. He transformed the left-of-center Supreme Court to the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court.” Real America’s Voice, *Steve Bannon’s War Room*, [6/28/24]

• • The Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis wrote: “BREAKING: In a major blow to the unelected administrative state, the Supreme Court has overruled the Chevron doctrine, which required courts to defer to the legal interpretations of unelected bureaucrats.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • National Review senior editor Charles C.W. Cooke: “Chevron is overruled. A great day for the Constitution.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Climate denier and frequent Fox News contributor Steve Milloy wrote on X that the decision was a “HUGE WINNING,” adding that Trump “made this possible!”Twitter/X, [6/28/24, Media Matters, 10/13/21]

• • Daily Signal editor Tyler O’Neil posted on X that the ruling is “a huge step forward for holding the administrative state—and the deep state—accountable.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Cato Institute Senior Vice President Clark Neily wrote that “SCOTUS just withdrew a deep reservoir of power from the administrative state.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Carrie Severino, a former legal clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas and the president of the Leonard Leo-connected Concord Fund (formerly the Judicial Crisis Network), wrote: “Good riddance to Chevron deference, which put a two-ton judicial thumb on the scale of government bureaucrats against the little guy. This is a big victory for the rule of law.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24; ProPublica, 10/11/23; CNN, 6/13/24]

• • Reason Magazine editor Billy Binion wrote: “Congress has ceded its authority to executive agencies & given unelected bureaucrats immense power to interpret vague laws. Today's Chevron decision will force the legislative branch to do its job: Write laws that make sense. That's not a scandal.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Former GOP candidate and climate denier Vivek Ramaswamy wrote on X that “this is a *seismic* ruling,” claiming Chevron deference “has poisoned our country in recent decades.” He added that “unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state” will no longer make the laws, and “America is better off for it.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24; Rolling Stone, 8/23/23]

• • The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles posted a video about the “Earth-shattering, groundbreaking” decision, saying that the Supreme Court “just gutted the deep state” and that it’s nearly as consequential for the right as Roe v. Wade getting overturned. “Conservatives have considered this a major source of the unaccountability of government, the bloat of government, the capricious rule that we have,” Knowles said in the video. “I’m not saying that it rises to the level of a Dobbs decision overruling Roe,” he concluded, “but in some ways, from a structure of government perspective, it sort of does.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • Far-right influencer Ian Miles Cheong wrote on X that the decision prevents agencies from “coming up with onerous regulations that force companies to pay salaries to government observers whose job is to act like unwanted nannies,” celebrating that it “stops federal agencies from being able to force compliance with mask mandates and COVID vaccines onto companies.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

• • :{Climate denier:{ Chris Martz}: wrote that the Chevron doctrine “allowed unelected bureaucrats to interpret the law as they pleased and create boundless rules and regulations on businesses,” calling the new ruling overturning it “a major win for the Constitution.”:{ Twitter/X, :(style="background-color:#ffff00ff"):}:[6/28/24; AFP Fact Check, 5/1/24]}:

• • Epoch Times contributor Hans Mahncke wrote: “The invalidation of the Chevron deference, which gave DC bureaucrats largely unchecked authority to create rules and regulations, is arguably the most significant constraint of the administrative state in generations. This is a major victory for rule of law and democracy.” Twitter/X, [6/28/24]

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mma tag random

Climate deniers | Media Matters for America

The Latest

MSNBC’s Katy Tur hosts Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Jamie Raskin to discuss new report on Big Oil’s climate disinformation efforts

05/02/24 11:10 AM EDT

Drenda Keesee

Podcast host and Ohio county commissioner nominee has pushed baseless conspiracy theories and compared the LGBTQ movement to Hitler

04/16/24 1:00 PM EDT

Google is profiting from PragerU’s climate denial ads on its search engine

04/16/24 11:01 AM EDT

Matt Walsh: “The people that are destroying the planet, the worst offenders at destroying the planet are non-whites”

04/03/24 2:45 PM EDT

Bill Hemmer on Fox News live from the Arctic

Fox News anchor claims “global warming” doesn’t exist because he is surrounded by ice in the Arctic

03/11/24 11:41 AM EDT

Stephen Moore at CPAC

At CPAC, Heritage fellow Stephen Moore claims “climate change is not a science, it’s a religion”

02/27/24 10:54 AM EST

On CNN, climate scientist Michael Mann claims victory against right-wing media smears

02/09/24 5:40 PM EST

Fox News' Jesse Watters with a picture of the sun with the chyron: "Trusting 19th century science"

02/01/24 10:46 AM EST

TVs in the snow

It's cold outside, which means right-wing media are going on their annual climate denial tirade

01/19/24 9:44 AM EST

Fox News is aiding a fossil fuel-funded campaign targeting offshore wind

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Image of Willie Soon over dark green background

What Gen Z need to know about climate denier Willie Soon

01/16/24 2:00 PM EST

Fox Business host Larry Kudlow claims climate change is a hoax because it's cold in Iowa

01/12/24 4:22 PM EST

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In 2021, Congressional Democrats subpoenaed Big Oil for internal documents detailing the industry’s role in worsening the climate crisis.

Some of the documents have already been released. But today, we got some more.

The internal materials are from Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce. They’re being released today as part of the Senate Budget Committee’s upcoming hearing on Wednesday morning, titled “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change.”

Source: X

Both the hearing and the documents mark the revival of the House Oversight Committee’s two-year investigation into the fossil fuel industry, and its role in misleading Americans about climate change. That investigation was put on ice when Republicans won back control of the chamber in late 2022.

Democrats say their new findings provide “a rare glimpse into the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.”

HEATED got a chance to review the new documents prior to their publication today. And while we don’t think the revelations are necessarily all that “rare,” here are five things we found notable.

1. BP really, really loves Princeton

To influence academia, fossil fuel companies have spent at least $700 million on partnerships with U.S. universities. The longest-running of these partnerships is between BP and Princeton.

The new documents provide some insight into why: because Princeton gives BP unprecedented access to discussions about research. In 2016 emails, BP officials discussed cutting funding to Harvard and Tufts and boosting it for Princeton, because research discussions at Harvard and Tufts “are directed by the universities and much less relevant to BP.” They said “personality and structural issues” at Harvard and Tufts made it “difficult to achieve the same BP focus.”

Achieving a “BP focus” meant two things: pushing research about the benefits of carbon capture and methane gas. And that’s what Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative did.

In 2018, an internal BP presentation marked “confidential” recommended Princeton CMI director Stephen Pacala as a preferred expert in defending methane gas as a climate solution. And in a 2020 email, BP officials discussed an upcoming call with Pacala, in which BP would recommend developing a net zero plan “with emphasis on CCUS [carbon capture utilization and storage] — building ‘backbone’ of pipelines to transport carbon from emitters to the Permian and Gulf Coast sites.”

CMI did eventually develop a net zero study with an emphasis on carbon capture. BP officials celebrated, writing, “Princeton’s net zero study is expected to be a guide for the Biden Administration.”

Today, sure enough, the Biden Administration is making massive investments in carbon capture—just as BP’s vice president of U.S. policy and regulatory affairs predicted. In a 2020 email, he said BP’s relationship with Princeton was “becoming increasingly synergistic.” If Biden won, the VP said, “I would not be surprised to see some of our friends in senior government policymaking roles, as well!”

2. Oil companies know they can’t meet their public climate goals

While they publicly tout their efforts to fight climate change, oil companies privately say they don’t believe the world could ever reach a safe, livable climate.

For example: Exxon first publicly supported the Paris Agreement in 2015, but internally the company revealed that it did not believe the climate treaty’s goals were realistic. “We don’t yet see the world even approaching a 2°C pathway … let alone a 1.5°C pathway,” Exxon’s former manager of environmental policy and planning Peter Trelenberg wrote in a 2018 email. “Both 2°C and 1.5°C would require unprecedented changes to the global energy system and economy, at a rate and scale never before demonstrated, and with technologies not yet available and affordable.”...

ref

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This joint staff report on Big Oil’s decades-long deception campaign is the culmination of a nearly three year-long investigation by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (House Oversight), which has worked with Democratic staff of the Senate Budget Committee staff during the 118th Congress.

The investigation, focused on ExxonMobil Corporation (Exxon), Chevron Corporation (Chevron), Shell USA Inc. (Shell), BP America Inc. (BP), the American Petroleum Institute (AI), and the Chamber of Commerce (the Chamber), provides a rare glimpse into the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

This final joint staff report builds on the House Oversight Committee’s earlier hearings, public memoranda, and document releases, and it presents new findings from the investigation.

The key findings include: Documents demonstrate for the first time that fossil fuel companies internally do not dispute that they have understood since at least the 1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change and then worked for decades to undermine public understanding of this fact and to deny the underlying science.

In fall 2015, blockbuster reporting by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Big Oil companies such as Exxon knew that burning fossil fuels was a major contributor to climate change. Companies publicly rejected the reporting at the time, but new documents corroborate the reporting and show that fossil fuel companies internally did not dispute the findings but tried to dismiss them as “hyperbolic” and “journalistic malpractice.” Big Oil’s deception campaign evolved from explicit denial of the basic science underlying climate change to deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.

The fossil fuel industry evolved from denying climate science to spreading disinformation and perpetuating doublespeak about the safety of natural gas and its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

New documents demonstrate that Big Oil companies: seek to position natural gas as a “bridge fuel” between coal and cleaner, renewable energy, while enmeshing natural gas in the U.S. energy economy for the long-term; seek to portray natural gas as a green, climate-friendly fuel, while internally acknowledging that there is significant scientific evidence that the lifecycle emissions from gas are as bad as coal and are incompatible with scientific emissions reduction targets;

make public pledges to support the Paris Agreement and to achieve net zero emissions while internally recognizing that they could not achieve those goals or referring to them as outside of their business plans;

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2

privately lobby—either directly or through their trade associations— against pro-climate legislation and regulations that they publicly claimed to support;

publicly celebrate carbon capture technologies to help reduce harmful emissions while privately acknowledging that the technology is expensive and claiming that it cannot be scaled without federal government investment;

and publicly promoted algae-based biofuels as an innovative low-carbon technology while investing little in its research and development and then cancelling the programs entirely.

The fossil fuel industry relies on trade associations to spread confusing and misleading narratives and to lobby against climate action. Fossil fuel companies use trade associations, think tanks, and other nonprofits to influence public policy proposals and messaging, including API and the Chamber, as well as the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, Natural Gas Supply Association, and Western States Petroleum Association.

New emails between fossil fuel executives and these groups demonstrate how the companies influenced and leveraged the associations and other organizations to control their messaging and use them to lobby for unpopular proposals that they do not want to be associated with.

The fossil fuel industry strategically partners with universities to lend an aura of credibility to its deception campaigns while also silencing opposition voices. Fossil fuel companies establish funded partnerships with academic institutions to enhance their credibility, shape academic research programs to provide studies supportive of a prolonged life for oil and gas, leverage the resulting research to their advantage, and bolster access to policymakers.

New documents reveal previously unknown funding levels and show how companies condition their funding on academics’ cooperation and alignment with companies’ business needs.

Additional documents demonstrate that companies actively tracked individuals and organizations critical of the industry and monitored their social media. All six entities—Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the Chamber—obstructed and delayed the Committees’ investigation.

Despite valid subpoenas, the entities refused to fully comply with the investigation, making baseless legal arguments and flouting longstanding congressional practices and norms for investigations.

The companies further obstructed the investigation by significantly redacting or entirely withholding more than 4,000 documents without any valid basis

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Shell announced this week that it will once again scale back its stated climate targets. The oil giant now plans to lower the “carbon intensity” of its fossil fuel emissions from 20% to a less strict 15-20% by 2030, after reaping billions in profits last year and defending its intention to keep doubling down on oil and gas production.

As fossil fuel companies steadily backslide on their already-questionable climate and clean energy promises, governments, shareholders, and international agencies have continued to plead with the industry to step up its investments in a renewable energy transition. “What we need are company chief executives, looking to the future and investing in that future and accelerating the transition to that future," former U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said in July when oil majors dropped their climate plans in favor of more fossil fuels.

But if you ask Dario Kenner, a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, governments and advocates should be looking at why our economies are so heavily dependent on fossil fuels — not pressuring oil companies to be part of the transition or debating the details of their climate plans. In new research first reported by The Guardianlast week, Kenner documented a trove of evidence showing that the fossil fuel industry has systematically lobbied to block the transition to clean energy.

Trying to get the industry to change its business model is “ridiculous” and “very likely to be a massive waste of time,” said Kenner. “They are the same industry that’s clearly tried to kill green technology for decades.”

Kenner combed through public statements from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and European oil and gas trade association FuelsEurope dating back to the 1960s and found a pattern of industry trade associations battling government support of wind, solar, and EV technologies on both sides of the Atlantic.

That dossier of evidence, reviewed by ExxonKnews, included repeated instances of the trade groups lobbying against tax credits and other forms of support for electric vehicles, wind, and solar panels, clean air and auto emissions standards, and government backing of research into green technologies.

In 1973, API — along with staff from member companies Shell and Exxon — pressured Congress to weaken auto emission standards that would have favored electric vehicles, arguing that it would impact “the oil industry’s continuing ability to meet its share of the Nation’s growing energy needs, not only for gasoline, but also for other petroleum products.”

Nearly a half a century later in 2018, the largest U.S. oil and gas trade group lobbied against tax credits for electric vehicles, claiming government support for EVs would “distort the free market and ultimately increase consumer costs,” and maintaining that “API opposes government intervention in the markets to pick winners and losers because it creates an un-level playing field.” API still uses free market talking points to fight clean energy today.

*Posted on X.

As The Guardian points out, fossil fuel companies have benefited from hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies each year while fighting action to address climate change.

“The market’s already rigged in favor of fossil fuels,” said Kenner, yet the industry embarked on a longstanding effort to “destroy the conditions under which renewables would have flourished.”

Today, the fossil fuel industry claims that renewable energy simply can’t supply the world’s energy needs on its own. Wind, solar, and electric vehicles are “not sufficient” to meet society’s energy demand despite climate concerns, said Exxon CEO Darren Woods in his recent interview with Fortune, claiming that society has “waited too long” to fund technology that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and “today’s technology will not solve this problem.” API chief executive Mike Sommers recently said he rejects the term “energy transition” because it “suggests we’re going to be moving from one thing to another — and very rarely has that happened in the history of energy.”

Those comments intentionally “hide the decades of lobbying they’ve done to shape the consumption options for the majority of the population and shape society’s needs to be based around fossil fuels,” said Kenner.

At the same time, major oil companies are promoting themselves as capable of leading the development of “low-carbon technologies” — as long as they don’t challenge the continued production of fossil fuels. “At our heart, we’re a technology company,” Woods told Fortune before touting the company’s carbon capture projects.

Exxon and other oil companies have invested heavily in carbon capture projects and expansion plans, claiming they’ll reduce carbon emissions without necessitating a shift away from their core business in fossil fuels. But experts and advocates have called CCS a “dangerous distraction” that’s eating up tax dollars (like Exxon’s 2021 ask of the federal government to help fund its $100 billion carbon capture hub in Texas) and heading us down the path of more oil and gas. According to a 2021 analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law, more than 80% of existing carbon capture technology has been used for “enhanced oil recovery” — or using captured carbon to extract otherwise inaccessible crude oil.

“Carbon capture and storage is, at its core, a technology for producing more oil,” wrote former Exxon scientist and whistleblower Lindsey Gulden in a recent LinkedIn post. “It requires more carbon to be expended to inject #co2 at pressure than it keeps out of the atmosphere. It is not and will not be a viable solution to climate change.”

Documents obtained by a House Oversight Committee investigation in 2022 show that major oil companies view carbon capture as a way to help them maintain their existing business models and social license to operate — and thus support government help in getting the technology off the ground. “API supports policy reforms to infrastructure permitting and development for CCUS [carbon capture use and storage] as well as research, development, and deployment funding to support technology breakthrough,” according to one internal document. “API also supports federal tax provisions incentivizing CCUS investment and deployment.”

“They’re against technology and progress when it’s a rival technology, and very happy to be leading technology companies in their own fossil fuel technologies,” said Kenner. “They’d like time to stop, and [for society] to just carry on using oil and gas. But you can’t stop time.”

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How Tucker Carlson was a terrible and effective megaphone for climate misinformation | Media Matters for America

Prior to his departure from Fox News on April 24, Tucker Carlson was one of the network’s most prolific purveyors of climate change misinformation. Carlson elevated fringe ideas and conspiracy theories from relative obscurity on the internet to become drum beats for right-wing media. He also dishonestly spun major news events and weaponized his viewers’ most deep-seated prejudices about race and power to push climate denial.

His absence will be a blow to the forces aiming to mock environmental justice, derail climate action, and protect polluting industries and their allies in Washington. But the end of Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show is far from the end of climate change denial on Fox News — his project is sure to be carried on by other Fox personalities who will continue the network’s awful history of climate coverage.

Carlson propelled internet misinformation and obscure conspiracy theories into right-wing media narratives against climate action

One thing that set Carlson apart at Fox was his ability to seemingly jump-start a tidal wave of misinformation. His producers seemingly scoured the internet so he could amplify right-wing grievances, as well as any obscure video or article that could be easily decontextualized to sound absurd or inflammatory. He knew his audience, and he knew exactly how to push their buttons.

Carlson’s response to the deadly Texas winter storm that killed hundreds of people in February 2021 triggered a deluge of misinformation from Fox News. He was the first Fox News host to blame the widespread power outages on wind energy. The reality was that Texas still largely relies on natural gas for power, and this infrastructure wasn’t ready for the extreme cold.

Over the last few years, Carlson helped create a misinformation crisis around climate action and even told his audience that climate activists were going to try to shrink children and force everyone to eat bugs, when there is no evidencethat those things are actually happening.

Fittingly, one of the very last things Carlson did in his final Fox segment was to promote Let Them Eat Bugs. Notably, he said that the chocolate-covered cricket was “delicious.”

• During Carlson’s new Fox Nation original Let Them Eat Bugs, right-wing comedian Jay Dyer said, “Is there a group of unelected bureaucratic elites that are involved in a global campaign to minimize meat consumption and convince people not to eat meat and to eat bugs to save the world from climate change? I think we can answer in the affirmative, absolutely.” Fox Nation, *Let Them Eat Bugs*,[4/14/23]
• In the same program, Carlson said, “The people we spoke to in the edible insect industry didn’t seem like extremists. In fact, to a person, they came off as decent and well-meaning. … But they are not the ones setting the bigger agenda.” Fox Nation, *Let Them Eat Bugs*, [4/14/23]

Video

CitationFrom the February 10, 2023, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

• In an unhinged February 2023 monologue claiming climate change is a fake religion being used to “make people suffer” and “atone for their climate sins,” Carlson said: “What else are you allowed to have in the name of the climate crisis? Well, how about no more heat or air conditioning or electricity or cars or wearing leather or eating meat or having children? All are sins against the climate. So, for you, it is insects, tap water, and celibacy. That's a tough religion. Even John the Baptist got to eat honey and locusts. No honey for you. We’re beyond self-denial.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/10/23]
• In June 2021, the Fox host also created panic around an obscure video of a New York University bioethicist at a conference talking speculatively about using genetic engineering to lower our carbon footprint. Carlson made it sound as though this was already being carried out as “potentially world-altering experiments” being “funded by the secretive daisy-chain of government health agencies, and powerful NGOs.” He then compared the idea to the Holocaust, saying that “bioethicists have short memories apparently. And in any case, climate change is a pressing emergency.” He later mockingly added, “All we need to do is experiment on human children. And we can solve climate change.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*,[6/22/21]
• Promoting a false claim two relatively unknown Twitter accounts had popularized in the days after the Texas storm, Carlson said that the state’s inability to keep the lights on was due to its “reckless reliance on windmills.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/15/21]

Misinformation about frozen windmills was just the tip of the iceberg for Carlson’s attacks on clean energy and climate action

Often portraying climate policies as a means to control the population or create a “permanent caste system,” Carlson regularly injected fearmongering about the clean energy transition into his segments. At the core of his argument was the fossil fuel industry talking point claiming the renewable energy technology was insufficient and that transitioning away from fossil fuels would weaken the U.S. and put Americans “under the complete and total control of people who wish us ill.” In October 2021, Carlson even used his newest venture, Tucker Carlson Originals on Fox Nation, to promote wind energy misinformation in the documentary Blown Away: The People vs. Wind Power.

• Carlson was among those on Fox News pushing the false claim that offshore wind development was responsible for whale deaths. In January he pushed this claim multiple times punctuating his misinformation with chyrons (“Green New Deal wind farms are killing off whales”) and graphics (“The Biden whale extinction”). Media Matters, [2/3/23]

• Carlson suggested that China is working through a climate organization to push a supposed ban on gas stoves: “Why would China push fake science like that? Maybe because the United States has some of the biggest natural gas reserves in the world. And if we can be convinced not to use those gas reserves, we will be weak and they will be strong.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [1/20/23]

• Carlson suggested “mass disobedience in the face of tyranny” in response to the potential regulation of gas stoves. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [1/10/23]

• In response to the United Nations’ COP27 climate negotiation in November 2022, Carlson fearmongered about the implementation of green energy policies, stating, “Fossil fuels are the reason we have civilization. Take them away and countries collapse.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [11/21/22]

• In an over 13-minute May 2022 monologue, Carlson suggested that renewable energy was making energy more costly while enriching Democrats: “Invest trillions of dollars of other people's money in batteries and wind farms and electric school buses. That way Democratic politicians get fingertip control over the entire U.S. economy and all of their friends get rich.” He also blamed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for high gas prices, claiming that “she has worked hard to prevent the United States from producing more gasoline, and that is the main reason it is so expensive.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [5/27/22]

Carlson continued to push climate denial even during extreme weather events, when the reality of the climate crisis was most evident

As the science connecting extreme weather to our warming planet has become more conclusive— and with other TV news outlets more frequently reporting on these connections in the aftermath of major disasters — Carlson relentlessly misinformed his audience about these connections and claimed that the media making the link between climate change and extreme weather were captured by the radical left or using the occasion to politicize tragedy.

• In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, which pummeled Florida and South Carolina in late September 2022, Carlson dedicated a 15-minute monologue to denying the relationship between hurricanes and climate change and implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. We didn’t cause them, they’re products of nature. God’s in charge.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/29/22]

• During an extreme heat wave in July 2022, Carlson devoted a monologue to undermining the existence of climate change, mockingly suggesting, “For the first time in history, it’s going to be hot and then it’s going to rain hard.” “No one really believes in global warming, and that’s why all of the liberals in the United States live on the coasts – because they don’t believe it,” he added. “The entire theory is absurd and they know it.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/20/22]

• In the wake of Hurricane Ida in September 2021, Carlson mocked Democrats for connecting the extreme storm to climate change and pointing to the need to pass climate policy over a chyron reading, “Dems Blame Wild Rain on Man-Made Climate Change.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/2/21]

• Carlson claimed Democrats were politicizing wildfires by linking them to climate change: “It took no time at all for the usual vultures and parasites to swoop in and try to make political advantage out of this. Barack Obama and governor of California Gavin Newsom are now telling you that these fires are a direct result of climate change, and according to Barack Obama, Donald Trump is directly responsible for them.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/10/20]

• Ignoring the clear scientific links between the climate crisis and natural disasters or extreme weather, Carlson said “there's no evidence” climate change contributed to apocalyptic wildfires ravaging the West Coast in 2020. Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, [9/10/20]

Video

CitationFrom the September 10, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

• In January 2020, Carlson hosted former Fox personality Anna Kooiman to suggest that arson, not climate change, was responsible for the severity of the bushfires that torched millions of acres of forest and residential areas in Australia. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [1/8/20]

Even beyond these extreme weather events, Carlson regularly promoted climate denial on his Fox show in order to feed doubt and discredit climate science.

Carlson platformed climate change deniers who influenced his coverage

Carlson used any excuse, such as new climate policies, initiatives, or convenings, to platform some of the most notorious climate deniers and controversial climate contrarians. For example, according to Media Matters’ internal database, from 2019 through the end of Carlson’s show in 2023, he hosted failed politician Michael Shellenberger 21 times, climate change denier Marc Morano 14 times, meteorologist Joe Bastardi 8 times, and fossil fuel shill Bjorn Lomborg 4 times. These guests pushed the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory, cherry-picked statistics to downplay the impacts of extreme weather, or suggested climate activism is a “cult” or a “new religion.”

Michael Shellenberger

• In September 2022, Shellenberger said that power outages during a heat wave in California were “a warning to the rest of the United States to not go down this path of over-relying on weather-dependent renewable energies.” Responding to Carlson’s claim that climate change activists are “a cult” devoted to “the one true faith of renewable energy,” Shellenberger then said “people that move away from traditional religion, they basically turned nature into a new god, a new victim god.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*,[9/7/22]
• Carlson would later use Shellenberger’s talking points on the subject in 2022 after Hurricane Ian devastated Florida, when he unsuccessfully attempted to discredit then-CNN anchor Don Lemon: “There has been, as a factual matter, no increase in hurricane frequency in the continental United States from 1900 to 2020.” (Only Lemon never made that claim — he had instead made the point that hurricanes are becoming more intense, which is true.) Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/29/22]
• Talking about the damage from Hurricane Ida in 2021, Shellenberger said “you can’t blame floods on climate change when we know the central factor is flood management. It’s the same thing with forest fires that we’ve talked about. It’s all about forest management to prevent those high-intensity fires, it’s not about modestly higher temperatures.” He also argued that renewable energy sources “make grids more vulnerable” and “don’t provide any additional resilience” because they are weather-dependent. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/2/21]

Carlson has run with the idea that climate change is like a new religion, which Shellenberger has written about at length.

• “As church attendance and self-identified religious faith have fallen off a cliff in this country, the cult of climate has grown even stronger,” Carlson said in February. “Zealots want to punish people in the name of their faith. That's always been true. It happens around the world still … So, what does that mean? It means you're about to be severely punished in the name of someone else's crackpot climate religion.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/10/23]
• In a nearly 14-minute monologue from December 2022, Carlson suggested that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had been deemed the new climate god: “In place of the concept of an omnipotent, loving God who brings justice to the world, Buttigieg simply substituted the word ‘climate.’ Thanks be to climate. Our climate, who art in heaven, that kind of thing.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [12/12/22]

Marc Morano

• Discussing his new book hyping the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory during a 2022 segment about multiple food-driven global conflicts that occurred over the summer, such as Sri Lanka’s economic collapse and protests lead by Dutch farmers, Morano claimed that the “war on agriculture” by global institutions has been going on for years with “their goal to literally get us to eat insects and this lab-grown fake meat” by shutting down traditional farming in order to adhere to countries’ climate goals. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/12/22]

• In 2021, Carlson promoted and praised Morano’s Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse Than You Think, calling it “a book with a title that sells itself.” Discussing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Morano claimed Democrats and climate activists would end private car ownership and abolish private home ownership because “in a climate emergency, it’s just too damaging to the Earth.” He added, “They love the lockdowns for this reason. They call it degrowth, they call it planned recessions.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [4/1/21]

Joe Bastardi

• In his final appearance on Carlson’s show, Bastardi pushed the absurd idea that climate advocates are trying to pollute the air as much as possible so that they can have an excuse to prevent others from using transportation. Bastardi offered that another option is that “it's a phony climate war, it's fraudulent,” and “has nothing to do with CO2.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [12/12/22]

• In August, 2022, Carlson called Bastardi “the most famous, most accomplished, most trusted meteorologist and weather forecaster in the United States.” In the segment, Bastardi claimed there is no significant warming in the Arctic because it’s “still very, very cold” and only a few degrees warmer in the winter, so “instead of freezing to death in three minutes, you’ll freeze to death in three and a half minutes.” Fox Nation, *Tucker Carlson Today*, [8/4/22]

• In September 2021, Bastardi downplayed the intensity of Hurricane Ida by stating that other bad storms happened in the 1950s and 1930s. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/8/21]

• In March 2019, Bastardi said young people are concerned about climate change because they “don’t look at everything. I have said hundreds of times that if all I looked at and all that I was told was the global warming issue, I'd say ‘Well, I believe it too. CO2 is causing this.’ But when you start looking at the entire picture … you realize that there is a very, very different story here.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [3/20/19]

Bjorn Lomborg

• In July 2022, Bjorn Lomborg suggested that climate change is actually good because “many more people die from cold” than heat. “Actually, over the last 20 years at least, we’ve seen more people being saved than extra people dying,” he added. “We need to hear both sides of that story if we’re going to be well-informed.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/20/22]

• Parroting Lomborg during a monologue the following month, Carlson implied the existence of winter disproves the science of climate change while claiming that “the real threat to people is global cooling” because “far more people freeze to death every year than die of heat.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [8/29/22]

In the last several years, Carlson had started to merge his climate denial and defense of fossil fuels with overt racism and white grievance

In response to climate justice and environmental justice becoming more mainstream and being incorporated into policy, Carlson seized on the opportunity to apply his increasingly overt racism to climate and environmental issues. Notably, Carlson has insisted that climate policies, not climate change, hurt marginalized communities. He has often claimed that environmental justice has “nothing to do” with the environment — with the exception of the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which the former Fox host used to stoke more conservative grievances.

• In March 2023, Carlson went into a tirade over a Los Angeles Times piece about minority communities facing disproportionately high levels of car pollution, insisting the story argued “that just by breathing, white people are hurting others.” Carlson later claimed that white people are victims of “Rwanda-style race hatred” pushed by the media. Media Matters, [3/15/23]

• After a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, Carlson asserted that there would have been a more robust federal response if the derailment had occurred in “the favored cities of Philadelphia and Detroit. … But it happened to the poor, benighted town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten and, in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/14/23]

• Just a few months prior, Carlson had a very different tone when talking about the Inflation Reduction Act spending directed at disadvantaged communities: “So really, this is about spreading race hate, as virtually everything they do is. They call it equity. It's not about protecting the environment. And if you're wondering how the environment's doing, take a very close look. Is anyone monitoring the chemicals in our water? No. We're busy conducting workshops for billions of dollars for disadvantaged communities.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [8/17/22]

• In 2021, Carlson similarly attacked the bipartisan infrastructure bill with a slew of white supremacist dog-whistles. “The entirety of this infrastructure plan looks more like a mashup of intersectional theory from Wesleyan and some kind of South African-style spoils system,” he said. “First and most obviously, is this really about infrastructure — bridges, roads, airports, things we can actually use — or is it yet another weird climate scheme-slash-power grab-slash-race-based redistribution plan?” Media Matters, [4/2/21]

• During a segment that aired a few weeks later, Carlson and Fox contributor Mark Steyn mocked comments made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) linking the harmful effects of climate change and racism. Media Matters, [4/23/21]

• In a 2019 segment reacting to then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ immigration plan, Carlson used language reflective of eco-facism, saying, “Why would a climate migrant have a right to come to my country?” Carlson later asked, “Why would you want a crowded country? Isn't crowding your country the fastest way to despoil it, to pollute it, to make it a place you wouldn't want to live?” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [11/11/19]

• Complaining about climate change “propaganda” targeted toward children, Carlson asked: “Why, since more people were killed last year in the United States by illegal aliens than were killed by climate change — why do you think they are so focused on scaring us, and telling us that we are all going to die? Why did they need to tell us that, when they don't know that?” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*,[3/20/19]

Other Fox figures will carry the climate denial torch in Carlson’s absence

Carlson was far from the only Fox News personality to regularly peddle climate change misinformation, and others will continue to carry the torch:

• In April, Fox host Greg Gutfeld went full climate denial mode saying, “None of their predictions have come true. None of them. They are fighting. They are forcing America to do this crap over one — less than a percent Celsius, less than a percent Celsius. It has no effect. And in fact, as this climate gets warmer, people's lives improve. That's a fact. That’s a fact. People die from cold weather more frequently than warm weather, so don’t give me your cancer BS.” Fox News, *The Five*, [4/12/23]
• In January, Fox host Jesse Watters platformed a fossil fuel industry-funded envoy as an “ocean advocate” to argue that offshore wind farms are killing whales. Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [1/12/23]
• When discussing a “loss and damage” fund for developing countries to address climate impacts, Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth described it as an example of “self-loathing. It’s the belief that the West's success was premised on pollution, so now it's our turn to pay developing countries basically a sin tax of the past so they can catch up to us because we built the world based on their backs.” Co-host Will Cain then described the proposal as “climate reparations.”Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [11/20/22]
• Prime-time host Laura Ingraham in October 2022 spoke with a climate change denier who claimed that “there is no climate crisis” and so we need to “use solid, dependable sources of energy like coal.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [10/12/22]
• Last September, Gutfeld called youth climate activists including Greta Thunberg “shrieking psycho brats” and blamed them for power outages during a heat wave in California, saying they had “poisoned the dialogue with hysteria.” He added that you “can’t take it seriously when you have a woman or a girl” speaking out passionately about the issue. Fox News, *The Five*, [9/7/22]
• On America’s Newsroom, co-anchor Bill Hemmer interviewed the CEO of Big Oil’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, to cast blame on Biden and present the fossil fuel industry as the answer to high gas prices. Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [7/25/22]

It’s uncertain who will be placed in Carlson’s 8 p.m. slot. But whatever the outcome, one sure thing is that Fox will continue to supplement its climate coverage with racism, bigotry, misogyny, and brain-frying idiocy.

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In response to wildfire smoke choking New York City, Fox News trots out tired climate denial script | Media Matters for America

hit 3 Fox News is aiding a fossil fuel-funded campaign targeting offshore wind | Media Matters for America

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In 2021, Fox News is still spreading dangerous climate denial | Media Matters for America

On a near-daily basis, Fox News hosts, anchors, and guests spew misinformation and false narratives aimed at tanking efforts to address the climate crisis. These tactics to delay climate action or downplay the seriousness of our warming planet have often been referred to as the new climate denial -- since the actual denial of the scientific consensus that climate change is happening has mostly been pushed to the fringes of both politics and the traditional media landscape.

Fox deploys the new denial so often, it’s easy to forget that the network is one of the few highly influential media outlets that still promote one of the most dangerous lies of our time: Human activity is not overheating our climate.

This lie has existed for over five decades and for five decades has been repeatedly debunked. Its origins and merchants have been exposed; those who have continued to perpetuate it have been discredited; and our own experience during each unprecedented storm, historical heat wave, and apocalyptic wildfire has proven again and again what science has told us to expect from a warming world.

But in 2021, you can turn on Fox News and watch prime-time host Tucker Carlson quip that “not even climate experts understand the climate” or watch Fox contributor Dagen MacDowell suggest that climate change is a hoax because it is cold in April.

And in 2021, there is still no federal response to the climate crisis on the books, despite decades of warnings from scientists and with mounting support for climate action even among the largest companies and businesses in the U.S.

Fox is still fueling the lie that our planet is not warming

From insisting the science on climate change is not settled to deliberately misconstruing weather with climate, Fox News is still pushing the idea that human-made climate change is not real, despite overwhelming evidence and consensus in the scientific community.

In a segment on the April 28 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, host Tucker Carlson and Fox News contributor Sean Duffy discussed how the “critical environmental movement has infiltrated” schools and colleges, is scaring children about the climate crisis, and is convincing them to not have children. At the end of the segment, Duffy claimed that climate change is a “political movement, not a scientific movement” and that it is wrong to assume “the science is settled in climate”.

Video

CitationFrom the April 28, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

The segment aired just a week after Carlson and ultra-conservative political commentator and Fox contributor Mark Steyn mocked comments made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) linking climate change and racism. (For the record, experts say the two are “inexorably” linked.) Steyn, not satisfied with mocking the relationship between climate and racism, went on to attack the scientific consensus that warming is human-made, by invoking a defamation suit filed against him by climate scientist Michael Mann:

MARK STEYN (GUEST): This is supposed to be science. I've been in a 10-year lawsuit in Washington, D.C., up against the guy who invented the climate change hockey stick, and he is a scientist and his position is that in the last millennium -- nothing happened for nine centuries and then you, Tucker, got into your SUV and fried the planet. And that is a completely idiotic theory. But at least he's not trying to sell the world on the idea that somehow climate change correlates to racism.

Video

CitationFrom the April 21, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

Not to be outdone, the following night, prime-time host Laura Ingraham focused her April 22 monologue on “the big climate con.” Ingraham’s “climate con” list included misleading arguments against the benefits of climate action like job creation; attempts to discredit the role of -- and the need for -- global cooperation in dealing with the crisis; and false claims that the scientific warnings on climate are not sound or well understood. For good measure, Ingraham closed her monologue by mocking and attacking young climate activists.

Video

CitationFrom the April 22, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

In back-to-back shows on April 29 and April 30, Ingraham suggested that the climate crisis along with other pressing issues have been manufactured to “justify the left’s brazen efforts to take more of our money and more of our liberty” and they “only exist in the minds of leftists ideologues who hate America anyway.”

Denial paired with fear-mongering about the “left’s radical agenda” exemplifies the brand of climate denial Fox has peddled for years, and some network figures disingenuously equate weather with climate to push that narrative.

On the April 21 edition of The Five, Fox News contributor Dagen McDowell ended a rant against the Paris Climate Agreement by suggesting that abnormally cold April weather from Texas to the Great Lakes somehow disproves that global warming is occurring.

DAGEN MCDOWELL (CO-HOST): Here is your forecast today and why they stopped calling it global warming. April 21, 2021: Freeze warnings from Texas to the Great Lakes. Record low temperatures engulfing the heartland. Oh, and Indians/White Sox game in Cleveland had to be postponed for snow and cold.

This bit by MacDowell is both painfully stupid and reminiscent of a body of tweets by then-President Donald Trump, who conflated weather with global warming while suggesting that the term “climate change” was adopted by scientists and advocates to hide the incongruity between major winter storms and the idea of warming. Interestingly, the term “climate change” was promoted by the Republican strategist Frank Luntz as part of the infamous 2002 memo advising the GOP on how to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activity was warming the planet.

Fox Nation host Lara Logan made the same inane claim on the February 19 edition of *Outnumbered*, in a segment about the winter storm that caused the deadly power failure in Texas:

“It's time for us to have an honest conversation about renewable energy and about global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it,” said Logan. “This is the first time in Texas’ history that it has had a winter storm warning. So this is — this means that it is not getting warmer and warmer and warmer, simply.”

Fox has long been a platform for climate deniers

Fox News hosts and contributors not only push climate denial but regularly feature discredited deniers on their programs. Notorious climate denier Marc Morano -- who has no scientific background -- and Bjorn Lomborg -- whose spiel is dangerously claiming that climate change is happening, but not a big deal -- have both appeared on Fox for more than a decade. Just this year, both have appeared across Fox programming at least six times from January through April. Notably, Fox hosted both the day after President Joe Biden took office to attack his agenda on climate change.

Larry Kudlow, a long-time climate denier who formerly served as economic adviser to Trump and now hosts a show on Fox Business, has also been one of Fox’s go-to commentators on policies related to climate change across both the network’s so-called “news” and “opinion” programs.

But Morano, Lomborg, and Kudlow are far from the only climate deniers and contrarians on Fox’s roster. Over the past several years Rush Limbaugh, Joe Bastardi, Steve Milloy, and Patrick Moore all appeared regularly on Fox to push climate denial and misinformation. (In 2019, Moore said on Fox & Friends that “the climate crisis ... is not only fake news, it’s fake science”, and the line was picked up by Trump and tweeted to his millions of followers.)

Importantly, like Morano and Lomborg, none of these commentators are climate scientists, many have strong financial ties to the fossil fuel industry, and all have made a living out of obstructing efforts to address the climate crisis. With the exception of the late Rush Limbaugh, none would have had a megaphone to spread their lies absent Fox News.

Supported by advertisers, Fox runs cover for climate inaction

Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that if immediate and bold actions are not taken, then we will face dire climate disruption -- ever-increasing extreme and abnormal weather that threatens our homes, our food, our livelihoods, our economy, and our lives.

The stakes could not be higher.

The purpose of Fox hosts’ and contributors’ climate denial is to maintain an air of doubt about the existence and reality of our dangerously changing climate to provide cover for Republicans, who actively work to do nothing to stop the climate crisis, and the Big Polluters that bankroll their campaigns. This climate denial is also the foundation of the network’s persistent attacks -- across “opinion” and “straight news” programming -- on any proposed actions to reduce our carbon emissions and transition to a clean-energy economy. By extension, companies that advertise on Fox are party to climate inaction.

Publicly, many of these companies that run ads on Fox, including big insurers Allstate and Liberty Mutual have acknowledged the severe threat of the climate crisis. While others like General Motors, which is also among the network’s biggest advertisers, are actively calling for significant reduction in climate pollution. On the same day Dagen McDowell mocked global warming because it was cold in Texas, General Motors, along with 407 other corporations and businesses, issued a press release for an open letter to Biden supporting his goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. By continuing to sponsor Fox, these brands expose the cavern between their words and actions and associate themselves with a dangerous hostility to facts and science.

To be sure, Fox News is an accomplice to the impending climate emergency we face as a country and as part of the global community -- and so are those that support its programming with ads.

//

1. ### Fox’s “news” side spreads fake story that Biden wants to ban hamburgers

04/26/21 1:43 PM EDT

2. ### Fox’s “War on Earth Day”

04/23/21 3:11 PM EDT

3. ### Fox rehashes old bad-faith arguments and misinformation in covering Green New Deal reintroduction

04/22/21 4:34 PM EDT

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Former Fox host Tucker Carlson is platforming disgraced climate denier Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer known for accepting over $1 million from fossil fuel companies for writing publications he referred to as “deliverables.”

Carlson invited Soon, a former researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, on his exclusive program on X (formerly Twitter) for an interview on January 9. The two amplified long-debunked hypotheses about what is causing climate change, and clips from the interview have already been viewed over 1 million times on TikTok, likely by a young audience that might not be familiar with Soon’s controversies, which came to light back in 2015.

The spread of these videos highlights TikTok’s ongoing climate misinformation problem, even as it has begun implementing a new policy banning content that “undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it.”

Though experts dismissed Soon’s false claims, clips of his interview with Carlson have gained traction on TikTok, a social media platform popular with young users

• Clips of Carlson’s interview with Soon have been viewed over 1 million times on TikTok. Media Matters identified six videos that have collectively accrued more than 1.1 million views. According to a January 2023 report from Morning Consult, over 60% of Gen Z adults use TikTok at least once daily. TikTok, [1/10/24, 1/10/24, 1/10/24;1/10/24; 1/10/24, 1/10/24;Morning Consult, 1/2023]

• Climate scientists continue to highlight and debunk Soon’s disinformation.“Soon's science is based on faulty assumptions & his conclusions are invalid & that's likely why FF [fossil fuel] companies pay him," wrote Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Twitter/X, [9/10/23, 1/10/24,1/10/24]

The interview is part of a larger trend of major right-wing media outlets relying more on long-debunked climate deniers

• :{:{Discredited climate deniers like Judith Curry, Patrick Moore, Anthony Watts, and Gregory Wrightstone, who have been vocal for decades, received renewed attention in 2023 from right-wing media figures. After years of relative obscurity, these figures found a reliable home on shows like Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight, and also appeared on Fox News programs such as Jesse Watters Primetime and The Ingraham Angle. On social media, they’ve increased engagement on X. Media Matters,:(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}: [11/28/12, 2/17/14, 12/22/23; DeSmog, 5/15/22; StateImpact Pennsylvania, 3/27/19]}:

Willie Soon has been exposed for unethically promoting flawed science

• In 2015, a joint investigation by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center found that Soon had accepted over $1.2 million in funding from fossil fuel companies for his research. Soon’s work was funded “almost entirely” by the fossil fuels industry, including Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Charles G. Koch Foundation. The Guardian, [2/21/15]

• Soon described his papers as “deliverables” to his corporate funders. Emails revealed that one of the country’s largest utility holding companies, Southern Company, paid Soon to publish research examining the sun’s role in driving climate change. At the time, Southern relied heavily on coal. Scientists have long recognized that solar activity cannot be responsible for the rapid warming that the planet has experienced in recent decades. The New York Times, [2/21/15; Inside Climate News, 2/21/15; NASA, accessed 1/11/24]

• The investigation also found that Soon failed to disclose his relationship with Southern Company in some of his research papers, violating ethical guidelines upheld by scientific journals. Despite accepting more than $400,000 from the company, Soon insisted he had no conflicts of interest, raising the alarm for academics and scientists. His papers, which have been published in top scientific journals, push a “range of climate-denial perspectives.” Inside Climate News, [2/21/15]

Soon has for years been a go-to source for media and lawmakers keen on protecting fossil fuel interests

• Soon and his work have been used by the GOP in their efforts to block climate action.Climate denier and former Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe has cited Soon in press releases and on the Senate floor. In 2013, Soon testified in support of an effort to repeal Kansas’ renewable energy standard in front of state legislators, claiming that climate change isn’t a problem. DeSmog, accessed [1/11/24; Energy and Policy Institute, 8/28/15; U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, 5/14/08, 7/29/03]

• Soon has worked with right-wing think tanks that influence climate policy. Soon has spoken at conferences hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the Texas Public Policy Institute, and the Heartland Institute. In 2014, he was awarded the “Courage in Defense of Science Award” by the climate denier organization now called CO2 Coalition. DeSmog, accessed [1/11/24, 1/12/24; Heartland Institute, accessed 1/12/24]

• Since Soon’s interview with Carlson, several well-known conspiracy theorists praised his ideas.Jimmy Corsetti, a YouTuber who has pushed the idea that a polar shift is responsible for climate change impact, and The Vigilant Fox, a figure known for spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, and many more, praised him on social media. Twitter/X, [1/9/24, 1/9/24; Media Matters, 5/24/23; Forbes, 11/26/22]

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Fox Business host Larry Kudlow claims climate change is a hoax | Media Matters for America

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Fox News' Mark Levin says that variability in local weather reporting disproves scientists ability to predict climate change | Media Matters for America

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BROCK BENEFIEL (HOST, THE CLIMATE POD) : On the other side, on the flip side of that, just recently, just within the last month, we've seen so many layoffs, especially of climate journalists, investigative reporters. We've seen this at Vox and Washington Post and CBC, Conde Nast. Like we’re seeing really good climate media — if not entirely disappear — be somewhat, resources being diminished.

And it just makes me very nervous about the way climate will be covered in the United States and in so many other countries if there are not more journalists being hired to cover climate, more good journalists having the time and the resources that they need to cover climate. And I just always get really worried about the business models for journalism, just writ large.

I had this conversation with Jane Glove a couple weeks ago talking about local journalism and, with climate journalism, this show would not exist without amazing climate journalists who are doing the real work, the real investigative work that is time-intensive, and it's resource-intensive. and it's really, really hard. I think that there's like a chilling effect when you see these layoffs to someone even wanting to do this work. I'll just open it up, though, to a bigger question of if you see any bigger trends unfolding in climate media that we should be aware of as we go into 2024.

EVLONDO COOPER (SENIOR RESEARCHER, MEDIA MATTERS): You know, it's interesting just speaking on that, I think any of these individuals who've done this amazing reporting would be an asset for any major news organization that's looking to deepen their climate reporting. I mean, to me this is an easy way to instantly 10x, 100x your reporting. And it does concern me as well, this kind of consolidation of media, the laying off of investigative reporters, people that kind of really dig in and do the hard work of exposing waste, fraud, and abuse, of exposing the fossil fuel industry. And it's concerning as well.

And as far as trends, I don't know. I think it sounds like a broken record. I think, you know, we've seen improvement in the last two years, specifically around broadcast coverage of climate. This year was a little concerning. I feel like they fell back into some of those same patterns of failing to connect extreme weather, of failing to provide these kinds of important climate moments, like the National Climate Assessment, COP28, the coverage they deserve. Missing big climate policy stories.

And so I think going forward, it's critical. I'll tell you one trend that excites me, and I hope that it translates over to how the media covers climate change. There are increasingly large number of polls being produced that show that majorities of Americans, including a majority of Republican or conservative Americans, are concerned about climate change and want to see something happen. And I think that reality has to penetrate the way national TV news networks cover climate change because despite what they say, people are concerned. But they don't want to just watch the doom and gloom all the time. They want to know what they can do. They want to feel empowered. They want to feel engaged. They want the government to do something about it. So you should be asking the politicians on your show, “What are you going to do to address the concerns of your constituents who are tired of seeing these extreme weather events happening in their communities, who want stronger climate policies, who want clean energy, and renewable energy?”

And so I think that's a trend, a positive trend, that if these broadcast networks and cable news networks were smart, they would respond to the will of what their viewers want. And instead of saying, “Oh, it's a ratings killer,” or. “Nobody really—” produce the reporting, and then people will come. You know, you have a podcast like yours and many others that have really great audiences who are concerned about this.

A lot of these folks migrated away from cable news and broadcast news because they no longer, you know, discuss the things that are important to them or has the depth that's important to them. And if you want to see some of that audience return, address some of the things that are important to them, like climate change, and do deep and substantive reporting because people do care, they are concerned, and they want to see something done.

National TV news coverage of COP28 was sparse and inconsistent}:

:{:{12/15/23}:

2. ### National TV news covered Trump’s buried climate assessment with gusto. Biden’s assessment barely made the air.

:{:{11/17/23}:

3. ### National TV news coverage of this summer’s record-breaking extreme weather exposed troubling trends

09/27/23

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==

tpm

MTG Explains Global Warming: “People are not affecting climate change. You’re going to tell me that back in the ice age, how much taxes did people pay, and how many changes did governments make to melt the ice? The climate is going to continue to change.” — Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ice Age), on X, 9/5/23.

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mma 12 23

:{:{In 2023, as climate-driven disasters plagued countries around the world and the COP28 climate change conference saw the adoption of a historic (though reportedly “loophole”-ridden) agreement referencing a transition away from fossil fuels for the first time, right-wing media remained committed to hindering progress}:

. Three concerning trends emerged in their strategies, which included facilitating comebacks for long-discredited climate deniers, cheering on violence against climate activists, and attributing deadly climate-driven events to conspiracies or religious calamity.}:

Right-wing media facilitated comebacks for long-discredited climate deniers.

Discredited climate deniers like Judith Curry, Patrick Moore, Anthony Watts, and Gregory Wrightstone, who have been vocal for decades, received renewed attention in 2023 from right-wing media figures, who seemed to be turning to views that stray further and further from established science.

Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, consulted for oil and gas companies during her time in academia. She resigned from Georgia Tech in 2017 citing climate “craziness” and has been called out by other climate scientists for taking public positions reliant on debunked climate change denialarguments.

Patrick Moore is a former nuclear energy consultant and climate change denier who falsely claims he is a co-founder of Greenpeace. Anthony Watts runs a junk science climate denier blog and is a senior fellow at the fossil fuel-funded Heartland Institute. Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist who worked for the natural gas industry for 20 years, started a consulting firm for energy companies, and is now the executive director of a climate change denial non-profit.

• Climate deniers found a reliable home on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight.Media Matters found that Curry and Moore appeared as guests on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight combined at least 7 times in 2023 alone.

• In 2023, these climate deniers appeared on cable news for the first time in years. Wrightstone appeared on One America News, seemingly making his first cable news appearance since 2019. Moore and Curry both appeared on Fox News for the first time since 2019, and Watts appeared on Fox News for the first time, according to Media Matters’ records. Moore and Curry were guests on Jesse Watters Primetime and Watts was a guest on The Ingraham Angle. As predicted, Jesse Watters continued Tucker Carlson’s legacy of climate denial on Fox News. Media Matters, [7/17/23]

• On X (formerly Twitter), bad actors found support and saw their audiences grow as climate scientists fled the platform. In the past year, Curry’s account grew by approximately 31,600 followers while Moore’s account grew by more than 32,500. Media Matters previously reported that climate deniers and contrarians have benefited from Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform. “Yes the number of my followers is increasing much more rapidly than over the past year or so,” Curry said in a November 2022 tweet. Moore also expressed contentment with his account growth in April 2022. Social Blade, accessed 12/15/23; Twitter/X, [11/11/22, 4/6/22; Media Matters, 12/8/22; The Guardian, 8/15/23]

Right-wing media attempted to justify violence against climate activists engaging in non-violent direct action.

In 2023, activist groups doubled down on demands for a global transition away from fossil fuels. Their tactics included throwing paint or food on famous works of art and property, infiltrating cultural events, and obstructing busy roads, provoking outrage from right-wing media.

• Right-wing media escalated a yearslong campaign to frame protesters as violent, aggressive, and mentally ill to justify state efforts to criminalize civil disobedience.Right-wing influencers described climate activists as “enemies of humanity” and compared nonviolent direct actions, such as blocking roads, to “firing a gun into the air at random targets” and committing violent crimes. This framing has also been reflected in charges filed in Georgia, where authorities repurposed a state anti-terrorism law to target environmental activists as part of a crackdown on what they claim to be violent extremism. Media Matters, [2/1/23, 11/10/23; Drilled, 12/6/23; Grist; 1/27/23]

• Right-wing pundits have called for disproportionately severe punishments for those who have engaged in controversial and disruptive — but peaceful — acts of protest.The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and former Daily Caller writer Greg Price have suggested that activists who have thrown food and paint at famous works of art should be dismembered, “beaten with a bullwhip,” or forced into “labor camps where they spend all day drilling for oil.” Media Matters [8/7/23; Media Matters, 2/1/23]

• When motorists responded to protests with violence, right-wing media repeatedly excused and even condoned the behavior.In November, Matt Walsh and other right-wing influencers blamed two government protesters in Panama for their own deaths after a U.S. citizen allegedly killed them for blocking the road. In Europe and in the U.S., violent motorists were praised and celebrated for beating up protesters who obstruct traffic. Media Matters, [11/10/23, 8/7/23; Media Matters, 2/1/23]

Conspiracy theorists and right-wing Christian media figures spread misinformation about extreme weather events, often suggesting they were planned or indicative of a religious event.

Conspiracy theorists spread misinformation about the causes of extreme weather events, often suggesting they are orchestrated occurrences. In parallel, conservative Christian media figures reject the scientific consensus on human-driven climate change, attributing such events to divine will and interpreting them as “demonic attacks,” manifestations of biblical prophecy, or signs of the End Times.

• Conspiracy theorists and right-wing media fabricated evidence that the fires that devastated the historic town of Lahaina, Hawaii, in August were planned. Claims that the fires were started by a direct energy weapon as a ploy to raise property prices or accelerate the construction of a “smart city” circulated online, and accounts used doctored images to back up these claims. YouTube and Meta allowed these posts to be monetized. Media Matters, [8/23/23]

• TikTok was a hotbed for misinformation about climate-driven events. TikTok videos falsely claiming that catastrophic wildfires plaguing Canada over the summer were started deliberately via helicopter, drone, or “Directed Energy Weapons” proliferated across social media, garnering millions of views. The fires received little coverage in U.S. media until smoke reached the East Coast, blanketing major cities in smoke and resulting in unhealthy air quality. Media Matters, [6/14/23]

• Right-wing Christian media figures and TikTok influencers dismissed climate change and instead cited biblical prophecy, the End Times, or “demonic attack” as explanations for extreme weather events. As concern about climate change declined among young evangelicals, Christian programs and news outlets such as FlashPoint and Charisma News attributed this summer’s heatwaves and wildfires to “God’s anger” and a “decline of morality.” TikTok accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers claimed the events were signs of the return of Jesus Christ. Even more mainstream right-wing media figures like Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Pete Hegseth suggested that only God controls the weather. Media Matters, [12/11/23]

• Climate change drove extreme wildfires in 2023.An August study found that human-induced climate change made Quebec’s 2023 fire season at least twice as likely and roughly 20% more intense. In the U.S. this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracked 25 weather or climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each. World Weather Attribution, [8/22/23; NOAA, 12/8/23]

2024 will be another crucial year for climate action, with the U.S.’s climate leadership and goals hinging on the election. While a recent CNN poll found that two-thirds of U.S. adults are concerned about the impacts of climate change in their communities, we can expect to see right-wing media assist GOP efforts to delegitimize and derail Biden’s landmark climate policy, the Inflation Reduction Act. In tandem, bad actors will also likely continue to shift the focus from these devastating impacts in order to vilify those speaking out about them, creating the potential for even more violence.

1. ### Matt Walsh blames two protesters shot in Panama for their own deaths

11/10/23 4:28 PM EST

2. ### TikTok is driving conspiracy theories about Canada's wildfires

06/14/23 12:45 PM EDT

3. ### Right wing media cheers on violence against climate activists

:{:{08/07/23}:

-=-=

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SEAN HANNITY (HOST): It really has nothing to do with the environment when you hear "Green New Deal," does it?

MARC MORANO (GUEST): No, absolutely nothing. And as you mentioned, they freely admit that, whether it's AOC's architect or even the UN. They've actually said, they said, "You thought climate treaties had something to do with environmental policy? This is about redistribution of wealth. This is about empowering the bureaucrats." What they're trying to do, it's all about power. It's about making fewer and fewer decisions by fewer and fewer individuals -- more decisions by fewer individuals.

...

All of this is happening so that you can have a regulatory state that we've never experienced in America -- in our American history -- as they take over more and more swaths. This is the intentional collapse of energy, food, transportation, and as a bonus, our free speech, because remember, the UN last year announced, "We own the science on climate change, and that's why we partnered with Google to make sure only UN-approved results on climate science are returned."

This is a frightening world in which we're entering now. And, you know, we really need to push back hard because they are crushing the middle class, and they are literally doing everything they can with 15 minute cities to keep us locked in, the banning of gas-powered cars -- which, by the way, no one's ever voted to ban.

Fox News platforms climate denial and the Great Reset conspiracy theory during COP27

:{:{11/14/22}:

2. ### Fox brings on climate denier to downplay landmark IPCC climate report

:{:{08/09/21}:

3. ### Merchant Of Doubt Marc Morano Concerned Google Won't Promote His Website's Climate Change Denial

:{:{03/06/15}:

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aha wildfires getting harder to ignore (smoke air quality, dramatic pix) tho morano just said no increase in US or world?! dn?! 8 23 but recall space laser, no rake, BLM arsonists in Oregon?

demonization?

https://www.mediamatters.org/michael-knowles/**daily-wires-**michael-knowles-suggests-**radical-environmentalists-set-maui-wildfires

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Moderators must rigorously scrutinize candidates’ climate positions during upcoming Republican debate in Florida | Media Matters for America

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mma 12 23

• ## White evangelical Protestants, particularly those who watch right-wing media, have a higher rate of climate denial than the overall American public

• • Concern over climate change has declined among evangelicals, despite the scientific consensus that climate change is real and worsening natural disasters.According to a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute, “while the proportion of all Americans who consider climate change a crisis has risen 16% since 2014, among white evangelicals it has dropped 38%.” PRRI, [10/4/23; Religion News Services, 10/4/23]
  • In public polling, right-wing Christians who express little concern about climate change and reject government action to curtail it cite a host of reasons, including the notion that God controls the climate and the belief that natural disasters are a sign of the End Times.Notably, the 2023 PRRI poll found that “agreement with the severity of natural disasters as evidence of the end of times is greater among Americans who most trust Fox News (52%) or far-right news outlets (43%).” Pew Research Center, [11/17/22; PRRI, 10/4/23]
  • Republican politicians, prominent figures on the religious right, and key right-wing media funders have for years invoked religion to deny climate change and reject action to curtail it.Farris Wilks, an evangelical fracking billionaire and early funder of PragerU and The Daily Wire — both of which also have histories of pushing climate denial — has attributed climate change to God’s will, saying in 2013, “If [God] wants the polar caps to remain in place, then he will leave them there.” In a 2019 appearance on a right-wing Christian radio program, former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) dismissed the need to mitigate climate change by citing “God’s word” that the world would not flood. The Guardian, [9/5/23, 9/6/23; Right Wing Watch, 10/15/19; Baptist News, 9/27/19; Vox, 2/23/18; Time magazine, 5/31/17]

• ## Right-wing Christian media figures and TikTok influencers have dismissed climate change and instead cited biblical prophecy, the End Times, or “demonic attack” as explanations for extreme weather events
• • FlashPoint, a Christian nationalist program that has interviewed high-profile Republicans including former President Donald Trump, tied record heat waves in the summer to biblical prophecy.Regular contributor and self-proclaimed prophet Hank Kunneman claimed that “when God tells you ahead of time what it’s going to specifically be and he lists out that it’s going to be in the hundreds and it is in the hundreds, and those specific numbers that he listed coincide with certain redemptive promises in the book of Psalms. … God’s anger is rising and it's coming with justice. Now, it isn't just weather and here's why. There is a connection between the prophetic and weather.” Victory Channel, *FlashPoint*, [7/25/23; Media Matters, 7/18/23]

• • Kunneman also connected the wildfires in Maui to biblical prophecy, suggesting the fires were the result of “demonic entities” and that God will show “it’s not climate.”Kunneman claimed that the week before the fires, “the spirit of the Lord … began to prophesy about Hawaii, and he began to prophesy about North America and the fire. … And he said that ‘the demonic entities have stretched their hands.’” Victory Channel, *FlashPoint*, [8/22/23]

• • TikTok influencers have also seized on wildfires as a sign of the End Times and return of Jesus Christ.An account with over 350,000 followers posted a video that suggested fires in Hawaii, Texas, Oregon, and Washington “have to do with the End of Times.” Another account with nearly 30,000 followers posted a video of wildfires in Canada with text that the fires were a “sign of His coming.” TikTok, [8/22/23, 8/23/23]

• • Other TikTok users have claimed that rain, floods, or drought are also signs of the End of Times.A video of extreme weather in Mexico with nearly 5 million views asserted, “Terrifying roars from the sky convince people the apocalypse is coming,” with the caption claiming, “He’s at the doors!!! #Jesus.” An account with more than 28,000 followers posted a video of flooding in Israel with the hashtags “#bibleprophecy #prophecy #endtimes #endtimesprophecy #lastdays.” An account with over 100,000 followers cited biblical prophecy that the Euphrates River would dry up, stating, “The rapture may be closer than you think,” with the hashtags “#bible #prophecy #rapture #israel.” Another account with 31,000 followers posted a video of flooding in France with the hashtags “#bibleprophecyishappening #christiantiktok #jesusiscoming #GOD.” TikTok, [8/15/23, 4/13/23, 10/17/23, 11/3/23]

• • Charisma News, a right-wing Christian outlet that is the top corporate sponsor of the Christian nationalist “ReAwaken America” tour, has repeatedly pointed to End Times biblical prophecy in coverage of recent extreme weather events.A Charisma News article titled “Growing ‘El Niño’ Expected to Cause End Times-Level Disasters,” asserted that “weather pattern changes” are “linked with the decline of morality in the end times of the Earth.” Another article suggested that “current bizarre weather events point to Biblical Prophecy,” citing “biblical” floods in Pakistan and the Euphrates River drying up. Charisma News, [5/25/23, 9/1/22; Rolling Stone, 2/28/23]

• • In an opinion piece for the Christian Post titled “Who’s behind the weather,” the Rev. Mark Creech suggested that a warming climate is a sign of the “last days,” not climate change.Creech quoted a book, God’s Answer for America, that claimed natural disasters “are not ‘global warming’ (or ‘climate change’), but they are part of God’s ‘global warnings’ as signs for these last days.” Creech agreed, writing that the book presented “a more likely cause” of extreme weather. The Christian Post, [1/24/23]

• • On the program Elijah Streams, which has interviewed members of the Trump family, self-proclaimed prophet Charlie Shamp attributed the Maui wildfires to “demonic attack” by a fire-breathing dragon upset over the legality of abortion.Twitter/X, [9/7/23]

• • Televangelist Jim Bakker declared that discussions of climate change dismiss that God is unleashing “judgment” that will “come in the last days.” Bakker claimed, “Global warming is the world’s excuse that God wasn’t in the storm. I’m going to prove to you God’s in the storm, God’s in the rain, God’s in the wind, it’s God’s storm, it’s God’s wind, it’s God’s lightning.” Right Wing Watch, [9/16/19]

• ## Prominent right-wing media and Christian media figures have downplayed links between climate change and extreme weather events by arguing God controls the weather

• • Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson claimed that Hurricane Ian was caused by “acts of God, not an act of global warming or climate change, as much as the perverse, seething scum wish to make it that.” *The Benny Show,* [9/30/22]
  • While covering Hurricane Ian, former Fox prime-time host Tucker Carlson told his audience that the left “think they are God, they think they’re in charge of the weather.” Carlson stated that all natural disasters are “products of nature — God’s in charge, we’re not God.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/29/22]

• • Right-wing Christian pundit Eric Metaxas hosted conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi to discuss “the hoax of global warming and climate change,” where Metaxas declared that “God has his hand on all of this, that to me is the key. And this is the hysteria of the, you know, the anti-fossil fuel left is simply a political narrative.” Salem Media Group, *The Eric Metaxas Radio Show*, [8/14/22]

• • Family Research Council, an extreme right-wing evangelical activist group, published an article titled “A Biblical Perspective on Climate Change,” which asserted that “Christians should not forget that God is the one who calms the storms and is Lord over the elements.”The article also suggested that, “God is in control of everything that happens in the world, and nothing occurs without His knowledge and permission.” Family Research Council Action, [9/9/21]

• • On Fox News, host Pete Hegseth suggested that climate activists are “wanting to play God” by attempting to mitigate climate change.Hegseth said: “This goes back to people wanting to play God. Climate has happened for thousands and thousands of years.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [1/27/23]

• ## Right-wing media and far-right Christian media have cited their faith to reject action on climate

• • On Fox, Rachel Campos-Duffy asserted that it is not necessary to curtail climate change because of religion.Discussing climate activists, Campos-Duffy said: “For them, where we live right now, this place, Earth is it. So everything’s on the line here for them. They think, as you said, they can perfect this Earth. Those of us who have faith don’t believe that, and we believe how we act here determines where we go after. And so we got to behave.” She added that “if you don’t have a faith, whether it’s Hindu, Islam, Christianity, you’re going to create one. And it could be climate, or it could be yourself.” The Daily Beast, [1/4/23]

• • Right-wing pastor Perry Stone, who has more than 750,000 subscribers on YouTube, said that the reason Christians don’t worry about climate change is because they know that all those problems will be taken care of “when Christ comes back to Earth.”Stone declared: “The travail of the earth will cease when the messiah returns, so those that criticize believers now for not being environmentally concerned or whatever, we know how the book ends, we know where this is going.” Twitter/X, [8/11/21]

• • On Family Research Council’s Washington Watch podcast, FRC President Tony Perkins claimed that the warming climate is caused by sin and to combat it, people should “turn to the Lord Jesus Christ.”Twitter/X, [9/15/21]

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random fox

Marc Morano

Weekly update ⋅ December 8, 2023

Marc Morano: China is getting a pass | Fox News Video

Fox News

Climate Depot's Marc Morano discusses John Kerry's remarks at the U.N. COP28 climate conference in Dubai on 'The Ingraham Angle.'

ingraham, extra AC units kery jetsetter india does not care what we think new plants permitted end global coal production, china 1/2 of production open 1 plant/wk; getting cty to cut back on naty gas lead the world in reducing emissions; greta will protest german plant but not in china; on x ingra how much does greta fam make?; li jets from mansion to mansion kite surfing ridiculous; 17m$ budget pvt jet potentate unelected; hillary says --- killing, studies show coal kills more? ej climate fund keep africa locked in poverty, then crush US decree global dictatorship vs trump 99perent drop in 20 yrs? kery and hillary never fact checked; gren reset summit; keruy not senate confirmed, how is that ok? US must take tougher approach on tech to China, says US House committee

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11 23 fox

victory lap on offshore wind

The wheels are starting to fall off the green energy bandwagon. The rose-colored glasses are clearing up and reality is sinking in. AND OTHER TRITE EXPRESSIONS

The giant push toward a net zero utopia is not practical and has been a complete disservice to the American consumer. Components of the green movement are experiencing major setbacks, namely offshore wind, electric vehicles (EVs), and investments.

Offshore wind projects are struggling to secure financing and stay on track. The biggest blow came last month, when the world’s largest offshore wind developer Ørsted canceled two major projects off the New Jersey coastline, taking the wind right out of Gov. Phil Murphy’s green energy sails. Ørsted is also suspending work on offshore projects in Maryland and Delaware.

President Biden previously set a goal of ensuring 50% of car purchases are electric by 2030. The White House said EPAs recent tailpipe rules would provide a "clear pathway for a continued rise in EV sales."

The EV market is also losing steam. Sales are slumping and manufacturers are scaling back on production. (Anna Moneymaker/Pool/Getty Images | Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Among the wave of cancellations are projects in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut. Several other projects are on the ropes and a host of companies are paying millions to break their contracts.

BIDEN ADMIN QUIETLY RELEASED STUDY SHOWING GREEN ENERGY RECEIVES FAR MORE SUBSIDIES THAN FOSSIL FUELS

The industry hit another snag recently when Germany-based Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy pulled the plug on its wind turbine blade facility in Portsmouth, Virginia. Siemens Gamesa, one of the world’s leading suppliers, says, "development milestones to establish the facility could not be met."

According to BloombergNEF, at least half of U.S. wind contracts have or are at risk of being terminated. The causes are typically due to skyrocketing inflation, high interest rates, choked supply chains and financial troubles.

Offshore wind is leaving a ‘heavy environmental footprint’ on the East Coast: CFACT’s Craig RuckerVideo

Offshore wind is costly and difficult to implement.

The EV market is also losing steam. Sales are slumping and manufacturers are scaling back on production.

EXPERT WARNS GREEN ENERGY PROJECTS ‘ARE NOT WORTH IT’ AS PRICES SPIRAL ‘OUT OF CONTROL’

Ford Motor Company stands to lose $4.5 billion on its EV business for 2023 and will be delaying many of their EV investments.

General Motors said it was restructuring EV goals, Honda shelved plans to develop affordable EVs with GM, and Hertz said it will slow their rate of purchasing them due to high repair costs. Elon Musk is even considering putting off plans for a $1 billion plant in Mexico.

Nobody wins in this push for electric vehicles besides China: Lisa BootheVideo

Most, if not all, manufacturers are reporting major losses per EV sold. Ford lost $62,000 per vehicle in the third quarter; one luxury electric vehicle company lost an astounding $430,000. Countless others are losing tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle, quarter after quarter.

Car dealers are slashing EV prices. EVs sit on lots nearly twice as long as internal combustion engines. Even industry-leader Tesla has been shaving thousands off their retail prices due to unmet sales expectations.

This kind of loss is not sustainable for any company.

EV MARKET COULD BECOME THE ‘NEXT BIG FLOP’: ECONOMIST

President Biden pushes electric vehicles despite high pricesVideo

The EV market is niche. Those who want one have one. But the rest of America is not convinced they would be better off with an EV on account of a multitude of reliability factors. Nor can they afford the steep price tag.

Consequently, the last few months have seen stock prices drastically dropping in companies across the green spectrum. From wind to solar to EVs to fuel cells, investors are abandoning the "green" energy ship in droves. It might be sinking.

Siemens Energy stock is down 45%; Ørsted, 67%; Power Inc., a hydrogen fuel cell producer, 71%; Charge Point Holdings Inc., an EV charging company, 70%; Blink Charging Co., another EV charging company, 72%; and Nikola Corp., maker of heavy-duty EVs, has gone from $65 a share in mid-2020 to the current price of less than $1 per share.

Green energy agenda is ‘environmental nightmare’: Michael ShellenbergerVideo

A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that such companies are "finding it more difficult to secure financing than at any time in the past decade."

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

We need to read between the lines here. The green energy revolution is not working, nor is central planning. You cannot force Americans to buy cars they don’t want any more than you can force energy transitions that aren’t viable.

Green energy is wholly inadequate to meet the needs of all Americans, and turns out, is insanely expensive.

Doug Burgum: Green New Deal spending is buried in Biden's 'Inflation Creation Act'Video

The World Economic Forum says that getting to net zero by 2050 will cost an extra $3.5 trillion a year. The U.S. has already poured hundreds of billions into the effort and continues to keep shoveling. All on the backs of the American taxpayer, to save a mere fraction of temperature. Maybe.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician estimates that even if all fossil fuels were eliminated from the United States, not even 0.2 degrees Celsius would be salvaged.

It’s time to quit throwing other people’s money into these projects and let the market dictate the solutions.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM KRISTEN WALKER

Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.

LNX

The wheels are starting to fall off the green energy bandwagon. The rose-colored glasses are clearing up and reality is sinking in.

The giant push toward a net zero utopia is not practical and has been a complete disservice to the American consumer. Components of the green movement are experiencing major setbacks, namely offshore wind, electric vehicles (EVs), and investments.

Offshore wind projects are struggling to secure financing and stay on track. The biggest blow came last month, when the world’s largest offshore wind developer Ørsted canceled two major projects

BIDEN ADMIN QUIETLY RELEASED STUDY SHOWING GREEN ENERGY RECEIVES FAR MORE SUBSIDIES THAN FOSSIL FUELS

The EV market is also losing steam. Sales are slumping and manufacturers are scaling back on production.

EXPERT WARNS GREEN ENERGY PROJECTS ‘ARE NOT WORTH IT’ AS PRICES SPIRAL ‘OUT OF CONTROL’

EV MARKET COULD BECOME THE ‘NEXT BIG FLOP’: ECONOMIST

We need to read between the lines here. The green energy revolution is not working, nor is central planning. You cannot force Americans to buy cars they don’t want any more than you can force energy transitions that aren’t viable.

The World Economic Forum says that getting to net zero by 2050 will cost an extra $3.5 trillion a year. The U.S. has already poured hundreds of billions into the effort and continues to keep shoveling. All on the backs of the American taxpayer, to save a mere fraction of temperature. Maybe.

*www.theamericanconsumer.org

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OMG

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/15-nonsensical-comments-made-right-wing-media-during-2023s-summer-climate-fueled

15 nonsensical comments made by right-wing media during 2023’s summer of climate-fueled extreme weather events

Special PROGRAMS

CLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY ALLISON FISHER

PUBLISHED 08/07/23

July 2023 was the earth’s hottest month on record, punctuated by record-shattering extreme heat events, catastrophic floods, and historic wildfires. While major media outlets sounded the alarm on the climate crisis, climate denial and downplay reached a fever pitch among right-wing media outlets and influencers.

Many in the right-wing media have downplayed the record heat — suggesting that it’s normal summer weather, despite clear evidence that the intensity of this summer’s heat waves would not have been possible without climate change — or dismissed its lethal impact by arguing that more people die of cold than heat. Others have said those linking July’s extreme weather to climate change are weaponizing these events to push a radical climate agenda or call for climate lockdowns.

Here are 15 other examples that illustrate the lengths to which right-wing media are going — often deploying nonsensical arguments or outright lies that attempt to ignore the fact that there is scientific consensus that carbon emissions are heating our planet— to maintain climate denial in the face of climate-fueled catastrophes: 

1 in

1. response to extreme weather that grounded planes in the Northeast, Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy said the left is “trying to control the weather” and “trying to be God.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [7/3/23]
2. Responding to calls for climate action, Newsmax host Eric Bolling denied that human activity is responsible for warming: “Real scientists, meaning those not purchased by the kings of propaganda, well, they’ll tell you there is actually no such thing as climate change.” Newsmax, Eric Bolling The Balance, [7/11/23]
3. Fossil fuel shill Steve Milloy on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight: “The Earth is greener than ever before. Have we affected the planet and wildlife? Yeah, sure. But you know, in the end, it's been, I think, positive. The Earth is carrying more life now than ever before thanks to warming, thanks to CO2, thanks to fossil fuel use.” Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, [7/11/23]
4. Newsmax host Greg Kelly said that “LGBTQ+IA whatever has been kind of pushed so relentlessly. … I think climate change and the whole phony debate about it has something to do with it,” suggesting the goal is to decrease population in order to reduce climate impacts. Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, [7/11/23]
5. Fox host Jesse Watters suggested that U.S. special presidential envoy for climateJohn Kerry made it “impossible” to believe in climate change because according to Watters he lied about using a private plane. Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [7/13/23]
6. Conservative radio and Fox News host Mark Levin on his radio show said climate change is a religion not based on science: “This is a religion. This is an ideology. This isn’t science. ...Don't you see how hot it is in Nevada? In the middle of the damn summer?It's what we have air conditioning for.”Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, [7/13/23]
7. Far-right media host Steven Crowder claims that carbon dioxide is not pollution because plants use it: “Is carbon dioxide the — basically, you know, the neurotoxin atmospheric poison that people make it out to be? Because you just pointed out plants thrive on it.” Rumble, Louder with Crowder, [7/15/23]
8. Fox host Greg Gutfeld attempted to downplay the record-breaking heat with bizarre logic: “The problem with using weather — like saying, ‘This place broke records’ — how many states,how many countries didn't break records? Nobody ever provides you the context. They’re going, ‘Three countries had record-breaking heat waves.’ It’s like, well, how many countries are there?” Fox News, The Five, [7/17/23]
9. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh claimed that the record heat is not a result of human activity but the sun: “The sun … that’s what calls the shots on Earth. It determines the temperature. It determines everything in terms of weather. … And until you can figure out a way to literally control the sun, there is basically nothing we can do to intentionally and significantly raise, lower, or otherwise affect the temperature on Earth.” The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, [7/18/23]
10. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “Thank God we have this thing called air conditioning. … You know what’s a great cure for being super-duper hot outside? Being a first world country.” The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, [7/20/23]
11. Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on America Reports: “This is not an overly hot July. ... Hot weather happens in some places; cooler weather happens in other places. We do not have a climate catastrophe.” Fox News, America Reports, [7/21/23]
12. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on climate science and why carbon dioxide is not pollution: “The science is not solid. The science is debated. They look at science as if it is religious, irrefutable dogma.” Kirk added, “The built-in premise of the climate hoax is carbon is bad. OK, well, carbon is life, actually. … Don’t plants thrive on carbon dioxide?” Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, [7/24/23]
13. On The Ingraham Angle, American Majority founder Ned Ryun called climate change a “hoax”: “It is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate people into a state of fear to have them give more control over to a ruling elitewho would take this hoax and enforce it through a whole host of means.” Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [7/27/23]
14. On America’s Newsroom, fossil fuel shill Daniel Turner deliberately conflated weather with climate: “And if you look at the weather forecast for this great city, where I’m born and raised, next Friday is mid-70s. So we are in what's called a heat wave.” Fox News, America’s Newsroom, [7/28/23]
15. Climate denier Marc Morano on Jesse Watters Primetime blamed global wildfires on arsonists, dismissing the role of climate change: “This is a global problem of people starting this. Now, is it climate change? Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying, oh, look, climate change is causing more floods.” Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [7/28/23]

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Next page

Related

Right-wing media deny climate change in face of deadly and record-breaking extreme weather event

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07/11/23

Only 5% of national TV news segments on the record-shattering heat wave that scorched Texas mentioned climate change

07/03/23

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Right-wing media deny climate change in face of deadly and record-breaking extreme ...

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/right-wing-media-deny-climate-change-face-deadly-and-record-breaking-extreme

Media Matters for America

Fox Business host Stuart Varney indulged climate change denier Marc Morano and said climate change is “a good debate.” When discussing extreme ...

as the climate crisis becomes more evident and destructive,even exceeding climate scientists’ earlier predictions, Fox News and other influential right-wing outlets and figures are downplaying the severity of climate-fueled events and pushing dangerous climate denial.

This summer has been marked by a series of record-breaking extreme weather events, illustrative of the rapidly intensifying effects of global warming. Unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, and floods have wreaked havoc across North America. Meanwhile, global sea surface temperatures have reached alarming levels, and the world just experienced its hottest day on record — four days in a row. These events align with scientists' warnings, but the acceleration of warming and the intensity of this summer’s extreme heat suggest that the climate crisis is unfolding faster than expected.

Last month, when smoke from hundreds of wildfires raging across Canada polluted the air over major population centers in the U.S., Fox News dismissed the link between the fires and climate change; meanwhile conspiracy theories seeking alternative explanations for Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season flourished online. In response to news that Earth had reached its hottest temperatures ever recorded, bad actors attempted to distract from the unsettling milestone by focusing on CNN’s use of the phrase “hottest day ever.”  As deadly heat continues to scorch parts of the U.S., Asia, and Europe with no end in sight, and with a 1,000-year flood event having left parts of Vermont and New York state underwater, right-wing media cling to talking points that deny climate science.

By flooding the zone with climate denial right when the climate crisis is most evident, right-wing media run cover for Republican decision-makers who are actively obstructing climate action, ward off accountability for the fossil fuel industry, and pollute information systems for those attempting to understand the link between extreme weather and our dependence on fossil fuels. This tactic, like the extreme heat, has no end in sight.

Right-wing media responded to deadly climate change-fueled heat and flooding with denial and delay

• Fox Business host Stuart Varney indulged climate change denier Marc Morano and said climate change is “a good debate.” When discussing extreme heat in Phoenix, Arizona, Morano said, “This is not outside the normal bounds of hot summer weather,” and claimed that CNN, The New York Times, and others are “weaponizing hot summer heat waves to turn it into some kind of climate action.” Varney asked Morano whether “that is not the result of CO2 emissions'' and said, “It's a good debate. This is a very good debate.” Fox Business, *Varney & Co*., [7/19/23]

• Far-right radio host Steven Crowder hosted climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg, who downplayed the climate crisis by arguing that more people die from cold than heat: “We are not talking about a world where most people die from heat. No, most people die from cold. Cold is fantastically more dangerous for a lot of different reasons.” Rumble, *Louder with Crowder*, [7/19/23]

• :{The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh suggests that the extreme heat is normal for summer: “:{Well it’s summertime and that means it's hot outside … This is when the media, as it does every year, claims that the hot weather is a sign of our impending planetary doom.” The Daily Wire, :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:*The Matt Walsh Show*, [7/18/23]}:

• Far-right pundit James Lindsay: “Climate struggle sessions ramping up. They're going to try and fail to make that transition again. The propaganda isn't going to work this time either, though.” Twitter, [7/18/23]

• Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in response to an Axios article about extreme weather: “I'm not taking@Axios seriously until they start crusading against coal burning in China — anyone who claims to worry about carbon emissions should start there or button it. Even the ‘best states for climate change’ get hit with extreme weather” Twitter, [7/18/23]

• COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Dr. Naomi Wolf: “Oh! Conclusions: this will happen more and more often because climate change so: stay indoors, do remote work, ‘mask’. Back where we were again.” Twitter, [7/18/23]

• Right-wing Irish political activist and conspiracy theorist Ben Gilroy: “Today media continue to propagandise weather showing high temperatures in Death Valley USA — yet the park rangers wear jackets and gloves? The elites UN climate scam is really about securing a world government plutocracy, depopulation, and severely cutting your quality of life.” Twitter, [7/18/23]

• Fox host Jesse Watters downplayed the extreme heat as simply “summer”: “It's been a hot July. Some call it ‘global warming,’ some call it ‘summer.’ But what's the best way to beat the heat? Ice cream.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/17/23]

• Lindsay mocked conditions in the southern U.S. that were so humid they had the potential to interfere with humans’ ability to sweat, pushing the limits of survivability. Twitter, [7/17/23]

• Longtime fossil fuel shill Steve Milloy: “@AP: 'Around the world, millions feel the heat of an unrelenting summer.' Two points: 1. It is summer. It gets hot. 2. There 8 billion in the world. If only 'millions' are experiencing extreme heat, that doesn't sound much like 'climate change.'” Twitter, [7/17/23]

• Misogynist influencer and alleged sex trafficker Tristan Tate: “They’re naming heatwaves like they used to name new ‘Covid variants’. Can somebody in the government give me the job of whoever makes the names up? I’ll do it for free. Watch out! The ‘lovely warm summer’ heatwave has just hit Europe.” Twitter, [7/15/23]

• COVID-19 conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine influencer Dr. Eli David: “When the weather is a bit warmer than usual: Experts™: IT'S PROOF OF GLOBAL WARMING!!!!! When the weather is colder than usual: Experts™: WEATHER AND CLIMATE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS YOU MORONS!!!!!” Twitter, [7/17/23]

• Newsmax host Chris Salcedo mocked concern over the record heat:“Newsflash folks, it gets hot in the summer.”  He continued, “After a few particularly hot days on the Fourth of July weekend, the left — they went into full fearmongering mode.” Salcedo then interviewed Milloy, who warned that climate activists would call for climate lockdowns. Newsmax, *The Chris Salcedo Show*, [7/17/23]

• On The Five, Jesse Watters attacked “the left” for connecting climate change to heat waves across the globe and mocked climate activists:“The left rushing to blame global warming for that dangerous heat wave gripping the nation and the world right now. But I think the heat's getting to their heads. Climate change-obsessed liberals are actually acting crazier than usual, with eco-extremists in Germany literally gluing their hands to airport runways as a way to sound thealarm on how the planet's cooked.”  Fox News, *The Five*, [7/17/23]

• Fox host Greg Gutfeld also attempted to downplay the record-breaking heat with bizarre logic: “The problem with using weather — like saying, ‘This place broke records’ — how many states, how many countries didn't break records? Nobody ever provides you the context. They’re going, ‘Three countries had record breaking heat waves.’ It’s like, well, ‘How many countries are there?’” Fox News, *The Five*, [7/17/23]

• On America’s Newsroom, Lomborg suggested that more air conditioning is the way to address extreme heat: “The way to fix this, of course, is to make sure that people get lots of air conditioningand that they can actually afford the energy that they will run their air conditioning on. That’s one. The second one is to remember that, yes, there are many people dying from heat, but many, many more people dying from cold.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [7/17/23]

• Climate change denier and former University of Alabama professor Matthew Wielicki: “We used to call this summer. Now we call this a climate crisis.” Twitter, [7/15/23]

• Milloy: “India's monsoon season is not affected by emissions. Indians have died in monsoon flooding since there have been Indians and monsoons. It is really dishonest and disgusting to surf tragic deaths for climate.” Twitter, [7/14/23]

• Right-wing British pundit Brendan O’Neill, who has been praised by anti-renewable energy activist Michael Shellenberger, wrote that “global warming could be good for humankind.” Citing Lomborg, O’Neill wrote that “the truth is that global warming could be good for humankind” because more people die from the cold than heat. “It’s pissing down in Britain,” he continued, “Where’s our global warming? Even the name of the heatwave is designed to conjure up visions of hellfire and torment.” Spiked, [7/14/23]

• On Fox News at Night, Carl Demaio, a political operative and conservative radio host, called a California campaign to warn residents about climate-driven extreme heat “wasteful spending” and “fear porn.” Fox News, *Fox News at Night*, [7/12/23]

• Newsmax host Eric Bolling, in response to calls for climate action after flooding in the Northeast, denied that human activity is responsible for warming: “It's raining, so we all must change our behavior. Unprecedented weather events — look flooding’s terrible, loss of property is a disaster, and our hearts go out to those affected. But just imagine, for one moment, the ridiculousness and the pompousness to think that: one, our behavior has any real impact on weather and the Earth, and two, even if that were true — which it’s not — that we could do anything about it without making things worse.” Newsmax, *Eric Bolling The Balance*, [7/11/23]

• Fox host Laura Ingraham also mocked the extreme heat and calls to action, suggesting that climate change is a made-up crisis: “It's hot, hot, hot all right. After all, we're in the middle of a season called ‘summer.’” Ingraham later played a clip from a previous show, arguing that “COVID lockdowns set the predicate for more to come.”  She said, “Their so-called public health expertswere wrong on everything from lockdowns to masks to social distancing. And yet now we see the usual suspects lining up to exploit  another hyped crisis: of course, I’m talking about climate change.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [7/11/23]

• Right-wing journalist and author Alex Berenson: As climate change hysteria reaches a new level of screeching (1-in-1000 this, world's hottest that), remember that weather-related deaths have PLUNGED since 1970. The wealthier the world becomes, the easier managing climate change will be. And wealth requires energy. Period. Twitter, [7/10/23]

• On Jesse Watters Primetime, guest host Pete Hegseth mocked reports of record-breaking heat and blamed media for “hyping climate insanity”: If there is one thing the mindless left loves to magically discover every year, it’s that summer is hot. Hegseth continued, “It was hotter in New York in April.And it’s not even the hottest June we’ve ever had. The data shows that the 80s and 90s … were a lot hotter.” Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [7/7/23]

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florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis says if elected president his plan to address climate change will be to throw out President Joe Biden’s Green New Deal.

Last week on Monday planet Earth suffered the hottest day on record, a record that it broke on Tuesday.

Fox News Business’ Stuart Varney, who has attacked climate change activists as “juvenile” and declared it is “ridiculous” that “the western world is obsessed with climate change,” on Monday asked DeSantis if he has a plan to address the climate crisis.

“The headlines are just full of stories about wildfires smoke, extraordinary temperatures in the southwest and the Southeast to some degree. Do you have a climate plan?” Varney asked.

READ MORE: ‘We Are Now Formally Back on Indictment Watch’ With Trump Georgia Grand Jury: Former Federal Prosecutor

“It’s going to be to rip up Joe Biden’s Green New Deal,” DeSantis bragged. “I think at the end of the day, we need to embrace American domestic energy. This could be a huge source of national security, economic vitality can build our industrial base in Florida.”

DeSantis’ claim echoes Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy‘s, who last Thursday said God has blessed America with largenatural gas resources, and the United States should use them to make two of the world’s largest countries and largest economies, China and India, “dependent on American natural gas.” He suggested doing so would “make us economically stronger but geopolitically the world safer,” while falsely claiming it would make the world “environmentally sound.”

The Florida governor bragged to Varney about Florida’s reduction in emissions, which happened, he admitted, through “market forces."

"We’ve actually had a huge reduction in emissions but it was done through innovation,” DeSantis said. “It was done through market forces, not command and control. So we’ll go about that in a much different direction than, than Joe Biden, I think ultimately, Biden’s policies andBidenomics is really about making the average person poor and reducing their standard of living. That is not the way you go about it.”

READ MORE: ‘Keeps on Chugging’: Unemployment Down and Wages Up in ‘Strong’ and Record-Setting June Jobs Report

Last year, a Tampa Bay Times opinion piece noted, “2018, the last year for which [emissions] data is available, Florida utilities had decreased emissions by 19%, the research shows, while tailpipe emissions grew 12%.”

DeSantis was sworn into office in 2019.

Also last year, the Miami Herald warned Florida was not addressing the causes of climate change.

“The last time the Legislature addressed the root cause of climate change — greenhouse gas emissions — it was in a law that effectively blocked cities from cutting emissions,” the paper reported.

Watch DeSantis below or at this link.

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Top Des Moines meteorologist resigns after receiving death threats for climate change coverage

Alex Henderson June 22, 2023

In Des Moines, Iowa, Chris Gloninger has been the top meteorologist at KCCI-TV, the city's CBS affiliate. Gloninger has been reporting on a subject that meteorologists are well aware of: climate change — and some far-right MAGA Republicans have responded with threats of violence.

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On Wednesday, June 21, Gloninger announced, on Twitter, that he was leaving the station — and cited the threats as a factor in his decision.

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In his statement, Gloninger explained, "18 years. 7 stations. 5 states. I am bidding farewell to TV to embark on a new journey dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis. After a death threat stemming from my climate coverage last year and resulting PTSD, in addition to family health issues, I've decided to begin this journey now."

READ MORE: Biden to fund California power grid upgrade in climate change push

The Des Moines Register reports that in September 2022, a man in Lenox, Iowa was fined $105 for harassing Gloninger in a series of e-mails. One of them read, "You are worthless Biden puppet, a liar, a conspiracy theorist, and an idiot!!! You give Iowa a bad name, GO HOME B—-."

Gloninger, according to the Register, has been with KCCI-TV since July 6, 2021, and he will be leaving this July 7.

The meteorologist also announced the departure on KCCI, telling viewers, "I did receive a threat last summer that left us a little bit shaken, and I've been working through the healing process.But during that time, both of our families had unexpected serious health issues. Family is important."

Gloninger stressed that leaving television will allow him to make climate activism his main focus.

READ MORE: State Farm axes new California home insurance policies citing 'escalating risk' of climate change: report

The meteorologist explained, "Stepping away from TV will allow my wife, and I to help (family members) in their time of need, and will also allow me to make a difference full time in something that I'm very passionate about in the realm of climate change and finding solutions, being able to adapt and mitigate to this issue that we have globally."

READ MORE: 'What a weirdo': Twitter shreds 'cartoon character' Republican for declaring 'there is no climate change'

The Des Moines Register's full report is available at this link.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/response-wildfire-smoke-choking-new-york-city-fox-news-trots-out-tired-climate-denial

June 7, as smoke from hundreds of wildfires raging across Canada turned New York City into a dystopian climate change movie, MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeted: “I always thought there would be *some* kind of climate reckoning when it got bad enough but Covid has taught me that, no, people will just step on the gas and happily mow people down so they never have to admit taking a wrong turn."

Too little TV news coverage connected the code red air quality in New York and other impacted U.S. cities to climate change, but Fox News and other right-wing media figures retreated even further from a reckoning, stepping on the climate denial pedal by dismissing the link between global warming and wildfires, attacking those that did, and insisting on alternative explanations for why Canada is having its worst-ever wildfire season.

In fact, at 2 hours and 41 minutes of coverage, Fox News covered the wildfire story more than either CNN (2 hours and 19 minutes) or MSNBC (41 minutes) on June 7 and mentioned climate change (to deny it) more times in its coverage than its counterparts.

Fox News dismisses the link between wildfires and climate change, mocks those that do make the connection

Scientists say wildfires are becoming more severe as “forests around the world increasingly dry out amid the warming climate”, a fact even observed by Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. Experts further note that Canada’s wildfire season is a “harbinger of our climate future” with the United Nations warning that by 2090, “global wildfires are expected to increase in intensity by up to 57% thanks to climate change.”  But no amount of evidence, either experiential or academic, changes the tone of the reporting at Fox News when it comes to extreme weather and climate-fueled events.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade mocks AOC, climate change czar John Kerry, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for connecting the dangerous air quality to climate change: “Every time it’s real hot, climate change. Every time it’s real cold, climate change. When it rains a lot it’s because of climate change. And you guessed it, Canada, with burning forests, 400 separate fires, it’s because of climate change. AOC said it. Of course climate change czar John Kerry said it, and [Karine Jean-Pierre] KJP has one note, listen.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [6/8/23]

Fox News host Laura Ingraham suggests that coverage of the event is overblown and mocks those reporting the air quality from a climate angle: “Is this really a novel occurrence for our country or is it getting the coverage of the type it’s getting because it's happening along the East Coast where all the elites live?” Ingraham continued: “The apocalyptic coverage in the New York Times today was just absolutely knee-slappingly hilarious. … CNN's Bill Weir, no stranger to hyperbole himself, used the event to call for action to electrify every car in the United States for humanity’s sake." Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [6/7/23]

Fox News host Sean Hannity accuses Democrats, including AOC, of politicizing the crisis to push their climate agenda: “Tonight, smoke from the Canadian wildfires, they blanketed the entire East Coast of the U.S. creating a scary martian-like scene in New York City especially. And as usual, Democrats, they wasted no time. They went right to politicizing the crisis, AOC using the wildfire and heat wave in Puerto Rico to once again push her radical Green New Deal or the climate alarmist religious cult agenda.” Fox News, Hannity, [6/7/23]

On Jesse Watters Primetime, climate denier and frequent Fox guest Mark Morano dismissed climate change and accused those making the connection of weaponizing the weather while smoking a cigar:“This is exactly what you would expect to happen. This is Canadian natural disaster mismanagement and now they are trying to blame global warming which makes it, what? Our fault. It's our SUVs. It's our gas stoves which, by the way, didn't New York ban them? Shouldn't we have -- shouldn't wildfires be a thing of the past? I thought they were banning them.” Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [6/7/23]

On The Five, Jeanine Pirro accuses AOC and Democrats of “pumping up climate hysteria”: “While Americans choke on the smoke, the far left smells an opportunity. AOC thinks this is a great time to push her Green New Deal. She says that we must, ”Adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure and healthcare to prepare for what's to come". Other Democrats are pumping up climate hysteria and bringing back, you guessed it, mask insanity.” Fox News, The Five, [6/7/23]

On Outnumbered,the panel mocks AOC for connecting the crisis to climate change while Fox contributor Kennedy suggests that because wildfires existed before “we started talking about the climate crisis” then the science is not settled: “There are a lot of reasons for wildfires. Wildfires have been happening for a long time. Before we started talking about the climate crisis. So, I want to make sure that the science is settled before we completely turf our economy and flush any innovation we have down the toilet because of a tweet from AOC.” Fox News, Outnumbered, [6/7/23]

Fox turns to its go-to explanation for catastrophic wildfires: It’s poor forest management. And it’s environmentalists’ fault.

Forest management has played some role in the unprecedented wildfire season in Canada — while the role of climate change is also evident and clear. But from watching Fox’s coverage of the fires, you would probably come away with the idea that it’s been Canada’s forest management policies alone driving the worsening fires.

Fox’s jump to shift blame to poor forest management as a tactic to downplay climate change goes back to at least 2018 when Trump first blamed California’s forestry policies while touring the aftermath of the deadly Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise. Fox revived the tactic in full force during California’s apocalyptic 2020 wildfires.

Helping drive the swift move to blame forest management and environmentalists this time around is News Corps darling, Fox News contributor, and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine who wrote a June 7 column, “Smoky New York isn’t climate change — it’s bad forest management,” which has been cited by Fox News personalities and amplified by right-wing media figures online.

Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy on Outnumbered: “The real blame is on the climate cult. … They are an anti-human group and they want to shut our forests and close them off to humans and to industry who know how to manage it. And that's what's happening right now.” Fox News, Outnumbered, [6/8/23]

On the Faulkner Focus, Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz insists that poor forest management is liberals' fault: I hate to tell it you folks but there have been big forest fires for eons probably since the beginning of time. It's ironic to me because the same people who claim they want the Green New Deal, they fight us every single time on the mitigation efforts to manage the forests, clear out the underbrush, clear out the dead trees and clear out the fuel that makes these things so ignite in such big fashion. They will not do that as Democrats and these left-leaning liberals. Fox News, Faulkner Focus, [6/8/23]

Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy dismissed climate change and redirected the blame to “bad forest management”: “Climate change does not start a fire. It can create dry conditions, and they have really bad dry conditions up in Canada right now. In Canada they are blaming bad forest management because of a very dry winter and they did not get a lot of snow. … Apparently behind the scenes they have not been doing the controlled burns that they should have been doing. And back in 2024 environmentalists wrote a paper and said not enough is being done to fund this kind of forest management and there is going to be hell to pay.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [6/8/23]

Sean Hannity also suggested that forest management is the main culprit:“Here's what nobody talks about. There is a science. You can get an advanced college degree in forestry. There's something called the controlled burns that climate alarmist cult membersare all dead set against. And you see, if you have a controlled burn that prevents the bigger fires like the one they're experiencing in little Justin's neighborhood in Canada that's now making it smoke all the way down here.” Fox News, Hannity, [6/7/23]

Host Jesse Watters claims that there are fewer wildfires now than 100 years ago to dismiss the role of climate change and prop up the forest management argument:  “You might be surprised to find out over the last 100 years, there have been less wildfires, not more. The Wall Street Journal says in the early 1900s about 4% of land worldwide burned every year by 2021 that was down to 2.5%. So instead of obsessing over climate change they should take a look at forest management.” Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [6/7/23]

On The Five co-host Dana Perino blames wildfires on forest management and liberal policies: “Canada is experiencing really bad wildfires on their public lands. We have a similar problem, and it has to do with forest management. The Biden administration has policies that are in direct conflict with one another. … Wildfires can occur naturally of course, but if you are actively managing your forest, then you can prevent some of these things. The left has never wanted to do that.”  Fox News, The Five, [6/7/23]

Pirro suggests that since only half of Americans believe in climate change that Democrats shouldn’t be linking it to wildfires: Agreeing that poor forest management is the main cause of severe wildfires, Pirro questions why climate change is even part of the discussion: “We’re at a point when I think 49% of Americans believe climate change is caused mostly by human actions, the lowest reported apparently in many years.So why are Democrats, why do they keep pushing climate change over something that could’ve been prevented?" Fox News, The Five, [6/7/23

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https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/fox-news-runs-ads-mike-huckabees-climate-denial-book-targeted-children

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former Arkansas governor, frequent Fox News commentator, and Trinity Broadcast Network host Mike Huckabee — who once joked that the threat of climate change to Americans amounted to “a sunburn” — is now marketing climate denial to children through ads airing across Fox News programming and social media.

Through his EverBright Media venture, Huckabee promotes an educational series targeted at children called The Kids Guide, which includes lessons on “Fighting Socialism,” “Cancel Culture and Free Speech,” and “Media Bias and Fake News.” The series of booklets is based on the premise that American children are vulnerable to biased and agenda-driven public school textbooks and liberal media reports, leading them to oppose“faith in God,” “lower taxes,” “smaller government,” and “the right to bear arms.”

The Kids Guide series is now promoting a new title that Huckabee claims “will help your kids break free from news-induced panic” and learn “the truth” about climate change.

Video

CitationThe Kids Guide to The Truth About Climate Change Ad

Huckabee’s materials targeted at children have long been called out for their blatant misinformation; a Huffington Post article from 2013 criticized his Learn Our History video series for distributing “Christian nationalist revisionism and right-wing political propaganda.” More recently, a Kids Guide to former President Donald Trump’s accomplishments from 2022 was widely mocked by online critics, who pointed out the glaring hypocrisy of books with such a clear right-wing political agenda and “cult”-like indoctrination being marketed to children at the same time Republican leaders are calling for eradicating access to books that reference any ideas they deem “woke.”

Now, Huckabee’s latest Kids Guide pushes long-debunked narratives and misinformation to downplay, dismiss, or deny the threat of climate change at a time when communities across the globe are already experiencing catastrophic climate impacts and the scientific community is urging immediate action to address the climate crisis.

Mike Huckabee is marketing climate denial to parents who watch Fox News

Fox News has long primed its audience to distrust teachers and the mainstream media, and to believe that climate change is a manufactured crisis to achieve a progressive agenda. And Huckabee's Kids Guide ad hawking a book to teach kids “the truth about climate change” seems tailor-made for the Fox audience:

MIKE HUCKABEE: Parents, you may have heard from your kids that the Earth is soon going to be an uninhabitable hellscape. Well, that's because some of their teachers and the media have an agenda. But is it really what kids should actually be learning? It's why my team created the new Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change. It answers your child's toughest climate questions, and you can have it for free.

Ads for The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change began running during Fox News programming in mid-May. Ads for other entries in the series, including The Kids Guide to Fighting Indoctrination and The Kids Guide to Fighting Socialism, appeared on Fox throughout May. In 2023 alone, Kids Guide ads have appeared hundreds of times across Fox programming.

Similarly, according to a Media Matters review of data from Sensor Tower, Kids Guide has spent $83,300 running ads on Facebook from January 1 to June 6, 2023, garnering over 11 million impressions. Kids Guide has also been running Google search ads that appear when users enter the phrase “climate change for kids.”

Kids Guide to climate change Facebook ad

While the ads only hint at climate denial and misinformation, the guide itself is a primer in some of the most oft-repeated and long-debunked arguments used to cast doubt about anthropogenic climate change and delay climate action.

The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change is climate denial propaganda disguised as education

The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change acknowledges that the climate is changing and that “human pollution has made things worse. No one disagrees with either of those concepts.” However, these acknowledgments are undermined by oft-repeated climate denial talking points and arguments that are intended to downplay the crisis and maintain the status quo.

In fact, the book goes to great lengths to suggest that even while climate change is happening, the U.S. response has been more than sufficient and “made significant progress toward Earth’s recovery.” To support this claim, itencourages readers to “recycle what we can, turn off lights, buy more pre-owned items, not waste our food, make better use of what we have, and support sensible programs to protect the planet and its life.” While these are worthy endeavors, they are nowhere near the level of action scientists urge is needed to ward off the worst climate impacts – rather, they neatly align with the fossil fuels industry’s campaign to individualize climate action and sidestep the need for systemic change.

Here is a sample of common climate denial tactics and arguments laundered through The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change.

The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change pushes debunked lies about settled climate science

The Kids Guide falsely argues that the causes of climate change are still being debated among experts: “Well, what you may not know is that thousands of renowned scientists and weather experts worldwide have some very different opinions on climate change.They point to the powerful effects of the natural cycles of the sun and changes that happen in earth’s magnetic field.”

In fact, there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming our planet. For nearly a decade, it was reported that 97% of scientists endorsed anthropogenic climate change. In 2021, a new study by U.S. researchers “examined the peer-reviewed literature and found more than 99% of climate scientists now endorse the evidence for human-induced climate change.”

It claims the climate is always changing: “The climate has always changed — long before humans walked the earth — and it continues to change!”

Climate communications expert and professor John Cook counts “the climate has always changed” among the most-used arguments by bad actors to mislead the public about the climate crisis. On his website Skeptical Science, which catalogs and debunks climate denial claims, he writes:

Climate has indeed changed in the past with various impacts depending on the speed and type of that change. Such results have included everything from slow changes to ecosystems over millions of years - through to sudden mass-extinctions. Rapid climate change, of the type we're causing through our enormous carbon dioxide emissions, falls into the very dangerous camp. That's because the faster the change, the harder it is for nature to cope. We are part of nature so if it goes down, it takes us with it.

So anyone who dismissively tells you, “the climate has always changed”, either does not know what they are talking about or they are deliberately trying to mislead you.

The book asserts that climate scientists’ predictions have never come true: “As you can see from the decades of headlines above, well-known and trusted scientists and experts have long predicted ice ages, killer floods, giant storms, and planetary catastrophes. By now, they said, we should have starved, frozen to death, or drowned!”

In fact, not only have scientists accurately predicted global warming for over half a century, but the consequences of a changing climate in the form of “killer floods,” “giant storms,” and “planetary catastrophes” that climate scientists have warned about are increasingly causing devastation and death across the globe.

The Kids Guide promotes the false argument that natural phenomena, not CO2, are responsible for changes in the climate: “Looking back in time, carbon dioxide levels have always gone up and down,” even before industrial activity. “The Sun’s natural lifecycles and Earth’s ‘wobble’ have helped drive ice ages and hot periods like the time of the dinosaurs.”

Akin to the claim that “climate has always changed,” the argument that natural phenomena are causing the climate to change also seeks to dismiss the role that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels plays in warming the planet. Looking specifically at the argument that the sun is to blame, Cook writes that those perpetuating this claim use cherry-picked data:

From the early 1970s until today, the Solar radiation reaching the top of Earth's atmosphere has in fact shown a very slight decline. Through that same period, global temperatures have continued to increase. The two data records, incoming Solar energy and global temperature, have diverged.

…

Attempts to blame the sun for the rise in global temperatures have had to involve taking the data but selecting only the time periods that support such an argument. The remaining parts of the information - showing that divergence - have had to be ditched. Proper science study requires that all the available data be considered, not just a part of it.

While the Kids Guide book uses common climate denial arguments to undermine the science of climate change, it also employs other narratives that are frequently used to attack climate action.

The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change argues against the need for climate action

The book makes the argument that renewable energy is not clean: “While protecting our home planet is certainly a noble cause, quickly switching off our primary energy sources is already costing people their jobs, deeply damaging supply chains and creating painful shortages of energy and food. Also, these new technologies have their own issues and environmental costs.”

It is true that all forms of energy development have environmental impacts, but the Kids Guide’s environmental-focused attacks on electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines are highly disingenuous considering that their effects pale in comparison to the collective damage fossil fuels have wrought on our environment and climate. In addition to their role in driving climate change, a new study put a price tag on one of the human costs of domestic oil and gas activity: “Air pollution from U.S. oil and natural gas production causes roughly $77 billion in health impacts nationwide every year, while also contributing to thousands of early deaths and health flare-ups,” including “7,500 excess deaths, 410,000 asthma attacks, and 2,200 new cases of childhood asthma across the U.S. in 2016.”

It pushes the argument that climate action hurts the U.S. and is useless because big polluters like China and India are not taking action to curb their emissions: “While the United States and Western Europe sacrifice our economies and quality of life to cut carbon emissions, huge industrial nations like China and India continue to emit massive amounts of carbon dioxide by comparison, as well as tons of other pollutants.”

These are long-held climate denier talking points. Climate change, not climate action, will devastate our economy because the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of action. In 2022, the White House Office of Management and Budget provided the first accounting of how much unchecked global warming could impact the U.S. federal government alone and concluded that failure to act would cost $2 trillion annually in lost revenue. Pretending that U.S. action is futile if other big polluters don’t curb their carbon emissions is another way to give license to industry and policymakers to kick the can down the road on fighting climate change.

The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change champions the dangerous idea that “things are getting better”

The Kids Guide highlights four examples to suggest that the current level of climate action is sufficiently reversing our impacts and “we are already making progress toward protecting the Earth for future generations to enjoy.” In fact, the examples used in the guide are anomalies that don’t disprove the larger warming trend:

“Throughout the winter of 2021, the British Antarctic Survey recorded the lowest Antarctic temperatures in over 60 years.” As The Washington Post wrote in October 2021, “Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming. Antarctica is notorious for its wild swings in weather and climate, which can run counter to global trends.” The Post cited a range of experts including Eric Steig, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, who said, “One cold winter is interesting but doesn’t change the long term trend, which is warming.”

“According to NASA, Greenland’s largest and most important glacier, Jakobshavn, has been gaining ice for several years.” This example is also intended to suggest that warming is either not happening or not having serious consequences, but as CNN reported in March 2019, “the melting from that single glacier alone contributed to global oceans rising an average of 1 millimeter between 2000 and 2010. And even though Jakobshavn has gained ice at lowest levels where it enters the sea, it has still been contributing to sea level rise because the rate it is melting into the ocean is still greater than the rate that ice is accumulating higher up on the glacier, according to the researchers.”

“While some claim the change is temporary, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that global warming has slowed.” The origin of this claim is unclear.The IPCC has repeatedly warned that we are increasing warming at an alarming rate. In an email exchange with Media Matters, climate scientist Michael E. Mann called the claim “absurd and dishonest,” adding: “The assertion that the IPCC ‘noted that global warming has slowed’ is simply a lie. The IPCC has made no such assertion. The planet continues to warm at a rate of roughly 0.2C per decade and the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) recently predicted that global surface temperatures will (briefly) cross the 1.5C warming threshold for the first time in history within the next couple years.”

“Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, predicted to be dead by now, recently recorded its most significant growth ever.” The news in 2021 that the Great Barrier Reef was in recovery was weaponized by bad actors to claim that those urging climate action were alarmists. But as ABC News reported, the recovery in 2021 was aided by a break in climate-related disturbance and experts believe the progress to be short-lived.

Kids are the obvious next front in climate deniers' misinformation campaign

Today’s climate movement is primarily youth-driven — in the last several years, young climate activists have demanded greater action from global leaders by getting out to the streets, online, and into the voting booth.  In part, they are the face of the movement because they have the most to lose, and the relentless mockery and attacks by right-wing media in response to the wave of youth activism has not been a strategy aiming to recruit a new generation of climate deniers. Disinformation disguised as educational material on climate change for children is, however.

The Kids Guide’s efforts to push climate denial on children may not undermine the momentum of today’s climate activists, but it certainly appears designed to stunt the next would-be wave of young people ready to demand a livable future.

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As NYC is inundated with wildfire smoke, Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ calmly shows link to climate crisis, while Murdoch's Fox News mocks it

WRITTEN BY JOHN WHITEHOUSE

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SAGE HODIL

PUBLISHED 06/07/23

New York City is currently inundated with a hazardous level of wildfire smoke, making the skies appear yellowish-orange.

The smoke is from wildfires in Canada, which scientists say are “becoming bigger and more frequent” due to climate change, as reliably explained by Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal:

Wildfires like those ravaging Canada are becoming bigger and more frequent as forests around the world increasingly dry out amid the warming climate, many scientists say.

Some of the biggest fires are breaking out in the boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere such as most of the ones in Canada. That is because the Arctic region has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world, said Carly Phillips, a Boston-based research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In the boreal areas—mostly conifer forests with long winters and short summers—of Canada and Alaska, she said the annual area burned has nearly doubled in the past 60 years, along with an increase in the frequency of large fires. Russia’s vast Siberian forests have been consumed by giant fires too. Phillips said this year’s outbreak, while unprecedented in size, is just following the trend.

“I don’t know if it’s a tipping point, but what this underscores is that the climate crisis is here and now,” Phillips said.

The link is so obvious and uncontroversial that Journal staff members have no problems tweeting it.

And yet, over at Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, this is just another reason for hosts to punch left, this time at frequent target Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who dared to point out that the country has work to do to adapt to the climate crisis.

Video file

Video CitationFrom the June 7, 2023, edition of of Fox News' Outnumbered

None of this is novel. Fox News (and the Journal’s right-wing editorial board) have for years pushed climate denial on the body politic. Now that the effects of the climate crisis are impossible to miss, the network is still refusing to recalibrate.

Like the Dominion case shows, it’s not clear if Fox’s audience — or whatever is left of it — will allow the network to speak the truth.

Either way, I’d recommend that people working at Fox News headquarters in Manhattan buy some high-quality masks. They might even still have some sitting around.

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Wall Street Journal

Climate deniers

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https://www.alternet.org/ron-johnson-climate-change-benefit/

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rogan tiktok escalator boost amplify conspiracy clickbait

https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/climate-change-conspiracy-theory-about-cataclysmic-changes-earths-magnetic-field-goes-viral

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joe Rogan’s podcast is fueling a bizarre TikTok conspiracy theory that falsely attributes climate change impacts to cyclical changes in Earth’s magnetic field, seemingly violating the app’s new climate misinformation policy.

The conspiracy theory’s viral spread on the platform highlights TikTok’s persistent climate misinformation problem, even as it has begun implementing a new policy banning content that “undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it.”

Inspired by the January 18 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, content creators have latched onto claims made in a pseudoscientific book called The Adam and Eve Story: The History of Cataclysms. (Along with pushing the cataclysmic pole hypothesis, the book claims that Jesus Christ lived in India for nearly 18 years and was abducted by aliens in a “space vehicle” after his crucifixion.)

Between January and April, Media Matters identified seven viral clips from the Joe Rogan Experience episode discussing the conspiracy theory, which garnered over 20 million cumulative views on TikTok. The videos feature clips of Rogan discussing the book with “independent researcher” Jimmy Corsetti, who runs the YouTube channel Bright Insight, and Ben van Kerkwyk, who runs the channel UnchartedX.

Joe Rogan keeps platforming conspiracy theorists and skeptics of human-caused climate change, driving misinformation

In the January 18 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the host brought up “the Adam and Eve” theory and asked Corsetti, “How much of that is agreed upon, that there could be a time where the magnetic poles actually shift?”

Corsetti replied that “This is science,” explaining, “The Adam and Eve Story", the theory on that is that it happens in cycles of 6,500 years and that it’s a 90-degree flip, but six days later, around the seventh day, it corrects itself.” He continued to describe “a planet flip, 90 degrees, and that because of it the Earth essentially does a standstill, the sun will be direct — will basically stay in the same spot, causing heating like we’ve never experienced — and that the wind and the waters continue with their momentum, because essentially the wind travels at approximately 1,000 miles an hour at the equator, so the theory is that when that event happens it’s going to be cataclysmic.:

[vid]

corsetti’s nonsensical explanation was widely shared on TikTok, with one viral clip receiving nearly 11 million views.

In reality, NASA reports that pole reversals, when Earth’s North and South Poles swap locations — which “take place over hundreds to thousands of years,” not a mere seven days— have occurred “183 times in the last 83 million years, and at least several hundred times in the past 160 million years.” Notably:

Plant and animal fossils from the period of the last major pole reversal don’t show any big changes. Deep ocean sediment samples indicate glacial activity was stable. In fact, geologic and fossil records from previous reversals show nothing remarkable, such as doomsday events or major extinctions.

Additionally, there's “no evidence” that any magnetic excursion event (periods of “shorter-lived but significant changes in the magnetic field’s intensity”) has impacted the Earth’s climate within the last 2.8 million years. Scientists aren’t sure when the next pole reversal will occur, but a recent study suggests that won’t be anytime soon. And if it is, a doomsday scenario is unlikely.

Corsetti acknowledged this but claimed that scientists “don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Rogan has previously drawn criticism for leveraging his massive reach and influence to amplify climate denial, and his podcast has catered to guests such as Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg, who use cherry-picked and decontextualized talking points to downplay the devastating impacts of climate change and to attack climate solutions.He has also hosted figures who downright deny the fact that fossil fuel consumption is driving climate change, such as Steve Koonin, Jordan Peterson, and Randall Carlson, who has appeared on the podcast at least six times and said that and that actions.

In their discussion of The Adam and Eve Story, Rogan and his guests also downplayed the impacts of climate change that millions of people are experiencing and praised Donald Trump for suggesting that the Earth is actually cooling. 

“Right now we should be grateful that it’s nice and cozy because we can live when it’s warm,” Corsetti said.

Rogan then cited  r Carlson, saying, “Global warming’s not scary. It’s global cooling, that’s what’s really scary.” The host further suggested that climate change is “ this narrative that just gets repeated over and over and over and this fearmongering and everyone gets freaked out. It’s not to say that we aren’t polluting, we certainly are, and it’s not to say that we shouldn’t improve, we certainly should, but if the fucking magnetic poles might shift and we might get hit by a giant rock from space, we might have bigger problems. If we’re going to be concentrating on nonsense, which is really par for the course with human beings, we’re going to be concentrating on these things we’re really not going to fix over the short-term, when something might happen that makes all of it a moot point.”

Media Matters also identified two viral clips of this exchange on TikTok with 2 million and 2.6 million views, respectively.

What is The Adam and Eve Story?

The book was written in 1965 by Chan Thomas, who worked in the aerospace industry and claimed to be a psychic. The book was not available to the public until 2013, however, when 57 pages were released by the CIA, and this censorship has captured the imaginations of conspiracy theorists. Since its declassification, The Adam and Eve Story has worked its way into the broader conspiracy theory ecosystem.

Thomas argued that the Earth’s magnetic poles shift every several thousand years, causing cataclysmic events such as tsunamis that destroy civilizations and drastically alter Earth’s geology — one example he used was the flood in the Noah’s Ark narrative in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Chan predicted that such an event would occur in the near future, and some are now framing increasingly extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts as evidence that the next cataclysm is approaching.

A TikTok account for a podcast called No Regulars posted a March 1 video that has been viewed nearly 18 million times in which host Darris Watkins says that the book’s explanation of cataclysmic magnetic pole shifts actually “makes sense” in describing climate change and “explains a lot” because “the Sahara desert used to be green and like Antarctica used to have forests … So now like some places turn cold, some places turn hot.[pix?]

the popularity of these conspiracy theories among TikTok users may indicate one way that climate misinformation is evolving to reach young people.

Climate misinformation disguised as ancient civilization conspiracy theories

At the time Thomas wrote The Adam and Eve Story, the public at large was not informed of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Despite fossil fuel companies being aware of the potential for human-caused global warming as early as the 1950s, people weren’t yet experiencing the ecological effects of increasing temperatures. But when the book was declassified in 2013, it was released into a world grappling with the dire effects of climate change.

While it was not written to provide an alternative explanation for climate change, The Adam and Eve Story provides a framework for interpreting its effects outside of an anthropogenic explanation. This narrative, which shifts blame away from our fossil fuel economy onto planetary forces beyond human control, can serve as climate misinformation.

Rogan’s guests and other proponents of this conspiracy theory purport to be interested in its ramifications for scientific understanding of ancient civilizations, but climate misinformation often serves as a backdrop for their discussions. At one point in their interview, Rogan suggested “that there was incredibly sophisticated technology that existed and … was wiped out. And that we’re talking about a really advanced civilization that lived a long time ago that’s more advanced than we are today but moved in a different direction, like we moved in the direction of combustion engines and electronics and they moved in some other direction but achieved maybe many thousands of years more sophistication in that direction than we have with our internal combustion engines.”

While climate change may not take center stage in these speculations, the implications that humans are not having any influence over our warming planet and that near-apocalyptic events are always inevitable as a result of natural cycles in the Earth’s magnetic field are nonetheless harmful misinformation that lets politicians and fossil fuel companies off the hook for their role in the climate crisis. (Meanwhile, the world’s biggest oil and gas companies just raked in record first-quarter profits.)

Cataclysm narratives as climate sedatives

Narratives that frame climate change as an inevitable disaster caused by forces beyond our control are a key argument of climate denial: If climate change is caused by changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, then there is no point in implementing sweeping action to curtail fossil fuel emissions. In the past, the Earth’s orbit, the sun, and cosmic rays have all similarly been used to provide alternative explanations for climate change.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. The only way to avert increasing social, political, and ecological effects of climate change is by transitioning away from a fossil fuel economy.

Despite its appearance as a conspiracy theory about ancient civilizations,The Adam and Eve Story is being used to undermine the scientific consensus regarding the cause of climate change. As TikTok ramps up the enforcement of its new climate misinformation policy, the platform should account for the ways climate denial is often incorporated into seemingly harmless conspiracy theories.

Finally, Spotify still has no clear policy regarding the promotion of climate misinformation on its platform. Spotify reportedly paid $200 million for exclusive rights to Rogan’s show, which was the top podcaston its platform in 2022. As Rogan’s contract is expected to expire in 2023, Spotify will have to decide whether platforming his misinformation and hate speech is worth the profit.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/how-tucker-carlson-was-terrible-and-effective-megaphone-climate-misinformation

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Prior to his departure from Fox News on April 24, Tucker Carlson was one of the network’s most prolific purveyors of climate change misinformation. Carlson elevated fringe ideas and conspiracy theories from relative obscurity on the internet to become drum beats for right-wing media. He also dishonestly spun major news events and weaponized his viewers’ most deep-seated prejudices about race and power to push climate denial.

His absence will be a blow to the forces aiming to mock environmental justice, derail climate action, and protect polluting industries and their allies in Washington. But the end of Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show is far from the end of climate change denial on Fox News — his project is sure to be carried on by other Fox personalities who will continue the network’s awful history of climate coverage.

Carlson propelled internet misinformation and obscure conspiracy theories into right-wing media narratives against climate action

One thing that set Carlson apart at Fox was his ability to seemingly jump-start a tidal wave of misinformation. His producers seemingly scoured the internet so he could amplify right-wing grievances, as well as any obscure video or article that could be easily decontextualized to sound absurd or inflammatory. He knew his audience, and he knew exactly how to push their buttons.

Carlson’s response to the deadly Texas winter storm that killed hundreds of people in February 2021 triggered a deluge of misinformation from Fox News. He was the first Fox News host to blame the widespread power outages on wind energy. The reality was that Texas still largely relies on natural gas for power, and this infrastructure wasn’t ready for the extreme cold.

Over the last few years, Carlson helped create a misinformation crisis around climate action and even told his audience that climate activists were going to try to shrink children and force everyone to eat bugs, when there is no evidencethat those things are actually happening.

Fittingly, one of the very last things Carlson did in his final Fox segment was to promote Let Them Eat Bugs.Notably, he said that the chocolate-covered cricket was “delicious.”

• During Carlson’s new Fox Nation original Let Them Eat Bugs, right-wing comedian Jay Dyer said, “Is there a group of unelected bureaucratic elites that are involved in a global campaign to minimize meat consumption and convince people not to eat meat and to eat bugs to save the world from climate change? I think we can answer in the affirmative, absolutely.” Fox Nation, *Let Them Eat Bugs*,[4/14/23]
• In the same program, Carlson said, “The people we spoke to in the edible insect industry didn’t seem like extremists. In fact, to a person, they came off as decent and well-meaning. … But they are not the ones setting the bigger agenda.” Fox Nation, *Let Them Eat Bugs*, [4/14/23 [vid]
• in an unhinged February 2023 monologueclaiming climate change is a fake religion being used to “make people suffer” and “atone for their climate sins,” Carlson said: “What else are you allowed to have in the name of the climate crisis? Well, how about no more heat or air conditioning or electricity or cars or wearing leather or eating meat or having children? All are sins against the climate. So, for you, it is insects, tap water, and celibacy. That's a tough religion. Even John the Baptist got to eat honey and locusts. No honey for you. We’re beyond self-denial.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/10/23]

• In June 2021, the Fox host also created panic around an obscure video of a New York University bioethicist at a conference talking speculatively about using genetic engineering to lower our carbon footprint. Carlson made it sound as though this was already being carried out as “potentially world-altering experiments” being “funded by the secretive daisy-chain of government health agencies, and powerful NGOs.” He then compared the idea to the Holocaust, saying that “bioethicists have short memories apparently. And in any case, climate change is a pressing emergency.” He later mockingly added, “All we need to do is experiment on human children. And we can solve climate change.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*,[6/22/21]
• Promoting a false claim two relatively unknown Twitter accounts had popularized in the days after the Texas storm, Carlson said that the state’s inability to keep the lights on was due to its “reckless reliance on windmills.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/15/21]

Misinformation about frozen windmills was just the tip of the iceberg for Carlson’s attacks on clean energy and climate action

Often portraying climate policies as a means to control the population or create a “permanent caste system,” Carlson regularly injected fearmongering about the clean energy transition into his segments. At the core of his argument was the fossil fuel industry talking point claiming the renewable energy technology was insufficient and that transitioning away from fossil fuels would weaken the U.S. and put Americans “under the complete and total control of people who wish us ill.” In October 2021, Carlson even used his newest venture, Tucker Carlson Originals on Fox Nation, to promote wind energy misinformation in the documentary Blown Away: The People vs. Wind Power. 

• Carlson was among those on Fox News pushing the false claim that offshore wind development was responsible for whale deaths.In January he pushed this claim multiple times punctuating his misinformation with chyrons (“Green New Deal wind farms are killing off whales”) and graphics (“The Biden whale extinction”). Media Matters, [2/3/23 [vid]
• carlson suggested that China is working through a climate organization to push a supposed ban on gas stoves: “Why would China push fake science like that? Maybe because the United States has some of the biggest natural gas reserves in the world. And if we can be convinced not to use those gas reserves, we will be weak and they will be strong.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [1/20/23]

• Carlson suggested “mass disobedience in the face of tyranny” in response to the potential regulation of gas stoves. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [1/10/23]

• In response to the United Nations’ COP27 climate negotiation in November 2022, Carlson fearmongered about the implementation of green energy policies, stating, “Fossil fuels are the reason we have civilization. Take them away and countries collapse.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [11/21/22]

• In an over 13-minute May 2022 monologue, Carlson suggested that renewable energy was making energy more costly while enriching Democrats: “Invest trillions of dollars of other people's money in batteries and wind farms and electric school buses. That way Democratic politicians get fingertip control over the entire U.S. economy and all of their friends get rich.” He also blamed Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-MA) for high gas prices, claiming that “she has worked hard to prevent the United States from producing more gasoline, and that is the main reason it is so expensive.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [5/27/22]

Carlson continued to push climate denial even during extreme weather events, when the reality of the climate crisis was most evident

As the science connecting extreme weather to our warming planet has become more conclusive— and with other TV news outlets more frequently reporting on these connections in the aftermath of major disasters — Carlson relentlessly misinformed his audience about these connections and claimed that the media making the link between climate change and extreme weather were captured by the radical left or using the occasion to politicize tragedy.

• In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, which pummeled Florida and South Carolina in late September 2022, Carlson dedicated a 15-minute monologue to denying the relationship between hurricanes and climate change and implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. We didn’t cause them, they’re products of nature. God’s in charge.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/29/22]

• During an extreme heat wave in July 2022, Carlson devoted a monologue to undermining the existence of climate change, mockingly suggesting, “For the first time in history, it’s going to be hot and then it’s going to rain hard.” “No one really believes in global warming, and that’s why all of the liberals in the United States live on the coasts – because they don’t believe it,” he added. “The entire theory is absurd and they know it.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/20/22]

• In the wake of Hurricane Ida in September 2021, Carlson mocked Democrats for connecting the extreme storm to climate change and pointing to the need to pass climate policy over a chyron reading, “Dems Blame Wild Rain on Man-Made Climate Change.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/2/21]

• Carlson claimed Democrats were politicizing wildfires by linking them to climate change: “It took no time at all for the usual vultures and parasites to swoop in and try to make political advantage out of this. Barack Obama and governor of California Gavin Newsom are now telling you that these fires are a direct result of climate change, and according to Barack Obama, Donald Trump is directly responsible for them.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/10/20]

• Ignoring the clear scientific links between the climate crisis and natural disasters or extreme weather, Carlson said “there's no evidence” climate change contributed to apocalyptic wildfires ravaging the West Coast in 2020. Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, [9/10/20[
• vid]
• in January 2020, Carlson hosted former Fox personality Anna Kooiman to suggest that arson, not climate change, was responsible for the severity of the bushfires that torched millions of acres of forest and residential areas in Australia. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [1/8/20]

Even beyond these extreme weather events, Carlson regularly promoted climate denial on his Fox show in order to feed doubt and discredit climate science.

Carlson platformed climate change deniers who influenced his coverage

Carlson used any excuse, such as new climate policies, initiatives, or convenings, to platform some of the most notorious climate deniers and controversial climate contrarians. For example, according to Media Matters’ internal database, from 2019 through the end of Carlson’s show in 2023, he hosted failed politician Michael Shellenberger 21 times, climate change denier Marc Morano 14 times, meteorologist Joe Bastardi 8 times, and fossil fuel shill Bjorn Lomborg 4 times. These guests pushed the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory, cherry-picked statistics to downplay the impacts of extreme weather, or suggested climate activism is a “cult” or a “new religion.”

Michael Shellenberger

• In September 2022, Shellenberger said that power outages during a heat wave in California were “a warning to the rest of the United States to not go down this path of over-relying on weather-dependent renewable energies.” Responding to Carlson’s claim that climate change activists are “a cult” devoted to “the one true faith of renewable energy,” Shellenberger then said “people that move away from traditional religion, they basically turned nature into a new god, a new victim god.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*,[9/7/22]
• Carlson would later use Shellenberger’s talking points on the subject in 2022 after Hurricane Ian devastated Florida, when he unsuccessfully attempted to discredit then-CNN anchor Don Lemon: “There has been, as a factual matter, no increase in hurricane frequency in the continental United States from 1900 to 2020.” (Only Lemon never made that claim — he had instead made the point that hurricanes are becoming more intense, which is true.) Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/29/22]
• Talking about the damage from Hurricane Ida in 2021, Shellenberger said “you can’t blame floods on climate change when we know the central factor is flood management. It’s the same thing with forest fires that we’ve talked about. It’s all about forest management to prevent those high-intensity fires, it’s not about modestly higher temperatures.” He also argued that renewable energy sources “make grids more vulnerable” and “don’t provide any additional resilience” because they are weather-dependent. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/2/21]

Carlson has run with the idea that climate change is like a new religion, which Shellenberger has written about at length.

• “As church attendance and self-identified religious faith have fallen off a cliff in this country, the cult of climate has grown even stronger,” Carlson said in February. “Zealots want to punish people in the name of their faith. That's always been true. It happens around the world still …  So, what does that mean? It means you're about to be severely punished in the name of someone else's crackpot climate religion.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/10/23]
• In a nearly 14-minute monologue from December 2022, Carlson suggested that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had been deemed the new climate god: “In place of the concept of an omnipotent, loving God who brings justice to the world, Buttigieg simply substituted the word ‘climate.’ Thanks be to climate. Our climate, who art in heaven, that kind of thing.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [12/12/22]

Marc Morano

• Discussing his new book hyping the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory during a 2022 segment about multiple food-driven global conflicts that occurred over the summer, such as Sri Lanka’s economic collapse and protests lead by Dutch farmers, Morano claimed that the “war on agriculture” by global institutions has been going on for years with “their goal to literally get us to eat insects and this lab-grown fake meat” by shutting down traditional farming in order to adhere to countries’ climate goals. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/12/22]

• In 2021, Carlson promoted and praised Morano’s Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse Than You Think, calling it “a book with a title that sells itself.” Discussing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Morano claimed Democrats and climate activists would end private car ownership and abolish private home ownership because “in a climate emergency, it’s just too damaging to the Earth.” He added, “They love the lockdowns for this reason. They call it degrowth, they call it planned recessions.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [4/1/21]

Joe Bastardi

• In his final appearance on Carlson’s show,  Bastardi pushed the absurd idea that climate advocates are trying to pollute the air as much as possible so that they can have an excuse to prevent others from using transportation. Bastardi offered that another option is that “it's a phony climate war, it's fraudulent,” and “has nothing to do with CO2.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [12/12/22]

• In August, 2022, Carlson called Bastardi “the most famous, most accomplished, most trusted meteorologist and weather forecaster in the United States.” In the segment, Bastardi claimed there is no significant warming in the Arctic because it’s “still very, very cold” and only a few degrees warmer in the winter, so “instead of freezing to death in three minutes, you’ll freeze to death in three and a half minutes.” Fox Nation, *Tucker Carlson Today*, [8/4/22]

• In September 2021, Bastardi downplayed the intensity of Hurricane Ida by stating that other bad storms happened in the 1950s and 1930s. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/8/21]

• In March 2019, Bastardi said young people are concerned about climate change because they “don’t look at everything. I have said hundreds of times that if all I looked at and all that I was told was the global warming issue, I'd say ‘Well, I believe it too. CO2 is causing this.’ But when you start looking at the entire picture … you realize that there is a very, very different story here.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [3/20/19]

Bjorn Lomborg 

• In July 2022, Bjorn Lomborg suggested that climate change is actually good because “many more people die from cold” than heat. “Actually, over the last 20 years at least, we’ve seen more people being saved than extra people dying,” he added. “We need to hear both sides of that story if we’re going to be well-informed.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/20/22]

• Parroting Lomborg during a monologue the following month, Carlson implied the existence of winter disproves the science of climate change while claiming that “the real threat to people is global cooling” because “far more people freeze to death every year than die of heat.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [8/29/22]

In the last several years, Carlson had started to merge his climate denial and defense of fossil fuels with overt racism and white grievance

In response to climate justice and environmental justice becoming more mainstream and being incorporated into policy, Carlson seized on the opportunity to apply his increasingly overt racism to climate and environmental issues. Notably, Carlson has insisted that climate policies, not climate change, hurt marginalized communities. He has often claimed that environmental justice has “nothing to do” with the environment — with the exception of the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which the former Fox host used to stoke more conservative grievances.

• In March 2023, Carlson went into a tirade over a Los Angeles Times piece about minority communities facing disproportionately high levels of car pollution, insisting the story argued “that just by breathing, white people are hurting others.” Carlson later claimed that white people are victims of “Rwanda-style race hatred” pushed by the media. Media Matters, [3/15/23]

• After a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, Carlson asserted that there would have been a more robust federal response if the derailment had occurred in “the favored cities of Philadelphia and Detroit. … But it happened to the poor, benighted town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten and, in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/14/23]

• Just a few months prior, Carlson had a very different tone when talking about the Inflation Reduction Act spending directed at disadvantaged communities: “So really, this is about spreading race hate, as virtually everything they do is. They call it equity. It's not about protecting the environment. And if you're wondering how the environment's doing, take a very close look. Is anyone monitoring the chemicals in our water? No. We're busy conducting workshops for billions of dollars for disadvantaged communities.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [8/17/22]

• In 2021, Carlson similarly attacked the bipartisan infrastructure bill with a slew of white supremacist dog-whistles. “The entirety of this infrastructure plan looks more like a mashup of intersectional theory from Wesleyan and some kind of South African-style spoils system,” he said. “First and most obviously, is this really about infrastructure — bridges, roads, airports, things we can actually use — or is it yet another weird climate scheme-slash-power grab-slash-race-based redistribution plan?” Media Matters, [4/2/21]

• During a segment that aired a few weeks later, Carlson and Fox contributor Mark Steyn mocked comments made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) linking the harmful effects of climate change and racism. Media Matters, [4/23/21]

• In a 2019 segment reacting to then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ immigration plan, Carlson used language reflective of eco-facism, saying, “Why would a climate migrant have a right to come to my country?” Carlson later asked, “Why would you want a crowded country? Isn't crowding your country the fastest way to despoil it, to pollute it, to make it a place you wouldn't want to live?” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [11/11/19]

• Complaining about climate change “propaganda” targeted toward children, Carlson asked: “Why, since more people were killed last year in the United States by illegal aliens than were killed by climate change — why do you think they are so focused on scaring us, and telling us that we are all going to die? Why did they need to tell us that, when they don't know that?” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*,[3/20/19]

Other Fox figures will carry the climate denial torch in Carlson’s absence

Carlson was far from the only Fox News personality to regularly peddle climate change misinformation, and others will continue to carry the torch:

• In April, Fox host Greg Gutfeldwent full climate denial mode saying, “None of their predictions have come true. None of them. They are fighting. They are forcing America to do this crap over one — less than a percent Celsius, less than a percent Celsius. It has no effect. And in fact, as this climate gets warmer, people's lives improve. That's a fact. That’s a fact. People die from cold weather more frequently than warm weather, so don’t give me your cancer BS.” Fox News, *The Five*, [4/12/23]
• In January, Fox host Jesse Watters platformed a fossil fuel industry-funded envoy as an “ocean advocate” to argue that offshore wind farms are killing whales. Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [1/12/23]
• When discussing a “loss and damage” fund for developing countries to address climate impacts, Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth described it as an example of “self-loathing. It’s the belief that the West's success was premised on pollution, so now it's our turn to pay developing countries basically a sin tax of the past so they can catch up to us because we built the world based on their backs.” Co-host Will Cain then described the proposal as “climate reparations.”Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [11/20/22]
• Prime-time host Laura Ingraham in October 2022 spoke with a climate change denier who claimed that “there is no climate crisis” and so we need to “use solid, dependable sources of energy like coal.” Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [10/12/22]
• Last September, Gutfeld called youth climate activists including Greta Thunberg “shrieking psycho brats” and blamed them for power outages during a heat wave in California, saying they had  “poisoned the dialogue with hysteria.” He added that you “can’t take it seriously when you have a woman or a girl” speaking out passionately about the issue. Fox News, The Five, [9/7/22]
• On America’s Newsroom, co-anchor Bill Hemmer interviewed the CEO of Big Oil’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, to cast blame on Biden and present the fossil fuel industry as the answer to high gas prices. Fox News, America’s Newsroom, [7/25/22]

It’s uncertain who will be placed in Carlson’s 8 p.m. slot. But whatever the outcome, one sure thing is that Fox will continue to supplement its climate coverage with racism, bigotry, misogyny, and brain-frying idiocy.

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biden all in on "ej"

mma 4 23  note victim rev discrim BS

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): What does environmental justice mean? AOC laid out perfectly: the environment is now tied to racism, which is what they did with ESG -- environmental social governance. It's a scorecard, another scorecard that takes measures on how companies act responsibly. So, they marry the environment to race because it couldn't be believed alone, the numbers weren't working. The projections weren't working. But you know what works? Being scared of being called a racist.

So, environmental justice, if you do not agree with it, if you don'tswallow the climate agenda, if you don't agree with AOC, you probably don't just hate the planet, you probably hate non-white people as well.

And the consequences of that, we've talked about it before, with every aspect of life being filled with racism or injustice. The roads are racist we found out this week. Pollution is racist, we just found out. Cheap energy, fossil fuels, that's racist because it hurts non-white people. If you don't want to be looted, that's racist, too, because looting is mere redefinition of justice.

Basically, you're telling people that they can -- you're sanctioning crime. You're sanctioning riots. That's why the politicians in Chicagosaid as much and said that this was their way of evening the score. Because when you tell everybody, and you program their brain with this language that the world sucks and it's this group of people behind it, now it's in climate. Now it's in climate.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-networks-fearmonger-over-biden-administrations-new-vehicle-tailpipe-emissions-proposal

on April 12, the Environmental Protection Agency introduced its strictest standards yet to curb planet-warming emissions from American cars and trucks. For automakers to be in compliance, over two-thirds of new vehicles sold in 2032 may have to be electric. Fox’s cable news networks, which for years have both bashed EVs and downplayed or outright denied the climate crisis, are of course not too keen on the proposal.

The EPA’s new standards apply to cars being manufactured in 2027 and beyond. Notably, they do not ban gas-powered vehicles; as NPR reported, the EPA is setting “a standard for emissions, on average, based on the size and type of vehicle being built.” These rules are stringent enough that auto companies will probably “need to produce 67% zero-emission vehicles to meet them.”

The EPA states that the standards would remove billions of tons of carbon emissions from the atmosphere in the coming decades, as well as improve the air quality for communities across the U.S. The standards still need to go through a public comment and review process before being finalized.

Throughout last week, programs on Fox News and Fox Business responded to the proposal by claiming EVs are prohibitively expensive, not popular among the U.S. public, and not environmentally friendly. They also complained about unnecessary federal regulations and blasted any efforts to transition to clean energy because, in their telling, it will only help China and weaken the U.S.

Fox is misleading about the cost and popularity of EVs

A common refrain from Fox is that electric vehicles are too expensive to compete with gas-powered cars, or that consumers in general just don’t want them.

While their upfront costs are currently more expensive than gas-powered cars, EVs are cheaper than gas-powered cars over their entire lifespan. Furthermore, the production costs of EVs continue to fall, and in the next decade EVs are projected to be cheaper to produce than gas cars.

In addition to long-term financial savings, EVs have numerous health benefits, as well. Reporting on the EPA proposal, The Detroit News noted that by 2055, the rules would reduce “fine particulate matter in the air that can have negative health effects and potentially saving up to $1.6 trillion.” Indeed, one recent study estimated that up to 20,000 people in the U.S. die each year due to vehicle pollution.

In terms of popularity, while EVs made up just 6% of total vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2022, this figure is double the amount from 2021 and likely only getting higher. By 2030, EV sales could make up nearly 40% of total passenger car sales in the U.S., according to analysis by S&P Global (without factoring in the proposed EPA standards). Research from Goldman Sachs estimates that EVs will constitute half of global car sales by 2035, and 60% of sales by 2040.

• Fox contributor and former Trump economic adviser Steve Moore: “Only 6% of the car sales are EVs, so they're basically telling the American consumers, ‘We're going to build the cars you don't want.’ I mean, how stupid is that?” Fox Business, The Bottom Line, [4/10/23]
• Fox anchor Harris Faulkner: “Six percent of all new cars are EVs. That is a huge sign that people don't want this.” Frequent Fox guest Steve Forbes agreed that people don’t want EVs: “The fact they have to keep forcing people to do it shows that, again, people don't want it because they don't like the short distances, they don’t like having to charge an hour, hour and a half. People don't have garages to charge these things.” Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, [4/12/23]
• Fox anchor Sandra Smith downplays the costs, popularity, and market share of EVs: “In these big American cities, people are scared to take public transportation because of rising crime rates coast-to-coast. … Why aren't we addressing that rather than pushing for these EVs that are not popular, they’re expensive, and the president’s own energy administration right now is forecasting they’ll only be a mere 10% of the American car market by the year 2050. So, if they were liked, if they were affordable, if they were efficient, wouldn't there just naturally be demand for these cars?” Fox News, America Reports, [4/12/23]
• Fossil fuel shill and writer Robert Bryce: “This is very much a class issue. And it's not just about the affordability of the vehicles themselves, it’s about the upgrades to the grid that we’re all going to have to pay for through the rate base and through our taxes.” Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [4/12/23]
• President and CEO of Celebrity Motor Cars Tom Maoli suggests that car companies don’t even like EVs: “You know it’s interesting because while you’re saying that the car companies are trying to push EV, it's really the government that’s pushing it. The car companies don't want it. Nobody has figured out how to make money on this venture. … The consumer is not buying into it. They’re coming into the showrooms, they’re afraid of them.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [4/13/23]

Fox portends that it's strictly government regulations, and not market forces, that are pushing EVs on Americans

Whether Fox wants to admit it or not, major automakers including Ford, GM, Stellantis, Toyota, and Volkswagen already have aggressive goals for EV sales in the next decade. Additionally, climate-focused media outlet Heatmap reports that the EPA “expects that automakers are collectively on track for 44% of vehicle sales to be electric by 2030 without any changes to emissions rules.” Federal regulations will certainly prod automakers to manufacture more EVs, but to say that major automakers focused on the global market are moving to produce more EVs solely because of U.S. regulations is false. As part of this narrative, Fox figures are also claiming that this new rule is an affront to personal liberties. This is straight fearmongering, as the rule does not ban gas-powered cars or force people to give theirs up.

• Investment adviser Gary Kaltbaum: “We have a government now that’s coming out with some more dictates that are going to try to force you to maybe buy something you don't want to buy when there’s no demand there.” Fox News, *Your World*, [4/10/23]
• Fox Business host Sean Duffy denounces the Biden administration’s “attack on gas-powered cars.” “The Biden administration is back at it again using crazy regulations to push their radical green agenda,” Duffy claimed. “The EPA now reportedly getting ready to roll out some of the most aggressive climate regulations ever this coming Wednesday, continuing their attack on gas-powered cars.” Fox Business, *The Bottom Line*, [4/10/23]
• Fox News anchor Sandra Smith: “If you create the cars people want, they'll demand them. You don't have to mandate them.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [4/10/23]
• Fox Business anchor Larry Kudlow states that the EPA is “taking away our free choice.” Kudlow said, “You know the problem with EPA and radical climate change in general is? They are taking away our free choice. So, if you're fed up with a bunch of left-wing central planners jamming stuff down your throat, well, then vote no.” Fox Business, *Kudlow*, [4/11/23]
• Fox contributor Steve Moore suggests an ulterior motive to the emissions proposal: “So this isn't about cleaning up the atmosphere. This is about a radical climate change plan that is going to force people to buy cars they don't want to. I think the Biden people have really stepped in it on this one. Because, as I said, people don't want the government telling them what kind of car they can buy.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [4/13/23]
• Fossil fuel shill Steve Milloy: “Electric cars are so popular government has to mandate them and subsidize them. Look, this whole rule is a failure.” Fox News, *Fox News @ Night*, [4/13/23]
• Fox contributor Phil Flynn says that Americans are “not ready” for the EV transition. “We are not ready for it and they are coming for your car, Sandra, you better lock your garage,” Flynn said, later adding “When the government starts meddling in the free markets and starts to try to pit winners and losers, there is always going to be a backlash that hurts the American people and that's what we’re seeing right now.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [4/13/23]
• Fox Business host Brian Brenberg suggests this is not about EVs but rather controlling peoples’ movement: “Americans are not going to have the choices they have now about what they drive and how they do that. The fact is, Sean, what the president's actually trying to do is not get people into EVs but get them out of cars. He wants to control this whole supply chain. And the point is, the government's going to control how you get around, not you. And that, look, that's the stock and trade of every totalitarian government is to control the means of movement.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [4/14/23]

Fox is insinuating that EVs are worse for the environment than gas cars, and that only China benefits from this proposal

An MIT article from October 2022 stated that “although electric cars' batteries make them more carbon-intensive to manufacture than gas cars, they more than make up for it by driving much cleaner under nearly any conditions.” EVs also don’t have the deadly tailpipe emissions associated with gas-powered cars.

Additionally, claims that only China benefits from this proposal are overstated. While China does control much of the supply chain for EV materials, the U.S. is taking steps to develop its own domestic supply chains (thanks in part to the Inflation Reduction Act) to reduce its reliance abroad. Automakers are also rethinking their supply chain strategies and investing in mines to secure the resources needed for scaling up electric vehicle production.

Finally, in addition to the numerous health benefits that come with reducing gas-powered car use, a transition to EVs would mean drivers would be less vulnerable to high gas prices and the whims of the global oil market. Reporting on the EPA proposal, MarketWatch notes that it “would strengthen American energy security by reducing reliance on 20 billion barrels of imported oil.”

• Fox host Will Cain suggests this plan only gives power to China: “In China, either through its own domestic geography or through its colonization of the world like Africa, has control of those raw materials as well. … If we move in this direction, we're giving that power, we're taking it from ourselves and giving it to China because of their dominance of those raw materials.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [4/9/23]
• American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers states that we are “sacrificing American energy independence” to China.“Doing this the way that they're doing it, which is really just to focus on tailpipe emissions, rather than the emissions that actually exist when you create a vehicle from the very beginning, these electric vehicles, while great technology, most those key components continue to be made in China. We shouldn't just be looking at this from the perspective of emissions, but we should also look at it from a national security perspective. We should not be sacrificing American energy independence to a regime that is certainly hostile to American interests.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [4/10/23]
• Fox co-host Brian Brenberg suggests this new proposal just gives China more power: “This is what I meaned, mixed up. We're talking about China's desire to dominate on the world stage, and we have a industrial policy by the Biden administration that wants to throw power to the Chinese by increasing emissions standards and, at the same time, handing all sorts of American taxpayer subsidies to Chinese companies in the U.S. for battery power and for battery production.” Fox Business, *The Big Money Show*, [4/10/23]
• Fox correspondent Jackie DeAngelis insinuates that only China will profit: “Basically with this EV push and the green push in general — our solar panels, a lot of them come from China, as well — you’re basically selling out this country so that China can profit from this. It’s absolutely insane to me.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [4/11/23]
• Fox host Brian Kilmeade: “You can sleep well at night knowing that you're driving an electric car and other people’s lives​ are being ruined and countries​ are being destroyed, while China pays them and profits.” Fox News, *The Story*, [4/12/23]
• Fox anchor Dagen McDowell: “We, by this electric vehicle boondoggle, are handing power and our borrowed money to China.” McDowell said: “We have taken a hammer to one of our greatest resources, our energy economy, our fossil fuel economy. We have lowered our standard of living, and so we have ceded power and prosperity to nations that hate us, to Iran and Russia, by reducing our energy output, our oil and natural gas output here, and then in turn we — to Sean's point, we, by this electric vehicle boondoggle, are handing power and our borrowed money to China.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [4/12/23]
• Fox host Sean Hannity: The electric car push only helps China. “The push for electric cars also threatens national security,” Hannity claimed. “Experts warning now it will make us more dependent on China giving them more leverage over this country. Now, as-powered cars, they are just the latest thing that they want to ban.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [4/13/23]

Fox is using good old-fashioned climate bashing to advance their anti-EV agenda

As usual, Fox is downplaying the seriousness of climate change by suggesting that these rules won’t do anything to help fight climate change. However, The Washington Post noted that the proposal is “large enough to avert the equivalent of two full years of nationwide carbon emissions, according to EPA estimates.” This proposal would thus go a long way in helping the U.S. — which is the world’s largest historical carbon emitter — to advance its climate goals. Additionally, as climate change requires a global, collective response, the U.S. would also be following in the footsteps of the European Union, which recently proposed even more-stringent requirements for tailpipe emissions.

• Fox host Greg Gutfeld: “None of their predictions have come true. None of them.” Gutfeld continued, “They are forcing America to do this crap over one, less than a percent Celsius. Less than a percent Celsius. It has no effect. And in fact, as this climate gets warmer, people's lives improve. That's a fact. That's a fact. People die from cold weather more frequently than warm weather.” Fox News, The Five, [4/12/23]
• Fox host Jesse Watters suggests that climate change is like a religion: “It’s not going to lower the Earth's temperature at all. All it does is make the donors happy because this is a religion to them, and it makes my guys in Detroit happy because they sell these things, and we pay for half of it. It’s the taxpayers subsidizing this ‘green revolution.’” Fox News, The Five, [4/12/23]
• Fox contributor Jason Chaffetz argues the proposal is part of a climate denial conspiracy theory related to the 15-minute city idea: “And the only thing they want to ramp up is their goal of limiting your mobility. This is not a mistake. As Laura [Ingraham] discussed last night with famed U.K. professor Norman Fenton, these moves are essential in order to bring about the end game of climate fanaticism — so-called 15-minute cities.” Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [4/12/23]
• Fox’s Dagen McDowell: “There is no climate crisis. This is all about removing your choice and ending your ability as an American to decide what the hell kind of car you want to drive.” Fox Business, The Bottom Line, [4/12/23]

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https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/right-wing-media-use-misinformation-around-15-minute-cities-pivot-toward-climate

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Misinformation surrounding a plan to reduce traffic in the city of Oxford, England, is the latest example of how three years after the onset of COVID-19, anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have seamlessly transitioned into climate change denial, and how this message is proliferating not just in Europe, but now in the U.S. as well.

The Oxford plan, which aims to cut down on daytime traffic and greenhouse gas emissions from cars, has been conflated with a broader “15-minute city” urban planning concept, which calls for communities where necessities are within walking/biking distance. The plan recently made headlines when right-wing media influencers presented it as one component of the sprawling “Great Reset” conspiracy theory, saying its goal is to lock down residents and essentially turn cities into open-air prisons. Backlash, led in part by climate change denier Jordan Peterson, was so severe that academics and politicians who support the plan or the related idea of a 15-minute city got death threats.

What is a 15-minute city?

In a nutshell, the concept of the 15-minute city is that life’s necessities such as schools and grocery stores should be just a short walk or bike ride away. According to Carlos Moreno, an urban planning professor who helped lay out the plan in Paris, cities should be “designed so that we can live, work and thrive in them without having to constantly commute elsewhere.” The goal is to foster healthier habits and stronger social relationships between neighbors by prioritizing green space, accessibility, and safety for human bodies, bikes, and public transportation, rather than cars.

The City of Oxford is implementing a separate strategy, Local Plan 2040, to help achieve these goals. But that’s not what has drawn so much attention in the media.

The traffic plan approved by the Oxford County Council which triggered backlash is meant to reduce commuting time and greenhouse gas emissions from excess traffic. According to a fact check from the Associated Press: “Oxfordshire has approved a plan to put ‘traffic filters’ on some main roads, restricting drivers’ access during daytime hours and freeing up space for buses, cyclists and pedestrians. But car owners can apply for daylong permits to bypass the new rules, and many other vehicles are exempt. All parts of the county will remain accessible by car, officials said.”

Right-wing opposition to the 15-minute city has been firmly rooted in COVID conspiracy theories

Despite what is actually happening in Oxford, right-wing influencers have painted the plan as a thin veneer for controlling every aspect of residents’ movement with the goal of preventing them from owning cars or leaving town at all. According to DeSmog, in 2022 in England, COVID-19 conspiracy theorist David Fleming, along with figures tied to climate denial think tank Global Warming Policy Foundation, created a group to oppose the plan and spread false claims via leaflets to Oxford residents. One founding signatory was Del Bigtree, a U.S. filmmaker and founder of the Informed Consent Action Network, an anti-vaccine group.

The seeds for the conspiracy theory to take root in the U.S. were planted back in April 2020. Frequent Fox News guest and climate change denierSteve Milloy warned of an impending “climate lockdown”and the idea proliferated, with figures like Laura Ingraham and Alex Jones claiming in 2021 that COVID-19 lockdowns were conditioning the public for even more stringent mandates in the name of climate change.

15-minute city fearmongering comes to the US

The ideas driving the 15-minute city are not new. New urbanism and public transit enthusiasts have been gaining traction on social media as Gen Zers and millennials lament their childhood confinement to suburbs that felt unnavigable and isolating. For years, but especially post-pandemic, cities across the globe have prioritized walkability and mixed-use development.

Right-wing media are working hard to maintain the status quo in part through elaborate conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities or anything seemingly related. Right-wing media figures including Australian anti-lockdown campaigner Bernie Spofforth, Turning Point USA contributor Drew Hernandez, and Swedish climate change denier Peter Imanuelsen have insisted they are being spearheaded by The World Economic Forum. In truth, the WEF has mixed things to say about the concept. 

Right-wing culture warrior James Lindsay, said in a March 7 segment on One America News’ Morning News with Stephanie Myers that 15-minute cities are a means of “more social control.” He went on to say that they would lead to “new kinds of car non-ownership subscription borrowed models, kind of like Uber, but with no owner. All these things going, so that you don't have freedom of movement” before falsely claiming that in Oxford, “you can only leave your zone so many days a year” and “absolutely no vehicle that emits any kind of ah, you know, I guess CO2 or whatever was allowed to drive during certain hours.”

In the same segment, host Stephanie Myers again suggested that residents of 15-minute cities would be allocated 100 passes per year permitting them to leave their designated zones. In reality, Oxford drivers will always be able to get wherever they want using alternate routes, as only some roads will have traffic filters. Both Myers and Lindsay are misleadingly referencing the fact that local residents will have to apply for 100 day-long permits per year, where they can use any road at any time of the day free of charge.

On an April 6 segment of OAN’s Tipping Point with Kara McKinney, Jeffrey Tucker, former editorial director for the Koch-funded Foundation for Economic Education, blamed Dr. Anthony Fauci for 15-minute cities. Tucker said Fauci, who served as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and was a lead member of the White House COVID-19 Task Force under Trump, wanted people “imprisoned in our local communities and condemned to forage and eat bugs” and that he and the ruling oligarchy would insist on “no football games, no concerts, no amusement parks, certainly no church. They want us doomed to a kind of a pre-medieval existence with them in charge.”

In the interview, Tucker also used the familiar trope of Democrats supposedly being soft on crime, but he claimed it was intentional. “They really want to dismantle our cities. There’s no better way to do that than through crime,” he said. And the fact that cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco are “collapsing in a miasma of blood and weed” would supposedly give them an excuse, he said.

Climate change denier Marc Morano spoke about 15-minute cities on an April 10 segment of OAN’s In Focus. Morano told OAN contributor Alison Steinberg that 15-minute cities are “conjuring up a little place called … East Germany, where you literally had to apply to the government in order to go from place to place. … All of this again is so that we will stay at home. That's actually the goal. They loved COVID lockdowns.” Steinberg asked of “radical leftists”: “Do you think they really realize — hey, you're not going to be able to drive to go get your little soy crackers that you like eating every night while you’re watching and playing your video games?”

In an April 11 segment of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle,Laura Ingraham spoke with U.K. professor Norman Fenton, who claimed 15-minute cities are “absolutely catastrophic” and that “the idea is essentially to stop you — yeah, it’s to stop you going out of the zone, stop you traveling wherever you want. … But in practice, people will have to go out of the zone to get to work, to take their kids to school and stuff like that.”

Fenton is a memberof HART (Health Advisory and Recovery Team), described by The Daily Dot as “a group of prominent proponents of an anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown, anti-mask strategy.” He has inaccurately suggested that the spike in second-wave COVID-19 deaths in 2021 may have been caused by vaccines.

Before turning his attention to 15-minute cities, Fenton also railed against the UK government's net-zero emissions target, misleadingly conflating it with a report on absolute zero emissions, which is not a current policy goal. He suggests that the government might prohibit airplane travel and shipping in the U.K. by 2050. This is not happening.

Online, one American anti-vaccine group seems particularly concerned about Oxford. Children’s Health Defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vax group, promoted a video of a young girl making a speech at a protest in Oxford calling 15-minute cities a “dystopian reality” on Telegram and on Twitter. One article on the group’s news site gives credence to the idea that 15-minute cities could in fact lead to “climate lockdowns.” The group also promoted a February protest against 15-minute cities in Oxford. Kennedy recently announced his bid for the presidency.

Infowars promoted a video that compares a hen house to a 15-minute city because “it’s a spot-on illustration of how they view the people as vassals, or serfs – who only exist to produce eggs to be harvested.” The Telegram channel for the anti-vax group The Truth About Cancer wrote that 15-minute cities are proof that “we are under attack” from the “globalist ghouls.”

For online conspiracy theory networks, anti-15-minute city propaganda has been a gateway to climate change denial

On social media, an infamous COVID-19 conspiracy theory network has also signaled a shift to climate change denial, with the 15-minute city as a catalyst.

A channel that has been promoted by White Rose, an international disinformation group that operates on a network of Telegram channels, is among those promoting conspiracy theories about the 15-minute city, in addition to climate change denial.

The channel, Wide Awake Media, has 26k subscribers on its Telegram channel and has recently been gaining traction on Twitter. It has occasionally featured posts about climate change but started posting more often on the topic in January 2023 when the topic of 15-minute cities was becoming popular in right-wing media. This topic has provokedviolent responses suggesting that leaders who support green policies should be killed.

On March 31, Wide Awake noted on both Twitter and Telegram that it had turned its attention to climate change, calling it a scam and comparing it to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[twit]

members of White Rose, which made headlines for distributing anti-vax stickers, posters, and leaflets, have also discussed the group’s shift to 15-minute cities. The group has repeatedly promoted Wide Awake, which primarily sells merchandise promoting conspiracy theories, in its channel.

The continued popularity of 15-minute city conspiracy theories proves that climate change denial is the perfect place for anti-vax and anti-mask enthusiasm to thrive as COVID-19 becomes less prominent in the news cycle but their need to prove they are “wide awake” persists. We have also seen that it can be easily adapted for U.S. audiences with their specific villains, such as Fauci, and framed as an affront to American values, such as our obsession with cars.

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odd mix of sci and bible, gets both wrong?

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illinois State Representative Chris Miller (R-110th District), a farmer by trade, recently claimed that climate change concerns are overblown because of the role trees play in capturing carbon dioxide.

"We're not having a climate crisis, but what we are having is a crisis, crisis of common sense. If you think about it, CO2 uh, manmade CO2 collectively adds up to one-one-hundredth of one percent of the atmosphere around the globe.If you think about the entire CO2, it's about four-one-hundredths of one percent.And there's one thing that I know is that I remember from an Earth science class, there's something called photosynthesis," Miller said, "and it's where green leafy plants actually absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, and it's a way God made it, a way to clean up the climate and to keep things in balance the way it should be."

Under ideal conditions, such as a cessation of deforestation and restoration of millions of trees, photosynthesis can aid in mitigating the warming effects of CO2, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration explained in 2019. Indeed, countless studies have definitively concluded that habitat loss and the conversion of forests into acreage to grow feed for livestock are exacerbating the climate emergency.

READ MORE: 'Things just aren't moving fast enough': IPCC issues most dire warning yet in latest report

Touching on Miller's remarks about God, social media users pointed out that humanity is not treating Earth's biosphere responsibly or sustainably.

Lee Martin: "That's the whole point - we aren't taking care of what God made. We are poor stewards of the earth, in disobedience of his command."

:{JudyVöluspá:{: "He's picking small parts of science just like he picks small parts of the Bible."}:

}:

Thom_777: "Republicans ...always so out of touch, non-empathy and anti-science. What happened to these people?"

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omg

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CARLSON (HOST): Of course, climate does change, it has always changed. In fact, the landscape we live in now is formed by climate change. The glaciers are a product of climate change. The climate is changing now, it never stops changing. That is a process that we didn't cause and that we can't control to any great degree. We will never be able to control.

And there are upsides to it and downsides to it.By the way, if the Earth is indeed getting warmer and it seems to be, well, then that will make more arable land in places like Canada and northern Europe.

So, like everything in this life and the temporal world, it's a mixed blessing. But you only hear the downsides, which tells you a lot. It tells you this is not science, it's manipulation. These aren't reports from the experts, these are threats.

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https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/

science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, authors of the classic 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, have released a new book placing that doubt machine into a longer arc of U.S. business and political history.

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market explores an even more ambitious history dating from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.

The book documents how today’s prevailing anti-regulatory and anti-government postures that deride Big Government and cheer for Big Business did not arise simply from grassroots demands. Instead, they arose from well-funded industry campaigns creating what Oreskes and Conway have called a manufactured consensus “quasi-religious belief” in deregulated markets and an accompanying diehard opposition to governmental solutions to public policy problems.

Fighting Public Utilities, Child Labor Laws

One of the first campaigns in that spirit occurred within the electricity utility industry via an organization which eventually became known as the Edison Electric Institute.

What is now colloquially calledEEI, was launched in 1885 as the National Electric Light Association, or NELA. At the time, it “represented more than five hundred of the largest privately owned electrical utilities, accounting for more than 90 percent of U.S. kilowatt output,” according to the book.

In the 1920s, according to Oreskes and Conway, “electricity industry leaders organized one of the largest propaganda campaigns in the history of the United States.” The campaign aimed to persuade the public thatmunicipal-owned electricity was a bad thing, advocating instead for investor-owned utilities. In the end, though, it resulted in higher rates for homeowners and small businesses and bigger profits for company owners and their bankrollers.

The initially unpopular campaign framed its activities under the guise of freedom and market efficiency. NELA’s influence operation — involving rewriting K-12 and university textbooks, courting and funding industry-friendly professors, utilizing astroturf campaigns, deploying sophisticated lobbying techniques to facilitate regulatory and legislative capture, and other deceptive practices — resembles much of the fossil fuel industry’s political pressure that DeSmog has covered and uncovered week-in and week-out for over a decade and a half.

At the time, it was the first of its kind industrial-scale full-court press, and it provided a roadmap for other corporate hegemons in subsequent decades. And NELA’s goal went far beyond merely winning a PR campaign, Oreskes and Conway conclude; it had much deeper ideological underpinnings.

“[U]nlike conventional PR, the aim was not simply to create a positive impression of a particular business or even of the whole industry,” they write. “Rather, the goal—expressed outright in numerous documents—was to change the way Americans thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation” altogether.

Core to NELA’s campaign, Oreskes and Conway wrote, was the idea “that free-market capitalism was the embodiment of freedom, writ large, and that any restriction on the freedom of any business would put us on a slippery slope to tyranny.”

Private ownership of the electricity industry was, up until then, relatively rare in the United States and even more so throughout the industrializing world. But as of 2017, 72 percentof U.S. electricity customers got their power from investor-owned utilities. NELA’s campaign, in other words, changed history as we know it.

Today, its successor EEI and its member companies continue to wage deceptive PR campaigns to fight renewable energy and bolster the continued consumption of fossil fuels.

The NELA campaign’s legacy, however, goes far beyond its sector alone, according to Oreskes and Conway. “Perhaps most importantly, NELA pioneered a strategy of insisting that these claims were true, regardless of the facts,” they wrote.

Broadening their view beyond the fossil fuel industry, Oreskes and Conway also detail how the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) propelled similar efforts across other industries during the same era. Like EEI, fast-forwarding to the present-day, NAM has served as a key node of climate denialism. 

But in its earliest days,NAM maintained a different sinister focus, according to The Big Myth: advocating against child labor laws amid what the authors described as a “pandemic” of workplace deaths both among young workers and the adult workforce.The sheer volume of such deaths served as one of the first major wakeup calls in the need for a more active regulatory state, the book maps out.

In making its case for child labor and against regulations protecting children, NAM espoused “that the federal government had no business interfering in business” and called such a notion “socialistic in its origin, philosophy and associations.”

Libertarian Fringe to (Neo)Liberal Mainstream

While both NELA and NAM laid the groundwork for a paradigm that’s alive and well today, their ideas were not adopted globally until the formation of theMont Pelerin Society,a group created in 1947 that like EEI and NAM has received close scrutiny from DeSmog for years. Oreskes and Conway devote a whole chapter of The Big Myth to Mont Pelerin.

Like NELA and NAM, Mont Pelerin’s roots lay in anti-regulatory and business-funded ideology. But unlike them, Mont Pelerin came out of academia and via professors committed to the now globally pervasive neoliberal ideology they created. Mont Pelerin inspired similar groups that are, like it, still active today, such as the Koch Industries-funded Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and the University of Chicago’s free market-oriented Economics Department.

Oreskes and Conway point to a legion of like-minded groups arising by the 1970s, riding the momentum of an academic community devoted to neoliberal ideology, and reacting to the gains made in environmental protection and other areas. Formation of these groups accelerated after the metaphorical call-to-arms made in a memo written to theU.S. Chamber of Commerce by the then-tobacco industry attorney and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

Known today as the Powell Memo, the 1972 letter called for Big Business to undergo “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”

The Powell Memo, Oreskes and Conway concluded, spearheaded free market fundamentalist groups such as the Cato Institute, Koch Family Foundations, Scaife Family Foundations, Olin Foundation, Heritage Foundation, and the Federalist Society, among others. All of these entities, and the groups they fund or work alongside in coalitions, remain powerful forces within U.S. and global politics.

The Big Myth further highlights how those think tanks and companies also played akey role in defeating the 2009 and 2010 congressional push, led by then-President Barack Obama, to pass a federal, market-oriented climate bill known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Critics would charge that the policy approach taken in the bill, emblematically, embodies the very “market fundamentalist” ethos reigning over U.S. politics for the past 100-plus years.

During the congressional debate over a bill that would haveenshrined the policy lever of cap-and-trade, the Koch-funded Tea Party network also ascended[vid]

previous congressional pushes in the 2000s for what was ultimately a business-friendly climate policy, had enjoyed bipartisan support. But The Big Myth explains how as the Tea Party network took flight, Republican Party support for the climate bill — and broader climate action — eroded to a near-zero level. It has mostly remained there since.

At the same time, the reality of climate change had and has continued to become all the more clear. That reality though, Oreskes and Conway wrote, clashes with the religion of market fundamentalism.

“[H]ad the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market-place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale?” the authors asked of the legion of climate-change deniers who helped to kill the bill. “To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but now.”

Although this “quasi-religious belief” in the power of the market holds the greatest sway with conservatives, Oreskes and Conway argue that belief in the “magic of the marketplace” has become an intoxicating ideology withinliberal circles too, including within climate policy debates.

“Even in supposedly liberal enclaves like Cambridge, Massachusetts,” where Oreskes teaches at Harvard, “many people think climate change will be best addressed by technological innovation in the marketplace,” the co-authors surmise, perhaps in alluding to the prototypical industry-friendly policies pushed by former Obama Administration U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz — a professor at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The rise of right-wing think tanks helped spread the pro-market, antigovernment gospel across the country and insert what had been decidedly niche views into the mainstream,” the authors explained of the ideology’s spread. Other scholars have referred to this as the “force field” effect, moving the gravitational pull of what’s possible within U.S. politics further and further toward right-wing, corporate-created policy solutions.

The ideological roots of anti-democracy, anti-environmental, and anti-regulatory campaigning explored in The Big Myth also serve as the heart and soul of the book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, written by DeSmog co-founders James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.

If you have learned from DeSmog’s reporting shedding light on the climate change denial machine, you’ll love The Big Myth, an excerpt from which follows below. The book is a must-read for all students of the sordid history of public relations and governmental capture.

Go grab a copy and checkout some recent interviews on the book, as well, for further background. A video of Professor Oreskes discussing the book can also be seen below.

Excerpt from The Big Myth

In the 1990s, as capitalism was being declared triumphant in many quarters, scientists had proved that man-made climate change was under way.1 Climate change was textbook market failure. It arose from everyday economic activity— using fossil fuels—but was about to impose a huge external cost, inundating major coastal cities around the globe, making hurricanes and cyclones even more deadly than they already were, and dislocating tens or even hundreds of millions of people. It was also textbook environmental injustice, as poor people would almost certainly bear the brunt of a problem created by the rich.

But it also had a textbook answer: putting a price on carbon. Economists called this solution a “Pigouvian tax”—after the Cambridge economist Arthur Pigou, who in the early twentieth century had helped develop the concept of negative externalities. (Pigou also suggested it would be reasonable for governments to subsidize activities that had “positive externalities,” such as education.) The idea of pricing social and environmental costs of carbon was hardly radical; Pigou was firmly mainstream, a respected scholar at Cambridge University, a leading figure in what came to be known as the Cambridge school of economics.2 The obvious benefit of the Pigouvian approach was that it remedied the market failure directly by embedding information—in this case scientific information—into the price of fossil fuels. Then consumers could decide for themselves whether or not to buy more expensive fossil fuels, and producers of alternatives could compete on a level playing field.

The Clinton administration proposed to address climate change through a Pigouvian tax, the so-called “BTU” tax (referring to the heat content of fuels as measured in British Thermal Units).3 But it was opposed—indeed, ridiculed—by a broad coalition of conservatives, including, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and virtually every right-wing think tank in America.4 

The notorious Global Climate Coalition, a network of fossil fuel producers and users that in the 1990s successfully prevented the U.S. Congress from ratifying the Kyoto protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, was originally established as a committee of the National Association of Manufacturers. Even though the idea of putting a price on carbon was a mainstream economic approach to market failure, Republicans framed it as just another example of Democrats’ penchant to “tax and spend.” The Wall Street Journal mocked it as Al Gore’s “favorite tax.”5

In his 1979 paper on nonmarket failure, economist Charles Wolf had slipped into his conclusion the idea that one cause of nonmarket failure was “premature but politically effective demands for government action.”6 In the 1990s, many Republicans picked up on this theme, arguing that it was premature to act on climate change. Even at the time, that was wrong: scientists already had a consensus that man-made climate change was under way and likely to be very costly.7 To act in the 1990s would have been appropriate. It would have been timely. But Clinton was unable to generate congressional support for action; Republican opposition made it clear that any proposal to put a price on carbon would be dead on arrival. In 1999, when Vice President Al Gore ran for president on a platform prioritizing climate change, journalist Gregg Easterbrook (brother of Judge Frank Easterbrook) embarrassed him on the campaign trail with a false story that his mentor—climate champion Roger Revelle—had experienced a deathbed conversion and died thinking climate change was not a serious problem.8 (He had not.)

As the 1990s became the 2000s—and scientists declared the evidence “unequivocal”—market fundamentalist did not adjust their views. To the contrary, their opposition hardened.9

In 2006, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, concluded on behalf of the UK government that, yes, fixing climate change would be expensive—perhaps as much as 1 percent of global GDP per annum—but not fixing it would cost much more: at least 5 percent and perhaps as much as 20 percent.10 Here was a solid argument from a man who could scarcely be accused of being any kind of -ist other than an economist. In response, conservatives dug in deeper. Senator Ted Cruz promoted the canard that global warming had stopped; Senator James Inhofe called it a liberal conspiracy to bring down capitalism.11 No matter what solutions were proposed—market-friendly or not—the right wing found reasons to oppose them. The science wasn’t settled (they claimed). It would be too expensive to fix. We could just adapt. It was all a hoax. Often these claims were couched in libertarian terms, as when in 2011 former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed the push to address climate change “the newest excuse to take control of lives.”12

The singular exception to climate denial in Republican Party leadership was Senator John McCain. He and conservative Democrat Joe Lieberman introduced Climate Stewardship acts in 2003, 2005, and 2007 to address the carbon dioxide emissionsthat drive climate change by creating an emissions trading system—a proven mechanism, albeit more complicated than a Pigouvian tax. But when given the chance to use it to address climate change, Republicans refused.13 The 2003 bill failed on mostly party lines, with a few Democrats and nearly all Republicans in opposition. But it was a closer call than many expected, and soon Congress faced intense lobbying pressure against climate legislation, particularly from NAM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The 2005 version came to a vote and failed 60–38, with only a handful of Republicans voting yea.14 Two years after that, McCain could not even persuade Republican leaders to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor.15

In 2009, Congress tried once more, with the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as Waxman-Markey,for its primary sponsors, Massachusetts representative Ed Markey and California representative Henry Waxman). For the fourth time in a decade, Congress had the opportunity to address climate change using a market mechanism, and for the fourth time rejected it. The bill barely passed the Democratic-led House; nearly all Republicans voted against, as did Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states (and a few Democrats who found the bill too weak). The Senate never brought it to a vote. Democrats concluded they could not overcome the “wall of opposition” they faced from their Republican colleagues, opposition fortified by fierce lobbying.16 One analysis concluded that, in the eighteen months between January 2009 and June 2010, electric utilities, oil and gas companies, trade associations, and think tanks spent at least $500 million against climate change legislation.17 Another study tracing anti-climate lobbying back to 2003 places the figure at closer to $1 billion.18

The fossil fuel industry’s economic interests in preventing climate action have always been obvious; less understood is how it has camouflaged those interests. No one ever said, “I am denying climate change to protect corporate profits.” They said they were protecting jobs, protecting the economy, and protecting free markets from government “encroachment.” They said they were fighting for capitalism and freedom.

But historically, capitalism has never been just one thing: Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century vision of a democratic, distributed marketplace populated by small bankers and businessmen was a far cry from the industrial capitalism that developed in early nineteenth-century England and Germany—with its cruel “Satanic mills”—or the monopolies and managerial capitalism that came to dominate America in the late nineteenth century, much less the globally financed capitalism that emerged at the end of the twentieth century. China has liberalized its markets while continuing to oppress and even murder its ethnic and religious minorities. There are many capitalisms. American market fundamentalists fight for a form of capitalism that is both brutal and ignorant: that brushes aside market failure, anticompetitive practices, and external costs, in part by denying the facts of science, the facts of history, and the necessary role of government in making capitalism work.19

The question is not whether government should set limits that prevent individual autonomy from producing collective harm, the question is where we draw the lines. That is not an economic question, it is a political one. Market fundamentalists have managed to distract from the political aspects of these decisions and frame them as questions of “economic freedom.” Thus, a reasonable response to climate change is rejected as unreasonable “government encroachment.”

All this may make one wonder: was this ever reallyabout capitalism? Or freedom? Or was it all just one long, semi-continuous, shape-shifting defense of the prerogatives of big business? Of freedom for capital and capitalists? Or had the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market- place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale? To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, butnow.

ref bib...

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https://www.alternet.org/big-oil-outspent-green-groups/ no lnx grfx vid

Big oil spent 27 times more than green groups to keep fossil fuels flowing

Charles Downie , Robert Brulle and The Conversation February 13, 2023

You’ve probably seen ads promoting gas and oil companies as the solutions to climate change. They’re meant to be inspiring and hopeful, with scenes of a green, clean future.

But shiny ads are not all these companies do to protect their commercial interests in the face of a rapidly heating world. Most also provide financial support to industry groups that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on political activities, often to thwart polices designed to slow climate change.

For example, The New York Times recently reported on the Propane Education and Research Council’s attempts to derail efforts to electrify homes and buildings in New York, in part by committing nearly US$900,000 to the New York Propane Gas Association, which flooded social media with misleading information about energy-efficient heat pumps.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents oil refiners and petrochemical firms, has spent millions on public relations campaigns, such as promoting a rollback of federal fuel efficiency standards.

These practices have been going on for decades, and evidence shows that industry groups have played key roles in blocking state and federal climate policies. This matters not just because of the enormous sums the groups are spending, but also because they often act as a command center for political campaigns to kill pro-climate policies.

We study the political activities of industry groups. In a recent research paper, we dug through tax filings to follow the money trail of trade associations engaged on climate change issues and track the billions they have spent to shape federal policy.

What we found

After NASA scientist James Hansen sounded the alarm on climate change in 1988, three trade associations – the National Association of Manufacturers, the Edison Electric Institute and the American Petroleum Institute – banded together with a couple of electrical utilities to form the Global Climate Coalition, or GCC.

The GCC systematically opposed any international regulation of climate-warming emissions, and successfully prevented the U.S. from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This was the first example of trade associations working together to stall government action on climate change. Similar efforts continue today.

So, how much do trade associations spend on political activities, such as public relations? As not-for-profit organizations under the Internal Revenue Code, trade associations have to report their revenue and spending.

We found that trade associations historically opposed to climate policies spent $2 billion in the decade from 2008 to 2018 on political activities, such as advertising, lobbying and political contributions. Together, they outspent climate-supporting industry groups 27 to 1.

The oil and gas sector was the largest, spending $1.3 billion. Across the 89 trade associations we examined in nine different sectors of the U.S. economy between 2008 and 2018, no other group of trade associations came close.

No. 1 expense: Advertising and promotion

What came as more of a surprise as we were tallying up the data was how much trade associations are spending on advertising and promotion. This can include everything from mainstream media ads promoting the industry to hiring public relations firms to target particular issues before Congress.

For example, until they parted ways last year, Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm, received close to $30 million from American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers to promote fossil fuels, reporters at the online news site Heated found.

Our study found that trade associations engaged on climate change issues spent a total of $2.2 billion on advertising and promotion between 2008 and 2018, compared with $729 million on lobbying. As 2022 lobbying data shows, their spending continues. While not all of this spending is directly targeting climate policy, climate change is one of the top political issues for many industries in the energy sector.

Media buys are expensive, but these numbers also reflect the specific role trade associations play in protecting the reputation of the firms they represent.

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One reason that groups like the American Petroleum Institute have historically taken the lead running negative public relations campaigns is so that their members, such as BP and Shell, are not tarred [heh] with the same brush, as our interviews with industry insiders confirmed.

However, many firms are now coming under pressure to leave trade associations that oppose climate policies. In one example, the oil giant Total quit API in 2021, citing disagreements over climate positions.

Spending on social media in the weeks ahead of theU.S. midterm elections and during the U.N. Climate Conference in November 2022offers another window into these groups’ operations.

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A review by the advocacy groupClimate Action Against Disinformationfound that 87 fossil-fuel-linked groups spent roughly $3 million to $4 million on more than 3,700 ads through Facebook’s parent company alone in the 12 weeks before and during the conference.

Revealed: Facebook received millions for ads promoting fossil fuel

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The largest share came from a public relations group representing the American Petroleum Institute and focused heavily on advocating for natural gas and oil and discussing energy security. America’s Plastic Makers spent about $1.1 million on climate-related advertising during the two weeks of the U.N. conference.

Funneling money to think tanks and local groups

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Trade associations also spent $394 million on grants to other organizations during the decade we reviewed. For example, they gave money to think tanks, universities, charitable foundations and political organizations like associations of mayors and governors.

While some of these grants may be philanthropic in nature, among the trade associations we spoke to, most have a political purpose in mind. Grants channeled to local community groups, as one example, can help boost an industry’s reputation among key constituent groups, and as a result their social license to operate.

What this means for climate policy

Fossil fuel companies, which reported record profits in 2022, still spend more on political activities than their trade associations do.

But industry groups historically opposed to climate policies are also big spenders, as our research shows. They outspent those that support actions to slow climate change, such as the solar and wind industries, by a whopping $2 billion to $74.5 million over the 10 years we reviewed.

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This likely helps to explain why it took Congress almost 35 years after Hansen first warned representatives about the dangers of climate change to pass a major climate bill, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

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https://www.desmog.com/2023/01/19/fossil-fuel-groups-spent-millions-on-social-media-ads-spreading-climate-disinformation-during-cop27/

fossil fuel-linked groups spent around $4 million on Facebook and Instagram ads that spread false climate claims over the COP27 summit, a new report says.

The physical presence of more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists overshadowed the November conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, as world leaders, NGOs and activists gathered in a bid to accelerate global efforts to confront the climate crisis.

Analysis out today shows oil and gas interests were also busy online. Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) – the coalition behind the second “Deny, Deceive, Delay” report – has documented how PR companies, front groups and oil majors were actively spreading disinformation in the weeks leading up to and during the summit.

Researchers with the coalition’s COP27 Intelligence Unit identified over 3,700 ads sharing false claims on Facebook and Instagram, platforms owned by Meta. They also found a rise in content related to outright climate-science denial by ‘anti-woke’ pundits on Twitter, who pushed #ClimateScam and lines such as ‘climate is a hoax’.

Jennie King, head of climate research and response at the non-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think tank, which led the Intelligence Unit, said the events of 2022 had “turbocharged a global ecosystem of disinformation”.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine and its impact on energy supply chains have renewed anti-climate attacks globally, as vested interests falsely attribute blame for these events to the “cult of Net Zero,” King explained.

“Our report shows Big Oil continues to invest millions in digital advertising to launder their image as ‘climate champions’, while also promoting the necessity of fossil fuels.”

The coalition’s findings come nearly two years after a report by the UN’s climate science body, which found for the first time that “vested interests” were delaying efforts to tackle climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that actors representing “vested economic and political interests” had eroded support for climate policy by generating “rhetoric and misinformation that undermines science and disregards risk and urgency”.

Climate Denial ‘Comeback’

Big Oil companies Shell, Chevron and Exxon all ran ads in the run-up to the summit, but the majority were posted by PR and fossil fuel front groups.

The 850 organisations surveyed spent between $3-4 million on nearly 3,800 adverts on Facebook and Instagram between September 1 and November 23, the report found. Adverts promoted fossil fuels as affordable and reliable, and justified their ongoing use with arguments around energy independence.

Energy Citizens – a PR and lobby group for the largest trade association for the oil and gas industry the American Petroleum Institute – ran more daily ads than all the other pages combined, the analysis found. The ad campaign advocated for U.S. production of fossil gas and oil, citing nationalist arguments around ‘energy security’.

The analysis found that a number of U.S. based pages ended their ad campaigns after mid-term elections on November 8. However, the research found disinformation ramped up with ad campaigns from three industry PR groups: America’s Plastic Makers, funded by the American Chemistry Council, which describes itself as ‘the leading association representing the $553-billion U.S. chemicals industry’, and fossil fuel front groups Affordable Energy for New Jersey and Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future.

In addition, the Saudi Green Initiative had at least 13 live adverts around the summit, just as Saudi Arabia’s delegation was accused of pursuing a ‘strategy to keep the world hooked on oil.’

The findings come as Sultan Ahmed Jaber was announced as the new President for COP28, making the Dubai summit next year the first to be led by a current oil executive.

Ben Dennes, a researcher at the University of Exeter who specialises in environmental communication online, said the $4 million figure was just the “tip of the iceberg”.

The Meta ad library used in the analysis was a “black box”, with only ads deemed by Meta to relate to ‘social issues, elections or politics’ fully accessible.

There is “unclear and subjective guidance on what this means”, Dennes told DeSmog, adding that researchers were also unable to analyse Google Ads in the study as the service does not permit searches for misinformation and greenwashing content.

It was therefore possible that “certain greenwashing and misinformation content has slipped through the net”, Dennes said.

Culture Warriors Co-opt Climate 

Alongside analysis of industry-linked advertising, researchers also documented climate disinformation on Twitter over a four week period from the end of October.

‘Anti-woke’ pundits and conspiracy theorists gained the most traction, the report found, and “often collaborate with a well-funded network of think tanks and pundits.”

Climate denial tropes such as ‘climate actors are alarmist’ and ‘climate change is a hoax’ also featured. Some posts targeted the “loss and damage” fund, established in Sharm-el-Sheikh to provide financial assistance to vulnerable nations most impacted by the climate crisis.

Researchers also found that the hashtag #ClimateScam spiked on Twitter with 362,000 mentions between July and December, raising concerns over a failure to prevent disinformation on the platform. The original content came from a non-verified account, but was then adopted by a number of verified account holders – including U.S. pundit Tom Fitton, a climate denier with two million followers.

The CAAD coalition is advocating for immediate steps to be taken by tech companies to stem the flow of climate delayism and “junk science”. It is also calling on governments and multilateral bodies to implement a “unified definition” of climate mis-and disinformation within UN key institutions.

“This research shows that climate disinformation isn’t going away and, in fact, it’s getting worse.

During COP, Twitter’s search engine pushed #ClimateScam as a top result without any justification for the data behind it,” said Erika Seiber, climate disinformation spokesperson at Friends of the Earth U.S.

“Until governments hold social media and ad companies accountable, and companies hold professional disinformers accountable, crucial conversations around the climate crisis are going to be put in jeopardy.”

Meta and Twitter were contacted for comment.

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from Brulle:

by the #

Brulle has previously found that more than $2bn was spent lobbying Congress on climate legislation between 2000 and 2016.

Over roughly the last three decades, five major US oil companies have spent a total of at least $3.6bn on advertisements – not counting their investments in public relations programs like sponsored beach clean-ups, or their influence through trade associations, dark money groups and campaign donations.

they have a $600bn annual subsidy that they’re defending, according to the [International Monetary Fund].

2019:The five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies have spent some $1 billion on “narrative capture” and lobbying since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2016, according to a report published this month by Influence Map. That spending includes $195 million on “often misleading branding campaigns.”

In research published in 2018, Brulle found that “environmental organizations and the renewable energy sector lobbying expenditures were dwarfed by a ratio of 10:1 by the spending of the sectors engaged in the supply and use of fossil fuels.”

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Though climate lobbying only accounted for 3.9 percent of the total amount spent on legislative lobbying between 2000 to 2016, its rates fluctuated considerably.Early on, relatively little money—only about $50 million, or 2 percent of all lobbying—was spent trying to sway federal legislators' opinions during the years leading up to and including 2006.

But in the years that followed, climate lobbying expenditures shot up, reaching a high point of $362 million in 2009, which accounted for 9 percent of all lobbying that year alone. The next year, 2010, saw only a slight drop, before climate lobbying efforts plunged, eventually reaching about 3 percent of total lobbying after 2011.

Of course, 2009 marked the year that the House of Representatives narrowly passed the landmark climate legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markeybill. However, that effort died on the floor of the Senate just over a year later.

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Right-wing media just can’t seem to quit old-school climate change denial.

Even as fossil fuel companies moved away from directly questioning established science in their marketing in favor of more subtle forms of climate delay and greenwashing, media influencers on the right repeatedly suggested that climate change is a fake crisis manufactured by global elites, using the energy crisis, extreme weather events, and a general mistrust of our institutions to make the case for climate change denial.

The war in Ukraine was convenient for climate change deniers

As gas prices skyrocketed, in part due to the global energy disruption resulting from the war in Ukraine, and American families started to become frustrated, right-wing media took the opportunity to blame climate policies. They insisted that high prices were being caused by a fake crisis manufactured by the government, arguing that climate change was a hoax from the beginning.

AnOctober 6 Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that “the White House blames the industry for high gas prices while it does everything it can to make drilling more difficult and financially risky.”

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, Donald Trump went on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria on March 2 and called climate change a hoax while discussing the Biden administration's energy policy, saying that “this climate situation is killing our country.”

He did the same thing in a March 21 segment of Fox Business’s Varney & Co, saying what the left does “is a climate hoax.” When asked by host Stuart Varney whether climate change is caused by human activity, Trump responded: “In my opinion, you have a thing called weather, and you go up and you go down. If you look into the 1920s, they were talking about global freezing. … The climate’s always been changing,” he continued.

Media Matters documented ample disinformation about gas prices and theKeystone XL pipeline extension during that period. Some right-wing media influencers claimed the Biden administration was adding insult to injury by allegedly driving high gas prices and lying to Americans about what could be done to fix the situation in order to carry out its agenda.

Fossil fuel shill Daniel Turner of Power the Future wrote on April 18, “There is no climate crisis and oil is back to $110 because everything@JoeBiden says is a lie.”

Kurt Schlichter, a Townhall columnist and podcast host, alleged that Biden was more committed to “the idiotic members of the climate change hoax cult” than he was to lowering gas prices for families.

Schlichter has been a loud and consistent voice for climate change denial. But for someone who believes it doesn’t exist, he certainly spent a lot of time obsessing over it in 2022. He tweeted “climate change is a hoax” or similar statements at least 145 times in 2022, or an average of nearly three times per week, and penned op-eds like “Don’t Let Them Reset Society To Make You Into a Bug-Eating Serf” and “Climate Hoax Hacks Love Putin” in which he claimed that “you cannot claim to both oppose Putin and fight global warming.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was also an influential Twitter climate misinformer in 2022, voicing opposition to climate policy such as the Inflation Reduction Act, and posting climate skeptic and denialist content. “Taxes on energy, subsidies for favored corporations, dangerous drug price controls will increase inflation. And -- Fact check: There is no ‘climate crisis,’” he tweeted onJuly 28.

Judicial Watch is a member of the State Policy Network, which has deep ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Koch-funded lobbying group that has most recently been working to punish fossil fuel divestment. When Biden was considering declaring a climate emergency in July, Fitton wrote, “There obviously is no ‘climate emergency’-- for Biden to dictate otherwise is a desperate abuse of power.”

The right turned reporting on natural disasters into “climate alarmism”

Last year, we clearly saw the impacts of major climate-fueled extreme weather events at home and around the world: Hurricanes Ian and Fiona, a heat wave and drought in Europe, China, and the American West, and massive flooding in Pakistan. As of October, according to insurance broker Aon, there had been 29 billion-dollar disasters in 2022. Additionally, according to the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat, the EU experienced 53,000 more deaths in July compared with that month’s averages for 2016-2019. 

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, which pummeled Florida and South Carolina in late September,Fox News’ Tucker Carlson implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. … They’re products of nature. God’s in charge.” His guest Candace Owens, who has a history of climate change denial, reiterated that climate change does not exist because “if there was no human beings that walked the face of the planet, there would continue to be hurricanes, like there would continue to be blizzards, and like there would continue to be tornadoes.”

Carlson responded to natural disasters with climate change denial on more than one occasion. On July 20, he devoted a monologue to undermining the existence of climate change, reducing climate predictions to: “It’s gonna be hot and then it’s gonna rain hard.”

“No one really believes in global warming,” he continued, “and that’s why all of the liberals in the United States live on the coasts – because they don’t believe it. That’s why many of them fly private, because the entire theory is absurd and they know it. … The whole thing is a joke.”

The day before, onJuly 19, Fox News host Dan Bongino questioned whether the planet is getting warmer and whether humanity played a role in it, asking: “What kind of a dunce believes that? Come on. Is it [the planet] getting warmer? The answer is maybe. … The question isn’t is it getting warmer; the question is what’s human beings' role in it.”

Even in the absence of an extreme weather event, right-wing media regularly dismissed and challenged the scientific consensus that warming is making these types of events more severe.

On an October 11 segment of The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham brought on climate change denier Tom Harris to falsely claim that the science isn’t settled: “The real underlying thing is that there is no climate crisis. … It's all based on models that don't work. … In fact, we don't even know whether it's going to be warm or cool in the future. … The only sensible approach is to get ready for it, to make our infrastructure hardened, to use solid, dependable sources of energy like coal.”

The “Great Reset” was a magnet for climate skepticism

Also in 2022, some right-wing media framed climate change as a hoax orchestrated by elites to implement the “Great Reset,” using climate policies and other measures to assert dominance and control over the general population.

These ideas got attention in July, when right-wing media attempted to blame a series of complex global conflicts and unrest on climate policy, and in November as the global community gathered in Egypt to negotiate climate action.

Former Australian journalist and key Twitter climate denial amplifier Peter Clackattacked plans made during the conference to provide financial climate support for developing nations, tweeting, “This is the reality of the Great Reset. … COP27 has approved - without dissent - reparations starting at $2 trillion because of climate-caused damage. There is none.”

On a December 12 segment of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson and meteorologist Joe Bastardihad a nearly unintelligible conversation packed with climate change denial, where Bastardi offered that climate advocates might not want to ban private air travel because “they’ve all got climate vaccines. We don't know about them, but unlike the covid vaccine, they actually work.”

Another cockamamie theory, according to Bastardi, is that climate advocates are trying to pollute the air as much as possible so that they can have an excuse to prevent others from using transportation. Bastardi claimed that another option is that “it's a phony climate war, it's fraudulent,” and it “has nothing to do with CO2.”

Though not explicitly mentioned, these accusations are consistent with the Great Reset narrative of elites controlling the masses through climate and public health policy. Carlson posited earlier in the segment, “Could it be that the climate movement is really about creating a permanent caste system where the people at the top of society, the Brahmins, can do literally whatever they want?”

Right-wing journalist Jordan Schachtel mentioned the Great Reset while celebrating Twitter’s change in ownership, tweeting, “Twitter will now become the network through which we utterly destroy the forces of The Great Reset. … This is why the power-drunk covid addicts, climate hoaxers, commies, etc are furious today.”

On the September 12 edition of Eric Bolling The Balance, host Eric Bolling encapsulated the right’s fearmongering about the Great Reset, claiming that climate change is a hoax being used “in order to make people fear the end of the world, convince us to change everything. They want to control us forever and ever.”

Climate contrarians lashed out against so-called censorship

Sometimes, climate change denial was just a drumbeat regardless of current events. Prominent right-wing culture warrior influencers used climate change denial without any context as part of their rotating script attacking different “liberal” beliefs or simply as a protest against what they view as censorship.

For example, after Twitter initially accepted  Elon Musk’s acquisition offer onApril 25, right-wing contrarians and other influencers were seemingly emboldened to “test” the new environment by making statements that might reasonably be labeled as misinformation or hate speech under previous management. This occured in the days following Musk’s takeover of the platform on October 27 as well, with some tweets garnering tens of thousands of engagements.

[twt]

former Daily Wirecontributor Greg Price and right-wing Twitter troll and self-described political commentator Gunther Eagleman repeatedly pushed climate change misinformation on Twitter in 2022, along with a plethora of other uncouth and conspiratorial statements. Eagleman tweeted about climate change being a hoax, scam, or similar statements 48 times this year.

[twt]

despite right-wing media’s repeated claims that climate change is a hoax, it was among the top voter concerns during the recent 2022 midterm elections, suggesting climate change denial is a losing argument.However, as the phenomenon ramps up on Twitter and “free speech” continues to be a major point of contention in the culture wars, right-wing media may be empowered to continue pushing these types of disinformation in 2023.

Methodology ...

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an 11 22

Computer scientist, composer, artist, and author Jaron Lanier has for years been outspoken about his total avoidance of social media platforms because of the harm that they inflict on their users and the detrimental impacts that they have on societies. In a 2018 conversation with Vox producer Eric Johnson, Lanier decried people who refuse to delete their accounts even though they can.

"You have even more of a responsibility to see if you can get out of it than someone who genuinely is dependent on it. So, I think that that argument has a situation exactly backwards. I mean, I and you and the people we tend to know are privileged. We’re wealthier than ever. We have more options. That puts a moral onus on us to make some decisions that do what little we can to help those who are less fortunate, and this is one of those things," he said.

"If you are actually in a position to quit and you don’t, you’re making yourself part of the problem. You’re not doing anything to free those who are more trapped. You’re only enslaving them more by entrenching the system. As an affluent or valuable person to the system, you’re the one that the whole system is being funded by," he added, later comparing online platforms to "gambling addiction."

READ MORE: By destroying Twitter, Elon Musk reveals contempt for democracy

On Sunday, Lanier warned in an interview with The Guardian GUK that the takeovers of tech giants like Twitter pose a fatal danger to the future existence of the human race.

“People survive by passing information between themselves,” Lanier explained to reporter Edward Helmore. “We’re putting that fundamental quality of humanness through a process with an inherent incentive for corruption and degradation. The fundamental drama of this period is whether we can figure out how to survive properly with those elements or not.”

Lanier believes that powerful digital arenas such as Twitter, whose owners allow misinformation, conspiracy theories, and hate speech to flourish, are exacerbating the threat that humanity faces.

“There are all kind of intermediaries. They might be the people who own a platform, recently Elon Musk, or third parties who are good at sneaking in influence. The interveners can be varied. Some are official, some are revealed, others hidden. Some are competent, some incompetent. Some are random, like an algorithm that someone made but didn’t understand," Lanier said. “I still think extinction is on the table as an outcome. Not necessarily, but it’s a fundamental drama.If we can coordinate ourselves to solve the climate crisis it’s a fundamental sign we haven’t become completely dysfunctional."

READ MORE: Half of Twitter’s top advertisers flee as Elon Musk welcomes Trump back

The story continues here.

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tiny effect denier meme?

no lnx grfx date

https://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises

Paris climate promises will reduce temperatures by just 0.05°C in 2100(Press release)

A new peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg published in the Global Policy journal measures the actual impact of all significant climate promises made ahead of the Paris climate summit.

Governments have publicly outlined their post-2020 climate commitments in the build-up to the December’s meeting. These promises are known as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs).

Dr. Lomborg’s research reveals:

The climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is minuscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.

Even if we assume that these promises would be extended for another 70 years, there is still little impact: if every nation fulfills every promise by 2030, and continues to fulfill these promises faithfully until the end of the century, and there is no ‘CO₂ leakage’ to non-committed nations, the entirety of the Paris promises will reduce temperature rises by just 0.17°C (0.306°F) by 2100.

:{:{}:

}:

US climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.031°C (0.057°F) by 2100.

EU climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.053°C (0.096°F) by 2100.

China climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.

The rest of the world’s climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.036°C (0.064°F) by 2100.

Overview in Celsius and Fahrenheit by the year 2100....

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Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida

On back-to-back nights during Florida’s Hurricane Ian nightmare, Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham cast doubt on climate science

Special PROGRAMS

CLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY ILANA BERGER

PUBLISHED 09/30/22

In response to Hurricane Ian, Fox News primetime shows sought to mislead viewers about how climate change is affecting hurricanes, using bad faith and often-repeated climate denier talking points.

More than 2.6 million people were without power across the state on Thursday morning, as extreme flooding left many residents trapped in their homes and on top of cars. At a press briefing, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called Ian a “500-year flooding event” and added, “The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that has been done is historic. … We've never seen a flood event like this, we've never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.” There were at least 21 confirmed deaths as of Friday morning, but that number is expected to rise as recovery efforts continue.

Fox primetime shows recycle debunked or irrelevant talking points on climate

Meanwhile, Fox personalities attempted to gaslight viewers into complacency by describing any hurricane coverage that mentioned climate change as “alarmist.” Fox also cherry-picked information about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes to imply that the two are not related. Climate scientists and media outlets have acknowledged that there is not enough evidence to support the theory that climate change will increase the frequency of hurricanes. However, there is evidence suggesting that higher ocean and air temperatures are causing hurricanes and storms to intensify more rapidly instead of weakening as they approach landfall, as happened with Ian. Hurricanes are also absorbing more moisture and dumping more rain on affected areas. Fox ignored this crucial connection or refuted it all together.

On September 27, Tucker Carlson called severity warnings leading up to the storm a “scam” on Tucker Carlson Tonight. But the next day, he called Hurricane Ian “a catastrophe” and a “national disaster,” adding, “People will certainly be killed.” Carlson then tried to use an exchange between CNN’s Don Lemon and Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, to push his agenda. Carlson used Rhome’s reluctance to link climate change to specific events to suggest that for political reasons, the media is more concerned about climate change than actual climate scientists are. However, Rhome clearly agreed that climate change is having an impact on storms, which is consistent with mainstream reporting on the issue. In fact, on September 28, CNN meteorologist Tom Sater reiterated Rhome’s point and added, “Since 1950 there have been seven landfall hurricanes in Florida that were a category 4 or 5 … the first 4 were each in a different decade. The last three — all in the last 5 years.”

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On September 29, Carlson devoted a good chunk of his show to ranting about climate change as well.He was obsessively focused on hurricane frequency, arguing that somehow, a decrease in the numbers of storms would cancel out the plethora of other evidence indicating that the storm events themselves are intensifying. After citing a NOAA research overview highlighting that hurricanes are predicted to become more intense, Carlson went on to insist that “the claim is never proven,” and that “there’s no science behind these claims.” Later in the segment, he implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. … they’re products of nature, God is in charge.”

He then discussed Hurricane Ian with Candace Owens, who has a long history of climate change denial.Owens reiterated that climate change does not exist because “if there was no human beings that walked the face of the planet, there would continue to be hurricanes, like there would continue to be blizzards, and like there would continue to be tornadoes.” She also used several other environmental concerns such as the hole in the ozone layer, which has diminished because of the Montreal Protocol, and ocean acidification, which remains a concern due to climate change, to try and argue that “they’ve been wrong over and over and over again.”

Video

CitationFrom the September 29, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

On September 28 edition of The Ingraham Angle, frequent Fox News guest and climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger and host Laura Ingraham told viewers that their personal experiences with extreme weather were untrustworthy and invalid. Ingraham implied that concerns about climate change only exist because people “feel that the ocean is warmer … but a feeling is not fact.” Shellenberger falsely claimed that hurricanes are “not intensifying right now, so any perception that hurricanes are more intense is just a perception fed by that relentless alarmist media.” Guest Mollie Hemmingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, later claimed that “the left” is pushing a “conspiracy theory” that “man-made climate change is the cause of hurricanes. … There’s just no evidence for this theory that people keep holding.” Hemmingway said this despite the fact that no one is claiming that climate change is the primary cause of hurricanes, rather it is one factor making them more dangerous.

Video file

Video CitationFrom the September 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Hemmingway and Shellenberger also latched onto the idea that hurricane frequency is apparently the only metric that should concern the public, glossing over the very real dangers of threats like higher rainfall rates, which is the main factor that drives deaths and damage during a hurricane. They were fixated on the number of hurricanes that have occurred over different periods of time, using various irrelevant data points to unsuccessfully support their climate denial. They also downplayed damage caused by storms by saying that nowadays more people live in the areas most affected by hurricanes. Shellenberger first said that damage caused by hurricanes “has not increased at all” but then claimed that the increase in damage is due to the fact that “there’s more wealth in harm’s way,” going on to claim that the extreme weather events of the last several decades represent “an incredible success story for America,” because, in his telling, they could have been worse. 

Before Ian made landfall, Sean Hannity hosted his favorite climate denier Joe Bastardi to emphasize that hurricane frequency in Florida has not increased. On September 28, Hannity said that the media should not discuss climate change because “this is hurricane season and during hurricane season, you usually have hurricanes like we did a hundred years ago.” Fox News contributor Lara Trump insisted that the Democrats' “marketing arm, the mainstream media” is “now trying to claim that one of the quietest hurricane seasons in 30 years is somehow due to climate change.” Finally, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, who was a guest on the show, said that people should reject the established science of climate change and instead of “worshipping that which is created rather than the creator … get back to the simple things of science and real faith and trust in God.”

The public is beginning to increasingly understand the dangers of climate change and the need for actions that not only reduce climate-causing emissions, but make our communities less vulnerable to the climate impacts that are already happening. But as the public and more media outlets are starting to connect extreme weather to the need for climate action, Fox News coverage seeks to break those links.

THE LATEST...

Fox News host: “Americans are going to have to start strapping up and exercising their Second Amendment rights”

09/30/22 5:30 PM EDT

Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida

09/30/22 2:52 PM EDT

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Climate deniers

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Climate denial and near climate silence has marred national TV news coverage of Hurricane Ian

09/30/22 1:48 PM EDT

Right-wing media manufacture outrage over CNN host Don Lemon discussing relationship between climate change and strengthened hurricanes

09/29/22 1:53 PM EDT

As Hurricane Ian hits Florida, Fox News undermines climate change

09/27/22

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https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/right-wing-media-are-outraged-biden-spent-tenth-his-un-speech-climate-change

Right-wing media are expressing outrage that President Joe Biden mentioned climate change during his September 21 speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Biden’s, which focused mainly on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, also included calls for global cooperation on important issues including food insecurity, human rights, and climate change. The climate part of his speech lasted roughly 3 minutes and included celebrating the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. He also touched on recent climate disasters and the need for global emissions reductions, as well as promising billions of dollars in international climate finance.

Despite the relatively modest amount of time he spent on climate change, many in right-wing media were outraged that he even mentioned climate at all. Their comments included climate denial and falsehoods about the importance of climate change to the global community.

Right-wing media falsely claimed that the global population doesn’t care about climate change

Climate change is a serious concern around the world. For example, a January 2021 survey found that a majority of people around the globe want greater climate action. And a September 2021 Pew poll found that the world’s population increasingly views climate change as a personal threat. In August of this year, another Pew survey found that a “​​median of 75% across 19 countries in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region label global climate change as a major threat.”

Additionally, people from the global south — those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis but disproportionately suffer its effects — are often some of the loudest voices for climate action. Around the same time that Biden gave his UN speech, indigenous peoples from around the world were protesting in New York for climate justice. The president of Kenya made climate change a key part of his UN speech, and the prime minister of Pakistan, a country that has seen over 30 million displaced due to climate-fueled monsoon flooding, thanked Biden for “highlighting the plight of the flood victims.”

Climate change and poverty, meanwhile, are inextricably linked, as are climate change and global hunger. These facts, however, were still not enough to convince right-wing commentators in the U.S. that climate change is a significant threat to the global population.

For example, on the September 22 edition of Newsmax’s Wake Up America, host Rob Finnerty stated that “there's 193 sovereign nations in that room right there. … And nobody cared about that part of the speech. They needed a lot more from the American president, with everything going on in the world right now, and they get climate change.”

On Fox News’ Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy insinuated that people living in poverty don’t care about climate change, stating, “Suddenly he’s talking about climate change. And, you know, there are 675 million people living in poverty around the world. And for the president of the United States to be talking about climate change rather than trying to figure out a way to feed them.”

Doocy also entirely missed the fact that Biden did discuss food in his speech; he mentioned the term “food insecurity” 6 times, while also mentioning “feeding the world.”

The editorial board of the right-wing New York Post also claimed that the world's poor don’t care about climate change. They referred to climate change as part of a “laundry list of left-liberal shout-outs,” before writing that the speech focused “on climate change, which Biden claimed lists first among the ‘challenges that matter most to people’s lives.’ The planet’s 674 million people living in abject poverty don’t agree, Joe.”

Right-wing media also dipped into one of their favorite overused talking points when it comes to climate change: U.S. action is worthless because China is the biggest polluter

There were also criticisms claiming China does not care about climate change. Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade remarked about Biden’s climate comments that “climate change is unbelievable. The fact is that China could not care less.” On Wake Up America, The Daily Caller’s Briana Lyman took this China criticism a step further, stating that if “you want to talk about climate change, then you need to talk about China because China is responsible for more than double the emissions of the United States. … I think it's a dereliction of duty when he doesn't tie China and climate change together.”

Kilmeade’s comments ignore the fact that China is by far the largest market for clean energy in the world, and that its pledge to become carbon neutral by 2060 came about a year before the U.S. passed major climate legislation. Yes, its coal plants (and emissions) are a huge problem, but to say that the country doesn’t care about climate change (especially when an unprecedented heat wave just hit the country) is absurd.

Regarding Lyman’s comments, Biden did mention that the United States “will work with every nation, including our competitors, to solve global problems like climate change.” Immediately after this, he referenced China and said the U.S. will not seek out conflict with them.

Lyman also touched on a longtime right-wing trope about climate change: that countries like China are the problem because they currently emit the most carbon, and because of this, it’s foolish to think that the U.S. should act on climate change. But the United States is the largest historical emitter; per capita emissions in the U.S. vastly outweigh those of China; and many of our products are manufactured in China.

Solely blaming China while absolving the U.S. for its own pollution problems and its outsized role in spreading climate denial does nothing for solving climate change in the long run.

Right-wing media also exaggerated the time Biden spent talking about climate change, and they threw in some good-old-fashioned climate denial

Three minutes out of 30 is arguably not enough time to devote to a problem that has led to a summer of destructive extreme weather across the globe. But it was still enough to annoy right-wing media figures.

Again on Wake Up America, host Rob Finnerty stated that “the president spent a lot of time talking about climate change during his speech. … This, of course, coming at a crucially important time. We’re seven months into the worst war in Europe that we've seen since World War II, and the president took the opportunity to campaign for Democrats and talk about climate change.” Additionally, on the September 21 edition of Kudlow, guest Steve Moore falsely claimed that “he spent half the time talking about climate change.”

Perhaps the worst reaction came from Newsmax host Eric Bolling, who went on a climate denial rant on the September 21 edition of Eric Bolling The Balance. He called climate change “another made-up crisis lurking just around the corner,” adding, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” He then blamed Al Gore for supposedly inaccurate predictions about climate change and chastised former President Barack Obama for buying a house near the sea despite being concerned about rising sea levels.

The right-wing blow-up over Biden’s climate comments is not surprising. To these figures and outlets, any action on climate, big or small, is akin to a radical socialist takeover of the U.S. economy. In particular, the right has increased its climate denial and criticism of climate policies in recent months. As climate change worsens and global citizens come together to clamor for climate action, right-wing media will continue todouble down on denial and lies to protect their polluting interests.

Related

Fox News’ vicious response to the California heat wave is a harbinger of things to come

09/16/22

As a climate-fueled heat wave stresses California's electric grid, right-wing media are disingenuously attacking electric vehicles

09/02/22

The Inflation Reduction Act is not the Green New Deal no matter what Fox News says

08/19/22

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interesting update /case study/ cross section ~ BBB?

coastal elite = Hollywood celeb eco-hypocite gore pvt jet

mma 8 22

on August 16, Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the single biggest climate package in history, into law. With its historic investments in clean energy, the IRA is widely considered a surprise win for Democrats ahead of November’s midterm elections, despite major fossil fuel concessions in the bill that will expand drilling and ultimately harm vulnerable communities.

While some oil and gas companies went so far as to publicly celebrate the legislation, Republicans and right-wing media mobilized against it.Now, in an attempt to distract from the realization of one of President Joe Biden’s key campaign promises, right-wing media are capitalizing on a tried and true tactic — trying to discredit the climate movement, and government climate action as a whole, by vilifying certain wealthy advocates for their personal consumption habits.

On August 15, FoxNews.com published emails suggesting that the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation may have helped fund state and local lawsuits against oil and gas companies that seek to hold them accountable for climate change impacts, which occurred as a result of the industry lying about the consequences of burning fossil fuels. This should come as no surprise, given that DiCaprio has long been an advocate for climate action and a donor to climate-related causes.

In 2017, his foundation awarded $20 million in grants to 100 environmental organizations, a small fraction of which went to the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience and Adaptation. The fund “supports precedent-setting legal actions to hold major corporations accountable for costs associated with the effects on climate of their pollutants,” and was associated with the Resource Legacy Fund, an environmental conservation and grant-making 501(c)(3) organization. Fox alleges that the emails prove the money went through the fund to support Sher Edling, the law firm representing the cities and local governments suing big oil. It’s unclear how much DiCaprio donated to Resource Legacy Fund, but Fox labeled it a “dark money” group in the August 15 piece, suggesting that both DiCaprio and the law firm were unethically forcing taxpayers to cover lawsuits, which would force an industry Fox constantly champions to pay up for decades of deception. The Washington Examiner, Daily Caller, and New York Post all picked up the story.

Fox attempts to tie big oil lawsuits to liberal elitism

Fox News picked up the story, contrasting DiCaprio’s activism, which they framed as deceptive, with his carbon-intensive lifestyle. On Hannity, host Sean Hannity claimed the lawsuits further justified right-wing media’s fixation on DiCaprio: “The climate litigation and Dicaprio's arrangements specifically raises a whole host of legal and ethical concerns, but hypocrisy and bad optics are nothing new for this climate activist.”

On Outnumbered, co-host Kayleigh McEnany recalled DiCaprio’s “apocalyptic quote” from his 2016 Oscars speech on the urgency of climate action while discussing the lawsuits. "He doesn't act” as if climate change is an existential threat, McEnany said, “It has not kept him from traveling across the world on gas-guzzling private jets.”

Jesse Watters Primetime featured Brian Claypool, a lawyer and frequent guest, who told correspondent Christina Coleman that it was “ironic that Leonardo DiCaprio and his foundation is funding a law firm to sue big oil companies for alleged deception when he him very self is deceiving the public on where these charitable contributions are going.”

During the August 16 episode of The Five, co-host Dana Perino even suggested DiCaprio's donation was “behind the collusion and price gouging of increasing gas prices on Americans,” because oil companies pass on the costs of hiring a legal team to consumers. (Meanwhile, these companies have seen record-breaking profits.)

In general, climate activists on the left have not been shy to criticize the use of private jets by the rich. After the release of DiCaprio’s climate change-themed movie Don’t Look Up, climate journalist Molly Taft wrote in Earther:

"Whenever DiCaprio is in the news for his climate charity work, a right-wing outlet always smugly runs a piece about his private jet use. While these critiques are in bad faith, they do point out their own inconvenient truth that DiCaprio is part of the sliver of rich people who could actually make a real carbon dent if they changed up their lifestyles or gave away more of their money … The actions DiCaprio is promoting as part of Don’t Look Up fail to properly confront power. Celebrity activism is inherently a strange, slippery slope."

Right-wing media appoints climate spokespeople and projects fossil fuel corruption onto the climate movement

It is naive to think that those elevating the story are really concerned about taxpayers, especially when extreme weather driven by climate change costs taxpayers billions every year. Similar lawsuits against oil companies have been moving through courts for years now, and many are currently pending, embroiled in disagreements over whether there is state or federal jurisdiction. According to PBS, “some recent federal court decisions show support for state jurisdiction” in similar climate suits. On August 17, a federal appeals court panel said that two of these two lawsuits belong in state courts, which is considered a win for plaintiffs. One of the plaintiffs is being represented by the law firm Sher Edling.

The same people attacking the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation have brazenly supported fossil fuel industry corruption. According to Daily Kos, Chris Horner, the person who gave FoxNews.com the emails, “is better known forgetting paid by fossil fuel companies to target climate scientists with baseless or frivolous and harassing or vexatious FOIA lawsuits demanding they release their emails in an attempt to rerun the Climategate disinfo playbook.”

Michael Krauss, a George Mason University law professor who Fox quoted extensively in the piece on DiCaprio, has previously gone after Steven Donziger, a human rights lawyer who was confined to one thousand days of house arrest after winning a $9.5 billion lawsuit against Chevron after the company deliberately contaminated the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest and poisoned the Indigenous communities that live there. Krauss called Chevron, which spilled 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and 17 million gallons of crude oil into open, unlined pits, “courageous” for its “persistence” in “defending itself against Donziger,” after it launched a massive smear campaign against him. Notably, George Mason University accepted an estimated $50 million from Koch foundations between 2005 and 2015.

Leonardo DiCaprio is not and has never been an accurate representation of who is the most concerned about climate change, and it is deeply misleading to portray him as such. Nonetheless, Fox keeps attempting to appoint politicians like John Kerry and wealthy celebrities like Prince Harry, Thom Yorke, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the face of the climate movement, obscuring the role of the activists on the ground who have worked tirelessly to pass legislation like the IRA and the millions of people around the world harmed by climate change and environmental injustice.

According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from June, Black and Hispanic Americans and women are among the groups most likely to be “strongly concerned about the impact of climate change on them personally and about how their personal choices affect the climate.”

When things don’t go your way, blame far-left infiltration or a teenager

Right-wing media’s fixation on “dark money” and celebrity activism is not new. When Republicans face scrutiny, they try to paint Democrats as beholden to radical, hypocritical elites who are out of touch with real Americans. On August 16, FoxNews.com also published an article attempting to frame Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry's office as radical because some officials who work there have previously worked for other large environmental organizations.

Additionally, the article quotes Myron Ebell, who calls large green groups and those affiliated with them the “climate aristocracy.” Ebell, a noted climate denier who led Trump’s EPA transition team, is the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) Center for Energy and Environment. Chris Horner was also a CEI fellow, and the organization has filed briefs and launched campaigns defending the oil companies being targeted by the lawsuits discussed above, and has also received funding from the industry.

related

Fox's attacks on John Kerry shows how specious the network’s argument against climate action really is

02/05/21

In 160 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Fox networks mentioned the Green New Deal 564 times

08/08/22

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolds, right-wing media is pinning the blame on Greta Thunberg and climate activists

03/08/22

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london protests 7 22 break glass in emergency so they did

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wow omg ingraham? 1100 dead

an 7 22

with thousands dying from extreme global heat in recent days, and as President Joe Biden announced new executive actions to address the climate crisis, right-wing media figures and climate deniers are downplaying the heat wave and the threat from human-caused climate change.

In Europe, extreme “red” heat warnings were issued in the United Kingdom for the first time, and Wales recorded its highest-ever temperature. Railroad lines, major highways, and airport runways in the U.K. buckled under the extreme heat. Multiple regions of Germany also set all-time highs, as did at least part of Denmark. Over 2,000people have died in Spain and Portugal due to the extreme heat, which has fueled wildfires there and in parts of France. These record-setting events are not contained to Europe. Parts of the U.S. and Central Asia are suffering from extreme heat as well.

Even though the extreme heat event in Europe is truly exceptional, and its connections to the climate crisis are unquestionable, multiple right-wing media figures used the extreme heat event to downplay and criticize any possible action to address the climate crisis.

Right-wing media also attacked Biden for considering declaring a climate emergency during this deadly heat wave. Instead Biden unveiled much more modest steps to address climate impacts, such as putting $2.3 billion toward community resilience and infrastructure and bolstering offshore wind development. The Federalist falsely declared that “Biden has no right to declare a ‘national climate emergency,’' though The Washington Post explained that such a move would “tap a variety of long-standing emergency authorities under the National Emergencies Act and other laws.” LifeSiteNews fearmongered thatthe emergency powers would result in “climate lockdowns.” And other right-wing media suggested that there is no crisis at all.

Right-wing media denied the existence of the climate emergency

Fox News host Dan Bongino questioned whether the planet is getting warmer and whether humanity played a role in it, asking: “What kind of a dunce believes that? Come on. Is it [the planet] getting warmer? The answer is maybe. … The question isn’t is it getting warmer; the question is what’s human beings' role in it.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [7/19/22]

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton wrote on Twitter: “There is obviously no ‘climate emergency'.” Twitter, [7/19/22]

Fox host Tucker Carlson devoted a monologue to undermining the existence of climate change, reducing climate predictions to: “It’s gonna be hot and then it’s gonna rain hard.” “No one really believes in global warming,” he continued, “and that’s why all of the liberals in the United States live on the coasts – because they don’t believe it… The entire theory is absurd and they know it. … The whole thing is a joke.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/20/22]

On Fox, conservative British political commentator Douglas Murray dismissed the urgency of the climate crisis, saying, “Whenever there is not an absolutely vital recent emergency, we can always fall back on – oh and the climate emergency.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [7/20/22]

Fox anchor Dana Perino asked: “What has changed with the science that would lead a president to need to declare an emergency?” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*[, 7/20/22]

Fox host Todd Piro said that climate impacts, particularly the ones affecting the most vulnerable communities, did not meet his criteria for an emergency: “While we all love clean air and clean water — I, in fact, use both … this is not an emergency that we need to focus on today. We got a lot of other problems in the world.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [7/20/22]

Fox host Sean Hannity responded to new actions by the Biden administration to address climate change by dismissing the role of human influence over global warming saying, “I think these might be acts of nature, and God, and way out of the realm of something that human beings can prevent.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [7/20/22]

Conservatives also downplayed the deadly extreme heat

Climate change denying author Bjorn Lomborg dismissed the dangerous extreme heat event, writing on Twitter: “Standard climate scare.” Twitter, [7/17/22]

Climate denier Steven Milloy on Twitter dismissed a Washington Post article linking the Europe heat wave to climate change, writing: “Hot in some places. Cool in others. Just weather. Not climate.” Twitter, [7/19/22]

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade dismissed the dangers extreme heat poses to human health, saying: “Don’t panic. It is summer. If it was December and this was happening, then I would say, this is a little weird. But it's just a little bit hotter than usual.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [7/20/22]

Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro said on his radio show that the heat wave and wildfires were being reported so fervently because “you always know that it’s the slow season newswise when you start getting weather reports from Europe. … The thing that they will never tell you, the media, is that more people die of cold every year than die of heat every year, but the cold narrative doesn’t tend to play into the climate change narrative that they wish to progmulate.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*,[7/19/22]

Fox host Jesse Watters dismissed the extreme heat event as regular seasonal weather, saying: “Joe Biden has seen more seasons than a lot of us. He knows that it gets cold in January and hot in July.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/20/22

Watters followed this up with an interview during which an on-screen graphic read: “Dems worried about weather, not real problems.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/20/22]

Fox host Greg Gutfeld said: “We are in a full-blown heat wave hysteria.” He said that while he does believe “it’s getting warmer,” climate advocates should “think about the opportunity cost of all the zealotry. You know? Panic didn’t work.” Fox News, *The Five*, [7/20/22]

Right-wing media also attacked the Biden administration for considering a climate emergency declaration

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed on his Infowars show that a climate emergency would be orchestrated by a “scientific global dictatorship whose aim is 90% world depopulation,” and that it would lead to a “dystopia”: “You’re gonna live in a 200-square-foot coffin apartment, you’re gonna be given forced inoculations five, six times a year, you’re gonna be sterilized, you’re gonna be killed.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*,[7/20/22]

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called a possible emergency declaration “a serious abuse of power.” The Wall Street Journal, [7/19/22]

Kilmeade called Biden’s executive orders tone-deaf and “agenda-driven,” insisting that they “will do nothing but hurt the price of oil and gas.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*,[7/19/22]

Hannity quoted climate denier Joe Bastardi, saying on his radio show that Democrats’ response to climate change is the “systemic dismantling of the American way of life. It’s not a rational response to a climate crisis.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [7/19/22]

Hosts of Fox’s Outnumbered claimed a possible climate emergency declaration from Biden “could cause a global depression,” is “suicide,” and is “going to kill the economy.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [7/19/22]

related: Tucker Carlson tells idiotic lie that “no one really believes in global warming”

07/20/22

Fox contributor calls for more coal plants as a solution to extreme heat

07/20/22

National TV networks mention climate change in 32% of segments on global extreme heat

07/19/22

---

---

via amy w

https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/deny-deceive-delay-documenting-and-responding-to-climate-disinformation-at-cop26-and-beyond-full/

Report authors: Jennie King, Lukasz Janulewicz, Francesca Arcostanzo

Contributing partners: CASM Technology, Conscious Advertising Network, Climate Nexus, Eco.Bot-Net, Friends of the Earth, Purpose, Reset Australia and Stop Funding Heat.

Special acknowledgments to Paula Matlach, Kata Balint, Cecile Simmons, Sara Bundzten and Melanie Smith for their efforts in ISD’s climate “War Room”, monitoring climate mis- and disinformation during COP26.

Published: 9 June 2022

In February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took an unprecedented step, citing mis- and disinformation and the “politicization of science” as key barriers to action. For the first time, a document accepted by all Member Governments stated that rhetoric from “vested economic and political interests… undermines climate science” and in turn has driven “public misperception of climate risks and polarised public support for climate actions”. The diagnosis was explicit, and built on a growing body of evidence produced across the environmental and research sectors in recent years: to solve the climate crisis, we must also tackle the information crisis.

Drawing on research compiled over the past 18 months, and especially in the margins and aftermath of COP26, we have clear evidence of the challenge at hand: the failure to stem mis- and disinformation online has allowed junk science, climate delayism and attacks on climate figures to become mainstreamed. Our analysis has shown how a small but dedicated community of actors boast disproportionate reach and engagement across social media, reaching millions of people worldwide and bolstered by legacy print, broadcast and radio outlets. Far from helping to mitigate this issue, tech platform systems appear to be amplifying or exacerbating the spread of such content. Moreover, the taxonomy of harm relating to climate mis- and disinformation has been poorly defined to date, providing an inadequate basis for response.

This report – ‘Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 and Beyond’ – is a collective effort to quantify the problem and establish concrete responses for the months and years ahead. Produced by ISD, CASM Technology and the Climate Action Against Disinformation alliance (CAAD), it is a data-driven examination of the landscape, actors, systems and approaches that are combining to prevent action on climate.

For the executive summary, please click here.

Published: 9 June 2022

In this executive summary we outline the most prominent discourses identified before, during and after COP26. These narratives show how the climate conversation has moved from outright climate denialism to delayism and distraction from acting. As these narratives infiltrate general discourse, stances on climate actions are entrenching into broader individual identity and grievance politics, emerging as a new front in the culture wars.

This report – ‘Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 and Beyond’ – is a collective effort to quantify the problem and establish concrete responses for the months and years ahead. Produced by ISD, CASM Technology and the Climate Action Against Disinformation alliance (CAAD), it is a data-driven examination of the landscape, actors, systems and approaches that are combining to prevent action on climate. Looking ahead, we have outlined recommendations for governments, multilateral bodies, tech platforms and the media in addressing this threat online.

For the full report, please click here.  https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Summative-Report-COP26.pdf

---

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Glossary of Terms

• Part 1: Discourses of Delay

o Hypocrisy and Elitism

o Absolutionism

o Unreliability of Renewables

o Ineffective Electric Vehicles

• Part 2: Understanding the Network - A Structural Analysis of Accounts on Twitter

o Network Overview (Graphika analysis)

o Key Communities (Graphika analysis)

o Key Actors

• Part 3: A Policy Response to Climate Mis- and Disinformation

Policy Ask 1 - Implement a unified definition of climate mis- and disinformation within key institutions

(e.g. IPCC, UNFCCC) and reflect these criteria in tech company Community Standards or Terms of Service

• Definition

• Current actions by platforms

• Indicative examples of content

Policy Ask 2 - Enforce platform policies against ‘Repeat Offender’ accounts

• Repeat Offender Network (Graphika analysis)

• Case studies

o Peter Imanulesen

o John Stossel

o Michael Shellenberger

o Bjorn Lomborg

o Tony Heller

o Patrick Moore

• Key takeaways

Policy Ask 3 - Limit media exemption loopholes within legislation

• Case Study 1: Recommendation algorithms on Facebook (Global Witness analysis)

• Case Study 2: Labelling misleading content on Facebook (Media Matters analysis)

• Case Study 3: A comparison of climate sceptic actors and Facebook’s Climate Science Center

Policy Ask 4 - Improve transparency on climate disinformation trends and the role played by algorithmic

amplification

• Most cited media outlet

o The Daily Mail

o The Guardian

o The Telegraph

o Watts Up With That (WWUT)

o The Wall Street Journal

• In-depth case study: Sky News Australia (ISD and Purpose analysis)

Policy Ask 5 - Strengthen platform labelling on ‘missing context’ and the re-posting of old or recycled

content

• Overview of theAd Tech ecosystem (CAN analysis)

• Case study 1: ExxonMobil (Eco.Bot-Net analysis)

• Case study 2: American Petroleum Institute (Eco.Bot-Net analysis)

Policy Ask 6 - Restrict paid advertising and sponsored content from fossil fuel companies, known front

groups, and/or actors repeatedly found to spread disinformation around climate

• Case study 1: The Daily Mail during COP26

• Case study 2: PragerU opposition to EVs

Policy Ask 7 - Enable API image-based searched to support research on viral disinformation

• Case study 1: Private jets in Glasgow

• Case study 2: Attacks on Txai Surui (Avaaz analysis)

• Appendix 1: Methodology

• COP26 ‘War Room’ - Technical Set-up

o Data collection strategy

o Overview of Beam

o Climate dashboards

• Other analyses

• Network mapping

• Media Matters (Policy Ask 3, Case Study 2)

• Queries/Keyword Dictionaries

...FAR-LEFT There is no broadly agreed definition of the far-left, and the scholarship on radical or far-left actions and groups in contemporary Western societies is much less developed than that surrounding the far-right. Following Cas Mudde and political researcher Luke March, as well as established framing of the far-right (see below), we propose a distinction between left-wing radicalism and extremism. Under this frame, the latter groups would be considered anti-democratic, while the former advocate fundamental political and economic changes without being anti-democratic per se. Radical left groups, actions or networks are typically rooted in Marxist, socialist or anarchist ideologies, and pursue an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and radically egalitarian and anti-fascist agenda, often with an internationalist outlook.

FAR-RIGHT There are no unanimously agreed parameters or traits for the term ‘far-right’, but for the purposes of this report we refer to the well-established framing put forward by Dutch political scientist and right-wing extremist expert Cas Mudde and UK-based academic Elisabeth Carter. This understands the extreme right to be typically marked by several of the following characteristics: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy, and strong-state advocacy or authoritarianism. We use the generic umbrella term ‘far-right’ to cover both radical and extreme right-wing groups, actions, and ideologies. The conceptual difference between right-wing radicalism and extremism is that the former is not explicitly anti-democratic (e.g. far-right libertarian, anti-Muslim groups), while the latter is characterised also by an explicit anti-democratic stance (e.g. openly fascist, neo-Nazi groups). Both share the core ideology of exclusivist nationalism, which openly advocates against the principle of egalitarianism.

LUKEWARMERS / LUKEWARMERISM The term ‘lukewarmer’ originated as a self-description by various authors and bloggers publishing on climate related topics, such as British Viscount and author Matt Ridley, before being picked up by media outlets as a wider narrative trend. Academic research has since defined this term as a basic acceptance of anthropogenic climate change combined with a belief that the threat is exaggerated, impacts will be markedly less than predicted by most climate scientists, or that global warming may even have beneficial effects. A key component of lukewarmerism is to claim that the ‘small and manageable’ effects of climate change render efforts to limit emissions ‘too difficult or expensive’, and that related calls to action are ‘alarmist’...

---

In recent years we have witnessed a clear evolution in rhetoric opposing the idea of climate change

and related action. While outright denial of climate change is still present and espoused by many

pundits, or found in their former outputs, it has largely been confined to the margins of public

debate. According to various large-scale polls - including a 2021 study of 1.2 million people in 50

countries by UNDP and the University of Oxford - there is a strong public mandate to address the

climate crisis. Denying the reality and impacts of climate change, or the need for corresponding

action, is therefore unlikely to hold sway as it might have done in previous decades. In its place,

narratives have trended towards discrediting any proposal for mitigation, adaptation and transition

• arguments sometimes referred to as ‘discourses of delay’ (see Fig. 1).

The ‘opposition playbook’ (i.e. the tactics used by those seeking to undermine action on climate

change) has been forced to adjust to this new paradigm, including by historically polluting industries

and those with vested interests. Even with broad consensus on the issue of climate, there is a long

road ahead to achieving meaningful policy change in line with IPCC warnings and the goals of the

Paris Agreement. By focussing efforts in that gap - between recognition, buy-in and action - actors

who oppose action can maintain the status quo without resorting to the now unpalatable opinions

of the nineties and early noughties. Arguments framed as ‘pro-green’ can still advocate for inertia

or inactivism, often using the veneer of fiscal pragmatism, free market logic and concerns about

individual liberty. In this way, environmentalism has followed policy issues like migration and public

health as a new front in the culture wars, becoming ever-more enmeshed in broader identity and

grievance politics. Whether through conspiracies like ‘climate lockdown’, or by conflating climate

with divisive issues like critical race theory, LGBTQ+ rights and abortion access, the goal of much

climate change mis- and/or disinformation is now is to distract and delay. Yet, with the window to

act deemed “brief and rapidly closing”, such an approach may prove fatal.

Monitoring by Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) over the course of COP26 and beyond

confirms these trends (more information about coalition partners can be found at the start of this

report). We identified four key ‘discourses of delay’ across social media, which continue to achieve

high reach and engagement or set the parameters for debate in contexts globally. These are:

PART 1: DISCOURSES OF DELAY

l ‘Hypocrisy and Elitism’

l ‘Absolutionism’

l ‘Unreliability of Renewables’

l ‘Ineffective Electric Vehicles’ ...

nice grf

1:Taxonomy for ‘Discourses of Delay’ from Lamb, W., Mattioli, G., Levi, S., Roberts, J., Capstick, S., Creutzig, F., . . . Steinberger, J. (2020). Discourses of climate delay. Global Sustainability, 3, E17. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.13

Absolutionism [but india china]

‘Absolutionism’, the second major narrative we identified and analysed, seeks to absolve a given country from taking any climate action by highlighting the perceived failings of another state or multilateral group. In the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Australia and other countries broadly categorised as ‘Western’, this line of argument tends to focus on China and, to a lesser extent, India for making insufficient progress or having weak onward targets. Russia and Saudi Arabia can also be cited, but are far less frequent targets for this line of argument. Analysis of this narrative has featured in previous ISD research across several geographies and is pivotal to delayist rhetoric, not least in the political sphere. Content generally condemns domestic policymaking on principle, claiming such efforts are: i) futile in reducing global carbon emissions (since others pollute more); ii) a form of ‘self-inflicted harm’ that punishes citizens (through loss of livelihoods, rising prices, lifestyle changes etc.); and/or iii) will cede power to geopolitical foes (who benefit from continued fossil fuel use and export)....

[pix w/ kohler box in bkgd]

the most widely shared Facebook post came from a page called ‘Wyoming Energy Families’, garnering over 19k shares and 13k likes. The page is overtly pro-oil, gas and coal and opposed to measures like Biden’s Build Back Better bill or increased use of wind power. Numerous US accounts shared the same image of a random EV charging port with a technical device directly adjacent, which they claimed to be a diesel generator. Such content is now marked as “False Information” by Facebook, highlighting that this is not a diesel generator powering the station, but content remains live on the platform. Other examples include: ● A high-volume public group called ‘Kaitlin Bennett’ with over 100k members and upwards of 400 posts a day, often memes in support of various US conservative talking points (823 shares/2k likes) ● A page labelled as ‘satire/parody’ called ‘No Definite Purpose’ which boasts 55k followers (204 shares) ● A page labelled as ‘interest’ called ‘The Lockdown Left Lunacy’ which has 3.6k+ followers and posts memes around rightleaning talking points. It also contains large volumes of content sceptic of COVID-19, vaccines and related public health measures ..

EV

A viral Bjorn Lomborg video from 2016 was re-shared in various forms by PragerU,a right-wing digital media entity, amassing 2.6m views/1k shares on a single post during COP26. Older posts containing the video were viewed 2.4 million times with 4.8k likes (PragerU on Facebook), 7.1m times (PragerU’s own website) and 1.9m times with 32k likes (PragerU on YouTube). The video claims that EVs have an equal, if not markedly worse, carbon footprint than existing petrol-based vehicles and thus constitute a ‘green myth’...

nice cluster grfs]

major communities

the largest and most vocal cohort in this network are right-wing groups, activists and pundits from the US, UK and Canada. Graphika’s mapping showed these groups were more active in conversations immediately preceding COP26 than dedicated climate sceptic and conspiracy accounts. All clusters tied to the political right-wing combined made up 43.31% of the map, compared with 31.36% comprising those focussed on science scepticism and related conspiracies.

Several top influencers at the core of the network fall into the category of sharing right-wing content: Dinesh D’Souza, Ezra Levant, Rita Panahi and PragerU. These conservative pundits and organisations have successfully built followings in their own right on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and alt-tech platforms. While climate issues are not part of their main content strategy, they nevertheless engage in frequent criticism of their respective governments’ environmental policies, attack or ridicule prominent climate activists, or employ narratives outlined in the previous section of this report. During COP26 in particular, they downplayed the climate emergency and amplified accusations of hypocrisy against politicians and other figures attending the Glasgow summit. The other major group in the network consists of four anti-science clusters.

As highlighted above, they coalesce around geographies, but showed interconnectedness during COP26 around content that extended beyond their local and national issues. It is noteworthy that COVID-19 and climate sceptic accounts overlap both structurally and in the content they share. The network includes several anti-vaccine clusters within the wider anti-science groups. For the purposes of this report, the terms “vaccine-sceptic, “anti-vaccine” and “anti-vaxx” cover a range of attitudes, characterised by distrust of a specific vaccine (e.g. for COVID-19) or immunisation regimes more broadly. “Vaccine sceptics” are not categorically opposed to vaccines, but have reservations to varying degrees about their safety, necessity or inclusion within health mandates. By contrast, “anti-vaxxers” are fundamentally opposed to vaccination as a matter of principle. Their reasons range from suppositions derived from conspiracy theories to the deeply held belief that vaccines constitute a harmful intervention into the body’s biochemical processes, potentially causing long-term damage. The most widely followed accounts in the UK-based Anti-Science/Conspiracy group are a mix of anti-vaccine influencers alongside prominent climate denialist.

..

stry-linked delegates

versus those representing indigenous communities and other frontline movements).

However, the vast majority of posts in this category came from accounts known

to share right-wing and far-right content, rarely engaging with the substance of

negotiations and instead focussing on COP26 as a symbol of the ‘liberal woke agenda’.

In total we identified 199,676 mentions of this narrative on Twitter (tweets and

retweets) and 4,377 posts on Facebook, which were shared 101,749 times between

10 October and 19 November 2022. Social media activity peaked during the opening

days of the summit, a trend echoed for all narratives analysed below. In the case

of ‘Hypocrisy and Elitism’, volume and engagement were largely spurred by the

arrival of delegates in Glasgow, in particular celebrities, world leaders and other

prominent public figures. Such content declined once negotiations began in earnest,

but for some outlets had already set the tone of their coverage and remained

a consistent theme.

Page 33

The most significant influencers in this category, such as Patrick Moore, Michael Shellenberger,

Bjorn Lomborg, Tony Heller or Friends of Science(see below), are characterised by their primary

focus on creating and sharing climate-related content. They most commonly come from scientific

or academic backgrounds and some were previously involved in the green movement. This allows

them to present themselves as ‘rationalist’ environmentalists and claim greater credibility for their

analysis. It also gives them significant appeal online and the potential to galvanise far broader

audiences, since they are frequently invited by conservative media outlets as ‘climate experts.’ It

should be noted, however, that there are cases where these pundits also delved into other policy

areas or culture wars-type content.

A prime example of this phenomenon is Michael Shellenberger, who contributed to a ‘Woke Religion

Taxonomy’ that presented climate action and several other causes as ‘easily debunked myths and

supernatural beliefs.’ In 2021, Shellenberger also published a book critical of policies he claims

contribute to homelessness in San Francisco, with the subtitle ‘Why Progressives ruin cities’, before

announcing his candidacy as an Independent in the 2022 California Gubernatorial race (against

Democrat incumbent Gavin Newson). This branching-out is reciprocated by accounts that focus on

portraying themselves as ‘rational’ voices against ‘woke’ society.

The remaining key influencers in the ‘Anti-Science’ group fall into this contrarian set, sometimes

branded as the ‘Intellectual Dark Web.’ While their focus is on social wedge issues, climate change

also plays a role in such ‘anti-woke’ messaging. Jordan B. Peterson, the fourth most followed account

in the overall network, falls into this category and has a track record of both climate-sceptic and

climate denialist statements (covered below and in other sections of the report). Peterson’s central

placement in the network emphasises the role such influencers play in amplifying and sustaining

a climate sceptic community. Another member of this group, Peter Boghossian, collaborated with

Shellenberger on the abovementioned ‘Woke Religion Taxonomy...

---

Description

Dr Jordan BPeterson

Facebook - 1.4m

Instagram - 2.9m

TikTok - 442k

Twitter - 2.2m

YouTube - 4.5m

Reddit: 274k

Quora: 41.9k

Now-emeritus Professor of Psychology

at the University of Toronto, Peterson

initially achieved fame on YouTube for his

polemical takes on culture and liberalism.

He has since become a ‘celebrity

intellectual’ within conservative circles,

sparking controversy on everything from

feminism and gender identity to racial

privilege and university censorship. Over

the course of 2021, Peterson became more

publicly vocal on environmental issues,

amplifying stances by other pundits like

Lomborg and Shellenberger.

In January 2022, Peterson was widely

criticised for inaccurate statements made

about climate science, environmental

modelling and other issues on the Joe

Rogan podcast. This included claims such

as “there’s no such thing as ‘climate’”

because “‘climate’ and ‘everything’ are

the same word”; that “more people die

every year from solar energy than from

nuclear”; and that US carbon emissions

have decreased over the past 20 years due

to fracking. Following pushback from the

scientific community, Peterson tweeted a

thread to his 2.2m followers encouraging

them to read ‘Hot Talk, Cold Science:

Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate’ by

the (now deceased) climate sceptic Fred S.

Singer.As documented by DeSmog, Singer

was a career climate change denialist

and a regular recipient of funds from the

Heartland Institute. In a 2018 episode of

Rogan’s podcast, Peterson joked that he

had learnt ‘how to monetize social justice

warriors’ through his own reactionary

content.

---

d’Souza is a right-wing commentator

and author, who started his career

in the Reagan administration and

mainstream conservative think tanks

the American Enterprise Institute and

the Hoover Institution. Chiefly known

for his controversial views on race, as

well as producing conspiracy-based

content on the cultural left and US

Democratic Party, D’Souza has also

garnered attention for his climate

denialism. This includes comparing

Greta Thunberg to ‘Nordic white girls

with braids’ from ‘Nazi propaganda’

campaigns, and a track record of

stoking outrage about alleged climate

hypocrisy.

Ezra Levant

Facebook - 73k

(personal), 276k

(Rebel News)

Instagram - 3.2k

(personal) / 210k

(Rebel News)

TikTok - 12.4k

(Rebel News)

Twitter - 296.6k

(personal) / 263.3k

(Rebel News)

YouTube - 1.52m

(Rebel News)

A Canadian conservative lawyer

turned media figure. He is the founder

of the right-wing media organisation

Rebel Media, notorious for its extreme

anti-Muslim views. In the past, the

outlet had far-right figures Tommy

Robinson and Gavin McInnes on its

payroll. Levant himself has a long

track record of supporting the fossil

fuel industry in his home province of

Alberta, particularly in his 2010 nonfiction book “Ethical Oil.” .

Former environmentalist turned ‘ecopragmatist’ pundit. Shellenberger co-founded the Breakthrough Institute in 2003 and has been the FounderPresident of Environmental Progress since 2015. He regularly writes about climate and energy for Forbes. His position has been described as a “lukewarmer” towards climate change: He publicly apologised on behalf of environmentalists for a ‘climate scare’ while supporting fracking and the shale gas industry, as well as highlighting the world’s improved ability to withstand natural disasters. He is also a keen supporter of nuclear power, and the 2017 annual report of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of the US nuclear industry, suggests he was engaged by the group to give media interviews and write op-eds. In 2020, Shellenberger published the debunked climate book ‘Apocalypse Never’, and in October 2021 was featured on Joe Rogan’s podcast talking about ‘Climate Change Alarmism.’

 Following COP26, he attacked it as “neo-feudal” pageantry and that it “gathered all of the world’s douchebags in a single conference.”

no lnx

moore: A former President of Greenpeace Canada,who has since been denounced by the organisation for ‘offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues’ and for being ‘a paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries.’ Greenpeace particularly criticises how Moore uses his former ties to the group to claim legitimacy and expertise, especially his refuted claim that he co-founded Greenpeace. Moore is the author of ‘Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist,’ Director of the C02 Coalition, and Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute. Notably, his claims denying a climate crisis and portraying global warming as potentially beneficial were shared on Twitter by then-US President Donald Trump after Moore was featured by Fox News in 2019. He has in the past also denied anthropogenic climate change before the US Senate. He also shares his views on climate policy on social media. A twitter thread calling Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a ‘pompous little twit’ and claiming her Green New Deal proposals would cause ‘mass death worse than WW2’ garnered widespread attention.

PragerU’

a tax-exempt, non-profit media company, primarily targeting millennials and Gen-Z audiences online in the US. Their outputs span a range of conservative narratives, with the self-described aim to “promote American values…[as] an alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education”. Its founder, radio host Dennis Prager, has openly claimed that the Green New Deal “will lead to bloodshed, loss of liberty, loss of human rights” and that “climate change is God’s will”.PragerU’s online platform was launched in part through investment from fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks, and regularly platforms other key players in this network such as Bjorn Lomborg, Patrick Moore, Dinesh D’Souza and Alex Epstein. According to their main website, PragerU content has garnered over 5 billion views with 4 million average views daily. It also claims that 60% of its YouTube audience are under 35 and 70% of them’ changed their mind on at least one issue’ after viewing PragerU content (further profiles available via Media Matters for America; DeSmog; New York Times).

key amplifier

scott adams: A cartoonist and author, best known for the popular “Dilbert” comics, Adams has turned into an internet provocateur popular with right-wing audiences. During the 2016 Republican primaries he compared Donald Trump to Jesus and vocally supported him while in office. Despite later criticism around the 2020 Presidential Debate, Adams originally defended Trump’s controversial response to the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville in 2017. As part of Adams’ wider propagation of conspiracies, including predictions that Republicans would be hunted and killed if Joe Biden won the 2020 election, he also engages in climate denialism commentary.

President of the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, Fitton has also promoted false claims about the 2020 Iowa caucuses and vote counting during the 2020 US Presidential elections. He was identified as a major amplifier of COVID-19 disinformation by the Federation of American Scientists and linked to the Trump administration’s efforts to portray Antifa as a left-wing terrorist group. Fitton denied that Judicial Watch has a stance on climate change, despite trying to obtain the private communication of climate scientists working for the US government. However, his personal social media profile involves posts calling climate change ‘fanaticism’ and labelling it a totalitarian ideology, together with other topics like critical race theory.

tony heller: Also known by his pen name Steven Goddard, Heller’s main output is the blog Real Climate Science. A debunked claim that the world is cooling and climate scientists falsify the data, which gained prominent exposure in conservative media, has been traced back by Media Matters to Heller’s blog. In 2017, Heller was invited as an expert to a hearing of the Washington state legislature. The same year, he was also a panellist on an event at that year’s CPAC conference. Beyond his climate focus, Heller has also spread other conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting, former President Obama’s birthplace and the 2020 US Presidential election.

solutions

...In April 2022, the US-based Climate Disinformation Coalition, along with Friends of the Earth, Avaaz, and Greenpeace USA, released an analysis of social media companies’ policies. The 27-point evaluation of Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube found that all companies fell short on adopting definitions and policies to address the issue at scale, and continue to conceal data about the prevalence and impact of climate disinformation on their products or services. 

Of the five companies assessed, Pinterest and YouTube were deemed to have taken the most notable steps, including explicit mis-/disinformation policies informed by climate experts - both scored 14 out of a possible 27.Pinterest’s new policy rollout, which directly cites language from the above definition within their community standards, helped raise their score. In contrast, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter fared the worst, receiving 9, 7, and 5 points respectively due to a lack of transparency and detail on how they are holding repeat offenders accountable. The full report shows how social media leadership has largely failed to take action against climate disinformation despite promises to do so. This lack of transparency prevents climate experts, researchers and advocates from monitoring the severity of the problem and uprooting the mis-/disinformation ecosystem at a time when the window for climate action is fast closing.

ask 2 ban repeat offenders

the largest technology companies claim to be tackling disinformation, climate or otherwise, through policies within their Terms of Service or Community Standards. By engaging third-party fact-checkers, the premise is that posts rated ‘false’ or ‘misleading’ will be labelled, downranked and/or removed, and some punitive action taken against the related account depending on the severity of the content and number of ‘strikes’ already recorded. It follows that such measures should be properly enforced and, above all, prevent ‘repeat offenders’ acting with impunity on their platforms. Unfortunately this is not the case, even for the types of disinformation explicitly covered by company policies (e.g. Twitter’s Covid-19 Misleading Information Policy and Civic Integrity and Election Fraud Policy; Facebook’s Covid-19 Misinformation Policy).

As reported by CNN in September: “Some platforms have three-strike policies for specific violations, others use five strikes. Twitter (TWTR) doles out strikes separately for misinformation related to Covid-19 and civic integrity, which could give misinformation spreaders up to nine chances before being booted from the platform. On YouTube and Facebook (FB), expiration timelines for strikes — 90 days and a year, respectively — could provide loopholes for people looking to post misinformation spread out over time, especially when using multiple accounts, experts say. And in some cases, strikes don’t always amount to a ban.”

As in other areas like public health, our research shows that a small group of accounts create the majority of anti-climate content, originate or amplify new lines of attack, and have disproportionate influence on the public debate across social media (see also CCDH’s report on the ‘Toxic Ten’). Many of these accounts have been labelled by fact-checkers as sharing false or misleading content, yet remain live even after repeated flags by our coalition directly to platforms’ internal teams. Such disinformation is often not limited to climate issues, but runs the gamut of ‘culture wars’ talking points: from anti-vaxx and COVID-19 scepticism to conspiracies like the New World Order, unsubstantiated claims of ‘voter fraud’, or Holocaust denial.

In some cases, such as with Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, high-visibility figures have eventually been banned, although not before they could garner millions of interactions for their content and cultivate profiles on other mainstream and ‘alt-tech’ platforms to maintain an audience. There is also limited consistency across platforms - while Watson has been suspended from Facebook, he boasts 1.1m Twitter followers, 1.9m YouTube subscribers and even maintains an Instagram account with over 40k followers. Meanwhile, articles and posts re-sharing Watson’s content, as well as public fan groups, remain active on Facebook.

...

eg

pPETER IMANUELSEN

An emerging trend appears to be ‘contrarian’ or polemical figures using climate to spread their broader worldview and recruit new followers. This includes vlogger Peter Imanuelsen - Twitter alias @PeterSweden - who featured prominently in our COP26 data collections with posts such as on page 65. Imanuelsen is a controversial figure beyond climate, previously tweeting that “the Holocaust is a lie to further the agenda of the NWO”, that Hitler “had some good points” and that “the globalists (mainly Jews) are the ones bringing in the muslims to Europe”. He has also espoused strong antiimmigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, as documented by Media Matters in 2018 and more recently by Hope not Hate. The repeated framing of climate action as “communism” or “global tyranny” may also prove a dog-whistle to antisemitic tropes, tying into recent conspiracies like The Great Reset which play on scapegoating of ‘Jewish elites’.

From ISD analysis, Imanuelsen’s major amplifiers span Bitcoin advocates, COVID-19 conspiracists and accounts using the anti-Biden catchphrase ‘Let’s Go Brandon’, many with their own follower counts in the tens of thousands to millions. Notable accounts retweeting his content include a UK actress (519k followers), a Mexican influencer (804k followers), a US-based OnlyFans model (505k followers), an NFT trader (260k followers) and a lifestyle coach (142k followers).

On the political front, his posts have been re-tweeted by figures including Martin Daubney from the right-wing party Reform UK, Dutch right-wing politician Thierry Baudet,former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Monica Crowley, and Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts. Many of these accounts were most engaged with content around COVID-19, but would likely be exposed to Imanuelsen’s rhetoric on climate in parallel. Brandwatch shows 235,700 retweets or quote tweets of his posts in the period from 25 October - 14 November 2021 (immediately before and during COP26). Applying a filter to look for COVID-19 related keywords (e.g. medical; covid; QR code; mask; hospital) and climate keywords (e.g. climate; power plant; global warming; COP26), we found 85,569 retweets contained the former and 54,454 retweets contained the latter, although some will constitute an overlap.

...jOHN STOSSEL

On the other side of the spectrum is John Stossel. Starting his career as a primetime TV host on ABC’s 20/20 segment, he sparked controversy for using child interviewees to push an anti-environmental stance. Stossel transitioned to Fox Business News from 2009-2016, after which his own production company became one of the top contractors for the Charles Koch Institute. The company secured over $1.5 million in Koch contracts from 2017-2019, in addition to nearly $500,000 of Koch donations to Stossel’s non-profit. He is currently suing Facebook for defamation after a fact checker debunked one of his posts, stating it contained a video with active climate disinformation. This has resulted in a reduction of ad revenue and traffic to his page. However, on Twitter Stossel received the highest average interaction per post among the 16 key accounts monitored. His 9 posts about COP26 drew an average of 905 interactions each - three times greater than the average (though this is likely due to his sparse posting relative to others, rather than any inherent quality of his content.) [twt pix]

On 1 November, as COP26 officially began in Glasgow, Stossel posted a “Paris Climate Fraud” video that amassed over 300,000 views on Twitter. Three days later, he tweeted a video of a panel presentation he hosted in 2019, organised by the polluter-funded and frequently fact checked Heartland Institute. It featured Patrick Michaels, who once guessed that around 40% of his research funding came from fossil fuels; David Legates, whose climate denial led him to be reassigned under the Trump administration; and Willie Soon, who in 2015 was outed by the New York Times for receiving over a million dollars from the fossil fuel industry to produce climate disinformation. This lineup of climate deniers was not new, and the video itself had already been fact checked by ClimateFeedback where it was rated to have “very low” credibility and said to use “imprecise language that misleads viewers about the scientific understanding of climate change”. However, since Twitter lacks a climate disinformation policy that would recognise and action fact checks, the clip could once again gain traction online. On 1 November, Stossel also posted a video to Facebook which has garnered over 900,000 views and frames nuclear energy as “the ONLY technology” which could help mitigate climate change. The clip once again repurposed old content which had already been fact-checked, featuring individuals who create and/or propagate climate disinformation regularly...

stossel has not slowed down with his climate disinformation efforts since COP26. On 30 November 2021, he posted a YouTube video attacking Poynter, the highly esteemed journalism institution that oversees the fact checking organisations used by Facebook (including ClimateFeedback). The transcript of the video was quickly picked up by right-wing and/or polluter-funded outlets like the Daily Signal, Heartland, TownHall and PatriotPost. In it, Stossel interviews other figures known for spreading anti-science misinformation: a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as well as Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg who are covered in further detail below.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGERProducing 203 climate-focused tweets during COP26, Michael Shellenberger was a key influencer during the summit, garnering over 124,000 interactions for content attacking COP26 or the premise of climate change. On 28 October, before the summit had even begun, Shellenberger shared Bjorn Lomborg’s article in the Wall Street Journal which questioned the impacts of climate change and was retweeted a thousand times. He featured continually in our dataset throughout the event, often achieving some of the highest engagement figures in a given day. On November 11, as negotiations neared their climax, he tweeted a graphic entitled “Woke Religion: A Taxonomy” which was co-authored with academic Peter Boghossian and positions climate change alongside other contentious issues such as racism, gender identity, crime and mental illness. Under the ‘Myths’ column for climate are statements such as “The Earth’s climate was safer in the past”, “We can power world with renewables” and “Human civilization is unsustainable”, while ‘Supernatural Beliefs’ (defined as beyond scientific understanding or known laws of nature) include “Humans causing sixth mass extinction”, “Prosperity doesn’t depend on high energy use” and “Study of ‘tipping points’ is scientific”. In the same diagram, ‘Taboo Facts’ and ‘Taboo Speech’ (things which are supposedly

censored from mainstream debate) encompass “Deaths from natural disasters have declined 90% since 1900”, “Renewables are dirty to produce and distribute”, “Fracking reduces carbon emissions” and “Economic development outweighs impact of climate change”.

The taxonomy also implies that oil and gas companies, the Koch Brothers and “climate deniers” have been unfairly cast as villains in the climate debate, while actors like Greta Thunberg, climate scientists and UN officials are uncritically chosen to lead. Shellenberger’s taxonomy was liked over 6.5k times and retweeted over 2k times, including from a number of influential accounts across media and politics. Like others highlighted in this section, he has become central to so-called ‘anti-woke’ networks on social media, who in turn expose their audiences to such climate sceptic or actively misleading content. Posts like the one described above have been shared by figures such as journalist Glenn Greenwald (1.7m followers), former OANN correspondent and far-right activist Jack Posobiec (1.6m followers), Fox News host Bret Baier (1.3m followers) and contributor Brit Hume (1.2m followers), Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw (1.1m followers), conspiracy theorist and ‘alt-right’ agitator Mike Cernovich (847k followers), Spanish People’s Party politician Toni Cantó (425k followers), right-wing content mill PragerU (617k followers), and Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi (284k followers). The breadth and cumulative reach of these accounts is notable, as is their potential to influence public opinion at a transnational level. This further reinforces how a handful of individuals can serve as engines for a wider movement, providing content or lines of attack which are easily repurposed in different geographic contexts.

...BJORN LOMBORG Lomborg has cultivated a strong presence in both legacy and social media, most notably via his regular column in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and frequent platform in outlets across the globe including Fox News, The Daily Mail, the New York Post, Sky News Australia, talkRADIO and Forbes. One of Lomborg’s first columns for WSJ was fact checked by PolitiFact, but this did not prevent their editorial page editor Paul Gigot from interviewing him on Fox News, a clip which Lomborg then posted to his Facebook page. During COP26, an old video of Lomborg was repurposed by right-wing propaganda hub PragerU to attack electric vehicles, garnering millions of interactions on Facebook - this case study is documented fully in Policy Ask 6.

He also appeared in The Washington Post thanks to a column by Marc Thessein (itself fact checked), who is affiliated with a group funded partially by polluters and tobacco companies and has a history of platforming climate disinformation. While the fact-checks may have slowed Lomborg’s spread on Facebook, he still garnered over a thousand interactions for one post alone. Meanwhile on Twitter, where there were no parallel measures to curb reach, Lomborg neared 20,000 interactions for his 60 climate posts over the COP period. The Daily Mail also appeared as a top performing domain in our overall dataset, within which Lomborg’s COP26 op-ed was the second most shared link. Across the monitored timeframe, key amplifiers of Lomborg’s content included Fox News contributor Brit Hume (1.2m followers), talkRADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer (367k followers), conservative Canadian YouTuber Lauren Chen (325k followers), Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi (284k followers), British MP and member of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group Steve Baker (152k followers), and prominent Polish climate denier Łukasz Warzecha (130k followers).

TONY HELLER A retired computer engineer turned video producer, Heller posted nearly 300 tweets to his nowsuspended account and garnered almost 30,000 interactions during COP26. Heller is commonly known by the pseudonym ‘Steven Goddard’ and formerly contributed to climate denial blog WattsUpWithThat - he has previously described global warming as “the biggest scientific fraud in history”. In addition to content on COVID-19 conspiracy theories, which led to his suspension from Twitter in mid-December 2021, Heller also pushed the debunked conspiracy that temperature records are being manipulated to justify climate action. He has been repeatedly fact-checked for such claims, including by ClimateFeedback and Politifact, but remained a key influencer online during the Glasgow summit. While Heller’s content has earned him temporary suspensions from YouTube and Twitter, previous bans were lifted and do not seem to have affected his general rhetoric - the most recent suspension from Twitter appears to be permanent, but came after he had amassed hundreds of thousands of interactions on topics including COVID-19 and climate change.

PATRICK MOORE Canadian activist Patrick Moore is another individual whose online reach has not been curbed by repeated fact-checks. He presents himself as a Greenpeace “Co-Founder”, although the organisation has strongly distanced itself from any former affiliation and Moore’s more recent stances on climate. He now oversees the CO2 Coalition. Moore self-describes as a ‘sensible environmentalist’, and achieves continually high engagement on Twitter in particular. A week before COP26 began he achieved nearly 45k likes and 16k retweets for one post, sharing a Sky News Australia segment in which the host condemned youth climate activists as “selfish, badly educated virtue-signalling little turds”. His most popular content tends to push back against ‘woke media’ who dismiss those sceptical of the climate crisis/emergency as ‘eco-traitors’. Similar to Shellenberger and Lomborg, Moore’s success is partially dependent on branding himself a pro-climate ‘liberal’, although his content is frequently debunked or rated false by entities like ClimateFeedback, The Tyee and PolitiFact. Despite such comprehensive fact-checks, Moore’s social media presence remains unfettered and high-traction. For example, over 6000 users liked his erroneous claim that COP26 was running on diesel fuel, with nearly 3000 retweets. An official fact-check by the COP Presidency team (commented under Moore’s post) received only 70 likes and less than 20 retweets - a stark reminder of the attention disinformation can gain in the face of verified sources. During COP26 alone, key amplifiers of Lomborg’s content included Jordan B. Peterson (2.4m followers), Rebel News journalist Ezra Levant (353k followers), and conservative Canadian politician Maxime Bernier (186k followers)

...these case studies are by no means exhaustive, but highlight a few key features of the ‘repeat offender’ cohort:

1) The network is mutually reinforcing, with many actors cross-referencing, sharing or making appearances in each other’s content. This creates an impression of consensus and ‘critical mass’ on social media, and confers false legitimacy on individuals in the wider media landscape. 

2) Accounts are repeatedly fact-checked without any meaningful response from platforms. Many of the largest tech companies tout their partnership with ‘independent, third-party’ fact-checkers, certified via bodies like the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), to identify, review and take action on questionable content. As Facebook highlights on its website, this model is intended to combat viral misinformation, with a focus on false claims that are ‘timely or trending and important to the average person’. The company also states that ‘pages, groups, accounts and websites that repeatedly share misinformation will face some restrictions, including having their distribution reduced’, among other punitive actions. Our analysts found some instances where fact-checking labels had been applied to content, or where users were directed to more reliable content hubs and sources. However, beyond this lowest-tier measure there is little evidence of any enforcement against known disinformers, even during critical moments like a global climate summit or extreme weather event.

 3) Repeat offenders have often spread mis- or disinformation on multiple topics. This is most clearly observed in the number of high-traction accounts sharing misleading claims on climate and COVID-19, but encompasses a wider range of issues - from anti-vaxx sentiment and genocide denial to conspiracies such as QAnon, the Great Reset and electoral fraud. This should provide an even greater incentive for platforms to act, since an effective response against such accounts could have a ‘force multiplier’ effect and mitigate harm in multiple areas

POLICY ASK 3: IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY AND DATA ACCESS FOR VETTED RESEARCHERS AND REGULATORS ON CLIMATE MISINFORMATION TRENDS, AS WELL AS THE ROLE PLAYED BY ALGORITHMIC AMPLIFICATION...

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-funder-of-clim_b_8684320

ExxonMobil, Funder of Climate Change Deniers

It's been an interesting time watching the ExxonMobil attempt to defend its track record on climate science, in the wake of revelations that it had bone fide climate scientists properly studying the issue since the 1970's. Co-author of exxonsecrets.org It's been an interesting time watching the ExxonMobil attempt to defend its track record on climate science, in the wake of revelations that it had bone fide climate scientists properly studying the issue since the 1970's.

The #ExxonKnew investigations by Inside Climate News and the LA Times have had ExxonMobil's head of PR, Ken Cohen, furiously tweeting, writing letters, and appearing on news programmes to defend his company's honor.

"Our company's work to help understand the role that man-made CO2 emissions play in climate fluctuations has continued unabated for four decades," he opined in the Wall St Journal.

But that's the point. ExxonMobil did know about the science. So the question now is how can the company explain its role in funding, to the tune of $31m 1998-2014, the think tanks running climate denial campaigns specifically aimed at undermining the very science that Exxon's own scientists were studying?

A new review of the climate change papers published by ExxonMobil to somehow defend its position has shown that there was 100 percent consensus among its scientists that global warming is caused by human interference.

Exxon's denial appears to have begun in earnest with CEO Lee Raymond, back in the 90's. Raymond became CEO of Exxon in 1993, and CEO and Chairman of the newly-merged ExxonMobil in 1999.

"A factual, common sense approach will also serve us well as we address the issue that perhaps poses the greatest long-term threat to our industry -- so-called global climate change," Raymond told the annual meeting of the America Petroleum Institute (API) in 1996.

The same year, he told Exxon staff in the company magazine "Lamplight" that "scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect global climate."

In 1998, Exxon lobbyist Randy Randol was present at a meeting organised by the API, along with a number of the think tanks Exxon funded, where they created a communications strategy to undermine support for the Kyoto Protool, by questioning the science.

The leaked strategy's stated goal was "A majority of the American Public, including industry leadership, recognizes that signifcant uncertainties exist in climate science and therefore raises questions among those (e.g. U.S. Congress) who chart the future U.S. course on global climate change."

Victory, it stated, would be achieved when Americans, industry and media understood the uncertainties on climate science, and those supporting the Kyoto Protocol "on the basis of extant science appear out of touch with reality."

Leaks of the paper may have led to the campaign being quashed, but this was the strategy that ExxonMobil was to fund to the present day.

The think tanks present at the meeting included a number of those funded by ExxonMobil Foundation, under the leadership of Ken Cohen, its chair since 1999.

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), while it no longer receives ExxonMobil funding, is launching a film challenging the science of global warming in Paris on December 7, as part of its 20-year campaign undermining climate science.

Under Lee Raymond's chairmanship, before his retirement in 2005, ExxonMobil spent millions funding these denial campaigns, and on a number of ads in the New York Times opinion pages. In one, in 2000, entitled "Unsettled Science," ExxonMobil quoted science on temperatures in the Sargasso Sea to prove that global warming wasn't happening.

Raymond himself cited the study at the company's AGM that year. The scientist who authored it, wrote to ExxonMobil saying:

"I believe ExxonMobil has been misleading in its use of the Sargasso Sea data. There's really no way these results bear on the question of human induced climate warming... I think the sad thing is the a company with the resources of ExxonMobil is exploiting the data for political purposes."

Think tanks receiving grants from the ExxonMobil Foundation include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which was the leading think tank pushing climate denial, coordinating the "Cooler Heads Coalition." At one point, ExxonMobil funded nearly all the groups listed in the coalition.

In 2005, the CEI ran a TV ad proclaiming "C02 is Life." This was the last straw for the UK's Royal Society, which complained to ExxonMobil and led Cohen to declare, in 2007, that the company was no longer funding these organisations. The world's media heralded the move. But ExxonMobil quietly continued funding the think tanks, extensively. In 2009, it dropped a few more.

While Ken Cohen might try to state that the organizations he funded could do what they wanted, it's important to note that in some years, the company specifically spelt out its funding as being for their work on climate change.

Even today, ExxonMobil continues to be a member of -- and to fund -- the American Legislative Exchange Council which, at its annual meeting, has hosted a number of climate change-denying scientists to question the existence of global warming. Research has revealed that that ExxonMobil donated at least $1.6 million to ALEC between 1998 and 2012. In 2014 it gave them more.

A study published in PNAS on November 23 looked at the effect of grants from ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers on the discourse around climate science. It showed that the climate denial echo chamber organizations they funded produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The way ExxonMobil is reacting to the #ExxonKnew revelations is bizarre. In the full knowledge of the climate change science, provided to it by its own scientists, this company has spent years, and many millions, funding the myths created by the denier industry to obfuscate the science and slow change.

To me, although I'm not a lawyer, knowing about the harm caused by your product, then spending millions on trying to create doubt about the facts of that harm, sounds very similar to what another industry did with its product.

This post is part of a "Corporate Skullduggery" series produced by The Huffington Post, in conjunction with the U.N.'s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris (Nov. 30-Dec. 11), aka the climate-change conference. The series will put a spotlight on businesses that have actively tried to mislead the public about the dangers of climate change or about their own contributions to rising temperatures. To view the entire series, visit here.

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ref

https://www.desmog.com**/2015**/11/23/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media/

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The abstract and full text of the study can be found here: Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change.

The analysis of 20 years’ worth of data by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond a doubt that ExxonMobil and the Kochs are the key actors who funded the creation of climate disinformation think tanks and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse.

“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,” Dr. Farrell told the Washington Post which was first to cover the news of the study’s release. “This counter-movement produced messages aimed, at the very least, at creating ideological polarization through politicized tactics, and at the very most, at overtly refuting current scientific consensus with scientific findings of their own,” Dr. Farrell said.

From PNAS’s press briefing note about the article by Dr. Farrell:

Corporate funding likely influences the nature and content of polarizing texts pertaining to climate change, according to a study. Political polarization has become a hallmark of climate change policy discussion, with multiple groups in various sectors contributing to public discourse regarding climate and energy. To quantify the influence of corporate funding in climate change discourse, Justin Farrell analyzed more than 39 million words of text produced by 164 organizations active in the climate change counter-movement between 1993 and 2013. The author examined the ideological content of the produced texts, as well as the funding behind the organizations that produced the texts.

Organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have produced polarizing texts, the author found, with ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundation acting as influential funders (emphasis added). Further, according to the author, corporate funding may have influenced the ideological content of produced texts. The results suggest quantitative evidence of the influence of funding in the climate change debate that had previously been hypothesized, and suggests an analytical model for integrating texts with the social networks that created them, according to the author.

This study confirms once again the central thesis of industry-funded attacks on climate science, which inspired the DeSmog book Climate Cover-up and countless articles about the deception campaign over the past decade.

Now let’s see how the mainstream media cover this story — that is what I’m most curious to see. (The Washington Post article was pretty straightforward, although it gave ExxonMobil an unchallenged last word, and Joby Warrick seemed to pose a bogus question to Dr. Farrell equating the fossil-funded disinformation campaign with pro-climate-action campaigns, but Dr. Farrell correctly rebutted such a comparison.)

Will this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation?

Will false balance — quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote — finally stop?

Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn’t published any longer?

It’s critically important today that the public hears the scientific facts about climate change without the confusion injected into the policy debate by well-funded think tanks and their highly paid PR operative counterparts.

Dr. Farrell’s research also provides further evidence of the public deception orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry, and should prove valuable to investigators examining ExxonMobil as well as other current and future efforts to hold polluters accountable for their PR pollution.

Here is a video produced years ago, “Doubt” by The Climate Reality Project, which provides a nice overview of this issue[vid]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVjr-qOpNk

also highly suggested: track down access to Merchants of Doubt, the full-length documentary by Food Inc. director Robert Kenner that exposes the history of tobacco-to-climate denial and their common PR manipulators such as Marc Morano and Fred Singer.

It’s far beyond the time to end the climate cover-up. And responsible media can lead the way.

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-funder-of-clim_b_8684320

no lnx

ExxonMobil, Funder of Climate Change Deniers

It's been an interesting time watching the ExxonMobil attempt to defend its track record on climate science, in the wake of revelations that it had bone fide climate scientists properly studying the issue since the 1970's.

By

Cindy Baxter, Contributor

Co-author of exxonsecrets.org

Updated December 1, 2016

Stacks and burn-off from the Exxon Mobil refinery are seen at dusk in St. Bernard Parish, La., Friday, Feb. 13, 2015.]

It's been an interesting time watching the ExxonMobil attempt to defend its track record on climate science, in the wake of revelations that it had bone fide climate scientists properly studying the issue since the 1970's.

The #ExxonKnew investigations by Inside Climate News and the LA Times have had ExxonMobil's head of PR, Ken Cohen, furiously tweeting, writing letters, and appearing on news programmes to defend his company's honor.

"Our company's work to help understand the role that man-made CO2 emissions play in climate fluctuations has continued unabated for four decades," he opined in the Wall St Journal.

But that's the point. ExxonMobil did know about the science. So the question now is how can the company explain its role in funding, to the tune of $31m 1998-2014, the think tanks running climate denial campaigns specifically aimed at undermining the very science that Exxon's own scientists were studying?

A new review of the climate change papers published by ExxonMobil to somehow defend its position has shown that there was 100 percent consensus among its scientists that global warming is caused by human interference.

Exxon's denial appears to have begun in earnest with CEO Lee Raymond, back in the 90's. Raymond became CEO of Exxon in 1993, and CEO and Chairman of the newly-merged ExxonMobil in 1999.

"A factual, common sense approach will also serve us well as we address the issue that perhaps poses the greatest long-term threat to our industry -- so-called global climate change," Raymond told the annual meeting of the America Petroleum Institute (API) in 1996.

The same year, he told Exxon staff in the company magazine "Lamplight" that "scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect global climate."

In 1998, Exxon lobbyist Randy Randol was present at a meeting organised by the API, along with a number of the think tanks Exxon funded, where they created a communications strategy to undermine support for the Kyoto Protool, by questioning the science.

The leaked strategy's stated goal was "A majority of the American Public, including industry leadership, recognizes that signifcant uncertainties exist in climate science and therefore raises questions among those (e.g. U.S. Congress) who chart the future U.S. course on global climate change."

Victory, it stated, would be achieved when Americans, industry and media understood the uncertainties on climate science, and those supporting the Kyoto Protocol "on the basis of extant science appear out of touch with reality."

Leaks of the paper may have led to the campaign being quashed, but this was the strategy that ExxonMobil was to fund to the present day.

The think tanks present at the meeting included a number of those funded by ExxonMobil Foundation, under the leadership of Ken Cohen, its chair since 1999.

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), while it no longer receives ExxonMobil funding, is launching a film challenging the science of global warming in Paris on December 7, as part of its 20-year campaign undermining climate science.

Under Lee Raymond's chairmanship, before his retirement in 2005, ExxonMobil spent millions funding these denial campaigns, and on a number of ads in the New York Times opinion pages. In one, in 2000, entitled "Unsettled Science," ExxonMobil quoted science on temperatures in the Sargasso Sea to prove that global warming wasn't happening.

Raymond himself cited the study at the company's AGM that year. The scientist who authored it, wrote to ExxonMobil saying:

"I believe ExxonMobil has been misleading in its use of the Sargasso Sea data. There's really no way these results bear on the question of human induced climate warming... I think the sad thing is the a company with the resources of ExxonMobil is exploiting the data for political purposes."

Think tanks receiving grants from the ExxonMobil Foundation include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which was the leading think tank pushing climate denial, coordinating the "Cooler Heads Coalition." At one point, ExxonMobil funded nearly all the groups listed in the coalition.

In 2005, the CEI ran a TV ad proclaiming "C02 is Life." This was the last straw for the UK's Royal Society, which complained to ExxonMobil and led Cohen to declare, in 2007, that the company was no longer funding these organisations. The world's media heralded the move. But ExxonMobil quietly continued funding the think tanks, extensively. In 2009, it dropped a few more.

While Ken Cohen might try to state that the organizations he funded could do what they wanted, it's important to note that in some years, the company specifically spelt out its funding as being for their work on climate change.

Even today, ExxonMobil continues to be a member of -- and to fund -- the American Legislative Exchange Council which, at its annual meeting, has hosted a number of climate change-denying scientists to question the existence of global warming. Research has revealed that that ExxonMobil donated at least $1.6 million to ALEC between 1998 and 2012. In 2014 it gave them more.

A study published in PNAS on November 23 looked at the effect of grants from ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers on the discourse around climate science. It showed that the climate denial echo chamber organizations they funded produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The way ExxonMobil is reacting to the #ExxonKnew revelations is bizarre. In the full knowledge of the climate change science, provided to it by its own scientists, this company has spent years, and many millions, funding the myths created by the denier industry to obfuscate the science and slow change.

To me, although I'm not a lawyer, knowing about the harm caused by your product, then spending millions on trying to create doubt about the facts of that harm, sounds very similar to what another industry did with its product.

This post is part of a "Corporate Skullduggery" series produced by The Huffington Post, in conjunction with the U.N.'s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris (Nov. 30-Dec. 11), aka the climate-change conference. The series will put a spotlight on businesses that have actively tried to mislead the public about the dangers of climate change or about their own contributions to rising temperatures. To view the entire series, visit here.

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ref

https://www.desmog.com**/2015**/11/23/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media/

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The abstract and full text of the study can be found here: Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change.

The analysis of 20 years’ worth of data by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond a doubt that ExxonMobil and the Kochs are the key actors who funded the creation of climate disinformation think tanks and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse.

“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,” Dr. Farrell told the Washington Post which was first to cover the news of the study’s release. “This counter-movement produced messages aimed, at the very least, at creating ideological polarization through politicized tactics, and at the very most, at overtly refuting current scientific consensus with scientific findings of their own,” Dr. Farrell said.

From PNAS’s press briefing note about the article by Dr. Farrell:

Corporate funding likely influences the nature and content of polarizing texts pertaining to climate change, according to a study. Political polarization has become a hallmark of climate change policy discussion, with multiple groups in various sectors contributing to public discourse regarding climate and energy. To quantify the influence of corporate funding in climate change discourse, Justin Farrell analyzed more than 39 million words of text produced by 164 organizations active in the climate change counter-movement between 1993 and 2013. The author examined the ideological content of the produced texts, as well as the funding behind the organizations that produced the texts.

Organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have produced polarizing texts, the author found, with ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundation acting as influential funders (emphasis added). Further, according to the author, corporate funding may have influenced the ideological content of produced texts. The results suggest quantitative evidence of the influence of funding in the climate change debate that had previously been hypothesized, and suggests an analytical model for integrating texts with the social networks that created them, according to the author.

This study confirms once again the central thesis of industry-funded attacks on climate science, which inspired the DeSmog book Climate Cover-up and countless articles about the deception campaign over the past decade.

Now let’s see how the mainstream media cover this story — that is what I’m most curious to see. (The Washington Post article was pretty straightforward, although it gave ExxonMobil an unchallenged last word, and Joby Warrick seemed to pose a bogus question to Dr. Farrell equating the fossil-funded disinformation campaign with pro-climate-action campaigns, but Dr. Farrell correctly rebutted such a comparison.)

Will this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation?

Will false balance — quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote — finally stop?

Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn’t published any longer?

It’s critically important today that the public hears the scientific facts about climate change without the confusion injected into the policy debate by well-funded think tanks and their highly paid PR operative counterparts.

Dr. Farrell’s research also provides further evidence of the public deception orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry, and should prove valuable to investigators examining ExxonMobil as well as other current and future efforts to hold polluters accountable for their PR pollution.

Here is a video produced years ago, “Doubt” by The Climate Reality Project, which provides a nice overview of this issue[vid]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVjr-qOpNk

also highly suggested: track down access to Merchants of Doubt, the full-length documentary by Food Inc. director Robert Kenner that exposes the history of tobacco-to-climate denial and their common PR manipulators such as Marc Morano and Fred Singer.

It’s far beyond the time to end the climate cover-up. And responsible media can lead the way.

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cic

july 2020

BBC Radio Series Tracks History of Climate Denial

Posted: July 27, 2020

The BBC has launched a two hour series on the history of corporate climate denial. The series starts in 1988 and traces the rise in climate policy attacks through the George W. Bush Administration in the 2000s. They been researching this series for several months. Great to hear it finally! Featured interviews include Naomi Oreskes, …

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https://theconversation.com/the-five-corrupt-pillars-of-climate-change-denial-122893

no lnx many

The Conversation

The five corrupt pillars of climate change denial

November 28, 2019 8.00am EST

Author

Mark Maslin

Professor of Earth System Science, UCL

Disclosure statement

Mark Maslin is a Founding Director of Rezatec Ltd, Director of The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and a member of Cheltenham Science Festival Advisory Committee. He is an unpaid member of the Sopra-Steria CSR Board. He has received grant funding in the past from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, Royal Society, DIFD, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust and British Council. He has received research funding in the past from The Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

Partners

University College London

The fossil fuel industry, political lobbyists, media moguls and individuals have spent the past 30 years sowing doubt about the reality of climate change - where none exists. The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly-owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200 million a year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate policy.

Their hold on the public seems to be waning. Two recent polls suggested over 75% of Americans think humans are causing climate change.School climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion protests, national governments declaring a climate emergency, improved media coverage of climate change and an increasing number of extreme weather events have all contributed to this shift. There also seems to be a renewed optimism that we can deal with the crisis.

But this means lobbying has changed, now employing more subtle and more vicious approaches – what has been termed as “climate sadism”. It is used to mock young people going on climate protests and to ridicule Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old young woman with Asperger’s, who is simply telling the scientific truth.

Anti-climate change lobbying spend by the five largest publicly-owned fossil fuel companies. Statista, CC BY-SA

At such a crossroads, it is important to be able to identify the different types of denial. The below taxonomy will help you spot the different ways that are being used to convince you to delay action on climate change.

Do experts have something to add to public debate?

1. Science denial

This is the type of denial we are all familiar with: that the science of climate change is not settled. Deniers suggest climate change is just part of the natural cycle. Or that climate models are unreliable and too sensitive to carbon dioxide.

Some even suggest that CO₂ is such a small part of the atmosphere it cannot have a large heating affect. Or that climate scientists are fixing the data to show the climate is changing (a global conspiracy that would take thousands of scientists in more than a 100 countries to pull off).

All these arguments are false and there is a clear consensus among scientists about the causes of climate change. The climate models that predict global temperature rises have remained very similar over the last 30 years despite the huge increase in complexity, showing it is a robust outcome of the science.

Read more: Five climate change science misconceptions – debunked

[grapf] Model reconstruction of global temperature since 1970. Average of the models in black with model range in grey compared to observational temperature records from NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Cowtan and Way, and Berkeley Earth. Carbon Brief, ]

The shift in public opinion means that undermining the science will increasingly have little or no effect. So climate change deniers are switching to new tactics. One of Britain’s leading deniers, Nigel Lawson, the former UK chancellor, now agrees that humans are causing climate change, despite having founded the sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009.

It says it is “open-minded on the contested science of global warming, [but] is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated”. In other words, climate change is now about the cost not the science.

2. Economic denial

The idea that climate change is too expensive to fix is a more subtle form of climate denial. Economists, however, suggest we could fix climate change now by spending 1% of world GDP. Perhaps even less if the cost savings from improved human health and expansion of the global green economy are taken into account. But if we don’t act now, by 2050 it could cost over 20% of world GDP.

We should also remember that in 2018 the world generated US$86,000,000,000,000 and every year this World GDP grows by 3.5%. So setting aside just 1% to deal with climate change would make little overall difference and would save the world a huge amount of money. What the climate change deniers also forget to tell you is that they are protecting a fossil fuel industry that receives US$5.2 trillion in annual subsidies – which includes subsidised supply costs, tax breaks and environmental costs. This amounts to 6% of world GDP.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that efficient fossil fuel pricing would lower global carbon emissions by 28%, fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46%, and increase government revenue by 3.8% of the country’s GDP.

3. Humanitarian denial

Climate change deniers also argue that climate change is good for us. They suggest longer, warmer summers in the temperate zone will make farming more productive. These gains, however, are often offset by the drier summers and increased frequency of heatwaves in those same areas. For example, the 2010 “Moscow” heatwave killed 11,000 people, devastated the Russian wheat harvest and increased global food prices.

Geographical zones of the world. The tropical zones span from the Tropic of Cancer in the North to the Tropic of Capricorn in the South (red shaded region) and contains 40% of the World population. Maulucioni/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

More than 40% of the world’s population also lives in the Tropics – where from both a human health prospective and an increase in desertification no one wants summer temperatures to rise.

Deniers also point out that plants need atmospheric carbon dioxide to grow so having more of it acts like a fertiliser. This is indeed true and the land biosphere has been absorbing about a quarter of our carbon dioxide pollution every year. Another quarter of our emissions is absorbed by the oceans. But losing massive areas of natural vegetation through deforestation and changes in land use completely nullifies this minor fertilisation effect.

Climate change deniers will tell you that more people die of the cold than heat, so warmer winters will be a good thing. This is deeply misleading. Vulnerable people die of the cold because of poor housing and not being able to afford to heat their homes. Society, not climate, kills them.

This argument is also factually incorrect.In the US, for example, heat-related deaths are four times higher than cold-related ones. This may even be an underestimate as many heat-related deaths are recorded by cause of death such as heart failure, stroke, or respiratory failure, all of which are exacerbated by excessive heat.

US weather fatalities for 2018 alongside the ten- and 30-year average. National Weather Service, ]

4. Political denial

Climate change deniers argue we cannot take action because other countries are not taking action. But not all countries are equally guilty of causing current climate change. For example, 25% of the human-produced CO₂ in the atmosphere is generated by the US, another 22% is produced by the EU. Africa produces just under 5%.

Given the historic legacy of greenhouse gas pollution, developed countries have an ethical responsibility to lead the way in cutting emissions. But ultimately, all countries need to act because if we want to minimise the effects of climate change then the world must go carbon zero by 2050.

[graf Per capita annual carbon dioxide emissions and cumulative country emissions. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Nature. Data from the Global Carbon Project]

Deniers will also tell you that there are problems to fix closer to home without bothering with global issues. But many of the solutions to climate change are win-win and will improve the lives of normal people. Switching to renewable energy and electric vehicles, for example, reduces air pollution, which improves people’s overall health.

Developing a green economy provides economic benefits and creates jobs. Improving the environment and reforestation provides protection from extreme weather events and can in turn improve food and water security.

5. Crisis denial

The final piece of climate change denial is the argument that we should not rush into changing things, especially given the uncertainty raised by the other four areas of denial above. Deniers argue that climate change is not as bad as scientists make out. We will be much richer in the future and better able to fix climate change. They also play on our emotions as many of us don’t like change and can feel we are living in the best of times – especially if we are richer or in power.

But similarly hollow arguments were used in the past to delay ending slavery, granting the vote to women, ending colonial rule, ending segregation, decriminalising homosexuality, bolstering worker’s rights and environmental regulations, allowing same sex marriages and banning smoking.

The fundamental question is why are we allowing the people with the most privilege and power to convince us to delay saving our planet from climate change? grafs

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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:{, }:{ }: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.

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AP june 2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — Does he or doesn’t he? Believe in climate change, that is.

You’d think that would be an easy enough question the day after President Donald Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the landmark global accord aimed at combatting global warming.

But don’t bother asking at the White House.

“I have not had an opportunity to have that discussion” with the president, responded Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Friday.

“You should ask him that,” offered White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt dodged the question, too.

The president also ignored it during an unrelated bill-signing.

It’s quite a reversal for Trump, who spent years publicly bashing the idea of global warming as a “hoax” and “total con job” in books, interviews and tweets. He openly challenged the scientific consensus that the climate is changing and man-made carbon emissions are largely to blame.

“Global warming is an expensive hoax!” he tweeted in 2014.

But Trump has been largely silent on the issue since his election last fall. On Thursday, he made scarce mention of it in his lengthy remarks announcing America’s exit from the Paris accord. Instead, he framed his decision as based on economics.

Here’s what he’s said before:

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TRUMP’S TWEETS:

The president’s twitter feed once was filled with references to “so-called” global warming being a “total con job” based on “faulty science and manipulated data.”

An Associated Press search of his twitter archives revealed at least 90 instances in which he has referred to “global warming” and “climate change” since 2011. In nearly every instance, he expressed skepticism or mockery.

“This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bulls--- has got to stop,” he wrote in January 2014, spelling out the vulgarity.

Often the president has pointed to cold weather as evidence the climate scientists are wrong.

“It’s 46 (really cold) and snowing in New York on Memorial Day — tell the so-called “scientists” that we want global warming right now!” he wrote in May 2013 — one of several instances in which he said that warming would be welcome.

“Where the hell is global warming when you need it?” he asked in January 2015.

The same message was echoed in the president’s books.

In “Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America,” Trump made a reference to “the mistaken belief that global climate change is being caused by carbon emissions.”

“If you don’t buy that — and I don’t — then what we have is really just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves,” he wrote.

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CANDIDATE AND SKEPTIC:

“I’m not a believer in man-made global warming,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in September 2015, after launching his bid for the White House. He bemoaned the fact that the U.S. was investing money and doing things “to solve a problem that I don’t think in any major fashion exists.”

“I am not a believer,” he added, “Unless somebody can prove something to me ... I am not a believer and we have much bigger problems.” LOMBORG SHUFFLE?]

By March 2016, the president appeared to allow that the climate was changing — but continued to doubt humans were to blame.

“I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer,” he told The Washington Post. “There is certainly a change in weather,” he said.

Then-campaign manager, Conway explained Trump’s view this way: “He believes that global warming is naturally occurring. That there are shifts naturally occurring.”

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EVOLVING PRESIDENT:

In an interview with The New York Times in November, after the election, Trump was asked repeatedly whether he intended to leave the Paris accord and appeared to have a new open-mindedness.

“I’m looking at it very closely,” Trump told the newspaper. “I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully.”

He went on to say that he thought “there is some connectivity” between human activity and the changing climate, but that, “It depends on how much.”

Asked about the comment several days later, Trump’s now-chief of staff Reince Priebus told Fox News that Trump “has his default position, which is that most of it is a bunch of bunk.”

“But he’ll have an open mind and listen to people,” he said.

Stay tuned.

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negin imi

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/exxonmobil-climate-science-denial/

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no lnx

The truth about ExxonMobil's campaign to fund climate science denial

Elliott Negin and Independent Media Institute October 26, 2021

In a secret video recording made public in late June, a top ExxonMobil lobbyist—Keith McCoy, who was fired soon afterward—not only conceded that the oil giant's support for a carbon tax is a sham, but he also admitted that the company quietly financed climate science denier groups to stave off government action and maximize its profits—a fact that my organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others revealed more than a decade ago.

"Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes," McCoy, then ExxonMobil's senior director of federal relations, said during the interview. "Did we join some of these 'shadow groups' to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that's true. But there's nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders."

For all his candor, McCoy got at least one thing wrong. ExxonMobil did "join"—in other words, pay—denier groups to spread disinformation to blunt initial government attempts to curb carbon emissions. But McCoy inaccurately used the past tense. In fact, the company continues to fund them.

That videotaped interview caused some major heartburn for McCoy's boss, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, especially since theHouse Committee on Oversight and Reform has invited Woods—as well as top executives from the American Petroleum Institute, BP America, Chevron, Shell Oil and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—to testify at a hearing on October 28 on the "long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming."

ExxonMobil has been at the heart of that campaign. Since 1998, the company has paid a network of seemingly independent think tanks and advocacy groups more than $39 million to manufacture doubt about climate science and stymie government action. Only Charles Koch and his late brother David, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, are known to have spent more.

In 2020, according to ExxonMobil's most recent corporate grantmaking report, the company spent $490,000 on three grantees—the American Enterprise Institute ($100,000), the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University ($140,000), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($250,000). That amount is down from the $790,000 the company reported it spent on nine climate science denier groups in 2019 and a fraction of what it spent in the past, but there's a catch.

True, the company lost more than $22 billion in 2020 and cut back its grants across the board. But another factor for this decline is that ExxonMobil changed how it reports grants. As first reported by Salon, the company only listed grants of $100,000 or more in its 2020 annual giving report. In previous years, it included grants of $5,000 or more. The change reduces transparency and ultimately means there is no way to tell how much the company spent in smaller donations to support climate disinformation in 2020 or compare the grants it made in 2020 with previous years.

Only three denier groups—the same three named in the 2020 grantmaking report—received $100,000 or more from ExxonMobil in 2019. That year, their grants collectively amounted to $625,000. The other six denier groups the company funded in 2019—the Center for American and International Law ($5,000), the Federalist Society ($10,000), the Hoover Institution ($15,000), the Manhattan Institute ($90,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000) and the Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000)—collectively received $165,000. None of those grants, even if ExxonMobil continued them, would wind up in the 2020 report, given the company's new threshold.

Still, it's worth taking a closer look at where the bulk of ExxonMobil's self-reported climate disinformation budget did go in 2020.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Since 2014, ExxonMobil has given more than $5 million on top of its annual dues to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—a major player in blocking action on climate change for decades. A few years after becoming an ExxonMobil grantee, the Chamber gained some unwanted notoriety by financing a widely debunked report that then-President Trump cited as a primary rationale for pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.

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In 2019, however, the Chamber appeared to flip 180 degrees, declaring on its website, "Our climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes. Inaction is simply not an option." The assertion that human activity is merely contributing to climate change is inaccurate, given that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause, but the statement did represent a quantum leap from when the association spuriously maintained in comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 that "a warming of even 3 [degrees Celsius] in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans."

That said, the Chamber vowed in an August 24 press release to "do everything [it] can to prevent" the proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill—which would slash carbon emissions from the electric power and transportation sectors—"from becoming law." And in a section on its website addressing climate change, the Chamber calls for "the increased use of natural gas" to make "further progress."

Increase the use of natural gas?! That runs counter to what climate science says about the need to swiftly decarbonize the energy sector, essentially trading one major carbon pollution source—coal—for another—methane, which is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the planet. Moreover, according to a December 2019 study in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the boom in natural gas use over the last decade alone have now surpassed the emissions avoided by closing coal-fired power plants.

The American Enterprise Institute

:{:{}:

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Economist Benjamin Zycher might be considered the climate science denier in residence at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has received $4.86 million from ExxonMobil since 1998. Zycher insists that a carbon tax would be "ineffective," has called the Paris climate agreement an "absurdity," and rejects the scientific consensus about the causes and seriousness of global warming.

Zycher published his most recent broadside against climate science in the Summer 2021 issue ofNational Affairs, a formerly independent conservative policy quarterly that AEI brought in-house in 2019. In his essay, "The Case for Climate-Change Realism," he falsely argued that the "available science" does not support the notion that human activity is "the single most significant cause of climate change" and the "available data" undercut the assessment that extreme weather events are "evidence of an ongoing climate crisis."

As he has in previous articles, Zycher cited roundly debunked hypotheses for the primary causes of climate change, including a shift in northern Pacific Ocean circulation patterns called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which scientists have determined is incapable of causing a long-term warming trend, and "changes insolar activity," when, in fact, the sun's energy has declined since the 1980s while average global temperatures have continued to climb.

This summer was not a fortuitous time to be peddling discredited theories. On August 9, less than two months after Zycher posted his essay, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark, nearly 4,000-page "code red for humanity" report warning that the climate crisis is close to spiraling out of control and human activity is "unequivocally" to blame.

Zycher's main objective? To make a case, no matter how specious, for continued reliance on fossil fuels, which he falsely claimed are less expensive than renewables. Proposals to cut carbon emissions, including the Paris agreement, would have little real impact, he argued, and could "be accomplished only by substituting expensive energy for cheaper energy." In fact, according to a recent analysis by Bloomberg, it is "now cheaper to build and operate new large-scale wind or solar plants in nearly half the world than it would be to run an existing coal or [natural] gas-fired power plant." To be sure, no one would confuse Zycher for a scientist or National Affairs for a peer-reviewed journal. But he serves ExxonMobil's interests as a seemingly independent expert who continues to express doubt about climate science and the viability of renewable energy, thereby providing cover for climate science deniers in Congress.

George Washington University's Regulatory Studies Center

The relatively unknown Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington (GW) University received $140,000 from ExxonMobil in 2020 and $1.2 million from the company since 2013.Director Susan Dudley founded the center in 2009 after serving as President George W. Bush's "regulatory czar" at the Office of Management and Budget and, before that, running the Regulatory Studies Program at Koch-financed Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She currently serves in various capacities for other longtime climate science disinformation groups, including the Koch-founded Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Regulatory Studies Center portrays itself as an "objective, unbiased" policy shop, but—like the Mercatus Center—its primary raison d'être is to weaken and quash government regulations, according to a 2019 analysis by the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. The GW center's main tools are reports and public comments it submits to Congress, and although it does not get much mainstream news media attention,it has found a receptive audience on Capitol Hill—and in the previous administration. Much of the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda, Public Citizen found, echoed the center's recommendations, including "dramatically reducing the cost that the government attributes to carbon emissions."

But should the Regulatory Studies Center be lumped in with climate science disinformation groups? In response to the Public Citizen report, as well as criticism from UnKoch My Campus and GW student groups, the center issued a statement in February disputing the charge that it rejects climate science. "Contrary to unsubstantiated claims, no one in the Regulatory Studies Center questions climate science," it said. "In fact, most of the Center's scholars do not focus on environmental or energy issues at all. Those who have written on climate issues address economic and legal questions, not the science."

Whether or not the center directly disputes climate science is beside the point. In the face of incontrovertible scientific evidence, most ExxonMobil-funded disinformation groups have revised their position on the reality of climate change. Instead of challenging the science, their efforts now tend to focus on denigrating renewable energy, overstating the costs of transitioning to a clean energy economy while ignoring the benefits, and preventing government action. That is exactly what the Regulatory Studies Center does.In recent years, for example, it has published papers and filed public comments opposing stronger efficiency standards for home appliances and vehicles that would dramatically reduce carbon emissions.

The center also has enlisted the help of unabashed climate science deniers. In the fall of 2018, for example, it tapped Julian Morris to file a public comment supporting the Trump administration's proposed rollback of Obama-era standards for cars and light trucks designed to increase fuel economy and, for the first time, substantially reduce tailpipe carbon emissions.Morris, president and founder of the International Policy Network and vice president of research at the Reason Foundation—two libertarian, climate science denier organizations—falsely declared in a paper published in March 2018 that the "effects of climate change are unknown—but the benefits may well be greater than the costs for the foreseeable future."

Millions More for Disinformation

The money ExxonMobil donated in 2020 to AEI, the GW Regulatory Studies Center and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce represents only a small percentage of the company's recent outlays to sway public opinion and blunt government climate action. It is difficult to document all of the company's related expenditures, but they include:

More than $5 million on Facebook ads in 2020, which is more than half of the $9.6 million that the U.S. oil and gas industry spent on the ads, according to an analysis by the think tank InfluenceMap that reviewed more than 25,000 ads on Facebook's U.S. platform. Many of the ads described natural gas as a "green" fuel source and argued that cutting carbon emissions would drive up energy costs.

:{:{}:

}:

An estimated $10 million in annual dues to the American Petroleum Institute (API) (based on how much Shell Oil recently revealed it paid). The U.S. oil and gas industry's oldest and largest trade association, API is working overtime to block stricter methane emissions standards. McCoy indirectly referenced API during the secretly taped interview when he said ExxonMobil relied on third parties to publicly represent its interests in Congress. "We don't want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing," he said. "It's getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be, for the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of Congress."

At least $100,000 in annual dues to trade associations (based on what it reported it spent in 2019) that have a long track record of peddling climate disinformation, including the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.[ipaa]

Nearly $834,000 during the 2018 and 2020 election cycles to 118 of the 139 climate science deniers currently in Congress. Over that same time period, the company reportedly spent nearly$41 million to lobby in Washington, but neither McCoy nor ExxonMobil's other in-house lobbyists have broached the topic of a carbon tax—the company's avowed top priority—with legislators since 2018, according to its quarterly lobbying reports.

So while ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods and his colleagues proclaim that they fully understand the threat posed by climate change and are "committed to being part of the solution," the evidence shows they continue to spend tens of millions of dollars every year to promote gridlock in Congress on the issue.The future of the planet as we know it hangs in the balance, but as McCoy acknowledged in his interview, ExxonMobil was—and still is—looking out for its investments and its shareholders' short-term interests, regardless of the long-term consequences.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.

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guk

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/big-oil-delay-tactics-new-climate-science-denial

Big oil’s ‘wokewashing’ is the new climate science denialism

‘Discourses of delay’ by the fossil fuel companies.

Academic researchers say the fossil fuel industry has a new tool to delay efforts to curb emissions – a social justice strategy

Amy Westervelt

@amywestervelt

Thu 9 Sep 2021

ExxonMobil has been touting its commitment to “reducing carbon emissions with innovative energy solutions”. Chevron would like to remind you it is keeping the lights on during this dark time. BP is going#NetZero, but is also very proud of the “digital innovations” on its new, enormous oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile Shell insists it really supports women in traditionally male-dominated jobs.

A casual social media user might get the impression the fossil fuel industry views itself as a social justice warrior, fighting on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, and women – at least based on its marketing material in recent years.

These campaigns fall into what a handful of sociologists and economists call “discourses of delay”. While oil and gas companies have a long track record of denying climate change, even after their own scientists repeatedly warned of the harm caused by burning fossil fuels, now the industry’s messaging is far more subtle and in many ways more effective than outright climate science denial.

By downplaying the urgency of the climate crisis, the industry has new tools to delay efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions. And worse yet: even industry critics haven’t fully caught up to this new approach.

“If you just focus on climate denial, then all of this other stuff is missed,” explains Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist and visiting professor at Brown University.

Brulle, who published a peer-reviewed study in 2019 that analyzed major oil corporations’ advertising spending over a 30-year period, says the “lion’s share” of ad dollars were directed not toward denial, or even toward the industry’s products, but toward pro-fossil fuel propaganda – campaigns that remind people over and over again about all the great things oil companies do, how dependent we are on fossil fuels, and how integral the industry is to society. //API ROWE]

“They’re spending probably five or 10 times more on all this corporate promotion advertising,” he says. “And yet the climate movement seems to only focus on the science denial part.”

ExxonMobil has used Twitter campaigns to emphasize progress on addressing climate change while also downplaying the urgency of the crisis. Source: Twitter

Oil companies stopped pushing overt climate denial more than a decade ago. And while conspiracy theories claiming climate change is a hoax may surface occasionally, they are no longer an effective strategy.

Instead, the fossil fuel industry, utilities and the various trade groups, politicians and think tanks that carry water for both, have pivoted to messages that acknowledge the problem, but downplay its severity and the urgency for solutions. Instead companies are overstating the industry’s progress toward addressing climate change.

In a paper published in the journal Global Sustainability last July, economist William Lamb and nearly a dozen co-authors catalogued the most common messaging from those who would prefer to see inaction on climate for as long as possible. According to Lamb’s team, the industry’s “discourses of delay” fall into four buckets: redirect responsibility (consumers are also to blame for fossil fuel emissions), push non-transformative solutions (disruptive change is not necessary), emphasize the downside of action (change will be disruptive), and surrender (it’s not possible to mitigate climate change).

“This was a paper that was born on Twitter, funnily enough,” Lamb says. Lamb and collaborators Giulio Mattoli and Julia Steinberger began compiling the fossil fuel messaging they saw repeatedly on social media. Then they asked other academics from various fields to add what they were seeing too, and patterns soon emerged.

Lamb says they explicitly left denial out of the equation. “What we tried to do was really examine delay as something distinct,” he says. “From our view, delay had not received the kind of attention it deserves.”

Of all the messaging geared toward delaying action on climate, or assurances that the fossil fuel industry has a grip on possible solutions, Lamb and other authors agreed that one theme was far more prevalent than the rest: “the social justice argument.”

This strategy generally takes one of two forms: either warnings that a transition away from fossil fuels will adversely impact poor and marginalized communities, or claims that oil and gas companies are aligned with those communities. Researchers call this practice “wokewashing”.

Twitter ads, like this video by ExxonMobil, reflect popular messaging around social justice, implying that the company is aligned with diverse communities. Researchers call this practice ‘wokewashing’.]Composite: Twitter]

An email Chevron’s PR firm CRC Advisorssent to journalists last year is a perfect example. It urged journalists to look at how green groups were “claiming solidarity” with Black Lives Matter while “backing policies which would hurt minority communities”. Chevron later denied that it had anything to do with this email, although it regularly hires CRC and the bottom of the email in question read: “If you would rather not receive future communications from Chevron, let us know by clicking here.”

Another common industry talking point argues a transition away from fossil fuels will be unavoidably bad for impoverished communities. The argument is based on the assumption that these communities value fossil fuel energy more than concerns about all of its attendant problems (air and water pollution, in addition to climate change), and that there is no way to provide poor communities or countries with affordable renewable energy.

Chevron also claimed solidarity with Black Lives Matter last year, although it is also responsible for polluting the Black-majority city it’s headquartered in: Richmond, California,where Chevron also pays for a larger-than-average police force. Meanwhile the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s largest trade group and lobbyist, funds diversity in stem programs, but it also declines to acknowledge the disproportionate impacts on communities of color.

Discourses of delay don’t just show up in advertising and marketing campaigns, but in policy conversations too.

“We’ve gone through thousands of pieces of testimony on climate and clean energy bills at the state level, and all of the industry arguments against this sort of legislation included these messages,” says J Timmons Roberts, professor of environment and sociology at Brown University, and a co-author on the “discourses of delay” paper.

People need a sort of field guide to these arguments so they’re not just duped.

In a recently published study focused on delay tactics in Massachusetts, for example, Roberts and his co-authors catalogued how fossil fuel interest groups and utility companies in particular used discourses of delay to try to defeat clean energy legislation. Another recent study found similar campaigns against clean energy and climate bills in Connecticut. “The social justice argument is the one we’re seeing used the most,” he says.

Lamb sees the same thing happening in Europe. “Often you do see those arguments come from right of center politicians, which suggests hypocrisy in a way because they’re not so interested in the social dimension on parallel issues of social justice like education policy or financial policy.”

While the social justice argument stands out as a favorite at the moment, Lamb says the others are in regular rotation too, from focusing on what individual consumers should be doing to reduce their own carbon footprints to promoting the ideas that technology will save us and that fossil fuels are a necessary part of the solution.

“These things are effective, they work,” Roberts says. “So what we need is inoculation – people need a sort of field guide to these arguments so they’re not just duped.”

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

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https://climateinvestigations.org/the-climate-change-countermovement-brown-university-report-and-panel/

The Climate Change Countermovement: Brown University Report and Panel

Climate Investigations Center on February 28, 2019

Kert Davies

Earlier this month, CIC’s Kert Davies was an invited speaker at a collaborative conference held at Brown University on the economic impacts of climate change and the opposition to policy advances. The day long event, America’s Climate Change Future: Housing Markets, Stranded Assets, and Entrenched Interests, gathered experts on a range of climate change topics ranging from increased flood risk and stranded assets in fossil fuels, to the climate change countermovement and misinformation campaigns.

Alongside keynote speaker Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Brown professor Timmons Roberts, Davies participated in a discussion on a recently published paper by Justin Farrell of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The paper’s focus on the “institutional and corporate structure of the climate change countermovement” helped shaped a discussion which outlined the existing body of research the paper built on.

The panelists examined the corporate genesis of the climate denial movement and the many methods of influence that have been utilized to stall effective climate change policy. Using documents and analysis found on Climate Files, Davies recounted how the largest oil majors, including Shell and Exxon, had extensive internal knowledge about climate change science and impacts decades before it became a topic of global concern. Rather than addressing the threat that their product posed to the world, the documents show that the fossil fuel industry engaged and funded a climate change countermovement to deny the urgency their own scientists knew to be true.

See video below of the full session with Davies, Senator Whitehouse and professor Roberts called, “Pushing Against Climate Denial and Defending Science.”

Brown University: New Report on Climate Change Countermovement

Brown University’s Climate Development Lab recently released a supplemental report titled Countermovement Coalitions: Climate Denialist Organizational Profiles tracking the affiliations and output of twelve organizations that “engaged in public misinformation campaigns about climate change” from 1989 to present day. Collaborating with CIC and drawing from Climate Files, ExxonSecrets, and other resources, the report highlights the coalitions’ “insular nature,” showing many to “share leadership teams, major donors, key members, and mission statements.” The twelve organizations highlighted by the Brown team are:

1. Global Climate Coalition
2. Information Council on the Environment
3. Alliance for Climate Strategies
4. Coalition for Vehicle Choice
5. Cooler Heads Coalition
6. Center for Energy and Economic Development
7. Americans for Balanced Energy Choices
8. American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
9. Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth
10. Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy
11. Coalition for American Jobs
12. Partnership for a Better Energy Future

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aha: recall origins in Heartland reverse engineer: if AGW real, world gov't no capitalism

also fork 1 origin // sununu collectivist jackboots story 1 threatened

vax everywhere = neg?

gw denial eroded faith in sci for decades and made us vuln to vaxxer BS --> civil war?!

fox murdochs burn down the world for money and power (vax and AGW) ; koch gopanti-gubmint erode norms,

fox briefly forgot trump TV hacks and acted like a news org and reported FACT that trump lost AZ, immediate threat from oann newsmax reb mercer soc media play

no lnx

Black flag:Understanding the Trumpists' latest threatening symbol

Chauncey DeVega and Salon October 12, 2021

It's an old truism that the "real bad men" (and bad women) "move in silence and violence." That's certainly true for the most dangerous and most effective of Donald Trump's allies, henchmen, henchwomen, and other followers. But for Donald Trump himself, and most of his political cult, that rule does not apply....

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/trumpists/

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172 pp report corp denial 2019

figures

1. Scope of Research 7

2. Climate Actions for NRG Energy, Inc. and Peabody Energy Corporation 9

3. Climate Actions for NIKE, Inc. and FMC Corporation 10

4. Affiliations with Industry Groups That Support or Oppose

Climate Science and Science-Based Policy 13

5. Affiliations with Think Tanks and Other Organizations That Support or

Misrepresent Climate Science 15

6. Total Lobbying Expenditures by Stock Market Sector, 2002–2010 19

7. Summary of Corporate Statements and Actions on Climate

Change Science and Policy 21

8. Venues Where Contradictory Companies Express Concern about

Climate Change or Misrepresent Climate Science 24

9 Climate Actions for Exxon Mobil Corporation 26

10 Climate Actions for ConocoPhillips 28

11. Climate Actions for Caterpillar Inc. 29

12. Climate Actions for DTE Energy Company 30

Tables

1. Political Contributions and Lobbying Expenditures Ranked

by Funding Ratio 16

2. Political Contributions and Lobbying Expenditures Ranked

by Lobbying Totals for Top Lobbying Companies 17

3. Selected Quotes from Members of Congress Who Have

Misrepresented Climate Science

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/a-climate-of-corporate-control-report.pdf

very good on trade gp

A proposed 2012 budget document, for example, indicated that Heartland has and will continue to provide several thousand dollars per month to many academic scientists who have been “high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message.” The documents also outlined Heartland’s plan to challenge the teaching of climate science in public schools; the plan included a module to teach high school students that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.” The documents showed that Heartland’s financial backing comes from anonymous donors, the fossil fuel industry—including Murray Energy Company and Marathon Oil Corporation— and other corporate interests such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has vocally opposed climate policy actions (U.S. Chamber of Commerce 2009)

...

For example, two industry trade groups representing many of the companies in this study have actively fought against science-based climate policy. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), on whose board sit officers from 12 of the companies in our sample (Figure 4), strongly opposed the EPA’s Endangerment Finding. The NAM questioned the science on which the finding was based and warned that regulating carbon emissions “will inevitably cripple the economy” (NAM 2009). In its comment on the EPA Endangerment Finding, the NAM implied that it was speaking on behalf of 11,000 member companies; however, because there is no public list of member companies, this claim is difficult to verify. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also refuses to publish a list of members (though it allegedly represents millions of businesses), criticized the EPA Endangerment Finding with even more vehemence. The Chamber alleged that the EPA “proposes a rule based entirely on untested scientific sources—mostly a U.N. report,” and cited “profound and wide-ranging scientific uncertainties” as the basis of its.

MOC:

State Name Quote NH-Sen (R) Kelly Ayotte “There is scientific evidence that demonstrates there is some impact from human activities. However, I don’t think the evidence is conclusive.” (McDermott 2010) MN-Rep (R) Michele Bachmann “…the science indicates that human activity is not the cause of all this global warming. And that in fact, nature is the cause, with solar flares, etc.” (Grandia 2009) TX-Rep (R) Joe Barton “Global warming is ‘unequivocal?’ It’s just flat out not true!” (Barton 2011) MO-Sen (R) Roy Blunt “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.” (Hair 2009) OK-Sen (R) Tom Coburn “I am not the smartest man in the world, but I have been trained to read scientific documents, and [anthropogenic climate change] is malarkey.” (Roberts 2009) OK-Sen (R) James Inhofe “With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.” (Inhofe 2003) WI-Sen (R) Ron Johnson “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change. It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination.” (Miller 2010) IA-Rep (R) Steve King “It’s not rational, it’s a religion that we’re up against . . . the presumption of the greenhouse effect is at least, from what I saw, was pretty convincingly rebutted.” (Keyes 2010) MN-Rep (D) Collin Peterson “They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn.” (Power and Hughes 2009) CA-Rep (R) Dana Rohrabacher “There is no consensus. Yet we are bombarded by radical environmentalists, and the media hype, with the common refrain ‘case closed: global warming is real.’” (Rohrabacher 2009) WI-Rep (R) Jim Sensenbrenner “I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything human beings do.” (Berliant 2009) IL-Rep (R) John Shimkus “There is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet— not too much carbon.” (Mail Online 2010) MI-Rep (R) Fred Upton “The principle argument for [delaying EPA’s greenhouse gas regulation] is that it will allow Congress time to create its own plan for regulating carbon. This presumes that carbon is a problem in need of regulation. We are not convinced.” (Phillips and Upton 2010)

Demands for Climate Risk Disclosure I n 2007, Andrew Cuomo, then attorney general of the state of New York, investigated five companies (Xcel Energy Inc., Peabody Energy Corporation, Dominion Resources Inc., Dynegy Inc., and AES Corporation) interested in building new coal-fired power plants (Confessore 2008). Cuomo pursued the case on the grounds that the proposed plants carried substantial business risk related to climate change, particularly from the possibility of legislation restricting carbon emissions, and that these risks had not been adequately disclosed, thereby misleading investors. Xcel Energy Inc. settled its part of the investigation in 2008 by agreeing to disclose business risks associated with climate change, including physical and legislative risks, in its annual reporting to the federal government, and to disclose more information about its carbon emissions (Confessore 2008). This unprecedented case came during a time of broader demand on utility companies for greater consideration of climate change risk. Many other companies, including Sempra Energy, Ameren Corporation (Sheehan 2008), ConocoPhillips (Hays 2007), and Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Ceres 2010) were receiving shareholder proposals that specifically requested greater disclosure on the financial risks of climate change. The Cuomo investigation and shareholder demands sent a strong message: climate change represents serious financial risks that publicly traded companies need to analyze and then disclose to their investors (Sheehan 2008). Shortly thereafter, the SEC issued guidance to companies for considering and discussing in their annual Form 10-K reports any significant business risks posed by climate change (SEC 2010)

...

Trade Group Memberships

• Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth

• American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity

• Business Roundtable

• Center for Energy and Economic Development*

• National Association of Manufacturers*

• National Mining Association*

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce*

Action: Peabody

funded the American

Energy Security Study,

which published stories

that undermine established climate science

chanpion: relevant Spending

• Total political contributions:

$684,283

• Total lobbying expenditures:

$33,420,000

• Funding ratio of anti-climate to

pro-climate members of Congress:

4.0 to 1

....

inconsistent:

...d Alcoa Inc., an aluminum producer, took many actions in support of science-based climate policies, while FMC Corporation, a chemical manufacturer, took steps to spread misinformation on climate science and oppose climate policy efforts (Figure 3). Fourteen companies were inconsistent in regard to their statements about climate change. While all companies in our sample stated they were taking voluntary internal action to reduce carbon emissions, half of them also misrepresented some element of established climate science in their public communications. These companies included Ameren Corporation, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, ConocoPhillips, DTE Energy Company, Exxon Mobil Corporation, FMC Corporation, Marathon Oil Corporation, Murphy Oil Corporation, Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Peabody Energy Corporation, Progress Energy, Inc., TECO Energy, Inc., Valero Energy Corporation, and Waste Management, Inc. For a description of how we characterized the misrepresentation of science for this study, see Appendix A; for corporate statements on climate change from each company in our sample, see Appendix C...

General Electric Company, Boeing Company, and

Exxon Mobil Corporation spent significantly more

in political contributions and lobbying expenditures

than the rest of the companies in our sample.

With the exception of Caterpillar Inc., all the

companies donating most heavily to anti-climate

members of Congress were in the energy sector,

with eight of the 10 energy sector companies in

our sample donating three times more to anticlimate

candidates than to pro-climate candidates.

By contrast, only five companies (AES Corporation,...

Alcoa Inc., NRG Energy, Inc., Sempra Energy,

and NIKE, Inc.) donated at least twice as much

to pro-climate candidates as to anti-climate

candidates, and none of these companies were

in the energy sector.

Most companies in our sample had

lobbying expenditures that dwarfed their

contributions to individual candidates. For instance, Marathon

Oil Corporation spent $43.7 million on federal ...

lobbying from 2002 to 2010, but its PAC donated only $1.2 million to individual candidates in the four election cycles from 2004 to 2010 (Andoni and Jaime 2011). For companies in the energy sector, lobbying expenditures increased by 92 percent from 2007 to 2009, when climate change bills were being actively debated in Congress (Figure 6).

Although these results were driven to some extent by companies with the largest lobbying expenditures— notably Boeing Company and General Electric Company, which dominated the industrials sector’s trend—we observe thattotal lobbying expenditures for all companies in our sample increased 160 percent between 2002 and 2010(during which time inflation was only 21.2 percent).

...

Although corporate executives testifying in Congress are under oath, and therefore have a legal obligation to tell the truth to policy makers, they sometimes express opinions in such testimony that do not align with their statements and actions in other venues. Exxon Mobil Corporation (Figure 9, p. 26) is well known for having heavily funded skeptic organizations that spread misinformation about climate science (Hoggan and Littlemore 2009; UCS 2007). In a 2008 congressional hearing, a company executive took exception to a senator’s allegation that Exxon Mobil was “supporting junk science and trying to make people think that [climate change] is not an issue.” The executive replied, “I think all of us recognize it is an issue . . . and I think we are dealing with it, and we are doing so in a responsible fashion” (Simon 2008).

Despite this claim and a company announcement that same year that Exxon Mobil would stop funding skeptic organizations, results from investigations (this one and others) indicate that the company has continued to make public statements that doubt climate science and to fund and affiliate with groups that spread misinformation (Adam 2009).

ConocoPhillips (Figure 10, p. 28) provides another example of the inconsistency of executive congressional testimony with corporate behavior elsewhere. At a May 2008 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a company executive testified, “ConocoPhillips has acknowledged the scientific consensus that human activity. . . is contributing to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that can lead to adverse changes in global climate” (Lowe 2008). He further stated that the company supported “a mandatory national framework in the U.S. for reducing carbon dioxide emissions” (Lowe 2008). Yet shortly before climate legislation was introduced in the Senate in February 2010, ConocoPhillips (along with Caterpillar Inc., BP, Marsh, and Xerox) withdrew from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of corporations that advocates...

The Influence of Private Corporations: Koch Industries

Although this report focuses on the influence of

publicly traded companies, privately held corporations have played a larger role in the climate change denial campaign in recent years (Mann

2012). While the finances of publicly held companies

are under some scrutiny from the government and

shareholders, private companies are not subject to

these outside pressures and thus can operate even less

transparently.

Most prominent among the private funders of climate science misinformation are Koch Industries and

its largest co-owners, Charles G. and David H. Koch. A

conglomerate that encompasses manufacturing plants

and refineries, venture capital, and consumer goods,

Koch Industries is one of the largest private companies

in the United States (Google Finance 2012). Through

funding of political campaigns, ideological think tanks,

political nonprofits, and large-scale lobbying efforts,

Koch Industries and affiliated charities and foundations

have systematically exerted enormous political influence on the climate dialogue at both the national and

local scale.

Since 1997, the Koch Foundation has given more

than $55 million to groups that misrepresent climate

science or oppose climate policies, including the Heritage Foundation and several Koch-founded organizations: Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and the

Cato Institute (Mann 2012; Greenpeace 2011). In political contributions, Koch Industries led the energy sector

between 2006 and 2010 with a staggering $7.27 million

contributed to political candidates (Greenpeace 2011).

Koch Industries has also worked aggressively to delay  and derail climate regulations at the state and regional

levels. For example, it has made substantial financial

contributions through its affiliates to the Yes on Prop

23 campaign (which opposed California’s Global Warming Solutions Act). Koch Industries also contributed

generously to a campaign, led by Americans for Prosperity, against the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

(RGGI), the market-based cap-and-trade system sponsored by 10 U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States

(Greenpeace 2011).

Although a substantive amount of Koch Industries’

involvement in the climate dialogue has been revealed,

this is likely not the complete picture. Greater transparency in the political activity both of public and private

corporations is needed so that politicians, shareholders,

and the public may understand and hold accountable

those who are influencing the national conversation

on climate science and policy.

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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/how-exxon-chevron-and-their-buddies-58986784/

fOOTNOTES:

• Exxon accused of misleading investors on climate change
• An investor enquiry: how much big oil spends on climate lobbying  https://influencemap.org/report/Climate-Lobbying-by-the-Fossil-Fuel-Sector
• Column: A new study shows how Exxon Mobil downplayed climate change when it knew the problem was real
• Exxon’s Climate Concealment  https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/opinion/exxons-climate-concealment.html?_r=2
• Shell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents Show
• Shell and Exxon's secret 1980s climate change warnings
• On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming  https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/01/on-its-hundredth-birthday-in-1959-edward-teller-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming
• Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate
• Did ExxonMobil Just Admit It’s Still Funding Climate Science Deniers?  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-exxonmobil-just-admit_b_8625514
• Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change  https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/18/1509433112.abstract
• Two-faced Exxon: the misinformation campaign against its own scientists  https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/25/two-faced-exxon-the-misinformation-campaign-against-its-own-scientists
• Rex Tillerson to oil industry: Not sure humans can do anything to battle climate change
• Exxon May Have Erased 7 Years of Tillerson's 'Wayne Tracker' Emails, Witness Says
• Rex Tillerson Testifies, Denying Exxon Misled Investors About Climate Risk
• ‘All Rhetoric and No Action’: Oil Giants Spent $1 Billion on Climate Lobbying and Ads Since Paris Pact, Says Report https://www.desmog.com/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap/
• The new science fossil fuel companies fear  https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/10/22/attribution-science-fossil-fuels-climate-change-001290
• Report details how ExxonMobil and fossil fuel firms sowed seeds of doubt on climate change  https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-21/oil-companies-exxon-climate-change-denial-report

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https://www.desmog.com/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap/

NO LNX grfx

‘All Rhetoric and No Action’: Oil Giants Spent $1 Billion on Climate Lobbying and Ads Since Paris Pact, Says Report

By Sharon Kelly on Mar 22, 2019

A new report by a British think tank estimates that since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies spent more than $1 billion lobbying to prevent climate change regulations while also running public relations campaigns aimed at maintaining public support for climate action.

Combined, the companies spend roughly $200 million a year pushing to delay or alter climate and energy rules, particularly in the U.S. — while spending $195 million a year “on branding campaigns that suggest they support an ambitious climate agenda,” according to InfluenceMap, a UK-based non-profit that researches how corporations influence climate policy.

InfluenceMap cites as an example ExxonMobil’s heavily-touted algae-biofuels research, which the oil giant says “offers some of the greatest promise for next-generation biofuels” with significant climate benefits and has made it the focus of its “The Tiny Organism” ad campaign.

InfluenceMap notes that “detailed disclosures from the company show its goal of 10,000 barrels of bio-fuel a day would equate to only0.2 percent of its current refinery capacity.”

“Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins, author of the new report, said in a statement. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Today’s report updates the group’s 2016 report that estimated these companies spent $115 million a year lobbying against climate regulations — even policies companies said they supported.

“Say one thing,” said SenatorSheldon Whitehouse, as he described InfluenceMap’s 2016 research on the floor of the U.S. Senate, “do another.”

The new estimates suggest that spending to influence climate policy by the five oil giants has increased sharply over the last two years.

It also comes as global banks are investing more in fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement. In addition, the five oil companies are spending heavily on finding and producing more fossil fuels — and putting only a tiny fraction of their budgets into efforts to transition away from climate-altering fuels.

“This spending accompanies the expansion of the companies’ operations with combined annual sales of over $1 [trillion] and profits of $55 [billion in] 2018, the vast majority of which is oil and gas related,” InfluenceMap wrote. “Combined capital investment will increase to $115 [billion] in 2019 but only about 3 percent of this will go to low carbon investments, according to company disclosures.”

Lobbying One Message While Advertising Another

The report focuses on the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron, leaving out state-controlled oil giants like Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec.

InfluenceMap examined the extent to which each company’s branding efforts and advertising campaigns focused on climate change.

Shell's branded content about its emissions scenario in The New York Times

Shell’s branded content about its “Sky” emissions scenario in The New York Times.

“The research suggests that Total maintains the highest proportion of its branding activities on climate (29 percent),” the new report finds. “Following this, ExxonMobil, which has faced significant negative media attention in 2018, allocates 19 percent. Shell and BP followed with 16 percent and 14 percent respectively. Chevron appears far less concerned, using approximately 2 percent of its branding budget on climate issues in 2018.”

The think tank’s research also looked at what the companies were saying to government regulators, either directly or through industry groups funded by the oil majors.

“Since Paris, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil have led in opposition to a range of climate-motivated policy stands,” InfluenceMap wrote. “For example, in 2018 both BP and Chevron have directly lobbied U.S. policymakers for a rollback on U.S. methane requirements.” (Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the major constituent in natural gas.)

The report credits Shell and Total for becoming “more positive on a number of climate policy issues” since 2015, but adds that they “continue to support policies that will extend the role for fossil fuels in the energy mix and remain part of highly climate-oppositional trade associations.”

Mixed Messages and Industry Trade Groups

At times, the public stances of a corporation’s leadership stand starkly at odds with the messages from industry groups funded by that same corporation.

For example, on electric vehicles, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden had a very direct and simple message in July 2018. “We need battery electric vehicles,” he said. And a year earlier, at the oil industry conference, CERAWeek, in 2017, he expressed support for “regulations that speed up investment in low carbon technologies and ? at the same time ? move consumer demand.”

Oil and gas lobbying on climate policies through trade associations. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

In May 2018, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. trade group for oil and gas, pushed the U.S. Congress to move in the opposite direction by rolling back incentives for electric vehicles.

“American Petroleum Institute (API) opposes mandates and subsidies,” API testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, according to InfluenceMap’s new report. The fossil fuel trade group voiced its opposition for subsidies for electric vehicles, adding that “the level of market penetration achieved by electric vehicles should not rely on government interference.”

The report also notes the difficulty in tracking corporate lobbying in the U.S. given the rise of so-called “dark money” groups and the lack of transparency surrounding political contributions in the U.S. “Political contributions that were made without full disclosure of their ultimate source totaled $539 [million] in the 2018 election cycle according to OpenSecrets.org,” the report says.

Social Influencers

InfluenceMap also dives deep into how companies usedsocial media to influence Americans during the mid-term elections last year.

“During this time ExxonMobil was by far the most prolific spender, racking up over $400K in four weeks on over 360 individual political ads,” InfluenceMap wrote. “The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives whilst promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebook’s data indicates that ExxonMobil’s ads made over 10 million ‘impressions’ in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.”

Oil industry spending on Facebook and Instagram ads leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

All of this spending has implications for shareholders, InfluenceMap observed — and some shareholder groups appear to be listening.

“InfluenceMap’s research confirms a widely held suspicion that Big Oil’s glossy sustainability reports and shiny climate statements are all rhetoric and no action,” Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, a UK charity focused on responsible investment, said in a statement accompanying the report. “These companies have mastered the art of corporate doublespeak — by boasting about their climate credentials while quietly using their lobbying firepower to sabotage the implementation of sensible climate policy and pouring millions into groups that engage in dirty lobbying on their behalf.”

DeSmog has reached out to ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron for comment.

“We firmly reject the premise of this report. We are very clear about our support for the Paris agreement, and the steps that we are taking to help meet society’s needs for more and cleaner energy,” Shell said in a statement provided to The Guardian. “We make no apology for talking to policymakers and regulators around the world to make our voice heard on crucial topics such as climate change and how to address it.”

“We have not been afforded the opportunity to review the data but we disagree with the assertion that Chevron has engaged in ‘climate-related branding and lobbying’ that is ‘overwhelmingly in conflict’ with the Paris Agreement,” Chevron said in a statement provided to DeSmog, adding that the company was taking “prudent, cost-effective actions” and seeking “balanced and transparent” policies to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. “We believe climate change is real and human activity contributes to it. We accept the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

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nrdc 2010?

Who’s Behind the Smears

Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity

American Council for Capital Formation

American Energy Alliance

American Enterprise Institute

Americans for Prosperity

American Legislative Exchange Council

American Solutions for Winning the Future

Atlas Economic Research Foundation

Capital Research Center

The Cato Institute

Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

CO2isGreen

Coalition for Affordable American Energy

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Congress of Racial Equality

Energy Citizen

Fraser Institutes

FreedomWorks

Foundation for Research on Energy and Environment

Frontiers of Freedom

George C. Marshall Institute

The Heartland Institute

The Heritage Foundation

Independent Women's Forum

Institute for Energy Research

Koch Industries

Mackinack ? Center for Public Policy

The Manhattan Institute

National Black Chamber of Commerce

National Center for Policy Analysis

National Center for Public Policy Research

Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy

Property and Environment Research Center

The Reason Foundation

The Tax Foundation

Texas Public Policy Foundation

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Washington Legal Foundation

Young America's Foundation

lliance for Energy and Economic Growth (AEEG) was created by the U. S. Chamber Of Commerce and is led by a VIP list of companies that oppose clean energy and climate legislation. AEEG has organized numerous climate change "dialogues" with state-level Chambers of Commerce, which typically include industry-sponsored economic impact studies which paint doom-and-gloom scenarios of massive job losses and higher energy costs (example here), presentations that raise doubts about the science, and presentations on the difficulty of doing anything about global warming. Even these slanted studies actually show healthy economic growth under federal climate policy, but these results are not presented to the public. For the real story on clean energy jobs check out NRDC economist Laurie Johnson’s blog.

American Council For Capital Formation (ACCF) has partnered twice with the National Association Of Manufacturers to produce and disseminate distorted economic analyses that overstate the costs of climate legislation and which have been prominently featured at the US Chamber of Commerce-organized "forums" on climate over the past year. The ACCF/NAM studies have been credibly debunked more than once. ACCF has been supported by a number of major corporate interests, including ExxonMobil, Southern Co. and the American Petroleum Institute.

American Coalition For Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is the number one group representing Big Coal. Created through the renaming and merger of two former front groups, Americans For Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) and Center For Energy And Economic Development (CEED), ACCCE members and funders include a number of companies directly and indirectly reliant upon coal as a major source of revenue. According to ACCCE’s 2008 tax return, the group brought in $47 million in revenues, nearly 7 times what it reported the previous year. Coal companies and the nation's biggest railroad association accounted for fifty percent of ACCCE’s budget in 2008.  ACCCE opposed the Waxman-Markey climate bill, and recently Duke Energy left the group because of its entrenched opposition to meaningful climate legislation. The organization's lobbying expenses in 2009 have been left murky by a revision of their disclosure report which removed more than $10 million from their reported expenditures on federal lobbying (see ACCCE's 2nd quarter 2009 reports before and after).

Already infamous for its campaign featuring animated lumps of coal singing Christmas carols revised to tout coal's virtues, ACCCE's most recent embarrassment has blown into a full-fledged scandal: Bonner & Associates, Washington DC's most famous 'astroturf' consulting firms, was forced to admit that it had produced and sent forged letters to members of Congress opposing clean energy and climate legislation, on behalf of ACCCE. The scandal has resulted in Rep. Edward Markey's House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to investigate ACCCE's campaign.

American Energy Alliance (AEA) is a 501(c)4 political action group the National Association Of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute formed to fight the Clinton administration's BTU tax proposal in 1993, and in recent years funded by ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. Now coupled with the 501(c) (3) Institute For Energy Research and run by Thomas Pyle, (former aide to Republican Tom DeLay and former lobbyist for Koch Industries and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association) veteran oil lobbyist. AEA has been active in the climate debate, from running ads repeating false claims about the costs of climate legislation to trashing clean energy at town halls around the US - this time using false claims about the dangers of clean energy jobs.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has a long track record of distorting the science and solutions of climate change. Its arguments tend to de-emphasize the environmental and economic risks of climate change, exaggerate the costs of addressing the problem and question the value of putting a policy in place at all, as this recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by AEI fellow Steven Hayward. In 2007, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that AEI was offering to pay scientists $10,000 to debunk global warming. AEI has received substantial funding from ExxonMobil and has received tobacco funding from Philip Morris.

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)is one-stop shopping for elected officials interested in perusing the wares of an array of Koch-funded opposition organizations including Institute for Energy Research, American Council For Capital Formation, the Mercatus Center and other sources. ALECpublishes its own materials as well, including a “Climate Change Overview for State Legislators” which downplays the science and risks of global warming and exaggerates the costs of addressing it. The Overview was written by Daniel Simmons, who moved from ALECto become the American Energy Alliance’sDirector of State Affairs. ALEChas received funding from ExxonMobil and has been associated with the tobacco industry.

American Solutions for Winning the Future, a 527 political organization chaired by Newt Gingrich, has been fighting clean energy for several years. Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company and one of the groups biggest backers, has contributed $250,000 in the most recent 2010 election cycle to support American Solutions' activities. The oil and gas company Devon Energy also contributed $250,000, while Arch Coal, the utility American Electric Power and oil services company Plains Exploration and Production gave $100,000 each. Recently, Media Matters reported the group tried to downplay the impact of the Gulf oil disaster oil by claiming natural oil leaks in the Gulf are greater than the blown oil well in the Gulf. But as the oil spews into the ocean at a rate many times higher than first estimated, no oil-whether man made or natural-is good for the ocean environment. The Gingrich group also has been attacking the American Power Act as a gas tax that would hurt the economy, a specious claim debunked by the recent economic report by the Peterson Institute. In 2009, American Solutions ran a misleading TV advertisement against the American Clean Energy and Security Act shortly before it was passed by the US House in June, organized an email-drive targeting members of Congress and continues to collect signatures and mobilize its followers to oppose clean energy and climate legislation.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a front-group founded and funded by members of the family that owns Koch Industries, one of the largest privately-held companies in the world, with $100 billion in sales and 70,000 employees. According to an extensive investigative report by Greenpeace, AFP received more than $5 million from Koch family foundations from 2005-2008. In 2008, Koch Industries executive vp and board member the David H. Koch was listed as chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Various members of the Koch family make up of the most consistent sources of funding of opposition to clean energy, including $1,000,000 to **AFP** in recent years. Beginning in 2008, AFP organized Astroturf "hot air balloon" events to highlight their opposition to clean energy and climate legislation, a tactic they resumed in the summer of 2009. They are continuing to fund anti-climate change events in 2010. This Astroturf campaign has been repeatedly exposed, including this item in the Wall Street Journal's blog Environmental Capital.

Americans for Tax Reform(ATR)denies the science of global warming and opposes federal policies to address it. ATR focused on costs and denial in their 2008 “Cost of Government” report. ATR is run by conservative Washington insiderGrover Norquist, who once wrote a letter along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute demanding that the Bush Administration withdraw its Climate Action Report 2002 posted on the EPA website because it was based on “junk science.” ATR has received funding from ExxonMobil and the tobacco industry.

APCO Asssociates**, now APCO Worldwide, was a PR agency that partnered with Philip Morris to develop grassroots and science front groups such as The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition(TASSC). It supported tobacco industry views on regulation and other anti-regulatory efforts on topics such as global warming. TASSC was headed by junk science king and climate science denier Steve Milloy, who still is hosted on Fox News shows as a science expert on global warming.

Atlas Economic Research Foundation has cosponsored Heartland  Institute**events dedicated to the proposition that climate change is not a crisis and has supported organizations such as the **John Locke Foundation,  a group that has attacked efforts by state elected officials working on climate solutions with the Alliance  for Climate Strategies. Atlas has helped spawn dozens of conservative libertarian think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute. Atlas has received money from Philip Morris and Exxon.

TheCenter for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is run by Sherwood Idso and his sons Craig and Keith, long-time climate science deniers. The Center runs the science denial site CO2 Science. The group has worked with the Greening Earth Society, founded by the Western Fuels Association. It also has received funding from ExxonMobil.

Per its unapologetically Orwellian name, CO2isGreen runs anti-climate/clean energy advertisements reflecting the strident climate science denial sentiments of the oil and coal executives who run it. H. Leighton Steward is chairman of CO2IsGreen.org and the related front group PlantsNeedCO2.org. Steward has worked at Shell and Burlington Resources. He has chaired the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, the Natural Gas Supply Association, and the Louisiana Mid Continent Oil and Gas Association. Steward currently serves on the board of the oil and gas company EOG Resources. In 2001, Steward was awarded the American Petroleum Institute's Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement. The Washington Post reports: "Steward has joined forces with Corbin J. Robertson Jr., chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine in return for royalties." According to Astrotruth.org: "[Robertson] is the CEO of Natural Resources Partners L.P., which belongs to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. ACCCE is a 'pro coal group' that is linked to at least thirteen fraudulent letters mailed to members of Congress purporting to be from seniors, veterans, African American, Latino and Women's organizations expressing opposition to ACES. In 2008, ACCCE spent at least $45 million on a clean coal advertising campaign, and during the first two quarters of 2009, ACCCE has spent over a million dollars in direct federal lobbying."

Coalition for Affordable American Energy (CAAE) is a coalition of more than 180 trade associations sponsored by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. CAAE is chiefly responsible for a misleading study projecting job losses and increased energy costs, under an Obama energy plan, and they won praise from President George W. Bush for their support of offshore domestic oil drilling. CAAE was formed in 2008 to push for a pro-oil drilling agenda with industry heavyweights.

Capital Research Center(CRC)runs the GreenWatch.org website collects information on non-profit environmental advocates, and is heavily biased against climate science.CRChas taken funding fromExxon and Philip Morris.

The Cato Institute tends to focus on disputing the science behind global warming and questioning the rationale for taking action. The organization’s 2009 “Handbook for Policymakers” on global warming begins with the suggestions that Congress should “pass no legislation restricting emissions of carbon dioxide” and “inform the public about how little climate change would be prevented by proposed legislation.” Robert Bradley, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is also a founder and the CEO of the Institute for Energy Research. In 2007 the Cato Foundation gave $120,000 to New Hope Environmental Services, a "an advocacy science consulting firm" founded and run by long-time climate science denier Patrick J. Michaels, who uses New Hope to public his World Climate Report, a sort of ongoing journal of denial of climate science. Michaels is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, which paid him $98,000 to write a book “The Satanic Gases” with fellow skeptic Robert Balling. Over the years, Michaels’ work has been financed by a number of coal and polluter interests, including the Western Fuels Association and the Intermountain Rural Electric Association. According to an investigative report by Greenpeace, Cato received family foundation grants from oil services giant Koch Industries worth $3,358,000 between 1997 and 2008.

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow(CFACT) is a major critic of climate science and helped organize a conference during the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen to dispute ongoing efforts to combat global warming. CFACTadvisors include Patrick Michaels, Michael Fumento and Dennis Avery, major critical voices of climate change science. CFACT has been funded by conservative foundations and Exxon, among others.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is one of the oldest conservative think tanks dating back to the Reagan years of the 1980s. It has also been closely involved in putting out misinformation about global warming, and stated a front group called the Cooler Heads Coalition in 1997, a group of conservative and fossil fuel funded organizations opposed to efforts to implement clean energy regulations and cut global CO2 emissions. CEI has been a major recipient of funding from Exxon and other oil companies. Last year, CEI was behind the specious claim that the government was hiding evidence that fighting global warming would cost more than it was saying publicly. CEI has also jumped on the hackergate bandwagon making outrageous claims that the stolen emails were proof that global warming was a fraud. CEI was also a close ally of Philip Morris and has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from Big Tobacco. Read more.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 to champion civil rights. Its chairman and CEO is Roy Innis, also on the board of the conservative Hudson Institute which receives funding from Koch Industries. Between 2003 and 2006, ExxonMobil donated more than $275,000 to CORE, including for projects described as "Global Climate Change Environmental Outreach." CORE has focused on opposing clean energy and climate legislation by claiming it would raise energy prices disproportionately for minorities. CORE's original founders have criticized the organization for "renting out" its reputation to companies like ExxonMobil.

The Cooler Heads Coalition is a loose association of more than a dozen conservative climate skeptic groups and publishes the website globalwarming.org.  It was hosted and financed by the anti-regulatory group Consumer Alert and is chaired by Myron Ebell, who directs the global warming and energy policy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Energy Citizens is a "grass roots" campaign against climate and energy legislation which has organized rallies in the Midwest and South during the August Congressional recess. The Energy Citizens** coalition includes business and industry groups and conservative advocacy organizations like Freedomworks.Greenpeace USA recently exposed Energy Citizens' funding ties to the oil industry, including the American Petroleum Institute.

Fraser Institute, a Canadian based anti-regulatory think tank, publishes in-depth critiques of climate science, including a 110-page report attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment report. The Institute also offers lesson plans and educational materials designed to encourage children to be skeptical of mainstream climate science. The Fraser Institute has sought funding from thetobacco industry and has received funding from ExxonMobil.

FreedomWorks is an Astroturf campaign organization run by Dick Armey, former Republican House Majority Leader and noted corporate lobbyist. In 2004 FreedomWorks merged with Citizens for a Sound Economy, a major advocacy group founded by oil services giant Koch Industries executive David Koch. Freedomworks has been a driving force behind the anti-healthcare, anti-tax, anti-clean energy opposition groups showing up at town halls and rallies across the states, and it has asked its "grass roots activists" to send a letter to members of Congress. In 2009 Freedomworks joined the Energy Citizens coalition, which is funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute and other organizations. Read More.

Frontiers of Freedom Foundation(FF) was formed in 1996 by former Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallop as an anti-regulatory think tank. It has hosted some 55 articles on its website focusing on climate science denial and high estimates of the cost of climate policy. Frontiers of Freedomreinforced the Tax Foundation’s characterization of cap-and-trade as a tax on the poor and middle class. FF also smears climate science and spreads climate disinformation. FF has worked closely with and has been funded by the tobacco industry and ExxonMobil.

Foundation for Research on Energy and the Environment(FREE) sponsors controversial seminars for federal judges that promote “free market environmentalism,” events that have been criticized for creating judicial conflicts of interest. FREE states it does not accept direct corporate support for its judicial seminars and only takes money from foundations whose founder is deceased (called dead-men foundations). A Koch report on its FREEfunding raised questions about the accuracy of the disclosure.

George C. Marshall Institute produced a “Cocktail Conversation Guide” on with suggestions for denying the dangers of global warming in any “social setting.” The Marshall Institute was originally established in the 1980s to promote President Reagan’s Star wars program but in recent years it has increasingly turned its attention to climate change. It has promoted climate skeptic Patrick Michaels books on its website and has received substantial funding from ExxonMobil. Its former chairman was Frederick Seitz, a climate skeptic and former tobacco consultant.

TheHeartland Institute is a conservative think tank that strongly criticizes climate science and runs a web site that includes misleading information about the science behind climate change. Heartland has hosted annual conferences to dispute consensus agreements around climate change. It also promoted the faulty Spanish green jobs study that was debunked by experts. Heartland is funded by conservative foundations and fossil fuel companies such as Exxon. It has received funding from and been a frequent ally of the tobacco industry.

TheHeritage Foundation is a mainstay of misinformation and exaggeration when it comes to climate and policy issues. In the last couple of years, Heritage has misinterpreted of the impacts of global warming on the US economy, twisted news reports to justify scary claims about ‘climate taxes’, issued bad economic analyses and deceptive presentations, and released exaggerated claims about economic ruin and impacts in the agricultural sector should Congress pass climate legislation. This is only a representative sample. The Heritage Foundation also teamed up with the Institute for Energy Research to promote the widely debunked “Spanish” study. Heritage has been funded by ExxonMobil and tobacco companies. According to an investigative report by Greenpeace, oil services giant Koch Industries and its family foundations gave the Heritage Foundation grants worth $3,358,000 between 1997 and 2008

Independent Women’s Forum(IWF)spread misinformation on climate science and touts the work of climate deniers. IWF is run by Nancy Pfotenhauer (formerly Nancy Mitchell), Koch Industries’ chief in-house lobbyist from 1996 to 2001 when she left Koch to become the director of the IWF. In 2003, IWF affiliated itself with Americans for Prosperity, which replaced Citizens for a Sound Economy. IWF is funded primarily by conservative foundations.

Institute for Energy Research is a partner organization to American Energy Alliance that employs the same staff and supports misinformation trashing clean energy. It supported and promoted the “Spanish” and “Danish” studies critical of clean energy jobs, both of which have been debunked by credible sources. IER also argues that efforts to curb global warming would accomplish little at too great a cost, promotes ACCF/NAM** and **Heritage Foundation** studies that exaggerate the costs of climate policy, and discourages U.S. leadership on the international stage.  Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive, is the CEO of IER and one of its founders. Thomas Pyle, a former Koch and oil-industry lobbyist, is the President of IER and the American Energy Alliance, the 501c4 counterpart to IER.One of IER's directors, Steven Hayward of theAmerican Enterprise Institute, was exposed in 2007 for attempting to pay IPCC scientists to criticize the IPCC's findings on climate science.IER has received funding from ExxonMobil.

Koch Industries the giant privately owned oil services company, is a major funder of climate change denial groups, funneling money to organizations opposed to climate change legislation through its foundations, the Claude R. Lambe Foundation; the Charles G. Koch Foundation; and the David H. Koch Foundation. According to a thorough investigative report released by Greenpeace, Koch foundations have doled out more than $48 million to group to promote its pro-oil agenda. These include the Mercatus Center (1997-2008: $9,874,500), Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) ($5,176,500 from 2005-2008), The Heritage Foundation (grants worth $3,358,000 between 1997 and 2008), and the Cato Institute (foundation grants of $5,278,400 between 1997 and 2008).

Mackinac Center For Public Policyis a large conservative think tank in Michigan that spreads climate change denials and smears prominent climate policy consultants. It has received funding from ExxonMobil.

TheManhattan Institute,founded by former CIA Chief William Casey,  publishes climate science denials and has hosted Bjorn Lomborg, a favorite of climate deniers, in the last several years. The Manhattan Institute has received funding from ExxonMobil and from tobacco companies.

National Center For Policy Analysis (NCPA)disseminates climate science denials and exaggerates the economic costs of mitigation. NCPA is an anti-regulatory think tank that has attacked efforts to combat global warming. It was caught up in the web around convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who used the organization as part of a scheme to defraud Indian tribes. The Center also has received tobacco funding from Philip Morris, as well oil companies such as ExxonMobil.

TheNational Center For Public Policy Research is an anti-regulatory think tank that has attacked efforts to combat global warming. It was caught up in the web around convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who used the organization as part of a scheme to defraud Indian tribes. The Center also has received tobacco funding from Philip Morris, as well oil companies such as Exxon.

Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP), based in San Francisco, supported and funded An Inconvenient Truth…or Convenient Fiction,a film attacking the science of global warming and intended as a rebuttal to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary. The film was produced by PRIPP Senior Fellow Steven Hayward and promoted by the Heritage Foundation. PRIPP has received funding from ExxonMobil and from the tobacco industry.

Property And Environment Research Center (PERC) is a private property rights think tank based in Bozeman, MT. It touts the economic benefits to American farmers as a reason not to act against climate change. PERC has been a part of the Cooler Heads Coalition and has taken funding from ExxonMobil.

National Black Chamber Of Commerce (NBCC) and its president Harry C. Alford have vigorously opposed  H.R. 2454, participating in rallies and testifying before Congress. In a recent Senate hearing, Alford recently called Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer a racist for her comments about NAACP's support of the climate change legislation. NBCC has received funding from ExxonMobil and the tobacco industry.

Science And Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)was founded byFred Singer,a leading climate science skeptic, and was originally associated with the Unification Church. Singer, who also worked with the tobacco industry, worked closely with a variety of climate skeptic groups, including the Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. SEPP received funding from ExxonMobil.

The Reason Foundation,publisher of Reason Magazine, promotes the tenets of “Free Market Environmentalism (FME)” to argue that those who suffer from the effects of global warming have little legal or moral claim for compensation from GHG emitters. The Reason Foundation received funding from ExxonMobil and the tobacco industry.

The Tax Foundation opposed ACESA and issued a study on the costs of cap and trade legislation. Wayne Gable, a former Managing Director of Federal Affairs at Koch Industries, served as president of the Tax Foundation from 1989-1991.  He is now on the board of the Institute For Energy Research. The Tax Foundation has received funding from ExxonMobil.

Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) fellows recently wrote on why reducing global warming pollution won't work and the devastating impact the American Clean Energy and Security Act would have on all aspects of American life. It has received funding from conservative foundations and Exxon.

The US Chamber Of Commerce (The Chamber) wouldn't ordinarily make a list of front groups since in general it is what it claims: a representative of business interests. However, in the case of the climate debate, The Chamber presents the positions of three of America's biggest coal producers as representative of the entire body, a misrepresentation that some members have complained about. In fact, nineteen of **The Chamber's** board members support federal policy on climate, while only four—including those three coal companies—oppose it. The Chamber's** calls to hold a “Scopes Monkey” trial on global warming science evidence that the body has chosen to present the views of a few coal companies as representing US business in general. This analysis connects the dots between Union Pacific Railroad and its support for UP Director and Chamber President Tom Donohue, dirty coal and The Chamber's anti-climate legislation stance. The Chamber spent $144 million on lobbying in 2009, a 60% increase from 2008.

The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) publishes articles on the business threats posed by regulation of global warming pollution, such as vulnerability to tort claims. WLF is funded by conservative foundations and has received funding from the tobacco industry and has received money from Exxon.

Young America’s Foundation (YAF) publishes climate-denial creeds and promotes prominent climate-denier Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute which has received funding from ExxonMobil.  Horner is author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism,” and “A Field Guide to Climate Criminals.” YAF President Ron Robinson is a director of Citizens United and of the American Conservative Union, which have been skeptical of climate change.