The new obstructionist approach doesn’t say global warming isn’t happening. Instead, it argues we don’t need to phase out oil and gas.
This propaganda is spun out of six key terms that dominate the language of #climate politics: alarmist, cost, growth, “India and China,” innovation, and resilience."
Today, the Good Law Project is airing their documentary short, 'Carbon conspiracy: How shadowy think-tanks went to war on net zero'.
In it, we hear from leading figures in media and politics to explore the insidious network based around 55 Tufton Street with undisclosed donors - a network that lobbied for Brexit for years and is now focused on downplaying the climate crisis.
This last one is also a white supremacist, so, yeah. I think their account is suspended from my instance but still active on Infosec.exchange, but I could be wrong. Update: I have been informed that Infosec has indeed suspended this account. Thanks!
Also observe these accounts interacting with a couple of somewhat well-known faux leftist accounts: Flexghost and RadicalEgoCom. Recommend those for a block as well.
#TESLA NEWS: New York City Comptroller Brad Lander Files Letter to #TSLA Shareholders with #SEC: The Board's Failure to Curtail the CEO Jeopardizes Tesla’s Brand, so "we urge you to vote against the reelection of Kimbal Musk and James Murdoch and against the ratification of the #Musk 2018 Pay Package."
James Murdoch is a #climatedenial promoter. He is a billionaire's buddy on a Board that is totally captive to Musk's fantasies. That's no way to make money!
"The pro-Trump Epoch Times has run hundreds of anti-climate social media adverts in Europe since the beginning of 2024 that have been seen millions of times.
Many of these adverts have explicitly questioned the contribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) to climate change."
I love the space program as much as anyone, but there is not even time left on habitable Earth to think somehow a colonization to Mars would save us.
Terraforming is a VERY difficult, expensive, and risky task, easy to fail at, as writers of hard science fiction like Kim Stanley Robinson have explained in fascinating detail.
If you REALLY want an uninhabitable planet to rehabilitate, take the engines out of existing rockets, put them on cinder blocks, and wait. The wait won't be long. You'll be on one faster, cheaper, and more reliably than if you try to escape the gravity well, and with lots better available resources.
Seems far better to me to just get started now in earnest with the serious task of fixing Earth, in hopes of optimizing out the messy, sad, painful part in the middle where humanity goes extinct due to that messy uninhabitability thing that's rocketing toward us. Fixing things here at home is perhaps not as flashy as planetary colonization, but it's much more relevant and, if we start now, doable. YMMV.
When you watch science denial in action, you will see the same sort of arguments being used over and over, often in much the same order. Here is a handy-dandy cut-out-and-keep guide, with examples from:
Red state attempts to tell city what to do / not do. This is the kind of delay tactics that is the current brand of #ClimateDenial. Helped by #CarBrain that says bus riders are undeserving.
" The bill targeted Indianapolis and could have scuttled over one hundred million dollars in federal funds. Specifically, the bill put a one year moratorium on dedicated lanes deemed essential for the Blue Line while a one year study could be conducted on their effectiveness."
Please read this opinion piece by Johan Hansson, a theoretical physicist at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. Here are a few excerpts...
I find it tragic that the world is governed exclusively by economists and is driven by economics, which is not a natural science, but just a human invention. There are physical limits to continuous economic expansion – a fact that most economists do not seem to understand.
In my view it is crazy to think that uncontrolled technological “development” and exploitation driven by unbridled and increasingly unequal capitalism will save us. It is what has plunged us into today’s crisis in the first place.
After all, if you are sitting on a tree branch that you are sawing off, and the ground underneath is burning, the solution is not to switch to a better saw – it is to stop sawing.
Role models like climate activist Greta Thunberg are trying to save those who, for some reason, have not yet understood how serious the situation actually is. To reach the climate pledge of limiting global warming below 1.5°C, the use of fossil fuels must completely cease by 2035, with zero deforestation and a drastic reduction in other greenhouse gas emissions. Yet according to the International Energy Agency, about 80% of the world’s energy today still comes from fossil fuels.
There is one option to reverse the current trend and that is to abide by Earth’s natural limits. Governments need to realize that rich countries must adapt their production and consumption to bring it below what is sustainable for the Earth-system as a whole. The only alternative to a planned and controlled downsizing is a forced and catastrophic global collapse.
"There are physical limits to continuous economic expansion – a fact that most economists do not seem to understand."
One of those limits is time. Failing to respect this has allowed people to think that human ingenuity can eventually come up with solutions to almost anything. And probably it can. But we don't have "eventually" to work with. And it is just not equally true that human ingenuity can come up with solutions to almost anything within a year or two.
There really is not time to invent and deploy new tech. We need to act fast enough that we have what we have. And, given that, we need to scale back. We're just in collective denial.
Some say we can't change society fast enough. But we have counterexamples, the most recent of which was covid. Almost overnight, we changed how society's core functions and cash flow worked. We did it because we knew we had no choice.
The reason we aren't changing for Climate Change is not that we can't, it's that we think we have some other choice or we think we have more time. We don't. We're just in denial.
I was diving through old blog essays in search of something that I guess wasn't there. But along the way, I ran into a writing of mine I called Plutocratic Denial, that's maybe worth a visit by some who, like me, are frustrated by our society's inaction on Climate Change.
"The [researchers] say the “report reveals how these East Coast #OffshoreWind opponents are not solely local – they are embedded in a network of seasoned #FossilFuel interests and #ClimateDenial think tanks that have perfected obstruction tactics for decades.”
One striking aspect of the anti-OSW network is the sharing of tactics and rhetoric, both in mainstream media and on social networks, said Slevin."
"[Outright climate denial] is explicitly banned from generating ad revenue on #Youtube according to Google's policy.
Instead, the report found that last year 70% of #ClimateDenial content on the channels analyzed focused on attacking climate solutions as unworkable, portraying global warming as harmless or beneficial, or casting climate science and the environmental movement as unreliable. That's up from 35% five years earlier."
This #FossilFuel driven Dementor campaign is not helping people already struggling with mental health, especially the young. It may help if you point out to them that part of the bleak view on climate they get online is manufactured.
" “New denial” content — attacks on solutions, the science and the climate movement — now makes up 70% of all #ClimateDenial claims posted on #YouTube, according to the report, up from 35% in 2018. "
"Until last week western #Canada had been enduring a cold spring but the rapid onset of #unseasonably high temperatures, in places 10-15C above the average for early May, is causing #fires and #flooding."
Wonder what it takes for #Alberta and Albertans to connect the dots.
" #Postmedia [is] a media conglomerate that owns virtually all the newspapers of any size in Canada except the longstanding national newspaper, the Globe & Mail. And Postmedia is a very conservative, very corporate friendly, very oil and gas friendly corporation."
#HomeInsurance premiums are in the five figures: this is #insurance companies telling you, in their language of premiums, that you're living in a vulnerable place.
"I've heard of #premiums for residences in Lismore being $15,000. It's just not reasonable," Katschke says.
But is IS reasonable, if you consider how high the risk is of losing the entire home. Calling it unreasonable is a form of #ClimateDenial.