Thursday, November 12, 2015

Part 5a - Debating ClimateDepot fan: Myth of the noble climate science opposition

Will, if I'm ever going to get through your last comment I need to take it in segments, here's my first installment.  Your opening sentence raised my hackles because it's such a patently false description.  Therefore, in addition to my Reposts of the previous days, this session is going to be all about offering you a gallery of information that supports my claims regarding the base dishonesty at the root of the past decades worth of Climate Science Contrarianism.

WillH  at 7:44 PM, Oct 26, 2015
"There are great people on both sides of the AGW issue. 
It is sad that they are not all still with us. …"

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Nonsense!  

On the one side we have a very tiny group of über-wealthy individuals with passionate political convictions - sure "great" business magnets, power politic players, PR tacticians, able to purchase what they want.  Thing is, they are people obsessed with achieving their own goals, they have no interests beyond self-interest, and they buy people who are willing to sell themselves. Money enabled the megaphone, self-interest drove the message.

So it was, "think tanks" sprouted like weeds and an alternate universe of thinking was fabricated to serve their lord's myopic-vision. All of it ringing of Machiavelli empire building struggles, not of learning about our planet.  

What happened to curiosity and wanting to understanding how our planet operates or how our society has and is changing it?   What happened to that eons old human drive to make the world a better place for our children's generations?

 WillH my friend, self-interest über alles is all this other side you love knows.  I can point you to the evidence.  The truth is out there.  You just gotta poke around.
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Chances are if you read something of prominence that bad-mouths the "establishment" scientific community and their ability to form a rational fact-driven consensus - I'll bet its been authored by one of these characters.

Climate Science Misinformers
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I understand that everything I share on this page has already been categorically ex-communicated from the Republican/libertarian realm of consideration.  
So Will will dismiss it with a breezy wave.
So it goes.
Yet...
Yet...
This information and the story it tells is real - 
pretending it don't exist, 
don't make it go away chump.  

WillH, you have been had by a great PR con job.  
The tragedy is it's our kids who will be paying the price for our failures.

Chronicling the timeline, the participants and their tactics:
Merchants of Doubt

"The troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda. 

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on public health, environmental science, and other issues affecting the quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. 

In their new book, Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain how a loose–knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. In seven compelling chapters addressing tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole, global warming, and DDT, Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era. 
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The Republican War on Science 
is a 2005 book by Chris C. Mooney, an American journalist who focuses on the politics of science policy. 

In the book, Mooney discusses the Republican Party leadership's stance on science, and in particular that of the George W. Bush administration, with regard to issues such as global warming, the creation–evolution controversy, bioethics, alternative medicine, pollution, separation of church and state, and the government funding of education, research, and environmental protection. The book argues that the administration regularly distorted and/or suppressed scientific research to further its own political aims.

... recounts the 20-year campaign by "influential Republicans—initially in Congress and now also in the White House—in concert with determined allies in private industry and fundamentalist Christian organizations" to systematically deny, disparage and misrepresent scientific information related to public policy.

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Exxonsecrets
By James Hoggan • Friday, March 26, 2010 

Greenpeace released a terrific report today on the 20-year campaign by polluters to mislead the public by creating the climate denial industry. 
The new report succinctly explains how fossil fuel interests used the tobacco industry’s playbook and an extensive arsenal of lobbyists and “experts” for hire in order to manufacture disinformation designed to confuse the public and stifle action to address climate change.

In the report, titled “Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science,” Greenpeace provides a brief history of the attacks waged by polluting industries against climate science, the IPCC and individual scientists. 
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Cindy Baxter | 17 September 2015
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Organisations listed in the Exxonsecrets database
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{And oh those sleazy tactics}


Republicans struggle to find a convincing reason not to take action on climate change, so they tend to recycle excuses. In the 2014 election, one line in particular caught on—the two top Republican congressional leaders, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, insisted they were not qualified to discuss climate change science because they were not scientists. Since then, countless high-profile figures have called out this line, including President Barack Obama and Stephen Colbert.
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Not just the Koch Brothers: 
New Drexel Study reveals funders behind the climate change denial effort
By: Alex McKechnie - December 20, 2013

A Drexel University study finds that a large slice of donations to organizations that deny global warming are funneled through third-party pass-through organizations that conceal the original funder

By Douglas Fischer and The Daily Climate | December 23, 2013
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Climate Misinformers

Climate Myths from Politicians
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Conservative media outlets found guilty of biased global warming coverage
Dana Nuccitelli | Friday 11 October 2013
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Silencing the Scientists: the Rise of Right-wing Populism
2011•03•02 Clive Hamilton Australian National University
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ExxonMobil gave millions to climate-denying lawmakers despite pledge
Under pressure from shareholders, company promised eight years ago to stop funding climate denial – but financial and tax records tell a different story


But since 2007, the oil company has given $1.87m to Republicans in Congress who deny climate change and an additional $454,000 to the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), according to financial and tax records.
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Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years
A newly unearthed missive from Lenny Bernstein, a climate expert with the oil firm for 30 years, shows concerns over high presence of carbon dioxide in enormous gas field in south-east Asia factored into decision not to tap it
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Why is Our Government Attacking Science?
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Science under Attack: Legal Harassment of Climate Scientist Michael Mann
Threats to scientific inquiry and academic freedom expand in Virginia and elsewhere 
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The Relentless Attack on Climate Scientist Ben Santer

May 16, 2014
Ever since scientists first began to explain the evidence that our climate was warming — and that human activities were probably to blame — people have been questioning the data, doubting the evidence and attacking the scientists who collect and explain it. And no one has been more brutally — or more unfairly — attacked than Ben Santer. ...
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Science League of America
Attack on science education
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Oh and lets not forget  ALEC
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To be continued at 5b when I respond to WillH's next ploy:


WillH wrote:  "Concerning Our Failure to Appreciate the Weather"  I did read your article. You seem to be primarily into the politics of AGW and  (you) are an environmentalist.  I myself was once a Sierra Club member. ...

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