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The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

smithsonianmag.com

31–40 of 276 posts

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, the "environment movement" as you call it is obviously funded by the governments looking for an excuse to raise taxes. It's the governments giving away grant money to fund the "scientific consensus" (another ridiculous term). Meanwhile, this has nothing to do with "saving the world", only with the sovereign debt crisis. United States, EU and Japan are dead broke, they will try every ploy to raise taxes and steal…

What's ridiculous about a scientific consensus? It's a trend in the publication of scientific facts. Show me a better way of unearthing what the data is showing than extrapolating from publications of hundreds of independent research. Especially when you follow it with a steam of unfounded speculations.

Science is not determined by consensus. It's determined by fact. If 100% of scientists paid for by a government declare what the government wants to hear as "fact", it does not become fact. Especially if it's based on arbitrary models that have been shown wrong. In the 1970s the "scientific consensus" was about global cooling, now it's about global warming, and Al Gore promised that Manhattan would be submerged underwater by now. The truth is, there is no model proven to be accurate in predicting the Earth's climate even over a timeframe of 50 years.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, NASA was funded to collect the actual data until Trump arrived. The facts don’t care if you don’t like them and they don’t go away if you cover your eyes like a child and pretend they’re not there.

The facts are that nobody knows how climate works and there is no proof that humanity controls climate. The facts are that there is a large propaganda machine in the media using dirty tactics (e.g. a mentally ill child) to spread fearmongering and doomsday bullcrap. The facts are that there is big money behind this climate religion that has nothing to do with helping the environment (reality check: carbon dioxide is…

Oddly I think it’s you who have fallen pray to propaganda.

(Ps calling her mentally ill when she is clearly not does nothing for your position)

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the GOP is bought by fossil fuel, even though solar and wind and nuclear can lobby, they can not compete with record setting fossil profits in 2019 dollar amounts, thus the GOP will continue to get on their knees before this industry. We need to technologically destroy the profits that drive denialism. We need to make EVs, renewables, nuclear, etc. so much better that fossil can't compete... seems unli…

It's funny how perspectives can be so different. I feel like the GOP has been politely waiting for the DNC to come to terms with the fact that nuclear is really the only path forward to provide clean stable grid power.

Oh yeah, "politely waiting". You mean "denying the very existence of a problem". Meanwhile: is it? How do you know?

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#34

Right now very close to my house there is a gas and oil storage facility and a pipeline connected to it. The city, under pressure from activist groups, has declared a climate emergency. And yet, nobody has connected the dots on the fact that if we get off fossil fuels in a timely manner, that facility is going to close . Nobody is planning for it or expecting it. The company is not facing higher insurance rates and i…

Exxon is one of the top 5 investors in renewables research. They're not idiots, they know they're going to run out of oil, and they're legally obligated to make sure their shareholders don't lose all of their money. So they're preparing for the future.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#35

Sure there is. But doesn't the title of the article read like nazi era propaganda? Not very professional or scientific or to call anyone on the other side a 'climate denier'. I'm sort of in that camp but am not paid and kind of dont mind debating it

I don't know what exactly qualifies as "climate denial", so I'm not even sure which group that is. Everybody who doesn't 100% agree with policies that are suggested and refer to "climate change" as their argument? Global-Warming Skeptics would fit the bill much better, and doesn't have that bitter taste of sounding insanely propaganda-esque, but I guess it also doesn't have the same bang.

The article actually makes this clear: if you believe that "climate change is up for debate, or that climate change is no big deal"...then you are a "climate denier".

I wonder if the guys at Smithsonian read some of the research on this from the 70s. Much of that turned out to be woefully inaccurate - Limits to Growth most famously - and that did massive damage...lesson learned? I think not.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#36
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how perspectives can be so different. I feel like the GOP has been politely waiting for the DNC to come to terms with the fact that nuclear is really the only path forward to provide clean stable grid power.

Can you point to any source that indicates that the GOP, broadly, is pro-nuclear and anti-CO2 like your comment suggests? I'm skeptical but genuinely open to the possibility of being corrected.

Might not be the best citation

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/23/1850729...

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#39
Outside climatologists, geophysicists, biologists and other people with scientific training, I am not sure most people are really equipped to argue against evidence of human impact on the climate, or that human activity is a non-factor in change. However, I do think that the policies countries and even municipalities institute in response to the evidence are fair game. Wild lands conservation, green belts on cities, reducing suburban blight and car dependency, not importing garbage, and using tariffs to reduce dependency on globalized supply chains are viable policy options, but ones that are unpopular with many of the very people who use climate change as a motte for global equity, justice, and economic central planning.

The people I know who dismiss climate activism and its acknowledgement don't disagree with the science. They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda that is unrelated and inconsistent with the needs of reducing human impact on the planet (beyond reducing birth rates in wealthy countries). These activists, whose insistence that everything is connected and systemic, are not interested in solving problems, rather they use this conflation of all things to muddy the waters and place themselves at the centre of it, conveniently gate keeping what policy options are acceptable to talk about.

Climate changes, it's a fact, and humans are impacting it, that is not seriously controversial. What is controversial is freighting the solutions with a destructive, class war agenda designed to leverage a crisis, spread poverty, and centralize governance.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#40
> Clarifying the institutional dynamics of the CCCM can aid our understanding of how anthropogenic climate change has been turned into a controversy rather than a scientific fact in the U.S.

I know how unpopular this comment will be in some circles, but I feel I have to say it anyway: Anthropogenic climate change is not a “scientific fact”. It is a theory, and (to the best of my knowledge) an untestable one at that.

I believe in anthropogenic climate change, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to abandon the scientific method and intellectual honesty in some desperate attempt to convince others of this. I fear a world without truth and science more than I fear one a few degrees warmer.

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