Pretend Underdogs: Inside a Climate Denier Conference at Trump Hotel
entered Trump International Hotel in Washington last Thursday with a three-person team to cover the Heartland Institute’s 13th International Conference on Climate Change. I left with two.
Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change by burning fossil fuels, this free-market think tank, which has received large sums of fossil fuel money, continues to hawk various strains of climate change denial. And they weren’t happy that The Weather Channel had brought along George Mason University researcher John Cook, who tracks disinformation and climate change denialism professionally. About two hours into the conference, interim Heartland President and Director of Communications Jim Lakely pulled us aside. “You have two choices,” the stocky, spikey-haired man told us in a small conference room filled with empty cardboard boxes. “Either John leaves, or you all leave.”
(Cook was not on the press list, but was an official correspondent with The Weather Channel for the occasion. After the Heartland Institute failed to respond to multiple emails, Cook joined our reporting team, assuming there was no problem.)
This gesture — “He’s not welcome on principle,” Lakely said — set the tone for the next several hours, during which former NASA climate communications specialist Laura Faye Tenenbaum, sound recordist Rachel Falcone and I would listen to a cabal of policy wonks, contrarian scientists and communicators sounding a little too certain in their denial to deserve the title, “skeptics.”
After reading article the right have no right to say it's the left who are politicising climate change. The conference was all politics and no science.
Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.
Foregoing burgers and chops can really help the climate...
Climate crisis reducing land’s ability to sustain humanity, says IPCC
The climate crisis is damaging the ability of the land to sustain humanity, with cascading risks becoming increasingly severe as global temperatures rise, according to a landmark UN report compiled by some of the world’s top scientists.
Global heating is increasing droughts, soil erosion and wildfires while diminishing crop yields in the tropics and thawing permafrost near the poles, says the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Further heating will lead to unprecedented climate conditions at lower latitudes, with potential growth in hunger, migration and conflict and increased damage to the great northern forests.
The report, approved by the world’s governments, makes clear that humanity faces a stark choice between a vicious or virtuous circle. Continued destruction of forests and huge emissions from cattle and other intensive farming practices will intensify the climate crisis, making the impacts on land still worse.
However, action now to allow soils and forests to regenerate and store carbon, and to cut meat consumption by people and food waste, could play a big role in tackling the climate crisis, the report says.
Such moves would also improve human health, reduce poverty and tackle the huge losses of wildlife across the globe, the IPCC says...
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
She has addressed world and U.N. leaders and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Later this month, she'll sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a 60-foot yacht powered by solar panels and underwater turbines on her way to participate in the U.N. climate talks in New York (see related story).
But the success of Thunberg — who describes herself on Twitter as a "16 year old climate activist with Asperger" — remains a sore point for those who reject mainstream climate science and some who have helped shape or encourage the Trump's administration rollback of climate policy.
They frequently point to Thunberg's autism, claim she is used by her parents and compare her call to young people on climate change to "Hitler Youth." They have pointed to her "monotone voice" and framed her as a "millenarian weirdo" with the "look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes."
Indeed. But the more they try to discredit her the louder her voice will be heard.
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here. .
"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
They're not dumb - merely 'concerned'. I mean, it's pretty disgraceful the way she's virtue signalling and flaunting her wealth by travelling on a luxury liner.
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here. .
"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Another hottest month ever (recorded). Well, at least the stock market is up! Oh, wait...
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." —Voltaire
"They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved." —Sebastian Gorka
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould
The Brazilian president is actively trying to devastate the Amazon rainforest, leaked documents have revealed.
The documents show arguments put forward by Jair Bolsonaro that a strong government presence in the Amazon region is important to prevent any conservation projects going forward.
Intending to build bridges, motorways, and a hydroelectric plant in the rainforest, the Brazilian government hopes to ‘fight off international pressure’ to protect the Amazon, according to the leaked information.
As reported by The Independent, the plans were leaked to political website openDemocracy and include PowerPoint slides believed to have been presented at a meeting in February between Brazilian government officials and local leaders in Para state, which is home to the Amazonia National Park.
During the meeting, Brazilian ministers put forward projects planned for the region by President Bolsonaro’s government, with one slide mentioning a priority to strategically occupy the rainforest.
The slide reads, as per openDemocracy:
Development projects must be implemented on the Amazon basin to integrate it into the rest of the national territory in order to fight off international pressure for the implementation of the so-called ‘Triple A’ project.
To do this, it is necessary to build the Trombetas River hydroelectric plant, the Óbidos bridge over the Amazon River, and the implementation of the BR-163 highway to the border with Suriname.
The ‘Triple A’ (Andes, Amazon and Atlantic) project is a conservation effort led by the organisation Gaia Amazonas, which aims to conserve 265 million square kilometers of jungle and ‘the lungs of our world’.
But now Bolsonaro, Brazil’s controversial far-right president, appears to be sabotaging this effort as devastating fires rage through the Amazon. Fires which are causing a loss equivalent to three football fields per minute, according to the latest government data.
The rainforest – which covers northwestern Brazil and extends into Colombia, Peru and other South American countries – has been burning for weeks, plunging Brazil’s Sao Paulo into darkness and devastating the Amazon.
If the fire continues to burn at its current rate, this will be the first month for several years in which Brazil loses an area of forest bigger than Greater London, with many fearing it will never be able to recover.
According to the latest data from Brazilian satellites, as per The Guardian, 1,345 square kilometres of the region were cleared in July – a third higher than the previous monthly record under its current monitoring system, the Deter B satellite system, which started in 2015.
Bolsonaro yesterday (August 22) claimed his government ‘lacks the resources’ to extinguish the fire, although environmental groups are now placing the blame for the devastation directly on him.
Richard George, head of forests at Greenpeace, told The Independent:
The whole area around the Amazon has been highly volatile with loggers and farmers, and Bolsonaro has absolutely lit a torch under that.
The fire currently sweeping through the rainforest reportedly took hold after farmers announced a coordinated ‘day of fire’ on August 10, due to the president giving the go-ahead for farmers and illegal loggers to enter indigenous communities.
The fires present a number of interesting ideas, highlighting as they have whether anyone has a legitimate right to specify what a country does with the natural resources that sit within its borders.
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here. .
"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
You'd think with such a valuable resource that the opportunity for gain would favor either approach: the good of all, or being selfish. So I'm not sure why anyone would choose to throw the world under the bus, unless they are just nasty people.
Maybe that's not right though, maybe we wouldn't be willing to make its guardians rich.