Unreliable Sources: First in a series about media, misinformation and following the money…

Part I: How the Media Help the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil Spread Climate Doubt

“When it comes to climate, the Oil Eight share the same goals as their corporate underwriters: sow doubt about the reality or seriousness of global warming, stifle government efforts to curb carbon emissions and hinder the growth of renewable energy technologies.”

http://ecowatch.com/2013/part-i-media-help-koch-brothers-exxonmobil-spread-climate-disinformation/

Reality Drop: A New Way to Fight Climate Denial

Here’s how Reality Drop works. We start with an online library of more than a hundred of the most common climate change myths deniers try to propagate—the same myths you might read in news stories, online comment threads, hear on talk radio, or even run across in your community or workplace. For each one, Reality Drop offers a simple, succinct rebuttal, grounded in the most up-to-date climate science—without an attitude. It’s just the facts, but easy to understand and share, no matter who you’re talking to.

Well the old adage is when you are in a hole, stop digging. Someone though hasn’t told Joe Bast, the head of the Heartland Institute.

Written on the eve of its latest denier-fest in Chicago, Bast’s outrageous blog shows he is still not only in denial about climate change, but he is still trying to denigrate his critics. He is also still trying to twist the truth.

To Read More, CLICK HERE

Koch-ing the Climate

Thanks to series of great Greenpeace investigations, we have long known about Koch’s funding of climate denial but not the extent of this involvement, which becomes apparent in this new investigation.

To learn more, CLICK HERE

“This is what desperation looks like. Comparing 97 percent of the world’s scientists, the pope and the president—all of whom believe in climate change—to mass murderers is a bit unhinged, to put it lightly.”

To learn more, CLICK HERE

Only nine states have taken comprehensive steps to address their vulnerabilities to the water-related impacts of climate change, while 29 states are unprepared for growing water threats to their economies and public health, according to a first ever detailed state-by-state analysis of water readiness released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The report ranks all 50 states on their climate preparedness planning, and is accompanied by an interactive online map showing the threats every state faces from climate change.

To read more, click here. 

After a period of declining levels of belief in global warming, there appears to be a modest rebound in the percentage of Americans who believe temperatures on the planet are increasing.

This is one of the key findings from the latest National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change (NSAPOCC), authored by Barry Rabe, a nonresident senior fellow in governance studies at The Brookings Institution and professor at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and Christopher Borick, an associate professor of political science and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.

The fall 2011 survey results indicate that current views on the existence of global warming are almost perfectly situated between the highs of late 2008 and the lows of early 2010. Other highlights include:

• More Americans than ever are pointing to experiences with warmer temperatures as the main reason they believe global warming is occurring.
• For Americans who believe that climate change is occurring, factors beyond weather (such as declining polar species) appear to be having the greatest effect on convincing an individual that the planet is warming.
• A sampling of the open-ended comments provided by survey respondents helps demonstrate the role that weather plays in shaping individual views on global warming. Personal observations also play a significant role in leading individuals to say that global warming is not occurring.
• Nearly 80 percent of Democrats believe in global warming, while Republicans are almost evenly split with 47 percent seeing evidence of increasing global temperatures.
• The divide between individuals who believe climate change is occurring and those who think it is not happening appears to be enhanced by differences on a number of key issues related to the presentation of research on global warming by scientists and the media.

To see the graphs, and read the full report, click here. 

An energy industry public relations man and lobbyist with no background in climate science has infiltrated Carleton University in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, teaching a course on climate change denial that other Carleton professors describe as “a source of embarrassment to the institution.”

Tom Harris, who originally trained as a mechanical engineer, has been a strategist for the climate change denial industry for at least a decade. A favourite presenter misrepresented as a PhD at the Heartland Institute’s regular climate change denial conferences, Harris has worked directly for companies like the international PR giant APCO Worldwide and for energy industry lobby firms such as Toronto’s High Park Group. More recently, he has launched or led at least three phony “grassroots organizations”—energy industry front groups that promote confusion or denial in climate science.

Now, Harris is teaching at Carleton, passing on a mix of climate denial mythology and flat out fiction, telling students that the planet isn’t really warming, that (if it is), humans aren’t to blame, that (if they are) if might be a good thing and that, regardless, it’s just too complicated for mere scientists to figure out. (“The climate problem is so difficult that we might never solve it.”)

Harris’s ridiculous claims have been laid bare in a new report by the Canadian Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism (CASS), which has gone through videotapes of lectures from Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective (ERTH2402), identifying 142 errors, exaggerations or outright prevarications.

To read more about what Harris has been teaching, click here. 

The climate skeptic think tank, the Heartland Institute, that last week was the victim of a devastating leak of information, has decided that attack is the best form of defense and has started threatening organizations and websites that published the leaked documents.

Its first response was to argue that the authenticity of the documents had not been confirmed. It then argued that one of the most damaging documents—its leaked 2012 Strategy—was a fake “apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute.” This was a clear attempt to stop people from quoting from it.

The Heartland then “respectfully” asked “all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, especially the fake “climate strategy” memo and any quotations from the same, from their blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.”

To read more, click here.