Peter Dykstra: Will we reach peak denial soon?

Here are some crazy, detached folks that also happen to be enablers of crippling denial at the highest levels of the United States Congress

by Peter Dykstra, The Daily Climate, December 9, 2015

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In an email exchange a few months ago for another story, historian Naomi Oreskes counseled me that climate denial would only get more bold and unhinged as the impacts of climate change became more obvious.  

With their rhetoric around the Paris climate talks, anti-science firebrands are making their nemesis, Dr. Oreskes, seem prescient.

Attorney Arkady Bukh, guest blogging on Anthony Watts' go-to website for climate denial, drew a lengthy analogy between advocates of action on climate change and the “People’s Temple” religious cult.  

Leader Jim Jones, a former San Francisco street preacher, ordered over 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide in Guyana in 1978.  They complied. Now, 37 years after their tragic demise, they’re being compared to the science community, defense strategists, environmental activists, and a Pope.

Over at Breitbart, James Delingpole was slightly more restrained, dismissing climate scientists as “talentless low-lives who cannot be trusted.”  

I reached out to the Climate Scientists’ Underground Lair, but their voicemail said they were all out selling drugs at middle schools.

A hardy perennial among denier memes is flourishing: President Obama, they say, is a hypocrite because he arrived at the Paris meet via a fuel-guzzling jet.  

I can remember encountering this one as far back as 1985, when a chemical industry exec told me that because I, too, had used an aeroplane, I had no moral authority to write about anyone else’s pollution.  But I’m no Obama, and he’s drawn heavy flack as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, the National Review, and others beat this dead horse.  

I’m willing to give Obama some slack for using Air Force One:  Perhaps the carbon-neutral Presidential trireme is back in dry dock.

Rush Limbaugh postulated that “deranged people …..and most of them are leftists” would take Obama’s embrace of climate action as a cue to start America’s next mass shooting.

Lord Monckton, the theatrical British peer, offered a different perspective: Instead of one-off acts of domestic terrorism, he said, Obama’s game was teaming up with “malevolent scientists,” using the climate summit to establish a world totalitarian government.

Another central theme from the denial-o-sphere is that distributing as much coal as possible throughout the developing world will be the key to beating “energy poverty.”  

Peabody Energy, who couldn’t lick Appalachian poverty even while mining a century’s worth of its coal, is big on this one.  And Peabody’s learning a thing or two about its own poverty:  Its stock traded at $112 a share in 2001, and right now, it’s hovering at $10.

Patrick Moore, an early Greenpeace leader who has spent the last quarter century in the employ of the chlorine industry, the timber industry, the nuclear industry, the aquaculture industry and others who need an environmental PR boost, officially weighed in as an ocean acidification denier. 

In a report that appears to contain no original research or indication of peer review, Moore defies a growing body of research as well as a basic understanding of chemistry by pronouncing that “alarmism” is responsible for findings—original research and peer-review included—that the pH balance of the oceans is beginning to change.

Hopefully you get the gist of this by now.

These people are crazy.  Detached from reality.  Off the deep end.  Not rowing with both oars in the water.  And while the U.S. media hasn’t entirely stopped giving them oxygen, they’re now largely quarantined onto Fox News. 

On Monday, a conference at an ironically-named Paris venue drew Moore, Monckton, and a host of denial cohorts, but according to Reuters, filled “just a handful of the 70 seats.” Yes, there was plenty of room at the Hotel California.

These people are crazy. Detached from reality. Off the deep end. Not rowing with both oars in the water. 

So why am I spending time on them?

They’re also the enablers of crippling denial at the highest levels of the United States Congress, and at the core of the Republican race for the 2016 Presidential nomination.

On Tuesday, Ted Cruz held a hearing titled “Data or Dogma?”  The senator and presidential hopeful teed up four denier faves to testify: scientists John Christy, Judith Curry, William Happer, and, incredibly, Mark Steyn. 

Steyn is a conservative blogger who is facing a defamation lawsuit for likening Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann to Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach and convicted serial child rapist.  

Dr. Happer jumped the mother of all sharks last year, when in a TV interview he likened the “demonization” of CO2 to the treatment Jews received under Hitler.  

Their testimony, and that of Rear Admiral David Titley, the lone witness from outside the deny-o-sphere, is here.

Steyn’s is particularly striking: In a written statement prior to the testimony, he takes a swing at the National Science Foundation and manages to work in references to the “Communist regimes of Eastern Europe” and “the Baathist tyranny of Saddam Hussein.” He also repeated the charge that got him hauled into court.

Sen. Cruz kicked things off by ticking off a laundry list of oft-refuted claims: polar ice is not declining, there’s been no warming in 18 years, and, of course, that he’s all about science.  

He also introduced Steyn as a “human rights activist” for his role in toppling a Canadian anti-hate speech law.

Meanwhile, House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith continues his much-criticized witch-hunt of government scientists, doubling down on threats to grill NOAA’s scientists and leadership.  

Eight science organizations have condemned Smith’s crusade.  Perhaps more significantly, Mike Mann pointed out in a New York Times op-ed that reasonable Republicans would also condemn such forays, but not anymore.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell worked overtime to undermine U.S. efforts to push for an accord.  And Cruz is hardly alone among the GOP presidential contenders.  

Only three long shots—Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Chris Christie—have made occasional acknowledgements that maybe-just-maybe we’ve got a climate problem.  Last week, Christie flew with the pack, blurting out “Hell No!” when asked if the U.S. should lead on climate change.

Climate-denying demagogues are far from the only reason that denial is grossly over-represented in American politics.  An irrational campaign finance and primary system and under-performing political journalism are major players, too.  

But I neither expect nor want the Tom Steyers and Mike Bloombergs of the world to out-buy the tsunami of money coming from their ideological opposites.  Nor do I expect the Lamar Smiths or Jim Inhofes in Congress to feel unsafe in their denial—they routinely coast to re-election by margins of three to one or better.

But maybe we’re reaching peak denial.  Maybe the ideology, money, and irrational fear that a cabal of scientists and hippies are poised to take over the world are getting tired.   Maybe the crackpots will move on, as they’ve partially done with marriage equality. Humor me on this, please.

The Daily Climate is an independent, foundation-funded news service covering energy, the environment and climate change. Find us on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email editor Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org

Photos: www.commerce.senate.gov 

http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2015/12/will-we-reach-peak-denial-soon

Peter Dykstra: Doubling down on doubt

HeartlandTube/Youtube

Swift support from the denial community for Willie Soon reflects a disregard for self-policing.

by Peter Dykstra, Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, March 5, 2015

The most remarkable aspect of Willie Soon’s soiled science scandal is that in the light of damning evidence of a serious ethical lapse, the climate denial camp shows no interest in self-policing.

When documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act showed Soon was promising “deliverables” for climate research funded by fossil fuel affiliates, the judgment outside the climate denial sphere was swift, largely because the evidence was from Soon’s own hand.

But many who embrace climate denial not only saw nothing wrong with this, they circled the wagons around their embattled Man of Science.

Many who embrace climate denial not only saw nothing wrong with this, they circled the wagons around their embattled Man of Science. Soon crossed what most scientists believe are several inviolable ethical lines. While academia doesn’t generally disdain funding from parties who may have an economic or ideological stake in the outcome, transparency is key. Soon, via his unpaid climate-related research with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, failed to reveal on multiple papers that his climate change-related publications were largely bankrolled by Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, and the Charles Koch Foundation.

He also gushed about how the results would please prospective funders. "I have a big super-duper paper soon to be accepted on how the sun affects the climate system,” he wrote to a Southern Company sponsor. Southern is the biggest electric utility in the Southeast U.S., is heavily coal-dependent, and clearly would have something to gain should a scientific paper throw the sun under the bus for what the vast majority of scientists believe to be fossil fuel-driven climate change.

The Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute's Joe Bast called climate scientists and advocates "mental midgets."

The Climate Investigations Center and Greenpeace* obtained and released the documents. Some climate activists crowed. Editorial pages scowled. The Smithsonian promised a swift investigation.

Soon's defenders, meanwhile, pulled out what is now a reliable playbook for conservatives confronted with accusations of errors, omissions and downright lies: They doubled down and went on the attack.

The Heartland Institute, which has listed Soon as an in-house expert, took the reins as his communications clearinghouse, releasing Soon’s official statement on its website along with a volley of counterattack. Heartland chief Joe Bast called climate scientists and advocates “mental midgets.” To be fair, that may signal a softening of Heartland’s hard line, since three years ago they were likening their foes to mass murderer Ted Kaczynski.

The Breitbart.com site was particularly unhinged in its response. The release of Soon’s own documents was a “crucifixion,” and reporting on the documents by The New York Times was a “hit piece” and a “smear.” Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Penn.) was singled out for the offense of re-tweeting the Times story. (Heartland’s Bast co-authored the “crucifixion” piece.)

Fox News took a more passive stance, deploying crickets. While Fox’s website lists multiple stories about sexual harassment allegations against R.K. Pachauri, the recently resigned head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Soon’s soiled science appears to have received only one brief mention on a Sunday talk show. The only other reference to climate change on Fox in recent weeks have centered on attempts to prove that a cold, snowy month in much of the U.S. is Exhibit A against climate change.

The World Affairs Council

Fox’s high-profile prime time host Bill O’Reilly (left) didn’t mention the scandal, either. O’Reilly once embraced climate science, telling "60 Minutes": “Global warming is here… all these idiots that run around and say it isn’t here, that’s ridiculous.” But as climate denial has embedded itself in conservative doctrine and in Fox’s Fair-and-Balanced reporting, O’Reilly no longer believes climate scientists.

O’Reilly might be excused for skipping the Soon story. Like Soon’s supporters, he’s busy doubling down to defend against his own accusers’ allegations that he embellished his own war-correspondent stories.

And in that is an illustrative lesson in how climate denial and American conservatism became inseparable: Doubling down against critics is the standard defense, no matter how demonstrable the evidence is against you. It’s what Dick Cheney did on his whirlwind media tour last December, in which he defended both the Iraq war and the use of torture by American intelligence officials. It’s what Pat Michaels, another widely-cited skeptical scientist, did when soliciting coal producers’ money back in 2006. And it’s what Oliver North, the Grandpappy of modern-day doubling down, did in the late 1980’s when he was caught at the center of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. He became a hero to millions of Americans.

To this day, Ollie North still hosts a weekend show on Fox News. So in the event that Willie Soon has to face the music because ethics outweighs doubling down, there may be an opening for a Fox News science show host. It would be Super-Duper.

*I used to work for Greenpeace in the 1980s. That’s full disclosure, Willie.

EHN welcomes republication of our stories, but we require that publications include the author's name and Environmental Health News at the top of the piece, along with a link back to EHN's version.

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2015/mar/willie-soon-climate-denial-science-conservative-politics

Peter Dykstra: It's not the heat, it's the stupidity [of rabidly anti-science Republicans]

Mike Licht/flickr

The new Congress may be the most boldly anti-science body since the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial

by Peter Dykstra, Environmental Health News, January 3, 2014

The 114th Congress convenes this week. The last time a Congressional anti-science caucus was this strong may have been during the Scopes Monkey Trial ninety years ago. But that’s not the worst part of it: The folks who want to gut government research and deny climate change are virtually guaranteed perpetual re-election and jobs for life.

Let’s get straight to the moral of this story: Entrenched anti-science isn’t going away. Not soon, maybe not in our lifetimes.  Every one of the most ardent congressional climate deniers who chose to run won re-election, mostly by runaway margins, and probably have jobs for as long as they want them. A landscape of gerrymandered “safe” districts and wide-open campaign cash spigots make their futures even safer, even as their behavior helps make our own a little more bleak.

More examples than you may care to know about

Chris Stewart handily won a second term for his Utah congressional seat over a state senator. As a freshman, he chaired the House Environmental Subcommittee. In 2013, he dismissed human-influenced climate change in the Salt Lake Tribune, citing scientific uncertainty, “questionable” claims, and the motives of “radical environmentalists” as drivers behind a dubious debate.

Entrenched anti-science isn't going away. Not soon, maybe not in our lifetimes.But Stewart’s 27-point win was a squeaker compared to his committee boss. Lamar Smith is a veteran congressman from San Antonio who ran the full House Science Committee for the last two years. While Smith embraces the language of climate denial, his portfolio is wider than that. Otherwise a solid opponent of Big Government intervention, Smith has targeted about 40 National Science Foundation grants for congressional scrutiny. Democrats couldn’t muster a candidate to run against him in November, and he swamped two third-party candidates by capturing over 70% of the vote. Smith’s Science Committee Vice Chair is Dana Rohrabacher of California. The veteran scientist-kicker romped by 29 points.

When it comes to sneering at science and cringing at climate claims, the Texas Congressional delegation is in a league of its own. Joe Barton, who famously issued an apology to BP after its 2010 oil spill, is pushing a bill to open up oil exports. He powered to a 25% win over his Democratic challenger.

Lamar Smith begins his second term as chair of the House Science Committee.

Departing from Congress is Steve Stockman, the East Texas firebrand who failed to unseat John Cornyn in this spring’s Senate primary. Stockman turned up at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit sporting a theatrical red blindfold, suggesting, I suppose, that climate action advocates were Blind Commies.

His replacement is dentist Brian Babin, an enthusiast for both energy independence and the Keystone XL pipeline. The Texas 36th district could benefit mightily from approval of the Keystone, which would have a terminal refinery in Port Arthur - a perfect spot to undercut energy independence by exporting Keystone’s oil. Just like Joe Barton wants. Newly elected Rep. Babin drilled Democratic opponent Michael Cole: 76% to 22%.

Just north of Babin’s district is that of Louie Gohmert. Let’s just be nice and say he may be the most colorful member of Congress, new inductees pending. Louie is a staple of The Daily Show, and has warned that a loosely patrolled border would lead to a brisk import trade in “terror babies.” But for Rep. Gohmert, “crackpot” is too polite a moniker. In October, he lashed out at the Obama Administration, whom he characterized as so overwrought about climate change that they were willingly allowing Ebola to eat us alive. A month later, Gohmert beat his Democratic challenger by 55 points.

Then, there’s the rookie field. New congressman Glenn Grothman may have only won his Wisconsin seat by a relatively paltry 16%, but he’s busting out of the gate on this “environment stuff,” including the War on Coal and “global warming, which doesn’t exist anyway.”

"Rich countries solve their own problems"

In Virginia, conservative college professor Dave Brat trounced another college professor by 24 points after ousting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the primary. Brat believes climate change isn’t a big deal because “rich countries solve their own problems.” 

Here in Georgia, we’re losing an anti-science giant. In 2012, Paul Broun became a viral video congressman when he told a small-town gathering thatevolution was “lies straight from the pit of hell.” Like Stockman, Broun's leaving because his Primary attempt for the Senate failed. That’s Paul Broun, physician, by the way, so he couldn’t even take the trendy dodge that he’s not a scientist.

Georgia will not miss a beat; in fact, Broun’s replacement may well be an anti-science upgrade. Jody Hice is a conservative radio talk show host who doesn’t stop at denying climate change – he denies that Islam is a religion, but acknowledges that it’s well on its way to overthrowing America.  Voters rewarded him with a two-to-one margin of victory. I strongly suggest you keep regular track of his congressional pronouncements by watching the The Daily Show.

Grand finale: Senator James Inhofe (left), the grandpappy of climate denial, won reelection by nearly forty points. He next runs, if he wants, in 2020, just before his 86th birthday. Martha Blackburn, the Tennessee congresswoman who waged war on energy-efficient lightbulbs, unplugged her Democratic challenger by 44 points -- and in December, got a rider attached to the huge Omnibus spending bill to block DOE's new lightbulb efficiency standards. John Shimkus of Illinois, who famously dismissed the possibility of climate change by quoting the Book of Genesis on the House Floor, crushed an obscure Democrat by a three-to-one margin.  Jason Chaffetz of Utah, new chair of the Government Oversight Committee and a 50-point victor in November, will give the Benghazi treatment to EPA and other agencies via a newly-created subcommittee.  Wyoming's Cynthia Lummis, freshly-reelected by a 3-to-1 margin, will chair the new government entity responsible for limiting government growth.  Her pet cause during the last Congress was dismantling the Endangered Species Act.

Defying science, even in clumsy and ignorant ways, carries no political consequence for many American officeholders. Until it does, the consequences are ours to own.

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/its-not-the-heat-its-the-stupidity