Seventeen years ago, on this day, April 6, 2006, the Canadian culture wars kept going.
April 6th 2006 “open letter” of “60 experts” to Harper in Financial Post Page 93 of Climate Cover-Up?
“Last week 60 accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister. They wrote to propose that balanced, comprehensive public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation of the […] government’s climate-change plans.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
There was a strong (and ultimately successful) effort to get Canada to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. This sort of thing, with the usual code words “balanced, comprehensive” was part of it.
What I think we can learn from this
Those who want to keep being rich, and don’t care if the planet burns down as a consequence, they’re persistent and skilful.
What happened next
Canada pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, and is in a tussle with Australia for “shittiest climate criminal settler colony”.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs...
Six years ago, on this day, March 28, 2017, PBSs report on the denialist Heartland Institute spamming science teachers with ludicrous “NIPPC” nonsense.
Climate Change Skeptic Group Seeks to Influence 200,000 Teachers
“Twenty-five thousand science teachers opened their mailboxes this month and found a package from the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. It contained the organization’s book “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming,” as well as a DVD rejecting the human role in climate change and arguing instead that rising temperatures have been caused primarily by natural phenomena. The material will be sent to an additional 25,000 teachers every two weeks until every public-school science teacher in the nation has a copy, Heartland president and CEO Joseph Bast said in an interview last week. If so, the campaign would reach more than 200,000 K-12 science teachers.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 407.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the culture war never ends. The Heartland Institute had suffered reverses because of its attempt to smear environmentalists with the Unabomber; it was all considered a bit much (see May 4th, 2012 – The Heartland Institute tries the Unabomber smear. It, er, blows up in their face). And so low profile stuff, like sending science teachers loads of crap was more likely to keep them afloat and feeling important.
What I think we can learn from this
As per the blog post about the school student, and the textbooks, which we come to in April, controlling what children are able to learn about climate change the way it is framed is a major goal of denialists organisations. And unfortunately, they have been very successful in this. Here we are 35 years into public knowledge of a climate emergency and most people are not taught or are mis-taught this stuff as they grow up. And then that sets the anchoring for them (see the anchoring heuristic).
What happened next
Heartland has kept going on this stuff I think and most textbooks are crap on this as per December 22 2022 report.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs
Twenty six years ago, on this day, March 14, 1997, a Liberal senator spews his usual nonsense.
Senator Parer seems to be an exception. For instance, at the Australasian Institute of Minerals and Metallurgy Annual Conference at Ballarat Senator Warwick Parer said: “I don’t have any figures to back this up, but I think people will say in 10 years that it [greenhouse] was the Club of Rome” and “The attitude of this government is to look for ways to allow projects to go ahead.” The SMH (14.3.97 ‘Greenhouse effect? No worries says Parer’.).
(Duncan, 1997:83)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 364.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Warwick Parer – and I can say this because he’s dead – was a shonk and he caused political problems for Howard. He was the kind of old white man who wants to believe that physics doesn’t exist. And so he came out with that idiotic line about in 10 years, dot, dot dot. And Howard was busy, by this time, trying to do nothing or commit Australia to nothing around the Kyoto Protocol.
What I think we can learn from this
Old white men who don’t like the consequences of industrialization will try to wish it away. And they will predict that the whole fad will die. And it hasn’t, and it won’t
The basic question of how we’re supposed to survive the 21st century behaving as we do, has not yet been answered.
What happened next
Parer was sacked as Minister in 1998. He produced an anti renewables report in 2002. He died in 2014.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..
Thirteen years ago, on this day, March 10, 2010, Maurice Newman, a neoliberal warrior from the 1970s onwards, gave a climate denial speech to senior ABC staff. Prime Minister John Howard had appointed him as chair in January 2007.
In a speech to senior ABC staff on 10 March 2010 he said climate change was an example of “group-think”. According to an ABC PM account of the speech: “Contrary views had not been tolerated, and those who expressed them had been labelled and mocked. Mr Newman has doubts about climate change himself and says he’s waiting for proof either way.”
(wikipedia Maurice Newman)
and
“The media hasn’t been good at picking these things up and it’s really been the question of what is conventional wisdom and consensus rather than listening perhaps to other points of view that may be sceptical.
“And I brought in as well in that vain what’s been going on in climate change where there’s been clearly a point of view which has been prevailing in the mainstream media, and the fact that again perhaps consensus and conventional wisdom may not always stand us in good stead.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 391.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
People like Maurice Newman, long time neoliberal soldier, want to be within the commanding organisations such as universities and media, for obvious reasons. And he did what he (was) set out to do….
What I think we can learn from this
What’s interesting, what we can learn is that these terms like “groupthink” gets thrown around as if there’s some sort of profound statement. And they’re a shortcut for avoiding actually engaging with the fact that the science around the basics of climate change has been settled for a very long time. Unable to combat that. Newman and his ilk resort to name-calling and pseudo profound smears. But it’s quite effective…
What happened next
In an article in The Australian on May 8, 2015, Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s business advisory council, said that the United Nations is behind the global warming hoax. The real agenda of the UN “is concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook,” Newman said. “This is not about facts or logic,” he added. “It’s about a new world order under the control of the UN. It is opposed to capitalism and freedom and has made environmental catastrophism a household topic to achieve its objective.”
The ABC has continued to be a site of struggle, and has been almost entirely hollowed out by the neoliberals and their chums. You can always track individual journalists and stack the board with non entities and lackeys and if they persist in being independent, reduce their funding until they get the message.
See also organisational decay.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs...
Thirteen years ago, on this day, March 9, 2009, Stefan Rahmstorf, climate scientist and oceanographer at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research spends time and readers’ bandwidth unpicking the trickery of Bjohn Lomborg, ace lukewarmist.
“And it is telling that he then goes on to draw an “inescapable” conclusion about a slow-down of sea level rise from just four years of data. This is another well-worn debating trick: confuse the public about the underlying trend by focusing on short-term fluctuations. It’s like claiming spring won’t come if there is a brief cold snap in April.”
Rebuttal in The Guardian of Lomborg´s claim that sea level is not steadily rising, March 9th 2009.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that denialists were stepping up their campaigns of cherry-picking, doubt-mongering and so on. The so-called lukewarmists – a more sophisticated.version of straight out denial, were stepping up their campaigns of doubt and confusion and spewing out flak, ahead of another big international gathering, this time in Copenhagen.
What I think we can learn from this
The patient work of debunking a set of misleading statements is costly and ineffective. Because the mere attempt to debunk gives the appearance that there are two more or less equal sides in a debate on this issue. There really aren’t, not equal, cognitively or in terms of numbers of working scientists.
But they want to give that impression thus – the Oregon petition, (which comes up in April on this site), and so on.
What happened next
The “Gish Gallop” technique keeps getting used, because it’s a really effective tool in the absence of an educated populace that is able to think for itself.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..
Thirty one years ago, on this day, March 6, 1992, US Public Radio had a segment with polar opposite views on its environment segment with Fred Singer (denialist idiot) and Anil Agarwal, of the Center for Science and the Environment, in New Delhi [link]. Agrawal made the point that while the West was talking about its luxury emissions, the mere survival emissions of poor people were being ignored, or worse, thrown into the mix as something that must be reduced. Oh how times have changed…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that negotiations for the text of a climate treaty were entering the end game, centred on US intransigence on the question of targets and timetables versus the desire of the Europeans to have a stronger treaty.
Singer had just orchestrated an open letter (see Feb 27 1992)
And National Public Radio was trying to educate people about all aspects of the debate, the science, the policy, etc. Agrawal made the point that there are such things as necessity, “survival emissions” versus “luxury emissions”, and that countries like India should have capacity to increase their emissions. Singer was just spewing the usual shite.
What I think we can learn from this
We should remember that what we now see, as a matter of fact, text of a climate treaty has been, from the beginning, intensely fought over. And the battles that were won by the evil bastards in 1992 have made it much easier for the opponents of climate action to continue to win, though they have never, to my knowledge, rested on their laurels, or taken their ongoing victory for granted.
What happened next
The French and Europeans blinked. There were no targets and timetables in the treaty. And here we are 31 years later.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs...
Twelve years ago, on this day, March 5, 2011 veteran Australian political commentator Laurie Oakes nailed the climate denialist nutters.
“Wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork. The mad and menacing phone calls to independent MP Tony Windsor are just one indication. There are plenty of others online. The carbon tax and Tony Abbott’s call for a people’s revolt have crazies foaming at the mouth. You see it on the ‘Revolt Against the Carbon Tax’ Facebook page, for example. Like this message from a Gillard-hater about a rally in front of Parliament House being planned for March 23: ‘Just like Egypt we stay there and protest continuously until she and her cronies, Bob Brown Greens etc are ousted! We have got to get rid of this Godless mistress of deceit.”’
Oakes, L. 2011. Loonies latch on to the politics of hate. The Australian, 5 March.
Oakes, 2013: 86
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was an incredibly heated culture war that had been constructed around the question of having a price on carbon emissions. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had had multiple positions on carbon pricing and climate change (the Howard government had gone to the 2007 election with such a policy). Abbott admitted to being a weather vane n the issue
By March 2011 he had seen off Kevin Rudd and had been reportedly willing to sell his ass to become Prime Minister. In February 2011 Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard had announced that there would be an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price for two years. And as oaks puts it, all the wingnuts came out to play…
What I think we can learn from this
That settler colonies don’t deal well with the notion of environmental limits especially if someone who is only a woman is in charge.
That it is partly possible to import culture war techniques from the United States. They won’t work perfectly in other countries, but for a while, they give the appearance of effectiveness.
You also want to think about McCright and Dunlap 2011, anti reflexivity as part of the picture underneath all of this.
What happened next
Well, on the 23rd of March, there was the infamous rally with Abbott being photographed next to placards that talked about “Bob Brown’s Bitch” and “Ditch the Witch ”. The wingnuts kept coming out to play but with less than less efficacy. It’s not just left wing groups that suffer from burnout and emotacycles.
Abbott got the opportunity to show the world what a smart and effective leader he could be from September 2013. “Oops” doesn’t begin to cover it.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Twenty years ago, on this day, March 4, 2003, President Bush’s greenwash strategy was revealed in all its steaming glory
The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has “lost the environmental communications battle” and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases.
“The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that George Bush was clearly not going to do anything about climate change. It’s not clear that Al Gore, who actually won the 2000 presidential election, would have either, but there you are. So it became a question of how to position the issue. So-called “perception management.” And the Luntz memo basically says,
What I think we can learn from this
The battle for the control of the public mind is a never-ending battle. (Or rather, the propagandisation and the attempts to combat it, so that we can have a public sphere not dominated by rich vested interests, is never-ending). And as reality, physical reality, impinges more and more, you’re gonna find more and more people spewing propaganda and more and more people and this is the crux, wanting to believe it. So, this is not brainwashing against resistance. This is going with the grain.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..
Thirty one years ago, on this day, February 27, 1992, denialists released a denial statement during what were supposed to be the last negotiations before the “Earth Summit”, the one where a text was supposed to be agreed that could then lock-in the attendance of Prime Ministers and Leaders…
In February 1992 the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) published the “Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming” objecting to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development Earth Summit planned for Rio de Janiero in June 1992.[1]
The signatories to the letter complained that the Earth Summit “aims to impose a system of global environmental regulations, including onerous taxes on energy fuels, on the population of the United States and other industrialized nations. Such policy initiatives derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. They are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action. We do not agree.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The climate negotiations were coming to a crunch. The whole thing might fall over. The US administration, with George Bush senior as the boss, was blocking blocking blocking, but there was always the fear they might – with a US Presidential election pending – make concessions. The denialists wanted to make that more unlikely by making it more costly….
What I think we can learn from this
Those fearful of change will keep pushing even if “their guy” (and it usually is a guy) is ‘rock solid’. They take little/nothing for granted. That attitude, and all their money, and their structural position within the economy, explains why they win so often…
What happened next
Bush held firm. The French blinked on the question of targets and timetables for emissions reductions in the climate treaty. There were extra “negotiations” in May in New York, but they were just really a white flag being run up. Everyone went to Rio for a grip and grin.
The following 30 years have been about trying to claw back a mechanism by which rich countries would actually cut emissions. It was never going to be easy, but the Bush Whitehouse rendered it actually impossible.
Am so very very glad I did not breed, because I’d have had to try to teach my kid a whole bunch of survival skills for a shituation whose particular needs are pretty impossible to specify.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Ten years ago, on this day, February 22, 2013, some miners went ape, setting up a ludicrous front organisation. Brain-damage indeed.
A Goldfields lobby group is planning to launch an eleventh hour campaign against what it calls “green extremists”.
The group DAMAGE, Dads And Mums Against Green Extremists, is planning advertisements in a Kalgoorlie newspaper in the last week of the state election campaign
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 397ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Western Australia is heavily dependent – in every sense – on mining. Anything that gets between the miners and their cash is regarded as something to be ignored, then smeared and repressed, by any means necessary.
What I think we can learn from this
Sometimes the goon squad tries to develop a sense of humour, as it did with this retronym. It’s usually not very funny though, more pitiable and embarrassing.
And smearing people who think a habitable planet in years to come is a nice idea as “extremists” is, well, an old ploy.
But, you know, sometimes it goes all step on a rake/Streisand effect.
But the Greens? The Greens were glad of the attempted “damage” to their brand. As one their MPs Robin Chapple said after the election
“I thank Tim Hall, the Greens candidate for the seat of Kalgoorlie. In Kalgoorlie, I also thank an organisation called Dads And Mums Against Green Extremists. DAMAGE was set up specifically to target the Greens, but in fact it helped to retain our vote by focusing on the Greens and identifying some of the issues it stands for. Many years ago former federal member of Parliament Michael Beahan told me that if your opposition is invisible, the worst thing you can do is identify them. Until the establishment of DAMAGE, the Greens to a large degree had been invisible in the Kalgoorlie media. But in the last two to three weeks of the election, the Greens were front and centre in the media and retained its vote. Michael Beahan’s point was that if somebody is not grabbing the attention, do not highlight them, but DAMAGE did exactly that.”
