Tag: cranks

Fairfax and Stuff.co.nz: presenting propaganda as opinion and lies as fact

This morning the Sydney Morning Herald published an opinion piece by well-known Aussie climate denier David Evans, and later in the day the Fairfax New Zealand news web site Stuff.co.nz decided to feature the Evans article in their science section. Two small problems for Fairfax: Evans “opinion” piece is nothing more than propaganda masquerading as opinion, and contains straightforward lies about our understanding of climate.

We last met Evans back in April, when he unleashed on an unsuspecting world a risible political analysis of those who want action on climate change. Even so, the SMH, for reasons best known to themselves, chose to let him loose on their pages to present a “scientific” argument. The problem? Evans scientific understanding is as weak — if not weaker — than his political analysis. His deliberate misrepresentation of the state of scientific understanding of the climate system renders his “opinion” on the matter worthless, and calls the editorial judgement of the SMH and Stuff.co.nz into question.

Continue reading “Fairfax and Stuff.co.nz: presenting propaganda as opinion and lies as fact”

Prat watch #5: Ignorance is bliss

What happens when you deny things? Well, if you deny the reality of global warming, and if you are to be in any way self-consistent, then you have to deny every bit of evidence that it might be happening. Here’s a classic example, drawn from New Zealand’s very own little corner of the climate crank echo chamber, Richard Treadgold’s “Climate Conversation Group” blog. Treadgold concludes a recent post thus:

Once more: let’s stop accepting this palpable nonsense that climate change is responsible for anything.

Climate change means global warming. Global warming has not happened for about 15 years, unless you take a micrometer to the thermometer. And if you have to do that just to detect warming, then it’s hardly dangerous, is it?

Oh – if it didn’t happen, then it didn’t cause anything! No droughts, no wildfires, no floods, no storms. No ice melt.

Look at the bit I’ve emphasised. No warming for 15 years? Tell that to the planet, Richard. Here’s what the World Meteorological Organisation says about the first decade of the 21st century:

…climate change accelerated in 2001-2010, which was the warmest decade ever recorded in all continents of the globe.

No warming for 15 years? After we’ve had the warmest decade ever recorded in all continents of the globe?

Continue reading “Prat watch #5: Ignorance is bliss”

Prat Watch #4: Foundation and Empire

While the noble Lord, Viscount Christopher “I’m no potty peer” Monckton tours the USA and Canada at the behest of his friends at the Heartland-lite Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (aka the Billionaire Liberation Front), his Australian admirers, led by former Climate Sceptic Party candidate Chris Dawson, have announced the creation of… wait for it… The Monckton Foundation. This remarkable institution is set to “open its doors” this month, and has, as you might expect, some laudable, if long-winded goals:

The Lord Monckton Foundation shall conduct research, publish papers, educate students and the public and take every measure that may be necessary to restore the primacy and use of reason in science and public policy worldwide, especially insofar as they may bear upon the rights of the people fairly and fully to be informed, openly and freely to debate, and secretly by ballot to decide who shall govern them, what laws they shall live by and what imposts they shall endure.

It has a vision too — it may be having them still — issued by the charter of Monckton himself:

Continue reading “Prat Watch #4: Foundation and Empire”

How Heartland lied to me and illegally recorded the lies

4 a.m. Bali, December 2007, the first Tuesday of the two-week UN climate talks. My phone rings, waking me up. Blearily, and a little crossly, I answer it.

I was in Bali to run Greenpeace International’s media for the meeting. The caller was someone called “John” who said he was an intern for a US NGO that I had never heard of. It was a small NGO, he said, who couldn’t come to the meeting, but “john” asked me for a copy of the UNFCCC’s media list for the meeting.

I confirmed I had a copy but refused to give it to him – he appeared a little suspect. The conversation ended when I put the phone down – the caller clearly wasn’t bothered that he had woken me at 4 am, which was odd, as an NGO colleague would have apologised and hung up immediately.

Three days later I was again woken by the phone, with the information that the right wing think tank the Heartland Institute had just issued a press release slamming the UN for working with environmental NGO’s. Heartland’s press release posted a link to a recording of the 4 a.m. conversation earlier in the week.

Hang on, let’s get this clear:

Someone from the Heartland Institute:
 – called me at 4 am, lied to me saying they were an intern for a US environmental NGO 
- recorded that conversation without my knowledge or my permission, and released the audio of the telephone conversation to the media, again without my permission.

Sound familiar?

Continue reading “How Heartland lied to me and illegally recorded the lies”

Inhofe’s “Hoax”: foolish and dangerous

I decided to take a look at Senator Inhofe’s newly published book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, thinking I might get a better understanding of what impels a politician like him into aggressive denial of climate science and opposition to any moves to tackle the climate crisis. It wasn’t difficult to find out. He is a virulent opponent of what he regards as government over-regulation.  He describes earlier in life working “long hard hours” as a developer, and finding the chief obstacle to “living out my American dream” was the government. Bureaucrats, “pseudo-intellectuals in Washington who think they know best”, are holding back the enterprising spirit on which the American economy depends.

It’s not my purpose in this post to discuss Inhofe’s politics per se. It’s how they impinge on the challenge of climate change that concerns me. So far as I could see in reading his book climate change is denied in the name of free enterprise, the lifeblood of the American economy.

Continue reading “Inhofe’s “Hoax”: foolish and dangerous”