Monday, 28 January 2019
Climate change denialism is alive and apparently thriving in 2019
One would
expect this dodgy co-sponsorship from the likes of Facebook Inc, but Google and
Microsoft do surprise.
Mother Jones, 22 January 2019:
Google, Facebook, and
Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last
week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change
denial to young libertarians.
All three tech companies
were sponsors of LibertyCon,
the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took
place in Washington, DC. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and
Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations
put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the
donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other
sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate
change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Among the most notable
was the CO2 Coalition, a group founded in 2015 to spread
the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is
linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate
change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which
in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of
dollars to
right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the
Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch
Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.
In the LibertyCon
exhibit hall, the CO2 Coalition handed out brochures that said its goal is to
“explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional
atmospheric carbon dioxide.” One brochure claimed that “more carbon
dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and
that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect
on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow
faster.
In a Saturday
presentation, Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor and a
member of the coalition, gave a presentation titled “Let’s Talk About Not
Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing
Climate Catastrophe?” In his presentation, Rossiter told the assembled students
that the impact of climate change on weather patterns has been vastly
exaggerated. “There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency,”
he said. “The data don’t show a worrisome trend.”
He insisted that when he
hears the news that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, “I’m
cheering!” That’s because, he said, carbon dioxide “is a fertilizer” that has
made Africa greener and increased food production there, reducing human misery.
Rossiter also claimed
that carbon dioxide emissions correlate with wealth and that the greenhouse gas
“improves life expectancy” because poor countries that start burning fossil
fuels have a more consistent power supply and can then clean up their water.
“I’m happy when carbon dioxide is up, because it means poverty is down,” he
declared.
“I come not to bury your
carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.....
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