TomDispatch <tomdispatch@nationinstitute.org>
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 13:14:02 +0000
Subject: Tomgram: Naomi Oreskes, Why Climate Deniers Are Their Own
Worst Nightmares
Here is more proof, as if we needed it, that the use of money, an
artificial measurement used for determining the value of absolutely
everything, was the very worst invention ever devised by Mankind. To
one degree or another we are all controlled by this out of control
monster. It was one thing to devise Time and create a calendar to
make some conformity out of a confusing Universe, but when we invented
money as a means of determining our importance and worth to
civilization, we actually removed ourselves from the real world.
Putting a price on everything did not realistically prioritize what
was around us. The things we were pleased by, found important, and
just could not live without, have turned out to be destroying us and
our planet. But even so, the very defenders of Nature and Planet
Earth, get trapped into placing monetary values. The Greed Plague has
got us all. We might say, "God help us all", except I fear that we
invented God, too.
Carl Jarvis
http://www.tomdispatch.com
June 16, 2015
Tomgram: Naomi Oreskes, Why Climate Deniers Are Their Own Worst
Nightmares (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176011/tomgram%3A_naomi_oreskes%2C_why_climate_deniers_are_their_own_worst_nightmares/)
When I go out with my not quite three-year-old grandson, his idea of a
good time is hide-and-seek. This means suddenly darting behind a bush
too small to fully obscure him or into a doorway where he remains in
plain sight, while I wander around wondering aloud where in the world
he could possibly be. In this, there's a kind of magical thinking and
denial of reality that has great charm. When similar acts of denial
are committed by adults, when they refuse to see what's right before
their eyes -- the melting sidewalks
(https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/28237987/roads-melt-as-deadly-heatwave-sweeps-india/)
and roads of India
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/asia/india-heat-wave-andhra-pradesh-telengana.html)
, the emptying reservoirs
(http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/12/15/its-raining-so-how-do-those-reservoirs-look)
of parched California, the extreme rain
(http://www.weather.com/storms/severe/news/southern-plains-flooding-texas-arkansas-oklahoma)
and flooding
(http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/05/26/extreme-weather-texas-oklahoma/27945961/)
in parts of Texas and Oklahoma, the news that last year was a global
heat record (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html)
for the planet and this year is already threatening
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-04-17/this-has-been-the-hottest-start-to-a-year-on-record)
to be another, or that Alaska just experienced its hottest May
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/06/09/alaska-just-had-its-hottest-may-in-91-years/)
ever, or that 13 of the 14 hottest years since temperatures began to
be recorded took place
(http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/24/warmest-years-record-un-global-warming)
in this century, or that a supposed post-1998 "pause" in the planetary
warming process was a fantasy
(http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/06/much-touted-global-warming-pause-never-happened)
--
the charm fades fast. When you discover that behind this denial of
reality lies at least $125 million
(http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/09/secretive-donors-gave-us-climate-denial-groups-125m-over-three-years)
in dark money, it fades even faster. In just three years, unidentified
conservative sources have poured that eye-popping figure into a web of
think tanks and activist outfits dedicated to promoting climate denial
(and not even included in that amount are the vast sums
(http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=E) that Big
Energy continues (http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php) to contribute
(http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/)
to the promotion of denialism, as it has done since the 1980s). In
other words, some of the most powerful and profitable interests on the
planet are determined to deny reality with a ferocity meant to confuse
the public and put a damper on any moves or
movement (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175902/tomgram%3A_todd_gitlin,_as_the_globe_warms,_so_does_the_climate_movement/)
to save a planetary environment that has long nurtured humanity. It's
a charmless spectacle.
The well-funded climate deniers and the politicians who support them
(and are, in turn, supported by
(http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=E) the same set
of funders) repeatedly yell "hoax." In truth, they are the hoax and by
now, were we looking, we would see that they are standing in a nearby
doorway stark naked and in clear sight. And yet, backed by all that
money, they essentially control the Republican Party and the
Republican Congress. (Seventy-two percent
(http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/01/republican-climate-denial-caucus)
of the Republican Senate caucus, for instance, now qualify as climate
deniers.) This means that, for the party's increasing horde of
presidential candidates, the phrase
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/why-republicans-keep-telling-everyone-theyre-not-scientists.html)
"I'm not a scientist, but..." followed by doubts about or the
rejection of climate science will be a commonplace
(http://grist.org/politics/meet-the-climate-deniers-who-want-to-be-president/)
of election year 2016. It couldn't be a grimmer vista, even though in
the decades to come achieving a relatively speedy changeover to
non-greenhouse-gas-releasing fuels seems ever more possible
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175982/tomgram%3A_michael_klare,_is_the_age_of_renewable_energy_already_upon_us/)
.
This means, of course, that taking on the climate deniers directly
couldn't be more important. That's why TomDispatch
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175873/) is lucky to have historian
of science Naomi Oreskes
(http://ncse.com/blog/2015/03/congratulations-to-naomi-oreskes-2015-friend-planet-winner-0016243)
return -- having only recently given testimony before a
Republican-controlled congressional committee dotted with climate
deniers -- to take on their false claims, fantasies, and lies. She
co-authored with Erik Conway the now-classic book Merchants of Doubt
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608193942/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20) on
how the fossil fuel companies, like the tobacco companies before them,
created a public sense of uncertainty about the dangers of their
products when a scientific one didn't exist. More recently, again with
Conway, she wrote The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from
the Future
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/023116954X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20) ,
a look back at the effects of global warming and climate denialism
from the point of view of a historian of 2393. Tom
The Hoax of Climate Denial
Why "Politically Motivated" Science Is Good Science
By Naomi Oreskes (http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/naomioreskes)
Recently, the Washington Post reported
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/02/13/polarization-in-congress-has-risen-sharply-where-is-it-going-next/)
new data showing something most of us already sense: that increased
polarization on Capitol Hill is due to the way the Republican Party
has lurched to the right. The authors of the study use Senator John
McCain to illustrate the point. McCain's political odyssey is, in some
dismaying sense, close to my own heart, since it highlights the
Republican turn against science.
As unlikely as it might seem today, in the first half of the twentieth
century the Republicans were the party that most strongly supported
scientific work, as they recognized the diverse ways in which it could
undergird economic activity and national security. The Democrats were
more dubious, tending to see science as elitist and worrying that new
federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National
Institutes of Health would concentrate resources in elite East Coast
universities.
In recent decades, of course, the Republicans have lurched rightward
on many topics and now regularly attack scientific findings that
threaten their political platforms. In the 1980s, they generally
questioned evidence of acid rain; in the 1990s, they went after ozone
science; and in this century, they have launched fierce attacks not
just on climate science, but in the most personal fashion imaginable
on climate scientists.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176011/tomgram%3A_naomi_oreskes%2C_why_climate_deniers_are_their_own_worst_nightmares/#more)
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