Rather typical, wouldn’t you say?UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a major climate summit in New York on September 23, “to mobilize political will” towards reducing global emissions. U.S. President Barack Obama will be attending, as will U.K. Prime Minster David Cameron. In fact, 125 heads of state will
Continue readingTag: climate change denial
Politics and its Discontents: While Harper Fiddles, Canada Burns
There have been so many developments on the climate front of late that, collectively, give us a pretty stark warning and yet the media, the public and our political leadership are tuning out. We seem to be culturally embracing a sort of Andean fatalism that seems to precede abrupt civilizational
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Lethal Dysfunction Of The Far Right: A Mound of Sound Guest Post
Problem: you’re already getting hammered by early-onset climate change. Solution: deny it’s happening, look the other way, think happy thoughts. It sounds ridiculously dysfunctional and it is but that is the approach being taken by governments, state and municipal, in parts of the American south. Take North Carolina, for example,
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: It Takes Imagination
http://www.aoga.org When it comes to climate change, Murray Dobbin writes, knowledge isn’t the problem. We have plenty of it. And it’s growing everyday: We have seen especially alarming predictions in the past few months. Two studies released almost simultaneously claim with a high degree of certainty that the glaciers
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Safe Bet
Mother Jones predicts that the next episode of Cosmos will inflame the climate-change deniers. I think that is a safe bet: Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Everything Is So Simple
That is, if you have a fundamentalist cast of mind like Pastor Matthew Hagee, who says this whole climate change thing is ordained by God, and to pay no attention to those environmentalists trying to tempt you from the true path. Perhaps the good pastor should bone up on his
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Putting The Climate-Change ‘Debate’ Into Perspective
I think John Oliver does this rather effectively: And on a more sobering note, you might like to gnaw on this ominous nugget. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Don’t Worry; Be Happy
Apparently those of us who fret about the ever-growing magnitude of climate change effects are just not grasping the truth. As The National Post’s Peter Foster recently explained at a gathering of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the oil industry just isn’t adequately communicating why climate change skeptics are
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: I Have Missed Him
But he’s back! My favourite crazed evangelical, and I hope yours, Pat Robertson, is once again making ‘newsworthy’ statements. Watch below as this preacher of the preposterous, this evangelical of the extreme, holds forth on yet another topic from his prodigious repertoire of ‘expertise’. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: And Speaking Of Stupidity….
Bill Nye and Bill Maher offer an entertaining and informative analysis of this growing phenomenon: Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: An Epidemic of Stupidity
Starting with Tim Hudak and then progressing stateside, this post will attempt to merely display the range of prodigious stupidity that North America seems to be cursed with. First, to young Tim. It seems that each time the beleaguered leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives opens his mouth, one of his
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Climate Change Denial And The Koch Brothers
Since April 2013 the number of Americans who do not believe global warming is happening has increased from 16 to 23 percent. Find out why here and in the following video: Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: I Am Weak
Already, I am breaking my New Year’s resolution not to mock unhinged televangelists. Pat Roberston, as usual, provided a temptation I could not withstand: Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: I Think We Saw This Coming
Given the severity of this winter season, it was only a matter of time before the usual right-wing blowhards weighed in with their ‘wisdom.’ Led by Donald Trump, they are all reassuring us that the cold, wind, and snow many of us are contending with definitively prove climate change to
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Was Scott Walker Chosen to Headline Heartland Institute Gala Due to His Bradley Foundation Ties?
800px-ScottWalker.jpeg Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker will keynote the Heartland Institute's 28th Anniversary Benefit Dinner this evening at Navy Pier in Chicago, IL. Walker recently won the Kochtopus-funded Americans for Prosperity George Washington Award. Now, two months after his recall election steamrolling of Democrat Tom Barrett, the climate change denying group
Continue readingImpolitical: Koch funded climate change study making news in a good way
Big climate change news that is making a splash, this New York Times op-ed by Richard Muller that gives an overview of a Berkeley study which he led: “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic.” It is garnering attention because the study was funded by the Koch brothers and, well, see
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Heat’s On
Thomas Homer Dixon writes this morning that the hot weather we have endured over the last decade has taught us something about crop yields: In the past few years, agricultural scientists have shown that crops critical to humankind’s caloric supply – including corn and soybeans – are extremely sensitive to
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: How To Divide And Conquer The Free Market Climate Change Denial Movement
head-in-the-sand.jpeg Much has been made lately of the Heartland’s Institute’s implosion over it extreme position on climate change. In February there was the revelation of internal strategy documents that included a plan to promote climate change scepticism in schools. In early May they unveiled a billboard equating those who believe
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: ALEC Launches Assault on Renewable Energy Industry
ALEC Exposed Image.jpg The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as covered previously by DeSmogBlog, is the "Trojan Horse" behind mandating that climate change denial ("skepticism," or "balance," in its words) be taught in K-12 classrooms. Well, ALEC is at it again, it appears. Facing an IRS complaint filed by Common Cause, one of the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Kochtopus Cato Institute Power Grab: A Historical Perspective
Kochtopus-3_0.png A new chapter is being added to the ongoing Kochtopus saga. On March 1 the Washington Post, in a story sure to fill the airwaves for the weeks and months to come, revealed the Kochtopus is suing the Cato Institute for control of the recently deceased and former Cato Chairman William Niskanen's ownership share in the think-tank.
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