No Such Thing As Global Warming?: A Lake Twice the Size of Los Angeles Has Evaporated—and It May Never Return

Lake Poopó was Bolivia's second largest lake.

By Samantha Cowan
Fish skeletons, dead birds, and fishing boats sit abandoned on the desiccated stretch of land that was once the second-largest lake in Bolivia. Lake Poopó is now practically bone-dry, leaving species decimated and hundreds of people without jobs.

The lake—once twice the size of Los Angeles—has shrunk down to just 2 percent of its previous size, The Associated Press reports. It was officially declared evaporated in December.

Officials cite a drought fueled by El Niño weather patterns as the primary culprit for the lake’s disappearance. Located in the semiarid Andean plains at 12,000 feet above sea level, the 977-square-mile lake has dried up and rebounded in the past. But this time, experts don’t believe it will recover.

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing the azure mirror of Poopó again,” Milton Perez, a Universidad Tecnica researcher, told the AP. “I think we’ve lost it.”

That’s because El Niño weather events are becoming stronger and more frequent because of rising global temperatures, leaving the lake little time to replenish itself after a dry season. “It’s only going to get worse,” Perez said. The area has seen a temperature increase of 0.9 degrees Celsius over the past 60 years, causing water from the lake to evaporate roughly three times as fast, according to Perez.

As the water has disappeared, so have the people who depended on the lake as a source of livelihood. More than half of the people living in the nearby village of Untavi have left in the past three years.

While climate change has fueled the lake’s disappearance, locals also point to the government’s mismanagement of water sources.

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Revoke ExxonMobil's Corporate Charter: Their Scientists Discovered the Connection Between Fuel Emissions and Global Warming in the 1980's - The Company Hid the Facts

Capitalism is Not Patriotism: Not only did the Exxon Corporation know that fuel combustion effects on climate change could lead to "catastrophic events" — it made a concerted effort to convince the public that climate change wasn't even real.

Exxon's own research in the 1980s indicated that without major reductions in fossil fuel combustion, "[t]here are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered." (Photo: Luc B / Flickr)

By Marjorie Cohn
More than 50,000 people from around the world came together in Paris in December 2015 to address the single biggest threat to the survival of the natural world - the climate crisis. There is virtual unanimity among scientists that the burning of fossil fuels is causing the warming of the planet, and if critical steps are not taken, a habitable world will cease to exist.

RELATED STORY: Exxon's Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too

But there are entities that stand to lose if alternative sources of energy overtake coal, oil and natural gas. They are huge corporations, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Texaco.

Indeed, from 1990 to 2005, Exxon - now called ExxonMobil - spent millions of dollars in a sophisticated campaign to cast doubt on the science of climate change. The oil giant knew better.

Exxon's Scientists Confirm Climate Change

In 1977, James Black, an Exxon senior scientist, told a meeting of powerful oil company executives, "There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from burning of fossil fuels." The following year, Black wrote: "Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical."

During much of the 1980s, Exxon conducted cutting-edge research on climate change. In 1982, its environmental affairs office prepared a corporate primer labeled "not to be distributed externally." It said that preventing global warming "would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion." If that didn't happen, the primer read, "There are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered." It added: "Once the effects are measurable, they may not be reversible."

RELATED STORY: Big Oil Braced for Global Warming While it Fought Regulations

In 1989, Duane Levine, Exxon's manager of science and strategy development, told the board of directors that scientists largely agreed that the burning of fossil fuels would release gases that could raise temperatures between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the 21st century. Glaciers would melt and sea levels would rise, Levine declared, "with generally negative consequences."

When James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, testified before Congress in 1988 that global warming had begun, Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colorado) said, "Congress must begin to consider how we are going to slow or halt that warming trend."

As calls for reductions in carbon dioxide from fossil fuels increased in the United States and around the world, Exxon realized the severity of the threat to its bottom line. Brian Flannery, Exxon's climate expert, wrote in an internal newsletter that such regulations would "alter profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry."

Exxon Begins to Sow Doubt About Climate Change

Exxon made a strategic decision to publicly sow seeds of doubt about climate change while internally confirming it. A far-reaching investigation by Columbia University's Energy and Environmental Fellowship Project and the Los Angeles Times, and another by InsideClimate News, revealed Exxon's fateful shift.

An internal draft memo dated August 1988, called "The Greenhouse Effect," set forth the "Exxon position." It advised that the corporation should "emphasize the uncertainty."

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Greenpeace Sting Exposes Climate-Denying Academics-for-Hire

Professors from major U.S. institutions agreed to write reports promoting the benefits of CO2—and said they did not need to disclose fossil fuel funding

Princeton University Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits
of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret. (Photo: James Loesch/flickr/cc)

By Deirdre Fulton
As climate change deniers face growing scrutiny and skepticism, a new undercover investigation by the environmental group Greenpeace shines new light on academics-for-hire, who are willing to accept secret payments from fossil fuel companies to sow doubt about global warming.

The sting operation publicized Tuesday involved two Greenpeace UK employees posing as representatives of oil and coal companies, and asking U.S. academics to write papers touting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels and the benefits of coal use in developing countries.

Professors from Penn State and Princeton University "agreed to write the reports and said they did not need to disclose the source of the funding," according to reporting by Greenpeace Energydesk, a journalistic arm of the international environmental organization.

Energydesk reporters Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan continue:

Citing industry-funded documents—including testimony to state hearings and newspaper articles—Professor Frank Clemente of Penn State said: “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.”

Leading climate-sceptic academic, Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret.

Among the exposé's other findings:

• US coal giant Peabody Energy also paid tens of thousands of dollars to an academic who produced coal-friendly research and provided testimony at state and federal climate hearings, the amount of which was never revealed.
• The Donors Trust, an organization that has been described as the "dark money ATM" of the US conservative movement, confirmed in a taped conversation with an undercover reporter that it could anonymously channel money from a fictional Middle Eastern oil and gas company to U.S. climate skeptic organizations.
• Princeton professor William Happer laid out details of an unofficial peer review process run by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK climate skeptic think tank, and said he could ask to put an oil-funded report through a similar review process, after admitting that it would struggle to be published in an academic journal.
• A recent report by the GWPF that had been through the same unofficial peer review process, was promoted as “thoroughly peer-reviewed” by influential columnist Matt Ridley—a senior figure in the organization.

Happer, the Princeton professor, was invited to speak on Tuesday before the U.S. Senate at a 'Data or Dogma' panel organized by GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Greenpeace investigator Jesse Coleman cornered him there to ask about the revelations.

Watch the video below:

Late last month, Happer—who has said "more CO2 would benefit the world"—appeared at a climate skeptic summit in Texas, Energydesk reports. There, he defended CO2 production saying: "Our breath is not that different from a power plant." He went on to say, "If plants could vote, they would vote for coal."

As Carter and McClenaghan point out, the Greenpeace investigation follows recent reports showing fossil fuel companies burying the truth about climate change, while funding spurious research to cast doubt on the scientific consensus and make it "difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Smithsonian Mounts Climate Change Denying Exhibition Funded by the Koch Brothers

By Joe Romm
The Smithsonian risks damaging its reputation by having a polluter-funded science denier on the payroll and a wildly misleading Koch-funded exhibit that downplays the risks posed by human-caused climate change. It’s time for the world’s self-proclaimed “largest museum and research complex,” to live up to its mission — and its own climate statement — and cut ties with the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd.

Last month, a New York Times exposé revealed that Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers.” This included funding from Exxon-Mobil and “at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.” The Koch brothers have become an even bigger funder of disinformation on climate science than Exxon Mobil.

During this period, Soon has advanced a repeatedly-debunked theory arguing that humans are not the primary cause of global warming. In October, the Smithsonian itself put out a climate statement, which makes clear that such a view is simply anti-scientific. The Smithsonian explains, “Scientific evidence has demonstrated that the global climate is warming as a result of increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases generated by human activities.”

The newly uncovered documents show that “Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as ‘deliverables’ that he completed in exchange for their money.”

Even more shocking, the Smithsonian repeatedly signed off on contracts with Southern Company Services — a coal company and long-time funder of science denial — requiring the Smithsonian to provide the coal utility “advanced written copy of proposed publications … for comment and input.”

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How Did Republicans Become So Stupid? — Exhibit #1000: Officials Ban Term ‘Climate Change’ In Florida

People try to pass through a flooded street in Miami Beach. Florida is the state most susceptible to the effects of global warming. (Photo by maxstrz)

By Tristram Korten, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming in this country, according to scientists. Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years.

But you would not know that by talking to officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency on the front lines of studying and planning for these changes.

DEP officials have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

The policy goes beyond semantics and has affected reports, educational efforts and public policy in a department that has about 3,200 employees and $1.4 billion budget.

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Climate Change Will Never Be Tackled As Long As Big Media Presents The Issue As 'Open To Debate'

CNN Host: Climate Change Is Undeniable,
So Here's a Denier

By Peter Hart
CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter was refreshingly direct about climate change on his November 2 show:

I don't think there are two equal sides to climate change. The scientific consensus is that it's real. The debate is over what to do about it. And the press has to be careful about creating this notion of sides.

That's right, down with false balance!

Stelter said this, unfortunately, as an introduction to a debate about whether there's any such thing as global warming.

He introduced it as "a story you will see nowhere else this morning." That story is that one of the founders of the Weather Channel, retired TV weather forecaster John Coleman, thinks "climate change is a hoax."  And saying so got him invited on Fox News.

So how does this all add up to something that deserves a segment on CNN? It's not clear; the CNN host only says that

Coleman's platform as a co-founder of a channel dedicated to weather is unique and so is the channel's declaration that it believes climate change is happening. So, this morning both players are here, Coleman and the CEO of the Weather Channel, David Kenny.

This would be precisely the type of climate debate that Stelter just said the media shouldn't have. Coleman, for his part, represented the climate change-denying side exactly as you'd expect: He accused CNN of bias, and claimed that the US government only gives research dollars to scientists who support climate change and hence the Democrats.

He added:

If you get down to the hard, cold facts, there's no question about it. Climate change is not happening. There is no significant manmade global warming now. There hasn't been any in the past, and there's no reason to expect any in the future. There's a whole lot of baloney and, yes, it has become a big political point of the Democratic Party and part of their platform, and I regret it's become political instead of scientific, but the science is on my side.

Or, the short version:  "Hello, everybody. There is no global warming."

Meanwhile, back in reality…. (cc photo: Brendan Cox / Oxfam)

The current CEO of the Weather Channel arrives next to affirm the channel's statement that it disagrees with Coleman. And, since the discussion mostly skipped over challenging any of Coleman's rhetoric, one could actually argue that there wasn't much of a debate at all.

What else happened the day of this segment? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which represents the work of thousands of scientists, released a new report. "UN Panel Issues Its Starkest Warning Yet on Global Warming," read the New York Times headline (11/2/14); "Effects of Climate Change 'Irreversible,' UN Panel Warns in Report," was how the Washington Post (11/2/14) played it.

It does not appear to have received any coverage on the Sunday chat shows–making this CNN segment, featuring the views of a former TV personality with a journalism degree and a media executive with an MBA, one of the few mentions of climate change in TV news that day.
It could be worse, I suppose–CNN could have had Ann Coulter on again to talk about climate change unopposed (FAIR Action Alert, 5/29/14).

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

ABC's 'Middle Ground' on Climate Change: Who Knows? — Plays Stupid While California Suffers Historic Draught and Southern States Flood

By Peter Hart
Yesterday ABC's This Week (10/26/14) profiled George P. Bush, a Texas land commissioner candidate who is a grandson and nephew of the more famous George Bushes. It was part of This Week's "Closer Look" series, which seems to be intended as a place for upbeat profiles of political heavyweights. But a brief exchange about climate change showed the limits of this kind of journalism.

Given its impact on land issues, correspondent Jonathan Karl had good reason to ask Bush about climate change.

KARL: As land commissioner, he'll oversee millions of acres of oil and natural gas reserves. But he also talks about the need for renewable energy and he attempts to stake out a middle ground on climate change. Well, sort of.

How big a threat is climate change to the Texas coastline?

BUSH: The Texas coastline is impacted by rising sea levels. And again, the question is whether or not that's man-made, and I'll leave that to the scientists. But, at least in Texas, the facts showed that on average, about 17 feet of wet beach is lost due to coastal erosion and so….

KARL: Which is a huge problem for Texas.

BUSH: It's a huge problem.

KARL: But you don't doubt that human activity contributes to climate change?

BUSH: Well, we'll see in terms of the science, there's a wide range that has been discussed. And, again, I'm not a scientist by any stretch. But everywhere from, you know, no impact at all to 100 percent.

So Bush's position is that coastal erosion is a problem linked to rising sea levels, but he's not sure that's linked to human activity. I suspect Karl's "sort of" quip is intended as a signal to viewers, but some clarity would be helpful. The position that Bush is taking–maybe humans are causing climate change, maybe they aren't–is not a "middle ground" in any sense. It's certainly a good position to take if you don't want there to be any action to stop climate change.

Are scientists right in saying human activity is causing ocean levels to
rise? "I dunno" is not a neutral position. (cc photo: Van Sutherland)

This isn't the first time Karl has been able to get a Republican politician on the record on climate change. In May of this year (FAIR Blog, 5/12/14), Karl interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who gave him a nonsensical answer to a direct question about the scientific consensus on climate change. Rubio said that "natural disasters have always existed" and that scientists were taking "a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend." What was Karl's response to that?

It's talk like that that Rubio hopes will appeal to the conservatives he would need to win the Republican nomination.

In Karl's worldview, it would seem, Rubio's position is one that will appeal to the conservative base. And Bush, with his more rhetorically evasive version of scientific denial, is somewhere near the "middle." Both positions, of course, are outside the overwhelming scientific consensus–which should be the most important benchmark for journalists who are describing where a politician stands on the issue.

Climate change is rarely discussed on the Sunday talk shows. It'd be nice if when they did discuss it, the conversation was less about political positioning and more reality-based.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

The Other Kind of Climate Change Denial — Impact of Expanded Oil Drilling On Climate Change Ignored

Writing about expanding oil drilling without talking about its impact on the climate
indicates a deep state of denial. (cc photo illustration: -POD)

By Peter Hart
It's gotten to the point that sensible people can agree that climate change is a real problem in the world. But some people manage to write about energy policy and pretend that that problem doesn't exist–which is perhaps a more dangerous kind of climate change denial.

Take Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson. As we noted recently (FAIR Blog, 8/26/14), Samuelson is no longer really a climate denier. But it's hard to tell how meaningful the shift in his views is when you see what he writes nowadays. His column in today's print edition of the Post (9/28/14) is a full endorsement of increasing US oil drilling.

"One of the economy’s good-news stories is the oil boom, a derivative of the natural gas boom," he writes, explaining that fracking technology has been applied to oil drilling and has "yielded similarly astounding results." Samuelson declares: "By all logic, we should be working to sustain the boom." Alas we are not, and his column goes on to explain why it's disappointing that we aren't drilling more oil and exporting it on tankers.

He doesn't skip the downsides of drilling for more oil–he gives them one entire sentence:

Sure, there are concerns: Rail transport of crude oil involves safety issues; there are continuing environmental worries about fracking. Still, public gains outweigh the costs.

Whew. Back on planet Earth, burning more fossil fuels is going to have at least one consequence: It will continue contributing to the heating of the planet. But Samuelson never mentions climate change, which is too often treated as a non-event in coverage of energy (FAIR Blog, 5/15/12; 9/9/14).

In a way, this is merely a different type of climate change denial, one that wishes away the consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels. Interestingly, the Samuelson column has a "Read more about this topic" link at the bottom, which takes readers to a Post editorial on the same subject, headlined "Commerce Dept. Should Allow Exports of US Crude." This is notable because the Post editorial page has drawn attention for a series they're calling "A Climate for Change," which is supposed to represent the paper's decision to take the climate crisis seriously. Except, apparently, when the same editorial page is making the case for drilling for more oil.

If climate change represents a profound crisis, the only sensible policy is to leave fossil fuels in the ground (Extra!, 5/13). A media system that has begun to understand the scale of the problem while at the same time advocating for policies that will make the problem worse is still in denial.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Climate Change — Now or Never: Green Movement Embracing More Radical Tactics As Desperation Grows

By Peter Moskowitz
Hundreds of thousands of people marched recently in the biggest climate-related demonstration ever. The slogan of the march: “To change everything, we need everyone.”

A day later hundreds of people were arrested in downtown Manhattan for blocking traffic as part of the Flood Wall Street demonstration. The protesters' slogan: “Stop capitalism. End the climate crisis.”

The two events, within 24 hours of each other and just a few miles apart, juxtaposed what have been two factions in the larger climate movement. The climate march highlighted the big-tent approach to organizing. Groups with widely differing and often conflicting ideals came together to broadcast a message that climate change is important — which they accomplished — but offered few solutions.

On Wall Street, the protest was a tiny fraction of the march’s size and garnered much less attention, but the demands were much clearer: Hold the financial industry and the politicians who support it accountable for propping up the energy industry.

While the protests had different aims and supporters, organizers and participants from each event said they showed that the divide between them is narrowing. They say that as more and more people become aware of the severity of the climate crisis and as serious political action on climate issues stagnates, lines are blurring between reformists and radicals. Radicals are becoming aware that in order to have a big tent, not everyone has to agree on every issue, and reformists are becoming more open to using once-shunned tactics like nonviolent civil disobedience.

“The public is all over the place in its awareness of climate change, so the march was for those people,” said Sandra Steingraber, a professor at Ithaca College and an environmental activist.

“And then there are the people who have accepted climate change as a fact long ago and are really ready to carry a manifesto to those who are responsible and nail it to their doors,” she said, referring to the Wall Street protesters.

Social and political movements have almost always seen divisions between factions that are more militant, operating under the belief that the ends justifies the means, and those that believe in reforming existing practices as a solution.

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When Climate Change Creates Multiple Disasters in the United States — Blame Republicans: 'Marco Rubio Is Trying to Kill Me by Denying Climate Change'

Thanks to the lies about climate change advanced by Republicans like Marco Rubio,
Americans may soon be dying of thirst. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Mark Karlin
Now, it is getting personal: Someone is enabling circumstances that might result in my death, your death and the death of countless people around the world.
 
I am referring to an infamous statement Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) statement made in a May 11 interview with This Week:

Rubio - who expressed deep skepticism about whether man-made activity has played a role in the Earth's changing climate - told [ABC news reporter Jonathan] Karl he doesn't believe there is action that could be taken right now that would have an impact on what's occurring with our climate.

"I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it … and I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy," he said.

Given ongoing major reports, including last week, that we may have crossed the threshold into a catastrophic cauldron of brewing and already-present climate change, Rubio is condemning much of the earth to catastrophe and death.

That is because most scenarios that scientists have outlined will create a new atmospheric reality on earth, one that will unleash disastrous forces. It is unlikely that large-scale death will be avoidable under any of the current predictions.

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Heartland Institute Head Reluctantly Stands by Earlier Denial of Cigarette Smoking Risks - His Current Job is 'Debunking' Climate Change

Heartland president Joe Bast: (Screen capture from YouTube video)

Just as the group is now known for its over the top attacks on climate scientists, Heartland once played a large role in criticizing public health experts and others calling attention to the dangers of cigarette smoking.

By Nick Surgey
Before the Heartland Institute became famous for its leading role in climate change denial, the group spent many years working to defend the tobacco industry. Just as the group is now known for its over the top attacks on climate scientists, Heartland once played a large role in criticizing public health experts and others calling attention to the dangers of cigarette smoking.

At a mining conference in Denver earlier this month, Republic Report spoke to the Heartland president Joe Bast about his past support for the tobacco industry. In an opinion column titled "Five Lies About Tobacco," Bast once repeatedly claimed that health concerns regarding cigarette smoking were overblown and worth ignoring. At first, Bast denied that he had ever dismissed concerns about smoking and disputed the quote we read to him.

"In 1998, you wrote in a Heartland op-ed that smoking cigarettes has little to no adverse health effects," we noted. "Do you stand by that?"

"No, I never wrote that," replied Bast. "Why would I have written something like that?" Bast asked to see the op-ed, and promised to "contest" it.

Later, Republic Report returned and read Bast's op-ed to him. Watch the video below:

After reading his op-ed to him — which claimed moderate smoking is not deadly and has "few, if any adverse health effects" — Bast then reaffirmed his comments, but hedged, arguing that he meant "one or two cigarettes a day or week." We read another line from his piece, which at the time claimed up to seven cigarettes a day does not raise the risk of lung cancer. Bast again confirmed his sentiment.

Heartland has gone to great lengths to argue that its attacks on public health or climate science are not motivated by the vast amounts of funding it receives from industry groups. But again, the tobacco wars are an instructive reminder of Heartland's agenda.

After litigation forced the disclosure of thousands of tobacco company documents, many Heartland letters to companies such as Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds were exposed to the public.

"Heartland does many things that benefit Philip Morris' bottom line," Bast once wrote to Roy Marden, the Manager of Industry Affairs for Philip Morris Management in a letter seeking $35,000 in contributions for Heartland from the tobacco company.

His evidence? A litany of reports, opinion pieces, and new articles placed by Heartland in defense of the tobacco industry and in opposition to those seeking to highlight the health risks associated with smoking.

"Heartland has devoted considerable attention to defending tobacco," wrote Bast in the letter. He pointed to several examples, including "two of my essays, titled 'Five Lies About Tobacco' and 'Joe Camel is Innocent.'"

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

Wyoming Republicans Don't Want Kids to Learn About Climate Change: You See — The Dumber Voters Are, The More Likely They'll Vote Republican

Thanks to Republican resistance to recognizing the reality of climate change, your
children or grandchildren may all be dead in 50 years. (Photo by Andrew)

By Ben Adler
Let’s briefly review the science on anthropogenic climate change: 97 percent of articles on the subject published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over two decades have agreed with the consensus that humans are causing global warming. Now, granted, climate change is a theory, in the same way that gravity is a theory: It is the framework that explains indisputable phenomena, in this case the Earth’s warming temperatures since the dawn of the Industrial Age. So it follows that, just as school textbooks teach students about gravity, they should teach them about climate change, right?

Not if you live in Wyoming. Last month Dick Cheney’s home state passed a budget with a footnote that prohibits the use of public funds to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The standards were recently developed by the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in concert with 26 states. They’re intended to replace a hodgepodge of state standards of varying quality, providing a national framework for teaching the most up-to-date science. Naturally, this includes climate change (though the climate sections were watered down).

But Republican State Rep. Matt Teeters, who holds an aptly abbreviated B.S. in political science from the University of Wyoming, knows more than all those experts. Teeters, who sponsored the budget footnote, complained that the standards “handle global warming as settled science.” And why should scientists tell everyone else what constitutes “settled science”? (Teeters did not respond to a call from Grist, which was hoping to ask whether he intends to also remove gravity from the state science curriculum.)

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The Republican Lie Machine: 'Tell Lies So Fast Your Opponents Can't Keep Up' — If Lies in Mass Media Were Against the Law, the GOP Would Be Classified as a Criminal Enterprise

Pinocchio is the only "god" Republicans seem to believe in. (Photo by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier)

By Amanda Marcotte
Mark Twain once famously said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Twain wasn’t praising lies with this comment, of course, but modern-day conservatives seem to think he was dishing out advice instead of damning the practice of dishonesty. Conservatives have figured out a neat little rhetorical trick: One lie is easy for your opponents to debunk. Tell one lie after another, however, and your opponent’s debunkings will never catch up. By the time the liberal opposition has debunked one lie, there’s a dozen more to take its place.

Science educator Eugenie Scott deemed the technique the “Gish Gallop,” named for a notoriously sleazy creationist named Duane Gish. The Urban Dictionary defines the Gish Gallop as a technique that “involves spewing so much bullshit in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it.” Often users of the Gish Gallop know their arguments are nonsense or made in bad faith, but don’t particularly care because they are so dead set on advancing their agenda. Unfortunately, the strategy is so effective that it’s been expanding rapidly in right-wing circles. Here are just a few of the most disturbing examples of the Gish Gallop in action.

1. Creationism. It’s no surprise creationists inspired the coining of the term Gish Gallop, as they have perfected the art of making up nonsense faster than scientists can refute it. The list of false or irrelevant claims made by creationists, as chronicled by Talk Origins, numbers in the dozens, perhaps even hundreds, and more are always being spun out. Trying to argue with a creationist, therefore, turns into a hellish game of Whack-A-Mole. Debunk the lie that the speed of light is not constant, and you’ll find he’s already arguing that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. Argue that it’s unconstitutional to put the story of Adam and Eve in the science classroom, and find he’s pretending he was never asking for that and instead wants to “teach the controversy.”

“Teaching the controversy" is a classic Gish Gallop apology. The conservative wants to make it seem like he’s supporting open-minded debate, but instead he just wants an opportunity to dump a bunch of lies on students with the knowledge that they’ll never have the time and attention to carefully parse every debunking.

2. Climate change denialism. This strategy worked so well for creationism it makes perfect sense that it would be imported to the world of climate change denialism. Climate change denialists have many changing excuses for why they reject the science showing that human-caused greenhouse gases are changing the climate, but what all these reasons have in common is they are utter nonsense in service of a predetermined opposition to taking any action to prevent further damage.

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Meet the Press Meets Climate Change: Is NBC Giving Climate Change Doubters More Respect Than They Deserve?

NBC Debates Climate Change.

By Peter Hart
Just when you think the corporate media is getting beyond the idea of a climate change "debate," and that journalists are finally going to acknowledge the scientific consensus that humans are warming the planet, the idea that "both sides" must be heard comes around again.

On Meet the Press (2/16/14), host David Gregory announced at the top of the show:

Are the paralyzing storms in the East, the drought in the West, creating new urgency to take on climate change? I'm going to speak to two people on opposite sides of the issue. Bill Nye, The Science Guy, and Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

The debate rolled out just as one would have expected.  Gregory kicked off by saying, accurately enough, that "in the scientific community, this is not really a debate about whether climate change is real." Which is an odd thing to say right before a debate that, well, sort of suggested that this was up for debate.

Nye was there to represent the scientific consensus on climate change. Blackburn, meanwhile, was there to try to suggest there wasn't one:

I think that Bill would probably agree with this, neither he nor I are a climate scientist. He is an engineer and actor. I am a member of Congress. And what we have to do is look at the information that we get from climate scientists. As you said, there is not agreement around the fact of exactly what is causing this.

 She went on:

BLACKBURN: Well, I think that what you have to do is look at what that warming is. And when you look at the fact that we have gone from 320 parts per million 0.032, to 0.040, 400 parts per million, what you do is realize it’s very slight. Now, there is not consensus and you can look at the latest IPCC Report and look at Doctor Lindzen from MIT. His rejection of that, or Judith Curry, who recently…

GREGORY: Right.

BLACKBURN: …from Georgia Tech. There is not consensus there.

And then, once more: "What we have to look at is the fact that you don't make good laws, sustainable laws, when you're making them on hypotheses or theories or unproven sciences."

If Gregory doesn't think there's any point in debating the science of climate change, why did he host a debate on it? It's puzzling. But then again, so was the reaction from NBC journalist Chuck Todd later on in the show, who tried to lay down a middle-of-the-road approach:

TODD: There are a lot of people that say okay, let’s not debate who's right, man-made or is it just nature that's happening. The fact of the matter, it's happening. And I wonder if there's too much–you know, I know some environmentalists are frustrated with that portion of the debate. But maybe you steer away from it and say, it doesn't matter. We have to tackle this infrastructure problem. You got to build different higher seawalls in some places. We’re going to have to figure out a different way to distribute water in California. The fact of the matter–and the federal government is going to have to pay for this.

GREGORY: Right.

TODD: And pay for all these things. And so I wonder if everybody should say, you know what? Let's table this debate. We know what's happening. Table that part of the debate, because when you do that, then it becomes this like clubbing each other with–with–with political argument that takes away from what we have to do.

This is a great example of the problem with corporate media centrism. The debate over "who's right" about climate change annoys people like Todd because it is objectively true that some are more right than others. And one major political party is more frequently aligned with those who deny climate change's existence or the need to do something about it.

So it's not a debate that can be "tabled," nor is it a distraction from "what we have to do." Sea level will continue to rise as the planet warms, and governments will necessarily spend trillions of dollars dealing with the consequences. But whether we're looking at a 35-centimeter rise (about 14 inches) by the end of the century or more like 124 centimeters (close to four feet) depends in large part on whether we face the reality that human-caused changes to the atmosphere are catastrophically altering the climate. Chuck Todd wants us to stop talking about our responsibility for the  disaster we're creating–and focus instead on who's going to pay for the damages.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Creationists and Climate Change Deniers Are Slammed By 'Greatest Naturalist of Our Time' Sir David Attenborough

Photo by ItzaFineDay

By Nico Hines

Sir David Attenborough, the greatest naturalist of our time, says it’s foolish to blindly accept what you’ve learned at your mother’s knee.

Sir David Attenborough is one of the great naturalists of our time, celebrated for decades of peerless documentary making, an infectious love of the animal kingdom and that distinctive and enthusiastic whisper. Once criticized by campaigners for his reticence to address contentious issues, Attenborough is no longer willing to speak in hushed tones.

Sitting opposite the kangaroo enclosure at London Zoo, he told The Daily Beast he had lost patience with the “ignorance” of creationists, polluters, and climate change deniers. “To simply say that you must accept unquestioningly what you learned at your mother’s knee is not the act of an intelligent person,” he said.

It was a rare flash of frustration from a man who has spent more than 60 years in the public eye.

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