Pseudo-Science Group Launches Misinformation Campaign To Oppose Climate Action
Institutionalized Delay Creates Doubt
Following years of organized climate change counter-movements that spend almost a billion dollars a year on denial, a group has sent a letter entitled, “There is no climate emergency,” to leaders of the European Union and the United Nations in early September. Over 400 climate change deniers signed the letter, including politicians, lobbyists, and academics in an attempt to thwart net-zero carbon goal initiatives around the world.
The letter uses the same old debunked arguments that have been peddled for decades by climate change deniers, such as:
-There is no cause for alarm.
-Climate change is just a natural cycle.
-There is no proof of anthropogenic warming.
On the contrary, independent research organizations such as NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC have shown conclusive scientific evidence that unless we act immediately, we will experience irreversible destabilization and expensive impacts over the next several hundred years. And that humans have “loaded the dice” by putting enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and oceans, which correlates with the extraordinary warming. There are several decades of proof that anthropogenic climate change is irreversibly destabilizing the climate, that humans are responsible, and the impacts on humans will be alarming. Sadly the pseudoscience letter fails to acknowledge the tens of thousands of scientists who have agreed (97%) that we have anthropogenic global warming.
A number of organizations are participating in the pseudoscientific propaganda. Exxon-Mobil perpetuated a hoax for decades debunking climate change research and is a defendant in a lawsuit to that effect. Two U.S. think tanks were involved with personnel from the Cato Institute and the Heartland Institute, both of which are supported by the Atlas Network from the infamous Koch Brothers. From the UK, there is the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute, and Taxpayers Alliance, all provided staffing for Boris Johnson’s team of advisors.
In addition, there is the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by the former Chancellor Nigel Lawson. The campaign is coordinated by a Netherlands-based climate science denial group called the Climate Intelligence Foundation, aka Clintel, founded by a gentleman named Guus Berkhout. He formerly worked at Shell Oil and later created the Delphi Consortium to work on new ways to extract oil and gas. Berkhout predicted that they will be very active in the future.
Robert Brulle, the author of extended studies on organized climate change denial, remarked that he sees this as a panic in response to activism from the Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thurnberg, and mass protests in the media that point out we have a climate crisis. Brulle previously published extensive research showing there is a close-knit group of think tanks and other organizations that have been spending $900 million a year to spread misinformation throughout the media for a couple of decades. The “institutionalized delay” has been successful in creating doubt as to the credibility of the scientific research and as such has fueled the continued use of fossil fuels worldwide.
