Weather Of Wrath And Climate Crisis Deniers

It’s not that the weather is out of its joint. It’s behaving in its normal pattern. In a period of crisis, apparently erratic pattern is the normal. This crisis-normal pattern signifies the crisis. Usual-normal or expected-normal weather pattern would have nullified the climate crisis claim. But the “wise” climate crisis deniers can claim that the weather is wishing the globe in an erratic, abnormal way, which is just occasional.

There are rare moments in the world history, when major world players simultaneously, in the same week, in the same day, experienced bad weather. The recent weeks and days have found them having similar weather-experience in the US, UK and Russia.

In Krasnodar, southern Russia, a recent heavy flooding caused by torrential rains has brought a death toll of more than 100. Many residents climbed trees and roofs. This type of flood is unusual in memorable history in the region.

Muddy water flowed through streets and homes in the town of Krimsk. At some places in the town, the flood water rose to rooftops. Boats plied through the town streets. One report said of seven meters of water in a town. In Novorossiisk, a major Black Sea port, the severe weather compelled to suspend loading of oil on to tankers.

Recent flood brought by torrential rain has created havoc in many parts of the UK. The flood has brought death. The Yealm burst its banks. Homes are flooded. A number of homes had 1-2 meters water inside. The country has been alerted with more than 200 flood warnings by its environment agency. Now, there are flooded homes, road closures and badly disrupted public transport system. Farmers have been advised to move livestock from low-lying fields and ensure that animals had access to food and shelter.

Parts of the US, from the western Rockies to the Midwest and eastern part, experienced heat wave, sweltering temperatures and monstrous thunderstorms in recent weeks. There is loss of life. Temperatures reached record level in more than 4,500 locations including Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Lansing hit 103°, the hottest day in Michigan’s capital city since record keeping began in 1863. The O’Hare International Airport also experienced 103° on July 6, 2012.

The country has already experienced Colorado wildfires and hurricane within the last few weeks. Storms knocked out power in Michigan, West Virginia, Maryland, and other areas. Millions passed days without electricity.

These weather-incidents are creating questions among people about the statements climate crisis deniers and “scientists” in their pay roll forcefully and shrewdly propagate.

Jane Lubchenco, head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), on July 6 told a university forum in Canberra that the experience of recent extreme weather has convinced many Americans previously unconvinced or unconcerned with the impact of man-made climate change.

“People’s perceptions in the United States at least are in many cases beginning to change as they experience something first-hand that they at least think is directly attributable to climate change,” Jane said. Climate change used to be a “nebulous concept”, removed from everyday life, she said. As an example of people’s attention to the science behind the storms she cited “skyrocketing” demand for NOAA’s data from individuals and groups across the US.

It seems climate crisis deniers and their reliable “scientists” are loosing ground in the area of public trust in a country significant in climate crisis negotiations.

Despite the fact the deniers may argue for a short while. But they will be denied of soundness of their arguments as they confront, if they like to, the fact of frequency of extreme weather in a short span of recent time. The “wise” deniers argue: Conclusion on climate can’t be reached on the basis of one or two erratic events. But they miss the aspects of frequency, intensity and time span, and historical records.

Climate crisis deniers, however, don’t restrain. To assert claims of denying the climate crisis deniers have powerful organs.

The Wall Street Journal climate denial episode is now well known to many. The famous WSJ published an opinion piece signed by 16 “scientists” with flawed and misleading arguments about climate science with the following headline: “No Need to Panic About Global Warming”. The “scientists” tried to argue that “there’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy”.

But the WSJ “upholding” the principle of democracy and fairness refused to publish a scientifically accurate essay by 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences on the realities of climate crisis. The NAS is the preeminent independent scientific organizations in the US and members of the Academy are among the most respected in the world in their respective areas of knowledge and work. However, Science, one of the most important journals on scientific issues in the US, later published the NAS members’ essay.

But, the episode of denying freedom of expression exposed the deniers’ position. They even tried to deny, actually suppress, scientific fact. It is an old practice by the forces of status quo and decay since science started its journey for the welfare of humanity.

The climate crisis deniers’ also get exposed as “stories”, actually scandals involving innocent-looking “scientists”, of funding to climate denial “endeavors” come to light. It’s actually funding denial-“science” game, which is quite old. The funds come from powerful interests signifying the extent of interest in denying the climate crisis.

On May 30, 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that found 28 “leading” US companies that publicly express concern about climate change but provide support to think tanks and groups engaged with the work of denying the climate crisis issue.

Obviously, these donors provide support to the denial-“science” behind public eye, a non-transparent practice but usual for capital. This fact exposes corporate hypocrisy, lie, and practice: pronounce what consumers like to listen and do what you consider as your interest.

Half, 14, of the UCS examined companies misrepresented climate crisis in their public communications. Many more contributed to the spread of misinformation about the climate crisis in ways that included political contributions, trade group memberships, and think tank funding. These companies, the report found, utilized their financial resources to oppose climate policy. Lobbying expenditures for energy sector companies increased by 92% from 2007 to 2009, the period climate change bills were actively debated in the US congress.

According to the report, the worst offenders were ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, DTE energy, General Electric Company, and Caterpillar Inc. Peabody Energy Corporation was ranked the most obstructionist of these companies. The company spent more than $33m to lobby its interest. Caterpillar spent more than $16m on lobbying. Valero Energy Corporation donated more than $4 million to the Yes on Prop 23, a campaign that sought to undermine California’s climate change law, but voters rejected it.

There is bigger money behind climate crisis-denial “science”. According to the Green Peace, the billionaire US oilmen David Koch and his brother Charles have funneled $61.48 million to climate-denial misinformation and disinformation groups working to obstruct policies and regulations aimed at stopping global warming. The Koch brothers funneled another $4.38 million into the climate crisis denial venture.

Americans for Prosperity ($5.7 million since 1997), the Heritage Foundation ($2.7 million), the Cato Institute ($1.2 million), and the Manhattan Institute ($1.2 million) were the top recipients of Koch money.

All of these are prestigious institutes in the realm of knowledge. Their observations carry more weight of credibility than many governments in poor countries. Their advocacy influences life of millions of poor around the world although millions of poor don’t know names of these organizations and are not aware of these institutes’ connections, power and influence.

The Koch brothers have billions of dollars from their ownership and control of Koch Industries, an oil corporation that is the second largest privately-held company in the US.
Kansas-based Koch Industries is a conglomerate dominated by petroleum and chemical interests with approximately $100 billion in annual sales and having operations in about 60 countries. The Koch brothers’ money is funneled through one of three “charitable” foundations they have set up: the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation; the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation; and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation. David Koch, one of the owners of this power, once claimed that “global warming could be good for the planet”. It’s not possible for the farmers and fishers, the people, facing uncertain future caused by rising temperature and sea level to perceive David’s perception of “good”.

While two persons deal with billions of dollars the rest millions count cents and a meal a day. A bad catch of fish, a bad yield of crop in a season demolishes survival opportunity of many. To a poor child of school going age, who helps his father in fishing or farming, education and sports are not the issue. The issue is a favorable weather for fishing, crop not damaged by insects, a better earning, a better food, a sleep not disturbed by an angry sea. The two worlds, of the rich and of the poor, are completely opposite.

But the deniers don’t refrain. The Green Peace reports Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial, 2011 and Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine tell about the deniers, their misdoings in the area of climate crisis. In March 2010, Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine, another Greenpeace report, told of an “initiative”. Their funding is so big, activities are so wide and involvement/meddling are so deep that the information in these reports may appear a small fragment to a reader concerned with the climate crisis.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund has a similar report: The Koch Brothers: What You Need to Know about the Financiers of the Radical Right. The Center for Public Integrity has another report: Koch’s Web of Influence. Audio recordings from inside the Koch’s 2011 secret strategy meeting available at BradBlog with additional reporting by Mother Jones present more facts.

This profit entity owned by the Koch brothers, two of the top 10 richest people in the US, is an ally of ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and individuals – a section of scientists, media men, politicians – opposing energy and climate policy that take into account the issue of climate crisis. Their propagandists also come from poor countries, from countries being affected by the rising seas.

From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent US$8.9 million, while the Koch Industries controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the climate crisis denial “science”.

But facts can’t be suppressed.

The Koch brothers funded a research that concluded the planet is warming. The Charles G. Koch Foundation provided $150,000 to the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study in 2011, which was embraced by the denial machine until it redundantly re-confirmed that there in the world temperature is increasingly. Neither of the brothers explained the way the BEST study they funded contradicts their denial of climate crisis. Greenpeace activists asked David Koch the question. But there was no explanation.

This climate crisis denial, the “game” of money, does not only expose a section of capital’s role in climate crisis. It does also tell the old truth experienced by science and knowledge over ages: Suppress fact in the interest of status quo even if that act of suppression hurts the common people. Thus interest of status quo stands against the interest of the common people and against science, and there resurfaces the old contradiction between capital and science.

Deny Global Warming, Intimidate A Scientist, And Pocket Some Money

Denying the fact of global warming is “not” a sin. Intimidating a scientist providing facts on global warming is “not” an offence. These are in the interest of a bigger interest: an economy warming up and periling the world, and in eternal wish of perpetuating status quo. A section of the world masters clutch this pattern of praxis.

Michael E. Mann, a scientist at Penn State University , experienced this “sweet” fact. His research confirmed the fact of global warming. The results of his study were published in Nature in 1998. His finding showed a recent unprecedented alarming global temperature increase, and the increase in temperature is linked to human induced activities, to cars, factories, etc. Many other later studies have confirmed the finding. But the scientist was persecuted by conservative forces for telling the truth.

The data Mann got appeared the shape of a hockey stick as these were put as a graph, and the name, Hockey stick graph , and a confusion were brought to the Earth. His finding was used prominently by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Hockey stick graph angered global warming deniers, and Mann was made “a target of right-wing denial campaigners.” A section of scientists tied to status quo and a section of politicians of the same feather vigorously opposed it and created confusion. The opposition ultimately appeared in true color – status quo politics. Conservatives and capital joined hands in denying the fact.

While seeds of confusion were being sown Mann had to bear “the full brunt of attacks by climate change deniers, including death threats and accusations of misappropriating funds,” as The Guardian said. (“Death threats, intimidation and abuse: climate change scientist Michael E. Mann counts the cost of honesty”, March 3, 2012 ) “Among the tactics used against Mann were the theft and publication, in 2009, of emails he had exchanged with climate scientist Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia University . Selected, distorted versions of these emails were then published […] in order to undermine UN climate talks due to begin in Copenhagen a few weeks later”. Using those emails to kill off the climate negotiation was “a crime against humanity, a crime against the planet,” Mann said. (ibid.)

A number of policy foundations threw a barrage of intimidation to Mann. These “were set up by privately-funded groups that included Koch Industries and Scaife Foundations and bore names such as the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity and the Heartland Institute. These groups bombarded Mann with freedom of information requests […]” He was served with a subpoena by a Republican congressman to provide access to his correspondence. The aim was to intimidate the scientist. He was “attacked by Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican attorney general of Virginia who has campaigned to have the scientist stripped of academic credentials. Several committees of inquiry have investigated Mann's work. All have exonerated him. Thousands of emails have been sent to Mann, many deeply unpleasant. ‘You and your colleagues… ought to be shot, quartered and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families', said one. ‘I was hopin [sic] I would see the news and you commited [sic] suicide', ran another.” “‘On one occasion, I had to call the FBI after I was sent an envelope with a powder in it', Mann adds. ‘It turned out to be cornmeal but again the aim was intimidation. I ended up with police security tape all over my office doors and windows. That is the life of a climate scientist today in the US .'” (ibid.)

Mann's book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is coming out in April. “The book details the ‘disingenuous and cynical' methods used by those who have tried to disprove his findings.” (ibid.)

Intimidating Mann is not an isolated act. This type of activities has connection to bigger money. But, ultimately this comes to public view. Intimidators and global warming deniers are exposed. One such story is Chicago-based Heartland Institute's.

The institute's documents related to its donors, spending and anti-science strategy were leaked recently. The institute is one of the leading deniers in the US that strains to create confusion in the public “mind” by saying that “climate change is a controversial, unproven theory.”

The leaked documents prove that the oil-rich Koch brothers donated $200,000 to HI in 2011and before. The Koch brothers' involvement makes HI a shill for oil companies. The brothers have backed climate-denier Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign.

One of the documents reveal HI's plans to spend $100,000 to build an anti-climate change curriculum for schools that “shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”

Recently, David Suzuki writes, someone sent documents from the HI's board of directors' Jan. 17 meeting to persons and organizations including DeSmogBlog, a website devoted to exposing the climate change denial. “The documents confirm much of what we already knew about Heartland […]” Suzuki says: HI doesn't publicly reveal its funding source and expenditure. “These documents indicate that Heartland has offered U.S. weatherman blogger and climate change denier Anthony Watts close to $90,000 for a new project. They also reveal that Heartland funds other prominent deniers, including ‘Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals' […] And even though it has received funding from wealthy individuals and corporations in the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, including the Koch brothers and RJR Tobacco, it gets most of its money from a single anonymous donor”: $4.6 million in 2008. “The papers also confirm that the institute's primary mission is to discredit the established science of human-caused climate change.” (“It's time that climate-change deniers were exposed”, Feb. 21, 2012 )

Citing leaked documents Josh Israel and Brad Johnson expose 19 major corporations backing the HI. The documents reveal “the think tank's plans to teach students that climate change is a hoax […]” ( ThinkProgress Green ) The institute, however, “ deemed at least one of the documents fake and some tampered with.” The think tank's 2010-2011 “corporate backers included Altria Client Services Inc. : $90,000, Amgen , USA : $25,000, Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. : $5,000, AT&T : $100,000, BB&T : $16,105, Comcast Corporation : $35,000, General Motors Foundation : $30,000, GlaxoSmithKline : $50,000, Microsoft Corporation : $59,908, Nucor Corporation : $502,000, PepsiCo, Inc. : $5,000, Pfizer : $130,000, Reynolds American Inc. : $110,000, Time Warner Cable : $20,000.” (Jaeah Lee, “Which Major Corporations Are Backing a Climate-Denier Think Tank?”, Mother Jones , Feb. 18, 2012 ) Other companies included Diageo: $10,000, Eli Lilly & Company: $25,000, KCI: $115,000, LKQ Corporation: $24,500, XL Group: $35,000. Combined contributions of the companies exceeded $1.3 million for an array of projects. The AP independently verified their contents. ( ThinkProgress Green ) HI also collects money from Philip Morris parent company Altria and the tobacco giant Reynolds American. (Cory Doctorow, “Leaked climate-change denial lobby docs came from water scientist”, Feb. 21)

However, a number of companies have issued statements about their contributions, but none have committed to ending their support for the HI. A Diageo spokesperson said: “Diageo provided a small contribution (nearly two years ago) […] related to an excise tax issue. We vigorously oppose climate skepticism and our actions are proof of this. We will be reviewing any further association with this organization.” A GlaxoSmithKline spokesperson said: “GSK absolutely does not endorse or support the [HI]'s views on the environment and climate change. We have in the past provided a small amount of funding to support the Institute's healthcare newsletter and a meeting.” While disavowing climate denial, Microsoft has indicated no intention to stop its in-kind tax-deductible contributions to the think tank. General Motors defended the HI as “careful and considerate.” Forecast The Facts has established a petition to GM asking them to stop funding climate denial. ( ThinkProgress Green ) It's only part of a story. There are also other parts of the denial story.

Money business with the global warming issue is quite old. In 2010, after analyzing publicly available campaign finance records the Climate Action Network (CAN) stated that “a number of European companies are supporting climate legislation blockers in the U.S. by funding the campaigns of republican candidates to the U.S. Senate.” The CAN finding was that a number of big European industrial companies including Arcelor Mittal, GDF Suez, BP, BASF, Bayer and Lafarge already spent a total of 171.000 Euro on candidates. “They are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy in the U.S. , and candidates who actively deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is caused by people. These companies are simultaneously lobbying against aggressive emissions reductions in Europe – and are arguing that such reductions should not be pursued until the United States takes action”, it said.

Indicating the climate change deniers Bryan Walsh writes: “[T]hey refuse even to believe that a problem exists — despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that says it does. One of America 's major political parties has, in effect, adopted denial as policy.” (“Who's Bankrolling the Climate-Change Deniers?”, Time , Oct. 4, 2011 )

Citing sociologists Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and Aaron McCright of Michigan State University Bryan writes: “[C]limate denialism exists in part because there has been a long-term, well-financed effort on the part of conservative groups and corporations to distort global-warming science. That's the conclusion of a chapter the two researchers recently wrote for The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society . ‘Contrarian scientists, fossil-fuel corporations, conservative think tanks and various front groups have assaulted mainstream climate science and scientists for over two decades,' Dunlap and McCright write. ‘The blows have been struck by a well-funded, highly complex and relatively coordinated denial machine.'” (ibid.)

“Fossil-fuel companies like Exxon and Peabody Energy — which obviously have a business interest in slowing any attempt to reduce carbon emissions — have combined with traditionally conservative corporate groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and conservative foundations like the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity, to raise doubts about the basic validity of what is, essentially, a settled scientific truth. That message gets amplified by conservative think tanks — like the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute — and then picked up by conservative media outlets […] and cable TV.

“For both Big Oil and Big Smoke, that playbook is lethally simple: don't straight-up refute the science, just raise skepticism and insist that the findings are ‘unsettled' and that ‘more research' is necessary. Repeat that again and again regardless of the latest research, and you help block the formation of the solid majority needed to create any real political change. (ibid.)

Climate crisis denial is well organized. Claims have been made that lobbyists including the Western Fuels Association funded efforts to undermine the scientific basis of climate crisis explanation. In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute organized discussions between oil companies, trade associations and conservative think tanks. The API provided fund for research critical of the Hockey stick graph. In June 2002, the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists published a paper arguing against the IPCC findings and the Kyoto Protocol.

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway's Merchants of Doubt (2010) cites collusion between private corporations, conservative think tanks and conservative scientists to create confusion so that scientific consensus on current burning issues are not questioned as the burning issues have been blazed by the present economic world order.

Since long, climate crisis issue has turned into a political issue. A section of capital is fully in politics with the issue. Sections of conservatives deny the fact of climate crisis while the rest of the human society is concerned with the facts. Contradictory activities and interests have made it also a class issue. Interests opposed to people, especially the poor are well aware of it. All their activities, in economy, politics, diplomacy, propaganda, in bargaining conclaves, in education, in scientific pursuits, reflect this. All their efforts are to keep people unaware, uninformed, misinformed, demobilized. It's not only labor's, entire people's interests also stand opposed to the status quo interests in the global warmsphere.

However, there is effort and hope as “Mann insists he will not give up. ‘I have a six-year-old daughter and she reminds me what we are fighting for.' […C]limate change deniers and their oil and coal industry backers have overstepped the mark and goaded scientists to take action. He points to a recent letter, signed by 250 members of the US National Academy of Science, including 11 Nobel laureates, and published in Science . The letter warns about the dangers of the current attacks on climate scientists and calls ‘for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.' ‘Words like those give me hope', says Mann.” ( The Guardian , op. cit.) The more people get mobilized the more there will be hope.