Open thread for night owls: Climate science deniers still get reporters to quote them. No joke
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So Ryan Worst-Interior-Secretary-Since-Jim-Watt Zinke finally sorta kinda conceded Thursday after days of denials that the wildfires charring California are made worse by climate change. At New York Magazine, Adam K. Raymond noted that Zinke tossed off anOpen thread for night owls: Climate science deniers still get reporters to quote them. No joke
So Ryan Worst-Interior-Secretary-Since-Jim-Watt Zinke finally sorta kinda conceded Thursday after days of denials that the wildfires charring California are made worse by climate change. At New York Magazine, Adam K. Raymond noted that Zinke tossed off an “of course” when most recently asked if a warming climate could be proliferating the devastating blazes. His admission has made a few headlines. But it’s not as if the man has had a transformative epiphany. He’s just playing the latest edition of the denier game. Just hours before that admission, he said on Fox Business: “There’s no dispute that the climate is changing, although it has always changed. Whether man is the direct result, how much that result is, that’s still being disputed.” That doesn’t sound like someone who is having second thoughts. With most of the scores of climate science rejectionists in Congress and the White House, it’s hard to know if 1) they really are such ignoramuses so as to believe Heartland Institute propagandists and all the other deniers, or 2) if their scientifically illiterate publicly expressed views are just an act to cover up their venal attachment to the benefit$ that come from being pliable friends of the fossil fuel industry. Whichever the case, it’s time to sweep away the deniers and delayers, and to stop giving them press. They’re not just liars. They knowingly and intentionally misled Americans about climate change for pay. And they are still doing it, as Zinke’s yes-but-no bullshit proves. Merchants of Doubt, a pair of authors called them. Their deception is a big part of why our species now faces the gravest crisis since homo sapiens emerged in Africa 200-300 millennia ago. A recent example of this deceit is Politico’s otherwise reasonably good story about the Trump regime’s move to replace the Obama Clean Power Plan with one that’s not as clean. The reporters chose to publish the words of the execrable Myron Ebell, identifying him only as being with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They made no reference to his long record of fabricating look-you-in-the-eye lies for tobacco companies and fossil fuel companies as well as concocting narratives useful to climate science rejectionists. Valuable information to have for anyone wanting to have some sense of an interviewee’s possible conflicts. These professional deniers should never be mentioned without referencing their wretched falsehoods in the same paragraph as their name. They actually shouldn’t be referenced at all. They have had their say. Anybody who publishes an op-ed by them is maltreating their readers. These mercenary deniers bought their way into the spotlight with the money of their paymasters. Since it’s been known for some time that they are charlatans, perhaps we should find a way to regularly remind the media that there is no journalistic requirement to amplify the voices of disinformation specialists. And that includes the ones in government. TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES QUOTATION “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.” ~~Eliezer Yudkowsky, Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk (2006) TWEET OF THE DAY xJust so we all donâÂÂt forget what the fuck were fighting for: pic.twitter.com/lUKsdpRkNa— Paula Froelich ð¤ (@Pfro) August 15, 2018 BLAST FROM THE PAST On this date at Daily Kos in 2006—Experts to bush: Back Off, Iran is “not a Crisis”: Apprehensive that Bush's «hard line» toward Iran is a «prelude» to a U.S military campaign against Iran, 21 former U.S. generals, diplomats and national security officials will release an open letter to the president tomorrow, demanding, according to the Los Angeles Times, a «a complete overhaul of U.S. policy toward both Iran and Iraq.» More from the Times: Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, one of the letter's signers and a former military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in the 1960s, said the group was particularly concerned about administration policies toward Iran, believing them to be a possible prelude to a military attack on suspected nuclear sites in that country. ...«It's not a crisis,» Gard said in a telephone interview. «To call the Iranian situation a 'crisis' connotes you have to do something right now, like bomb them.» It appears that any action against Iran will not be able to filed under the «Nobody could have anticipated ...» category in the Bush White House. When such experts come out so openly and vigorously—and preemptively—against a destructive path, there's hope that no matter how desperately the president wants to expand the violence, the public and the press will be armed with solid ammunition against the attempt. On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin’s polls say the Gop’s Pelosi bomb is a dud. Again. 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