#climate change denialism

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Allison Fisher at MMFA:

During The New York Times’ “Climate Week NYC” discussion with Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts, reporter David Gelles outlined the right-wing initiative’s regressive approach to climate change and the environment. Gelles also noted that Project 2025's call to dismantle climate action comes as the world is already experiencing the consequences of a warming climate, pointing out that a record number of people in the Phoenix, Arizona, area were killed by extreme heat this year alone. Roberts responded by pointing to Heritage Foundation research claiming that there has been a “reduction in climate deaths — climate-related deaths — over the last century by 98%.” Not only is this a red herring argument used by climate deniers to downplay the climate crisis, but that reduction is reportedly due in part to improved forecasting, which is done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency Project 2025 has called to dismantling.

As Reuters has reported, the decrease in deaths since 1920 is largely due to “better forecasting and preparedness,” even while “the number, intensity, and cost of climatic and meteorological hazards have all increased over the last hundred years.”

Notably, Project 2025 calls for dismantling NOAA, which houses the National Hurricane Center, the very agency that has improved the forecasting of deadly weather events and is critical to providing life-saving information. 

With Hurricane Helene in the process of making landfall, Project 2025 architect and Heritage head honcho Kevin Roberts told the Climate Week NYC hosted by The New York Times vomited out climate denialist talking points. Project 2025 has called for the dismantling of NOAA and National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the privatization of the NWS.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[you-need-not-apply]

People who believe climate change isn’t real have the same energy as flat earthers

You get it bestie

[chambergambit]

i wonder how climate change deniers would've reacted to the dust bowl in the 1930s. like, would they see the incredible dust storm of black sunday sweep across the great plains all the way to the east coast, blocking out the sun in major cities like new york or dc and be like "nah, it's just the drought. it has nothing to do with the way we've been farming. if kids are dying from pneumonia, well, that's just what happens when you go outside with wet feet."

[00venator]

Ya know, it’s great when it hasn’t rained for like 2 months, and now there’s storm clouds hanging around. And in summer it was raining heaps. And before there were floods. And before that fires.

We had a pretty brutal localised thunderstorm yesterday.

Parents still have the audacity to say “it happens sometimes”

[itmightrain]

“[Research suggests that Social Dominance Orientation is linked to climate change denialism.] Social dominance orientation […] is people who express beliefs about the way things ought to be that are learned through socialization.

“It’s more about accepting that there’s differences between groups,” [Dr. Jylhä] said. “That some groups are better, and some groups are worse. So people who score high in social dominance orientation tend to see the world as a competitive triangle, where it’s natural and inevitable that hierarchies exist, and so society shouldn’t do anything to reduce those hierarchies, because there’s probably something in these groups who have a lower position that has caused their lower position.”

I responded, “I think most liberals in the United States think that the reason most republicans deny the existence of climate change or are opposed to acting, is because they’re financially invested in the status quo; either they’re politicians who are paid by fossil fuel lobbies or they work in resource extractive industries, or they are opposed to government intervention and they don’t trust the government. So how,” I asked, “is social dominance correlated to climate change?”

Jylhä responded, “There is some sort of unconscious risk calculation going on there, kind of like ‘should we really do all of these changes? Are the risks so high?’ Social dominance orientation comes into play here, based on this risk allocation they think that ‘hmm it sounds quite horrible, but I don’t think that I’m the one who would suffer if it’s true.’”

Future generations will suffer. Animals will suffer. And people in, for example, developing countries and islands and so on are already suffering because of climate change. But if white American men who buy the zero-sum story don’t see themselves as suffering, their bias will be towards retaining a status quo that rewards them even if it leads to suffering for others. [...]

[Dr. Jylhä describes being surprised by American class differences, especially compared to Sweden’s social safety net (houses for homeless people, treatment for ill people, etc.).] “It’s not like people are left, just thrown out from the system.”

Hearing her describe Sweden’s more humane society helped me connect the dots on how living in a society like ours could shape your perception of your own climate change risks.

“That comes back to your social dominance orientation, right?” I asked. “If you’re in a society where you’ve already let someone go without shelter, then what does it matter if they drown? If it’s okay for people to suffer, then it’s okay for people to suffer. And if your wealth has protected you from that suffering, then your wealth can probably protect you from another kind of suffering.”"

- The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGee

[politicalantibody]

Some things are just too ridiculous to invent.

Know-nothing populism is on the rise globally. So is the sea level.

[sufficientlyantique]

I heard someone say something about some law somewhere that won’t allow the use of certain words in local government. “Climate change”. It’s a clear acknowledgment that the words we use have power.

I had a childish thought. Since so many of the same folks use pronoun declarations to mock gender guidance, I imagined a scenario in which my stated gender guidance went like this;

“Hi! My name is It’s Real, and my pronouns are climate/change”

Or some variant. I’m not that clever, but it gives me pleasure to have a prepared snap back for a future self.

[buckaroosboogara]

Hi! Just wanna raise some awareness here because South America is on fucking fire and I need to see more people talking about this.

Source: RSOE EDIS x

Im just going to talk about the ones i'm closest to, but if you know about these fires, feel free to add in the reblogs!

Chile

In Chile there's (up to Feb 5) 160 wild fires, of which 40 are still trying to be controlled by authorities. The president, Gabriel Boric, has declared State of Emergency in the whole country, and theres a Red Alert Code in most part of the country.

Isla de Chiloé, Southern Chile (900 km away from Santiago de Chile)

This is a (recently controlled) fire that lasted a week, but many neighborhoods were burnt to the ground.

The whole South is in red alert for constant sudden fires that spread quickly due to the lack of rain and the elevated temperatues in the zone. Just today, two fires had to be controlled in the main land next to this island, and more are being reported in the Los Lagos region. This is added to the "controlled" intentional fires that farmers make to clean their fields of old crops along the Central-South parts of the country, mostly surrunding the main route, Ruta 5, that connects the whole country, thus making it hard to see and breathe because of the smoke. (flashnews, most of them get out of control quickly.)

Valparaiso/Viña del Mar, Central Chile (100 km away from Santiago de Chile)

A fire that started on Friday 2nd and grew exponentially because of the wind and the dry, hot climate. More than 100 people are dead, with 70 unrecognized bodies and other 400 that have dissapeared. At least 30000 people that have lost everything to the fire.

There's massive evacuations from this and the neighboring city, Viña Del Mar.

This is said to be the second most deadly fire in the century, surpased by Australia in 2009.

45000+ hectares that include land and neighborhoods have been burnt down.

I could go on about this one, so more info here and here

Argentina

Parque Los Alerces (Esquel), Chubut

The fire strarted on the 25th January, and the climate has made it hard to contain. 3000 hectares of native forest have been burnt to teh ground. It is now growing in the direction of the nearest city, Esquel. Theres been evacuations between yesterday and today (4 and 5th Febuary)

Parque Nahuel Huapi (Bariloche), Río Negro

The reason why im writing this. The city woke up today covered in smoke after a wildfire developed yesterday during the night. The reason? A fireplace that was not turned off in a place where people cannot disembark and can only be reached via boats.

As of now, there's not much information about the fire but hopefully the firefighters will be able to contain it before it reaches Tronador Mountain, where an ancient glaciar is.

...which leads me to the other point i wanted to talk about.

Firefighters

They volunteer to do this job.

In Argentina and Chile, firefighting is not rewarded with a salary, and most of the times they dont even have full firehouses to stay in. These people are at their houses, ready to jump into action and run to the station the second the alarm goes off.

They are neighbors, people that risk their lives and run into danger willingly, just because they want to help the community.

I felt the need to give a shout-out to these people and say:

Don't be a fucking dick, don't start fires in the woods unless it's an approved place, and if you do, TURN IT OFF.

Pour abundant water on it, and do not stop when you don't see any more flames.

Keep pouring water until the ashes don't burn/feel like room temperature in your hand if you put it 10 cm away from it, and even then, pour some more just to be sure.

No heat and no smoke mean a safely extinguished fire.

Save lives and forests.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ilana Berger at MMFA:

Google is allowing right-wing propaganda organization PragerU to run climate-denying ads on its search engine even though the tech giant previously committed to prohibiting ads that feature claims that contradict the “well-established scientific consensus” about climate change. In 2021, Google updated its ad policy to prohibit ads for or on content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”  Yet, nearly three years later, Google is still profiting from ads that contain climate change misinformation.  When Media Matters searched for phrases like “climate change,” “global warming,” and “climate crisis” on Google Search, the search engine returned PragerU ads that promised its website reveals “the truth about climate change” — or what it calls the “fake climate catastrophe.”  “Climate policies are causing inflation and keeping poor countries trapped in poverty,” the ad-description text read. “Get the facts with our Climate Change and Energy playlist.”

[...]

PragerU is deeply rooted in climate change denial

Along with the Daily Wire, PragerU is financially dependent on generous donations from fossil fuel billionaire Farris Wilks.  Recently,  PragerU Kids, a PragerU offshoot that produces conservative “educational” content targeted at school age children, has partnered with five different states to bring right-wing propaganda into public school classrooms.  Media Matters reviewed PragerU Kids’ ”educational” content and found it was rife with misinformation about climate change. In one video, a cartoon narrator explains why embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw uprising, when Polish Jews attempted to liberate Warsaw from German occupation during WWII.  

Google profits off of right-wing propaganda factory PragerU's climate change denialism ads.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

One of the philosophical/theological differences between judaism and other religions is how we conceive of the consequences of doing bad things.

I just heard someone say, "well jews don't believe in hell, so why don't you-" and just never sits right with me that the only thing that could prevent you from acting in bad ways are the threat of an eternal punishment. The implication that you shouldn't care about the consequences of your actions on the worldly level are astounding as well.

I care about not doing bad because it hurts people - myself included. Even if I did believe in hell... It wouldn't factor into how I live life. I fundamentally don't agree that we should treat this life and this world as a temporary home - a rest stop - where our actions only matter insofar as it affects where you go in the afterlife.

[rejectingrepublicans]

James Woods is a typical racist and bigoted Trump cultist who can’t understand why people are telling him it’s karmic payback that his house is on fire.

[miasma-my-asthma]

Im a brazilian that lives in an area of tropical/subtropical climate and EVEN HERE I can notice the climate changes from global warming and stuff and I only have 24 years old. Like we used to have 2 months of almost uninterrupted cloudy skies with constant rains and it was actually cold during this time (for brazilian standards at least which was a minimum of 5°C up to 18°C), now this period doesnt exist, its just a constant sun drought through the whole year here, with the few interruptions being when a mass of cold air hits the region, but those are sporadic random events that barely last a week. Just HOW can you be 40+ years old, who saw a completely different world weather wise and still refuse to aknowledge climate change/global warming? Right wing propaganda is a plague on this world.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Former President Donald Trump’s deadly lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene — and soon, inevitably, Hurricane Milton — depend on the impermeability of the right-wing information bubble. President Joe Biden has directed an ongoing federal and state response to the swath of death and destruction Hurricane Helene left on the southeastern United States, an effort which includes tens of thousands of personnel helping victims across several states.  Trump’s Helene response has been characterized by conspiracy theories and grievance-mongering for political gain.

The Biden administration won plaudits from GOP elected officials across the region, but Trump falsely claimed the federal government abandoned the public. Americans affected by the storm can access a robust program of federal assistance, but he falsely claims they could only get $750 in aid. The White House stressed there’s plenty of FEMA funds to respond to both Helene and Milton — and Republicans are reportedly the ones blocking additional funding — but Trump falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris blew “all her FEMA money” housing immigrants.  The former president, through these deranged fabrications, is trying to win votes in the coming election. He is summoning an alternate reality in which Biden and Harris are blithely unconcerned with the fates of millions of victims because many of those victims are Republicans and they instead prioritize immigrants. And he is doing so despite his own record  as president of allegedly withholding disaster aid for political reasons.

The only reason this strategy is remotely plausible is that the right-wing media ecosystem is willing to play along with it. The news sources Republicans rely on, from MAGA influencers to Fox stars, have bolstered Trump’s lies at every turn. The result is that right-wing audiences are bombarded with falsehoods from within an echo chamber. The MAGA media ecosystem responds in this same fashion to every news event because its function isn’t to report on what is happening. Instead, right-wing pundits offer a scapegoat — immigrants, Jews, journalists, teachers, trans people, Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans — in order to hold their audience’s attention, make money, and support the GOP’s core agenda of tax cuts for rich people and abortion bans.

Hurricane misinformation is plaguing the response to Helene. Local media outlets, federal and state officials, and emergency responders all are desperately trying to swat down rumors and falsehoods — some promoted by the former president. Republican officials in affected areas are begging the people pushing “conspiracy theory junk” to stop lying and pitch in instead.

Donald Trump and the right-wing media’s pushing of conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene reveals that they are in an insular bubble.