Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Michael Mann, the main obstacle to climate action is a coalition of Russian robots, Saudis, fossil fuel tycoons, Rupert Murdoch, Wikileaks and climate deniers.
Climatologist Michael E Mann: ‘Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes’
Jonathan Watts
@jonathanwatts
Sun 28 Feb 2021 03.00 AEDTThe author and eminent climate scientist on the deniers’ new tactics and why positive change feels closer than it has done in 20 years
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Who is the enemy in the new climate war?
It is fossil fuel interests, climate change deniers, conservative media tycoons, working together with petrostate actors like Saudi Arabia and Russia. I call this the coalition of the unwilling.If you had to find a single face that represents both the old and new climate war it would be Rupert Murdoch. Climate change is an issue the Murdoch press has disassembled on for years. The disinformation was obvious last year, when they blamed arsonists for the devastating Australian bushfires. This was a horrible attempt to divert attention from the real cause, which was climate change. Murdoch was taken to task by his own son because of the immorality of his practices.
We also have to recognise the increasing roles of petrostate actors. Saudi Arabia has played an obstructionist role. Russia has perfected cyber warfare and used it to interfere in other countries and disrupt action on climate change. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has made a credible case about Russia’s efforts to hijack the 2016 presidential election and get Trump elected. Russia wanted to end US sanctions that stood in the way of a half-trillion-dollar deal between Rosneft and ExxonMobil. It worked. Who did Trump appoint as his first secretary of state? Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil.
Today Russia uses cyberware – bot armies and trolls – to get climate activists to fight one another and to seed arguments on social media. Russian trolls have attempted to undermine carbon pricing in Canada and Australia, and Russian fingerprints have been detected in the yellow-vest protests in France.Advertisement
And WikiLeaks? Your book suggests they were involved?
I’m not an expert but there has been a lot of investigative journalism about the role they played in the 2016 election. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks helped Donald Trump get elected, and in doing that they did the bidding of Putin. Their fingerprints are also all over the climategate affair 10 years ago. UK investigators have evidence of Russian involvement in that too.…
I’ve got news for you Mann, climate activists don’t need our help to fall out with each other. Just look at the fight between Michael Moore and the rest of the climate community over his anti-renewable energy eco-epic “Planet of the Humans”. Or that hilarious time Naomi Oreskes called James Hansen a “denier”, because of a disagreement over nuclear power.
Of course it helps that Michael Moore is part of the climate denier conspiracy. Moore’s “Planet of the Humans” insider attack against renewable energy and the climate establishment was a maskirova master stroke.
The truth is the previous paragraph is a joke, Michael Moore is not a climate denying agent of fossil fuel interests, as far as I know. But do climate activists trust me to tell the truth? Maybe some of them will think I’m mocking climate activists by parading a snippet of the truth, then laughing about it, expecting nobody to believe my reveal.
What do you think, Michael Mann?
via Watts Up With That?
February 28, 2021 at 08:23PM
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