In a 1500-page long “manifesto”, published on the web shortly before the two attacks, Breivik described his religious and fascist conspiracy theories. In addition to the average islamophobic, undemoratic and nationalistic rantings about Muslims taking over Europe and whatnot he also had a section called “Green is the new Red – Stop Enviro-Communism”. According to Breivik global warming is just a eco-Marxist plot, or a “Anthropogenic Global Warming scam”, with the end goal of creating a world government:

“You might know them as environmentalists, enviro-communists, eco-Marxists, neo-Communists or eco-fanatics. They all claim they want to save the world from global warming but their true agenda is to contribute to create a world government lead by the UN or in other ways increase the transfer of resources (redistribute resources) from the developed Western world to the third world. They hope to accomplish this through the distribution of misinformation (propaganda) which they hope will lead to increased taxation of already excessively taxed Europeans and US citizens.”

Considering the fact that Breivik for several years was a member of the Norwegian Fremskrittspartiet (FrP/FpU), a far-right political party that strongly push the idea of climate change being “exaggerated”, the news of him being a climate denier really doesn’t come to any surprise. But it does show what kind of “endorsements” other and more mainstream climate deniers have. No wonder the two conservative and climate denying talking heads Glenn Back and Bill O’Reilley tried to downplay the terrorist attack in Norway and distance themselves from Breivik. For example. In his radio show Glenn Beck likened the dead Norwegian children on Utøya to Hitler youth. And Bill O’Reilley criticized the media for labeling Breivik as a Christian terrorist and foolishly tried to claim that such a thing was “impossible”.

Brad Johnson, from the liberal think-tank and blog Thinkprogress, writes more about Breivik’s crazy environmental conspiracy theories and links them to the rhetoric used by American conservatives:

“Although Breivik’s conspiracy theories are insane, they are in line with mainstream opinion among American conservatives. He cites Christopher Monckton’s speech before the Minnesota Free Market Institute in 2009, accusing President Obama of trying to cede United States sovereignty to the United Nations through climate treaties. Monckton — a rabid conspiracy theorist who claims his opponents are Nazis — was a Republican witness before Congress on global warming in 2010.”

If you are interested in reading the climate ramblings of a madman and a mass murderer, Brad Johnson has published the whole manifesto excerpt from Breivik’s climate denying chapter here.

“We are apparently going to let the debate on the science run until hell freezes over. If you can’t accept the conclusions of 98 percent of the scientists whose FIELD IT IS, then why even bother with science? If that high a percentage of field of study is to be discounted ENTIRELY, then we are in deep trouble, which, of course, we are. It would be so simple if it were just a matter of ignoring the yelping commenters hereabouts: “Move on, Mr. Cartoonist! Chill out Tommy! There are more important things to worry about!”

Really? Which would those things be? This may be the only political issue whose results could be catastrophic PERMANENTLY. But the deliberate dust storm thrown up by fossil-fuel-centric interests has succeeded in contaminating and paralyzing the American response. Quite a victory for the deniers! It looks like mass-suicide to me.”

You can read his whole rant about climate deniers here.

The media these days are just another big business managed not more differently than any other industry. The mainstream media is very global in its scope (just think on CNN as an example) and like any other business its owned by a handful of large transnational corporations, or TNCs. General Electric (GE) is an example of a media owning TNC as it operates NBC Universal in USA.

But how did it come to this? How come TNCs have such a big influence? If we look back in the US history we find some explanations. In the early days corporations was actually a public institution designed to serve the citizens in USA. It might be hard to imagine today in USA but the state had a great control over these political created corporations. But as time moved on these corporations became increasingly privatized. This was in the beginning fueled by the need to create private finances to help in war efforts and colonial state expansion and imperialism which took place during this period. But as corporations grew bigger and richer their political powers increased even further. During the nineteenth century the privatization increased rapidly as laws and ideologies were introduced to accommodate the corporate interests. In 1868 the US Supreme Court ruled in favor for private corporations to be given the same rights and protections as a "natural person" under the nations constitution. This meant that corporations were now free to influence the government with the very same rights as individual citizens had. This paved the way for corporate donations and lobbying which was used to "dominate public thought and discourse". Elizabeth Campbell notes that as a result corporations today basically controls individual politicians and whole political parties in the USA.

When it comes to the media it wasn’t until around the twentieth century that things changed and a new corporate media industry started to emerge. Before the twentieth century most of the media was local and national and not as globalized or privatized as they are today. The first forms of global media was the radio broadcasting and the film industry. 85% of all the films people were watching in cinemas by 1914 was coming from the US. And it was around this time that corporations and nations started to realize the importance of media as a political tool. At the end of World War II the USA successfully used the global media to reinforce the picture of its nation as a leading superpower in the world. After World War II the transition from local and public-owned media to global and corporate owned media begun. And with the successful spread of English media around the world commercials and advertising increased rapidly.

Mass media and advertising

Because mainstream media is privately owned their end goal is of course to make money from their business. And like one can imagine advertising is one of the main income sources. This means that the media have to comply with and cater to their advertisers wishes so they don’t lose their income source. And those who can afford to advertise are the transnational corporations who all share and push the free-market capitalistic ideology. Campbell writes that these large corporate advertisers rarely want to sponsor shows or programs that involves any kind of serious environmental, social or political criticism towards any corporate activities.

Product-placement in the media, for example when Pepsi pays to have their soda drink visible in a TV-show, is a multi-billion-dollar industry these days. And to be able to influence the public, i.e. their consumers, corporations spend more than half as much per capita on advertising than what is spent on education around the world. With the help of advertising corporations can construct needs and desires among the public for their various products. The ideology which is spread with the help from the mainstream media and the advertising industry encourages mass consumption on an unquestioned level and promotes consumption as happiness.

Because corporations are all about profit margins they want to advertise their products to the largest audience possible. And when the media is profit-driven they want to attract as many viewers or readers as possible to be able to sell more advertisements and increase their sponsor income. And as Campbell notes it seems that the largest audiences can be brought together by offering celebrity gossip news, sex, violence or other shock value tactics. And of course this is what the mainstream media will concentrate their coverage on then. Thus the more in-depth and the more complex social, political or environmental issues gets left behind in the shadows of the spotlight on the "infotainment" news and "advertorials". See the above image screenshot for example.

Corporate media means less diversity

In the beginning of this post I mentioned General Electric as one of the media owning TNCs. GE is one of the six firms that controls most of the news, commentary and entertainment in the USA. Besides GE these six firms are AOL-Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, NewsCorp and Bertelsmann. They are also ranked among the world’s richest corporations. Just 25 years ago there were around 50 different corporate owners in the US media. So as one can imagine if there are only six corporations in the USA, who all concentrate on their own self-interests, while controlling the majority of all the media consumed it results in less diversity for their audiences. And it doesn’t matter then, as Campbell notes, if there are more information available if there is a lack of diversity. Less diversity means less democratic media. Let me explain this a bit further. In USA the top media sources such as CNN, Fox News and the New York Times etc supply the local papers and broadcasters with national and international news. So while the news are being described in many various media actors the news and opinions all originates from the same source.

Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick also notes that the mainstream media rarely have any coverage or debates about leftist and socialistic theories of development which are critical of our current capitalistic society. They argue this is because the mainstream media is so much largely controlled by private interests who only want to cover conservative and "at most" liberal viewpoints and topics. "Indeed, most people even in the "free democracies" go through life without even hearing the great critical ideas and the political-economic motives of leftist intellectuals," they write.

And in an effort to increase their incomes and securing their profit-margins the corporate media is cutting their costs wherever they can. And unfortunately this means less quality and objective news journalism and more cheap "infotainment" like I’ve mentioned before. A big cost for the news media corporations are their overseas and field reporters. In-depth and field-based reporting is even on a national and local level expensive and reporters based overseas is in turn even more costly. Another result of the cost-saving measurements is that the media gets gradually more and more dependent on "official sources" in their reporting. Campbell notes that the global mainstream media is backing up their stories with information from "experts" provided by businesses and governments. An example of this is the Pentagon, as a government funded department, and Exxon Mobil, as a privately owned corporation, who both has the funds available to offer news organizations with everything from "experts" available for questioning to press statements, quotes and photo opportunities. According to Campbell this reliance is risky as it can make the reporters and journalists hesitant to confront, challenge or debate the information provided by these governmental and corporate bodies as it might "damage their established relationship". It also means that only the wealthy are able to fully access and exercise their right to free speech in the media.

PR firms and think-tanks are the media tools for the corporations

Due to their size, power and involvement in our societies these media corporations play one of the biggest roles in shaping each generations own personal values and thoughts, as well as people’s political and environmental stances. According to Campbell today’s media corporations have "almost total power" to decide what kind of topics will and will not be covered and discussed in our TVs, radios and newspapers. And as Campbell points out environmental topics in the mainstream media are never debated in a way that points out corporations as the source of the problem or the environmental degradation. Her example here is global warming. In USA the climate change debate has been mostly centered around the question if it is a problem or not. This question has managed to stay alive in the media debates mostly thanks to the work of corporate funded think-tanks and PR firms. These PR firms and think-tanks have managed to create a feeling among the public that there still are clear doubts and that the arguments are balanced on both sides of the global warming spectrum.

A Gallup survey released last year shows that an increasing number of Americans (41%) believe that global warming is being "exaggerated" in the media. According to Gallup this is the highest level of public skepticism ever reported when it comes to the coverage on global warming by the mainstream media in USA. The same survey also shows that Americans have started to feel a bit less worried about climate change. The overall worry has decreased from 65% in 2007 and 66% in 2008 to 60% in 2009. According to Gallup global warming was the only environmental issue that "dropped significantly" among the public concerns during 2008. And lastly the survey shows that 16%, a new record-high for Gallup, of Americans believe the effects of climate change will never occur. But it’s still important to note that a majority of Americans still believe that climate change is being correctly portrayed, or even underestimated, in the media.

And as people usually tend to only favor actions on issues that there seems to be no clear doubts about one must say that these PR firms and think-tanks have succeeded in their work of creating "manufactured doubt". The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the CATO institute, all situated in the political centre in Washington D.C., are examples of powerful corporate funded think-tanks who has a huge influence in shaping the global warming debate in the media. These think-tanks use both emotional arguments as well as scare tactics to create their "manufactured doubt" in the media. Examples of arguments can be that any cuts in our energy consumption would harm workers, elder and poor people around the world. Or that renewable energy is both expensive and damaging to the environment. They also promote the views of a selected few scientists who disagree with the strong consensus and the vast majority of scientists and scientific institutions on man-made climate change. Another example is the now disbanded Global Climate Coalition which was carefully created by PR firms to give the impression of a friendly grassroots organization while actually lobbying against environmental reforms. This so-called grassroots organization had around 50 different trade associations and corporations who were involved in the oil, coal, gas, automobile and chemical industry.

The tactics used by the agrichemical industry back in 1962 alongside the release of the widely popular book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is yet another example. Carson’s book criticized the use of dangerous toxins such as DDT and helped create awareness of environmental destruction. The agrichemical industry responded by distributing thousands of negative book reviews of Silent Spring and at the same time they doubled their PR budget. According to Campbell it is estimated that corporations and businesses in USA spends $1 billion every year on PR firms and think-tanks who help them lobby against environmental reforms, laws and protection in the media.

Earlier this year Greenpeace exposed the US-based Koch Industries, a privately owned oil company, as a major financial contributor to global warming skeptics in both Europe and USA. According to Greenpeace Koch Industries donated around $48 million to different climate skeptic groups and think-tanks between 1997 and 2008. The money went to many well-known conservative and libertarian think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato institute and the Foundation for research on economics and the environment. Greenpeace claims all of these think-tanks are "at the forefront of the anti-global warming debate". The Guardian also writes that Koch Industries also spent nearly $6 million ($5.7m) on various political campaigns and another $37 on lobbying in support of fossil fuels.

"Koch industries is playing a quiet but dominant role in the global warming debate. This private, out-of-sight corporation has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. On repeated occasions organisations funded by Koch foundations have led the assault on climate science and scientists, ‘green jobs’, renewable energy and climate policy progress."

Now one might think that these climate denying think-tanks are solely funded by oil, gas and coal corporations who might have something to win by creating a fog of confusion and doubt around global warming. But this is not entirely the case. The CATO institute is for example funded by well-known corporations such as Comcast, FedEx, GM, Honda, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Toyota, Visa, VW, and WalMart among others. These corporations was, according to Cato’s own annual report in 2007, contributing financially to the think-tank and helped fund an "absurd anti-scientific denier ad" in major American newspapers such as the The New York Times in 2009. Campbell claims that government action on environmental issues such as global warming is lagging behind because these topics can’t be discussed "seriously" in the mainstream media. Instead, she says, the mainstream media and their corporate owners put the spotlight on simplistic topics such as discrediting individual environmentalists and "controversial scientific reports" instead of debating the larger and harder questions. Campbell writes that:

"By reducing complex issues like global warming to simplistic special interest-driven sound bites about whether or not it really exists, citizens consuming the media become incapable of understanding and acting on real debate and questioning and instead prefer easy answers, quick fixes, and easy-to-grasp phrases. Audiences thus grow apathetic, cynical, and quiescent about media presentations of environmental issues, which has resulted in an increasingly widespread lack of interest in engaging in them."

And this lack of interest is a major threat to democracy which requires a actively involved and informed citizen to function properly. Campbell concludes that a so-called democracy that only caters to corporate interests "will never pursue a path toward social and environmental sustainability".

Journalismgate

A paper on what kind of role the media plays in how we perceive and react to environmental issues around us is not complete without talking about "Climategate", as the media calls it. Climategate is what climate skeptics labeled as "the final nail in the coffin" of "the theory of global warming". The root of this "climate scandal", as the mainstream media portrayed it, was some email conversations between scientists at a climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. The emails, who were illegally hacked, was reported to be evidence of some sort of attempt to manipulate and prevent scientific climate data to be released to the public.

One can easily remember all the news reports, debates and commentaries from scientists who claimed the emails were taken out of context and all the various climate skeptics who claimed this was the evidence which exposed man-made climate change as a fraud last year. Even here in Sweden climate skeptics seemed to breathe fresh air from the major Climategate news coverage. Lars Bern who is one of the founders of the Stockholm Initiative, a Swedish think-tank which opposes the strong link between climate change and human activity, claimed that this was evidence on the "systematically manipulation" of temperature data from UN climate scientists.

But was Climategate really the big scandal that the climate skeptics and largely the mainstream media portrayed it as? Of course not. Recently an independent inquiry set up to investigate the Climategate affair came to the conclusion that there was "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever." Lord Oxburgh said that "whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly". But did this exoneration for the involved scientists from the University of East Anglia get as much coverage in the mainstream media as the false claims from the climate skeptics did? Did anyone in the mass media try to figure out who hacked the emails? Well from my own, and many others, experience they did not. Why is it, like Johann Hari says, that:

"…when it comes to coverage of global warming, we are trapped in the logic of a guerrilla insurgency. The climate scientists have to be right 100 percent of the time, or their 0.01 percent error becomes Glaciergate, and they are frauds. By contrast, the deniers only have to be right 0.01 percent of the time for their narrative–See! The global warming story is falling apart!–to be reinforced by the media. It doesn’t matter that their alternative theories are based on demonstrably false claims, as they are with all the leading "thinkers" in this movement."

I would say that we can find the answers in the mainstream media’s recent corporate development to why the climate skeptics only have to be right "0.01 percent of the time" to get their claims reinforced in the media. I have with the help from Campbell and others tried to make it apparent that the global mainstream media only cares about their profit-margins and rather want to focus on "infotainment" news, and stories like Climategate, as it helps them pursue their corporate owners free-market and consumption-driven agenda. My main and most obvious example of how corporations have controlled the debates and reports in the mainstream media has been global warming. But there are of course other examples of environmental issues and topics that the media has failed to adequately report on.

Two of those are for example the topic of the garbage’s created by our society and the various energy related issues. The media fails to inform the public on the issue of the millions of metric tons of household, chemical and corporate waste that are affecting a large population of people very day. Campbell argues that it becomes an "nonissue" because those people affected by the waste are not "key power holders" or the media corporations main target audience. When it comes to energy related issues such as oil drilling the media often simplify it to a question of whether who is for or against it. But these "both sides of the story" reports can not cover the complete story in such a complex issue as energy is. The corporate media also fails to explain or examine for their viewers and readers about the connections between energy production and consumption, our dependence on fossil fuels and those who control these energy sources. Simply put, the media is failing to relate environmental and social problems with the socioeconomic factors and powers that have created them. Campbell argues that as an result of this people gets the impression from the media that the war on terrorism, energy consumption and corporate power for example are totally unrelated issues to each other.

Rush Limbaugh might be an extreme example of a conservative corporate mainstream media. But he works just fine as a shock example. In the ongoing BP offshore oil drilling scandal, out in the Gulf of Mexico, Limbaugh is claiming that the explosion could have been an inside "Earth Day eco-sabotage" and that the cleanup is unnecessary: "The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there," Limbaugh said. "It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is".

So if we want to be able to have informed citizens, move towards a more environmental and socially sustainable society and a media which not only the wealthy have right to access and use we need to deal with the corporate mainstream media. Otherwise we will soon face a major threat to our fragile democracy. After all, those who have the control over the mass media controls our culture and society.

“Mr Brown last night insisted that the science on climate change in settled, and accused those who question the consensus of being outdated.

He said: “With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do.””

Ed Miliband, Brown’s climate secretary, also recently joined in defending the climate science from the deniers “siren voices“:

“We know there’s a physical effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to higher temperatures, that’s a question of physics; we know CO2 concentrations are at their highest for 6,000 years; we know there are observed increases in temperatures; and we know there are observed effects that point to the existence of human-made climate change. That’s what the vast majority of scientists tell us.”

And Brown and Miliband do have the climate science on their side. Last month a new climate report was released by the Met Office in the UK making the link between climate change and human activity even stronger:

“It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007. The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.

It says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.”

So the science is clear. And our politicians seems to know how to talk about it. It’s just too bad then that inequality between rich and poor nations helps fuel a climate of mistrust and sabotages efforts to secure a climate deal.

Photo credit: laszlo-photo

As winter weather hits us again, many people confuse the current weather (cold) with the long-term direction of the climate (warmer).

Just because it is cold outside right now doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t real. Global warming has to do with the climate, with the long-term trend of the world’s average temperature. The short-term weather has to do with what is happening this week or next in the part of the world where we currently reside. The two are not identical, and colder weather does not contradict the fact that our climate is warming up.

Another reason the two related but not identical issues are confusing is that global climate change is not uniform across the globe. Just because it is colder where you live doesn’t mean it isn’t warmer, relatively, elsewhere. In fact, global warming is taking place much more at the northern latitudes than in the continental U.S.

This is the reason why, even though the U.S. is experiencing more severe winter weather, the Arctic summer ice is covering less and less of the Arctic water, opening the fabled Northern Passage. It is still very cold at the North Pole, but it is relatively warmer. Average temperatures have already increased in the northern latitudes by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit, much more than at temperate latitudes.

This is also one reason among many why global warming is so threatening. As temperatures warm more rapidly nearer both poles, two things happen which bode ill for the entire world.

First, ice, ice sheets and glaciers are melting rapidly, much more rapidly than even the most dire predictions of a few years ago. The glaciers on Greenland are melting more quickly, and also accelerating the speed at which they move towards the open seas. In the Antarctic, massive ice sheets are breaking off. Both these developments will cause a faster than predicted rise in the ocean level. Instead of happening over a thousand years, the complete melting of the Greenland glaciers is likely to take a few hundred years – and when they are completely melted that will increase sea levels by over 25 feet, inundating many coastal cities.

Second, as the northern latitudes warm more rapidly, more and more of the permafrost will melt, releasing both carbon dioxide and methane that have been frozen for millennia. This could result in runaway global warming, coming on top of the direct human release of greenhouse gases.

There are many more reasons to be concerned about global climate change, but just because it is cold outside is no reason at all to ignore the problem.

In a thoughtful article at HuffingtonPost, environmentalist Bill McKibben explains why climate change is a different kind of problem. He makes the essential point that what climate change skeptics are fighting is not other politicians or scientists; it’s physics.

In another good article, Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations explains the seriousness of even sharper cuts in emissions, and also his concept of “climate debt.”

Author: Marc Brodine, People’s World

Photo credit: azrainman

Global warming is exaggerated and is just hyped by climate scientists. It’s not a big deal. That is what you might think if you listen to the mainstream media and its misinformation, or if you believe in the denier’s lies and their anti-science rhetoric about man-made climate change.

But that is so far from the truth that it’s absurd as a recent poll among climate experts and scientists clearly show. The poll conducted by the Guardian during the scientific conference in Copenhagen earlier this year shows that 9 out of 10 climate experts don’t believe we will be able to restrict climate change to 2C:

“Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. An average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely, they say, given soaring carbon emissions and political constraints.

Such a change would disrupt food and water supplies, exterminate thousands of species of plants and animals and trigger massive sea level rises that would swamp the homes of hundreds of millions of people.

The poll of those who follow global warming most closely exposes a widening gulf between political rhetoric and scientific opinions on climate change. While policymakers and campaigners focus on the 2C target, 86% of the experts told the survey they did not think it would be achieved. A continued focus on an unrealistic 2C rise, which the EU defines as dangerous, could even undermine essential efforts to adapt to inevitable higher temperature rises in the coming decades, they warned.”

The poll shows that climate experts are not exaggerating the effects of global warming but that they are actually downplaying and toning down their research in an attempt to avoid despair and inaction among the public.

“It blows the lid on a very different sort of conspiracy: that climate scientists have actually been toning down their message lest the worst-case scenario becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As one respondent put it, “Great things can only be achieved by everyone believing it can be done. How do you think the second world war was won? Churchill didn’t stand around saying most people think we will lose the war. He said we will fight it on the beaches.”

Far from over-playing their hand to swell their research coffers, scientists have been toning down their message in an attempt to avoid public despair and inaction.”

And this is a bit tricky. I agree that if people begin to think that it’s over and nothing can be done to halt man-made climate change inaction and hopelessness would most likely prevail. But toning down the science is not the way to go. Political leaders and people around the world needs to know the real size and dangers of the climate crisis. How else would we be able to gain public and political support for the actions that are needed to solve the crisis?

Just like James Randerson, the Guardian’s environment website editor and top UK science journalist, says:

“Scientists must stop sanitising their message. World leaders and their people need to hear the warnings loud and clear and follow through with radical action that matches the scale of the crisis. Only if they do will future generations look back on what is looking decreasingly likely to be our “finest hour”.”

George Monbiot , Europe’s leading green commentator, said a few weeks ago that it was all over but argued we can’t afford to abandon our efforts to cut emissions. Because then “our prophecy is bound to come true”.

With today’s political inaction the climate experts are correct that it’s over. But with real efforts to curb our emissions we can manage to stabilize the climate at a reasonable and safe level. As Climate Progress writes:

“No one who reads this blog regularly or follows U.S. politics could possibly believe there is a great chance that we will stabilize anywhere near 450 ppm, anywhere near 2°C warming.

But anyone who reads this blog also understand that it is not too late — not only could we stabilize at 450 ppm at a low total cost, one tenth of a penny on the dollar, we could stabilize at 350 ppm for probably no more than double the cost of stabilizing at 450 ppm.”

What do you think? Is it right or wrong to downplay the climate science to avoid despair and inaction among the public?

A survey released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that only 47% of people in the USA believes there is evidence of man-made climate change. Although a majority “believes” in climate change, over 20% doesn’t think there is any evidence of the earth warming. And among white evangelical Protestants in USA only 34% believes the earth is warming due to human activity, while over 30% don’t believe in it at all.

“The poll canvassed views on climate change among the “major religious traditions” in the US. Surprise, surprise, it shows that “white evangelical Protestants” were the group with the lowest level – 34% of those surveyed – of acceptance that there is solid evidence that global warming is real and that it is attributable to humans. This compares with 47% of the total US population (still startlingly low), and 58% of those surveyed who “had faith” but who were unaffiliated to any particular religious tradition.”

Maybe those 31% evangelical Protestants believes God decides when the earth will end? But I guess it makes more sense for these people to believe in a fairy-tale God that in his name promotes slavery, rape and murder instead of common sense and modern-day science?

But sure. You must give credit where credit is due, I suppose. Some of these evangelical Christians have started highlighting environmental concerns and adopt a more environmentalistic approach. Something they call “creation care”. Although it has already sparked controversy among evangelicals.

Last year, there was even an attempt by some leaders to talk up the need for “creation care”, but to dampen concern for global warming. The “We Get It!” campaign’s declaration is something to behold:

“God created everything. He made us in His own image, and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply and watch over His creation. Although separated from God by our sin, we are lovingly restored through Jesus Christ, and take responsibility for being good stewards. Our stewardship of creation must be based on Biblical principles and factual evidence. We face important environmental challenges, but must be cautious of claims that our planet is in peril from speculative dangers like man-made global warming. With billions suffering in poverty, environmental policies must not further oppress the world’s poor by denying them basic needs. Instead, we must help people fulfill their God-given potential as producers and stewards. We will follow our Lord Jesus Christ and honor God as we use and share the principles of His Word to care for the poor and tend His creation.”

This would just be a silly side note if it weren’t for the fact that while the media in the USA ignores the latest warnings from climate scientists an increasing number of people in the US believe global warming is exaggerated.

“Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.”

So unfortunately it seems that these climate and science denying religious fundamentalists is, mainly due to their effective propaganda machine, playing a large part in spreading climate denialism and confusion in USA.

According to Climate Progress well-known companies such as Comcast, FedEx, GM, Honda, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Toyota, Visa, VW, and WalMart is helping to fuel global warming denialism by funding the Cato Institute.

“Comcast, FedEx, GM, Honda, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Toyota (!), Visa, VW, and WalMart — these are among the brand name companies who support the global warming denial promoted by the Cato Institute (full list below).

Many of you have probably now seen that absurd anti-scientific denier ad Cato is spending big bucks to put in major newspapers. “The New York Times ad alone would have cost over $150,000, based on the newspaper’s published ad rates,” notes one article.

The ad attacks President Obama and the whole notion of strong climate action with studies that don’t even support its basic premise — see New study quoted by Cato deniers concludes “warming over the 21st century may well be larger than that predicted by the current generation of models” and RealClimate’s excellent post (here).”

According to Cato’s most recent annual report (2007) these companies are sponsoring the “extreme” Cato Institute:

• Altria Corporate Services Inc.
• American Petroleum Institute.
• Amerisure Companies.
• Comcast Corp.
• Consumer Electronics Association.
• FedEx Corp.
• Freedom Communications Inc.
• General Motors Corp.
• Honda North America Inc.
• Mazda North America Operations.
• Microsoft Corporation.
• R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
• TimeWarner Inc.
• Toyota Motor Corp.
• UST Inc.
• Visa USA Inc.
• Volkswagen of America Inc.
• Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Shame on them!

George Monbiot, Europe’s leading green commentator, has listed his royal flush of climate change deniers. These are the people “who have done most for the denialist cause” and they include deniers (or should I say climate change creationists?) like David Bellamy, Sarah Palin, Václav Klaus and Steve Milloy.

Ace of spades, David Bellamy, TV presenter: David Bellamy has claimed that global warming is “poppycock”, that “the global warmers are telling lies – carbon dioxide is not the driver”. He maintains that “since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming I’ve not been allowed to make a TV programme.” This is odd because he stopped making TV programmes in 1994. He was making public statements in support of mainstream climate science until at least 2000. But the conspiracy extends even further. “Have you noticed there is a wind turbine on Teletubbies?”, he asked in the Daily Express. “That’s subliminal advertising, isn’t it?”

King of diamonds, Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph columnist: Booker writes a column in the Sunday Telegraph. It’s filled with so many misleading claims about climate change, evolution, asbestos, speed cameras and the European Union that it would take an encyclopedia to document them.

Queen of spades, Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail columnist: Mel P (Genuinely Scary Spice) claims that “the theory that global warming is all the fault of mankind is a massive scam based on flawed computer modelling, bad science and an anti-western ideology … The majority of well-meaning opinion in the Western world believes a pack of lies and propaganda”

Click here to discover the other deniers!

“[...]the denial phrase allows them to claim that the debate around global warming is a purely political argument. It isn’t and it is dangerous for that notion to gain any traction. Plus I’ve seen the phrase “eco-Nazi” repeated too many times on blogs to want to sink to that level of debate.”

Instead he argues that because climate change deniers recklessly and “sometimes” deliberately deny established scientific facts a more fitting label for these deniers would be “climate change creationists”:

“How do you sum up an intellectual stance that has a pre-conceived position that is unyielding to the most compelling evidence; ignores mounting and alarming data from numerous scientific fields backing up the opposing position; and clutches at the most ephemeral of straws that can be twisted to support its arguments? How to capture the sheer head-in-the-sand-fingers-in-the-ears bloody mindedness?

[…]Climate change fact-ignorers? A little too cumbersome I think. Climate obfuscators? Better, but still not quite right. Climate change creationists. A suggestion from a friend that I believe sums them up perfectly. Although people have linked the two groups before, as far as I can see no one has used the phrase before.

Think about it. They operate in very similar ways. They have a fixed position and ignore evidence that does not fit their case. And they cherry-pick shreds of data that do appear to back them up.

They play up the “it’s just a theory” debate just like the creationists and they paint themselves as valiant scientific mavericks who are supposedly ignored and vilified by the establishment. Worst of all they have been pushing their own version of “teach the controversy”.”

Although I find the climate change creationist label a pretty good idea I can’t stop thinking that it might not sound bad in the ears of religious fanatics in USA. So, yeah. I think I will continue to label them as climate deniers.