Today begins Heartland’s annual Denier-palooza conference, where an esteemed group of so-called experts will be presenting their various versions of a reality where CO2 isn’t causing warming and fossil fuels are our lord and savior. Although there is generally scant coverage of this fringe event, the rise of a certain climate conspiracy theorist to the White House means the ideas discussed might be worth paying some attention to, if only to know what we’ll be fighting against over the next four years.
By the looks of the schedule, it seems we can expect trumped-up versions of the same speeches we’ve heard in previous conferences. But unlike past years, the sponsor list this time around is pretty sparse. Instead of listing dozens of (Koch-funded) groups, the sponsor page shows only nine, as sponsors have fled in the years after the ill-fated Unabomber billboard comparing those who believe in climate change to Ted Kaczynski. Seven of those nine remaining sponsors are squarely in the Koch/Mercer funded axis.The only exceptions are the EIKE (Europe’s version of Heartland) and the aptly named Reality News Media Group, a tiny website run by a Tea Party activist in Wisconsin.
For those who would rather learn about how to debunk denial than watch it in action, the online course “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial” kicked off yesterday. If you missed the start, don’t worry, there’s still plenty of time to catch up - sign up to learn about denial from many of the experts often discussed here, including John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli.
The course runs for seven weeks, covering the history and psychology of the “controversy” about global warming, how we know climate change is happening and is human-caused, climate models and impacts and, of course, how to debunk the deniers who claim all that is a just a Chinese conspiracy.
At a whopping zero dollars, the course is priced so well that even the barely-sponsored Heartland conference could afford it!
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