In honor of yesterday’s holiday commemorating Christopher Columbus’s brave “discovery” of a continent already populated for thousands of years, we’re going to talk about some more recent confirmations of things we pretty much already knew.
First, the biggest news: The repeal of the CPP begins today, and the EPA uses exactly the approach we expected to downplay benefits of reducing carbon pollution (though the agency waiting to get public comment before proposing a replacement). The justification for repeal ignores the global benefits of climate action (something courts will frown upon, given the Paris agreement shows the sort of global reciprocation that justifies inclusion of global benefits) and fails to include the co-benefits of reducing non-CO2 pollutants. Both these misses mean the repeal will have a tough time holding up in court, given past rulings upholding the social cost of carbon and striking down complaints exactly like the ones Pruitt raises.
Next up: Scott Pruitt’s red team/blue team idea is puts a thumb on the scale for the 3%, and climate denial exposes the public to health risks. The Opposition, the new Comedy Central show seeking to fill the void left by Stephen Colbert, tackled these topics last Tuesday, as guest Gina McCarthy talked to host Jordan Klepper about the red team (segment starts at minute 11), and a fun “debate” followed to illustrate the wonderful potential of the Red Team. On Thursday Klepper was joined by Jane Mayer, who argued that the fake news peddled by big political spenders like the Mercers and the Kochs is polluting the public discourse (segment starts at minute 20).
Speaking of the Mercers’ fake news, Buzzfeed published a bombshell story last week exposing how the Bannon-led and Mercer-funded Breitbart “laundered hate” in building its alt-right brand. Buzzfeed got its hands on a tranche of emails from Milo Yiannopoulos, who resigned from the site back in February after his comments on pedophilia made headlines. There’s a lot in the piece, including a video of Milo is singing the National Anthem while white supremacists like Richard Spencer raise their arms in a Nazi salute. The piece exposes much of the racist “sausage making” behind Milo’s ghostwritten stories (like how Breitbart asked white supremacists to review one of Milo’s most famous pieces on the alt-right), and puts to rest any doubts about the white nationalist sympathies lurking behind Breitbart.
While interesting, how is it climate related? A study published late last month analyzed the network connections of German climate denial websites, finding that while these sites aren’t part of the mainstream climate or news networks, they are “part of an ‘alliance of antagonism’ with other groups, such as conspiracy theorists, men’s right groups, and right-wing sites.” Geoff Chambers at ClimateSceptics was none too pleased about this implication of a cozy relationship between deniers and racists, and set out to debunk the study. But with the Breitbart story showing how one of denial’s biggest outlets worked closely with white nationalists, and the exposure of the Daily Caller’s “white nationalism problem” last month, it’s hard not to recognize the racial bias at these far-right publications.
Finally, we’re glad to see that a different sort of publication bias addressed in a piece at the Conversation. Its topic is a recent study published in Climatic Change earlier this year that tests whether denier’s claims that the peer-reviewed literature exhibits a publication bias against non-significant findings. It does not. So claims that the peer-reviewed literature is biased towards alarmism are not true, supporting the “err on the side of least drama” concept first proposed back in 2013.
From the CPP, to racism in right-wing media, to academic bias, these stories are not exactly new, but nevertheless are useful rediscoveries. Columbus would be proud.
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