It's been a few months now since Koch-trained political hack Michael Bastasch was made managing editor of the once-Koch-reliant Daily Caller, and the propaganda shop is again regularly producing climate disinformation.
In addition to yesterday's hilariously, legally stupid piece, three recent stories confirm the trend. On August 14th, they published a piece headlined that "experts" are saying that "governing elites pushing to slash emissions are disconnected from reality." And who, you might wonder, are those "experts," and what expertise do they have?
Cashing their fossil fueled paychecks, it turns out. Of the 4 supposed experts quoted, all four are affiliated with fossil-fuel-funded disinformation organizations.
The day before, the Daily Caller published an guest opinion piece by Rick Whitbeck of the, you-guessed-it, polluter-defending front group Power the Future. Whitbeck's very clever argument, a staple of deniers, is that lots of places are warming faster than the rest of the world. Australia, Africa, China, Israel, and the Arctic are all warming more quickly than the average global temperature, leading Whitbeck to "ponder: If everything is warming faster than everywhere else, is anything warming faster, or is it all bogus?"
Yes, in the backwards logic of disinfoland, evidence of warming that's faster than the global average is somehow evidence that it's not warming at all. Makes total sense.
Assuming, of course, you're a conspiracy theory-loving moron, which happens to be just the vibe Bastasch seems to be aiming for at the Daily Caller. Case in point is a piece Bastasch himself wrote on August 11th, in which he picks up the "climate lockdown" disinformation narrative with a piece headlined: Europe Is Descending Into Climate Lockdown, Will America Blindly Follow Suit?
If, like us, you missed Europe's climate lockdowns, Bastasch helpfully fills you in on the terrible, horrible, outrageously draconian lockdowns in Europe: Germany isn't heating public pools! Schools in Hungary might use wood stoves! Dutch citizens are being encouraged not to take lengthy showers, and Spain's requiring businesses not to crank the A/C full blast!
Oh woe are the Europeans, sacrificing their heated pools and chilled businesses due to climate change (and that lil' matter of a global pandemic recovery punctuated by Putin's invasion in Ukraine and providing convenient cover for a fossil fuel price spike). (Also, wood stoves would be terrible for the students and teachers' lungs in Hungary, but Bastasch doesn't seem mad about that, only mentioning it once, in passing…)
"China’s malfeasance already brought about a COVID lockdown," Bastasch concludes, going all-in on the popular, and racist, Covid-19 conspiracy theory, "it would be a massive, unforced error to let it happen again".
Mock him if you must, but if they can take away your heated pools, there's clearly no limit to how much these supposed climate lockdowns are going to do.
Just think about how terrible your life would be, if you went to jump in the pool to escape the heat of a deadly heatwave made worse by climate change, only to find it cool and refreshing instead of bathtub-warm! All in the name of fighting climate change and, for the most part, reducing the methane gas payments funding Putin's war on Ukraine!?
The horror!
