We’re living in a time of records. More renewable energy came on stream in 2015 than ever — 147 gigawatts, equal to Africa’s entire generating capacity — and investment in the sector broke records worldwide. Costs for producing solar and wind power have hit record lows. Portugal obtained all its electricity from renewable sources for four straight days in May — the longest achieved by any country — and Germany was able to meet 90 per cent of its electricity needs with renewable power for a brief period. Clean energy employment and job growth now outpace the fossil fuel industry by a wide margin.

That’s just a portion of the good news. Oil prices have fallen so low that some more damaging activities are becoming unprofitable, a record number of coal companies are going bankrupt or filing for bankruptcy, and fewer coal mines are operating in the U.S.

But are the good records enough to help us deal with the bad? Global average temperatures are hitting record highs every recent month and year, and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are rising steadily, to levels unheard of in human history. Arctic sea ice is vanishing at unprecedented levels, mass bleaching is killing the Great Barrier Reef, and record-setting droughts, floods, heatwaves and extreme weather are happening around the world.

As Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research told the Guardian: “These are very worrying signs and I think it shows we are on a crash course with the Paris targets unless we change course very, very fast. I hope people realize that global warming is not something down the road, but it is here now and is affecting us now.”

The Paris Agreement, accepted in December by most nations, offered hope that world leaders are aware of this serious problem and know that unless we quickly employ a range of solutions — from renewable energy to reducing consumption to changing dietary and agricultural practices — humanity is at risk.

Despite overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change, the fossil fuel industry continues to employ shady people and organizations to fool fearful and apparently blind followers into believing the problem doesn’t exist or isn’t serious enough to worry about. Their messaging follows a pattern: Spread a simplistic lie until it becomes so discredited that few people accept it and then move on to another simplistic lie.

The most recent from Canadian industry propagandists like Patrick Moore, Tom Harris (of the misnamed International Climate Science Coalition) and their pals at organizations like the U.S. Heartland Institute is that CO2 is not a pollutant, just a benign or beneficial gas that stimulates plant growth. It’s true CO2 is good for plants. So is nitrogen, but when it runs into waterways and the oceans, it pollutes them. Overwhelming scientific evidence proves that increased atmospheric CO2 is a major cause of global warming. The profound effects of that warming are already here, and new and frightening aspects are also coming to light, such as ocean oxygen depletion.

Recent bankruptcy filings for Peabody Energy showed the U.S. coal company owes money to a range of deniers and their organizations, including the also misnamed Calgary-based Friends of Science. It claims the sun and not human activity drives climate change (and that the world is cooling, not warming), a ridiculous assertion, often repeated by coal companies, that real scientists have thoroughly debunked. Extensive research shows coal, oil and gas interests have pumped huge amounts of money into these denial campaigns, all the while knowing that human-caused climate change is real and dangerous.

It’s good that deniers’ voices are being drowned out by evidence and rational arguments and that solutions are becoming better, cheaper and more readily available daily. But we no longer have time to allow compromised politicians, greedy industrialists and dishonest organizations to stall progress. We need record numbers of people to do all they can — develop solutions, write letters, sign petitions, talk to politicians, vote and take to the streets — to demand that governments, industry and society treat climate change with the seriousness it deserves.

Humanity’s fate depends on the choices we make today. We can’t let a polluting sunset industry and its minions block progress to a cleaner, healthier future.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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By Charles Mandel for the National Observer.

A Canadian climate change denial group has popped up in a U.S. coal giant’s bankruptcy proceedings that have lifted the curtain on the funding of a sophisticated continent-wide marketing campaign designed to fool the public about how human activity is contributing to global warming.

A document, nearly 1,000 pages long, lists the Calgary-based Friends of Science Society as one of the creditors expecting to get money from the once-mighty coal company, Peabody Energy.

Climate scientists and environmentalists have long suspected that the so-called “Friends” group was a front for fossil fuel companies trying to block government action to reduce carbon pollution, but Friends of Science members always declined to reveal their source of funding.

The bankruptcy documents show that the coal giant — known for aggressively lobbying against environmental regulations — had some kind of financial arrangement with their “Friends” from Calgary. But when asked, the Calgary group’s spokeswoman said she wasn’t aware of the connection.

“That would be news to us,” wrote the Friends’ communications manager, Michelle Stirling, in an email response to a query about the funding from National Observer.

The document does not show the amount of funding provided, what it was for, when it was given, but only lists creditors.

Stirling said she would need to review the document, which she believes was filed by a party other than Peabody, and said the filing could be a “spurious attempt” to connect the Friends of Science to the coal company: “Until I review the full document and check the source I can’t say much more.”

Coordinated effort to attack climate science, says Greenpeace

Keith Stewart, head of Greenpeace Canada’s energy campaign, said the documents provide proof of what industry has been trying to do to manipulate public opinion.

“There has been for decades a coordinated effort to attack climate science as a way to delay action on climate change,” Stewart said.

Peer-reviewed scientific evidence has demonstrated that human activity, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels and land-use changes, have largely contributed to warming temperatures on the planet in recent decades. Governments from around the world have also accepted that the science shows humans must move off fossil fuels in the coming decades to avoid irreversible damage to ecosystems and life on Earth.

Friends of Science is made up of a core group of earth, atmospheric, solar scientists and engineers, as well as citizens “who challenge the catastrophic view of climate change.”

The Friends group says it has spent a decade reviewing a broad spectrum of literature on climate change “and have concluded that sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide.” The group was created more than a decade ago, using “research” accounts from the University of Calgary to finance its operations, including trips, wining and dining, for several years. But the university, which was issuing tax receipts to donors, later decided to shut down the accounts following an audit.

They created their organization, kickstarted by a $175,000 donation from Talisman Energy — another fossil fuel company — to lobby against the Canadian government’s decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2002.* Friends of Science also ran a sophisticated public relations campaign, including advertising in the 2006 federal election that challenged the Liberal government’s position.

A Friends of Science advertisement that appeared on public billboards. Image: Friends of Science

The court document also revealed that Peabody Energy owed money to many Americans groups that cast doubt on whether humans are responsible for the recent warming observed on Earth.

The Centre for Media and Democracy reported in mid-June that Peabody gave funds to a “network of individuals, scientists, non-profits and political organizations espousing climate change denial and opposition to efforts to tackle climate change.”

Other recipients included Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer who argues sun spots and not CO2 is causing climate change, and who has previously received funding from ExxonMobil; and The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), whose recent film, Climate Hustle, contains misleading information about climate change.

“Derail the science and you stop the train”

The centre noted that the filings “demonstrate for the first time that Peabody Energy has financial ties to a very large proportion of the network of groups promoting disinformation around climate change.”

Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center and one of the researchers who uncovered Peabody’s links to the U.S. climate denial groups, told National Observer: “Peabody’s funding of groups like Friends of Science and others like CFACT shows a clear intent by the company to intervene in the climate public policy debate by casting doubt on the science. They know full well that science is the engine that drives environmental policy; derail the science and you stop the train.”

​The revelation around Peabody’s funding of climate denial groups has sparked outraged reaction among Canadian scientists and environmentalists.

Danny Harvey, a professor of geography at the University of Toronto, said: Peabody’s funding of the Friends of Science confirms that the latter group was in a conflict of interest and could not be believed. “It confirms what we knew all along. It’s not surprising at all.”

Harvey, who is a past Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author, noted that ExxonMobil is currently in hot water for climate change denial after covering up what it knew about the disastrous effects globally of an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.

“I sort of suspect they would be doing something dirty like that,” he said of Peabody.

Stewart, from Greenpeace Canada, added that the Peabody bankruptcy proceedings show that the coal industry is in decline because they failed to embrace the science and plan for the future by developing more renewable forms of energy.

“The coal companies didn’t see this coming in time and they went bankrupt,” he explained. “What we need to do now is make sure that oil companies in Canada see this so that we can begin the orderly transition to a climate-friendly economy rather than lurching in that direction through a series of bankruptcies and rearguard political actions like funding Friends of Science.”

Competition Bureau Proceeding with Friends of Science Probe

At the same time, National Observer has also learned that the Competition Bureau is moving ahead with an inquiry into a complaint against the Friends.

The complaint cited the Friends for propagating false and misleading representations related to several billboards, website representations and a poster made available as a free download on a website. It also included The International Climate Science Coalition and the Heartland Institute.

Ecojustice, on behalf of a group of prominent Canadians (one of whom was Danny Harvey), filed the complaint with the Competition Bureau in December 2015. Charles Hatt, a lawyer with Ecojustice, said the bureau’s decision “validates the thrust of the application,” something he finds particularly gratifying given the “push-back” the application received.

Michael Osborne, a partner in the Toronto-based legal firm of Affleck Greene McMurtry LLP, wrote a withering opinion piece in the National Post.

“Ecojustice’s complaint not only is not within the ambit of the Competition Act, it is a blatant abuse of the Act’s six-resident complaint provision and an invidious attempt to deprive people of freedom of speech, which is not just protected by our constitution, but lies at the very core of our democratic system,” Osborne opined.

Hatt noted the Competition Bureau’s inquiry doesn’t come with a specific timeline and that it is conducted in private.

* This article previously stated Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2003 rather than 2002. It has been updated to reflect the correct year.

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We’re only a minute into watching a brief low-budget video — one that begins by alleging U.S. President Barack Obama is a bully because he suggests that climate change deniers should be “called out” — when Ezra Levant sits down in the chair next to me.

The Rebel Commander himself.

According to organizers, he’s the reason attendance of tonight’s $45-per-head fundraiser in Calgary — casually titled “Climate Leadership Catastrophe: Carbon Taxes, Job Loss, Freedoms Denied” and organized by the so-called “Friends of Science” — spiked from 200 to 445 people after he was announced as its keynote speaker.

And he’s the same intensely controversial pundit who I met in late November at another Calgary event called “Generation Screwed” which I covered for Vice Canada while wearing a “Dreamy Trudeau” sweater.

“Hey James,” he says, reaching out his hand to shake mine.

We briefly chat as the video moves on to clips of testimonies from human-caused climate change denying scientists like Roy Spencer and Willie Soon (the latter took $1.25 million from fossil fuel companies and lobby groups for his research). Levant relays a hilarious and self-deprecating story to me about his flight from Toronto to Calgary during which another person fell asleep on him.

I scribble a few observations in a notepad. He scrolls through his phone, probably Twitter mentions given he sports almost 50,000 followers.

After a few minutes he gets up to leave. I remind him that I tweeted at him a while back about how the Alberta NDP was elected on Karl Marx’s birthday, which seems like crucial information to include in his vehemently anti-NDP and pro-capitalist online show.

We opt to “follow” each other on Twitter. He wanders off.

The whole interaction seemed tense. But also, well, profound; Levant has a disposition that makes one feel strangely a part of something, even if you’re ideologically opposed to him.

It’s awfully disconcerting.

Little has happened in the interim. The slides that greeted each attendee as they walked in and had their tickets scanned by an enthused 15-year-old boy before moving to the buffet tables set the tone for the evening: “Say No To Climate Co2ercion,” “$WINDle,” “Climate — Change Your Mind.”

The video, itself backgrounded with close-up shots of the stars of the American flag, features a bizarre graduation of presumed rights from “freedom of thought,” to “freedom of rational dissent” to “freedom to expose the 97 per cent consensus propaganda.”

Such pun-inspired sayings seem hokey at best. But as the remainder of the night proves, dismissing such sloganeering is as dangerous as ignoring what makes Levant a genuinely enjoyable human to interact with.

For denial of human-caused climate change has very little to do with facts or data (which is why they can argue that CO2 has nothing to do with increased average temperatures and, minutes later, point out that forest fires produce far more emissions than human activity which seems to acknowledge the relevance of CO2 to the discussion).

Many climate change psychologists have observed that one’s views on the issue depend heavily on factors such as in-group biases, pre-existing political leanings and personal connections to carbon-intensive lifestyles.

As a result, it seems deeply naive to chalk the existence of groups like Friends of Science up to a lack of info. Pushing facts like the 97 per cent tidbit will likely only further alienate this kind of audience, fostering a martyr complex.

Take the night’s first presentation. The speaker, John Harper, has worked as a petroleum geologist for the likes of ConocoPhillips and Shell Canada. It’s unclear why he was picked as the person to deliver the technical lecture as opposed to, say, an actual atmospheric or climate scientist.

“What are the rocks telling us?” serves as his mantra for the talk, despite the fact the Geological Society of America agrees that “human activities … are the dominant cause of the rapid warming since the middle 1900s.”

The levels of carbon as measured by parts per million are nothing compared to previous eons, he says, “and the earth is still here” (a curious notion given there’s no way humans could exist in such conditions). He suggests global warming is inevitable. The real problems are population growth and human excrement. Blame the sun.

The trap that believers in human-caused climate change fall into is they rely on interpretation instead of actual assessment of the data, Harper says; he doesn’t know what politicians pushing for policy to address climate change even mean by “evidence-based.”

This statement is made entirely unironically.

Most attendees seem fairly disinterested. Ringtones keep going off.

The only truly captivating part of the entire presentation is an illegible graphic that spastically bounces up and down to demonstrate the fluctuations in average temperatures across the millennia.

The science presented is near impossible to follow.

But it doesn’t matter what Harper says. The point isn’t that he says the right things but that he is the right person: someone who the crowd can trust (former director of energy at the Geological Survey of Canada) and presenting in the right place (after a tasty meal and while sitting among people who look and think like you).

Levant — the star of the event — is announced as someone who’s been deemed by various publications as the “most irritating” and “talking head you’d most like to silence.” Each “achievement” is greeted with a raucous applause. The emcee, Michelle Sterling, clarifies that “I didn’t write this, by the way, they gave this to me.”

Of course she didn’t. Levant is a perfectly composed character. It’s very tricky to discern what he actually believes and what he plays up for a profit.

Either way, his intro as a “rebel” perfectly serves his cause: he’s an iconoclast representing the few who refuse to believe in human-caused climate change (just because a vast majority of scientists happen to).

Levant has no specific focus in his sermons. There’s certainly a thematic goal though: building a staggeringly convincing enemy-oriented narrative by pointing out the hypocrisy, insensitivity and alleged anti-Albertan nature of government and environmental organizations.

In the span of half-hour, he hops from slamming Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi for the Uber debacle, to ridiculing hemp rope bags, to noting that forest fires are natural, to linking environmental efforts with energy poverty, degrowth and deindustrialization (which inevitably led to a Unabomber comparison), to charting foreign donations to Canadian environmental non-profits.

Anyone who has seen Levant speak before knows the drill.

A standing ovation serves as a brief punctuation between his speech and Q&A session. Two mid-life-crisis-aged men in the washroom exchange thoughts about how “our governments are crazy,” “they’re a waste of our time and the country’s time” and how “Ralph Klein’s sacrifice” is being forgotten.

Levant’s responses to questions from the audience such as “why can’t Albertans oust the NDP?” and “why won’t governments stand up for Canada” hones in on hyper-specifics. The mainstream environmental movement’s take on GMOs is ridiculed. We’re made of carbon, we eat carbon, we exhale carbon.

He makes a fart joke (“I buy carbon credits for when I toot”). The “dairy cartel” isn’t taxed as the oil industry is even though its product — cattle — emit massive amounts of methane.

Et cetera.

It’s a spellbinding performance. The crowd occasionally responds to Levant with applause and to the targeted enemies with boos (for an ostensibly tax-averse crowd, they take the reduction of the province’s firefighting budget very, very seriously). The energy in the room can be described as nothing less than spiritual in nature.

There’s an unshakable sense of unity and drive, which likely has something to do with the fact everyone’s: a) white; b) rich; and c) feel persecuted by people concerned about climate change.

But it’s a force that must be acknowledged by climate change activists.

It’s not enough to dismiss Levant and the so-called Friends of Science as fringe groups that simply misconstrue data and graphs and decontextualized policy decisions to suit their mandates.

Of course, they do indeed do that. But such entities also tap into very powerful and deep-seated emotions — trust and pride, anxiety and anger, hyper-awareness of environmentalists who also fly around the world in private jets.

Good luck beating those back with facts. 

Image: The Rebel/Facebook

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Accredited journalists were kicked out of a sparsely attended climate denial conference hosted by the US oil-and tobacco-funded Heartland Institute today in Paris.

Heartland's ‘Day of Examining the Data’ event was repeatedly advertised as open to the public and media. However the freedom-of-speech espousing think tank had French security guards from the Hotel California outside the COP21 official venue remove DeSmog UK journalists.

Why? Because the 9 am press conference was now apparently a private event.

An archived copy of the Heartland Institute Website shows the conference advertised as "open to the public"

With the two DeSmog journalists gone, this left the likes of Marc Morano from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Christopher Monckton preaching to a small choir of under 30 people, the majority of which were elderly men. Ironically, tomorrow is gender day at the official Paris COP21 climate conference.

The formerly open to the public Heartland climate denial conference just cut number of women present by a third pic.twitter.com/8uUZzRDcyu

— Kyla Mandel (@kylamandel) December 7, 2015

This isn’t the first time such a climate denial conference has been underwhelming.

Last April, Heartland and CFACT travelled to Rome to try and pursuade the Pope not to speak on climate change. Aside from a very minimal media presence at the first day of their press stunt, there was no one except the climate denial faithful on day 2.

It also isn’t the first time for this group to refuse journalists entry to their events. In June, accredited journalists were barred from attending Heartland’s annual climate conference — and the media that did get in was cordoned off in a separate room unable to actually stand in the conference hall.

Sources tell DeSmog UK that Jim Lakely, Heartland’s communications director, is now standing guard outside the locked doors of the CFACT-Heartland climate denial conference in Paris.

This comes after The Australian published a story earlier today headlined “Greens want muzzle on ‘climate deniers’”.

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Thanks to a recent poll from ABC News and the Washington Post, we know that nearly two-thirds of American adults think global warming is “a serious problem facing the country.”

And now, thanks to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change (full study available at this link), we know exactly how many people are out there taking money from dirty energy interests to try and confuse Americans about climate changeto derail overdue action and protect the fossil fuel industries' profits.

Justin Farrell, a professor of sociology at Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the author of the report, studied both the institutional and social network structure of the climate denier movement and found that there are some 4,556 individuals with ties to 164 organizations that are involved in pushing anti-climate science views on the public.

“The individuals in this bipartite network include interlocking board members, as well as many more informal and overlapping social, political, economic and scientific ties,” Farrell wrote in the report. “The organizations include a complex network of think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, trade associations, and ad hoc groups.”

Farrell notes that while funding from ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have notoriously played a part in building the climate denial movement, there was very little empirical evidence demonstrating exactly how much influence these corporate benefactors had on the actual output of climate deniers and, in turn, how much they affected what politicians and other decisionmakers were saying about climate change.

So Farrell studied all of the written and verbal texts relating to climate change produced between 1993 and 2013 by climate denial organizations (40,785 documents comprising nearly 40 million words), as well as any mention of global warming and climate science by three major news channels (14,943 documents), every US president (1,930 documents) and the US Congress (7,786 documents).

He focused on Exxon and the Koch Brothers’ family foundations because, he writes, they are “reliable indicators of a much larger effort of corporate lobbying in the climate change counter-movement."

What Farrell found was that organizations taking funds from “elite” corporate funders of climate denial like Exxon and the Koch Brothers — groups like the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute — “have greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information” than other denial groups.

After performing a sophisticated semantic analysis, Farrell was able to show that climate denial organizations with ties to those two major funders were more successful at getting their viewpoint echoed in national news media. Presidential speeches and debate on the floor of Congress showed less of an impact.

According to Bloomberg, Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted similar research but was not involved in the Nature Climate Change study, said that Farrell’s findings beg a very obvious question:

"Why is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?”  

That is very similar to the questions posed by DeSmog's executive director Brendan DeMelle in his coverage of Justin Farrell's other recent study on this issue: Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media. DeMelle listed three questions for media outlets to ponder: 

Will this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation?

Will false balance — quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote — finally stop?

Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn’t published any longer?

Image credit: P.WOLMUTH/REPORT DIGITAL-REA/Redux

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Much of the country is understandably pre-occupied with Monday’s federal election. But while we have all been watching the national drama unfold, something monumental happened in Alberta.

In a nutshell: big coal is pushing for renewable energy and big oil is re-iterating its push for a carbon tax.

Close to 500 individuals (including at least one alien — more on that to come), companies and NGOs submitted proposals to Alberta’s Climate Change Advisory Panel (chaired by University of Alberta economics prof Andrew Leach) about the kind of policies they think the new government should introduce to address spiking greenhouse gas emissions.

The significance of this for Alberta’s climate politics cannot be overstated. After years of stalling or stifling meaningful conversations, the province has now pulled off one of the country’s most important and interesting climate consultation processes.

The submissions, now accessible online, largely consist of the classic combo of recommendations from the usual suspects: phasing out coal-fired power plants, incentivizing renewable energy sources and introducing a proper carbon tax.

But there were also some fairly surprising sources of support for such recommendations.

Major electricity providers TransAlta and ATCO backed immediate caps on coal-fired electricity and energy companies like Suncor and Shell reiterated calls for an economy-wide carbon tax (CNRL, on the other hand, issued an ostensibly veiled threat: “If we make investment in our province un-economic, the jobs and investment dollars will go elsewhere”).

Premier Rachel Notley seemed thrilled with the responses, saying to reporters: “The quality of the conversation has just improved so dramatically in just such a short time.”

It’s true. The conversation about climate change solutions has come a long way in Alberta in the past six months.

But looking through the comments posted online, there were some pretty far-out ideas coming courtesy of private citizens. Many such comments may in fact offer an intriguing window into how and what Albertans think about the issues of climate change.

Such esoteric suggestions arrived in three distinct forms: hyper-paranoid forecasting, well-meaning but unpopular social changes and outright climate change denial (we’ll let you decide which one is the more concerning of the bunch).

Aliens, Famines and Predictions of Apocalypse

The most overtly out-there suggestions of the bunch were the two that addressed aliens. Yeah, you read that correctly.

In one case, a person only referenced as “Aaron” announced that humans can’t possibly understand “broader thermodynamic processes” and the “offspring of the few humans who do miraculously survive extinction, despite failing to comprehend these limits, will nicely make pets for my offspring.” He later signed off as “the ancestor of the future benevolent overlords of your few surviving offspring.”

There was also “Michael,” who suggested there’s “UFO technology that would eradicate all pollution relating to energy production and general transportation worldwide” (linking to a radio show on the subject which has been listened to over 400,000 times).

Many other suggestions took a less extraterrestrial approach but exemplified an equal level of paranoia: someone identified only as “a terrified and terrorized citizen” warned of coming famines and suggested that Canada starts to ration food and incentivize the rapid construction of windmills by exchanging “work for full meals.” Some writers appeared to fall asleep on their keyboards, way overusing exclamation points (“Albertans should be outraged!!!!!!”). A dozen consecutive commas were issued in one bizarre entry, which also featured vaguely Biblical references and all-caps sentences like “THEIR [sic] WILL BE EMPTY (GAS_TANKS _ ).”

Keep in mind that someone had to sort through all of these. The real kicker is that the posts came with a disclaimer that “submissions will be reviewed for appropriateness before posting to the library.” It’s certainly an interesting thought experiment to imagine what kind of entries didn’t make it past such gatekeepers.

Dramatic Social Changes Proposed

Then there was the class of loftier, more cerebral pitches.

Take, for example, the notion of “Enviro-Wednesday,” which would “close” the province once a week with the exception of essential services such as hospitals and police. Only emergency services would be permitted to drive vehicles, with a “fleet of hybrid taxis” available to transport sick people to hospitals. “Enviro-Wednesday” would allow us to “relax and catch our breath in the midst of all of life’s crazy hustle and bustle and to reawaken ourselves to the priorities in life” by effectively trapping us all at home.

Another entry suggested alterations in societal values, with significant reductions in airline travel and bans on lawn-mowing and recreational road trips. A prohibition on driving trucks was also recommended.

The issue of “unchecked population growth” inevitably reared its head, as did banning GMOs. Which, of course, are legitimate concerns, but perhaps a tad beyond the powers of the Alberta panel.

Climate Change Deniers Arrive in Full Force

Rounding out the pack of entries from private citizens were those who simply don’t buy into the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. There was a staggering number of those. Many seemed convinced that climate change is being harnessed by politicians to generate more revenue for government coffers via mechanisms like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade arrangements.

“Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming has been a solidly falsified theory by now,” one person wrote with impressive confidence. Another contended that “CO2 is not a problem as anyone who has studied the real science knows.”

One Albertan dubbed wind farms “bird slicers” and photovoltaic panels “solar cookers.” The phrase “social engineers” was slung around a few times, usually accompanying the volcanoes-produce-emissions-therefore-human-action-is-irrelevant refrain.

Friends of Science, the controversial Calgary-based organization that suggests climate change is being caused by the sun, made five submissions. The most intensely worded of the climate-denying bunch proclaimed: “Time will come you and your panel of shills shall be exposed. Treachery as this carries massive consequences.”

Climate Change Panel Report Coming Soon

All strangeness aside, hundreds of Albertans did what no one 12 months ago would have believed: that is, have a meaningful engagement with the issue of climate change and what the province can do to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Hats off to you, Alberta.

The hundreds of submissions received by the panel supplement the two public open houses that were hosted in early September: the government reports that close to 1,000 people showed up to those.

Next up is the actual formation of the climate action plan, which will be presented to cabinet prior to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. It’s unknown how many of the submissions will be seriously considered by the panel.

Image: Premier of Alberta

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The B.C. Supreme Court awarded $50,000 in damages to climate scientist Andrew Weaver in a ruling Friday that confirms articles published by the National Post defamed his character.

The ruling names Terence Corcoran, editor of the Financial Post, Peter Foster, a columnist at the National Post, Kevin Libin, a journalist that contributes to the Financial Post and National Post publisher Gordon Fisher.

Four articles published in 2009 and 2010 refer to Weaver, now MLA for Canada’s Green Party, as an “alarmist” who disseminates “agit-prop” and a “sensationalist” that “cherry-picked” data as “Canada’s warmest spinner-in-chief.” Weaver was previously a lead author on a number of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports.

In the damages section of the ruling (attached below), Madam Justice Emily Burke notes, “the defamation in this case was serious. It offended Dr. Weaver’s character and the defendants refused to publish a retraction.”

Justice Burke concluded the defendants “have been careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts,” adding, “they were more interested in espousing a particular view than assessing the accuracy of the facts."

Weaver told DeSmog Canada he’s “thrilled” with the ruling.

"I am absolutely thrilled with today's B.C. Supreme Court judgment in my libel case against the National Post, Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, Kevin Libin and Gordon Fisher.”

Weaver said he initiated the lawsuit in 2010 when the National Post refused to retract the offending articles “that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held."

“I felt I had to take this matter to court to clear my name and correct the public record. This judgment does precisely that.”

Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, said the ruling “is a victory for climate scientists everywhere.”

There is “an extremely long history of efforts by climate deniers and contrarians to attack not just climate science, but climate scientists: to smear their scientific reputations, to distort their statements, and to make false and defamatory accusations,” Gleick told DeSmog Canada.

Gleick said defamation “has been a standard tactic for years, especially as the science of climate change has continued to strengthen and solidify.”

The attack on Weaver’s credibility is unfortunately only one of many examples, he said.

“While I'm sure the ruling will not stop the continued assault on climate science and scientists, it should certainly put people on notice that there is a responsibility to avoid such irresponsible attacks and a real cost for failing to do so. I hope this ruling has that effect."

Weaver said he is looking forward to the defendants “publishing a complete retraction and removing the offending articles from electronic databases.”

The four articles in question, as listed in the court ruling, can be seen below. Three of these articles still appear on the National Post’s website at the time of publication.

As part of his suit, Weaver also argued the National Post should take responsibility for the articles republished on third-party sites.

“I further look forward to them withdrawing consent given to third parties to re-publish the articles and to require them to cease re-publication,” Weaver said.

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The public debate over how to address climate change has been hindered in no small part by the media’s refusal to properly identify climate deniers, according to an open letter penned by fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry titled “Deniers are not Skeptics.”

Now, campaign group Forecast the Facts is making an open appeal to the media to accurately label climate deniers, enabling supporters of the CSI effort to co-sign the letter, which so far has garnered over 20,000 signatures.

The open letter, released last month, was signed by nearly 50 scientists and skeptics, including physicist Mark Boslough, science writer Ann Druyan, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, who say that public understanding of global warming science has been “confused” because of the misuse of the term “skeptic.”

“As scientific skeptics, we are well aware of political efforts to undermine climate science by those who deny reality but do not engage in scientific research or consider evidence that their deeply held opinions are wrong,” they wrote. “The most appropriate word to describe the behavior of those individuals is ‘denial.’ Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.”

The letter singles out Republican Senator James Inhofe, the new Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee even though he once infamously called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” He believes climate change is impossible because “God’s still up there.”

Sen. Inhofe is the type of climate change denier who has repeatedly benefited from being characterized as a “skeptic” in mainstream media outlets like the New York Times and NPR. You can read the full letter below.

Forecast the Facts picked up where the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry left off, inviting its supporters and anyone else concerned about the state of the climate debate to publicly co-sign the letter to the media, “Climate deniers are not skeptics.”

Of course, the fact that climate denial is regularly conflated with skepticism is no accident, as has been documented elsewhere, perhaps most notably in Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes’ must-read book Merchants of Doubt, which examines industry-funded campaigns to mislead the public on issues ranging from tobacco smoke to acid rain and global warming in the service of free market fundamentalism.

By cloaking their anti-scientific arguments in the mantle of skepticism rather than denialism, climate deniers are simply taking a page from the Big Tobacco playbook. Isn't it time the media stop falling for it all over again?

Here’s the full open letter from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry:

Deniers are not Skeptics

December 5, 2014

Public discussion of scientific topics such as global warming is confused by misuse of the term “skeptic.” The Nov 10, 2014, New York Times article “Republicans Vow to Fight EPA and Approve Keystone Pipeline” referred to Sen. James Inhofe as “a prominent skeptic of climate change.” Two days later Scott Horsley of NPR’s Morning Edition called him “one of the leading climate change deniers in Congress.” These are not equivalent statements.

As Fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, we are concerned that the words “skeptic” and “denier” have been conflated by the popular media. Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priorirejection of ideas without objective consideration.

Real skepticism is summed up by a quote popularized by Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Inhofe’s belief that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” is an extraordinary claim indeed. He has never been able to provide evidence for this vast alleged conspiracy. That alone should disqualify him from using the title “skeptic.”

As scientific skeptics, we are well aware of political efforts to undermine climate science by those who deny reality but do not engage in scientific research or consider evidence that their deeply held opinions are wrong. The most appropriate word to describe the behavior of those individuals is “denial.” Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.

We are skeptics who have devoted much of our careers to practicing and promoting scientific skepticism. We ask that journalists use more care when reporting on those who reject climate science, and hold to the principles of truth in labeling. Please stop using the word “skeptic” to describe deniers.

Mark Boslough, Physicist

David Morrison, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, at the SETI Institute

Bill Nye, CEO the Planetary Society

Ann Druyan, Writer/producer; CEO, Cosmos Studios

Ken Frazier, Editor, Skeptical Inquirer

Barry Karr, Exec Director, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Amardeo Sarma, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Executive Council, Chairman GWUP (Germany)

Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Ronald A. Lindsay, President & CEO Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and Center for Inquiry

Kenneth R. Miller, Professor of Biology, Brown University

Christopher C. French, Dept of Psychology, Goldsmiths University of London

Daniel C. Dennett, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University

Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at CUNY-City College

Douglas Hofstadter, Director, The Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University

Stephen Barrett, Co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), and the webmaster of Quackwatch

Scott O. Lilienfeld, Professor, Department of Psychology, Emory University

Terence Hines, Dept of Psychology, Pace University

James Randi, President James Randi Educational Foundation

Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research

Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Henri Broch, Physicist, Emeritus, University Nice Sophia Antipolis, France

Eugenie C. Scott, Chair, Advisory Council, National Center for Science Education

Edzard Ernst, Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, University of Exeter, UK

Indre Viskontas, Cognitive Neuroscientist, Host Inquiring Minds Podcast

David J. Helfand, Professor of Astronomy, Columbia University

Mario Mendez-Acosta, Journalist, Science Writer, Mexico City

Cornelis de Jager, Astrophysicist, Past President, International Council for Science

Sanal Edamaruku, President, Rationalist International

Loren Pankratz, Psychologist, Portland VA Medical Center, Retired

Sandra Blakeslee, Science Writer

Benjamin Radford, Deputy Editor of the Skeptical Inquirer Magazine

David Thomas, Physicist and Mathematician

Stuart D. Jordan, NASA Astrophysicist, Emeritus

David H. Gorski, Cancer Surgeon, Wayne State University School of Medicine

Anthony R. Pratkanis, Professor of Psychology, UC @Santa Cruz

Jan Willem Nienhuys, Mathematician, Waalre, The Netherlands

Susan Blackmore, Psychologist, Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth

Ken Feder, Anthropology, Central Connecticut State University

Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair, SETI Institute

Richard Saunders, JREF Million Dollar Challenge Committee, Producer – The Skeptic Zone Podcast

Jay Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy, Williams College

Lawrence M. Krauss, Director, The ASU Origins Project, Arizona State University

Barbara Forrest, Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University

Kimball Atwood, Physician, Newton, MA

James Alcock, Psychologist, Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Canada

Massimo Polidoro, Science writer, author, Executive Director CICAP, Italy

E.C. Krupp, Director, Griffith Observatory

Dick Smith, Film Producer, Publisher, Australia

CSI Consultants

Luis Alfonso Gámez, journalist, the Magonia blog, Spain

Felix Ares de Blas, Professor of Computer Science, Univ. of Basque, Spain

Image Credit: alphaspirit / ShutterStock.com

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A new film exposing the climate denial machine has hit the circuit with force, connecting the dots between extreme weather events, climate change and those making it all happen. Greedy Lying Bastards, as the title suggests, doesn't hold back while chronicling the web of deceit, corruption and personal greed underlying society's perpetual failure to meaningfully address global warming.

Just like the troupe of tobacco executives who made a mockery of the justice system when they systematically lied to Congress in 1994 about the addictiveness of nicotine and the negative effects of cigarette smoke, an organized network of climate change contrarians, conservative think tanks, politicians and oil and gas industry insiders are leading a coordinated campaign to deny the reality of climate disruption and its relation to the production and consumption of fossil fuels.

Produced by actress Daryl Hannah and directed by Craig Rosebraugh, Greedy Lying Bastards sets the misinformation of prominent climate deniers like Christopher Monckton and Marc Morano against the incisive commentary of climate scientists and debunkers – including DeSmog founder Jim Hoggan – to show just how misleading these spindoctors really are.

If you'd like to weigh in on the issue, you can sign your name to a call for a Congressional investigation into the network of deniers and their industry funders at ExposeTheBastards.com. But be sure to watch the trailer before you do:

The film makes its Canadian debut this Friday in Toronto, and is expected to hit theatres in Vancouver, Ottawa and beyond in the coming weeks. Check back on the film's website to see the theatre listings as they are updated. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.