Bill Nye Is a Terrible Spokesman for Science

By Alex Berezow — May 13, 2019

 When I was a kid, Bill Nye the Science Guy was a thing. I never watched his show (as I was too busy keeping up with Ren & Stimpy), but he seemed fun enough. If I could go back in time, I'd probably watch.

Some years later, Bill Nye experienced a resurgence in popularity. But instead of the old, nerdy-but-lovable Bill Nye, we got Bill Nye 2.0, a somewhat cantankerous scold who clearly knows less about science than he leads on.

It was clear that something was amiss a few years ago when, amid Nye's renewed celebrity status, it came to light that he aired an episode of Eyes of Nye that perpetuated anti-GMO propaganda. Nye was subsequently criticized by the scientific and (especially) science writing communities. Not long thereafter, Nye had a change of heart.

Good! Better late than never. But was this "conversion" based on a new understanding of biotechnology or simply a calculated marketing move? Evidence points toward the latter. As late as 2015, Nye was still pushing anti-GMO nonsense. That year, he published a book called Undeniable, which promoted evolution over creationism. The book entirely lacked references (quite bizarre for a science book), and despite GMO technology itself being "undeniable," Nye wrote this:

"But there is something weird and unnatural about putting fish genes in fruit, in tomatoes. Nobody wanted it, so that research was abandoned. 

I'll grant you, this could be a visceral reaction from ignorant consumers. Emotional responses do not necessarily reflect scientific reality, as is evident in everything from creationism to the anti-vaccine movement. In this case, though, I think science and emotion are on the same side. There are very valid scientific reasons to approach GMOs with caution, and those turn out to dovetail with economic reasons. So far, it's not clear that investment in GMOs pays off. It is certainly not clear that GMO research should be funded with tax dollars.

By 2016, however, he was singing a different tune. Call me jaded and curmudgeonly, but his newfound faith in GMOs doesn't seem authentic.

Bill Nye, Prophet of Doom

In his latest appearance, Bill Nye had a cameo on John Oliver's show, in which he lit a globe on fire and dropped a few F-bombs. (I guess that passes as comedy.) He also said that Earth's temperature could rise by 4 to 8 degrees, presumably Fahrenheit, since Nye didn't indicate which scale he was using. His projection is within the range predicted by the IPCC, so at least he got that right.

But is setting a globe on fire an appropriate analogy to get the message across? Earth's temperature has gone up 1.4 degrees F since 1880. Undoubtedly, another 4 to 8 degrees is quite a lot in a short period of time. It doesn't take a master prognosticator to conclude that might cause some problems. But Earth is not -- nor will it ever be -- a flaming ball of fire. Earth isn't Venus.

Bill Nye 2.0

Ultimately, it seems that Bill Nye just panders to whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear. He thought (incorrectly) that they wanted to hear why GMOs were bad, so he altered his message when he got pushback. He won't get pushback for exaggerating climate change, so it's likely he'll keep this up for a while.

I don't think Nye actually believes the climate hysteria. Because if he did, Nye would support whatever means necessary to stop it, like nuclear power. After all, he's a mechanical engineer. But lo and behold, Nye is opposed to nuclear power. Big surprise. Audiences don't like nuclear power.

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne once wrote of Bill Nye, "I'm not a fan of the new Science Guy, and see him as a self-aggrandizing person trying to capture his lost limelight more eagerly than he wants to promulgate science."

Unfortunately, I think that assessment is accurate. Bring back the old Bill Nye. Version 1.0 was better.

Six Reasons Why You Should Ignore the UN’s Species Extinction Report

James Dilingpole, 7 May 2019 @ Breitbart

The United Nations has produced a report warning that a million species are threatened with extinction. Here is why you shouldn’t take it seriously.

It’s politics, not science

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which produced the report, is a political organisation not a scientific one. Just like its sister organisation the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — IPCC — in fact.

As Donna Laframboise notes here, both exist purely to give a fig leaf of scientific credibility to the UN’s ‘sustainability’ agenda.

When the IPBES was established in 2010, we were informed point blank that its purpose was “to spearhead the battle against the destruction of the natural world.” 

In other words, there’s all sorts of deception here. This is no sober scientific body, which examines multiple perspectives, and considers alternative hypotheses. The job of the IPBES is to muster only one kind of evidence, the kind that promotes UN environmental treaties. 

That’s how the United Nations works, folks. Machinations in the shadows. Camouflaging its political aspirations by dressing them up in 1,800 pages of scientific clothing.

This is the usual suspects crying wolf. Again

No one would dispute that habitat loss is a problem for plants and animals. But it’s a big stretch from there to suggest that a million species are ‘threatened’ with actual extinction. The ‘E’ word has long been overplayed by environmentalists because it’s so dramatic and final and because everyone has heard of the dodo. There is no evidence whatsoever, though, that the world is heading for its so-called Sixth Great Extinction. As Willis Eschenbach once pertinently asked at Watts Up With That? – Where Are The Corpses?

Harvard ecologist EO Wilson once estimated that up to 50,000 species go extinct every year. How did he calculate this? Using the same method the IPCC uses for its junk-science prognostications on catastrophic climate change: computer models.
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore exploded this myth long ago:

Moore said in 2000: “There’s no scientific basis for saying that 50,000 species are going extinct. The only place you can find them is in Edward O. Wilson’s computer at Harvard University. They’re actually electrons on a hard drive. I want a list of Latin names of actual species.” Moore was interviewed by reporter Marc Morano (now with Climate Depot) in the 2000 Amazon rainforest documentary:
Environmental activist Tim Keating of Rainforest Relief was asked in the 2000 documentary if he could name any of the alleged 50,000 species that have gone extinct and he was unable.
“No, we can’t [name them], because we don’t know what those species are. But most of the species that we’re talking about in those estimates are things like insects and even microorganisms, like bacteria,” Keating explained.

R-i-g-h-t. So there are all these species going extinct. But we don’t know what they are because we haven’t yet discovered them. Hmm. Sounds terrible. Let’s cancel Western Industrial Civilisation right now, just in case.
Seriously, these people are like a stuck record

Here – h/t Dennis Ambler at Homewood’s place – is the Independent from 2006:

Life on earth is facing a major crisis with thousands of species threatened with imminent extinction – a global emergency demanding urgent action. This is the view of 19 of the world’s most eminent biodiversity specialists, who have called on governments to establish a political framework to save the planet.
Scientists estimate that the current rate at which species are becoming extinct is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than the normal “background” extinction rate – and say this is all due to human activity.
Anne Larigauderie, executive director of Diversitas, a Paris-based conservation group, said that the situation was now so grave that an international body with direct links with global leaders was essential.
The scientists believe that a body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could help governments to tackle the continuing loss of species.

They get away with presenting it as “news” every time because the mainstream media is so thoroughly compliant and dutifully bigs up each scare every time it appears.

“Nature is in its worst shape in human history’

This is exactly the kind of scaremongering claim the report was designed to generate. It gives environmental correspondents from on-message outfits like the BBC and CBC the excuse to put in a call to their favourite eco-alarmists, who helpfully respond with hysterical drivel like this:

“Humanity unwittingly is attempting to throttle the living planet and humanity’s own future,” said George Mason University biologist Thomas Lovejoy, who has been called the godfather of biodiversity for his research.

Actually, as Patrick Moore notes, there have been many worse times for species extinction.

Moore, in an interview with Climate Depot, refuted the claims of the species study. “The biggest extinction events in the human era occurred 60,000 years ago when humans arrived in Australia, 10-15,000 years ago when humans arrived in the New World, 800 years ago when humans found New Zealand, and 250 years ago when Europeans brought exotic species to the Pacific Islands such as Hawaii,” Moore explained.
“Since species extinction became a broad social concern, coinciding with the extinction of the passenger pigeon, we have done a pretty good job of preventing species extinctions,” Moore explained.
“I quit my life-long subscription to National Geographic when they published a similar ‘sixth mass extinction’ article in February 1999. This [latest journal] Nature article just re-hashes this theme,” he added. Moore left Greenpeace in 1986 because he felt the organization had become too radical.

Polar Bears and Tigers

By curious coincidence perhaps the two most overhyped of all doomed species are now enjoying a remarkable recovery, not least because – contrary to the claims of environmentalists – humans actually do care about flora, fauna and diversity and have made great strides in preserving them.
It has been a century since the last species of any significance – the passenger pigeon – died out. Almost all the species extinctions that have occurred in the last two centuries have been on islands, the result of predation by invasive species such as rats or cats accidentally introduced by sailors.
Polar bear populations have exploded from about 5,000 60 years ago to around 26,000 now – making a mockery of their status as an emblem of man-made environmental catastrophe.
Meanwhile, the number of tigers in India has risen dramatically in the last decade, according to the Irish Times:

The estimated population of the endangered big cat has increased from 1,411 in 2006 to 2,226 in 2014, according to the report published by the Indian government’s National Tiger Conservation Authority.

Read the small print

When you get to the bottom of the scaremongering report, the authors show their true colours.
Here is the BBC’s summary:

The study doesn’t tell governments what to do, but gives them some pretty strong hints.
One big idea is to steer the world away from the “limited paradigm of economic growth”.
They suggest moving away from GDP as a key measure of economic wealth and instead adopting more holistic approaches that would capture quality of life and long-term effects.
They argue that our traditional notion of a “good quality of life” has involved increasing consumption on every level. This has to change.

Yes, we’re back to our old friends – Agenda 21 and sustainability – the UN’s code phrases for a new world order in which technocrats of the international elite impose their globalist agenda of wealth redistribution, regulation, enforced renewables, higher taxes and enforced rationing on sovereign nations in the name of ‘saving the planet.’

If the UN really cared about species extinction, of course, it would be doing the exact opposite.
As Jo Nova points out:

1. The worst pollution is in countries with a low income per capita — when people are hungry they raze forests. The most polluted cities are in places like Ghana, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Zambia, Argentina, and Nigeria.  The most deforestation occurs in Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, and Mexico. The worst air is in India and China.
2. Only rich nations have the resources to save the environment.
3. Countries that produce more CO2 are richer.

Ignore everything the UN tells you about the environment. It’s drivel – and dangerous drivel at that.

More Below:

• One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns
• How humans create as well as destroy species
• Biodiversity threat won’t be tackled by alarmist biologist hype and dismantling capitalism
• A million species face extinction? Time to burn fossil fuels to save them
• The UN’s Extinction Warning Doesn’t Add Up
• Global Extinction Rates: Why Do Estimates Vary So Wildly?
• The Extinction Rebellion’s hysteria vs. climate science
• The UN is making up claims about extinctions
• New predictions of animal population doom are likely exaggerated
• UN hysteria regarding species extinction mindlessly parroted

Energy & Environmental Newsletter: May 13, 2019

By John Droz, Jr. -- May 13, 2019

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.
Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization — Because They Were Never Meant To
The Solar Energy Racket
IEA Report: Worldwide Renewable Growth is Stalling
Europe’s Dramatic Decline Of Renewable Energy Uptake
Oklahoma passes new bill to protect military airspace from wind turbine encroachment
Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis?
When the GOP rolls out climate policies, it endorses the Left’s assumptions
Study: The US Plan is No Plan
Short good video: Bad Data
Superior Report about a Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Electricity, etc.
German emissions target will be missed substantially, despite on-target renewables
Video of a recent major AGW debate
Archive: Carbon cycle modeling and… Greenhouse Dogma
How humans create as well as destroy species
Six Reasons Why You Should Ignore the UN’s Species Extinction Report
Propaganda conveyed to kids in US schools, then brainwashes their parents
From Indoctrination to Education: Salvaging the University
Rein in the four horsemen of irreproducibility
Short video: Antonin Scalia – On American Exceptionalism

Greed Energy Economics:

Study: Renewable Energy Mandates Cause Large Electricity Price Increases
U-Turn: German Christian Democrats Ditch Carbon Tax
Big oil goes big green
Pushback against IDA reforms in NYS

Renewable Energy Destroying Ecosystems:

Pennsylvania House Approves Four Interesting Environmental Regulations
Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis?
Scientists Are Mapping the Industrial Hums That Travel Through the Earth

Miscellaneous Energy News:

Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization — Because They Were Never Meant To
The Solar Energy Racket
IEA Report: Worldwide Renewable Growth is Stalling
Europe’s Dramatic Decline Of Renewable Energy Uptake
Oklahoma passes new bill to protect military airspace from wind turbine encroachment
How the Kremlin must be howling with laughter now green zealots have sabotaged UK fracking
Debunking the Left’s Wind-Power Myths
High Demand with Low Wind & Solar, During Summer in New England
The “limitless” Geothermal from old coal mines
Wind Industry Holds All The Cards
Converting Light into Electricity
Interior chief says offshore drilling plan not ‘indefinitely sidelined’
UK goes a whole week without using coal-fired electricity
European Solar and Wind Countries Are ‘Ostriches in the Coal Mine’
Floating Nuclear Power Plants: The Future Of Energy?
Green New Deal is a recipe for economic disaster
52 communities are currently fighting against wind in Ireland

Manmade Global Warming Articles:

When the GOP rolls out climate policies, it endorses the Left’s assumptions
Study: The US Plan is No Plan
Short good video: Bad Data
German emissions target will be missed substantially, despite on-target renewables
Superior Report about a Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Electricity, etc.
Video of a recent major AGW debate
Archive: Carbon cycle modeling and… Greenhouse Dogma
GWPF Statement On The Proposed Net Zero 2050 Emissions Target
Far Left Activists Not Impressed with Beto’s $5 Trillion Climate Plan
As our weather gets worse, forecasting just got better
Dr Willie Soon talk: The Sun Also Warms
Carbon is NOT a Synonym for Carbon Dioxide
Climate Alarmists Fear Debating Flimsy Science Claims
New Climate Discovery
Climate Change and the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894
Conservatives Must Stand Up to Climate Change Bullying
Europe’s New Climate Rebels: Germany, Italy, Hungary & Poland
Global Warming Cause Gains Nothing from Scare Tactics

The UN Extinction Report:

One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns
How humans create as well as destroy species
Six Reasons Why You Should Ignore the UN’s Species Extinction Report
Biodiversity threat won’t be tackled by alarmist biologist hype and dismantling capitalism
A million species face extinction? Time to burn fossil fuels to save them
The UN’s Extinction Warning Doesn’t Add Up
Global Extinction Rates: Why Do Estimates Vary So Wildly?
The Extinction Rebellion’s hysteria vs. climate science
The UN is making up claims about extinctions
New predictions of animal population doom are likely exaggerated
UN hysteria regarding species extinction mindlessly parroted by media

Science, Education, Politics, and Miscellaneous Related Articles:

Propaganda conveyed to kids in US schools, then brainwashes their parents
From Indoctrination to Education: Salvaging the University
Rein in the four horsemen of irreproducibility
Short video: Antonin Scalia – On American Exceptionalism
Grade Inflation: A Far Bigger Scandal Than Parental Bribes
A less noisy classroom equals a better learning environment
Algorithms, Shadow Bans Threaten Free Speech, Political Diversity
Life If the Democrats Take Control
Political Science Needs Intellectual Diversity, But Few Realize It
The Democrat’s Muddled Thinking
Critiquing Robert Kagan’s Enlightenment Liberalism
Global Warming Cause Gains Nothing from Scare Tactics
See Prior AWED Newsletters

The UN is making up claims about extinctions

May 10, 2019 By Jack Hellner

In early May, the United Nations put out another dire report saying humans will cause one million species to go extinct.  Here's what they were up to:

According to the new Report, entitled Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), more than one million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction (Figure 3A) — many of which are predicted to be pushed into extinction within just a few decades — thanks to decades of rampant poisoning, looting, vandalism and wholesale destruction of the planet's forests, oceans, soils, watersheds, and air.

As with most stories on climate change caused by humans, most of the news media are just feeding these predictions to the public without any questions.

Faunalytics, a group that helps save endangered animals, has only 3,000 animals on its endangered species list, so there's reason to ask questions. Start with this: where does the one million number come from?

The public has repeatedly been told that humans are causing thousands of animals to go extinct each year, yet a study by National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2015 found only 477 identified species that have gone extinct since 1900, or around four per year............ Isn't it time for journalists to do their job by doing some investigation and telling the public the truth instead of just repeating what they are told when previous predictions have been completely wrong? .............Read more

NRDC Never Stops Lying About Glyphosate, or Science in General

By Alex Berezow — May 3, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

 

Pop quiz: What do the New York Times, Jeffrey "the yogic flying instructor" Smith, and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have in common?

Answer: They all shamelessly lie about glyphosate to make money. (You get full credit if you answered, "They are all bad sources of science information.")

Danny Hakim, a journalist (I'm using that word rather loosely) who writes for the New York Times, promotes conspiracy theories about American agriculture. He once wrote an article comparing pesticides to "Nazi-made sarin gas." And he followed that up with another article accusing the U.S. government of knowing that glyphosate was killing people but covering it up. I eagerly await his next exposé on the aliens the government is hiding at Area 51.

The same sort of hysteria is repeated by Jeffrey Smith, a yogic flying instructor (yes, it's as weird as it sounds) who operates the deceptively named Institute for Responsible Technology. Like the New York Times, Smith perpetuates one lie after another about biotechnology. Now, he's spreading lies about medical treatments for cancer which are so egregious that, if cancer patients actually followed the advice, they would die. So much for responsible technology.

In our experience, birds of a feather flock together. It's an easy jump from being anti-GMO to being anti-vaccine or anti-technology in general.

NRDC: Cranks, Crackpots, and Conspiracy Theorists

Thus, joining this motley crew is the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a group of cranks, crackpots, and conspiracy theorists who knowingly spread misinformation about nuclear power, GMOs, and scary "chemicals."

While the NRDC is fond of calling everybody who disagrees with them a "shill" for industry, the reality is quite different. The NRDC rakes in a whopping $130 million every year telling people that the latest technological developments in energy and biotechnology are just too scary for Americans. It's good business. The President, Rhea Suh, made $541,000 in 2016. Not bad. That's more than half of ACSH's entire budget.

Well, NRDC is back, trying to cash in on the delirium surrounding glyphosate. What better time to cash in than when trial lawyers are duping juries into awarding multi-million-dollar verdicts to sympathetic cancer patients? It is within this milieu that NRDC's Jennifer Sass said:

"EPA's Pesticide office is out on a limb here—with Monsanto and Bayer and virtually nobody else. Health agencies and credible non-industry experts who've reviewed this question have all found a link between glyphosate and cancer."

That's not just a lie. That's a pants-on-fire, nose-is-longer-than-a-telephone-wire sort of whopper.  The truth is literally the exact opposite.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) claim that there is no link between glyphosate and cancer. That is also the conclusion of regulatory agencies in Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea. (See this excellent infographic from the Genetic Literacy Project for more.)

To insist that glyphosate causes cancer, you would have to reject the scientific consensus established by regulators around the entire world. (Or, you'd have to believe that Monsanto has secretly bought off every major nation on the planet.) The only groups who reject the consensus are IARC and the environmental activists and their lawyers who rake in millions of dollars telling juries that biotechnology is killing them.

We can predict that the New York Times will cheer them on and uncritically parrot whatever the NRDC says, because needlessly scaring people is good business for them, too. And for the yogic flying instructor.

It's utterly infuriating to watch as modern medicine and science are mocked and exploited for personal profit by environmental activists and lawyers. What a stupid time to be alive.

Big Oil goes Big Green

Oil companies give billions to climate alarmists, but hardly a dime to climate realists

David Wojick

Climate alarmists often accuse skeptics, like myself and independent groups like the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Heartland Institute, of being in the pay of Big Oil. This is completely false – the Big Lie repeated so often that people eventually believe it. We do not receive even a dime from Big Oil. It’s part of the green fairy tale that skepticism exists only because the oil companies are funding it.

For the record, none of us skeptics – climate realists – doubt or deny climate change. We all recognize that Earth’s climate is in nearly constant turmoil and fluctuation, locally, regionally or globally.

What we question is assertions that emissions from fossil fuel use have somehow replaced the sun and other powerful natural forces that have driven beneficial, benign, harmful or even hugely destructive climate changes throughout Earth and human history:

Changes such as at least five glacial periods that buried much of North America, Europe and Asia under mile-high rivers of ice, warm periods in between that melted those massive glaciers, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, a Little Ice Age, the century-long Anasazi and Mayan droughts, the Dust Bowl, and countless other major and minor climate and weather changes.

The standard refrain is that ExxonMobil gave a cumulative few million dollars to various skeptical groups prior to 2007. But that was many years ago. They got scared off by alarmist pressure groups and haven’t given climate realists a dime since then. In fact, the situation today is completely the opposite.

Big Oil companies now give at least a billion dollars a year to climate alarmists, projects and lobbying, to drive the Manmade Climate Chaos narrative. Why would they do that? Two reasons come to mind.

First, typical commercial reasons – what some would call corporate greed, or eliminating competition through the laws of the jungle. Feeding climate alarmism helps oil companies kill off “dirty” coal and position natural gas as being more “climate friendly.” After all, Big Oil is also Big Gas.

Second, public relations and “greenwashing” – portraying themselves as being more “green,” more socially and environmentally “responsible,” for supporting environmentalist groups and providing “clean” (or at least “less dirty”) alternatives to “climate destroying” coal.

(The central vehicle for moving these green billions of dollars goes by a perfectly descriptive name: the (Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI). If the false accusers were correct, “oil and gas” would never be connected logically or ethically to “climate initiative.” But there it is, and it is very big. OGCI members include these well-known Big Oil names:

British Petroleum * Chevron * China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) * Eni * Equinor * Exxon Mobil Corporation * Occidental Petroleum * PEMEX (Petróleos Mexicanos) * PETROBRAS (Petroleo Brasileiro) * Repsol * Royal Dutch Shell * Saudi Aramco * Total

Collectively, they claim to produce 30% of the world’s oil and gas. Their OGCI website also features a lineup of Big Oil corporate CEOs, just to show how seriously and responsibly “green” they are. Their latest annual report has a letter from the CEOs, including this little gem:

“As our ambition grows with the scale of the challenge, we look forward to working closely with policy-makers, regulators and all stakeholders to help develop the levers that can economically and sustainably accelerate the pace of the low carbon transition.”

You have to wonder whether their list of “stakeholders” includes families, companies and communities that understand how completely dependent they and all of modern industrialized society are on fossil fuels, especially oil and gas. Just read this list and watch the little embedded video.

More to the point, consider its origins. OGCI was launched in 2014, shortly after the infamous Chesapeake Energy scandal, when its CEO got caught giving the Sierra Club millions of dollars to support the environmentalist and Obama Administration war on coal. Ironically, even Club members opposed taking the money, since they consider all fossil fuels to be their enemy – and after it had bashed coal into submission, the Club took aim at natural gas, Chesapeake’s primary revenue source.

What seems to have happened is that the ever-wily Big Oil companies created their own “green” organization. With its billion bucks in annual funding, Big Oil is now one of the biggest financiers of Big Green, not counting Big Government funding sources.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is also actively engaged with Big Oil, through its EDF+Business arm. In particular, EDF has a huge methane reduction program – the Methane Challenge – which not surprisingly involves OGCI. The program features prominently in “Sustainability Reports” of several major oil companies. EDF is even building and launching its own satellite, cleverly called MethaneSAT.

EDF is clearly getting a lot of money for this. It claims it gets no money “directly” from the companies. Instead, the cash comes from unspecified “philanthropies.” Of course, where these philanthropies get their cash may be a different story; they could easily be laundering Big Oil money. It may be telling that OGCI does not issue a financial report – or provide any transparent online information about its financials.

Space News actually asked EDF about this funding – but got stonewalled. Here’s its report:

“However, EDF has provided few details about how much MethaneSAT will cost or how it will be funded. The project received last year a grant from a new initiative called The Audacious Project, although the size of the award was not disclosed. An EDF spokesman did not respond to an inquiry about the financial status of the project.”

Having EDF on its side is certainly a big plus for Big Oil. But talk about hypocrisy – for both of them.

In any case it is clear that Big Oil is spending at least a billion dollars on green stuff, which is a lot of green. (Cold cash, in the form of American greenbacks, is clearly the new Big Green.) There is no evidence that climate skeptics are getting any of this. But if some are getting any, it is trivial in comparison. Meanwhile OGCI and Big Green get billions, and EDF maybe many millions.

Another big irony is that the supposed alternative to abundant, reliable, affordable, civilization-enabling fossil fuels is supposedly “clean, green, renewable, sustainable, responsible” wind, solar and biofuel energy. (Hardcore environmentalists do not approve of nuclear or hydroelectric power, either.)

Those alleged “alternatives” require inconceivably vast amounts of land – not just for the wind turbines, solar panels, backup batteries and biofuel farms, but to mine and process the billions of tons of iron, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, limestone and other materials needed to make the turbines, panels, batteries, transmission lines, tractors, trucks and other “sustainable” infrastructure.

All that mining, processing, manufacturing and transportation requires fossil fuels. And biofuels emit just as much (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide when they are burned as do coal, oil and natural gas.

Even more disturbing, many of those raw materials are produced with widespread slave and child labor, under health, safety and environmental rules and conditions that would make Upton Sinclair and other early Twentieth Century reformers think their oppressed workers were living in paradise.

When it comes to skepticism, the simple fact is that roughly half of Americans do not accept climate alarmism, right up to the President. Yet no one is paying for this widespread skepticism. As for Big Oil, it is pouring big bucks into Big Green and green climate initiatives. Conservative and climate realist groups have think tanks that do manage to find some funding, but it doesn’t come from Big Oil .

That Big Oil is responsible for skepticism is just another part of the alarmist fantasy world.

David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.

David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.