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Alberta's gov't paid historian/home-school teacher Tammy Nemeth nearly $28,000 to write a report claiming a “Transnational Progressive Movement” is “strangling” its petrol industry. I read report so you don’t have to. Here’s some, er, highlights. #ableg #cdnpoli #climate https://twitter.com/vicecanada/status/1353766062291099650
Nemeth’s report states it draws upon “over a thousand” different sources. But among them are publications by climate contrarians/skeptics such as Tim Ball, Rupert Darwall, James Delingpole and the Friends of Science.
https://albertainquiry.ca/sites/default/files/2021-01/Nemeth%20Report.pdf
https://albertainquiry.ca/sites/default/files/2021-01/Nemeth%20Report.pdf
They've penned works like The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex and Watermelons: How Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing Your Children’s Future.
Nemeth’s report also cites articles from the Daily Caller among its sources: the same right-wing publication that has failed numerous fact checks and published "white supremacists, anti-Semites, and bigots." But wait, there’s more… https://www.mediamatters.org/maga-trolls/daily-caller-has-published-white-supremacists-anti-semites-and-bigots-here-are-ones-we
Not surprisingly, the report features debunked arguments that natural cycles are responsible for climate change, even though there’s only a one-in-a-million chance that the evidence human activity is responsible for global warming is wrong. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-temperatures/evidence-for-man-made-global-warming-hits-gold-standard-scientists-idUSKCN1QE1ZU
And it states the voices of those questioning the necessity of an energy transition are “rarely heard,” even though a recent study found climate contrarians were actually featured in "49 percent more media articles than scientists" between 2000 and 2016. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09959-4
Interestingly, Nemeth’s report lists the Sun News Network, which shut down in 2015, and the @nationalpost, the flagship of Canada’s largest newspaper chain, as the exceptions to that rule, carrying “commentator content that is generally critical of the energy transition.”
I could go on. I could talk about how Nemeth’s report states “just about every subject (taught in grade schools) incorporates climate change messaging,” before asking, “How many schools have a recycling program that began in kindergarten?"
Or I could talk about how the report states the Transnational Progressive Movement’s processes “operate like a multidimensional feedback loop.” However, I fear I would get sucked into one if I continued.
This report is yet another example of how denialism is becoming the defining feature of the modern conservative movement. It doesn't matter what the facts really are. What matters is what the movement wants them to be. And democracy won't be able to withstand that.
