With so much needing to be discussed on energy and climate change, the latest contribution to free and open online debate is the decision by YouTube and its parent Google to demonetize sites that offer alternatives to global warming orthodoxy. Thus far CDN has not been hit (shhhh, don’t give them any ideas). But what a moment to take this step, as a person-made energy crisis is sweeping westward from Europe into North America that the climate advocates not only failed to see coming but insisted was not possible because they operate far too much of the time in an echo chamber in which “deniers” are evil skunks not worthy of being listened to.
Facebook is also complicit, partly because it continues to employ an outfit called Climate Feedback to perform fact checks that are in fact heresy trials. From the “you just cannot win with these people” file, Mother Jones recently snarled that “‘Climate Change Disinformation Is Spreading Rapidly’ on Facebook/ Company’s plan to address the issue falls far short, climate advocates say.” Mother Jones apparently feels that “Fight disinformation” is a marketing winner for them. We say honest is as honest does. And veteran investigative reporter John Stossel is now suing both Facebook and Climate Feedback for defamation, though of course his claims have yet to be tested in court, because he says they made stuff up and wouldn’t back down when challenged.
There is a certain savoury irony in the fact that people who ridicule “climate deniers” should themselves be exhibiting plain signs of the much-deplored psychological mechanism of the same name, including belligerence. Thus in one particularly tone-deaf assault on skeptics, a viewer alerted us that one of our own videos was preceded by a hectoring trailer for a hectoring piece “Is My Microphone On?” in which children who know as much about climate science as they do about the Panov-Botvinnik attack berate adults for being stupid and callous about climate change even after being berated by children for etc. And it gets worse, because at least the children can plead that they were misled by adults.
No such excuse is available for the New Yorker, which recently both reviewed a book “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” and did a podcast “Should the Climate Movement Embrace Sabotage?” that did at least ask whether murdering CEOs might cause a public relations issue. Some particularly judgy sticks-in-the-mud might argue that while it easily could, there were more fundamental objections.
One common reason for hostility to open debate is an arrogant reflexive conviction that ordinary people are stupid and are even less to be trusted with sharp mental objects than physical ones. For instance NBC’s complaint in their “Climate In Crisis” section that “Hottest homes, coolest prices: Why cash-strapped families are moving to regions with extreme climates/ ‘People are much more fixated on budget and being close to family or work than thinking about climate risk,’ one housing expert said.”
What a bunch of dopes. Why would they care about being near family, staying financially solvent and securing gainful employment when climate models say blah blah blah?
Arguably NBC would be better off having a “Climate Not In Crisis” section as well so that their own reporters as well as their customers would get to hear both sides. Instead they’re presumably all getting curated feeds on social media that tell them that not only all the facts but all the virtue are entirely on their side. And wondering why their advertising revenue is in a tailspin.
