In our mind, the foremost barrier to combattingmisinformation in the US is the intense political polarizationthat, of course, is related intimately to decreasing social capital,rising inequality, declining trust in science, and an increas-ingly fractionated media landscape. While still debating thesources of polarization, political scientists agree that it hasreached unprecedented levels and stems more from Republi-cans moving far to the right than Democrats moving to the left(Mann & Ornstein, 2016). The rise of “negative partisanship,”in particular, has created a situation in which Republicans andDemocrats are likely to regard the opposing party as a threat tothe nation and view its followers in highly negative terms (PewResearch Center, 2016).9In this context, Republicans’ skepti-cism about Russian meddling in the last election and especiallytheir increasingly favorable views of Russia and Putin may notbe so surprising; anything and anyone keeping Democrats outof office is acceptable (Riley, 2017).This intense political polarization in the US is abetted by threefactors largely beyond the scope of Lewandowsky et al. (2017).First is the intentional promotion of misinformation in the pow-erful conservative echo chamber, ranging from the conspiracytheories of Infowars and Rush Limbaugh to the consistent liesand exaggerations about liberal politicians and Democratic can-didates spread on Fox News, Breitbart, and talk radio (Benkler,Faris, Roberts, & Zuckerman, 2017). Second is the utility ofmisinformation (especially systemic lies but also, increasingly,shock and chaos) to powerful political and economic interests(e.g., the Koch Brothers and fossil fuels corporations) and theirconsequent and unrelenting support for it, which was only brieflytouched on by Lewandowsky et al. (2017). Third is the insti-tutionalization of “false equivalence” in so-called mainstreamfollowers

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-57700-005

TUHO: It is a view shared by a number of far-right MEPs, including Romania’s Cristian Terhes who earlier this year told the European Parliament in a debate on climate change that the world is witnessing “the imposition of a utopian, criminal ideology, which requires us to totally destroy our way of life in the name of madness: zero-carbon emissions.”

Terhes is also an anti-vaxxer and is behind the International Covid Summit, whose opening anthem calls on parents to shield their children from perceived tyrannies. “We’ll be free until the day we die” are among the anthem’s lyrics.

TUHO: Despite Advertising Carbon Capture, ExxonMobil Saw Marginal Role for It in Fighting Climate Change
Internal documents unearthed by a U.S. Senate panel show the oil giant modeled up to 500 CCS sites operating globally by 2050, far fewer than rival Shell.

Vowles, K & Hultman, M (2022) Dead White men vs. Greta Thunberg: Nationalism, Misogyny, and Climate Change Denial in Swedish far-right Digital Media, Australian Feminist Studies, 36:110, 414-431, DOI:10.1080/08164649.2022.2062669

For fossil fuel ideologues, sowing misinformation about wind and solar power is proving to be an effective stall tactic. Public opinion surveys show that renewable energy remains popular with a bipartisan majority of Americans; in a poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland, seven out of 10 people said they'd be comfortable with a wind farm in their own community. But in New Jersey—where Morano's group has gone so far as to buy billboards reading "Save Whales Stop Windmills"—nearly half of all the state's residents now believe that such a connection probably exists, according to an August poll from Monmouth University

Climate-Science Deniers, Right-Wing Think Tanks, and Fossil Fuel Shills Are Plotting Against the Clean Energy Transition | Sierra Club
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2024-1-spring/feature/climate-science-deniers-fossil-fuel-shills-plot-against-green-energy

That Which They Will Not See: Climate Denial as a Vector of Epistemological Crisis in the Contemporary United States
Susannah Crockford

Climate denial continues as a cultural epistemology for anthropogenic climate change in the United States, despite worsening impacts. This article offers an ethnographic account of rural areas in three states in the southern US – Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri – based on long-term participant observation and interview data. Engaging with the literature on agnotology, the social construction of ignorance, the argument is made that this literature as it pertains to climate denial does not go far enough in accounting for the persistence of the rejection of climate science. Theoretically drawing from anthropological work on the incommensurability of paradigms, the argument is based on a tripartite construction of denial as produced through an interaction of a cultural norm of radical empiricism, a political-media ecosystem funded by fossil fuel companies, and a cosmological schema derived from conservative white evangelicalism. The result of this process is an epistemological crisis in contemporary American society.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1065912920946400?journalCode=prqb

TUHO: In Climate Obstruction: How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet, Kristoffer Ekberg, Bernhard Forchtner, Martin Hultman and Kirsti Jylhä bring together crucial insights from environmental history, sociology, media and communication studies and psychology to help us understand why we are failing to take necessary measures to avert the unfolding climate crisis.

They do so by examining the variety of ways in which meaningful climate action has been obstructed. This ranges from denial of the scientific evidence for human-induced climate change and its policy consequences, to (seemingly sincere) acknowledgement of scientific evidence while nevertheless delaying meaningful climate action. The authors also consider all those actions by which often well-meaning individuals and collectives (unintendedly) hamper climate action. In doing so, this book maps out arguments and strategies that have been used to counter environmental protection and regulation since the 1960s by, first and foremost, corporations supported by conservative actors, but also far-right ones as well as ordinary citizens.

This timely and accessible book provides tools and lessons to understand, identify and call out such arguments and strategies, and points to actions and systemic and cultural changes needed to avert or at least mitigate the climate crisis.

The internet is awash with misinformation about the climate crisis, even as its effects on the planet couldn’t be more clear. The summer of 2023 is officially the hottest on record, the World Meteorological Organization reported this week. That historic heat has fueled deadly extreme weather across large swaths of the world and pushed global sea temperatures to record highs, disrupting ocean ecosystems and putting countless marine species at risk.

In fact, more than 3.8 billion people—or nearly half the world’s population—experienced extreme heat between June and August that was made more likely because of human-caused climate change, according to a new analysis by Climate Central. This week alone, Britain recorded its hottest day of the year so far and several regions in the United States are once again under heat advisories, as yet another series of brutal heat waves test struggling power grids, damage critical water systems and raise the cost of doing business in industries like farming.

Experts Warn of ‘Denialism Comeback’ Ahead of November’s Global Climate Talks - Inside Climate News
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08092023/experts-warn-of-denialism-comeback-ahead-of-cop28-global-climate-talks/

40minut pobidani o great resetu, enjoy

https://twitter.com/celiawh2/status/1657495213819019264?s=46

The Secrets of Charles Koch’s Political Ascent
Two new documents reveal the political blueprint the billionaire developed 40 years ago, heavily influenced by the ultraconservative John Birch Society.

In a recent round of interviews, Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist and political patron, has been stressing that he only recently became involved in politics. As he put it in an interview with Megyn Kelly on October 15, “I’ve never been that fond of politics and only got dragged into it recently kicking and screaming.” But according to what appear to be two never-before-seen documents—a paper Charles wrote in 1976 and an unpublished history of Charles’ political evolution—Charles began planning his ambitious remaking of American politics 40 years ago, transitioning from libertarian ideologue to conservative power broker. For his new movement, which aimed to empower ultraconservatives like himself and radically change the way the U.S. government worked, he analyzed and then copied what he saw as the strengths of the John Birch Society, the extreme, right-wing anti-communist group to which he, his brother David and their father, Fred Koch, had belonged. Charles Koch might claim that his entry into politics is new, but from its secrecy to its methods of courting donors and recruiting students, the blueprint for the vast and powerful Koch donor network that we see today was drafted four decades ago.

By the 1970s, Charles had broken from an early political influence—the John Birch Society (of which his father had been a founding member)—over his opposition to the Vietnam War. Charles had also been skeptical of the group’s more far-fetched conspiracy theories, which included a belief that many prominent Americans, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, were communist agents.

The Secrets of Charles Koch’s Political Ascent - POLITICO Magazine
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/charles-koch-political-ascent-jane-mayer-213541/