<div dir="ltr"><div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div><div>-----------------------------------</div><div><br></div><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/23/climate-science-deniers-marc-morano-patrick-moore-biodiversity-report">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/23/climate-science-deniers-marc-morano-patrick-moore-biodiversity-report</a>  <br><div><br></div><div><h1 class="gmail-page__title gmail-title" id="gmail-page-title" style="line-height:1.2em;margin:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif">First, Climate Change, Now the Global Extinction Crisis: Industry-Paid Hacks Deny Science to Congress</h1></div><div><br></div><div><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">By </span><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/user/justin-mikulka" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Justin Mikulka</a><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"> • Thursday, May 23, 2019</span> </div><div><br></div><div> <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">In this week’s Congressional hearing on the recent (and dire) </span><a href="https://www.ipbes.net/news/ipbes-global-assessment-summary-policymakers-pdf" target="_blank" style="font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px;text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)"><span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">UN</span> Global Assessment of Biodiversity</a><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">, conservation scientist Dr. Jacob Malcom did not mince words as he explained the report's startling findings that one million species are at risk of extinction.</span><br></div><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"><span class="gmail-dquo" style="margin-left:0px">“</span>We are, as you have heard, losing species faster than ever in human history, tens to hundreds of times faster than the background rate of extinction,” the Defenders of Wildlife scientist told the <a href="https://naturalresources.house.gov/hearings/wow-oversight-hearing" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">Congressional House Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee.</a> “We are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction, where the last time this happened it was because an asteroid hit the planet. Today we are that asteroid.”</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Such a massive loss of plants, animals, and other species would also, quite naturally, affect human life on earth. But just as they have with hearings on the climate crisis, Congressional Republicans and their witnesses used this opportunity to attack the well-documented scientific evidence of a far-reaching global threat to life. And they even used some of the same climate science deniers and tired arguments to do it.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">The comprehensive report they attacked gathers even more evidence that human activities are having a significant effect on global biodiversity, just as the scientific consensus shows humans are driving rapid changes in the climate. </p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"><span class="gmail-dquo" style="margin-left:0px">“</span>The evidence is crystal clear: Nature is in trouble. Therefore we are in trouble,” Sandra Díaz, one of the co-chairs of the <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">UN</span>Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes-un-biodiversity-report-warns-one-million-species-at-risk/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">told National Geographic</a>.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"><span style="font-weight:700;font-size:1.17em">Business as Usual With Republican Science Denial</span></p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/marc-morano" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">Marc Morano</a> isn’t a scientist but does make his money attacking scientists. From 2006 to 2009, Morano was the communications director for <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/james-inhofe" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">Senator James Inhofe </a>(R-Okla.), who will be remembered for his stunt of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E0a_60PMR8" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">throwing a snowball</a> in Congress as he tried to discredit climate science.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Morano moved on from politics to working for organizations funded by oil companies, and he currently runs the website ClimateDepot.com, a project funded by the climate science-denying <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/committee-constructive-tomorrow" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (<span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CFACT</span>)</a>, a conservative think tank which has received funding from ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the Koch brothers.<br><br>This week, Morano wasted no time in attacking some of the actual scientists on the hearing's panel, specifically Sir <a href="https://tyndall.ac.uk/people/robert-watson" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">Robert T. Watson</a>, who heads the <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">UN</span> agency that produced the biodiversity report. These attacks on fellow witnesses resulted in hearing Chairman Jared Huffman (D-<span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CA</span>) twice reprimanding Morano.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Rep. Huffman had to ask that Morano “show respect for your fellow panelists.”</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">However, oil industry-funded attacks on climate science, and even Robert Watson, are nothing new. In 2001 a <a href="http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/2001-exxonmobil-randol-white-house-ipcc/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">memo </a>to the Bush administration from Exxon lobbyist Randy Randol specifically requests that Watson be removed as head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (<span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">IPCC</span>), a position he held at the time.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">And Morano, a notorious climate science denier, is continuing this long tradition of groups funded by Exxon attacking Watson. Exxon has donated heavily <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1019878-2004-exxon-giving-report.html%23document/p3/a260598" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">to <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CFACT</span></a> and was also involved in the infamous “Victory Will Be Achieved” <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Climate-Science-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">memo</a>. This memo, assembled by Randol and the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/american-petroleum-institute" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">American Petroleum Institute</a>, declared in 1998 that “Victory will be achieved when average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.”</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">The other climate science denier on the witness panel this week was Dr. <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/patrick-moore" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">Patrick Moore</a>, current head of the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/co2-coalition" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)"><span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CO2</span>Coalition</a>, an organization that grew out of a now-defunct group heavily funded by Exxon.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">What did the leader of an organization called “the <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CO2</span> Coalition” have to say about carbon dioxide?</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"><span class="gmail-dquo" style="margin-left:0px">“</span>There is no hard evidence that <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CO2</span> has anything to do with the change in temperature of the earth’s climate,” Moore told the committee.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">In fact, Exxon’s own research accurately predicted the rise in <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CO2</span> and temperature which the world has been experiencing.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">However, Moore not only made the claim that <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CO2</span> doesn’t contribute to atmospheric warming – a concept first demonstrated by<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lady-scientist-helped-revolutionize-climate-science-didnt-get-credit-180961291/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)"> Eunice Foote in 1856 </a>– but also said that because humans have been increasing the levels of <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CO2</span> in the atmosphere, they were actually the “salvation of life on earth.” And while plants do use carbon dioxide, <a href="https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">more <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">CO2</span> is not necessarily good for plants</a>.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Not everyone in the hearing seemed interested in the blatantly false statements coming from these industry-backed science deniers. Chairman Huffman noted that the efforts came from the “shadowy corners of these junior varsity think tanks.”</p><h3 style="line-height:1.28205em;margin-top:1.28205em;margin-bottom:1.28205em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif">Solutions Amid the Attacks and Noise</h3><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Due to the format of Congressional hearings and the general <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">GOP</span> policy of climate science denial, these hearings typically offer very little in the way of solutions or actual debate. However, two of the panelists did speak about the threats to biodiversity and comment on solutions.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Malcom, the scientist from Defenders of Wildlife, called out the success of the <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">U.S.</span> Endangered Species Act. “We have forty some odd years showing that the Endangered Species Act has worked incredibly well and as we all know the American economy has continued to grow throughout that entire time,” he said.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Notably, the Trump administration currently is attempting to <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-we-must-save-the-endangered-species-act-from-the-trump-administration-babbitt" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,153,204)">weaken the scope and effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act</a>.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">Perhaps the most concrete recommendation of the day came from Watson, who recommended that governments stop subsidizing industries that are causing harm to the climate and global species.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"><span class="gmail-dquo" style="margin-left:0px">“</span>One should get rid of many of these environmentally harmful subsidies in agriculture, energy, and transportation,” Watson told the committee.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px">With suggestions like these, Watson was an obvious target for industry-funded science deniers like Morano and Moore.</p><p style="margin:1em 0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"open sans",sans-serif;font-size:14.3px"><em><span style="font-size:11px">Main image: Screen shot of witnesses Patrick Moore, Marc Morano, and Robert Watson in the May 22, 2019 hearing of the Congressional House Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee on the recent <span class="gmail-caps" style="font-size:0.9em">IPBES</span> Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report.</span></em></p></div>