# Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 23, 2013, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029 "2013-12-23T19:32:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/241 "2013-12-31T20:37:45Z")
And , related to the matter at hand, it is not hard to find the source of the dishonest ideas FX and others claim to be as valid as the science GISS and others do report. Even Politifact declared this a “Pants on fire” lie from the merchants of doubt. > **[UPDATED: Scientific consensus remains that the planet is warming](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2013/dec/13/barry-smitherman/scientific-consensus-remains-planet-warming/)** > > Barry Smitherman sees the planet as not warming. Smitherman, a candidate for Texas attorney general, responded to Republ > [@](#): > > A Forbes magazine article by Peter Ferrara, published May 31, 2012, said “natural climate cycles have already turned from warming to cooling, global temperatures have already been declining for more than 10 years, and global temperatures will continue to decline for another two decades or more,” a conclusion Ferrara attributed to presentations at a conference on climate change hosted by the libertarian Heartland Institute. > > By email, Blakemore and Jared Craighead, Smitherman’s campaign manager, urged us to view a video placed on YouTube on June 27, 2012, of a presentation by Don Easterbrook, a professor emeritus of geology at Western Washington University. In it, Easterbrook said that scant temperature changes support his 2000 statement that global warming is over, making the key question only how intense the cooling period will be. > [@](#): > > Our own online search led us to a Sept. 10, 2013, commentary by Forbes magazine staff writer Alex Knapp taking Rose to task for focusing too closely on short-term temperature changes. > > On the suggestion that global warming paused in 1997, Knapp wrote: "Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ‘All of the top ten warmest years in the record have occurred since the last major El Niño event, in 1998.’ What’s more, according to NOAA, ‘Since 1976, every year including 2012 has had an annual temperature above the long-term average.’ In fact the two warmest years on record are 2005 and 2010, and the years between 2000 and 2010 had higher average temperatures than the years between 1990 and 1999. > > "To show the continued rise of global average temperatures over the decades, this chart from the World Meteorological Organization helps to make it pretty clear: > > "These rising temperatures have serious consequences. Rising temperatures melt glaciers on land, including Greenland and Antarctica. As those melts make their way to the oceans, they cause sea levels to rise. And those rising sea levels are real and have been measured. Here’s a chart of sea level rise since the 1880s – you can see the steadily rising trend for yourself. > > “The bottom line is that, as I wrote last summer, ‘In the end, everything about climate science boils down to one simple fact: all else being equal, increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in a mixture of gasses will cause the mixture to absorb more heat.’” > > Knapp closed: “For our planet, that means as more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, the warmer the planet will get. Sure, there might be some short term anomalies – one year might be cooler than its preceding year, for instance – but the long term trend remains…” > [@](#): > > Our ruling > > Smitherman said the Earth is not warming. > > To the contrary, national, international and Texas climate authorities concur that the planet is warming. They also warn against cherry-picking individual climatic indicators or timeframes to conclude otherwise. That makes sense to us. In the end, this claim strikes us as both unfounded and ridiculous. > > Pants on Fire! Barry Smitherman is the candidate of the Republicans to be the next attorney general in Texas. This twisting of reality can not lead to good solutions, one can only expect another Cuccinelli that is willing to launch harassing investigations against the scientists, a Lysenkoism that should not be tolerated in the 21st century. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2014, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/242 "2014-01-02T15:12:32Z")
Hit, hit, hit Fight, fight, fight The Itchy and Scratchy shooooow … Wow, nine column feet of two people calling each other ninnies. > [@marshmallow](#): > > If it gets so hot we start growing wheat and corn where there used to be tundra doesn’t that mean current bread baskets are hosed? Or they’d have to start growing something different than they do now. I don’t think anyone really knows for sure. If the large scale circulation patterns remain fixed, then we might just see everyplace 6ºC warmer. The deserts today will remain deserts. On the other hand, the desert belts may creep pole-ward increasing the tropical belts and shrinking the temperate belts. On the third hand, the large scale circulation may change completely either removing the desert belts or creating two. On the fourth hand, we might see tropical rain forests pole to pole. It seems difficult to determine this from the geological record the last time this happened. Couple of wildcards here are evolution, both natural and artificial; and rainfall rates. I’ve read a few predictions that we’ll see more rain, plus higher temperatures, leading to more wide spread tropical rain forests. The bread baskets of the world could either dry up like the Sahara, or proliferate like the Congo, or something in between. The good news is that the change will happen slow enough so that human-kind can adjust. That’s one thing inarguable, humans are GREAT at adapting to changing conditions [ka’ching] and finding profit thereof. Look at the OP, whoa, a billion bucks in someone’s pockets just to say climate doesn’t change !!! This may be capitalism’s finest hour (or century or whatever). ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2014, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/243 "2014-01-02T16:11:00Z")
While simultaneously solving the world’s over-population problem! And America leads the way! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2014, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/244 "2014-01-02T17:33:25Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > The good news is that the change will happen slow enough so that human-kind can adjust. That’s one thing inarguable, humans are GREAT at adapting to changing conditions [ka’ching] and finding profit thereof. Look at the OP, whoa, a billion bucks in someone’s pockets just to say climate doesn’t change !!! This may be capitalism’s finest hour (or century or whatever). Humans are great at being bastards. They are great at missing what problems are coming by denying a mess of issues that things like the rise of the oceans will mean. > **[Kiribati and the impending climate refugee crisis](https://theecologist.org/2013/dec/03/kiribati-and-impending-climate-refugee-crisis)** > > The New Zealand courts have refused to grant asylum to a 'climate refugee' from the Pacific island of Kiribati. But as Sandi Keane reports, the underlying problem is set to increase to a stupendous scale. > [@](#): > > Last week, the High Court of New Zealand delivered a blow to a largely ignored asylum seeker problem that has been quietly bleeding and threatening to hemorrhage into a full-scale global catastrophe within two or three decades. > > A 37-year-old man from the tiny, obscure nation of Kiribati, Ioane Teitiota, stood to make history as the world’s first climate refugee. He argued that global warming is a form of persecution and that those displaced by its effects should be recognized under the UN’s Refugee Convention. > > However, in his judgment, Justice John Priestley said it was not the High Court’s place to alter the scope of the Refugee Convention by granting Mr Teitiota’s leave for appeal. The judge said the enormity and scale of the problem was a fundamental reason for his decision: > > “On a broad level, were they to succeed and be adopted in other jurisdictions, at a stroke, millions of people who are facing medium-term economic deprivation, or the immediate consequences of natural disasters or warfare, or indeed presumptive hardships caused by climate change, would be entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention.” > > Although he has lived in New Zealand since 2007, the government has refused Mr Teitiota and his family asylum based on the current convention which was drawn up more than 50 years ago, before rising seas started threatening the 33 low-lying equatorial islands and atolls that make up the tiny nation, just under 4,000 kilometres north-east of Brisbane. > > The situation is now so dire there is no room left to bury the dead on some of the islands, let alone provide a home for the living. They are being encouraged to leave by their President, Anote Tong, who described his policy of orderly evacuation at the UN General Assembly in September as “migration with dignity”. > > Fresh water - a basic human right - is the main problem. Bloomberg Business Week reported last week that fresh water supplies would run out before the rising seas fully submerge Kiribati. > > Although aid agencies around the world have been warning governments for years about the coming tsunami of “climate refugees”, the world is unprepared for Mr Teitiota and his kind. > > According to Steve Trent, chief executive of the London-based Environment Justice Foundation (EJF), governments are in denial about the effects of rising seas despite sobering statistics. The EJF, an international non-profit environment and human rights organisation, has been lobbying governments and politicians for a new agreement on environmental refugees. > > The EJF said that climate refugees already outnumber those people fleeing persecution by three-to-one and predicts that the number of climate refugees could climb to 150 million by 2050. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/245 "2014-01-02T20:38:05Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > And America leads the way! [stands proud] God smiles on us, it just looks like He’s laughing. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/246 "2014-02-18T17:08:50Z")
Well, now! [Here’s](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/us/politics/financier-plans-big-ad-campaign-on-environment.html?hpw&rref=us&_r=1) at least one billionaire ready to spend big on the climate-change-action side! > [@](#): > > A billionaire retired investor is forging plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election, seeking to pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers. > > The donor, Tom Steyer, a Democrat who founded one of the world’s most successful hedge funds, burst onto the national political scene during last year’s elections, when he spent $11 million to help elect Terry McAuliffe governor of Virginia and millions more intervening in a Democratic congressional primary in Massachusetts. Now he is rallying other deep-pocketed donors, seeking to build a war chest that would make his political organization, NextGen Climate Action, among the largest outside groups in the country, similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/247 "2014-02-18T17:12:03Z")
Stop spamming One topic is enough ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/248 "2014-02-18T17:14:23Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Stop spamming > > One topic is enough Sometimes I like to post of bit of news in every relevant thread I can think of. It’s not spamming, and I won’t stop. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/249 "2014-02-18T17:15:58Z")
Oh yes you will. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/250 "2014-02-18T18:50:49Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Oh yes you will. Are you threatening me with the Mods? I wouldn’t want to attract their attention in any way if I were you. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/251 "2014-02-18T18:57:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Are you threatening me with the Mods? Hahaha that made me snort coffee out of my nose. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/252 "2014-02-18T19:57:07Z")
Interesting how you left off the last part. Want to share with the group how that makes you feel? ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029/253 "2014-02-18T20:09:44Z")
I read it in the voice of Beavis, as Cornholio. “Are you threatening me? You do not want to face the wrath of my bunghole!! BUNGHOLE!!” What last part? I had to clean up my laptop. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-groups-spend-up-to-1bn-a-year-to-fight-action-on-climate-change/677029.md?page=12)