the second original sin: taking another bite at the apple...

Coal: Part of God’s Divine Plan

After 35 years defending his industry, Palmer, a Roman Catholic, remains as literally evangelical about coal as he was in 1997.

Back then, he told a Dutch documentary maker that when people burned gasoline in their cars and added CO2 to the air, they were “doing the work of the Lord.”

Now, Palmer told DeSmog: “It’s hard not to concede that coal hasn’t been put on Earth and other fossil fuels as part of a divine plan. Because it’s easy to get to, it’s here and more people live better and longer from it, I believe that. I’m not terribly religious but I’m a believer in Christ and all of those things. But I’m relaxed about it.”

On his interpretation of the science, Palmer’s views have changed not one bit since the late 1990s.

“There are no observations that we have been having catastrophic global warming — it’s sophistry. It’s an agenda driven by lawyers who make their own facts and make up their own laws and that was called the Obama administration. [Former vice president Al] Gore would have been the same way if he had been in power.”

Palmer does not accept, for example, that records of extreme heat are linked to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. He says rising sea levels are “not a threat to any coastal area in the world, at all.”

Palmer’s views, and those of others now embedded in the Trump-led administration, are, of course, contradicted outright by every major scientific academy on the planet.

Among those part of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team is long-serving climate science denier Myron Ebell, who has been involved in campaigns to muddy the science since the late '90s.

Palmer knows Ebell, but brags he was “the first in the room” on attacking the science to defend his industry.

I asked Palmer if he ever stops to think that perhaps being paid by the coal industry for 35 years has slanted his view.

He admitted it has, but only, he said, in exposing him to how fossil fuels have been used “in the natural environment and in the human environment where more people live longer and live better.”

So what of the Trump presidency? Palmer has great hopes, and says we’re about to experience “an historical presidency.”

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/01/29/25-years-ago-fred-palmer-kick-star...

It is idiots like Fred Palmer who drives the debate with religious bullshit. And there is little we can do, except refer him to the Pope to get Fred excommunicated. That would teach him. But I trust the good old bible does not have smoking coal as a sin, Pity.

By Gus Leonisky at 16 Mar 2017 - 1:13pm
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an unfortunate list of idiots...

An extensive database of individual climate deniers involved in the global warming denial industry.

DeSmogBlog thoroughly investigates the academic and industry backgrounds of those involved in the PR spin campaigns that are confusing the public and stalling action on global warming. If there's anyone or any organization, (i.e. scientist, self-professed "expert," think tank, industry association, company) that you would like to see researched and reported on DeSmogBlog, please contact us here.

https://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-denier-database

By Gus Leonisky at 16 Mar 2017 - 1:16pm
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water mills...

The South Australian government announced on Tuesday that it would address market failure with the time-honoured measure of government intervention. In addition, the Weatherill government has chosen to continue to rely extensively on renewable energy. Together, these themes in the government’s announcement have provoked the kind of howling rightwing atavism that shows exactly why they are increasingly at odds with the Australian public on this issue.

Cast your mind back to 2016, when South Australia suffered from major power outages. The right took this as a propaganda opportunity for the promotion of dirty power. The problem, op-ed after op-ed from Einsteins like Chris Kennyproclaimed, was the reliance on wind. Magic words like “baseload” were relentlessly defecated into the pail of our energy debate. The verdicts of experts were roundly ignored, if not castigated. It was all of a piece with the madness that has produced Senate inquiries into imaginary ailments and the veneration of inanimate carbon in the parliament.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2017/mar/16/sou...

meanwhile:

The Federal Government could fund the $2 billion expansion of the Snowy Mountains hydro scheme alone if the New South Wales and Victorian state governments did not want to invest.

Key points:

Plan involves doubling the size of the scheme, building 27km of tunnel and new power stations
The scheme is co-owned by the NSW, Victorian and Federal governments
Feasibility work is due to be completed by end of 2017, allowing work to begin in 2018

The Turnbull Government is planning to increase the current 4,000 megawatt output of the scheme by 50 per cent, which would involve building a 27 kilometre tunnel and power stations.

It would be the first major expansion of the Snowy Hydro scheme since construction was completed in 1974.

The Federal Government currently owns 13 per cent of Snowy Hydro (formerly the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority established to build and operate the Snowy Scheme). New South Wales owns 58 per cent and Victoria owns 29 per cent.

and god said "burn the planet down"...

One of the world’s most notorious climate science denial groups — the Heartland Institute — will gather its supporters and fellow ideologues this week for a one-day energy conference in Louisiana.

Aside from the conference’s fanatical devotion to fossil fuels, the line-up includes the usual pushers of junk science who are sure that every major science academy in the world is wrong about the dangers of adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

Gathering at the conference will be “hundreds of state and national elected officials, think tank leaders, and policy analysts.”

Front and center in New Orleans will be Fred Palmer, a veteran coal industry lobbyist who was behind what was probably the very first fossil-fuel funded attacks on the science linking coal burning to dangerous climate change.

After more than 30 years with the Western Fuels Association and then coal giant Peabody, Palmer now spends his time as a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute.

Shortly after Donald Trump won the U.S. Presidency, Palmer told DeSmog that he would be “reaching out to the fossil fuel community” for cash to fund the institute. This would be added to the more than $5 million the institute has received from major Trump financial backer Robert Mercer, the hedge fund billionaire whose daughter Rebekah Mercer was a key member of the President’s transition team.

Given the backing of the Mercers, it’s perhaps not surprising that Heartland has borrowed the title of Trump’s energy policy in holding its “America First Energy Conference.”

A favorite talking point from climate science deniers around the world — including those at the Heartland Institute — is that governments and scientists around the world have adopted climate science as a new “green religion” and it’s this fanaticism that is clouding their judgment.

Heartland likes to pitch global warming as “facts vs faith,” as a “green religion,” and to tell its followers that environmentalism is like a church where climate change is the new religion.

This is a curious position to take, when you compare it to the beliefs of Fred Palmer and other speakers at the Heartland conference. Quite literally, they believe that coal was put there by a god for humans to use.

“It’s hard not to concede that coal hasn’t been put on Earth and other fossil fuels as part of a divine plan,” Palmer has told DeSmog.

In July 2018, Palmer gave a speech to the Western Conservative Summit in Colorado. In audio obtained by DeSmog, Palmer says of Heartland’s efforts on climate change: “We are, I know, doing the Lord’s work.”

But this literal religious zeal is not restricted to Palmer at Heartland’s conference this week.

One session — titled Why CO2 Emissions are not a climate crisis — includes panelists Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor David Legates, who are both old hands at pushing back on all that green religion.

In 2015, Legates was featured in a series of videos attacking climate science and environmentalism produced by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

“There has to be a designer — a creator behind this to make something as complex as it is, yet as robust as it is,” says Legates.

“To be a true Christian means you have to believe and understand what we are being taught through the Bible and through God’s word.”

Scheduled beside Legates on the Heartland Institute panel is Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Spencer once wrote that he had analyzed Biblical claims that “the universe and all life within it had been created by some greater intelligent Being, not by mere chance.”

His conclusion? The “theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution.”

There are many well-credentialed climate scientists who are also people of faith.

But the argument from denialists that climate scientists are blinded by their own faith in a “climate change religion,” belies their own quite literal belief that they are doing the work of god.

As a presumably god-given debating tactic, it’s as flawed as their science.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/08/06/doing-lord-s-work-heartland-instit...

By Gus Leonisky at 13 Aug 2018 - 6:24am
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