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hatrack

(59,446 posts)
Thu Apr 25, 2019, 07:39 AM Apr 2019

The Climate Change Generation Needs To Know What's Coming - Michael Mann

The fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to build political power and spread disinformation about climate change is well-documented. It has long kept the American public in the dark and elected leaders in their pocket. Their strategy of denying the causes of climate change has been wildly lucrative for the fossil fuel industry, but devastating for our environment and democracy.

As kids across the U.S. and around the globe rise up to demand action, this disinformation campaign is now being targeted at America’s classrooms. A spate of bills introduced in states across the country would either prohibit teachers from discussing climate change in their classrooms or require public school teachers to present “both sides” of an issue that has come to dominate American political discourse. This would give science equal weight with flat-out propaganda.

This assault on our children is reprehensible for so many reasons. To start with an obvious one, it is keeping kids in the dark about an urgent global problem that will affect the rest of their lives. To present rigorous scientific evidence alongside self-interested corporate propaganda equates truth with lies and blurs fact and fiction.

EDIT

What a cynical and depressing worldview the legislators who write these bills must have. I myself have long been targeted for my research into climate change and my efforts to communicate the dire consequences of human-caused climate change. These days it’s mostly easily-ignored Twitter trolls, but during the height of the attacks on climate science, someone mailed me a letter filled with white powder. And in the not-too-distant past, members of Congress used the power of their offices to publicly attack my research and malign my reputation. It is always disturbing to see elected leaders bully in this way. Their purpose is never to provide “balance.” It is always to intimidate and obfuscate.

EDIT

https://www.newsweek.com/climate-change-generation-need-know-whats-coming-1404552

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The Climate Change Generation Needs To Know What's Coming - Michael Mann (Original Post) hatrack Apr 2019 OP
Kick and recommend. bronxiteforever Apr 2019 #1
K&R 2naSalit Apr 2019 #2
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