Apple Censors AGW Skeptic Geologist… Was Al Gore Involved?

Guest post by David Middleton

ENERGY NEWS

Geologist Accuses Apple of Political Bias in Removing App Countering Climate Alarmism

Kevin Mooney / @KevinMooneyDC / March 11, 2019

Political figures who support the so-called Green New Deal and other proposals to restrict carbon dioxide emissions are up against some “inconvenient facts” that Americans may access immediately through a smartphone application, a geologist and author says.

But there’s one big problem.

The app, called Inconvenient Facts, is available only to Android users through the Google Play Store. Since March 4, users of Apple’s iPhone no longer can access the app through the tech giant’s App Store.

Why is that?

Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist with more than three decades of experience, told The Daily Signal in an interview that he has his own opinion about what may have transpired inside Apple.

Wrightstone is the author of the book “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know,” which served as the basis for the information available from the app.

He notes that former Vice President Al Gore, a leading proponent of the view that mankind’s activities propel dangerous climate change, is a board member of Apple. 

“It’s very rare for an app to be approved and then taken down unless there is offensive material or some other extreme issue,” Wrightstone said of Apple’s action in a phone interview with The Daily Signal, adding:

“We thought at first it may have been our fault. But I did a search on climate change and global warming in the Apple App Store and pulled up a whole bevy of pro-man-made global warming apps that are really bad. They are not formatted, they have incorrect spellings and no links.

But I suppose they have the political narrative right. Compared to these, our app is the gold standard. I made sure we had charts and links and references to the source for our data. This is all right in the palm of your hand.”

A total of 60 facts in Wrightstone’s book are available through the Inconvenient Facts app to Android users. Complete with data, charts, and videos, they challenge the premise of alarmist theories about climate change that link man-made emissions to dangerous levels of global warming.

Gore’s ongoing campaign to convince the public that rising levels of carbon dioxide emissions could trigger catastrophic global warming was the subject of the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and the 2017 follow-up, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.”

Before reversing itself March 4, Apple initially approved the Inconvenient Facts app for sale Feb. 3. Since that time, the app has been downloaded 13,000 times, according to figures Wrightstone provided.

[…]

The study of geology provides important insights into the study of climate change because it considers short-term trends within the larger context of Earth’s history, Wrightstone told The Daily Signal.

“Geologists are probably the most skeptical of all the sciences concerning a man-made link to temperature changes,” the geologist said, adding of carbon dioxide:

“Just to be clear, I don’t, and my colleagues don’t, dispute that CO2 is increasing, and I agree that it has to have some slight warming effect on the atmosphere. But I argue that it’s modest and overwhelmed by the same natural forces that have been driving temperatures since the dawn of time…

Looking out across Earth’s history, CO2 levels are extremely low. I always argue we are actually CO2 impoverished.”

[…]

The Daily Signal

Gregory Wrightstone is a past president of the AAPG Eastern Section, who has recently been quite busy on a speaking engagement tour. His is currently affiliated with the Heartland Institute and has apparently become a pain in the @$$ to the Climatariat. A few months ago, the AAPG Explorer featured an interview with Greg about his best selling book, Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know. The interview drew a mixed bag of comments from supportive to outright hostile. My informal conclusion was that the vast majority of the hostile comments came from 1) European AAPG members, 2) academic AAPG members and 3) millennial and younger AAPG members. The AAPG is supposedly in the process of reviewing the society’s position statement on climate change.

Did Apple censor Greg’s app for political reasons? I can’t imagine any other reason.

Was Al Gore a part of this? I tend to think this sort of thing is below his pay grade. It was probably some snot-nosed low-level millennial techie.