Guest essay by Eric Worrall
De-Smog Blog co-founder James Hoggan seems to think people who oppose climate action are “bad actors”. My question – how is that confrontational approach working out for you, James?
The making of a one-of-a-kind climate change PR professional
A pioneering climate change PR professional describes in his own words his views on how to navigate through today’s hyperpolarized public square.
By James Hoggan | Thursday, March 25, 2021
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My own journey from corporate PR consultant to co-founder of a new media website investigating climate change disinformation was eye-opening. We launched DeSmogBlog in January 2006 to “clear up the PR pollution that clouds climate science.” We wrote about Darth Vader PR campaigns in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK, largely funded by the coal and oil industries. Finding myself in the midst of a nasty international dispute about the climate crisis, I realized the strategies used to mislead people with anti-science propaganda and anti-environmentalism are much more developed and robust than those used to educate people about science and the environment.
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Over time, I realized that environmentalists are not crazy or even radicals. They’re very often telling the truth: Humans are rapidly destroying the oceans, driving record levels of species to extinction, and dangerously overheating the climate. Environmental collapse isn’t just a future risk. It is well underway.
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The more I delved into the war on fact-based reality, the angrier I got. The disinformation was so blatant and shameless. And much of it involved ad hominem attacks. But the main source of my anger was the effectiveness of the tactics: They worked, at least somewhat. Toxic conversations like these stall our ability to think collectively, act in our own interests and solve the many dangerous environmental problems stalking everyone on Earth.
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There’s the “climategate,” when in late 2009 and just before the Copenhagen climate talks, an unknown hacker stole more than 1,000 emails from climate scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the U.K. The hacked emails were then used to dupe much of the free world’s media into writing misleading stories suggesting climate scientists were falsifying data, and raising the possibility that global warming was a hoax.
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It’s not just bad actors who pollute and polarize public conversations. Carol Tavris, author of the best-selling Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me, told me the moment we make a decision we begin to see all the reasons we are right about it.
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Empathy and evidence need to replace disinformation and division. This is a challenge. The science of how to mislead people about science is advanced and muscular. The well-funded propaganda machines fighting environmental regulation know far more about stoking division than environmental scientists know about persuading us to support science-based public policies to protect the environment.
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Read more: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/03/the-making-of-a-one-of-a-kind-climate-change-pr-professional/
James Hoggan said one positive thing in the midst of ranting about Climategate, and accusing people who oppose climate action of being bad actors. “The goal of argument and public debate should NOT be to crush someone who disagrees with you, but to bring forward the truth“.
Here’s a truth for you James. Most of the contributors who write on WUWT would have no problem with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, so long as it doesn’t cost us anything.
You might think you can persuade us and our fellow travellers that CO2 emission reductions are worth supporting, maybe even worth making some sacrifices to achieve – but how well has that persuasion strategy worked for you since 2006? How much impact has the efforts of DeSmog Blog and all your fellow greens had on the rise of atmospheric CO2?
If you genuinely want an end to division, if you seriously think the world is in danger if we continue to emit vast quantities of CO2, compromise a little. Most of us are fans of nuclear power, which happens to be a zero carbon energy technology. Join with us, join with former NASA GISS director James Hansen, join with Michael Schellenberger, and jump on board the nuclear bandwagon.
France proved by doing that mass produced nuclear power is affordable, so this satisfies most of our objections about not having to pay for it – all nuclear needs to be economically viable is a benign regulatory environment. Nuclear power is zero carbon, or very close to it, so by building nuclear capacity and retiring fossil fuel plants, you get your large scale CO2 emissions reductions.
I like nuclear power and always have. It is one the 3 items in my book I list as the way to get rid of the co2 fear, rational or not. Why this nation is a slave to Jane Fonda and the China Syndrome is beyond me, except that the real reason for all this has nothing to do with the climate getting worse
Jane Fonda says that she’s been a climate scientist for decades and decades (at 2:20 in the video linked below). Maybe she’s a nuclear engineer as well.
https://abcnews.go.com/video/embed?id=66220337
Jane is discriminating against older men. 🙂
Apparently Jane likes COVID … https://newtube.app/user/RAOB/xPLyzd4
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Jane Fonda says that she’s been a climate scientist for decades and decades . . . .
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Hanoi Jane? I won’t watch her movies because of her actions during the Vietnam War.
I have lots of uncivil comments I’d make about her, but I’d probably be banned for making them.
Jim
When I got out of the Army about half a century ago, I came to OKC to visit an old Army buddy, living here. Went into a bar that displayed a bumper sticker that said: “F*** Jane Fonda”. Knew right then, I’d made it home.
She actually brags that so many did. She only regrets that more didn’t.
“except that the real reason for all this has nothing to do with the climate getting worse”
I’m afraid you are correct. It may be about CO2 to some, but to others it’s all about acquiring power and control over other people’s lives.
Only to the useful idiots in the West is CAGW about the climate. To the people behind the sc@m it is entirely about power and money, and always has been. The climate is merely a pretext.
One of the biggest buyers of “The China Syndrome” is the nuclear industry.
The movie showed an accident that was confined to the utility’s property.
If you are going to screw up. Keep it local. Keep down liability.
I love CO2
Then join,…join the 500 ppm CO2 Club….we are working to bring the world a new bright green look….500ppm will bring green like not seen in millions of years.
Any true environmentalist would be working day and night to get that CO2 level up to the true greenhouse level of about 1000ppm for the sake of pants and plankton! The world has only ‘greened’ by an extra 15% since satellites started going up to measure things like that says NASA – only 15% – we need to do more!
I’m not a fan of green pants, but the 1,000 ppm sounds fine.
And at the very least if, on the remote chance that CO2 is the control knob of global temperatures, more of it will delay the impending end of this interglacial by a few centuries.
Now that’s a green agenda with which I can get on board .
Do you have a website? 500.org perhaps? Fitting replacement for 350.org, no?
I’ll join up … https://newtube.app/user/RAOB/QiZ0C6Z
Why only 500 ppm?
I have to mow the lawns and do the pruning.
And cut the trees. Do you have any idea how fast they grow at 400ppm?
Will need to buy stock in the chainsaw companies when it hits 1000.
With indoor levels above 600 ppm some individuals may experience slight negative effects, persistent levels above 1000 are therefor not recommended, ventilation is generally calculated so that 1000 ppm is not exceeded.
Are you absolutely sure on those numbers? I thought the figures for carbon dioxide were quite a bit higher. The figures for carbon monoxide, of course, are a lot lower. You might find that levels up to 1000 ppm are fairly unsmptomatic, over 1000 ppm you might feel slightly drowsy but it won’t be harmful – in fact levels up to 5000 ppm have no long term side effects, although between 5000 and 50000 ppm you may experience oxygen deprivation – over 50000 ppm would likely be fatal for more than a few minutes. Everybody has likely experienced levels over 1000 ppm several times in their lives with no ill effects.
Although the actual precise numbers are classified, I think submarines operate with CO2 values well above 1000ppm. And you can bet that is extremely conservative.
Professional greenhouses (I have heard) typically use 1200ppm.
Me, too! 🙂
Dam strait. CO2 is good for this planet. More is preferable. Warmer Is Better. Please speak for yourself, Eric, and not for me.
James DeSmog is a whining ninny. Ad hom that!
Never give an inch.
I recently wrote a review of Patrick Moore’s latest book “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom”, but it has not yet been published.
This review is also quite good. Excerpted below is the most significant part. I strongly agree with Moore on these points, and independently published most of them years ago.
For the record, I am sick of this asinine pandering to climate doomsters, who have had the science completely wrong for decades (and they know that – they are not just wrong, they are deliberate fraudsters, wolves stampeding the sheep).
CO2 is not dangerously high, it is dangerously low. Earth is not dangerously warming, and is clearly cooler-than-optimum for humanity and the environment. End of crisis; end of scary story.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/patrick_moore_and_the_agenda_of_fear.html
Moore asserts that CO2 level should be celebrated as a critical life force: for 150 million years, CO2 level had been declining, and a rise in CO2 had had markedly beneficial effects on the growth of food crops, trees, and many wild environments because higher CO2 levels result in less water loss and cause plants to become more efficient in their use of water. As for “global warming,” he presents two counterpoints: life flourished during warmer as opposed to colder times; and in the past 50 million years, the Earth has in fact been cooling steadily, and is colder than it has been during most of life’s existence. The serious problem isn’t CO2, it is the environmentalists’ push for wind and solar energy, the maligning of the most economical source of reliable energy, and the jeopardizing of poor populations impacted by carbon reduction programs.
Just to throw some confusion into this thread- is it possible that higher concentrations of O2 allowed dinosaurs to become the behemoths in the fossil record? This does not mean that CO2 would necessarily be lower- maybe N2 would have been less prevalent?
I have often wondered how an apatosaurus was capable of getting enough O2 through those relatively small nostrils and incredibly long trachea.
I have a t-shirt to prove it – I love all the frowned looks l get
A thousand more years of coal burning prosperity for humans and greens(plants).!
It seemed to fall a bit flat right about where he got to “climate crisis” which doesn’t currently exist, nor will until we descend into the next abyss of cold.
….. so, since he was lying about other people lying, I didn’t read any further. Did I miss anything?
No, you didn’t miss anything. He couldn’t make a case against skeptics any better than he does with trying to promote Human-caused Climate Change.
A lot of words, not much substance.
A lot of bluster, compounded by sputtering rage.
I read it all, through my tears. By the time he gets to “…Toxic conversations like these stall our ability to think collectively…” I just cracked up.
That is a real agenda, isn’t it? Getting us all to “think collectively”, like ants in a hive. These people are seriously hive-minded, and it freaks them to see someone walking outside the marching line, makes them doubt their own sanity?
They are not sane.
“it freaks them to see someone walking outside the marching line, makes them doubt their own sanity?”
Yes, disagreeing with alarmists does make them question their sanity, so they turn it around and question the sanity of those who disagree with them. This way their worldview remains intact, and that’s the most important thing to a True Believer.
Having one’s Picture of Reality burst is not pleasant. It causes confusion and anxiety, so people go to great lengths to maintain their version of reality, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
I researched nuclear long ago for my thesis. Concluded it was not economic then when a ‘whole of economy’ view was taken. Researched it again for essay Going Nuclear in ebook Blowing Smoke. The Voglte economic disaster with gen three Westinghouse designs shows it still isn’t. Ditto the horrible cost overruns on France’s 3rd gen design experienced by new Finland and France reactors. NONE of these are yet completed; years late and 2x-3x initial cost projections.
The practical path forward for the next few decades is CCGT. There is plenty of natural gas in the world, and we have gotten good at shipping LNG to places pipelines cannot reach. Capital is only about $1500/KW, and LCOE correctly calculated is about $57/MWh compared to wind at $147/MWh.
CCGT cuts CO2 emissions over equivalent coal MWh to about 35-40% (depending conventional or supercritical coal (scc)). Two reasons: CCGT thermal efficiency 61%, SCC 41%; combustion stoichiometry—CCGT exhaust is 2/3 water vapor. That slows CO2 growth significantly for those who think it a problem.
CCGT lifetime is about 40 years (manufacturer warrant). That gives the world 4 decades to really research the several 4th gen nuclear options noted in the essay, pick say the two best, and then build pilot scale nuclear facilities to work out any engineering bugs and really understand the economics. Then move forward with the best of the two. Nuclear in 40 years, not now, using a very economic CCGT bridge technology.
Doesn’t make it any cheaper when your nuclear power source has to be built to withstand the impact of a fully-fueled jetliner, address any possible earthquake scenario, and be able to ride out power outages lasting days to weeks. Contrast that to something that’s basically like putting a jet engine on a concrete slab.
Yeah, I never understood why, if a fully fueled jet liner crashing into it had to be figured into the design and build, why not simply ring it with surface-to-air missiles?
Back in the day – and we are talking last century – I had a mate who worked at Lucas Heights, the Australian research reactor.
In conversation he mentioned that they had recently done a safety exercise based on a ‘lone wolf of no political affiliation with a history of mental problems’ attempting to crash an aircraft into the reactor.
“Oh,” I said, musing on the idea. “So what were you suppose to do?”
“Get inside the reactor building. That thing is massive. Safest building on the site.”
Now I am not a Nuclear professional, nor do I play one on television, but I feel confident in saying the costs of plane proofing and earthquake proving your reactor are already part of the design and installation cost.
Did they have a strategy for a “lone wolf of no political affiliation with a history of mental problems” teaching himself nuclear reactor control systems, getting through security and taking the reactor out from the inside? Just asking for a friend.
What … with the control room ops just standing there watching him?
Brian: Your response does not account for this- the ops may do just that, if the alternative is to report it, only to find that the op is “racist” for reporting it! It should not happen, but I read stories about british cops and child-protection types failing to report pakistani rape gangs because….racist!
I knew an ex-Marine that worked security at a nuclear power plant – they are armed to the teeth. It would take a small army to force your way in, and bypassing security without being detected is no easy task.
The real test was never a fully fueled jetliner. Commercial jets are just metal balloons.
The real test for a structure like a nuclear reactor was a jet fighter. The denisty at the impact point is much higher than a jet airliner.
Incidentally, there have been tests of reactor style structure with jet fighters.
CCGT may be the cheapest now, but we should not place all our eggs in that one basket. Nuclear has the strategic advantage that fuel can be stored at the facility to reduce risk of transport disruption.
True but. 3rd gen nuc now is really uncompetitively expensive. 4th gen Molten salt (U or T), Gates’ TWR, several SMR concepts all have promise. Texas had a nat gas problem because they did not have much intermediate buffer storage (mostly straight from wellhead to gas generation), and had not cold hardened their facilities. Texas lost one of its four nuclear generators during the cold snap also; Pump for water return from steam cooling tower froze up.
Besides, I don’t mind expenditures that prevent another Fukushima Daiichi. Most 4th gen nuclear concepts don’t even have all the issues you cite. Molten salt recoverably kills itself in any event. TWR has no refueling, so no spent fuel storage. SMR can either be refueled or not (Navy versions today last ~20 years and then are just discarded) but with small footprints easier to harden.
Nuscale has a fully licensed SMR reactor. The WIN project will have a series of them up and running by 2028.
There is a lot of truth in your analysis. Essentially, light water reactors, which all power plants in the U.S. are, were probably never the best “economic” models to choose. LWRs provided synergy for a nuclear navy that had chosen that technology, and that’s about it.
I can say that the costs of building a new 3rd gen plant are pretty high, whether it’s Westinghouse’s or AREVA’s. A lot of that cost is simply the concrete necessary to qualify the plant seismically. Also, to be fair, it should be noted that AREVA did bring EPRs online at Taishan in China. The French plant is getting close I think, and who knows about the infamous Finnish one (I stopped following it). Not sure if there’s an AP1000 up and running anywhere.
A couple of points that you don’t mention about costs for 3rd gen:
Finally, I def agree that natural gas is a great intermediate strategy. I don’t think it’s wise to forgo nuclear completely in the interim, though, as there is value in a diversified generation portfolio. And while I agree that there is more engineering to be done to commercialize some of the advanced technologies, we don’t need 40 years to finalize it. Not even close. We do need to get some pilot plants up and running, though, to fully understand these. I actually think there are plans for this at, say, INL.
There is a new ANEEL nuclear fuel, a combination of thorium and uranium, that promises a much lower waste. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2020/09/22/aneel-a-game-changing-nuclear-fuel/?sh=570592c614ea
I tend to agree, but
Rolls Royce are currently hawking fully costed design/& build modular reactors around Europe. they believe they have a cost justifiable base for extending nuclear, small scale, rapid build, standard design along the lines of Westinghouse
s idea.viable` very quickly.I have watched nuclear reactors since I learnt about Dounreay (started running 2 years before I was born). Ive watched the ever increasing cost of ever more complex "we have never built one like this before : Breeder, Magnox, PWR, GCR, AGCR etc , I even got to work in Hinkley point when that was going up for a short period of time and my father built some real neat 1 off bits of kit for down tube inspection at Windscale .
I understand that governments and scientists want to keep development going but if only they had stopped the development being carried out at the front of the market and just kept on building standard base load reactors of one type the costs would have dropped to
time to buy some R-R shares ?
The issue with RR SMR is that it is essentially a small, factory built gen 3 design. General Dynamics (maker of US Navy reactors) is talking a true ‘failsafe’ commercial gen 4 SMR. Visit both websites to see the conceptual design design differences.
Is it possible to see prototypes? Or just paper?
To now, all paper because there are no $¥£€ for actually building something, and nobody is willing to take nuclear risk on themselves.
Damn – the whole world’s gone like Germany in the 80’s; so rabidly anti-nuclear it’s going to take decades to undo the damage and get back on track. We need that research quickly – the kind of data you can only get by building prototypes and judging the actual results.
Hopefully we will find the answer to the new question
“Where is John Galt?”
“Nuclear in 40 years, not now, using a very economic CCGT bridge technology.”
That’s the most practical thing we can do.
Instead of telling the Africans they can’t burn coal. Tell them it’s ok to switch over to Natural Gas.
The African nations should tell the worlds busybodies to take a hike, and do whatever is required to bring their people into the 20th Century, let alone the 21st.
And in doing so, they will likely get rid of many of the ongoing environmental catastrophes going on, like poaching species to the point of extinction, deforestation of natural wildlife habit etc etc.
And, in a promising development, looks like they are doing just that, in calling out the EU’s proposed carbon Border Tax as the trade protectionism it is in reality.
You might want to look at where China is with SMR units – and how they’re (uncharacteristically) assiduously racking up international certs for the design and as I understand it integrating features in to recent coal plant designs to ease swapping the fossil “hot end” for a nuke…
I know. But it depends on the coal. As I understand it (maybe wrong, dunno metallurgy) nucs cannot run at SCC steam temperatures for neutron embrittlement safety reasons.
They are also building the world’s first pilot scale (16MW, IIRC) molten salt reactor. U rather than T cycle, because means can breed and use up spent U fuel from existing reactors. Real cheap fuel. All the basic conceptual engineering was done by an MIT spinout before 2014. China just downloaded their stuff, engineered it, and Xi is building one. Meanwhile, US got Biden.
All reactor vessels are going to have issues with neutron embrittlement over time. In older reactor vessels, you anneal the vessel and recover 90%, or so, of the original life of the vessel.
I up-voted you, definitely CCGT is the best solution in general, if you have lots of local natural gas (not imported). With Koreans and Chinese doing reactors at about $5000/KW and they can last about 100yrs considering the way other reactors have been re-licenced, and reactors use a lot less fuel, how do the economics work out over a 100 years? Is it likely that the CCGT can be extended the same way. I have always like the idea of utilities having a mix of power sources since one can’t predict fuel costs 20-50 years into the future, and I don’t like the idea of every utility and business jumping on the natural gas band-wagon if that ends up putting pressure on supply, raising NatGas prices for home heating use. After all, it easy for industry to use coal or even their own nuke for a heat source, not so much for home users. But you had a lot of good info in your comment. Though work should still continue on nuclear, like the way China has been developing several different types including molten salt thorium reactors (where’s the Major, that will make his day). Like the CCGT, the molten salt allows much higher efficiency because the top end temps climb from a luke warm ~300C in current reactors to I think about 700C and thorium is more plentiful and has a nicer fuel cycle than uranium.
I don’t think reactors can last 100 years because of neutron embrittlement of steel. Can they last 40? Obviously yes. TWR design life is 40, because uses up all the preloaded fuel in that time. Navy SMR design life is 20, but these are obviously quite small to fit into a submarine), and operate on highly enriched uranium.
Molten salt, dunno, because there is a side cycle to the MIT design to periodically remove damping radioactive nucleotides. So in theory, longer. About at the end of my very generally educated but non-nuclear engineering knowledge.
Any steel vessel exposed to a neutron flux is going to be embrittled over time. The neutrons get ‘caught’ in the crystal structural of the steel, making it brittle. Annealing the vessel will allow the crystal structure to ‘relax’, removing the point defects caused by the neutron flux. You can recover about 90%, or so, of the life of the reactor vessel when you anneal it. The newer submarine reactors are designed for about 30 years of life.
The French originally went nuclear because they were vulnerable to Arab oil embargoes. Not blessed with huge reserves of accessible fossil fuels 50 years ago they chose the only sensible option.
These days they are just as vulnerable but have banned shale gas, are closing nukes and relying on wind, solar and Russian gas. Not such a sensible option.
It was the French who identified the Oklo Natural nuclear reactor in May 1972 when researchers noticed the ratios of U235 and U238 were “wrong”. It is amazing how many anti-nuclear people get really upset when you tell them nature invented the nuclear reactor 2 billion years ago. Almost 100% are Oklo reactor deniers.
And wasn’t the Natural fusion reactor invented a few billion years BEFORE that?
Nuclear would be a LOT cheaper if it were not for the environmental (heavy emphasis on “mental”) lawyers.
Did you include the obstructive costs of Environmentalism lawsuits and other efforts to slow down or stop Nuclear Power planning?
Great summarizing Eric.
I would have no qualms if the academic research into CO2 influence on climate(s) muddled along quietly in the background to deliver some kind of interesting or yawn-inducing conclusions.
But what I vehemently object to is the carpetbagging exploitation of public funds that has exploded in the form of impossible “solutions” to long-identified characteristics of Earth’s weather cycles.
Imagine what extraordinary progress could have been made if all the efforts & treasure expended on “fighting climate change” over the past 3 decades had instead been invested in say medical science or infrastructure.
I would be happy if they could fix the potholes in the roads.
……. well, for starters.
Yep
Formula One Racing is doing their part….it’s a rule now that all fuel must be 10% biofuel….see…they are onboard…onboard the Green Biofuel Train…to save the planet.
Formula 1 home is EU, which has generally succumbed to AGW climate change madness. Case in point, BoJo. Case in point, Mutti Merkel.
Oooooh dear though they lost their Champion driver to Brexit, and he won again today.
I presume you realise that no current nuclear plant can track the grid power requirements – you simply cannot control the power output fast enough.
If you look at the nuclear generation in France you can see that the nuclear output is aways below the minimum generation required. Other generators provide most of the load following.
French National Grid status (templar.co.uk)
That’s why coal and NG are needed as well, forming that all-important three-legged stool. Nuclear is good for base load only.
Reliable energy vs unreliable solar and wind…. I will take reliable every time.
Surely the use of nuclear for mostly base load demand in France does not imply that nuclear generation can’t load follow! If that were true, how could nuclear submarines possibly work? Would they just have constant power output and churn the water full time, even when not moving forward?
To the extent that nuclear plants cost significantly more to build than fossil fuel stations, there is going to be a big incentive to use them full time, somewhat similar to the incentive to use a hydro dam as fully as possible. Also, I understand that it is relatively difficult to actually shut a nuke down *completely*. However, given the cost factor, keeping them running would seem to be commercially necessary anyway.
So, might it turn out that cheaper to build, and/or safer nukes could be the world’s electrical source, better than “intermittents” for certain?
Small modular nuclear can load follow, and as David said, if nuclear submarine reactors couldn’t load follow, there would be a lot of molten radioactive puddles on the bottom of the sea.
I suspect the secret to load following is to build a series of small reactors which can be cycled up and down quickly, to supplement the larger baseload cores.
… certainly not fast enough to cope with the ERRATIC behaviour of UNRELIABLES. !
But fast enough to provide a large chunk of the BASE LOAD.
How about a ballast regulator. I heard a test rig for a new Power station dam consisted of rods inserted into the water connected to the generators. It raised the temperature of the downstream water to exactly that at which it would have been if the dam had not been built.
Man, it must suck for the US nuclear subs not being able to go from all ahead slow to full and back to slow. Must be a serious disadvantage in tactical situations. /s
Maybe most “would not have a problem with reducing CO2”, Eric, but a significant proportion of us would, especially those who recognize the risk of natural carbon sequestration threatening the viability of plant life, and who appreciate the greening (not the ‘Greening’) of the planet brought about by anthropogenic CO2 production.
I agree, CO2 is good. But I’d prefer a nuclear powered future to the insane green charade.
From the article: “The science of how to mislead people about science is advanced and muscular.”
Here’s the gist of the effort to “mislead” people about science: “Where’s your evidence for all these claims, Alarmists?
Alarmists are good at making claims but they don’t have any evidence that backs up these claims. This is their real problem.
All someone has to do is ask for evidence from an alarmist and that’s the last you hear from them. It doesn’t take a conspiracy of deniers to ask a simple question. It’s not the skeptics fault that alarmists have no answer to the question.
The main problems with the De-Smog Blog co-founder, James Hoggan, is his utter lack of scientific understanding, especially climate; his unfamiliarity with logic; his editorial dishonesty and his close connection with the David Suzuki Foundation. Apart from that he’s reputed to be very good at PR. However it’s his one skill with PR that makes his vast scientific ignorance so dangerous and ugly. He has the ability to promote the bad science and stupidity of the worst AGW true believers.
@Rory Forbes: Not only are you correct in your assessment of Hoggan, the man himself inadvertently confirmed that in a 2014 presentation within two back-to-back sentences when he first claimed skeptic climate scientists were liars, and then admitted he knew nothing about climate science at the time he hurled that accusation, which he’d arrived at immediately after reading Ross Gelbspan’s 2004 “Boiling Point” book. Gelbspan, it should be noted, is also not a climate science expert, despite being described as such.
I detailed Hoggan’s wacko lack of logical thinking in my blog post “James Hoggan’s Monster Journalistic Due Diligence Lapse,” which features a partial transcript from his 2014 presentation. Notice in the current Yale Climate article that Hoggan never says who the other co-founder of Desmog is. It really isn’t the financier guy, John Lefebvre, who plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to conduct illegal Internet gambling. It was Ross Gelbspan, who says as much starting at the 8 second point of this 2012 audio interview. But in the currrent Yale interview, Hoggan barely credits Gelbspan at all, when elsewhere on several occasions he said Gelbspan’s work was a major reason why he formed Desmog.
These people are just parasites, feeding off the low hanging fruit of political activism and the Marxist influenced environmental movement. For a PR “expert”, like Hoggan, it was a gold mine of ignorance he could tap to make a very good living, just as David Suzuki has.
Thanks for your response. It has filled in some of the information I’d forgotten over the years. He fits the model of the various “hit men” like John Cook and Peter Hadfield. They employ the same tactics, lies, fallacies and all have the same scruples.
From the article: “If you genuinely want an end to division, if you seriously think the world is in danger if we continue to emit vast quantities of CO2, compromise a little. Most of us are fans of nuclear power, which happens to be a zero carbon energy technology. Join with us, join with former NASA GISS director James Hansen, join with Michael Schellenberger, and jump on board the nuclear bandwagon.”
Excellent advice. The alarmists can reduce CO2 if they want by using nuclear energy, and the conservatives will support the idea.
So if the alarmists don’t focus on the doable (nuclear), then they are not really serious about reducing CO2.
they are not looking for a solution they are ideologically driven and a solution would be a disaster
It still amazes me to this day that climate activists, apparently including Hoggan, read the climate gate emails and see no wrong doing. Open discussion of obstructing FOIA requests, discussions of stacking peer review boards, discussion of intimidating a journal editor, discussions of hiding data and a discussion of deleting data (which thankfully didn’t happen) and discussion of data manipulation to tell a certain story. But climate activists read all that and with a straight face say “nothing to see here.”
If only Richard Nixon were so lucky with the Watergate Investigation. (lol)
He cleverly lied by omission about the Climategate emails. As a long-standing campaigner he would have known he was lying and how.
A Bad Actor if ever there was one.
The evidence wasn’t that they falsified data – as he rightly says it don;t show – but that they falsified the confidence in the data.
The bristlecone trend doesn’t match other observations so the bristlecone trend is spurious. No. Just cut off the inconvenient bit and splice on other observations. No data has been falsifed. But lots of confidence in the data has be falsely given.
He knows that he is technically telling the truth about Climategate. And he knows that he is deliberately misleading people about Climategate.
Which is silly. All the Civil Servants who make decision know the truth. As does anyone who cares enough about the environment to do any basic research.
It’s just about playing to the gallery.
Mr. Courtney: I agree that he knows the full measure of the lie he tells re: Climategate, including this- the “free world’s media” wrote no stories at all, because they could not report this for fear the reading public might get the “wrong” idea. American news outlet ignored the story, there were no misleading articles because there were no articles at all. He is well aware that there were no stories at all, because he knows- any person who got wind of that story found the word “hoax” coming to mind. No U.S. news outlets, including Fox, will run a story showing CliSci in a bad light, period.
” Finding myself in the midst of a nasty international dispute about the climate crisis, I realized the strategies used to mislead people with anti-science propaganda and anti-environmentalism are much more developed and robust than those used to educate people about science and the environment.”
Pot calling the kettle black….or white….or yellow….or whatever the hell won’t get me banned.
What you’ve provided is the perfect example of the projection employed by the Left. You can guarantee that when we’re blamed for some nasty failing, that’s something they’re either about to do or have been doing all along.
I seriously doubt that…
Well, at least I agree with you.
Jim
By this I meant, going nuclear. We could always use a nuclear furnace to burn some limestone, if we need more CO2. Or just set fire to some open pit mines.
Typical of liberal political discourse today. Anyone who disagrees isn’t just wrong, they are evil.
Most of the contributors who write on WUWT would have no problem with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, so long as it doesn’t cost us anything.
Effort has a cost, and don’t count me in on wanting to reduce CO2. In terms of photosynthesis and keeping the planet green, it is in short supply. Programs to reduce CO2 emission or have it sequestered are without merit.
…environmentalists…very often [tell] the truth: Humans are … dangerously overheating the climate.
This coming August 12th it will be 40 years since the global warming/climate change/climate crisis began You Tube Climate Change – Warming Warning – 1981 and not very many if any of the claims and predictions/projections have come true over the last four decades.
The moment a “scientist” or reporter says you need “empathy”, I am suspicious. This generally means they are emotional about a subject and incapable of being unbiased. It means their mind is made up, not from the evidence but from the need to belong to a herd of other humans who believe likewise.
Science is not about “empathy”, it’s about collecting data and facts and then building theories to explain them. A good theory is a testable theory that can be falsified, otherwise it’s just a belief.
I whole-hardheartedly agree that we need to be developing commercially economic sound nuclear power. It is the bridge to the future – not these gimmick intermittent power generation technologies.
It was actually an outfit/journal like De-smog Blog that got me suspicious and eventually on the anti-CAGW bandwagon. If it was not for Think Progress and John Podesta going after Roger Pielke Jr. , as revealed by Wikileaks in 2016, I would have gone on blissfully teaching climate science at my university (out of the textbook, trusting in peer review).
And after the Think Progress encounter, I chanced upon De-smog Blog, which almost seemed like a caricature of everything that was wrong with Think Progress. I have never seen a more amateur, ham-fisted attempt at character assassination, of anyone who even peripherally hints that there might be a problem with the state of climate science, than De-smog Blog. It is like the Seven Degrees to Big Oil game, which implicates and indicts anyone De-smog Blog considers inimical, with the charge of being on the payroll of Big Oil… and all De-smog Blog seems to require for evidence is the “target” being spotted at a petrol filling station.
And it is so badly done, that De-smog Blog is often my first stop in discussing climate change alarmism with people who are sitting on the fence, because a sixth-grader could debunk its assertions. I suppose it works for the cognitively impaired, who can’t think critically, but for those with any ability, it is a gift that keeps on giving. All I need is one false or dubious assertion to begin unravelling the CAGW “house of cards”, and De-smog Blog is like a candy store filled with such treats.
All in all, I consider De-smog Blog to be one of the “weakest links in the chain” and completely inimical to the aims of the CAGW alarmist community.
So, I would hate to see it go.
DesmogBlog was complicit in the Gleick affair. (Gleick-gate?)
Few will remember his dastardly deeds and the accompanying fake polar bear photos … nor will they remember his lies directed at The Heartland Institute, which he was forced to walk back and apologize for. A sorry affair altogether and typical of DesmogBlog. They’ve started so many lies it’s criminal.
I remember Fakegate: when Dr. Peter Gleick† committed fraud, identity theft & forgery to defame Heartland Institute — with the assistance of James Hoggan’s DeSmogBlog.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/28/de-smog-blog-founder-opens-up-about-the-bad-actors-impeding-climate-action/#comment-3215667
†Ironically, Gleick was, at the time, the climate movement’s most prominent ethicist, being Chairman of the AGU’s Scientific Ethics Task Force. When Gleick’s crimes came to light, the AGU allowed him to resign that chairmanship for “personal, private reasons.” The irony of lying to shield the Scientific Ethics Task Force Chair seems not to have occurred to anyone at the AGU.
The only reason Gleick wasn’t prosecuted for his crimes is that the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney stonewalled and refused to prosecute, until the statute of limitations had run out.
As for Hoggan, it is impossible to know what he knew and when he knew it, but his web site still claims that Gleick’s forgery is genuine.
That seems to have been a recurring theme from within the AGW cult from the start. Violate all manner of ethical behavior and scientific protocol then use the media to gas-light and cancel real, hard working scientists and skeptics. This has all been either a willing or involuntary use of Marxist propaganda.
DeSmogBlog is a website of, by, and for Climate Liars, our new derogatory name for, well….climate liars.
Even worse … they are just the PR branch of the climate liar cult. They have no understanding of the science at all, but know many ways to attack those who do … all of which have nothing to do with science.
My parents visited DeSmogBlog & all they got for me was a lousy box with a bunch of dials, some kind of switch & a push button.
Vilifying co2 to appease a group of lying tyrants is despicable.
Shame on you Eric for giving that repulsive blog publicity.
Where do we put these new nuclear reactors? (It’s a given that they need huge water supplies to cool waste heat discharge.)
Lot’s of people are happy to see nuclear power increase. I’m not opposed to it; can’t see how emissions targets can be met without it. However, few of us are comfortable with a reactor being built just down the road from us.
A hint of hypocrisy?
Getting on in a world of increasing complexity AND population we must make compromises with increased frequency. Choosing nuclear over the AGW true believer/globalist/Marxist alternatives should be a no-brainer. We can’t survive without a reliable and reasonably affordable energy supply. Presently fossil fuels are the easiest choice, but it seems silly to be burning a resource with so many better uses … especially when there is already a useful alternative.
I have no problem with nuclear being built just down the road, especially if they sweeten the deal by offering everyone in the vicinity discounted electricity.
“Where do we put these new nuclear reactors? (It’s a given that they need huge water supplies to cool waste heat discharge.)”
In near term, add reactors to existing nuclear site {and don’t get rid of existing nuclear energy sites}.
But I favor putting nuclear energy on floating platforms in lakes and ocean.
And like idea making ocean settlements. Or I call it, low cost beach housing which starts making floating breakwaters in coastal zones. So make breakwaters which stop Cat 6 hurricane waves. Though this not stopping the wind- just ocean waves generated by such powerful wind. And making such calm water would also benefit land coastal communities.
In terms politics, one might start making such breakwater for land coastal communities, and later expand or continue it to then make ocean settlements and/or floating nuclear reactors.
And also stuff like waste water treatment which also use by ocean settlements.
Also all this could have low profile {it doesn’t need to very high above waterline, and be far enough away from coast so does interfere much with the “ocean view”}
What do these floating breakwaters float on?
Wouldn’t they just rise & fall on the swells, which would amount to a very unstable platform?
You want a floating breakwater to be stable. And example of something which remains stable is a spar buoy, wiki:
“A spar buoy is a tall, thin buoy that floats upright in the water and is characterized by a small water plane area and a large mass. Because they tend to be stable ocean platforms, spar buoys are popular for making oceanographic measurements.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_buoy
And wave energy you are stopping is deeper in the water, the larger the wave the deeper, or one can ignore most of a top of bigger waves, as example could have it be 10 feet above waterline and be 60 feet under the waterline. And the 30 foot wave would go over it, but you would stopping wave energy under water which is supporting the 30 foot wave.
And to stop big wave you want it massive and large diameter, but 99% of mass can be water which is within spar buoy. And it’s anchored like in the wiki picture. Need strong anchor which doesn’t cost a lot per unit. And type would depend on what kind ocean floor and it’s depth. For instance water depth could around 100 meters. And could be pile, screw, suction, anchor or just a dead weight anchor. Anchoring it would be significant part cost of the floating breakwater, and so the condition of sea floor could be determining factor of where one put a breakwater.
This is smaller scale but gives example of how can use screw/Helix anchors:
http://www.boatmoorings.com/
[So, the anchor would be about 10 times stronger]
Nobody wants a huge wind turbine in their back yard either.
But that hasn’t stop that particular environmental infection.
Those are evaporative towers at the modern power plants, friend. Fossil fuel plants once used scads of cooling water also but moved to evaporative towers. We could eventually move to air cooling if needbe.
Do you have wind turbines built down the road from you?
I would rather have a nuclear reactor “just down the road” than a solar farm.
From Hoggan: “The hacked emails were then used to dupe much of the free world’s media into writing misleading stories suggesting climate scientists were falsifying data, and raising the possibility that global warming was a hoax.”
Untrue: the MSM gave the story no attention for two weeks, up until the opening of the Copenhagen conference, on which it had no impact. During that interval we here on WUWT were grousing about how the media was complicit in a coverup.
The is a really excellent podcast done by Red Pilled America, (called Cherry Picking) that interviews Anthony Watts and many others about the CRU hack. It came out about 2 years ago, and is really worth the time, but unfortunately it seems to have been “memory holed”. If you can find it anywhere, it is well worth the listen. IMHO
Hoggan’s statement was not only a lie, but a gross logical fallacy. Apart from the fact that the emails were NOT “hacked”, it doesn’t matter how they were obtained if they were true. The CRU WAS falsifying data and there was massive evidence of collusion, criminal conspiracy and malfeasance. “Climategate” was unmitigated empirical evidence … something AGW true believers are allergic to.
AGW is NOT a hoax. It’s criminal malfeasance … a FRAUD!
“The disinformation was so blatant and shameless. And much of it involved ad hominem attacks”
Accusing your enemies of doing what you are doing yourself is a well established propaganda technique. It helps to obscure your own egregious falsehoods.
Let’s talk about safety…
Nuclear is safer per unit of power produced than ANY other form of electrical generation. People fall off roofs installing solar panels.
New nuclear technologies are even safer.
“Here’s a truth for you James. Most of the contributors who write on WUWT would have no problem with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, so long as it doesn’t cost us anything.”
That could be regarded as unrealistic. Things have costs.
But one could talk about low costs.
And we are wasting resources and could stop doing that.
I think everyone could agree, Obama wasted money on “high speed trains”. And stopping pipelines is wasting money. As is stopping border wall from being completed.
It seems Dept Energy is not doing it’s job. Since Dept could spend same amount of money and do it’s job, and I would count that as not costing anything.
It seems the easiest way to do, is stop subsiding “alternative energy”.
It seems the cost nuclear energy is mostly connected to legal aspects.
But if want make enough nuclear energy to make unrealistic expectation of lower CO2
emission within a short time period. That isn’t engineer issue, it’s big political issue to deal with- which could cost little in terms of dollar amount. And one might assume politicians could and should have already been doing this work, it seems like taunting challenge.
But if simply cease all the bickering over “alternative energy”- and admit it actually has not worked to lower CO2. There might be enough time for politicians to focus on what already has lowered CO2 emission. But even in that case, and the lack of Dept Energy doing it’s job,
it does seem like fast action would forthcoming from law makers. And it seems politicans probably see the whole idea of real threat from CO2 emission as a Hoax.
I tend think think politician are dumb as bricks, but not quite that dumb, and are fairly good at recognizing bullshit. Or even AOC doesn’t believe this wacky religion.
What a fat load of psychological projection. What he accuses his opponents of are precisely what he and his allies are guilty of.
“Finding myself in the midst of a nasty international dispute about the climate crisis, I realized the strategies used to mislead people with anti-science propaganda and anti-environmentalism are much more developed and robust than those used to educate people about science and the environment.
The more I delved into the war on fact-based reality, the angrier I got. The disinformation was so blatant and shameless. And much of it involved ad hominem attacks. But the main source of my anger was the effectiveness of the tactics: They worked, at least somewhat. Toxic conversations like these stall our ability to think collectively, act in our own interests and solve the many dangerous environmental problems stalking everyone on Earth.”
Who effectively uses anti-science propaganda and ad hominem attacks? Look in the mirror Mr. Hoggan.
Addition of nuclear OK but why buy into the need to reduce CO2?
I’m not – I’m just saying I don’t care about CO2. If going nuclear takes the heat out of the issue, and helps secure everyone’s electricity supply, kind of a win / win.
If going nuclear causes the end of the windmill and industial solar era then it would be a huge win for humanity and the creatues with which we share this world.
Windmills and industrial solar are a blight on the landscape. An affront to the senses. Let’s stop uglifying our world with these things.
“Windmills and industrial solar are a blight on the landscape.”
How true. I have NEVER understood how anyone who claims to “care about the environment” can look at one of those monstrosities and still say that it’s “environmentally friendly”. But I suspect that most of them have never done so.
“The goal of argument and public debate should NOT be to crush someone who disagrees with you, but to bring forward the truth“.
Trouble is I’m bombarded with conflicting truths-
‘Mr Cass said he expected the study to show clean technology was capable but would be expensive “like solar was 10 years ago”.’
Clean energy to solve grid security: study (msn.com)
whereas-
‘LNG imports and gas storage will be needed to cover peak demand.’
LNG imports push Australia’s projected gas supply gap out to 2026 (msn.com)
I had though Des Mog was the gentleman’s name.
The chappy is confused, he thinks visible air pollution is due to carbon dioxide.
I find it amusing that the vast majority of replies to this post are not discussing the rants/merits of the blog creator, but more concerned that young Eric believes that many of us would be happy to reduce CO2 levels.
GREEN THE PLANET! CARBON PLUS FTW! 😀
“environmental collapse.”
That itself is a piece of the noted propaganda strategies.
You make a series of claims. Extinction of species, warming oceans, etc.
Then you declare they all add up to an even bigger claim.
Then you point at the Boogeyman. The Bad Guy.
And your audience hopefully fails to examine the list of supposed threats, but simply decides surely at least a couple are valid.
Therefore Boogeyman.
Now, you could go back to the list. And examine each one. Until you figure out one by one that they are all made up or are nowhere as bad as claimed.
But by that time, the propagandist has added three more disasters!
“Environmental collapse” is not really a thing. It is the fictional price we pay for provoking or violating the rules of avoiding the Boogeyman.
We toyed with Nukular Energy. And got Godzilla.
Go watch “The Village” again. Follow the rules of the Elders or the Boogeyman will come out of the woods.
Well, quite independent of the question of how good it would be to use more nuclear power is the question what money spend on climate science and carbon reduction exactly is buying.
And in this regards the truth and fact loving James Hogan owes us readers an answer to the question what exactly is a Billion or a Trillion spend in USA exactly is buying in the case of India and China continuing to produce their electricity from increasing amounts of coal over the next 10years and the overall CO2 sensitivity being on the low end (which is kind of a worst case scenario for the case “use dollars to reduce future warming” he has to consider for this)
Hoggan wrote a book lamenting the “toxic rhetoric” and “divisive state of public debate.”
https://www.amazon.com/Im-Right-You%C2%92re-Idiot-Discourse/dp/0865718172
At the very same time, his DeSmogBlog site was (and is!) still doggedly defending Peter Gleick’s forged Fakegate “Strategy memo,” full of brazen lies, smearing Heartland.
https://sealevel.info/Peter_Gleick_DeSmogBlog_and_the_Fakegate_Scandal-Burton.html
Do you think Hoggan even knows how to spell the word hypocrisy?
James is really full of his own rightenousness isn’t he? Can someone open a window please.
I find it fascinating that Warmists like James Hogan all seek to accuse the sceptics of doing exactly what they do themselves although to a much greater extent; their misinformation being ubiquitous and encapsulated in the CAGW viral Meme, now at pandemic levels.
This is a standard left wing/Marxist tactic.
I personally DO have a problem with any n all of the co2 bullshit cleanups lowerings etc
its NOT a problem
cleaning up the long left serious pollution by toxic chem waste etc in legacy sites for eg
go for it
we could prob have sorted em all with the money wasted ON the warmists wet dreams
“The more I delved into the war on fact-based reality, the angrier I got. The disinformation was so blatant and shameless. And much of it involved ad hominem attacks. But the main source of my anger was the effectiveness of the tactics: They worked, at least somewhat. Toxic conversations like these stall our ability to think collectively, act in our own interests and solve the many dangerous environmental problems stalking everyone on Earth”……… for a brief moment I thought he’d seen the light, then I realised he was just projecting.
Eric writes: “Here’s a truth for you James. Most of the contributors who write on WUWT would have no problem with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, so long as it doesn’t cost us anything.”
I disagree with that statement and here’s why: To vilify CO2 as bad or a pollutant, etc. is to be against Life. CO2 is the essence of all life on this planet. Without a minimum level of around 150 ppm CO2, all plants die. This leads to all animals dying – extinction of all terrestrial life on this planet.
Hence anyone who supports, argues for or agrees with the notion of CO2 as bad – are themselves serving an evil purpose often under the guise of a misguided messiah complex* to save the world. (*which is a mental disorder but that’s another topic)
We humans are in fact internal combustion engines! We use hydrocarbons (carbohydrates) as fuel, combine then with oxygen and “burn” them, and the waste products are CO2 and water. You could conclude after some simple maths that every human on this planet by living, breathing and eating is equivalent to driving a car for 1,000 to 3,000 miles a year in terms of hydrocarbons consumed and waste products generated from that “burning”.
So where does this misanthropic crusade end? Does it end with banning fossil fuels? Or is the goal much more sinister? To cull the herd of talking apes by some drastic percentage?
Proponents of CO2 reduction are de facto against life, and as such no compromise, or acceptance of their diatribe should be acceded to.
For evidence of the pure evil nature of the “greens” in their many crusades see MacRae’s essay here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
They have already killed more than Stalin, Hitler, Mao et al combined with various green initiatives. This latest one involving the Climate Change Cult promises to up the ante considerably by eliminating cheap and relatively clean energy needed to sustain the herd of humans on this planet now.
There is an existential threat, but it’s not fossil fuels nor CO2. It’s the brainwashing that the essence of life is something bad and to be banned!
PR consultant professional–don’t forget down is up
And if you did not get at least 3 media hits per day in our campaign of the Climate Crusades we are not doing our job.
The degree of PR consultant drumbeats is really a clue as to the size of the money quest underpinning the Climate Crusades. For such a massive money undertaking, they need to keep awareness at a Pearl Harbor attack level all the time.
Da Smog Bog is the last place I would go for info. I haven’t been there in years.
His description of fake news fits him to a tee.
CO2 has been a massive benefit to huminity helping to boost food production and generally halting the likely slide into the next ice-age. So I like the fact that CO2 is rising and am very pleased at the failure of those who want it otherwise. It has no real down side and because cooling is the only substantial risk we face rising CO2 makes the only real risk we face less and less likely.