News bits: The AGW propaganda war update; Radical Christianity and oil; Psychological projecting

AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been a heavily propagandized science topic for decades. The reality of it, and the fact that it is serious, is not in dispute among climate science experts. It remains heavily disputed among enraged government-hating ideologues (most Republicans (~90% ?) and Libertarians (~97% ?), corrupt cynical politicians paid off by pro-pollution business interests and religious ideologies (chemicals, transportation, oil, coal, gas, Christianity, etc.) and various crackpots spouting various mostly idiotic false theories. So far, the deniers have done a damn good job of (1) deceiving, distracting and confusing the public, and (2) blocking or slowing national and international efforts to deal with it. All of this is documented and not seriously disputed by nearly all normal, reality-attached people.

At the COP28 UN climate summit, the main or only international AGW game in existence, meeting in the staunchly pro-pollution, oil-dominated United Arab Republic, the polluter’s propaganda, lies and slanders are on display. Not surprisingly, the dark free speech onslaught is shameless and ruthless. The NYT comments:

As the world’s leaders gather this week at a major summit to discuss ways to address the effects of global warming, one of the greatest obstacles they face is disinformation.

Among the biggest sources of false or misleading information about the world’s weather, according to a report released this week: influential nations, including Russia and China, whose diplomats will be attending. Others include the companies that extract fossil fuels and the online provocateurs who make money by sharing claims that global warming is a hoax.

They spread diverse and frequently debunked falsehoods: Humans are not responsible for climate change; recent wildfires were enabled by arson rather than hotter and drier conditions; the world is cooling; oil and gas giants are leading the charge toward carbon neutrality; and warnings about the environment are an excuse for authoritarian elites to destabilize the developing world and force everyone into lockdown and onto a diet of insects and lab-grown food. (Ahhh! Insect diet! 😮)

Their efforts have already significantly eroded the public pressure and political will needed to prevent a dire future for the planet, experts said.

“What has dramatically shifted is how central to public life mis- and disinformation about climate has become,” said Jennie King, an author of a new report by Climate Action Against Disinformation, an international coalition of more than 50 environmental advocacy groups.  

The campaign against meaningful action to curb emissions is powered by an ecosystem with “weird informal allegiances and overlaps” among countries, corporations and people — all with disparate agendas and motivations but united in their desire to discredit the climate change threat, Ms. King said.

“It’s actually about the normalization of disinformation, rather than just the sheer volume,” said Ms. King, who is running the coalition’s intelligence unit at the summit. “That’s what concerns me the most — how high-traction and how emotionally resonant this kind of content seems to be.”

Notice how the dark free speech campaign against AGW truth is about the same as that routinely used by America’s radical right pro-kleptocratic tyranny political movement against democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. 

At the current climate meeting in the UAE, a popular crackpot conspiracy on social media claims that governments use AGW as a pretext to steal land from farmers and cause deliberate food shortages. And, there are adult human beings who actually believe that obviously false bullshit. That’s no different from tens of millions of adult Americans believing the glaringly false 2020 stolen election and illegitimate Biden presidency bullshit. There’s no difference. Dark free speech works everywhere, especially if it has been normalized and accepted by a lot of people.

In my opinion, this trait of socially weak public defenses against the dark arts constitutes an existential threat to modern civilization, a huge global human population, democracies everywhere, civil liberties and the rule of law. That’s why Steve Bannon’s battle cry against democracy and truth is flood the zone with shit! (disinformation, lies, slanders, crackpot conspiracies, etc.). Unfortunately, Bannon’s shit-flooding tactic is quite effective. It could get most of us alive today literally killed if it causes civilization collapse, which it just might.

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An interview with Darren Dochuk, author of the 2019 book Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America, was published by TGC (The Gospel Coalition) in 2019 in an article entitled, Anointed with Oil: Evangelicals and the Petroleum Industry. Here are a few bits.

DD: While writing my first book—From Bible Belt to Sunbelt—I kept coming across influential oil executives who supported the religious and political institutions I was examining. Whether it concerned California governor Ronald Reagan’s “Kitchen Cabinet” of advisers, or Christian colleges such as Pepperdine and Biola, oilmen seemed almost omnipresent in the rise of California’s (and the Sunbelt’s) conservative movement. So I thought I might “follow the money” further and see how petroleum powerbrokers shaped the course of American religion and politics.This was part professional and part personal. While writing my first book—From Bible Belt to Sunbelt—I kept coming across influential oil executives who supported the religious and political institutions I was examining. Whether it concerned California governor Ronald Reagan’s “Kitchen Cabinet” of advisers, or Christian colleges such as Pepperdine and Biola, oilmen seemed almost omnipresent in the rise of California’s (and the Sunbelt’s) conservative movement. So I thought I might “follow the money” further and see how petroleum powerbrokers shaped the course of American religion and politics.

TGC: There were sharply divergent religious attitudes in the oil industry, especially the clash between the “civil religion of crude” and “wildcat Christianity.” What divided those camps?

DD: I identify the civil religion of crude with the major (fully integrated, multinational) oil companies of the east—Standard Oil and its offshoots—and with their controlling clan, the Rockefellers. .... The Rockefellers sought to impose order on their chaotic corporate realm (and early oil was chaotic) and to reform society .... a gospel that saw oil money as a means to uplift humanity and essentially baptize people in their liberal, internationalist worldview.

The ethic of wildcat Christianity with the independent oilmen who on account of the Rockefellers’ monopoly in Pennsylvania were forced to relocate west. Enraged by the Rockefellers’ control of their industry and that family’s liberal Protestantism, the wildcatters determined to protect their individual rights to drill exploratory wells (a process called “wildcatting”) and enjoy oil’s profits on their own terms. They shored up their core principles, which were intensely evangelical: They defended the autonomy of believers and the church, as well as orthodox theological convictions espoused in the 1915 publication The Fundamentals (a project independent oilman Lyman Stewart funded to offset Rockefeller-sponsored liberalism). They emphasized the primacy of soul-winning evangelism over social restructuring, in anticipation of Christ’s impending return. .... [pumping oil in California and Texas] these independents—many of whom, like Stewart, were extremely devout—were able to build their own empires, and fight the Rockefellers for control of their industry, and ultimately of the American church.  

Throughout oil’s history there’s been a get-rich-quick tendency, as well as a concern only for short-term economic gain, not long-term human, communal, and environmental consequences. On occasion those tendencies have stemmed from the urgencies of Christian oilmen, churches, and church folk to obtain black gold quickly in order to fund ministries and missionaries, and to spread the gospel.  

I think the oil industry has been particularly receptive to Christians and Christian values. Oil has always been seen as a business in which the combination of entrepreneurialism and certainty of belief can produce quick and spectacular outcomes.

This interview, which is long and has a lot more history in it, discusses the deep entanglement of American evangelical Christianity with brass knuckles oil capitalism. It also points why so many old-time evangelicals, now morphed into radical Christian nationalists (whether they know it or not, or deny it or not), don't seem to be all that concerned about AGW and pollution from burning oil.

In the modern radicalized Republican Party brass knuckles capitalism and Christian nationalism are compatible. One can say it’s a marriage made in Hell at least for democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. 

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In psychology projecting attributes personal feelings, desires or traits to other people, groups or things.

Projection is a standard dark free speech tactic the authoritarian radical right uses to attack political opposition and hated target groups, e.g., groups like the LQBQT community and racial minorities that God commands be vilified and oppressed. A NYT article reports about a current example:  

Trump’s Defense to Charge That He’s Anti-Democratic? 

Accuse Biden of It

Indicted over a plot to overturn an election and campaigning on promises to shatter democratic norms in a second term, Donald Trump wants voters to see Joe Biden as the bigger threat

While Mr. Trump shattered democratic norms throughout his presidency and has faced voter concerns that he would do so again in a second term, the former president in his speech repeatedly accused Mr. Biden of corrupting politics and waging a repressive “all-out war” on America.

”Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy,” he said. “Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”

Mr. Trump has made similar attacks on Mr. Biden a staple of his speeches in Iowa and elsewhere. He frequently accuses the president broadly of corruption and of weaponizing the Justice Department to influence the 2024 election. 

But in his second of two Iowa speeches on Saturday, held at a community college gym in Cedar Rapids, Mr. Trump sharpened that line of attack, suggesting a more concerted effort by his campaign to defend against accusations that Mr. Trump has an anti-democratic bent — by going on offense.

In this case, the actual dictator DJT accuses the mildly pro-democracy Biden of being a dictator in fact. Compared to the liar and traitor DJT, Biden is a freaking patriot and paragon of secular democracy. 

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