En hållbar framtid / Teachers Evening A Sustainable …...Lärarkvall En hållbar framtid / Teachers Evening A Sustainable Future Organized by the Nobel Museum and NIESs project Bifrost

Lärarkvall En hållbar framtid / Teacher’s Evening A Sustainable Future

Organized by the Nobel Museum and NIES’s project Bifrostin partnership with The Stockholm Act festival, Kulturhuset

Stockholm, Sweden22 August 2017

En

Bifrost | The Future is NowA response to the Orwellian rebranding of science in the age of Trump

built on border-crossing public interventions

linking science, education, arts and civil society

Steven HartmanHumanities for the Environment (HfE) Circumpolar ObservatoryStefansson Arctic InstituteMittuniversitetet

En hållbar framtidStudionKulturhusetThe Stockholm Act22 August 2017

This talk will present NIES’s project

Bifrost | The Future is Now

(oddly)

by not talking about it much at all…

Steven Hartman Bifrost Kulturhuset En hållbar framtid 22 August 2017

This talk will present NIES’s project


(oddly)

by not talking about it much at all

…but by presenting the remarkable context

which makes a project of its nature

—a collaborative border-crossing public intervention linking science, education, arts and civil society—

more necessary than ever.


SIGNS OF THE TIMES



https://www.ecowatch.com/millennials-trump-climate-change-

1976368422.html


Source: Pitts, Khalid. “Millennials Ditch Trump Over His Stance on Climate Change,” EcoWatch. Published 17 August 2016. https://www.ecowatch.com/millennials-trump-climate-change-1976368422.html


Historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain how a loose–knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.


From Merchants of Doubt website: www.merchantsofdoubt.org

“The U.S. scientific community has

long led the world in research on public health, environmental science, and other issues affecting the quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. ”

http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/


Promotion and coordination of climate change denial

has long been

a corporate public relations and lobbying strategyfor the fossil fuel industry

because…

Widespread recognition of the harmful effects of fossil fuel burning on the global climate system

threatens continued profits and the viability of the entire industry.

= Anthropogenic Global Warming


Source: Supran, Geoffrey and Naomi Oreskes, Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014), Environmental Research Letters, published 23 August 2017.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f

AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming------------------------

The authors conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancingclimate science—by way of its scientists’ academic publications—but promoted doubt about it inadvertorials. Given this discrepancy, the study concludes that ExxonMobil misled the public.


Climate Denial “Think Tanks” funded by fossil-full industry money include*:

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Americans for Prosperity (AFP)(AFP has its origins in a group founded in 1984 by fossil fuel billionaires Charles and David Koch--Richard Fink, executive vice president of Koch Industries, also serves as a director for both AFP and AFP Foundation.)

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University

Cato Institute

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation

Institute for Energy Research

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

* Source: Union of Concerned Scientists ( http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/global-warming-skeptic.html#.WYV37q2B2YU )

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/global-warming-skeptic.html#.WYV37q2B2YU


Fossil-Fuel Funders of Climate Science Denial include:

Koch Family Foundations

Donors Trust

Donors Capital Fund

ExxonMobil



The Faces of Climate Change Denial in the administration of Donald Trump


The Faces of Climate Change Denial in the administration of Donald Trump

Sources clockwise from upper left: Sheppard, Kate. Mike Pence’s Kinder, Gentler Climate Change Denial, Huffington Post. Published 28 Sept 2016 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-climate-change_us_57ec12bde4b082aad9b8b8f1 ); Levine, Daniel S. Rex Tillerson…5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, Heavy (http://heavy.com/news/2016/12/rex-tillerson-net-worth-salary-bio-exxon-mobil-2016-donald-trump-cabinet-russia-secretary-of-state-wife/); Muffson, Steven. Trump’s Energy Secretary just denied that humans are main cause of climate change. The Toronto Star. Published 19 June 2017 (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/06/19/trumps-energy-secretary-just-denied-that-humans-are-behind-climate-change.html ); Untitled. Video posted by Washington Post, Youtube. Published 2 June 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2ogZEGSbQg ) .


Meet Scott Pruitt —Former Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma— Current head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump Administration

Photo source: https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/12/08/what-media-should-know-about-scott-pruitt-trump-s-pick-head-epa/214763



“We won’t be joining this coalition, and we hope that those attorneys general who have joined will disavow it. Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”

Source: Pruitt, Scott & Luther Strange. “The Climate-Change Gang,” National Review, 17 May 2016.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435470/climate-change-attorneys-general

From the article: “The emails also show that American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an oil and gas lobby group, provided Pruitt’s office with template language to oppose ozone limits and the renewable fuel standard program in 2013. AFPM encouraged Oklahoma to challenge the rules, noting: ‘This argument is more credible coming from a state.’ Later that year, Pruitt did file opposition to both of these regulations. The letters also show the cosy relationship between Pruitt and the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the influential US lobbying network of Republican politicians and big business, and other lobby groups sonsored by the Koch brothers, the billionaire energy investors who have spent decades fighting against environmental regulation.”

Source: Milman, Oliver & Dominic Rushe, New EPA head Scott Pruitt's emails reveal close ties with fossil fuel interests, The Guardian. Published 22 February 2017.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/22/scott-pruitt-emails-oklahoma-fossil-fuels-koch-brothers








Cato Institute


Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation











Cato Institute


Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation






Meet Myron EbellDirector of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise InstitutePresident-elect Trumps pick to head up the transition to a new Environmental Protection Agency

Photo source: Schnayerson, Michael, “A Convenient Truth,” Vanity Fair, 16 April 2007. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/05/skeptic200705







Cato Institute


Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation











Cato Institute


Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation





Widespead Promotion of Misleading Pseudoscience


Links to Conspiracy TheoriesFake News

Alternative FactsDebunked Scientific Hypotheses


From the article: “While it’s easy to dismiss the conspiracy culture pushed by [Alex] Jones as pseudoscientific rubbish, it is not so easy to dismiss the size of the audience he has been building. Jones’s website gets 57m page views per month –double where it was six months ago.”

Source: Readfearn, Graham. More Terrifying than Trump? The booming conspiracy culture of climate science denial. The Guardian, Tuesday 6 December 2016.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/dec/06/more-terrifying-than-trump-the-booming-conspiracy-culture-of-climate-science-denial








Cato Institute


Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation





There is no question at all as to whether these “think tanks,” political “institutes” and thinly veiled lobbying organizations are collaborating with one another or with the fossil-fuel industry and corporate entities that fund them.

What is alarming today is the unprecedented extent to which they have infiltrated the U.S. federal government and many individual state governments (in both legislative and executive branches of the state apparatuses) and now exert considerable (de)regulatory influence over policy-making in their respective areas.

This they accomplish through the politically appointed leaders and upper-level management of many different agencies with very far reaching powers (the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the National Parks Service, the Department of Education etc).


Through a kind of Orwellian rebranding of the topics and conversations of climate change, science, environmental protection, and education (among numerous other topics) within national political and bureaucratic discourses, these professional climate change deniers are effectively subverting the very raisons d' être of the agencies they now steer.

In the process they are working to sidestep conversations concerning anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and climate change altogether by scrubbing clean references to both in agency public communications wherever they can get away with it and by severely cutting back on funding for research that address these issues.

In turn they are aggressively attempting to valorize and normalize the extreme minority (largely junk science) view of climate change as natural, which is overwhelmingly at odds with scientific consensus internationally as represented by many national scientific academies, international scholarly and scientific organizations and the consensus view within the climate science community.


“The Trump administration has disbanded a federal advisory panel that worked to translate the government’s climate data into actionable insight for policymakers and the private sector, according to a report in the Washington Post. The 15-member Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment included academics, corporate representatives, and local officials who were tasked with helping public and private-sector officials understand the findings of the National Climate Assessment so that the information could factor into their long-term planning.” – Chas Danner

Source: Danner, Chas. Trump Administration Disbands Climate Change Advisory Panel, New York Magazine. Published 20 August 2017.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/trump-administration-disbands-climate-change-advisory-panel.html


From the article: “Another grant winner…confirmed that he, too, had received a request from a DOE official on 24 August to remove references to climate change from his project’s description….The White House’s 2018 budget proposal for the DOE Office of Science proposes scaling back or eliminating support for many climate-research programmes and research areas, such as climate feedbacks.”

Source: Tollefson, Jeff & Amy Maxman, US energy agency asked scientists to scrub references to climate change. Nature. Published 25 August 2017.

doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22513

http://www.nature.com/news/us-energy-agency-asked-scientists-to-scrub-references-to-climate-change-1.22513?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews&sf109945786=1



Sourse: Clement, Joel. “I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration.” Washington Post, 19 July 2017.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-a-scientist-the-trump-administration-reassigned-me-for-speaking-up-about-climate-change/2017/07/19/389b8dce-6b12-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html?utm_term=.6f37b24a8525

“Nearly seven years ago, I came to work for the Interior Department, where… I’ve helped endangered communities in Alaska prepare for and adapt to a changing climate. But on June 15, I was one of about 50 senior department employees who received letters informing us of involuntary reassignments. Citing a need to ‘improve talent development, mission delivery and collaboration,’ the letter informed me that I was reassigned to an unrelated job in the accounting office that collects royalty checks from fossil fuel companies….A few days after my reassignment, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testified before Congress that the department would use reassignments as part of its effort to eliminate employees; the only reasonable inference from that testimony is that he expects people to quit in response to undesirable transfers.”

Clement, Joel. “I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration.”

Washington Post, 19 July 2017.



Orwellian Rebranding of Science in the Age of Trump



Orwellian rebranding

science ”science”

skepticism

doubtscientists/ expertise

empiricism testability

verifiability

skepticism

”experts”doubt

common sensenotions

plausability

speculation



Steven Hartman Bifrost Kulturhuset En hållbar framtid 22 August 2017Steven Hartman Bifrost Kulturhuset En hållbar framtid 22 August

2017

Pseudoscience Masquerading as Authoritative Empirically-based Knowledge


Pseudoscience Masquerading as Authoritative Empirically-based Knowledge

A Serious Threat to Youth, Public Debate, Democracy and Human Rights


From the article: “Earlier this year a booklet from the conservativeHeartland Institute [was sent out to science teachers all over the United States].The packaging included a cover letter, ‘glossy book and a CD’ advising teachers to be skeptical because scientists — it says — are unsure about the cause of climate change. According to Heartland, one of these booklets will be sent to every public school science teacher in America. And those teachers could be a receptive audience. A recent study out of Penn State showed that one-third of science teachers are open to the idea that climate change could be naturally occurring, instead of human caused.”

Source: Wolfman-Arendt, Avi. The Ongoing Battle Between Science Teachers And Fake News, National Public Radio online. Published 28 July 2017.

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/28/537907951/the-ongoing-battle-between-science-teachers-and-fake-news


Source: The Guardian, Tuesday 6 December 2016

NIPCC

(Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change)


Spoiler Alert!


Spoiler Alert!

They don’t.


“Science teachers and legislators are fighting back after a conservative advocacy organization mailed false information on climate science to thousands of school science teachers nationwide.

After the Heartland Institute began a mass mailing of teaching materials denying the scientific consensus on climate change, lawmakers and teachers' organizations have raised the alarm over what they characterize as propaganda disguised as information.”

-------------------------------------------------

The Heartland Institute, a libertarian nonprofit organization, has sent mailings discrediting the scientific consensus on climate change to thousands of teachers nationwide. Credit: Rhett Allain via Twitter




American Enterprise Institute





Cato Institute


Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation







American Enterprise Institute





Cato Institute


Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation





It would be a mistake to think that climate denial’s cultural reach (fueled to a very large extent in countries like the USA, Australia and Russia) is limited to

countries supporting heavy fossil-fuel extractive industries.


It would be a mistake to think that climate denial’s cultural reach (fueled to a very large extent in countries like the USA, Australia and Russia) is limited to

countries supporting heavy fossil-fuel extractive industries.

The public debate in general (and students/youth in particular) in Sweden and many other countries around the world are at risk from cynical efforts to

promote ignorance and misunderstanding.


The world cannot afford to have its educators

uninvolved in serious efforts to come to terms with the greatest challenges facing the planet in this century.


It’s TeachersAll of us here as educators

Who stand between

exploitation of youth

Steven Hartman Bifrost Kulturhuset En hållbar framtid 22 August 2017Steven Hartman Bifrost Kulturhuset En hållbar framtid 22 August 2017


Who stand between

exploitation of youthby vested interests in the prevailing economic order



Who stand between


Those interests gain from

ignorance misinformation and confusion



Who stand between


Those interests gain from

ignorance misinformation and confusion

At the expense of

democracythe planetThe Future


The Future is not some distant

abstract reality


The Future is Now



Photo credit: Thorvardur Arnason


Launch is 4 November 2017

bifrostonline.org



Launch is 4 November 2017

bifrostonline.org

The Future is Now

Teachers are on the front lines


www.bifrostonline.org

Launches 4 November 2017


http://www.bifrostonline.org/


www.bifrostonline.org

Launches 4 November 2017

For a sneak preview of media elements before then visit

www.projectbifrost.org

http://www.bifrostonline.org/

http://www.projectbifrost.org/

Thank you.


Documents

En hållbar framtid / Teachers Evening A Sustainable …...Lärarkvall En hållbar framtid / Teachers Evening A Sustainable Future Organized by the Nobel Museum and NIESs project Bifrost