Nativist Conservative MPs for Fossil Fuels versus Science, Education, Research, Analysis & Society

Interesting article from a science journalist at The Guardian on comments made about ‘woke’ science by the Tories in the UK at the Conservative Conference in  ‘Science hasn’t gone ‘woke’ – the only people meddling with it are the Tories’ by Philip Ball.

However, this is neither unique to the UK Conservatives nor dissimilar elsewhere, but it is a long game strategy against grounded science, research and analysis, like Trojan horses to disrupt curricula and universities, why? 

It’s both protection for fossil fuels and avoiding climate science (Covid too) while denigrating centre right through left moderate attitudes and policies as e.g. ‘woke’, to energise older right (and too many left) voters including Brexit, Trump and now in Australia ‘The Voice’ Referendum on Aboriginal recognition.

The fulcrum globally is Koch Network think tanks found at Tufton St. London, of course the US, Australia and other parts including links via Atlas Network and in Hungary, Heritage Foundation partnered with Danubius Institute, sharing anti-EU and pro fossil fuels sentiments, shared with Putin’s Russia and fossil fuels oligarchs, also includes the EU’s regulation for environment and financial transparency.

Overall, like Covid and climate science denial, denigration of experts, analysis and universities, with the nativist Tanton Network that shares donors with Koch in the US, is used to deflect from climate science by highlighting immigrants and population growth as environmental hygiene issues.

The end game is more alarming with their and e.g. Murdoch media support for corrupt nativist authoritarian leaders and governments who deny climate science and humanity?

‘Science hasn’t gone ‘woke’ – the only people meddling with it are the Tories

Michelle Donelan’s plan to “depoliticise” science with new guidelines on sex and gender research is a chilling move

The science secretary, Michelle Donelan, told the Conservative party conference this week that the Tories are “depoliticising science”. Or as a Conservative party announcement later put it, in case you didn’t get the culture-war reference, they are “kicking woke ideology out of science”, thereby “safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness”.

Scientists do not seem too delighted to be defended in this manner. “As a scientist, I really don’t know what this means,” tweeted Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. “This is totally shocking and is something I never thought I would see in the UK,” said Buzz Baum, a molecular cell biologist for the Medical Research Council.

What exactly does Donelan think science needs protecting from? What is this woke threat? At the conference, she expanded on that. “Scientists are told by university bureaucrats that they cannot ask legitimate research questions about biological sex,” she claimed, adding that Keir Starmer thinks the “legitimate concerns of the scientific community” on these issues of sex and gender “don’t matter”. She said she will launch a review of the use of gender and sex questions in scientific research, apparently to be led by Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London, which will be used to formulate guidance.

You would need to have been hiding under a rock not to appreciate that questions of sex and gender have become controversial, bordering on incendiary, in some areas of academia. As a recent exchange by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and professor of humanities Jacqueline Rose in the New Statesman revealed, academics are often talking at cross-purposes: Dawkins defended the binary nature of human sexes from an evolutionary angle, Rose the socially constructed aspects of gender identity. On top of that, there are the complications of developmental and cognitive biology, which, among other things, can produce intersex individuals and conditions where, say, people with a Y chromosome can be anatomically female.

But one doesn’t need to take a strong stand about rights or wrongs in these debates to recognise that they are difficult and subtle – and to acknowledge it is proper that they be rigorously discussed. Arguably, this is an area where science can’t supply definitive answers to all the germane societal questions.

This is not a case of academic research being trammelled by an imposed ideology, but rather, of a range of differing views among academics themselves. Besides, rather than await clarification, Donelan has evidently formed her opinion already: she called guidance that data on sex should only be collected in exceptional circumstances “utter nonsense” and a “denial of biology”. What is the point of a review if you have decided already what it must say?

More to the point, why is the government getting involved in the first place? What chills Baum is the idea of “politicians telling scientists about the nature of biology”. Some scientists can’t help thinking of previous instances where governments imposed their views on the subject: the spurious “race science” of the Nazis and the anti-Darwinian denialism of Stalin’s regime. While that might sound a slightly hyperbolic response to a transparently desperate ploy to stoke culture-wars division, the principle is the same: a government deciding an approved position on science and demanding that academics toe the line.

Much as Donelan tries to position herself as a champion of the objectivity and freedom of science, this intervention supplies more evidence of the government’s distrust of academics in general and scientists in particular – it’s of a piece with Rishi Sunak’s assertion that scientists were given too much power during the pandemic. Witness the disturbing way this policy direction is framed. However contested and emotive this particular issue, it is hardly relevant to the large-scale practice of science – yet Donelan is seeking to leverage it to imply that all of science somehow stands at risk from “woke ideology”, as if the integrity of truth itself were at stake.

That is perhaps the most ominous aspect of this announcement. The creation of a fictitious, ubiquitous enemy to scare the population is indeed straight out of the fascist playbook. It was thoughtful of the Conservatives to drive this point home with the spectacle of party member Andrew Boff, chair of the London Assembly, being escorted from the conference hall by police on Tuesday when he voiced protest at Suella Braverman’s criticism of the term “gender ideology”.

The notion that science can be “depoliticised” at all, let alone by an agenda-driven political party, is understood to be nonsensical by those who study the interactions of science and society. Of course political agendas should never dictate research results. But the questions asked, priorities decided and societal implications of advances made absolutely make science inextricably tangled with the political landscape – not least in a controversial area like sex and gender. That entanglement can get messy, but no true democracy tries to control the narrative.’

• Philip Ball is a science writer and the author of the forthcoming book, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology

For more related blogs and articles on Climate Change, Conservatives, Environment, EU European Union, Fossil Fuels, Koch Network, Media, Science Literacy, Tanton Network and University Teaching Skills click through

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Anglosphere Oligarchs – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

BBC: 55 Tufton Street London – Libertarian Think Tanks – Koch Network

Rishi Sunak and US Radical Right Libertarians in UK – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

55 Tufton Street London: US Koch & Tanton Networks’ Think Tanks – Radical Right Libertarians and Nativists

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections

Climate Change Science Attitudes Australia and Koch in USA

Trojan Horses – Ultra Conservatives Disrupting Education Curricula to Influence Youth

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

Australia the Lucky Country?

“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. A nation more concerned with styles of life than with achievement has managed to achieve what may be the most evenly prosperous society in the world … According to the rules Australia has not deserved its good fortune.”

Donald Horne, The Lucky Country

From Stephen Dark in The Fifth Estate:

Cruising down the road to Donald Horne’s Lucky Country

For near on 30 years we have cruised down the road of economic growth feasting on the fruits of the “lucky country”. 

Sure, there were a few speed bumps along the way, a few wrong turns, and more than a few prime ministers, but it was mostly smooth sailing. 

Hit in the face by a pandemic!

Then, suddenly, we were hit in the face by a pandemic, thrown into lockdown, and our fragility as a nation was fully exposed. 

While frontline workers took it on the chin and rallied, others were reduced to fighting over toilet paper in our supermarkets. 

Shameful disparities between the social value of what essential workers do and the low wages they receive were splashed across our screens. The now-familiar failure of a free market economy to adequately value our most valuable asset; “human capital” writ large!

And as maddening as our political leaders are, with their misguided priorities and penchant for finger-pointing, in the world we live in today, they are not so much the cause of our broken political system, but a product of its decline. 

To say that we have lost faith is an understatement

But this by no means absolves our political leaders from their obligations going forward — a few points worth pointing out from the 2019 ANU Federal Election report:

Satisfaction with democracy is at its lowest level (59 per cent) since the constitutional crisis of the 1970s

Trust in government has reached its lowest level on record, with just 25 per cent believing people in government can be trusted.

56 per cent of Australians believe that the government is run for ‘a few big interests’, while just 12 per cent believe the government is run for ‘all the people’.

Life’s little anomalies

Life is full of anomalies. Note this one: 

Australia has the 12th highest average income in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — for those who are lucky enough to have a job.

Of course, using an average instead of median creates an obvious distortion: in 2017-2018 average full-time earnings were $82,436 while the median wage — the one that most of us are on — was just $48,360 before tax. Politicians prefer to spout the former; the latter is simply an “anomaly”.

And we work pretty hard for it too, with the fifth highest hours worked per capita in the OECD. 

But could it be that simple?

In short: as a consequence of our laid back opulent lifestyles — a perpetual hangover from living in the lucky country — we are all suffering from intellectual atrophy! 

Although stagnant wages and underemployment suggest something else is in play. Or perhaps we might pin it on the steady decline in funding for research and development in our universities. R&D has never been a biggy for recent governments!

But we’re still living in the lucky country, aren’t we?

In the 1960s and 70s, we gave each other a slap on the back and called ourselves “the lucky country”. 

But the book of the same name, by Donald Horne (1921-2005) — a social researcher, philosopher, and historian — from whence it came, was actually a disparaging critique of Australian society: “an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past.” 

The reference to “lucky country” was satirical in the sense that we were lucky to have made it this far. Whoops!

The dumbest, or not-so-smart country

So, we might now more solemnly call ourselves “the dumb country” — as Horne had intended. Or at least one of the dumbest countries in terms of our technological capability. 

That is, we are still riding down that same old road on the coattails of our top three exports: coal, iron ore, and liquified natural gas (LNG); inclusive of the old-world technologies which they sustain.

Innovation: now that’s an idea!

Sustainable economic growth and genuine prosperity are powered by the accumulation of knowledge which is used to create increasingly innovative industries that benefit “everyone”. 

However, perception only creates reality to the point that reality eventually dismantles your economy. Read a little further ….

The latest Harvard Growth Lab Atlas of Economic Complexity — a guide to the level of technological knowledge and its use in the production of complex products — has Australia at 87th as of 2018, lagging well behind Kazakhstan, Uganda, Senegal, and Vietnam, and sitting just above Pakistan and Mali. 

Forget lucky, let’s make it “the progressive country”

Just imagine that we lived in a more progressive time, with more progressive leaders — or if ours was a more progressive country. 

People would be more willing to give more of themselves; we would be more productive, more enthusiastic, and our children would be more optimistic about what the future holds for them.

One thing is for sure, we wouldn’t wake up in the morning, not nearly as often anyway, fraught with despair for the welfare of the next generation and our beautiful blue planet.

For more articles and blogs about ageing democracy, Australian politics, demography, economics, management & leadership, political strategy and populist politics click through.

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Some would not be surprised with the doubts and confusion being created round the COVID-19 crisis, especially by those wanting all economic activity to continue and ignore the human costs.  

 

However, much of this agitprop, astro-turfing and junk science used by non experts has much in common with the information, media and political techniques used by radical right libertarian think tanks funded by the fossil fuel sector and related media, to influence society on climate science to avoid constraints and preserve income streams, with some eugenics in the background.

 

The following article from DeSmog explains the tactics in the UK, which also replicate those of elsewhere, especially the US and to a lesser extent Australia:

 

How the UK’s Climate Science Deniers Turned Their Attention to COVID-19

 

By Zak Derler Monday, August 10, 2020

 

On December 31, 2019 many of us were reflecting on the past year and thinking about what opportunities lay ahead. Few were paying close attention to early reports of unexplained cases of pneumonia thousands of miles away in Wuhan, the large capital city of China’s Hubei Province.

 

But less than three months later, on March 23, Boris Johnson was ordering a national lockdown to try and stop that virus, by then known worldwide as COVID-19, from raging across the UK. This came 52 days after the chief medical officer of England had confirmed the nation’s first two cases.

 

The coronavirus crisis once again saw the UK divided — between those putting their trust in public health experts and their recommendations, and those quick to question the science on which the government claimed to base its decisions for controlling the pandemic. For those who have watched the decades-long efforts to slow climate action, this was a familiar phenomenon. And the coronavirus pandemic seemed to give fresh ammunition to some familiar faces.

 

A close look at commentary on both COVID-19 and climate change reveals significant crossover between unqualified voices casting doubt on experts recommending action.

 

Why?

 

“There’s nothing mysterious about this,” says Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor of cognitive science, who studies the persistence of misinformation in society at the University of Bristol.

 

“I think COVID is just climate change on steroids in a particle accelerator,” he says. “The same forces are happening: you have the inevitability of a virus which is the same as the inevitability of the physics. And opposing that you have politics which motivates some people to deny the inevitables and instead resort to bizarre claims.”

 

‘No need to panic’

 

Commentators with a history of casting doubt on established climate science first turned their attention to COVID in the days just after Chinese authorities ordered the 11 million residents of Wuhan, a city the size of London, into lockdown.

 

On January 24, Ross Clark, a columnist for The Spectator who has lamented “hysteria” around COVID-19, said there was “no need to panic about coronavirus” despite warnings from leading epidemiologists about the potential spread of the outbreak.

 

On January 29, British economist Roger Bate similarly argued on the website of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a climate science denying free-market lobby group, that news reports around COVID-19 were unnecessarily sparking a major political reaction.

 

“A contagion will happen at some point, and it’s important we recognize it and react. Unless the coronavirus mutates into something far more dangerous, this isn’t it,” he wrote.

 

The idea that governments and the media were overreacting to the coronavirus threat was echoed by libertarian online magazine Spiked, which has taken funding from notorious backers of climate science denial the Koch family, and has included Bate and other AEI scholars among its contributors. It published an article as early as January 30 saying there was “mass hysteria in the newsrooms” around COVID.

 

By mid-February, the World Health Organization had declared that the threat of COVID-19 spreading across the world was “high” — yet a relaxed attitude continued to prevail among some commentators.

 

On February 19, centre-right blog ConservativeHome published an article by Daniel Hannan, a columnist and former Tory MEP, claiming that COVID-19 was unlikely to be as lethal as the common flu.

 

Hannan, a leading figure in the UK’s campaign to leave the EU, has links to various American lobby groups that have spread misinformation on climate change including the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. He encouraged ConservativeHome readers to “cheer up” and discouraged “panic” over the virus. That message was taken up by Clark in another Spectator article, arguing that “coronavirus hysteria” was “the latest phenomenon to fulfil our weird and growing appetite for doom.”

 

Miracle cures and conspiracy theories

 

These commentators’ contributions to the debate haven’t been without consequence. Some have spread conspiracy theories that have had real-world impact, while others have admitted to ignoring official safety guidelines, putting the public at risk of catching the disease…..

 

…..Theories about miracle cures can take hold partly as a result of personal politics, Lewandowsky argues. Under lockdown, “you’re asked to stay at home and to look after other people by not doing what you’d like to do, and that is very challenging if you’re a believer in personal freedom and autonomy,” he says.

 

The same can be said of the motivations for spreading misinformation on climate change: “A lot of climate denial is very high-pitched, frenetic, emotional, angry, toxic – and that’s all triggered because people’s identity is at stake.”

 

The desire to reach for conspiracy theories may also stem from a need to feel that individuals still retain some control, says Evita March, a senior lecturer of psychology at Federation University Australia. “Conspiracy theories offer the believer some comfort in that there is still behavioural predictability,” she says.

 

And there were plenty of conspiracy theories flying around, pushed by long-time climate science deniers….

 

Distrusting modellers

 

Many commentators directed their fire at a familiar foe — scientific models.

 

On April 1, the same day the United Nations announced the postponement of the annual UN climate change conference, two prominent UK climate science deniers argued in The Wall Street Journal that the pandemic had “dramatically demonstrated the limits of scientific modelling to predict the future.”…

 

Attacking environmentalists

 

As well as attacking coronavirus experts on their response recommendations, many commentators who oppose climate action also attacked those looking further ahead by putting forward proposals to ensure recovery plans were consistent with governments’ environmental pledges.

 

For months, commentators who regularly question the veracity of mainstream climate science denounced environmental activists for supposedly distracting the world with climate change amid the threat of pandemics……

 

Political impact

 

Unlike in the EU referendum or Trump’s presidential campaign, pushing anti-expert rhetoric may no longer be a winning strategy in the wake of COVID-19. Polling shows that despite worry about the pandemic and its impacts, the public still wants governments to tackle climate change. And politicians attaching themselves to the anti-science bandwagon are now struggling in the polls.

 

For the Centre for Countering Digital Hate’s Imran Ahmed, attacking the concept of expertise around COVID-19 is “the first truly great strategic mistake by those who espouse this radical world view.”

 

For more related blogs and articles on climate change, COVID-19, critical thinking, environment, fossil fuel pollution, libertarian economics, media, political strategy, populist politics, science literacy and statistical analysis.

 

Covid-19 Climate Science Vaccination Misinformation PR and Astro Turfing

In recent months there has been an increase in confusion, misrepresentation and misunderstanding in news and social media round Covid-19 using same techniques as in tobacco, climate science denialism and anti-vaccination movements that seem to benefit US radical right libertarians’ preferred ideology and politics.

 

The following articles from The Fifth Estate in Australia and DeSmog Blog in Canada explain the communication techniques well.

 

Separating truth from lies in the causes of the pandemic

 

David Thorpe | 28 April 2020

 

OPINION: What’s caused this devastating pandemic that’s so far cost at least 207,000 lives (and it’s hardly begun) and wrecked the global economy? If, like me, you’ve been on the receiving end of a blizzard of bizarre messages claiming to reveal the truth behind the pandemic you might be forgiven for feeling confused, so here’s your handy guide to what isn’t the cause and what is.

 

Misinformation wars

 

Right from the start misinformation was rife: there was no virus; the disease was like flu and wouldn’t cause significant harm; emails offered baseless cures and treatments; and conspiracy theories spread like wildfire about its origin.

 

It turns out that many who circulated such misinformation have a history of casting doubt on climate science or seeking to debate issues that were already laid to rest within the scientific community, according to DeSmog.org:

 

“The decades that fossil fuel companies spent funding organisations that sought to undermine the conclusions of credible climate scientists and building up doubt about science itself ultimately created a network of professional science deniers who are now deploying some of the same skills they honed on climate against the public health crisis at the centre of our attention today.”

 

Some of this misinformation was/is channelled by presidents Trump and Bolsanaro. Others by think tanks, experts (some self-proclaimed), academics, and professional right-wing activists who are also climate change denialists.

 

After taking apart all of these arguments, DeSmog asserts: “COVID denial should forever discredit climate science deniers”.’

 

From DeSmog direct:

 

‘The Reason COVID-19 and Climate Seem So Similar: Disinformation

 

Repost By Guest • Monday, April 20, 2020  of Amy Westervelt, Drilled News. Originally published by Drilled News.

 

For a long time, the story went that the tobacco industry cooked up disinformation and then spread it to the fossil fuel guys, the chemical industry, pharma, you name it. But one thing that became incredibly clear when we began digging into PR firms and specific publicists was that this version of history was not quite right; if disinformation strategies were cooked up by any particular industry it was the public relations industry, which put these strategies to work on behalf of fossil fuels, tobacco, chemical manufacturers and more, often all at the same time.

 

The very first publicist, Ivy Ledbetter Lee, worked on behalf of both Standard Oil and, shortly after, American Tobacco, for example. Daniel Edelman developed astroturf campaigns for both RJ Reynolds tobacco company and the American Petroleum Institute, as did John Hill, who went so far as to have tobacco folks join the API. He also worked with Monsanto, juggling all three clients at the same time. E. Bruce Harrison worked for the chemical guys first, then managed front groups for tobacco and fossil fuels at the same time. You get the drift.

 

These industries all surely learned from each other at various points in time, but that was mostly because they were working with the same publicists. The history is less that tobacco or oil embraced disinformation first and then passed it on and more that a handful of PR firms and consultants created the disinformation industry, and then put it to work on behalf of whatever industry needed it at any given time.

 

Today, those same strategies are at work on behalf of those who worry that the response to COVID-19 will undermine capitalism, which is why climate folks keep noting how familiar the whole anti-science component of the rightwing response to the pandemic feels. It’s familiar because the exact same strategies are being deployed, in some cases by the same people. Here are a few key examples:

 

Disinformation Strategy #1: He who controls the language controls the narrative.

Disinformation Strategy #2: Leverage science illiteracy to create doubt.

Disinformation strategy #3: Astroturfing.

 

Our hope, of course, is that when people learn to recognize these strategies and know what’s behind them, they might become less effective. Disempowering the disinformation industry is a necessary part of any climate solution.’

 

For more articles and blogs about climate change, Covid-19, populist politics, critical thinking, marketing & communications and science literacy click through.

Borders Nationalism and Pandemics

The Anglo world including Australia, US, UK, parts of Europe and developing world there have been xenophobic and nationalist obsessions coursing through political and media elites as not just a political strategy but as deep seated nativist ideology.

The COVID-19 pandemic was originally viewed as an Asian or Chinese problem but has now spread and managed to show how unprepared many western nations have been.

From John Quiggin in Inside Story:

‘Border deflection

 

The pandemic shows up the weaknesses of nationalism
Supporters of ethnonationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment have been quick to seize on the Covid-19 pandemic as evidence against what they call “open borders,” by which they mean any relaxation of the stringent controls that prohibit international migration by anyone who falls outside a tightly defined set of categories, each subject to numerical limits. The underlying idea is that foreigners who don’t look or think like us are all potential carriers of infection, and that we can keep ourselves safe by excluding them.
The reality is quite different. The vast majority of Australia Covid-19 cases acquired overseas had a recent history of travel to Europe or the Americas, or arrived on cruise ships such as the Ruby Princess. Hardly any (in fact none, as far as I can determine) were new migrants to Australia.

 

It could scarcely be otherwise. Australia (or at least some Australians) welcomed 162,000 migrants in 2019. The same year saw forty-two million passenger arrivals. On average, a Boeing 787 landing in Australia with a full load of 300 passengers contains just one permanent migrant.

 

This is the contradiction within the thinking of immigration restrictionists. While many like to cast themselves as “left behind” “stayers” — in contrast to “rootless cosmopolitans” — lots of them enjoy international travel. This was strikingly illustrated by the Brexiteers’ attachment to the traditional blue-covered British passports — hardly something that would matter to anyone content to stay in their home country.
More generally, the push to reduce international migration has been matched by all-out efforts to promote tourism. Scott Morrison embodies these contradictions. As managing director of Tourism Australia he famously asked, “Where they bloody hell are you?”, inviting the entire world to enjoy our beaches and charming cities; as prime minister, he cut the immigration intake by 30,000 (about one day’s worth of passenger arrivals) declaring “enough, enough, enough… The roads are clogged, the buses and trains are full.” Tourists, of course — who are by definition engaged in travel — use our roads and public transports at least as much as permanent migrants.
It’s not only migration that ethnonationalists have in their sights, but also any kind of international cooperation (unless it involves waging war). Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Australian and admirer of Hungary, Poland and other anti-democratic regimes, says that “coronavirus is the hunter-killer enemy of globalisation”…..’

 

Many conservative governments’ white nationalist and ‘great replacement theory’ narratives and arguments, promoted too easily by like minded media, have been wrong footed or contradicted, to the point of appearing incompetent and bigoted.
For more articles and blogs on immigration, white nationalism and related populist politics click through.