New Fraser Institute video both patronizing and wrong

authordefault
on

In an embarrassing – and failed – effort to speak the hip language of youth, the Fraser Institute has launched a YouTube video dismissing climate change as a matter of natural variability,ย saying:

โ€œThe climate changes naturally; always has; alwaysย will.โ€

Obviously aimed at high school students (sample voiceover: โ€œall because you ride the bus to school every dayโ€), this seems to steal from the tobacco makerโ€™s playbook for selling cigarettes to children.

There are so many offensive and incorrect elements in this two-minute video, itโ€™s hard to know where to begin. But how about this: having set up the concern about climate change, the overwrought announcer says, โ€œIn medieval times it was 10 degrees warmer than today.โ€ This is somewhere between a clumsy misrepresentation of cherry-picked data and a barefacedย lie.

For evidence, I recommend the graph on Page 37 of the Fraser Instituteโ€™s own Independent Summary for Policymakers,ย which was itself a thinly disguised, corporate-funded attack on the Nobel-prize winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change.

The really creepy aspect of the video, however, is the effort to use the kind of language that a bunch of 60-somethings at the Fraser Institute imagine sounds youthful. Itโ€™s patronizing at the least and in incredibly bad taste at the worst. (Whose idea was it to put the quote, โ€œGet the @#$% outta here!โ€ in the mouth of the only black person featured in theย video?)

The Fraser Institute has humiliated itself in the past, taking money from Exxon Mobil and then supporting climate change denial efforts like the Independent Summary. But the organization deserves no credibility whatever – on any issue – if this is representative of the quality of work coming from this particular โ€œthinkโ€ย tank.

PS

If you have a little time, read through the highlighted comments in the Independent Summary. This version is annotated by the good folks – and credible scientists – at RealClimate.org, led on this occasion by University of Chicago computational ocean chemist David Archer. His analysis will give you one more nail that can be used for the coffin holding the Fraser Instituteโ€™sย credibility.

Related Posts

on

Victoria Hewson called the 2050 ambition a โ€œhuge own goalโ€ while working for a Tufton Street think tank.

Victoria Hewson called the 2050 ambition a โ€œhuge own goalโ€ while working for a Tufton Street think tank.
on

Ahead of a city council vote, Resource Works launched an influence campaign with stock submissions for restaurant owners, hospitality workers, and residents.

Ahead of a city council vote, Resource Works launched an influence campaign with stock submissions for restaurant owners, hospitality workers, and residents.
on

Ahead of the November 29 election, dairy producers tell Irish government to step off the โ€œtreadmillโ€ of unsustainable milk production โ€“ and share a more holistic vision.

Ahead of the November 29 election, dairy producers tell Irish government to step off the โ€œtreadmillโ€ of unsustainable milk production โ€“ and share a more holistic vision.
on

The head of the CO2 Coalition tells DeSmog that Wright agrees carbon dioxide is โ€œnot the demon molecule, itโ€™s the miracle molecule.โ€

The head of the CO2 Coalition tells DeSmog that Wright agrees carbon dioxide is โ€œnot the demon molecule, itโ€™s the miracle molecule.โ€