Think Facts Matter? Try Attending a Friends of Science Event Headlined by Ezra Levant

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Weโ€™re only a minute into watching a brief low-budget video โ€” one that begins by alleging U.S. President Barack Obama is a bully because he suggests that climate change deniers should be โ€œcalled outโ€ โ€” when Ezra Levant sits down in the chair next toย me.

The Rebel Commanderย himself.

According to organizers, heโ€™s the reason attendance of tonightโ€™s $45-per-head fundraiser in Calgary โ€” casually titled โ€œClimate Leadership Catastrophe: Carbon Taxes, Job Loss, Freedoms Deniedโ€ and organized by the so-called โ€œFriends of Scienceโ€ โ€” spiked from 200 to 445 people after he was announced as its keynoteย speaker.

And heโ€™s the same intensely controversial pundit who I met in late November at another Calgary event called โ€œGeneration Screwedโ€ which I covered for Vice Canada while wearing a โ€œDreamy Trudeauโ€ย sweater.

โ€œHey James,โ€ he says, reaching out his hand to shakeย mine.

We briefly chat as the video moves on to clips of testimonies from human-caused climate change denying scientists like Roy Spencer and Willie Soon (the latter took $1.25 million from fossil fuel companies and lobby groups for his research). Levant relays a hilarious and self-deprecating story to me about his flight from Toronto to Calgary during which another person fell asleep onย him.

I scribble a few observations in a notepad. He scrolls through his phone, probably Twitter mentions given he sports almost 50,000ย followers.

After a few minutes he gets up to leave. I remind him that I tweeted at him a while back about how the Alberta NDP was elected on Karl Marxโ€™s birthday, which seems like crucial information to include in his vehemently anti-NDP and pro-capitalist onlineย show.

We opt to โ€œfollowโ€ each other on Twitter. He wandersย off.

The whole interaction seemed tense. But also, well, profound; Levant has a disposition that makes one feel strangely a part of something, even if youโ€™re ideologically opposed toย him.

Itโ€™s awfullyย disconcerting.

Little has happened in the interim. The slides that greeted each attendee as they walked in and had their tickets scanned by an enthused 15-year-old boy before moving to the buffet tables set the tone for the evening: โ€œSay No To Climate Co2ercion,โ€ โ€œ$WINDle,โ€ โ€œClimate โ€” Change Yourย Mind.โ€

The video, itself backgrounded with close-up shots of the stars of the American flag, features a bizarre graduation of presumed rights from โ€œfreedom of thought,โ€ to โ€œfreedom of rational dissentโ€ to โ€œfreedom to expose the 97 per cent consensus propaganda.โ€

Such pun-inspired sayings seem hokey at best. But as the remainder of the night proves, dismissing such sloganeering is as dangerous as ignoring what makes Levant a genuinely enjoyable human to interactย with.

For denial of human-caused climate change has very little to do with facts or data (which is why they can argue that CO2 has nothing to do with increased average temperatures and, minutes later, point out that forest fires produce far more emissions than human activity which seems to acknowledge the relevance of CO2 to theย discussion).

Many climate change psychologists have observed that oneโ€™s views on the issue depend heavily on factors such as in-group biases, pre-existing political leanings and personal connections to carbon-intensiveย lifestyles.

As a result, it seems deeply naive to chalk the existence of groups like Friends of Science up to a lack of info. Pushing facts like the 97 per cent tidbit will likely only further alienate this kind of audience, fostering a martyrย complex.

Take the nightโ€™s first presentation. The speaker, John Harper, has worked as a petroleum geologist for the likes of ConocoPhillips and Shell Canada. Itโ€™s unclear why he was picked as the person to deliver the technical lecture as opposed to, say, an actual atmospheric or climateย scientist.

โ€œWhat are the rocks telling us?โ€ serves as his mantra for the talk, despite the fact the Geological Society of America agrees that โ€œhuman activities โ€ฆ are the dominant cause of the rapid warming since the middleย 1900s.โ€

The levels of carbon as measured by parts per million are nothing compared to previous eons, he says, โ€œand the earth is still hereโ€ (a curious notion given thereโ€™s no way humans could exist in such conditions). He suggests global warming is inevitable. The real problems are population growth and human excrement. Blame theย sun.

The trap that believers in human-caused climate change fall into is they rely on interpretation instead of actual assessment of the data, Harper says; he doesnโ€™t know what politicians pushing for policy to address climate change even mean byย โ€œevidence-based.โ€

This statement is made entirelyย unironically.

Most attendees seem fairly disinterested. Ringtones keep goingย off.

The only truly captivating part of the entire presentation is an illegible graphic that spastically bounces up and down to demonstrate the fluctuations in average temperatures across theย millennia.

The science presented is near impossible toย follow.

But it doesnโ€™t matter what Harper says. The point isnโ€™t that he says the right things but that he is the right person: someone who the crowd can trust (former director of energy at the Geological Survey of Canada) and presenting in the right place (after a tasty meal and while sitting among people who look and think likeย you).

Levant โ€” the star of the event โ€” is announced as someone whoโ€™s been deemed by various publications as the โ€œmost irritatingโ€ and โ€œtalking head youโ€™d most like to silence.โ€ Each โ€œachievementโ€ is greeted with a raucous applause. The emcee, Michelle Sterling, clarifies that โ€œI didnโ€™t write this, by the way, they gave this toย me.โ€

Of course she didnโ€™t. Levant is a perfectly composed character. Itโ€™s very tricky to discern what he actually believes and what he plays up for aย profit.

Either way, his intro as a โ€œrebelโ€ perfectly serves his cause: heโ€™s an iconoclast representing the few who refuse to believe in human-caused climate change (just because a vast majority of scientists happenย to).

Levant has no specific focus in his sermons. Thereโ€™s certainly a thematic goal though: building a staggeringly convincing enemy-oriented narrative by pointing out the hypocrisy, insensitivity and alleged anti-Albertan nature of government and environmentalย organizations.

In the span of half-hour, he hops from slamming Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi for the Uber debacle, to ridiculing hemp rope bags, to noting that forest fires are natural, to linking environmental efforts with energy poverty, degrowth and deindustrialization (which inevitably led to a Unabomber comparison), to charting foreign donations to Canadian environmentalย non-profits.

Anyone who has seen Levant speak before knows theย drill.

A standing ovation serves as a brief punctuation between his speech and Q&A session. Two mid-life-crisis-aged men in the washroom exchange thoughts about how โ€œour governments are crazy,โ€ โ€œtheyโ€™re a waste of our time and the countryโ€™s timeโ€ and how โ€œRalph Kleinโ€™s sacrificeโ€ is beingย forgotten.

Levantโ€™s responses to questions from the audience such as โ€œwhy canโ€™t Albertans oust the NDP?โ€ and โ€œwhy wonโ€™t governments stand up for Canadaโ€ hones in on hyper-specifics. The mainstream environmental movementโ€™s take on GMOs is ridiculed. Weโ€™re made of carbon, we eat carbon, we exhaleย carbon.

He makes a fart joke (โ€œI buy carbon credits for when I tootโ€). The โ€œdairy cartelโ€ isnโ€™t taxed as the oil industry is even though its product โ€” cattle โ€” emit massive amounts ofย methane.

Etย cetera.

Itโ€™s a spellbinding performance. The crowd occasionally responds to Levant with applause and to the targeted enemies with boos (for an ostensibly tax-averse crowd, they take the reduction of the provinceโ€™s firefighting budget very, very seriously). The energy in the room can be described as nothing less than spiritual inย nature.

Thereโ€™s an unshakable sense of unity and drive, which likely has something to do with the fact everyoneโ€™s: a) white; b) rich; and c) feel persecuted by people concerned about climateย change.

But itโ€™s a force that must be acknowledged by climate changeย activists.

Itโ€™s not enough to dismiss Levant and the so-called Friends of Science as fringe groups that simply misconstrue data and graphs and decontextualized policy decisions to suit theirย mandates.

Of course, they do indeed do that. But such entities also tap into very powerful and deep-seated emotions โ€” trust and pride, anxiety and anger, hyper-awareness of environmentalists who also fly around the world in privateย jets.

Good luck beating those back withย facts.ย 

Image: The Rebel/Facebook

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