Shark Tank’s Steve Baxter Joins Climate Science Deniers and Islamophobes for Australian LibertyFest

authordefault
on

What do you get when you bring together some of Australiaโ€™s most fervent climate science deniers with anti-Islam activists, fledgling right-wing political groups, and an American โ€œfree marketโ€ย Libertarian?

The answer, apparently, is theย one-day conference titled LibertyFest scheduled for Brisbane thisย Saturday.

Two mainstays of Australiaโ€™s โ€œfever swampโ€ of climate science denial, Professor Ian Plimer and Jennifer Marohasy, are set to kick-off the proceedings on Fridayย evening.

Organizing the conference is Brisbane-based group LibertyWorks, founded 18 months ago by local businessman and libertarian Andrewย Cooper.

For those uninitiated, libertarians will tell you governments should be small andย stay out of peopleโ€™s lives, regulations should be drastically scaled back, andย economic markets left to function with little to noย regulation.

Cooper, who pleads not to be described as a โ€œconservative,โ€ defended his decision to give a platform to climate scienceย denial.

Plimer and Marohasy start proceedings on Friday with a session whose titleย  โ€” Climate Change & Electricity Ripoffs: The Delusion and the Facts โ€” leaves little doubt about the thrust and tone of their arguments. The pair will also speak onย Saturday.

โ€œI agree they are on the fringe, but that does not preclude them from appearing,โ€ saysย Cooper.

โ€œThey both have a high degree of certainty in their views and are prepared to share them, and therefore people with opposing views would feel put off orย offended.โ€

Sharks in theย Tank

Perhaps the most surprising name on the speakers list is tech entrepreneur Steve Baxter, who stars on Australian primetime TV as one of the investment sharks on Channel Tenโ€™s Shark Tank.

Whatโ€™s more, Baxterโ€™s appearance will come just two days before he officially takes office, on 16 October, as the Queensland state governmentโ€™s Chief Entrepreneur, where he will workย pro-bono.

DeSmog approached Baxter for comment, but a representative said he was too busy to respond. Baxterโ€™s speech will not cover climate change (and thereโ€™s no particular reason it should), but instead cover his insights as a successfulย entrepreneur.

On Twitter, Baxter has said he agrees that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is โ€œbadโ€ for the atmosphere, but points to the construction of coal plants overseas to suggest people donโ€™t care enough about theย issue.

Feverย Swamp

Cooper says Plimer and Marohasy are not well known and because their views are โ€œoutside the mainstream,โ€ they deserve a platform (we disagree aboutย that).

Cooper says he is โ€œcomfortableโ€ that manmade warming is likely happening, but this is about as much as he is prepared toย concede.

He thinks itโ€™s a valid question to ask if โ€œon balanceโ€ climate change will be bad, and would like to see a โ€œcost benefitโ€ analysis carried out on policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions (actually, the Federal Governmentโ€™s 2008 Garnaut Review did just that, and found the โ€œcosts of action are less than the costs ofย inactionโ€).

Plimer, a geologist, has been a mainstay of Australiaโ€™s climate science denial fraternity for the best part of a decade.ย Heย denies that human emissions of CO2 cause global warming.

His 2009 book, Heaven and Earth, influenced the views of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, despite many scientists pointing out it was riddled with errors andย misrepresentations.

A follow-up 2011 book, How to get expelled from school: a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters, was described by the governmentโ€™s Department of Climate Change as โ€œmisleadingโ€ and โ€œbased on inaccurate or selective interpretation of theย science.โ€

The department produced a blow-by-blow debunking. Plimerโ€™s latest book is called Climate Change Delusion.

Jenniferย Marohasy

Marohasy,ย of the โ€œfree market think tankโ€ the Institute of Public Affairs, has been busy claiming, through the pages of Rupert Murdochโ€™s The Australian, that the countryโ€™s weather agency, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), is engaged in a grand conspiracy to fiddle with temperature readings expressly to make warming look worse than it is. In short, theyโ€™re not.

Australiaโ€™s five hottest years on record have all happened since 2005, according to the BoM.ย Queensland just had its hottest winter on record. The countryโ€™s iconic Great Barrier Reef has seen the death of more than a third of its corals after consecutive mass bleaching events caused by warming sea surfaceย temperatures.

One of LibertyWorksโ€™ first campaigns was to challenge Australiaโ€™s Renewable Energy Target and Cooper said the โ€œNo RETโ€ campaign was the issue he had pushed theย hardest.

Cooper said such policies โ€œhave the effect of socializing countriesโ€ and tended to give power to โ€œcentral planningโ€ which he said โ€œas a Libertarian, I get scaredย about.โ€

Cooper says LibertyWorks, which has taken no corporate or government donations,ย has โ€œnot taken a position on the science because we are notย scientists.โ€

โ€œWe have people who think we should accept the science, but one of our board members, Alan Moran, is deeply skeptical of the science,โ€ heย says.

Moran was a long-serving staffer at Melbourneโ€™s Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), but was let go after controversial tweets attacking Islam.

The IPA has pushed climate science denial since the early 1990s. Now, Moran runs his own consultancy business and issues a monthly โ€œClimate Newsโ€ web bulletin that attacks โ€œwarmistsโ€ and pushes denialist talkingย points.

USย Links

Flying in for the event is Dan Mitchell โ€” a U.S.-based libertarian who recently left the Cato Institute โ€” a โ€œthink tankโ€ funded in part by the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers that has fought against policies to cut greenhouse gasย emissions.

Cato and the IPA are both part of a global network of conservative, libertarian, and neoliberal think tanks called the Atlas Network. Mitchellโ€™s Center for Freedom and Prosperity is also aย member.

Also listed to appear is One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts who, depending on a High Court hearing over his eligibility, may or may not still be a senator by the time the conference starts onย Saturday.

Roberts, of the far-right One Nation party, is one of Australiaโ€™s most fervent climate scienceย deniers.

The former coal miner managed the climate science denial group Galileo Movement, where he would routinely hassle climate scientists with demands for โ€œempirical evidenceโ€ on human-caused climate change which, while it exists , Roberts refuses toย acknowledge.

In December 2016, Roberts traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with a gaggle of climate science deniers, including the Competitive Enterprise Instituteโ€™s Myron Ebell, who led the team tasked with preparing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for an incoming Donald Trumpย presidency.

But outside of climate science denialism, Cooper has also attracted several other controversial figures to his LibertyFestย conference.

Rebelย Media

Former Labor Party leader Mark Latham is also scheduled to speak.ย Latham has had a recent and rapid fall from grace. Fired from Sky News earlier this year, Latham is known for his bullying attacks onย women.

In a 2016 radio interview, Latham suggested that men hit their wives as a โ€œcoping mechanismโ€ because some men had lost theirย self-esteem.

Latham has recently been signed by controversial conservative online news outfit Rebel Media.ย Rebel has also signed, as a presenter and general agitator, Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the anti-Islamic group the English Defenceย League.

The founder of Rebel Media, Canadian conservative Ezra Levant, also pushes climate science denial and claims there is no link between rising levels of carbon dioxide and globalย warming.

Only three years ago Latham was scathing of the kind of people he will share a platform with onย Saturday.

โ€œRight wing fanatics,โ€ wrote Latham in his 2014 book The Political Bubble, โ€œhave created an alternative universe of denialism, an anti-science movement that places greater weight on the political economy of climate change rather than scientific research.โ€ He also reserved criticism of the โ€œgreen leftโ€ for occasionally engaging in what he saw asย overreach.

These days, Latham is more concerned with confected attacks on โ€œfree speechโ€ and an apparently rampantย โ€œpolitical correctnessโ€ in society โ€” the common themes of his not-that-popular Rebel YouTube show, Mark Lathamโ€™s Outsiders.

Rod McGarvie, the Queensland state director of the Australian Conservatives, is another speaker.ย  The Australian Conservatives were established by former Liberal Party member, Senator Cory Bernardi โ€” another climate โ€œskepticโ€ who posted a picture of himself with โ€œpalโ€ Levant on Twitter inย April. McGarvie formerly ran as a senate candidate for Family First โ€” a conservative Christian party that also rejected the science of human-caused climateย change.

Islamophobiaย Fest

Also on the LibertyFest running order is โ€œSafe Communities Australiaโ€ โ€” a group that says it wants to โ€œprotect our multi-ethnic communityโ€ but is distinctly anti-Islam with a current campaign to block the building of a mosque on Queenslandโ€™s Sunshine Coast, an hour north ofย Brisbane.

Cooper, who put up his own money to create LibertyWorks and back the conference,ย is sincere in his efforts to draw attention to his own values and it seems he is not scared of courting controversy in order to getย it.

He claims โ€œtrue Libertarians would tend to believe the science (on climate change) but are suspiciousโ€ of the policies that are put in place to tackle theย issue.

But there wonโ€™t be much space for a sensible conversation about that, when inflammatory activists like Ian Plimer and Jennifer Marohasy are continually given aย forum.

Main image: A great white shark. Credit: Flickr/Elias Levyย (CC BY 2.0)

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€