The UK Guardian reviews Morano’s testimony at Democratic House climate/species hearing: ‘Appalling…bullying…strident & personal…he aggressively attacked’

Media outrage continues to grow:

Climate hearing turns ugly for Dems skeptics take over: Rip apart Green New Deal, UN Paris pact & 97% ‘consensus’ – Declare UN ‘Authoritative propaganda’ – Greenpeace co-founder blasts UN species report: ‘That is not science. That is fiction. Fairy tale stories’

UK Guardian outraged: ‘Republicans give platform to climate science deniers at hearing on biodiversity’

Climate skeptics hijack House Dem hearing – Dominate discussion – Warmists lament: “How did these two dominate a hearing run by Democrats?”

The latest: 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/23/republicans-arent-just-climate-deniers-they-deny-the-extinction-crisis-too

UK Guardian: Republicans aren’t just climate deniers. They deny the extinction crisis, too

By Jimmy Tobias

At the committee hearing on Tuesday, the Republican minority utterly ignored the report’s chilling conclusions. Instead, industry-backed politicians like Representative Tom McClintock and Representative Rob Bishop used the forum to sow doubt about the IPBES report and besmirch the reputations of its prominent authors, three of whom were at the hearing.

McClintock and his Republican committee colleagues, who have collectively taken millions in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, called a couple of their own witnesses to testify too. They chose as witnesses a pair of well-known climate deniers – Marc Morano, a right-wing operative and former aide to Senator Jim Inhofe, and Dr Patrick Moore of the CO2 Coalition, a Koch-brother-backed nonprofit that “educates” the public about the importance of fossil fuels. The two men used the hearing to aggressively attack the IPBES and its scientists.

Consider Morano’s testimony, for instance. At the hearing, he characterized the IPBES report as a piece of “propaganda” meant to give the United Nations “more money, more power, more scientific authority, more money and more regulatory control of the economy and people’s lives”. He then went on to smear the recent chair of the IPBES, Sir Robert Watson, who was sitting beside him, alleging that Watson and his fellow IPBES officials “are part of this con” and “the leaders of this UN politicization of species endangerment science,” implying that the well-pedigreed Watson is “not a scientist, but a science bureaucrat doing the bidding for his organization.” Morano’s comments were so strident and personal that Representative Jared Huffman, who was presiding over the hearing, had to repeatedly remind him not to direct comments at his fellow witnesses.

“I don’t know what inspires someone to make a career out of trolling scientists or monetizing contrarian ideology on the YouTube and Ted Talk circuit,” Huffman told Morano. “But it is just a very different kind of conversation than the science-based conversation I think many of us would like to try to have.”

The conduct of the Republican legislators and their witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing was appalling, reminiscent of the bullying tactics that Big Oil and the Republican party have used to prevent solutions to the climate crisis. But there they were, shamelessly using the same methods to distract from the growing biodiversity crisis that continues to undermine environmental and economic stability both at home and abroad.

Science denial on the part of people like Representative McClintock and Representative Bishop should come as little surprise, of course.

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