False climate denial #3 - DeSmog and Mark Dolan
GB News TV presenter labeled "climate denier" for decrying net zero and saying he has "an open mind"
In this series I highlight instances in which someone is falsely labeled a “climate denier.” I will soon publish a post explaining my motivations for doing so.
According to a May 26 DeSmog article titled “Revealed: 1 in 3 GB News Hosts Spread Climate Denial On Air in 2022”:
In a 22 September segment, Mark Dolan cast doubt on climate science, saying: “When it comes to global warming, my mind is open, but after two and a half years of, in my view anti-scientific Covid policies, and junk modelling in relation to the virus, forgive me for having questions and not slavishly following ‘the science’.”
Unfortunately DeSmog does not explain why this sentence is indicative of climate denial. One reasoning could be that by saying “when it comes to global warming, my mind is open,” Dolan is implicitly saying that climate change might not be real.
However, listening to the whole 7:57-minute segment, it is clear that Dolan is editorializing on net zero policies, not casting doubt on the existence of climate change.
If DeSmog had been a bit more charitable, they would have included the sentence just before the one they cite. Here’s the slightly longer context:
Now I'm all for a cleaner planet and let's get those carbon emissions down. When it comes to global warming my mind is open. But after two and a half years of, in my view, anti-scientific covered policies and junk modeling in relation to the virus, forgive me for having questions and not slavishly following “the science.”
“Let’s get those carbon emissions down”? Why would someone who does not believe climate change is real and man-made say such a thing? Here are a few more snippets from the same segment pretty clearly showing Dolan is not questioning that climate change is real and man-made:
No one can argue with the fact that low-cost clean energy is highly desirable
By all means phase fossil fuels out over time
Who doesn't want cleaner air, cleaner rivers and seas, and cheap sustainable energy
So, what is Dolan saying? He is expressing preferences on the source of low-carbon energy (nuclear over wind and solar), is prioritizing energy availability and security over CO2 emissions, and is emphasizing economic impact and national security. I’ve put the full transcript at the end of this post for reference, but the last few sentences capture the essence of his editorial:
I suspect [the UK’s future energy policy will] be a mix including drilling for fossil fuels on our own shores in the short to medium term until renewables and nuclear punch their weight. By all means phase fossil fuels out over time when the economic case is there and supply can be achieved by other means.
But in the meantime let's not bankrupt ourselves in this race to go green whilst China and others carry on regardless… Blindly pursuing net zero threatens to hasten the decline of the West and therefore poses an existential threat to the free world.
Net zero? Net on my watch.
Why this matters. Dolan is making statements about policy and politics, not about climate science. I personally believe we should be having such discussions and that everyone should be involved. The proposed net zero energy transition is so massive in its scope and impacts that, in order to be successful, it has to be supported by a large majority of people. Instead of labeling Dolan a “climate denier,” DeSmog should engage with the presenter’s arguments.
To reach widespread public support on any proposed energy or environmental policy, we need to understand the costs and benefits of both inaction and action. Climate science is well suited to inform on the costs of inaction, as long as the assumptions underlying the models and predictions are realistic (e.g. some reasonable amount of adaptation should be modeled) and plausible (e.g. RCP 8.5 should not be relied upon).
We also need sober discussions about costs. Some net zero proponents have in the past underestimated the costs of the energy transition. In 2018, UN Secretary-General António Guterres famously said there would be “nothing to lose from acting, everything to gain.” But there has been a growing recognition that net zero costs won’t be negligible. From Bloomberg on May 27: “Leaders and companies in Europe’s biggest markets are increasingly balking at the ambitious pace of the continent’s green push as they confront the massive costs associated with economic transformation.”
Every decision involves trade-offs, and everyone should be involved in deciding which ones to make. Let’s not exclude people by falsely applying labels such as “climate denier.”
Here’s the full transcript of the interview. I have copied YouTube’s auto-generated transcript that I have then formatted and slightly corrected.
Sir Patrick Valance — a man who in my view all but bankrupted this country with the disastrous and failed experiment of lockdown costing future generations a cool half a trillion quid — is at it again, this time tweeting about climate change. Here's what he had to say:
[Valance’s tweet] To reach net zero we must work together to accelerate innovation and make clean technologies the most affordable, accessible and attractive option - PV.
[Dolan] No one can argue with the fact that low-cost clean energy is highly desirable but be clear. This sort of statement has the same flavor as the so-called nudge messaging born out of behavioral science that we saw during the pandemic. In other words, brainwashing. During the pandemic we were given the impression COVID was the Bubonic plague, which it was not.
And now the message is that the Earth will have burnt down by next Tuesday due to global warming. On the positive side we'll have a nice warm weekend before it happens.
The important part of his tweet is the expression “net zero” which, as we've discovered in recent months, has proved to be the undoing of this country and the West. Arrogant German leaders laughed at Donald Trump in 2018 when the then-President warned them that Germany was getting far too dependent on Russian oil and gas. Take a look:
[Donald Trump] Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course. Here in the Western Hemisphere we are committed to maintaining our independence from the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers.
[Dolan] How right he was. Well here we are. Germany has spent hundreds of billions of pounds on renewables over the last 10 years and yet are facing energy Armageddon in the months ahead with their lucrative manufacturing base, made up of the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Siemens, facing an energy supply crisis for their factories. Well the last person to lead Germany please switch the lights out.
And Angela Merkel, the most overrated European politician in decades, proudly announced in 2011, aided and abetted by Green MPS in her Coalition, that Germany was not going to pursue nuclear. That aged well, didn't it?
And disgracefully David Cameron also failed to greenlight several new nuclear power stations in 2010. They would be up and running now and we would be in a very different place. Well done everyone.
Now I'm all for a cleaner planet and let's get those carbon emissions down. When it comes to global warming my mind is open. But after two and a half years of, in my view, anti-scientific covered policies and junk modeling in relation to the virus, forgive me for having questions and not slavishly following “the science.”
Let's debate all of this in the way that we didn't debate COVID and make sure that any measures are done with the consent of you the voters, again something that didn't happen during the pandemic and for which we're now paying the bill.
Eye-wateringly expensive green policies which are debatable at best given the intermittent and unreliable performance of renewables seem to have been exclusive to the woke West, with our politicians in the UK and across Europe proudly making announcement after announcement about green targets and net zero.
They've won plaudits from the political, corporate, and media elite whilst making their citizens poorer and as the great unwashed — us plebs — shiver in our homes this winter. And we will be unwashed — who the hell will be able to afford a shower let alone a cup of tea this December? A tunnel vision virtue signaling approach to the environment has destroyed our energy supply and left us in this predicament.
And whilst the West went for broke quite literally in pursuing net zero, China, the United States, India, Brazil and others didn't get the memo. They continued to burn fossil fuels like they were going out of fashion, building coal-fired power stations at a rate of knots and making a mockery of Western Europe who are now borrowing more billions to subsidize businesses and households with their bills.
It's the net zero of which Patrick Valance is so proud that has given Vladimir Putin such a power base. By failing to tap into the natural resources that we have in this country — 20 years of shale, 30 years of gas, a hundred years of coal — and spending far too long saying no to nuclear, Putin has a stranglehold over the West.
He hinted in a speech this week that he may go nuclear with Ukraine in that ongoing conflict. But be clear, he's already pressed the nuclear button by successfully weaponizing his control of energy resources upon which the West is so pathetically dependent. If we're honest, we've nuked ourselves.
And can we just reflect on the incredibly arrogant nature of Patrick Valance's tweet. Sam can you get it back up for me? Take a look at this. He signed it off at the end as “PV.” Right? Patrick Valance, his initials of course. “PV” like he's some kind of celebrity. Well as far as I'm concerned PV can pee off.
Not satisfied with wrecking the country economically, smashing the Health Service to pieces, and creating a miserable isolated society as a result of lockdowns and other COVID measures, he wants to finish the country off with yet another experiment — stopping climate change. Good luck with that.
Having supported horrific mask mandates especially for kids, which are as scientifically flaky as the masks themselves. Having supported school closures, which most people now admit was a terrible mistake. Having supported vaccine mandates for millions of Brits who statistically probably didn't even need a jab in the first place, he should be keeping a very low profile. It's my view that history will judge what SAGE and the likes of Valance and Whitty have done to this country very harshly indeed. Jail sentence? You tell me. It would be funny to lock them down though wouldn't it?
But be clear. The likes of Valence will transfer the apparatus of control assembled during COVID to the net zero agenda. And as with lockdowns, measures to — inverted commas — “save the planet” will be just as unilateral, just as undemocratic, just as coercive, and we'll see just as little debate as COVID restrictions. You can just imagine the slogans now, can't you? “Stay home to save the planet”, “Don't eat meat to save the planet”, “Get rid of your car to save the planet.”
Now I want to look after the environment. Who doesn't want cleaner air, cleaner rivers and seas, and cheap sustainable energy? And why do you think I hate those environmentally catastrophic masks so much?
But let's debate how we move forward. I suspect it'll be a mix including drilling for fossil fuels on our own shores in the short to medium term until renewables and nuclear punch their weight. By all means phase fossil fuels out over time when the economic case is there and supply can be achieved by other means.
But in the meantime let's not bankrupt ourselves in this race to go green whilst China and others carry on regardless. What a Carry On. Blindly pursuing net zero threatens to hasten the decline of the West and therefore poses an existential threat to the free world.
Net zero? Net on my watch.
Finally got to read this post. I'm growing convinced that climate denialism is becoming a catch-all phrase to label someone as "other". In other words, it's meant to divide us from what we agree on.
Climate denial is a flag that gets raise by use of seemingly benign yet critical words. For example, Dolan uttered a few forbidden words that aren't allowed by climate policy activists: "low carbon", "nuclear", and "unreliable" in the context of renewables. Low carbon isn't good enough, only 0 carbon is good enough, nuclear is a crutch and anti-environmental, and the approved word to describe renewables is "intermittent" not "unreliable". Use of those forbidden words gets a person labelled a climate denier, or at best a climate delayer ("delayer" is a newer term I've also started to see used.)
I've been looking more into the language of climate discussions and am very intrigued because language shapes the way we think about something. There's been little journalism about it, and what does exist doesn't get at the heart of the challenge. For example: Revkin is a journalist who says he's been writing about this challenge but I find his articles don't admit bias and dig deep enough: https://archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/can-better-communication-of-climate-science-cut-climate-risks/. The Guardian, perhaps not surprisingly, admitted in 2019 that its editing of articles about climate change would require authors to use more emotive language: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment. So climate change journalism is encouraged, at least openly by one source, to use emotive language. Emotive criticism however, like Dolan's, is a sign of Bad Think.
Peer-reviewed literature, include the social sciences, have weighed in on the challenges of communicating about climate change and the language used. Moser confirmed a culturally dominant point that I've suspected exists: "[...] it may be telling that such resources [on climate change] dominate in the Anglo-Saxon world, where resistance to climate action, politicization of climate science, and polarization have been stronger than elsewhere." (Moser, Susanne C. “Reflections on Climate Change Communication Research and Practice in the Second Decade of the 21st Century: What More Is There to Say?”) The irony in this Western dominance of climate change communication coming from Anglo-Saxon sources is ironic given recent social justice trends to repudiate Western domination. I'd imagine the most ardent climate activist would align with social justice yet that well-intentioned person wouldn't realize that non-Western people could see climate policies pushed without equitable discussion as more fuel on the fire of oppression. Moser begs the question of whether any culture -- I'd argue especially the West -- admits its cultural lense: "[...] the critical takeaways from this body of work [on climate communication] is that, first, we all hear, perceive, make sense of, and judge incoming information (be it spoken, written, visual, or sensory) through the filters of culturally transmitted values and no one can escape this influence although we can become conscious of this influence and actively probe it, if we are willing". It's far too simplistic for those of us in the West to say China and India don't get it; that the science is above culture and unquestionably says to stop coal now, etc.
A recent example is the UAE not falling in line with the Paris Agreement, and Western activists saying COP28 shouldn't be hosted in Dubai, or otherwise undermining the common ground that can be found with a host whose national income is massively funded by fossil fuels. Revkin, for example, allowed his Substack to syndicate an article about climate misinformation that its author believes are from the UAE: https://revkin.substack.com/cp/126714568. By pointing fingers of doubt about intention and using language to divides us, we're missing the next phase of climate communication that Moser and others have found. We need to cross cultural boundaries and collaborate. Or the other C word: compromise. Compromise is probably the worst forbidden word that will get someone labelled a climate denier. ;)
Thank you for pointing that out.
These people are deliberately arguing in bad faith, and we should do whatever we can to not let them get away with it.
I try to make use for your material in reader comments.