Dear friends,
Spin by climate deniers about hacked emails between scientists is threatening to drown out the call for a strong climate deal in Copenhagen, but Avaaz is fighting back in media across the planet. Chip in now to stop the deception and help save the climate talks:
Donate now!
Climate deniers and fossil fuel lobbyists are stopping at nothing to kill a Copenhagen deal.
Two weeks ago, hackers stole thousands of emails between a few climate scientists--and then released cherry-picked quotes out of context, absurdly claiming that they question the science behind climate change.
With big money behind it, this misinformation tactic aims to distract the media and the public from the most important conference of our time in Copenhagen -- we have to make sure it doesn't work.
We urgently need to chip in funds to step up our successful protests and ad campaign in Copenhagen and key cities to counter the denial lobby and get our media and politicians back on track. The industry lobbies are scaling up their fight, let's take ours to the next level:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/climate_denial_lets_fight_back
In the last 48 hours, the Avaaz community's voice on climate has been featured in media across the planet, including the Financial Times, the New York Times, the China people's daily and China's cable news station, the Guardian, Associated France Presse and many more. Our voice is successfully competing directly with the industry lobby's scams for attention, now we need to up the volume.
30 years of climate science are being borne out before our eyes, and 2009 closes out the hottest decade in recorded history. One study estimated that climate change already kills 300,000 people every year. Despite these facts, Climate denial -- a movement funded for decades by fossil fuel companies -- is now threatening our chance for a fair, ambitious, and binding global climate treaty.
It's a heartbreaking lack of responsibility for our planet. But we can't let it slow us down. We've already got the infrastructure in place, from 12/12 candlelight vigils around the world to our youth Climate Action Factory in Copenhagen. Funding now can scale up Avaaz's campaigns overnight -- and help keep the pressure on politicians to focus on action, not fall back on false excuses about unsettled science. Chip in below:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/climate_denial_lets_fight_back
With hope and determination,
Ben, Iain, Taren, Luis, Ricken, Sam, Alice, Milena, Paul, Julius, and the whole Avaaz team
Sources:
Financial Times -– “Copenhagen we can’t risk failure”:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28a8a3f4-e29c-11de-b028-00144feab49a.html?ncli...
Nature -- “Climatologists under threat”:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Source Watch – The Heartland Institute:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute
Guardian – “The science still points to Copenhagen”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/04/climate-change-uea-e...
Desmogblog – “The oily machine behind climate-gate”:
http://www.desmogblog.com/oily-echo-machine-behind-climategate
BBC -- "Climate email hack will impact on Copenhagen summit":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8392611.stm
For more information on the climate denial industry check out the new book "Climate Cover-Up": http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-cover-up
Comments
How Climategate was manufactured by Climate Sceptics
A Case Of Classic SwiftBoating: How The Right-Wing Noise Machine Manufactured ‘Climategate’
In mid-November, thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit webmail server — a top climate research center in the United Kingdom — were hacked and dumped on a Russian web server. Polluter-funded climate skeptics, along with their allies in conservative media and the Republican Party, sifted through the e-mails, and quickly cherry picked quotes to falsely accuse climate scientists of concocting climate change science out of whole cloth. The skeptics also propelled the story, dubbed “Climategate,” to the cover of the New York Times and newspapers across the globe. According to a Nexis news search, the Climategate story has been reported at least 325 times in the American press alone.
While the hacked e-mails may reveal that scientists might not have nice things to say about climate change deniers at times, they do nothing to change the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use are raising temperatures and making oceans more acidic. As the right attempts to use the Climategate story to derail the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference this week, arctic sea ice is still at historically low levels, Australia is still on fire, the northern United Kingdom is still underwater, the world’s glaciers are still disappearing and today NOAA confirmed that not only is it the hottest decade in history, but 2009 was one of the hottest years in history. But how did the right-wing noise machine hijack the debate?
Read more including a detailed timeline...
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/12/09/climate-gate-timeline/