Climate change denial is a moving target. In the past, it consisted of a fully fledged denial of any scientific evidence that the world was warming. More recently, it has evolved into a creative mix of strategies. Deniers today often contradict part of the scientific basis for climate change, while pinning the blame for the rest â anything completely undeniable, even to them â on developing countries, particularly India and China.
A major New York Times investigative report, published March 2, revealed efforts by Indur M. Goklany, a Department of Interior employee with ties to the Heartland Institute and other fossil-funded denial organizations, to modify federal reports to include misleading information about climate science.
Heartland director James Taylor revealed to the undercover journalists that much of the money is funneled through Donors Trust. Known as the âdark money ATM of the conservative movement,â right-wing donors use Donors Trust to obscure their identities and make it far more difficult â at times impossible â for the American public to know who is funding messages from think tanks and PR firms.
In the U.S., Donors Trust and similar âdark moneyâ funds operate in secrecy, having threaded the needle of American tax laws in a way that allows those with large sums of money to fund advocacy groups anonymously.
The worldâs largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.
The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.
The study implicitly condemns the US bankâs own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas.
JP Morgan has provided $75bn (£61bn) in financial services to the companies most aggressively expanding in sectors such as fracking and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris agreement, according to analysis compiled for the Guardian last year.
Its report was obtained by Rupert Read, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson and philosophy academic at the University of East Anglia, and has been seen by the Guardian.
The no. of Twitter-bots supporting climate-change denial must be teenily larger. Of course, this hasn't been researched.
On an average day during the period studied, 25% of all tweets about the climate crisis came from bots. This proportion was higher in certain topics â bots were responsible for 38% of tweets about âfake scienceâ and 28% of all tweets about the petroleum giant Exxon.
Conversely, tweets that could be categorized as online activism to support action on the climate crisis featured very few bots, at about 5% prevalence. The findings âsuggest that bots are not just prevalent, but disproportionately so in topics that were supportive of Trumpâs announcement or skeptical of climate science and actionâ, the analysis states.
Thanks1 Have to admit, the headline was enough to trigger my post... so, not so teenily, after all. Have you added the second heading later? ~ I know, I'm getting old.
The no. of Twitter-bots supporting climate-change denial must be teenily larger. Of course, this hasn't been researched.
On an average day during the period studied, 25% of all tweets about the climate crisis came from bots. This proportion was higher in certain topics â bots were responsible for 38% of tweets about âfake scienceâ and 28% of all tweets about the petroleum giant Exxon.
Conversely, tweets that could be categorized as online activism to support action on the climate crisis featured very few bots, at about 5% prevalence. The findings âsuggest that bots are not just prevalent, but disproportionately so in topics that were supportive of Trumpâs announcement or skeptical of climate science and actionâ, the analysis states.
Apparently, banks are among the most corrupt and criminal bodies, like concisely demonstrated in the book "Dark Towers" by David Enrich, an examplified study of "Deutsche Bank's" history and activities today. Here's a sad and enlightening recension of the book. ~ Some quotes from the article:
This important book puts in perspective the history of Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB), one of the most mismanaged and politically tainted global banks in modern history. âDark Towersâ also tells the story of how Deutsche Bank provided $2 billion in financing to President Donald Trump, cash that enabled the former real estate developer to continue in business despite his many poor business decisions and credit defaults. As the book makes clear, the only reason that Donald Trump was able to win the American presidency was due to the financial support of Deutsche Bank over more than two decades.
Reading âDark Towers,â one is left with the impression that Deutsche Bank is less a financial institution and more an ongoing criminal enterprise.
Deutsche Bank cut a swath of destruction âand is about the consequencesâdead people, doomed companies, broken economies,â Enrich writes, âand the 45th president of the United Statesâthat Deutsche Bank wrought on the world.â
The fact that Deutsche Bank laundered billions in dirty money for the likes of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and others via Deutsche Bank Trust Company in New York raises basic question about the efficacy of the bank supervision functions of the Federal Reserve, the State of New York and other agencies around the globe. The fact that Deutsche Bank's US subsidiary was home to both the Trump loans and the money-laundering Russian mirror trades makes the culpability of American regulators even more alarming.
While the Fed emerges badly tainted from the narrative so skillfully presented in âDark Towers,â the incompetence and indifference of European regulators and political leaders also is laid bare. The role played by former Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman, in particular, is painted by Enrich as being extremely damaging to the bank and the global financial system.
Starting from the acquisition of Morgan Grenfell in 1990 and then Bankers Trust a decade later, Deutsche Bank officials oversaw a sharp increase in the bankâs risk-taking activities that was neither prudent nor well-supervised. By the time Ackerman left Deutsche Bank in 2012, the bank was the largest in the word but was also in serious trouble, difficulties that would bring it to the brink of financial failure.
The deliberate indifference to risk and the overt willingness of Deutsche Bank officials to engage in money laundering, fraud and other wanton acts of criminality raises basic questions about the ability of governments in the EU to regulate financial institutions. Officials up to the board level of Deutsche Bank, for example, apparently were aware of illegal activities such as providing billions in cash to the Revolutionary Guards in Iran, yet did nothing to stop the activity.
Enrich reports that âBy 2006, Deutsche had zapped nearly $11 billion into Iran, Burma, Syria, Libya, and Sudan, providing desperately needed hard currency to the worldâs outlaw regimes and singlehandedly eroding the effectiveness of peaceful efforts to defuse international crises.â The book seemingly confirms a 2018 lawsuit which alleges that Deutsche played an âintegral role in helping Iran finance, orchestrate, and support terrorist attacks on U.S. peacekeeping forces in Iraq from 2004 to 2011.â
