Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

Unlike Andrew Neil, I haven't got the luxury of being Chairman of an establishment magazine which represents its billionaire-owner's interests.

Nonetheless, we need to talk about Andrew Neil's climate change stance & history of working for overseas-based billionaires.

Here's Andrew Neil in 2013, asking: "Is the whole global warming schtick over?"

Global warming is, as kids know, the long-term heating of Earth’s climate due to human activity, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

And here's a testy & revealing exchange following Neil's bizarre question, between journalist Andrew Neil & climate expert Bob Ward, who has served as policy & communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment at the LSE since 2008.

Here's Numpty Neil repeatedly embarrassing himself in 2014 & 2015, making the oh-so-funny banal joke that every moronic pub bore makes: 'It's snowing - so much for that global warming nonsense!' Ho ho ho.

Some of the highly selective 'evidence' Neil cited in 2013/14, including from well known climate sceptic John Christy, is used to imply global warming is a myth.

In 2019 Christy gave a presentation to the #TuftonSt-based climate science denial group, Global Warming Policy Forum.

In September 2020, lured by Dubai-based billionaire's & multimillionaire's money, Neil announced his exit from the BBC to become chairman of the toxic ideologically extreme shit-show known as GB News.

I'm sure he felt much more relaxed about writing tweets like this:

Within the first week, presenters on the Dubai-based investment firm funded GB News had already interviewed two commentators associated with the UK’s main climate science denial group, #TuftonStreet's Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

desmog.com/2021/06/21/ana…

In his high profile interview with Rishi Sunak, Andrew Neil repeatedly asked the then Chancellor about the “eye-watering” costs of meeting the UK’s net-zero target. In a sign of things to come, Neil must have 'forgotten' to mention or ask about the costs of not reaching net-zero.

GB News is of course funded by Dubai-based investment firm Legatum, founded by billionaire Christopher Chandler, who in 2002, along with his brother, were the fourth largest investors in Russian state-controlled gas company Gazprom.

What are the chances?

This 2020 exchange with that equally popular TV presenter, Philip Schofield, showcases all reactionaries' formulaic rhetorical manoeuvre.

Having spent decades mocking climate science, Neil feigns surprise when asked if he's a climate change denier - it was "bizarre" he says. 🧐

In the follow-up tweet he does what every single conspiracy theorist & ideological extremist does - he plays the victim, & falsely accuses the 'MSM' of 'closing down debate', when these fuckers puke out their unhinged toxic bullshit ALL DAY EVERY DAY ON MULTIPLE MSM PLATFORMS.

Neil was once the proud face of GB "News", but after leaving he describes its Dubai-based funders as a “quite ideological” “Ukip tribute band”. No shit. 10 of GB News’s 31 hosts made on-air statements in 2022 rejecting/challenging the scientific consensus.
theguardian.com/media/2023/may…

Shortly after “quite ideological” Andrew Neil left GB "News", he said journalists are “basically the PR department of Greenpeace” when it comes to reporting on the climate crisis, & accused the likes of #ExtinctionRebellion of “nonsense scaremongering”.

theguardian.com/media/2021/nov…

In October 2021, a month after announcing he wouldn't be returning to “quite ideological” GB News, Neil was tweeting another “quite ideological” right-wing media platform, Guido Fawkes, who just happened to characterise @SkyNews's climate reporting as "DOOMSDAY" reporting.

Last year, rather than celebrating the mixed but welcome news that *some* parts of the Great Barrier Reef had the highest amount of coral cover since monitoring began 36 years ago, the #Spectator predictably attacked the "climate doomsters".

Anyway, draw your own conclusions about a man who lives in France, who has worked closely with authoritarian regimes, & has spent much of his life mocking climate science & climate activists while representing the interests of foreign/non-dom billionaires.

And of course, the article Andrew Neil refers to at the top of the thread is by Koch-funded Spiked's Chief Crank & shit-stirrer, Brendan O'Neil.

A truly lovely chap. 😬

#Spiked has always debated the scientific consensus on global warming. In 2013, Rob Lyons of Claire Fox’s Academy of Ideas, told Spiked’s readers that the climate crisis was ‘a myth’ because, there ‘is 50% more ice in the Arctic than last year’.

Years later, like Andrew Neil, Spiked tacitly admitted climate change may be a problem, amending its stance from denial to downplaying outcomes. It recently published an article celebrating the benefits of global warming, while advocating use of more fossil fuels, shale gas coal.

Scratch the surface & there's just a relatively small number of well-connected people, who work for a network of linked & influential organisations, & who spend their lives pumping out toxic shit into people's minds in exchange for billionaires' money.