Starting soon, @MichaelEMann on Skeptical Inquirer Presents with @LeighannLord! Starts at 7pm ET. Register free right now. us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist… 
About to get started! You can still register for the Zoom event now to tune in right here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…
We're on! Look! It's Leighann!
(You can get more of Leighann's comedy at veryfunnylady.com)
The CFI Coronavirus Resource Center! centerforinquiry.org/coronavirus
Michael Mann is on, and he's opening with the climate change projections of...Exxon Mobile? Yep.
Mann says Exxon Mobile spent decades trying to discredit scientists who came up with the same projections their own scientists came up with and starting a flood of misinformation about climate. "We now have to go down a black double diamond slope."
"The impacts are no longer subtle. ... It's no longer just about polar bears." I mean, we cared about the polar bears too.
"Dangerous climate change has arrived."
"Dangerous climate change has arrived."
How bad are we willing to let climate change get?
On Texas: We're not seeing record levels of cold in Texas, and climate change may have made it possible for the polar vortex to have the impact it did in Texas.
"I didn't think I would live to see a year of thirty named storms in the Atlantic."
A hurricane, named with a letter from the Greek alphabet, was sucking in smoke from out of control forest fires. Yikes.
Michael Mann dropped the Carl Sagan "not so open minded that your brain falls out" line on Australian TV, which is super cool.
The forces of inaction, like the fossil fuel industry, Mann calls "the inactivists." They've turned toward tactics of deflection, division, despair, and false solutions.
Espousing ideas not aren't based on actual facts or evidence isn't "skepticism."
Mann listing off examples of "soft denial": things that delay real action, say we'll "innovate" our way out of things, allow the market will solve everything. Says Mann about the "we'll adapt" argument: "I guess we'll just develop fins and gills."
Mann says industry has gotten the mainstream media to buy into the idea that it's up to individual consumers to address climate change, rather than confront the problem systemically.
BP doesn't want us looking at their carbon footprint, they want us looking at our own, says Mann.
Inactivists try to get climate activists fighting amongst themselves over each other's "climate purity."
Mann addresses "doomism," which he says distorts the science in the same way that the deniers do. "There's no scientific evidence" for the idea that it's too late to do anything.
"We don't need magic new technologies," says Mann. We just need to scale up the solutions that we already have.
"We've gone about as far as you can go with behavior change...we need to decarbonize our economy."
"The United States is back and we're ready to lead again."
Mann also points out the powerful voices of young leaders.
Q&A time with Michael Mann!
Q: Wouldn't it just be cheaper for these inactivists to do the right thing?
A: The problem is that corporations don't have a soul.
Q: Wouldn't it just be cheaper for these inactivists to do the right thing?
A: The problem is that corporations don't have a soul.
Q: What about nuclear power?
A: There's a legitimate political debate to be had about nuclear energy, and I wish we were having that debate rather than fighting inactivism.
A: There's a legitimate political debate to be had about nuclear energy, and I wish we were having that debate rather than fighting inactivism.
"There's no economy on a dead planet."
This has been a really great discussion. Thanks so much, @MichaelEMann and @LeighannLord.
Next week on CFI Insider, meet our master of all knowledge, CFI Libraries director Tim Binga! centerforinquiry.org/news/meet-free…
Next week on CFI Insider, meet our master of all knowledge, CFI Libraries director Tim Binga! centerforinquiry.org/news/meet-free…
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