Thread by @DoctorVive

In all the drama over Biden, & all the mockery of Trump's unhinged (yet super-boring) convention speech, I haven't seen much attention to the language of climate politics during the Republican Convention.

But the GOP did unveil new climate propaganda, so let's take a look!

🧵

First of all, both Vance and Trump introduced a new term, replacing "hoax," that suggests climate change isn't real.

That term is "Green New Scam."

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The word "scam" will of course be familiar to anyone who follows climate news on X and is thereby exposed to the MAGA tolls using the "ClimateScam" hashtag.

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This trolling—this ongoing denial that #ClimateChange is real—is the core rhetoric of one of America's two parties.

As @billmckibben pointed out in his newsletter, the GOP is now even less connected to the reality-based community than the Taliban.

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washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/…

@billmckibben (Incidentally, this is why I feel like my eyes are going to melt out of my head every time I read coverage that treats the Republicans like a normal political party. They may as well be, essentially, flat earthers who believe in demons! And some of them surely are...)

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Anyway, back to the analysis.

Trump and Vance also advanced the additional lie that prosperity in the US requires producing and using ever more domestic coal, oil, and methane.

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With his customary rhetorical brio, Trump said: “We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far. We are a nation that has the opportunity to make an absolute fortune with its energy.”

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nytimes.com/2024/07/19/us/…

And Vance, going down a list of people whose futures Trump would supposedly fight for, cited “the energy worker in Pennsylvania & Ohio who doesn’t understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tinpot dictators across the world."

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nytimes.com/2024/07/17/us/…

So this is the implicit narrative advanced by the GOP convention: domestic fossil-energy production is a way to put money directly in American's pockets, and we can go all in on oil and methane production because #ClimateChange is nothing but a "scam."

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There's the pig in new lipstick!

And here's some information you can use to corral this pig, even given its new look...

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Let's focus on Vance’s figure of the “energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio.”

That “energy worker” is likely someone who works in fracking, which is the method of fossil-fuel production most often found in those states.

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Is a Pennsylvanian or Ohioan who works in fracking richer than they were before fracking?

No.

The 22 OH, PA, and WV counties responsible for 90% of fracking oil & gas production saw their share of jobs, personal income, & population all decline after fracking began.

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Here's that study, by the good people at @O_R_V_I



13/nohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/wp-content/upl…

@O_R_V_I And as @KateAronoff has reported, due to automation, the number of workers required per extraction project is projected by ff companies to fall by 20 to 30%—hardly delivering the economic boom for workers that the GOP is fraudulently promising.

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newrepublic.com/article/161937…

@O_R_V_I @KateAronoff Indeed, even without climate policy, the oil & gas worker is fast becoming a mythical figure in American culture, akin to the cowboys in 1950s film & TV, representing a nostalgic but fictional invocation of American imperial power that remains the core of Trump’s appeal.

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@O_R_V_I @KateAronoff In truth, the fastest-growing job in America is solar installer.



16/nbls.gov/oes/2023/may/n…

With studies now showing that #ClimateChange will ALREADY cost the world $38 trillion a year by 2050, it's clear that future prosperity relies on NO LONGER using coal, oil, or gas — rather transforming our systems as quickly as humanly possible.

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reuters.com/business/envir…

Indeed, the ONLY way you can claim that doubling down on fossil fuels would be anything but catastrophic is by insisting that climate change isn't real, that it's a "scam" created by elites, or whatever.

But how are the Republicans going to sustain THAT fiction?

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Well, they're going to do what authoritarians have always done and suppress information — science and, frankly, the truth.

How do I know this? Because THEY SAY IT OUT LOUD.

It's right there in black and white in #Project2025.

(Not a normal party, remember.)

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As @dharnanoor and @zoeschlanger have reported, #Project2025 promises that a Republican president (Trump or whoever) will gut America’s public weather agency, NOAA.

And why? Because it produces some of the best climate research in the world.

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This research, according to the GOP, is "the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism."

Indeed, they call NOAA "a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry."

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Now, this accusation of "alarmism" has long formed the core of GOP climate propaganda—that's why the first chapter of my book dismantles this strategy and offers a different narrative—but it's getting increasingly hard to sustain in the face of evidence & experience.

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But in true Orwellian fashion, the Republicans want to gut scientific reasearch, suppress the production of knowledge, and force us to "ignore the evidence of our eyes and ears."

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amazon.com/1984-George-Or…

We must fight this with every fibre of our beings.

And me must try to make the news media fight it too. #EndClimateSilence.

We can start with this rather terrifying piece of scientific evidence for the catastrophic dangers of using coal, oil, and methane gas...

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The good folks at the @gcarbonproject have found that in 2023 terrestrial carbon sinks—forests, grasslands, soils—were so damaged by heat, drought, and floods, and subject to so many wildfires, that on average they didn’t absorb any CO2 from the atmosphere at all. 😶

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@gcarbonproject Of course, this study may prove to be faulty — and even if not, this event may be a one-off rather than a new state.

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But that it happened at all tells us that the impacts of warming are emerging on the worst side of the range of possible outcomes, and that climate alarm is totally justified.

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Above all, it tells us that the world can afford no further delay in phasing out fossil fuels.

It can certainly NOT afford another four years of an America totally committed to “drill baby drill.”

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So let's do everything we can to elect Democrats and then, relentlessly, tirelessly, force them to break with oil and gas and pass polices that enact a #GreenNewDeal in order that our kids can have a livable future.

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This thread has been adapted from my weekly newsletter (to which you can subscribe here: ) and it draws on research from my book (which you can order here: )endclimatesilence.org/newsletter
amazon.com/Language-Clima…

Be well! Have hope! And keep fighting! We can do this together.

💚

/fin

PS, Trump et al also spewed a lot of bullshit about EVs. @scottpwaldman did a great job debunking that false messaging for @EENewsUpdates (gift screenshot of his article👇).

And I give advice on how to talk about EVs during the election cycle here: us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=3fc70448f23…