Climate Information And Misinformation

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." -- John 8:32

It'd be nice to think so. But it's sometimes easier said than done. Many organizations and corporations have the most misleading names. You might think, for example, that an organization with a name like Independent Women's Forum would be concerned with things like women's health and women's rights, but oh noooo: it promotes climate change deniers. It is run by a woman: a woman who formerly was one of Koch Industries' top lobbyists.

Here are a couple of links which may be helpful in our daily struggle against an ocean of well-funded bullshit: first, a detailed list of sources of misinformation provided by Fight Clean Energy Smears, which is not the best-named website in the history of the Innertubes, imho, but it's good stuff. The page I've linked is full of information about organizations, including the above-mentioned Independent Women's Forum, who deny climate change, hinder the growth of renewable energy and do other wonderful things like that. Most of them seem to get funding from oil companies. Many also get funding from tobacco companies. (Maybe the oil-company funding by itself just wasn't evil enough.) Exxon, the GOP, the Koch Brothers: their nasty fingerprints are all over the place here.

The second website I'm recommending to you is the home page of the organization which made the first website, the Natural Resources Defense Council. This website is crammed with facts, facts and more facts about climate change, pollution, green energy, the dirty tricks of oil companies, things which you yes you can do about all of this -- good stuff. The Wrong Monkey approves.

Things I Still Haven't Done

1. Ski down Mt Everest --in my sleep.

2. Cover the entire surface of Michelangelo's Pietà with peanut butter.

3. Be Pope.

4. Go to court and force Koch Industries to provide $300 billion for the creation of wind farms, including Jim Gordon's project for an offshore wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod. In addition to this $300 billion in start-up capital, Koch industries would be required to pay all of the operating expenses for the wind farms for the first 10 years after they began generating power, with all of the revenue from that electricity going to the Democratic Party for the same 10-year period. After that, all of the wind farms would become Federally-owned and operated public utilities, with the exception of that Cape Cod facility, which would become the property of Jim Gordon.

5. Produce a remake of David Mamet's House of Gameswhich would follow the original word-for-word with one exception: the word "thing" would always be replaced by "vagina." This also would apply to "something," "anything" and "everything." Just think about it: "There are a lot of vaginas in this world." "Some vagina is wrong. I can feel it." "Let me know if there's any vagina I can do." "Hold on! I'm doing every vagina I can!" You know this one is brilliant.

6. Ride across China on one of Charlie Sheen's motorcycles. (After first having had it thoroughly sterilized, of course. The motorcycle, I mean.)

7. Restore Latin to its prominence among the languages of academia and diplomacy. (The Papacy would be a great help with this one. See, this all fits together logically.)

8. Prove definitively either that Jesus existed or that he didn't, so that we can all move on.

I'm counting on your support, my readers, to help me accomplish all of these things. Together we can do great things. (Together, but with me in charge, of course. I'm the alpha ape in this shrewdness.)