Chris Wright, a gas executive nominated to be Secretary of Energy in the Trump administration, has had a video online for quite a few months where he makes provocative, and false, statements about the impacts of climate change.
Wright asserts that climate change is not a crisis, and then claims to cite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report to say that extreme events are not increasing.
Climate scientists say no.
One of the scientists cited by the Post, Jim Kossin, is a recently retired NOAA expert that I’ve interviewed in the past, so I called him up to elaborate.
Jim had a lot to say, so I’ll be sorting thru and doling out some of his other jewels of wisdom in the coming week. For now, here’s the low down on Trump’s DOE nom.
Oil executive Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Energy Department, accepts that burning fossil fuel is warming the planet, but he departs from the mainstream over the consequences, contending that there is no climate crisis.
Wright cites scientific studies to argue that global warming “alarmists,” as he calls the majority of climate scientists, have it all wrong. He rattles off data to support his contention that a warmer Earth has reduced deaths from cold weather. And he points to published research to assert that hurricanes and other major storms are not growing in intensity, despite observations by meteorologists.
The references to scientific research make his arguments seem more compelling, but the authors of those studies told The Washington Post in interviews that Wright has misrepresented their work.
“What he is saying is flat-out wrong,” said Jim Kossin, a climate and atmospheric scientist who was an author of a section of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report about dangerous weather that Wright cited in a recent video on LinkedIn. Other researchers accused Wright of cherry-picking bits of data to support his thesis while ignoring abundant evidence of climate dangers.
Their complaints are important because Wright would have deep influence on U.S. climate policy if confirmed. The Energy Department sets regulations for the fossil fuel industry, drives research into energy technologies and guides the future of electric power distribution. As energy secretary, he would be in a key position to carry out Trump’s vision for rolling back clean-energy subsidies.
Wright’s provocative views and decades in the fracking industry as chief executive of Denver-based Liberty Energy are bound to get a close examination during Senate nomination hearings. Wright, through his company, declined to comment and referred questions to the Trump transition team, which said Wright “intends to deliver on President Trump’s pledge to unleash American energy production from all sources.”
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Though he has never held a prominent government post, Wright has established himself as a high-profile fossil fuel evangelist in energy and climate policy debates. He has a flair for showmanship that has kept him in the spotlight: Amid a debate over possible pollution caused by fluids used in fracking, Wright and his colleagues published a video of themselves drinking fracking fluid to show that it is not harmful. “Let’s drink to the world!” he says in the 2019 video.
His elevation to energy secretary pick had the backing of oil and gas executives such as billionaire Harold Hamm, who was Trump’s point person in raising funds from industry donors, according to an interviewwith Hamm in Hart Energy, an online publication. Hamm did not respond to requests for comment made through his company, Continental Resources.
UPDATE: Funnily enough, a week or so after this post and video were published, a padded envelope showed up on my driveway, from Mr Wright’s company, Liberty Energy, in Colorado.
It was a copy of a glossy vanity book, detailing Mr Wright’s state-of-the-art climate denial distortions, and extolling his love and beneficence for the poor people of the developing world.
It’s called “Bettering Human Lives”, and it’s online here.
Of course, as soon as he came to power, the first act of the administration was to cut food assistance to the most vulnerable people in the world, which has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Maybe those people should have just fracked up themselves some food.
Promises kept, right Mr Wright?
I hate it that now the basic plan is just to say whatever you want to be true and that’s good enough. There is too much stuff being said to fact check it all and no remaining credible sources (according to the general public) left to do it. The media is too biased both ways so it’s no longer trusted and facts are apparently the same as opinions now.
There’s lots of solid science on almost any topic, but sometimes it’s drowned out by factional squabbles based, as you say, on how people would like things to be. Credible sources do exist, you just need to develop your ability to recognize them. We are living in a populist era where anyone can fool themselves more easily than ever, but the smarter and better educated and more careful and studious you are, the closer you’ll be to facts. It’s important to have the best people in government, not the angriest or most popular, and that’s not going well, so do your research carefully, on GoogleScholar, not YouTube. Rely only on credible experts with good credentials, and you’ll see things pretty much the way the experts do.
Not only saying that what they want to be true is true but saying it’s science & quoting specific works when the works don’t say that at all. Not a new thing in general, but I’ve run into this exact argument several times already, recently, in youtube comments—claiming to quote IPCC on extreme weather frequency. They know 98% of people won’t check, & like all disinformation, once it’s out there it’s in minds forever. “They said/we said” only preaches to the choir, but we know what they say about that.
Thanks for the debunkelization reference.
More, please.
There’s lots of solid science on almost any topic, but sometimes it’s drowned out by factional squabbles based, as you say, on how people would like things to be. Credible sources do exist, you just need to develop your ability to recognize them. We are living in a populist era where anyone can fool themselves more easily than ever, but the smarter and better educated and more careful and studious you are, the closer you’ll be to facts. It’s important to have the best people in government, not the angriest or most popular, and that’s not going well, so do your research carefully. Use GoogleScholar, not YouTube. Rely only on credible experts with good credentials, and you’ll see things pretty much the way the experts do.
Has anyone read the book “How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler”? I watched a TED talk by its author Peter Pomerantsev. It’s a tactic that might win but maybe tough for nice people to deploy.
I’ve been harping on this for so long I’ve lost count ~ not going to win this till you step off of the curb and into the gutter and fight by the same rules they do