How Climate Hacks Like Shellenberger, Curry And Tom Nelson Can Still Make Bank W. Same Old Spew
Links at original.
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We've been using blogger turned Twitter troll Tom Nelson as a denier bellwether since at least 2015, as his regular Tweeting was a good indication of what ideas got traction with decidedly unprofessional climate deniers. But last year he did a YouTube interview, and then started his own climate disinformation channel. On the channel, Nelson interviews all the professional deniers you know and love, and while Tom's not exactly going viral, his audience is growing, with his video with denier Valentina Zharkova approaching 90k views. While Nelson's channel doesn't (yet) appear to be monetized, we did see ads on his videos, which suggests that, despite its apparently entirely unenforced policy against ads on climate disinformation, YouTube is selling ads on Tom Nelson's climate disinformation. Thanks, Google!
Then there's the supposed former environmentalist Michael Shellenberger. In a September interview with Robert Bryce that we watched for sake of hearing about his humiliating loss in the California governor's race, Shellenberger also describes how he lost funders for his pro-nuclear-power nonprofit a few years back. But it's not all good news. Since then, he's found that a few thousand Substack subscribers are starting to fill that financial gap. That would certainly explain his drift from pro-nuclear advocacy to general purpose hippie-punching, bundling in attacks on anti-racism and pro-LGBTQ+ efforts as part of his algorithmically-amplified recruitment of new subscribers.
(Also in the video, Robert Bryce, whose channel is not monetized because his work is funded in other ways that he insists aren't Koch-y, said that he's not a journalist. This is only notable because professor-turning-to-substacker Roger Pielke Jr. called him exactly that in the process of harassing someone who'd described Bryce accurately as an anti-renewable activist.)
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Traditional media still provides its own incentives for convenient untruths and a retirement plan for former professors who can no longer tolerate the constraints of scientific accuracy imposed by the Ivory Tower. Such is the fate of Judith Curry, former Georgia Tech professor, founder of a climate forecast company with oil clients, blogger, and now, SkyNews Australia columnist. In a December post to her blog, Curry found herself "at a bit of an inflection point," with her academic days behind her, and the publication of a new book ahead of her. In the meantime, she's taken an offer to contribute regular columns to SkyNews Australia. She was hired not because she has any particular wisdom to impart to the land Down Under, but instead accepted the offer specifically because it's far away from domestic US issues. Apparently Curry feels that her home turf in the US is "so toxic and noisy" that she turns down requests from outlets to write op-eds. For her, "trust is a big issue," which is why she feels "comfortable working with SkyNews."
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/5/2145499/-Social-Media-Disinfluencers-Big-Tech-Making-Climate-Denial-Even-More-Lucrative
