Calvin Beisner is running low on allies in his effort to deny climate change. Beisner, the head of the Cornwall Alliance, is trying to stop other evangelical Christians from supporting efforts to curtail climate change with warnings that scientists are liars and environmental protection will destroy Christianity, promote mass genocide and hurt the poor.
But a recent study sponsored by the Charles Koch Foundation that was meant to prove that scientists were twisting data on climate change actually confirmed the science behind climate change. The physicist behind the study, climate skeptic Richard Muller of UC Berkeley, now declares, “Global warming is real.”
Naturally, Beisner is now attacking Muller for practicing bad science. As we reported in our report The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection, Beisner has close ties to oil and gas organizations and climate change denying organizations. Moreover, “Beisner is not a scientist and has no scientific credentials. Despite claiming to be an authority on energy and environmental issues, he received his Ph.D. in Scottish History.”
Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics writes in EthicsDaily that Beisner is losing allies fast because “[s]cience and experience are working against them.” Parham writes:
Muller’s work debunks the agenda of the Koch Foundation, which helped to underwrite the study. The Koch brothers are climate polluters.
Now, the ice under the global warming deniers and skeptics is thinning as fast as the ice is thinning from climate change in the Arctic.
Disregarding their increasingly precarious position, deniers and skeptics moved quickly to discredit Muller.
Fundamentalist theologian Calvin Beisner announced that physicist Muller’s study was irrelevant.
He called Muller’s position a “rhetorical sleight of hand.” He said the study had inherent flaws and criticized his papers for not being peer reviewed.
Beisner heads the Cornwall Alliance, a global warming denial group of right-wing Christians more committed to the free market than environmental stewardship.
Beisner, other fundamentalist Christians and profiteers from global warming pollution (big oil and dirty coal) will likely be the last outpost of climate change deniers.
Science and experience are working against them.
