Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)
@doctorvive.bsky.social
33K followers 1.5K following 6.5K posts
Founding Director, End Climate Silence Author, *The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It* genevieveguenther.com
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doctorvive.bsky.social
I am very happy to announce that "The Language of Climate Politics" has been shortlisted for the Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability. 😊

I'm honored to be in the company of @akshatrathi.bsky.social, Rob Jackson, and Edward Humes!

#ClimateChange
Penn Libraries Book
Prize in Sustainability This annual award acknowledges outstanding contributions to the global discourse on environmental sustainability, with a specific focus on books that have a substantial impact on the public's understanding of these
crucial issues.

Announcing the 2025 Shortlist
The following books have been shortlisted for the 2025 Penn Libraries Book
Prize in Sustainability.

Climate Capitalism, Akshat Rathi
Into the Clear Blue Sky, Rob Jackson
The Language of Climate Politics, Genevieve Guenther
Total Garbage, Edward Humes
Reposted by Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)
ketanjoshi.co
It's a little understated that Bari Weiss is really a flat-out 'just-asking-questions' style climate change denier.

Eg, here she is saying the science is up for public debate rather than settled, publishing the work of a big-name denier influencer (Koonin), and boosting a fake controversy

Bari Weiss
@bariweiss
"Is Donald Trump a “dictator”? Did the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., constitute an “insurgency”?

Is Joe Biden “sharp as a tack”?

Is the science of climate change “settled”?

Are Javier Milei of Argentina, Marine Le Pen of France, and the AfD party in Germany “far right”?

Is the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis a “conspiracy theory”? Was the persistence of the virus a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”? Does Anthony Fauci “represent science”?

Does Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, “promote hatred”? Do “fact-checkers” check facts?

Let’s ask a question about these questions: Why on Earth were we placed in a position of having to answer them?

In an open society, perspectives on reality confront one another in forceful competition. Each may contain some particle of truth—or at least some useful information.

So even the flat-earthers are allowed their say. Even the Bigfoot-seekers appear on the Discovery Channel. Somewhere among the nonsense, there may be something worth hearing.

Because we don’t precisely know where or when, the conversation is never over.

A vast diversity of perspectives should be promoted within an open society. It’s the intellectual equivalent of hybrid vigor.

If we all think alike, a single fatal error, being shared by all, could destroy the world.

These precepts are not original. They have long been part of the American DNA. The default, for us, has always been debate.

When certain subjects, like slavery, were made taboo and removed from the possibility of discussion, towering figures arose and terrible conflicts were fought to restore the balance.

However, the past four years have seen a sustained effort to overturn the principles of the open society. The just-departed administration, of which Biden was the decrepit figurehead, tried to impose, by threat or mandate, a version of reality that brooked no discussion.

Supported by its allies in the media, the academy, and the bureaucracy, the administrati… 
Bari Weiss
@bariweiss
Climate change did not cause the LA fires says Steve Koonin in an essential conversation with our 
@EmilyYoffe
:

https://thefp.com/p/climate-change-did-not-cause-the-la-fires-steve-koonin

Bari Weiss
@bariweiss
·
Sep 6, 2023
Gratified at the outpouring of responses to this important and courageous piece by 
@PatrickTBrown31
. 

https://thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-climate-change-to-get-published
From thefp.com
Bari Weiss
@bariweiss
·
Sep 5, 2023
"Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted. I know this because I am one of them.

Here’s how it works."

@PatrickTBrown31
 with a must-read piece:

https://thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-climate-change-to-get-published
Reposted by Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)
doctorvive.bsky.social
Those folks are just the flatterers of the status quo. Easiest climate job in the world!
doctorvive.bsky.social
I would bet $500 that one reason for the narrative that the climate movement is dead is that so many climate people have left X. Journalists work very hard but they are also lazy and STILL look to X to figure out what to pay attention to.

2/2
doctorvive.bsky.social
I would support a campaign to get them off X, but no such campaign exists. So they are staying and not hearing 1) many important voices and 2) a chorus singing harmonies about climate change.

1.75/2
doctorvive.bsky.social
The critical presence is policymakers, lobbyists, and journalists. THEY are the people who have power to drive policy and whose exodus will kill X, but they are not leaving.

1.5/2
doctorvive.bsky.social
It's not zero return. I know that what I'm saying over there about Abundance is being heard by at least some policymakers because they've told me. Using tweets that have gotten "no engagement."

Furthermore, WE are not the critical presence. We have next to zero power. 1/2
doctorvive.bsky.social
Okay. Still hoping you can reply to this! Maybe it got buried?

bsky.app/profile/doct...
doctorvive.bsky.social
Actually, one thing I wanted to ask you is: are there any studies into carcinogenic effects that *don't* give test animals large does of the substance they're testing? I thought that was how all those studies worked — but I honestly don't know!
doctorvive.bsky.social
Disagree. The good people leaving did not make the national and international policymakers or the journalists leave. Our leaving influences nobody. And information about Gaza is better on X.
doctorvive.bsky.social
Anyway, I'm going to have to read your reply tomorrow. I'm in Denmark at the moment, and it's actually past midnight here...
doctorvive.bsky.social
Actually, one thing I wanted to ask you is: are there any studies into carcinogenic effects that *don't* give test animals large does of the substance they're testing? I thought that was how all those studies worked — but I honestly don't know!
doctorvive.bsky.social
She then made a recommendation for the field in general.

But I guess you think the research is largely trustworthy and not tainted?

In any event, I don't think just dismissing issues like this helps one make one's case.
doctorvive.bsky.social
But she didn't say that you cited that study. She said that the general understanding (or the "scientific record") of the health effects of glyphosate is untrustworthy (or "has been tainted") and then she cited one particularly egregious reason for that.
Re "MAHA Is Focused on the Wrong Pesticide," by Michael
Grunwald (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 3): "There is no Roundup crisis," Mr. Grunwald writes. But there is, and the crisis is epistemological: The scientific record has been skewed to the point that a credible risk-benefit analysis of
glyphosate cannot be conducted with confidence. One telling case is a glyphosate safety review published in the
journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology in 2000. Litigation documents released in 2017 revealed that it was conceived and drafted by Monsanto staff members, yet it circulated as an independent review. Twenty-five years on, it still anchors the conversation: heavily cited, invoked in policy debates and embedded in Wikipedia and, by extension, A.I. models -
shaping how the public encounters "the science."
doctorvive.bsky.social
Especially because one of the writers is Naomi Oreskes, for god's sake.
Reposted by Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)
Reposted by Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)
volts.wtf
Turns out protest alone was never what changed things, it was protest *plus media coverage of protests*, which prompted officials to respond to protests, which increased public awareness of protests, etc.

If the protest happens & corporate media simply ignores it ... it's inert.
ineptitudinous.bsky.social
Six out of eight of the largest mass-movement protests in US history have happened since 2017. You wouldn't know this from most media reporting, and you sure af wouldn't know this from the way either major party has reacted.
doctorvive.bsky.social
Milankovitch cycles—infinitesimal shifts in the planet's rotational axis that allowed marginally more sunlight to hit the planet over millennia—repeatedly brought the Earth out of its ice ages.

It was mad to think that 1.3C of heating in, like, a century wouldn't totally destabilize our climate.
doctorvive.bsky.social
This is unworthy of you. Can you please actually explain why the objections readers raised are wrong?