Zuckerberg And Koch Lead Sponsors Of Climate Science Denial-Fest In Alberta

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called climate change “one of the most urgent challenges of our time” and pledged tens of millions of dollars to help fight it. Yet his company Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is listed as a “gold sponsor” for an event in Alberta next month featuring Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary political scientist who’s argued that there is “growing scientific skepticism” about whether humans are causing the climate to warm.

Another gold sponsor is Koch Industries, the oil and gas company whose billionaire owner Charles Koch, along with his late brother David, has given more than $100 million since 1997 to organizations that dispute or deny climate science, according to Greenpeace calculations. The event is headlined by Chris Rufo, the U.S. conservative activist who created a moral panic around “critical race theory” and has argued that “transgenderism” is “threatening families and kids all over the United States.”

“It’s pretty unusual,” Sean Buchan, a researcher with the organization Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), said of Meta’s sponsorship. “They generally speaking do their best to have a clean public image. These are some pretty toxic brands to be associated with.” Meta didn’t reply to detailed questions from DeSmog.

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He’ll be joined at the event by Cooper, a longtime climate change denier. Cooper was involved with the release of a 23-minute video from 2005 entitled “Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You’re Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.” Through his position at the University of Calgary, Cooper helped facilitate fundraising for an organization called Friends of Science, which in 2014 ran a billboard in Calgary stating that “the sun is the main driver of climate change. Not You. Not CO2.” Cooper in 2021 wrote a report for the Alberta government where he questioned whether humans are the main driver of climate change and claimed incorrectly that “there are good reasons for a decline in the plausibility of alarmist rhetoric.”

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https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/12/meta-and-koch-industries-to-sponsor-event-featuring-climate-denier-barry-cooper/