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Fox Finally Lands A Big Scandal: John Kerry Added! (Up The Death Toll Of Fossil Fuels) [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-21
As we and others have noticed, Fox "News"'s dedicated climate disinfo peddler Thomas Catenacci has been reliably turning stupid press releases into stupid stories attempting to make normal government functions (meeting with stakeholders who want protection from industry pollution) sound as corrupt as Trump administration problems (government regulators meeting with former lobbying coworkers from industries they're supposed to be regulating).
Catenacci’s latest piece is perhaps the best yet, because he basically disproves the story spoon-fed to him by a group weaponizing records requests to attempt to manufacture controversy.
Here's the real version of how a story like this goes, that the Right's now trying to recreate: Back in 2017 when Trump's EPA administrator Scott Pruitt claimed falsely that humans aren't "a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," a request for the records supporting that claim came up with exactly nothing . After court-ordered searching, the only document Pruitt's team could produce was his own Congressional testimony, again, with zero scientific evidence . Pruitt not only had the science completely wrong, but he couldn't even produce a shred of evidence — not a single study!
This, along with his other weird scandals , led to Pruitt's resignation, which is the obvious end-goal of Catenacci's steady stream of hit pieces.
Fast forward to May 2023, when Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry mentioned as a small part of a longer speech about agriculture that greenhouse gasses are killing 15 million people "every single year around this planet."
In response, Protect the Public Trust (PPT) is requesting an investigation and accusing Kerry of violating federal scientific integrity policies — ones put in place by the Biden administration specifically to address the flagrant science denial of the Trump administration. (As Fox viewers probably didn't notice, Trump's administration failed to squash congressionally-mandated climate reports , published denial pamphlets , and used a sharpie to rearrange hurricane forecasts.)
And while Kerry was perhaps speaking a little too loosely as a politician summarizing studies and not a scientist citing one, Catenacci himself justified Kerry’s fundamental claim: Fossil fuels kill millions annually.
PPT's Michael Chamberlain told Fox that Kerry’s “15 million” figure "seems to have been made entirely without evidence," and "appears to be a hysterical pronouncement of the most dangerous type."
While citing studies in an attempt to show that Kerry’s figure is inaccurate, Catenacci ends up providing evidence that fossil fuel emissions are killing millions of people per year:
“According to data from Lancet Countdown and Climate Vulnerable Forum presented during the United Nations climate summit in November, climate change is expected to cause 3.4 million deaths by the year 2100. The excess deaths are expected to be caused by increased wildfire frequency, heatwaves and higher incidence of mosquito-borne tropical disease. And a 2021 study from Harvard University published in the journal Environmental Research calculated that fossil fuel emissions are responsible for more than 8 million annual deaths. Another analysis, the Global Burden of Disease Study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, determined 4.2 million people died per year as a result of outdoor airborne particulate matter pollution.”
Now, you can't just add up these figures because surely some of the 4.2 million annual deaths from particulate matter are included in the 8 million fossil fuel-related deaths. Furthermore, the Lancet figure is 3.4 million deaths per year by 2100 as a result of climate change caused by fossil fuels, while the other studies show only 8+ million deaths from fossil fuels every year.
Interestingly, though, the figures Catenacci cites do add up to… 15.6 million!
Maybe Kerry is clumsily misreading the details about the exact numbers; we're certainly not about to claim any politician is always 100% accurate! And yes, 8 million and 15 million are quite different- but would only 8 million deaths per year from air pollution not still be a problem?
And maybe Kerry does have a rock-solid 15 million figure on hand! Catenacci didn't wait for his response before running the story asking the question. So, we'll just eagerly wait for Kerry's office to take this opportunity to verify for Fox News, again, that air pollution, climate change, and fossil fuels kill millions of people a year.
No doubt Catenacci will run the corrective story detailing all the science the Dept. of State provides, just as eagerly as he ran this backfiring confirmation that fossil fuels kill millions.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/21/2176681/-Fox-Finally-Lands-A-Big-Scandal-John-Kerry-Added-Up-The-Death-Toll-Of-Fossil-Fuels
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