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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHelp oust the Koch's junk science from our public science museums
http://jimhightower.com/node/8593We've all seen those touchie-feelie TV ads with baby deer, butterflies, and sylvan streams claiming that Amalgamated Contamination Inc. is nature's best friend. There's a word for such hokum: Greenwashing.
Leave it to the Koch brothers, however, to invent a whole new category of greenwashing. Doling out millions of their oil-smeared greenbacks, David and Charles have been buying their way onto the boards and into the exhibits and studies of elite museums of science. The fossil-fuel billionaires are using the academic and cultural prestige of these establishments to wash their filthy reputations and to spew the self-serving balderdash that climate change is a natural phenomenon, not one caused by polluting profiteers like them.
Astonishingly, David Koch was able to purchase a seat on the decision-making boards of the American Museum of Natural History and of the Smithsonian's natural history museum. The exalted Smithsonian has even allowed him to fund a Hall of Human Origins that promotes David's junk science fantasies. I know museums are scrambling for money, but come on an infamous science-denier directing a science museum?
Maybe not for long. A new kind of museum has been started to highlight economic and political forces that shape (or misshape) nature. Called The Natural History Museum, it's outing the Kochs and other greenwashers who're invading the public's science spaces and invading science itself. More than merely exposing the invaders, however, this upstart museum is recruiting prominent scientists, activating museum staffers, and rallying you and me into a spirited cultural campaign that literally can oust these hucksters, reject their tainted money, and throw junk science out of our centers of real science.
Leave it to the Koch brothers, however, to invent a whole new category of greenwashing. Doling out millions of their oil-smeared greenbacks, David and Charles have been buying their way onto the boards and into the exhibits and studies of elite museums of science. The fossil-fuel billionaires are using the academic and cultural prestige of these establishments to wash their filthy reputations and to spew the self-serving balderdash that climate change is a natural phenomenon, not one caused by polluting profiteers like them.
Astonishingly, David Koch was able to purchase a seat on the decision-making boards of the American Museum of Natural History and of the Smithsonian's natural history museum. The exalted Smithsonian has even allowed him to fund a Hall of Human Origins that promotes David's junk science fantasies. I know museums are scrambling for money, but come on an infamous science-denier directing a science museum?
Maybe not for long. A new kind of museum has been started to highlight economic and political forces that shape (or misshape) nature. Called The Natural History Museum, it's outing the Kochs and other greenwashers who're invading the public's science spaces and invading science itself. More than merely exposing the invaders, however, this upstart museum is recruiting prominent scientists, activating museum staffers, and rallying you and me into a spirited cultural campaign that literally can oust these hucksters, reject their tainted money, and throw junk science out of our centers of real science.
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Help oust the Koch's junk science from our public science museums (Original Post)
KamaAina
Apr 2015
OP
Great, about time. Some scientists & institutions are pushing back is right. Saw it in Truthout too.
appalachiablue
Apr 2015
#1
Like the article states, many major science museums & institutions are funded by big money
appalachiablue
Apr 2015
#3
appalachiablue
(41,174 posts)1. Great, about time. Some scientists & institutions are pushing back is right. Saw it in Truthout too.
The Kochs also fund PBS 'Nature' & 'NOVA' programs; don't watch enough to know if greenwashed.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)2. WTF?
edit: This would explain why Neil DeGrasse Tyson took the Cosmos remake to, of all places, Fox.
appalachiablue
(41,174 posts)3. Like the article states, many major science museums & institutions are funded by big money
and their exhibits show the influence (the Kochs also fund about 200 US colleges and universities). Yet some are trying to push back against these associations and there are calls for divestment from fossil fuels and energy ties from environmental groups and others. Have to start somewhere. Didn't realize Tyson's Cosmos was on Fox, that's strange.
An article in 'Truthout' covers the subject and Amy Goodman interviews experts involved in the new move:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29911-why-is-climate-denier-david-koch-on-the-board-of-top-science-museums-letter-urges-cutting-of-ties