Fanning the Flames of Doubt
As Climate Change Deniers Persist, Follow the Money
Yesterday morning, I woke up to an article sent to me by a friend, from a source called “NewsBreak.” I have seen this source before and been left with a negative impression, but didn’t think much about it. After all, there are all sorts of spurious content on the internet. However, as a person deeply concerned about the #ClimateEmergency, this story caught my attention because the headline proclaimed:
Scientist admits the ‘overwhelming consensus’ on the climate change crisis is ‘manufactured.’
I noticed the story originated with Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post, the owner of 24/7 propaganda machine Fox News, which has done profound damage to the social and political fabric of the US over decades. The article was written by well-known libertarian journalist and climate change skeptic John Stossel, and the person quoted in the story was climate scientist Judith Curry, retired in 2017.
Ms. Curry, is an outlier in the climate science community and has been repeatedly invited as a witness to United States Congressional hearings as one of the few scientists to advance doubts about the significance of human contributions to climate change. Between 2014 and February 2019, Curry testified before multiple Republican-led House committees, claiming that the dangers of global warming are overstated. She was also a Trump administration candidate for a "Presidential Committee on Climate Security" to perform an "adversarial scientific peer review" of climate science.
However, my story isn’t about Ms. Curry. As a learned person, she is after all the former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, her intentions may very well be good, if misguided, although I am also familiar with disgruntled academics, never pretty. Rather, I wondered what “NewsBreak” is about, republishing a NY Post article word for word, in which Ms. Curry is quoted as claiming, “It’s a manufactured consensus,” and that scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune.”
That got me thinking about fame and fortune.
NewsBreak has three investors, and funding of $151.4 million as of January 2021. The investors are IDG Capital, ZhenFund and Francisco Partners. IDG and ZhenFund are based in Beijing, China. Apparently that’s not a problem.
NewsBreak was founded by a Jeff Zheng in 2015, and is characterized as a Chinese media veteran by TechCrunch. According to his resume on LinkedIn, Mr. Zheng has a PhD in computer science from the University of Buffalo, and was the founding head of Yahoo! Labs in China, responsible for algorithm improvements on existing core products and science driven product innovations in the areas of search, media, advertising, and mobile. Apparently, Mr. Zheng knows how to leverage computers.
NewsBreak is headquartered in Mountain View, California but has teams in Beijing, Shanghai, Seattle, and New York. NewsBreak has three investors, and funding of $151.4 million as of January 2021. The investors are IDG Capital, ZhenFund and Francisco Partners. IDG and ZhenFund are based in Beijing, China. Apparently that’s not a problem. Francisco Partners is based in California. NewsBreak has ranked number one among all free iPhone news apps on the App Store several times since January 2019, and it’s estimated the app has more than 50 million installs globally across iOS and Android devices, of which more than 99 percent are from the US.
Mr. Zheng’s resume describes NewsBreak is an “AI-powered Local Discovery Engine & Online destination for everything local” [sic]. I’m not sure what local means since NY Post headquarters are in NYC, 399 miles from the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, NY, where this regurgitation appeared. Ms. Curry appears to live in Reno, Nevada, according to her LinkedIn profile. Perhaps Mr. Zheng is still sorting out his artificial intelligence bot.
According to the IDG website, IDG Capital “is a leading investment firm, focusing on developing extraordinary companies through venture, growth, and buyout,” and its mission is to “understand the future and invest in disruptive changes.” Sounds friendly and well-intentioned. Disruptive is always nice.
The ZhenFund website is written in Chinese, however, you can see their mandate here, which is to invest in future technology, AI, enterprise service, healthcare, new consumption, and mobile internet among other sectors. I love the new consumption part. That hasn’t caused any problems at all. No worries, I’ll have my VR headset on when the world ends.
Francisco Partners website, boasts $45 billion in capital raised, as “a leading technology investment firm with deep sector focus and a track record of delivering outstanding returns.” Where’s my checkbook? How about bitcoin? Crypto seems to be going well, unless you’re bothered by trillion dollar losses.
As far as I can see, Mr. Zheng is simply a naive, well-intentioned entrepreneur, completely unaware that his AI powered algorithm perpetuated a far-right climate denialism story in the NY Post, undermining established science, as the planet floods and incinerates. Hey, nothing wrong with that, when there’s a dollar or a yen to be made! That’s so American AND Chinese! World harmony, baby! I’m also certain his clever bot will pick up this article even though it’s my intellectual property, to give a “fair and balanced” presentation, just like Fox News.
I hope his super-hot bot informed him, Beijing got hit with insane flooding a few days ago, from a #ClimateChange supercharged typhoon. As of yesterday, 33 were dead and 18 missing. Days of heavy rain also hit the city’s mountainous western outskirts, causing an astonishing 59,000 homes to collapse, damage to nearly 150,000 others and flooding of over 37,000 acres of cropland. In Zhuozhou, southwest of Beijing, 125,000 residents were forced to evacuate their homes.
I already have my pontoon boat sales team over there, and will throw in a coffin with every boat sold. How I love disaster capitalism.
It’s just regular old weather though, no worries, and I certainly hope the swanky offices of IDG and ZhenFund didn’t take on water. That would be tragic.
Here are some pictures of the Beijing region, Mr. Zheng, in case your groovy AI bot hasn’t found them.
By the way, I hope you weren’t planning on vacationing in Lahaina, Jeffrey, it’s hard to find a luxury suite right now. Such a shame, being a quick flight to paradise from Mountain View, especially by private jet. Got one yet? Keep working, bud!
After you’ve made your first billion, and the planet is all water and charcoal, where will you vacation, dude? Mars? Elon is looking for a friend. He doesn’t have any.
And remember, readers, whatever you do, don’t remove the NewsBreak app from your devices. Jeff has plans.