Climate Liar Anthony Watts Solicits Student Essays For $2,000, Doesn't Get A Single Entry

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On Monday, Anthony Watts posted the first winning essay in his “do my job for me” contest to solicit essays about climate denial. Given that it’s from the “professionals” category, we expected the $2,000 prize would go to someone making an intelligent, science-based and professional-sounding argument. Instead, we got a rewrite of Jim Kelly’s 2019 Medium blog post detailing his issues with the IPCC’s First Assessment Report published back in 1990, most of which stem from his complete ignorance and misunderstanding of the IPCC, mixed with some troll-y alt-right cliches like attacking Greta and “SJWs.” Not exactly fresh content.

While we wait to see if the “general public” category does any better than the professionals at making a new, accurate, or remotely professional argument, based perhaps on the science of the 21st century, we will say we’re disappointed that apparently Watts got absolutely zero entries in the student category. Zero! Zip! Zilch!

Not a single student entered! Not even weatherweenie mistaken for a meteorologist Chris Martz was paying enough attention to Watts’s website to realize he could write “Greta bad” and send it in to make the first and easiest $2,000 of his surely inevitable career as a climate disinformer.

Watts’ failure to solicit essays from students in exchange for cash does not, unfortunately, mean that there isn’t a cadre of Koch Youth waiting in the wings. Quite the opposite, as the hub for all takes Koch-y, RealClearEnergy, recently ran not one but TWO essays from the Koch-y Young Voices “nonprofit” PR shop that pays students $1,000 for landing op-eds in school newspapers. We didn’t recognize the name, but that’s because it used to be the more descriptively named “Students for Liberty” before rebranding as a group training up the next generation of covert Koch (false) advertisers disguised as conservative activists, pundits, journalists and commentators who make up the media manipulation arm of the Koch influence machine.

EDIT

Ed. - Links at original

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/10/2085058/-Tony-Watts-Solicitation-of-Students-Fails-Where-Koch-Succeeds-Except-For-That-One-Porn-Star