Sir David Attenborough: ‘Shoot’ Donald Trump and Leave Politics to the Experts

Why not shoot David Attenborough?  If he thinks murder is an appropriate solution to political disagreements he should perhaps be careful that someone does not apply that principle to him.  Looking at his comments below, it's hard to decide whether Sir David is a Fascist or a Communist

UPDATE: A reader writes: "Such a pubic declaration in USA would land you in Jail and even now it could lead to a warrant for his arrest. A threat on a Presidential candidate is a serious crime"

Sir David Attenborough, the veteran broadcaster and climate change alarmist, has attacked the involvement of voters in politics beyond elections, suggesting the only way to stop Donald Trump is to “shoot him” and that complex political questions like Brexit should be blocked by “wiser” politicians.

Condemning Mr. Trump’s climate-scepticism, Sir David asked: “Do we [foreigners] have any control or influence over the American election? Of course we don’t. We could shoot him… it’s not a bad idea.”

Whilst the Radio Times journalist conducting the interview suggested it was a joke met with “giggles”, such violent rhetoric from this liberal establishment figure and cultural icon may bbe seen as hypocritical.

Furthermore, Sir David went on to explain that he was deadly serious about his desire to block popular, elected individuals and decisions via undemocratic means.

“There’s confusion, isn’t there, between populism and parliamentary democracy,” he told the Radio Times, one of Britain’s widest-read and oldest magazines. “I mean, that’s why we’re in the mess we are with Brexit, is it not?”

“Do we really want to live by this kind of referendum?” he asked of the European Union (EU) plebiscite.

“What we mean by parliamentary democracy is surely that we find someone we respect who we think is probably wiser than we are, who is prepared to take the responsibility of pondering difficult things and then trust him – or her – to vote on our behalf,” Sir David continued.

He said he was concerned by Michael Gove’s EU referendum claims that the British people have had enough of experts. “That’s why politicians getting up and saying, ‘We’ve had enough of experts’ is so catastrophic,” he added.

Donald Trump may not be the only person Sir David believes would be better off dead. As a patron of the Population Matters, the veteran climate change alarmist is a subscriber to an organisation which in 2011 stated their goal of reducing the global population to a “sustainable” 5.1 billion. The present population is presently an estimated 7.4 billion.

Speaking in support of the aims of the group in 2012, the television personality said: “I can’t think of a single problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve if there were less people”.

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Clinton's Environmental Cleanup

This sure won’t silence the chatter from the Bernie Sanders fan club that claims the system is rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. The unearthing of hacked emails from WikiLeaks appears to reveal evidence of more collusion — this time courtesy of the League of Conservation Voters, which plotted to do whatever it took to rally behind Clinton. That conclusion is supplemented by the fact the group offered her a do-over after she turned in a weak environmental questionnaire.

The findings were dug up by Emily Atkin, who reports, “LCV sent the Clinton campaign a questionnaire in May 2015, asking her position on at least 20 key issues including climate change, Arctic drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline. The Clinton campaign replied to the questionnaire in mid-June. But in July, the Clinton campaign received a response from LCV executive Tiernan Sittenfeld, who said many of the answers on the questionnaire were not good enough.”

The biggest sticking point was Clinton’s shifty position on Keystone XL. LCV executive Tiernan Sittenfeld wrote, “It’s good to see her moving in the right direction. But it’s hard to imagine we can move forward until she makes clear she now opposes KXL.” Despite the group’s concern, Sanders — the more established ecofascist — was snubbed anyway. In fact, LCV gave Clinton another chance to fortify her environmental credentials.

In addition to demanding she “explicitly oppose Arctic Ocean and mid-Atlantic drilling” and “support regulating existing sources of methane,” Sittenfeld said, “We very much hope that the attached questionnaire can be strengthened.” And as Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw explains, Clinton pivoted to where the political winds were blowing: “In September of 2015 she released a statement saying that she was against the pipeline (a position she didn’t take as Secretary of State) and that was after this letter was received, but two months before the LCV endorsement. Similarly, they chided her for not opposing Arctic drilling. She turned around in August and dutifully condemned that practice as well.”

“She’ll say anything” to get elected. That’s what Barack Obama said of Hillary Clinton in 2008. He was right. So is Sanders when he says the DNC and other leftist groups conspired against him, an assertion also backed up by the WikiLeaks hack. But it certainly doesn’t help Sanders that he endorsed his Wall Street rival anyway.

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The Phony War Against CO2

Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide has helped raise global food production and reduce poverty

By Rodney W. Nichols and Harrison H. Schmitt

National polls show that climate change is low on the list of voters' priorities. For good reason: In the U.S., and for much of the world, the most dangerous environmental pollutants have been cleaned up. U.S. emissions of particulates, metals and varied gases-all of these: ozone, lead, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur-fell almost 70% between 1970 and 2014.

Further reductions will come from improved technologies such as catalytic removal of oxides of nitrogen and more-efficient sulfur scrubbers. This is a boon to human health.

But a myth persists that is both unscientific and immoral to perpetuate: that the beneficial gas carbon dioxide ranks among hazardous pollutants. It does not.

Unlike genuine pollutants, carbon dioxide (CO2) is an odorless, colorless gas. Every human being exhales about two pounds of CO2 a day, along with a similar amount of water vapor. CO2 is nontoxic to people and animals and is a vital nutrient to plants. It is also a greenhouse gas which helps maintain earth at a habitable temperature.

Fear of excessive warming from more CO2 in the atmosphere, including that released from human activity, has caused some people to advocate substantial and expensive reductions in CO2 emissions. But observations, such as those on our CO2 Coalition website, show that increased CO2 levels over the next century will cause modest and beneficial warming-perhaps as much as one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit)-and that this will be an even larger benefit to agriculture than it is now. The costs of emissions regulations, which will be paid by everyone, will be punishingly high and will provide no benefits to most people anywhere in the world.

In 2013 the level of U.S. farm output was about 2.7 times its 1948 level, and productivity was growing at an average annual rate of 1.52%. From 2001 to 2013, world-wide, global output of total crop and livestock commodities was expanding at an average rate of 2.52% a year.

This higher food security reduces poverty and increases well being and self-sufficiency everywhere, especially in the poorest parts of the developing countries. Along with better plant varieties, cropping practices and fertilizer, CO2 has contributed to this welcome increase in productivity.

The increase of atmospheric CO2 following the Industrial Revolution also has facilitated the expansion of natural vegetation into what had been barren areas, such as the edges of the Sahara and the Arctic. According to the U.N., the world will add 2.5 billion people over the next 30 years, most of them in developing countries. Feeding these people and assuring them a comfortable living standard should be among our highest moral priorities. With more CO2 in the atmosphere, the challenge can and will be met.

National policies must make economic and environmental sense. When someone says, "climate science is settled," remind them to check the facts. And recall the great physicist Richard Feynman's remark: "No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles."

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If experts had been right about sea ice, there would be no polar bears in Churchill

The simple fact is that if polar bear experts had been right about the threat to polar bears from the loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, there would be no polar bears in Churchill this fall. No bears for tourists to photograph, none for biologists to study, and certainly none for the BBC to film for an upcoming three-part TV special called “Arctic Live.”

The low-ice future that biologists said would doom polar bears to extinction by 2050 has already happened in 8 out of the last 10 years. The sea ice future has been realized.

Polar bears have experienced those supposedly deadly low-ice summers for almost a decade but the global population did not drop by 2/3 as predicted and not a single one of the ten subpopulations predicted to be extirpated under those conditions has been wiped out.

How much more wrong can you be than that? Will the BBC mention this conundrum in their show? Will the polar bear experts they consult share this fact with viewers? We’ll all have to watch and see

Yet, almost a decade of polar-bear-destroying sea ice levels did virtually none of the damage predicted to occur – fat polar bears still come ashore in Western Hudson Bay and migrate through Churchill waiting for ice to form, and not a single subpopulation (let alone ten) has been wiped out (Wiig et al. 2015).

Global polar bear numbers have not declined at all, let alone a decline of 67% – in fact, the latest estimate of 22,000-31,000 polar bears worldwide (IUCN Red List, 2015) is the highest it’s ever been.

More HERE





$1.2bn economic cost of environmental ‘lawfare’ in Australia

Environmental groups’ legal challenges to development projects ranging from dams and roads to coalmines are estimated to have cost the economy up to $1.2 billion — an amount that is rising as more “vexatious and frivolous” claims are made.

The 32 legal challenges under the environment laws that went to court meant developers spent a cumulative 7500 days — or 20 years — in court even though 28 of the environmental cases were defeated and three required only minor technical changes to go ahead.

The Institute of Public Affairs estimates that the delays to the projects “cost the Australian economy as much as $1.2bn”.

The conservative think tank’s investigation into challenges to projects under section 487 of the Environment Act, which allows anyone with a “special interest in the environment” the right to challenge, found that environmental groups carried out “an ideological anti-coal, anti-economic development agenda” aimed at holding up projects to reduce profitability and investment.

“Given the high failure rate and frivolous nature of many of the legal challenges, it is clear it hasn’t been applied in the way ­initially intended and rather has been persistently abused by green groups whose primary motivation is an anti-coal agenda,” the IPA report says.

Drawing on Productivity Commission calculations, the IPA finds the use of section 487, which was introduced by the Howard government in 2000, “is estim­ated to have cost the economy ­between $534 million and $1.2bn”.

“This estimate is likely to underestimate the total cost to Australia, as it doesn’t capture all flow-on effects to employment, investment and higher capital costs,” the report says.

“Some projects never go ahead due to heightened risk of legal challenges and consequent higher capital costs.”

The Turnbull government is trying to amend the laws to prevent the delaying tactics of “green lawfare” in the courts, after it was revealed a highly orchestrated, ­secretly foreign-funded organisation of environment groups was trying to stop coalmining in Australia using the courts to undermine investor confidence.

The government is also looking at the tax-exempt status of ­environmental groups that are funded from overseas. Leaked emails, passed on to Hillary Clinton’s election campaign chairman, John Podesta, revealed that the groups wanted to hide its foreign funding.

The emails confirmed the co-ordinated campaign to stop the vast Adani coal project at Carmichael in northern Queensland and coalmining in Australia.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan said last night the object of environmental court cases was “not to win, but to delay” and so undermine investor confidence and halt development.

“These activists aren’t playing to win, they are happy to lose as long as it wastes an investor’s time and adds to their costs,” Senator Canavan said.

“They seek to subvert our legal system for political ends … If these disruption tactics aren’t stopped they will cause economic damage to our country through lost ­investment and jobs.”

Labor environment spokesman Tony Burke said yesterday the laws should not restrict who can launch a challenge because “for the matters that hit national environmental law it’s accepted that every Australian has an ­interest in them”.

“Every Australian does have an interest in a World Heritage Area, in the Great Barrier Reef, in a National Heritage Area or whether or not a species is going to be wiped out,” Mr Burke said.

He told ABC Radio National in relation to the Adani coal project that, subject to environmental approvals, federal Labor had supported it.

Mr Burke said complaints about foreign-funding of opposition to the Adani project went a bit far when the project was ­Indian and the Liberal Party wouldn’t oppose foreign funding of political parties.

On Sunday Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk joined the condemnation of US funding of the campaign to block Adani’s project.

The IPA said total projects in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland were expected to ­attract more than $28bn in investment and create more than 15,000 jobs during construction and 13,000 jobs once operational.

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