'Bold leadership': Seven young climate activists to have a say in UN

Children as experts?  It suits the infantile theory that is global warming, I guess

The global warming theory is that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 cause increasing global temperatures.

They do not, as the "grand hiatus" shows: For 30 years between 1945 and 1975, CO2 levels leapt but global temperatures remained flat, which completely contradicts the theory. See here

New York: The head of the United Nations will start meeting regularly with young climate activists, saying participation by youth on the front lines is critical to scaling up action to slow global warming.

A group of seven people, ages 18 to 28, from seven countries will sit down with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to advise him on global warming issues, he said in a video on Twitter.

"We have seen young people on the front lines of climate action, showing us what bold leadership looks like," Guterres said.

The youth advisory group is tasked with providing "perspectives, ideas and solutions that will help us scale up climate action," he said.

"We are in a climate emergency. We do not have the luxury of time," he added.

The announcement marked an acknowledgement of the role young people have been playing in combating climate change as they look to their future.

Young climate change activists met with UN leaders last year to demand a greater role in global decision-making and planning processes to combat global warming.

The one-day summit at the UN drew more than 1000 young climate campaigners from more than 120 countries.

Guterres, who has made climate change his signature issue since taking office in 2017, said recently that governments should consider the issue when designing economic stimulus responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg urged European leaders to take emergency action on climate change, saying people in power had practically 'given up' on the possibility of handing over a decent future to coming generations.

"Where taxpayers' money is used to rescue businesses, it needs to be tied to achieving green jobs and sustainable growth," Guterres said on Earth Day in April.

Unable to gather due to coronavirus restrictions, young activists from about 20 countries recently took to YouTube in a 24-hour broadcast to share ideas on how to fight global warming.

Previously they were skipping classes, marching through cities and holding vigils outside government buildings in regular Friday protests.

The founder of Fridays for Future, Sweden's Greta Thunberg, 17, addressed the United Nations last year.

She was not among those named to the advisory group, which included Nisreen Elsaim, a Sudanese climate activist; Ernest Gibson of Fiji; Vladislav Kaim, an economist from Moldova; Sophia Kianni, an American who founded a non-profit to translate climate information into more than 100 languages; Nathan Metenier of France; Paloma Costa, a Brazilian lawyer; and Archana Soreng of India.

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Green propaganda

Radical environmentalism sees truth as a threat to its objectives. Propaganda (whether outright lies, exaggerations, or distortions) in pursuit of green goals is justified.

Perhaps the most famous example of green propaganda has been the persistent claim that 97% of climate scientists agree that man-made climate change endangers the planet. Studies sporting the 97% figure were debunked in 2014. In one such study, four independent reviewers found that only 0.3 percent of 11,994 abstracts cited actually stated that human activity is the primary cause of global warming.

But forget about a measly 97%! In November 2019, the green propaganda machine upped the ante. Now, they claimed, there is 100% scientific consensus that humans are the main drivers of climate change. 100 percent?!? What about the “350 [peer-reviewed] papers published since 2017 [that] subvert the claim that post-1850s warming has been unusual” and dozens of additional articles in 2019 found “that there’s nothing alarming or catastrophic about our climate”?

Another commonplace tactic of green propaganda has been simply to fudge actual temperature records. Environmentalist and computer model expert Tony Heller has documented many of those shenanigans in a series of eye-opening videos. (Here is another link. And another.) Interestingly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the official keeper of temperature records for the United States was, according to The Wall Street Journal, explicitly exempted from the Data Quality Act – the federal law that requires sound science in policymaking.

Another fertile field for green propaganda shenanigans is the “peer review” process. First , many scientists believe that the peer review process itself is broken. Some describe it as “a form of censorship” – a gate-keeper to keep out dissenters. Others assert, “peer review is known to engender bias, incompetence…ineffectiveness, and corruption.” Dr. John Ioannidis, who has been so on-target with his critiques of data gathering and modeling in connection with Covid-19, maintains that the “hotter” a field of scientific research is (“hotter” meaning more popular and active) “the less likely the research findings are to be true.” And what field of scientific research has been hotter than climate change for the last 30 year?

Second, as we have learned from climategate emails and other sources, peer review in climate science has been highly incestuous, with key figures in the alarmist camp arranging to review each other’s work while shielding their work from review by other scientists.

Third, the late IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri haughtily asserted that IPCC uses only peer-reviewed science. Not so. The IPCC’s much-ballyhooed “climate bible” (the 2007 report that garnered a Nobel Peace Prize for IPCC) cited 5,587 non-peer-reviewed sources such as “press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, working papers, student theses, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups.”

A common propaganda technique is to tell only one side of the story. Thus, green propaganda hyped the record-warm temperature of 64.94 degrees F. (18.3 C.) in Antarctica in February this year. While hyping a record summertime high in the southern hemisphere, the green propagandists turned a blind eye to a record wintertime low in the northern hemisphere that had happened a month earlier – specifically, a temperature reading of minus 86.8 degrees F. (-66C) in Greenland.

Similarly, when the mercury in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk touched 100 degrees F. on June 20, the green propaganda machine went into overdrive. (That temperature was less than one degree above the previous record high set in 1988.) They failed to mention that such heat north of the Arctic Circle was not unprecedented. The temperature reached 100 degrees F. in Fort Yukon, Alaska way back on June 27, 1915. Oh, by the way, I didn’t see any green reports that the people of Verkhoyansk woke up to snow on the ground on July 5. Wild temperature gyrations are a fact of life there due to peculiar topography and other natural factors.

Did you catch the BBC report about the Antarctic glacier Thwaites melting rapidly? That’s true, but the report failed to mention that active volcanoes beneath the glacier are causing the melting. Banning SUVs will not keep Thwaites from melting.

Last September, 250 news organizations around the world openly proclaimed a coordinated campaign to convince their readers and viewers of the urgent need for political action to address catastrophic climate change at the UN’s climate summit that month. Any pretense of journalistic impartiality was explicitly disavowed. The media outlets openly and proudly announced themselves as advocates (propagandists) for their favored viewpoint. Variety magazine even featured an article entitled, “Is Hollywood Doing Enough to Fight the Climate Crisis,” as if the entertainment industry should be in the vanguard of public brainwashing.

Meanwhile, some green zealots are insisting that the green propaganda aimed at children here and abroad over the last few decades needs to be ramped up. One British greenie wrote, “Teachers…will have to help young people critique and rethink…deeply ingrained assumptions, attitudes and expectations that run throughout history, and now endanger much of life on Earth.”

I’ll leave you with a question: Do you really know the truth about climate change, or have you heard green propaganda so many times that you just assume what they say is true?

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The Shellenberger Chronicles part three: Do radical environmentalists mean well?

This is the third and final article in the series I call The Shellenberger Chronicles. I hope you have had an opportunity to read parts one and two still appearing at CFACT.org. More importantly however than reading my highlights of the book Apocalypse Never is for you to obtain the book and read it cover to cover.

I have published over 500 reviews of science books in my career, now spanning seven decades. Most of them were good and well worth reading. Many were excellent, but in today’s world where politics has biased nearly everything we read, see and hear in the media, Apocalypse Never is the most important book you can read. It is not a work of opinion but rather the unveiling of the facts and details of the nefarious goals of radical environmentalists across the world desiring to control your life.

I have been a bit harsh, at times, on Mr. Shellenberger for having spent two decades of his life helping those he is now Book Review: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenbergercommitted to expose. In his final chapter titled False Gods For Lost Souls he explains why. He first describes from Ernest Becker’s book The Denial of Death that an exaggerated fear of death reveals a deep and often subconscious dissatisfaction with one’s life. Where what one is really recognizing that he or she is not making enough out of their lives. They feel stuck in bad relationships, unsupportive communities, or oppressive careers. Then Shellenberger says:

“That was certainly the case for me. I was drawn toward the apocalyptic view of climate change twenty years ago. I can see now that my heightened anxiety about climate change reflected underlying anxiety and unhappiness in my own life that had little to do with climate change or the state of the natural environment”.

The final third of this amazing book is a complete denouement of who Shellenberger is today. He proves to be not only an excellent writer but also a philosopher. Not the kind that pulls thoughts out of thin air as Plato was known to do but thoughts based on a build up of concepts derived from the work of dozens of others described in his 1220 end notes, Just as he learned from Ernest Becker mentioned above.

In Chapter Nine “Destroying The Environment To Protect It”, he follows in the footsteps of Michael Moore’s outstanding movie Planet For The Humans which illustrated the destruction done in creating the materials necessary to build wind turbines and solar arrays. He goes further however in making a clear calculation that if the United States were to try and generate all the energy it uses with renewables, which is Mr. Biden’s plan, between 25 and 50 percent of all land in the US would be required. By contrast we know that today’s energy system requires less than a single percent of our nation’s land.

Now consider this. Just as the high power density of coal made the industrial revolution possible, the far lower power densities of solar and wind would make today’s high energy urbanized, and industrial civilization impossible. In fact for many environmental alarmists that is their very goal.

These facts become more obvious when we learn from the author of the corruption of most of the major environmental groups you can name. While fighting tooth and nail against the fossil fuel industry they are taking donations from them with the promise of helping them defeat any further success of nuclear power in America. Shellenberger specifically names the Sierra club, the Natural Resource Defense Council(NRDC), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Bill McKibben’s 350.org in this cabal.

His research turned up through government reports shows that Climate activists such as those mentioned above, massively outspend climate skeptics, though they claim the opposite. EDF and NRDC alone have a total budget of $384 million while the two largest skeptic groups, the Competitive Enterprise Group and the Heartland Institute have combined budgets of $13 million.

During the many years these groups were denouncing fossil fuels and Exxon and the Koch brothers for funding their political opponents and demanding that universities stop investing in fossil fuels, all of the above mentioned groups were accepting large quantities of money from fossil fuel billionaires like Michal Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.

In the next to last chapter of Apocalypse Never Shellenberger zeros in on the true evil perpetrated on the poor by rich progressives and Non Government Organizations (NGOs) pretending to help them. The United Nations and environmental NGOs describe their work as helping poor nations “avoid the mistakes made in the industrialized world”, in the words of the UN Development Program.

While we all know of Thomas Malthus, the late 18th century economist who predicted that the earth could not sustain its growing population, you will learn how truly evil he and his disciples have been. Malthusians continue to this day to operate through radical environmentalism. Adolph Hitler too was inspired by Malthus. “The productivity of the soil can only be increased within defined limits and up to a certain point” he wrote in Mein Kampf. What has given Malthus his popularity among the ruling classes is that he furnished a plausible reason for the assumption that some have a better right to existence than others.

Today’s Malthusians, Shellenberger tells us, have significantly modified Malthus preachings. Where he warned that overpopulation would result in scarcity of food, today they warn that energy abundance will result in overpopulation, environmental destruction and societal collapse. They say this while ignoring energy use among the rich and famous.

You may think that celebrities who moralize about climate change are tone deaf while jetting around the globe, but they are not. They are flaunting their special status. Hypocrisy, the author tells us, is the ultimate power move. It is a way of demonstrating that one plays by a different set of rules from the ones adhered to by the common people.

By virtue of giving up his spot among them he has quickly become a pariah to the left. He has been attacked in newspapers, on twitter and of course by CNN. The New York Post allowed him to publish a rebuttal to all the abuse and he did so with excellent clarity. He still has not given up his belief that CO2 may effect temperature but no one’s perfect. He does clearly explain the minimal negative impacts from climate change and points out that alarmists constantly say it makes disasters worse in order to have visual and dramatic events like Hurricane Sandy and California wildfires “to make the issue more salient with voters”.

In the end he says in his NY Post article “climate alarmism gives them a purpose: to save the world from climate change. It offers them a story that casts them as heroes. And it provides a way for them to find meaning in their lives while retaining the illusion that they are people of science and reason not superstition and fantasy”.

This is the theme of the final chapter of his book False Gods For Lost Souls. The trouble with the new environmental religion he tell us is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self defeating. It leads its adherents to demonize their opponents as we have seen with every so called denier. A term which we know was lifted from the despicable “holocaust deniers”. It drives them to to seek to restrict power and prosperity here and abroad. Worst of all it spreads anxiety and depression among an unsuspecting populace.

If the climate apocalypse is a subconscious fantasy he says, for people who dislike civilization, it might help explain why the people who are the most alarmist about environmental problems are also the most opposed to the technologies capable of addressing them.

The answer for many rational environmentalists like myself who are alarmed by the religious fanaticism of those claiming to be concerned with the environment is that we need to better maintain the divide between science and religion, just as scientists need to maintain the divide between their personal values and the facts they study.

As I reach the end of my chronicles of Shellenberger’s work, I hope I have not made you satisfied with understanding the great service he has done in committing himself to right the wrongs he now understands he committed. You will benefit so much more by obtaining his book and giving it a slow and discerning read.

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Irrigators warn Australian Premier that her minister is picking the environment over farmers

Irrigators have taken a complaint against NSW Environment and Energy Minister Matt Kean to the Premier, claiming the minister appears to be choosing environmental concerns over the interests of farmers and agriculture.

In a stunning broadside against the minister in a letter sent to Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Friday, NSW Irrigators' Council interim chief executive Claire Miller suggested the water and agriculture sectors were being treated as "part of the problem" by some wings of the government.

The letter comes after a tense meeting with irrigators on July 1, in which Mr Kean apparently stated he had been appointed by the Premier to represent his energy and environment stakeholders, and left early.

"We quickly got the impression Minister Kean was not much interested in engaging with us," Ms Miller wrote to the Premier.

"It was troubling to realise Minister Kean does not consider farmers to be among his stakeholders. This narrow view is divisive and perpetuates the false binary that pits environmental interests against farming, as if the two are mutually exclusive."

In a strong warning to the Premier, Ms Miller said the agriculture sector regarded itself as a critical player in the state’s COVID-19 economic recovery program.

"We see ourselves as part of the solution and trust we [will] not be treated as part of the problem in some quarters of government."

Ms Berejiklian declined to comment on Monday, and did not respond to a question on a claim made by irrigators that Mr Kean said she had instructed him to deal only with energy and environment sector stakeholders.

Mr Kean declined to comment on the tone of the meeting, but was forthright in what he said during the session: he wanted to see more done to look after the environment.

"In my view, farmers and industry have an important role to play in caring for our natural environment, including our rivers and waterways," he said. "But I also think that more needs to be done. That is what I communicated to the [Irrigators’ Council]."

In response to other questions regarding the objective of the meeting, he said: "I want to see a sustainable agriculture industry thriving in NSW and an environment that is in a better state than the way we inherited it."

The tension between the minister and the state’s farmers and irrigators comes at a delicate time for the Premier, who is increasingly having to mediate between MPs pushing for more ambitious environmental action while regional communities continue to reel from drought and bushfires.

Within his own portfolio, Mr Kean is pushing the accelerator on his own steep environmental ambitions — including a plan to double the koala population by 2050, announced on Sunday, and a commitment to renewable energy.

Meanwhile, regional MPs argue the government hasn't done enough to help rebuild regional and agricultural communities still suffering hardships from a nightmare summer.

"Hopefully he can remember that he's the minister for the whole of NSW and if he busts this relationship with farmers he'll be essentially hurting the environment," one unnamed backbencher said. "And I very much doubt he's been given the Premier's instruction to disregard farmers."

Another was more blunt, saying, "Kean has shown a complete disregard for the people putting food on our tables in a time of crisis."

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