Climate Change and Leftist Hypocrisy

Nothing exposes the cynical hypocrisy of the left more than its jihadist attitude toward the dubious theory of man-made global warming.  The phoniness and selfishness of the left show up in several different ways.

The left pronounces manmade global warming "settled science" but then insists that we continue to spend billions of dollars in climate change research.  If it is truly settled science, then we need to spend no more money at all on research, and if this supposed dire threat requires immediate action by governments, then even research on the best way to contain climate change is unnecessary.

Scientific research has value when there are "schools of thought" in science.  If some scientists doubt climate change and others believe that climate change is global cooling and others think that any climate change is natural and not man-made – and if there are others who believe in man-made global warming – then there is a purpose and a value to research.

What climate change research really means is the heavy-handed use of taxpayer-funded leftist totalitarianism in the institutional bureaucracies of academia, whose sole purpose is to propagandize the gullible with specious reasoning, with the heavy stamp of "Official Science."

The left professes to love progress, but climate change itself is progress.  Changing climate throughout history gradually reduces the value of land owned by those who live in the most desirable areas and gradually increases the value of land owned by those who live in less desirable areas.  Regardless of whether the world is getting warmer or getting colder, climate change redistributes wealth.

Keeping nature exactly as it is reflects the hidebound mindset of an ultra-reactionary, which is to say of a modern leftist.  These are the same dull, plump nabobs who despise free enterprise precisely because that process is constant and unmanaged revolution when the left wants nothing really ever to change at all.

That means, of course, that these privileged clerics of leftists never see smaller government or more freedom as the solution to environmental problems, and so even if next year new scientific evidence suggested that the planet is cooling, not warming, the same leftists who today lecture that free enterprise is heating the planet would then, undoubtedly, find that free enterprise was cooling the planet.

Leftist hypocrisy regarding climate change can also be seen in its attitude toward actual environmental changes.  Venice is sinking into the Adriatic, but no leftist is calling for lowering the Adriatic or raising Venice.  This is too real a crisis for the unserious left.

If the sinking of Venice seems too "trivial," then consider a dramatic and pending ecological apocalypse.  The West Coast of America will collapse into the Pacific Ocean, and the earthquakes that plague it today are a very real symptom of the grinding plate tectonics that will someday produce huge tsunamis and drastic climatic changes.

Shouldn't we be evacuating the West Coast and sending Californians to Quonset huts in Kansas and Arkansas until further resettlement can be done?  Shouldn't we stop all construction along the West Coast and begin, instead, the deconstruction of those cities with all their steel and concrete and people?  Sure, if the left actually cared about pending ecological catastrophes.

(As far as that goes, if leftists really believed that global warming is real and the low-level areas like Rhode Island and Delaware will be under water in a few decades, shouldn't the left be shipping those in the densely populated Northeast to parts of Flyover Country that face population losses as perfectly good homes in rural Oklahoma or Nebraska are left to decay?  If the Potomac River is going to rise, and sea levels rise, and put our nation's capital under water, should not the left be frantically trying to move our nation's federal district to Little Rock or Davenport?)

Don't wait for leftists to tell us that we need no more money for climate research (that is how they pay their pseudo-scientific toadies).  Don't wait for leftists to address real ecological issues like Venice or the San Andreas Fault (those are far too real problems).  Don't wait for leftists to depopulate their rich old centers of wealth and power on the coasts (that would actually cost the left power and wealth!).

Everything the left does is to hold forever its power, position, and wealth.  The only "science" allowed is science that helps that unsavory greed.  Leftist hypocrisy on climate change, like everything else, is utterly, absolutely corrupting.

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THREE CHEERS FOR CARBON DIOXIDE

Carbon dioxide is plant food, one of the basic necessities for almost all life on Earth. That enviros have tried to turn CO2 into a bogeyman verges on the bizarre. In fact, increasing levels of CO2 have already been of great benefit to plants and humans. This paper by Indur Goklany and the Global Warming Policy Foundation is an excellent corrective to warmist hysteria:

"Carbon dioxide fertilises plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15%. This has not only been good for humankind but for the natural world too, because an acre of land that is not used for crops is an acre of land that is left for nature."

This has been a huge boon to humanity, which has been undermined to some degree by environmentalists. In all of the quotes below, numerous footnotes have been deleted but can be seen at the link:

"Between 1990–92 and 2011–13, although global population increased by 31% to 7.1 billion, available food supplies increased by 44%. Consequently, the population suffering from chronic hunger declined by 173 million despite a population increase of 1.7 billion. This occurred despite the diversion of land and crops from production of food to the production of biofuels. According to one estimate, in 2008 such activities helped push 130–155 million people into absolute poverty, exacerbating hunger in this most marginal of populations. This may in turn have led to 190,000 premature deaths worldwide in 2010 alone. Thus, ironically, a policy purporting to reduce [global warming] in order to reduce future poverty and hunger only magnified these problems in the present day."

Environmentalism kills. On the other hand, the supposed perils of increased CO2 have failed to materialize. The alarmists’ claims relating to rising sea levels are a joke:

"Sea level has risen about 400 feet in the past 20,000 years, and continues to rise, albeit much more slowly than in many times past. That it continues to rise today is unremarkable. Its rise indeed signals a global warming, but not necessarily anthropogenic global warming. Anthropogenic global warming should cause an acceleration in sea-level rise, but several observational studies have failed to detect one. IPCC AR5 notes that, “it is likely that [global mean sea level] rose between 1920 and 1950 at a rate comparable to that observed since 1993.” Some studies actually indicate a recent deceleration. For example, Chen et al. find that the global sea level rose at a rate of 3.2±0.4 mm/yr during 1993–2003, but that rate has decelerated since 2004. By 2012, the rate of rise had slowed significantly to 1.8±0.9 mm/yr."

The alarmists’ models actually predict that there will be fewer extreme weather events, since the temperature differential between the poles and the equator will diminish. Global warming shills never mention this, however, preferring to blame every storm, flood or drought on global warming that hasn’t actually happened. Nor has weather taken a turn for the worse:

"Although there has been an increase in warm days, accompanied by a decline in cold days, there have been no general increases in the intensity or frequency of other weather extremes, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts. Other recent studies confirm this for droughts and floods. Tropical cyclones, a category that includes hurricanes and typhoons, are neither more frequent nor more powerful. Data from 1970 onward indicate that global and Northern Hemisphere accumulated cyclone energy is currently below average. There has not been a major hurricane landfall in the US since 2005 (as of this writing). Moreover, the average number of strong-to-violent tornadoes over the past few years is lower today than it was in the 1950s, 1960s or early-to-mid-1970s.

More importantly, despite a four-fold rise in population and much more complete reporting of such events, since the 1920s deaths from all extreme weather events, including those caused by extreme heat, have declined by 93%, while death rates have declined by 98%.

There has been no increase in economic losses from extreme weather once one accounts for the growth in aggregate wealth, a factor which automatically increases the economic assets at risk."

That’s enough for now, but there is much, much more in the report, which we may revisit in future posts.

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Canada: Forest Ethics’ cash pipeline

"The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines is a project to build a twin pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia. The eastbound pipeline would import natural gas condensate and the westbound pipeline would export diluted bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands to the marine terminal in Kitimat for transportation to the Asian markets by oil tankers" -- Wikipedia

New information contained in U.S. tax returns makes clear that a large percentage of the fuss over the Northern Gateway pipeline has been generated by a single, American organization: ForestEthics, based in San Francisco. In its 2012 tax return, filed with the I.R.S., ForestEthics claims credit for having generated fully 87 percent of the letters of comment sent to the National Energy Board regarding the Joint Review Panel for the Northern Gateway.

“Our campaign to halt the Enbridge Gateway pipeline has cemented itself in the Canadian media and citizenry. Grassroots organizing teams have mobilized an unprecedented amount of Canadian civic participation in the government’s environmental review and approval process. In the last six months of 2012, we amassed more than 25,000 new supporters for this campaign and helped organize the largest act of Canadian civil disobedience in the history of the pipeline fight. In August, we submitted to the National Energy Board 4,119 (out of 4,722 in total submitted) unique Letters of Comment on the Enbridge tankers/pipeline project, written by our supporters.” Those are ForestEthics’s own words in its tax return dated September 20, 2013.

ForestEthics has been working to stigmatize the Alberta oil industry since 2009. That year, ForestEthics reported to the I.R.S. “By stigmatizing ‘dirty’ sources of energy, we can make it difficult to finance and sell these products…”

Between 2009 and 2012, ForestEthics USA transferred $3.3 million to Canadian counter-parts, tax returns say. The recipients are not identified except in 2012 when ForestEthics USA reported that it paid $466,711 to sister organizations in British Columbia, ForestEthics Solutions Society and ForestEthics Advocacy Association which split off from Tides Canada in 2012.

ForestEthics also takes credit for organizing First Nations opposed to the pipeline.

In 2011, ForestEthics reported to the I.R.S. that the Tar Sands campaign had reached “a critical turning point.” “After securing the introduction of legislation calling for a tanker ban on BC coast, we amplified the opposition of First Nations and other communities, including by organizing a series of flights over the pipeline route for First Nations remembers that earned coverage in National Geographic, Outside and other outlets. We also focused on preparing for the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel (JRP), the body responsible for assessing the pipeline proposal,” reported ForestEthics to the I.R.S.

Since 2008, ForestEthics has been the workhorse of the Tar Sands campaign, co-funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Tides Foundation. Tides has dispersed more than $20 million for the Tar Sands campaign, including US$1.3 million to ForestEthics. The origin of these funds is not revealed by Tides.

ForestEthics has also received funds for its Tar Sands campaign from U.S. sources other than Tides. For example, in 2012 the Compton Foundation paid ForestEthics $40,000 for its “mindfulness program” which provides “meditation, coaching, retreats, and “inspired vacations,” (quotation marks as per the original) to increase staff tenure and morale and reduce conflict around “difficult decisions.”

Whether it was the intention or not, environmental activism has become a form of economic protectionism. In the name of protecting the environment, economic and trade interests are being protected. By blocking pipeline and port infrastructure projects, environmental organizations landlock Canadian oil within North American and continue the U.S. monopoly on Canadian oil exports.

The problem with the funding of the Tar Sands Campaign is the secret donors that may have an agenda that is contrary to Canadian interests. If ForestEthics and other environmental groups wish to have a credible voice in the pipeline debate, they must disclose the origin of their funding from Tides.

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Greenie Desperation Breeds Contempt for Free Speech, Freedom Itself

There’s an old legal adage, “When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table.” Climate alarmists have reached the point where they are not just pounding the table, they are breaking the table and using its pieces to pound on anyone who would dare dissent from the climate orthodoxy humans are causing catastrophic global warming.

Throughout 2015, in Climate Change Weekly, Environment & Climate News, and other outlets, I have described instances where alarmists tried to use the force of law to suppress debate, threatening the jobs and very freedom of climate skeptics or climate realists like myself.

In the August issue of Environment & Climate News, David Legates discussed how he was removed from his position as Delaware state climatologist for his views on climate science. And earlier this year I described witch hunts launched by members of Congress against climate researchers who have disagreed with the Obama administration, and the institutions employing them, demanding they reveal any and all funding for their work and any emails, research, or exchanges possibly related to testimony they gave to Congress.

This suppression of legitimate dissent is not limited to the United States. The Telegraph recently reported France’s top television weatherman has been fired for criticizing the international climate change experts in a promotional video he produced to publicize his book, Climate Investigation. Author Philippe Verdier, weather chief at France Télévisions, the country’s state broadcaster, says leading climatologists and political leaders have “taken the world hostage” using misleading data.

Verdier wrote, “We are hostage to a planetary scandal over climate change – a war machine whose aim is to keep us in fear.” For his efforts to confront climate alarmism, Verdier was suspended. And this in France, the country where just months ago thousands took to the streets to defend free speech in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations by Islamic terrorists.

Just two weeks ago in Climate Change Weekly I noted alarmists are calling for the International Court of Criminal Justice to settle the science of climate change, while in the United States some researchers are calling for racketeering trials for climate skeptics.

Intimidation and persecution of climate skeptics is not new. More than a decade ago some alarmists started to call for Nuremberg-type trials for climate realists. But lately, the voices have become more shrill, and the use of intimidation and the threat of force become more immediate.

I attribute this ratcheting up of the pressure on climate realists to three factors. First, measurable facts on the ground are increasingly undermining the so-called scientific consensus humans are causing climate change. Temperature increases have stalled while atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have grown. In addition, polar ice has recovered and hurricane numbers and intensity continue to fall well below historic averages. All of these facts confound climate models: The gap between climate model predictions and actual temperature measurements grows larger.

Second, polls demonstrate climate realists are winning the battle for the public’s hearts and minds. Fear of climate change ranks at or near the bottom of people’s public policy concerns, and very few people consider a candidate’s views on climate change an important factor when they vote.

Third, the 21st United Nations climate conference (COP 21) is coming up, and like every conference since the 2007 one in Kyoto it seems doomed to fail to produce a binding treaty restricting fossil fuel use and expanding governments’ controls over the world economy.

I long for the days when liberals were liberal. It’s time for climate alarmists and the politicians who follow their diktats like lap-dogs to brush up on their John Stuart Mill:

"This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions … [is] almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind"

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Critics Call for Moratorium on ‘Unachievable’ G20 Renewables Plan

Mark Duchamp (World Council for Nature) and other campaign groups have released the following open letter plea:

Prime Minister of Turkey, Energy Ministers of the G20 countries,
Ladies and Gentlemen of the G20 Meeting,

You are preparing the Istanbul meeting of October 2nd, the objective being to coordinate the energy policies of G20 countries. This is an opportunity to relay to you some serious concerns held by the ordinary people of this planet regarding the “energy transition”.  

Wind farm and photovoltaic output depend on the weather. Thirty years have passed since the introduction of this intermittent, erratic electricity. Without means for its storage on a massive scale, it remains of little use. Using fossil fuel power plants to regulate this energy is prohibitive in cost and cancels out savings realized on C02 emissions.

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates said that the cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is“beyond astronomical”. Having invested one billion dollars in finding new ways to harness the energy from the sun, he suggests governments likewise redirect wasteful green subsidies to research & development (1) . He also donated $28 billion to charity, nearly half his fortune (2).

Subsidies to ineffective wind "farms" have created a “1.8 trillion dollar global industry” (3), whose cost isstifling the economy everywhere while CO2 emissions fail to regress. Collateral damage, on the other hand, isconsiderable, no matter how many “experts” for hire dismiss the evidence, such as adverse health impacts revealed by conscientious professionals (4).  Likewise, the massacre of birds and bats by the million (5) is denied, as are deleterious effects on the price of electricity, employment, property values and tourism potential. Wildlife habitats and marine ecosystems are sacrificed, as well as marine mammals, forests, landscapes, amenity of the countryside and quality of life. Ground water is being contaminated (6), unrecyclable turbine blades accumulate in dumps, the extraction of rare earths for wind turbines kills miners, women and children in China (7), while everywhere populations are fed mendacious buzzwords like “green energy”, "wind is free",  and “renewables will save the planet”.

Vested interests and unscrupulous politicians have hijacked the "Green" Agenda, causing unprecedented devastation throughout the world, notably when wind turbines are erected in migration corridors or protected habitats, killing rare species - as in Ontario (8).

Press articles testify to growing suspicions of corruption, and a book describes how (money) “bundlers” are working within the US administration, distributing favors to private interests: “Throw Them All Out” (9).

Infrasound emissions increase as wind turbines become larger, causing more wind farm victims. These are neither attended nor compensated. Also, e.g. in Turkey, property rights are being breached by bulldozers illegally entering private properties, or valuable land being expropriated outright in violation of the Constitution (10). State Council (High Court) orders to stop construction are not always implemented by local authorities (10). In Bodrum, residents had to remain on guard 24/7 carrying sticks to prevent construction workers entering their properties. Yet many wind projects in Turkey are actively supported by the German or Danish governments, and financed by the EBRD and/or the World Bank.

Residents globally suffer the brutality of windpower development. Take Mexico, where entire communities of indigenous populations from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec are taking to the streets to demonstrate against the invasion of their tribal lands by hundreds of unwanted wind turbines. Violence pits wind farm personnel against protesters, causing loss of life (11). Wind development caused more deaths in Guatemala and Kenya (12), and in Dongzhou, China, 20 protesters were killed by police firing into the crowd (13).

Ineffectiveness & cost caused the wind farm bubble to burst in Spain, Greece, Portugal & Italy. Richer countries like Denmark, Germany and the UK, are scaling back their support, as have China (14) and India. Others - Australia, Canada, France & Turkey, having entered the game belatedly, lurch ahead blindly, moved by a political agenda which may yet prove corrupt (15). Only the United States can maintain its misguided renewables’ policy after 30 years of wasteful subsidies - courtesy of its bonds and treasury bills remaining sought-after investments the world over, giving the U.S. the unique advantage of being able to print money at will.

None of this bodes well for the future of mankind. In a bid to assist decision making based on current realities, we respectfully urge you to consider the information herein provided. It's merely the "tip of the iceberg", and we hold further evidence at your disposal. On behalf of those suffering now and in the future, we strongly recommend that G20 countries reassess their energy policies, starting with calling a moratorium.

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Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?

Written by Dr Tim Ball

Nearly every single climate model prediction, projection or whatever else they want to call them has been wrong. Weather forecasts beyond 72 hours typically deteriorate into their error bands. The UK Met Office summer forecast was wrong again. broken computer

I have lost track of the number of times they were wrong. Apparently, the British Broadcasting Corporation had enough as they stopped using their services. They are not just marginally wrong. Invariably, the weather is the inverse of their forecast.Short, medium, and long-term climate forecasts are wrong more than 50 percent of the time so that a correct one is a no better than a random event.

Global and or regional forecasts are often equally incorrect. If there were a climate model that made even 60 percent accurate forecasts, everybody would use it. Since there is no single accurate climate model forecast, the IPCC resorts to averaging out their model forecasts as if, somehow, the errors would cancel each other out and the average of forecasts would be representative.
Short term climate forecasts no better than the Old Farmers Almanac

Climate models and their forecasts have been unmitigated failures that would cause an automatic cessation in any other enterprise. Unless, of course, it was another government funded, fiasco. Daily weather forecasts are improved from when modern forecasting began in World War I. However, even short term climate forecasts appear no better than the Old Farmers Almanac, which appeared in 1792, using moon, sun, and other astronomical and terrestrial indicators.

I have written and often spoken about the key role of the models in creating and perpetuating the catastrophic AGW mythology. People were shocked by the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), but most don’t know that the actual instructions to “hide the decline” in the tree ring portion of the hockey stick graph were in the computer code. It is one reason that people translate the Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) acronym as Gospel in, Gospel Out when speaking of climate models.

I am tired of the continued pretense that climate models can produce accurate forecasts in a chaotic system. Sadly, the pretense occurs on both sides of the scientific debate. The reality is the models don’t work and can’t work for many reasons, including the most fundamental; lack of data, lack of knowledge of major mechanisms, lack of knowledge of basic physical processes, lack of ability to represent physical mechanisms like turbulence in mathematical form, and lack of computer capacity.

Bob Tisdale summarized the problems in his 2013 book Climate Models Fail. It is time to stop wasting time and money and put people and computers to more important uses.The only thing that keeps people working on the models is government funding, either at weather offices or in academia. Without this funding computer modelers would not dominate the study of climate.

Without the funding, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could not exist. Many of the people involved in climate modeling were not familiar with or had no training in climatology or climate science. They were graduates of computer modeling programs looking for a challenging opportunity with large amounts of funding available and access to large computers.

The atmosphere and later the oceans fit the bill. Now they put the two together to continue the fiasco. Unfortunately, it is all at massive expense to society. Those expenses include the computers and the modeling time but worse the cost of applying the failed results to global energy and environmental issues.

Let’s stop pretending and wasting money and time. Remove that funding and nobody would spend private money to work on climate forecast models.

I used to argue that there was some small value in playing with climate models in a laboratory, with only a scientific responsibility for the accuracy, feasibility, and applicability. It is clear they do not fulfill those responsibilities. Now I realize that position was wrong. When model results are used as the sole basis for government policy, there is no value.

It is a massive cost and detriment to society, which is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was specifically designed to do.The IPCC has one small value. It illustrates all the problems identified in the previous comments. Laboratory-generated climate models are manipulated outside of even basic scientific rigor in government weather offices or academia, and then become the basis of public policy through the Summary for Policymakers (SPM).

Another value of the IPCC Physical Science Basis Reports is they provide a detailed listing of why models can’t and don’t work. Too bad few read or understand them. If they did, they would realize the limitations are such that they preclude any chance of success.

Much more HERE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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