Suffer the Little Child to Warn of Global Doom

Better yet:  Look at the figures

Those concerned with the dangers of global warming were enraptured by the anger and indignation of Greta Thunberg during the September United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City. Here was an articulate teenager from the other side of the Atlantic, speaking very good English, condemning and challenging the older generations of the world for failing to save the planet for those of her age. Her life has been ruined, her future has been stolen from her, and millions are being left to suffer and die, she insisted, because people just talk instead of doing, and care more about money than mankind.

The villain in this drama about the declared worsening condition of Mother Earth is the profit-pursuing greed of private businessmen, who care little or nothing about the increasing temperatures and rising seas that threaten the habitableness of the planet for all life forms. “Man” is the criminal, due to his addiction to fossil fuels and obsession with mindless material growth. How dare you!

What happens if humanity does nothing? It will be the end of the world as we know it. The Day of Judgment will have arrived. We will live one of those great special-effects disaster movies in which all life ends on the planet. Be sure to bring your jumbo popcorn and mega soda drink; we will all be in the front row.

False Fears About Climate Change Worst-Case Scenarios

Earlier this year, Ronald Bailey at Reason magazine summarized, based on the UN’s own environmental report in 2018, what the worst-case scenario might look like if nothing was done to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere over the remaining decades of the 21st century:

If humanity does nothing whatsoever to abate greenhouse gas emissions, the worst-case scenario is that global GDP in 2100 would be 8.2 percent lower than it would otherwise be.

Let’s make those GDP percentages concrete. Assuming no climate change and a global real growth rate of 3 percent per year for the next 81 years, today’s $80 trillion economy would grow to just under $880 trillion by 2100. World population is likely to peak at around 9 billion, so divvying up that GDP suggests that global average income would come to about $98,000 per person. Under the worst-case scenario, global GDP would only be $810 trillion and average income would only be $90,000 per person.

This would be the global effect. What about the impact on the United States if nothing were to be done to diminish the possibility of global warming? Over at the Heartland Institute in Chicago, Illinois, one of its climate scholars, Stan Liebowitz, examined a widely touted 2018 U.S. government report, The Fourth National Climate Assessment, in terms of the long-term consequences of climate change on the U.S., which were asserted to be dire.

However, when Liebowitz looked at the data and the tables in the report, and did the math using the numbers provided in the text, he discovered the following:

[The report] estimates the damage the nation will experience from climate change in the year 2090…. Scenario RCP8.5 (8.5) … assumes the United States and the world keep increasing carbon dioxide emissions through the end of the century, approximately tripling their current yearly level….

[The report] estimates the dollar value (in 2015 dollars) of twenty-two different categories of potential damage in the United States from global warming in the year 2090…. The 22 categories include damages due to rising oceans, mortality due to excessive heat or poor air quality, damage from additional diseases such as West Nile Virus, and repair costs for roads and bridges damaged by floods or erosion….

Surprisingly, the total cost of the 22 rows of estimated harms is never summed up so as to show the total dollar value of climate-induced damage. Nor are those damages ever compared to the 2090 GDP predicted by [the report] …. 

When the rows are summed, the total damages are shown to be $507.6 billion…. The simplest way to put the number in perspective is to compare this predicted 2090 loss with the predicted 2090 GDP, [and when done so] predicted climate change damages in 2090 represent slightly more than 0.7 percent of [2090] U.S. GDP.

Thus the damage from climate change in NCA4’s worst-case scenario, according to our “best scientists and experts,” is less than 1 percent of U.S. GDP in 2090. The ratio would be even lower if any of the advanced technologies certain to be created in the next 70 years were used to help reduce carbon emissions.

Accordingly, the findings of the report are clear: Under even the worst-case scenario, the harms from climate change in 2090, assuming 70 years of increasing carbon dioxide emissions, are fairly trivial.

Yet, here we are with a hyped-up hysteria supercharged by the impassioned declarations of a 16-year-old placed front and center on the world stage as if she is a learned expert on climate science pointing an accusatory finger on her shaking hand about how the world is about to become uninhabitable in the way we have known life up till now on this planet. And … how dare you!

SOURCE 





Dear True Environmentalists: Fight Corporate Criminality, not Atmospheric Gases

Denis Rancourt is a Leftist nut but you can't fool him about the climate.  See below

Corporate pollution and releasing of toxic substances should be treated as a criminal act, with full power to seize assets for reparations, actual reparations, not just punitive fines.

However, the planet and biosphere are not at risk of imminent collapse, and certainly not from CO2.

The “imminent collapse” fabrication serves powerful manipulators, and necessarily diverts us away from attaining actual democracy and fairness.  In the words of Chomsky:

"For example, suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effect has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover—with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there just are no other alternatives around right now."

Rather than accept fascism or totalitarianism, corporate and finance criminality can best be fought from a position of realistic perspective regarding the end of the world, sober analysis of means regarding leverage for change, and focused political targeting against corporate rule without accountability.

History of imbedded doomsday narratives

All societies are dominance hierarchies, and all large, human dominance hierarchies have hired high-priests that construct and maintain the State doomsday narrative. These high-priests constantly instruct us on required beliefs and behaviours that minimize the deleterious effects of the alleged impending catastrophe. The behavioural instructions fan everything from diet, to hygiene, to dress code, to physical activity, to work ethics, to attitudes and morals, to child rearing, to political positions, to deference to experts, and so on.

It would be delusional to believe that this structural feature of society is any different than it ever was. In present Western society, the high-priests are the “scientists”, which include the medical doctors and all the “experts”.

This does not mean that science itself is not a valid and rigorous method to test and eliminate hypotheses and theories. It only means that establishment scientists are hired high-priests, notwithstanding the rare exceptions that prove the rule. It also does not mean that scientists never tell the truth. It only means that establishment scientists never harm or rebel against the dominance hierarchy, except by accident or solely in appearance.

These days, there is an industry of scientists that indulge in generating, testing and ameliorating ever more creative doomsday predictions, which are hoped to be of utility to the bosses. The said utility is often termed “societal relevance”. As an eminent example, we have the theory of a “tipping point” towards irreversible total collapse of the ecosphere, often referred to as a “species mass extinction”. The notion of a tipping point has also been advanced for planetary climate, wherein, in the absence of any non-human cause, one crosses into a global climate regime of constant extreme weather and flooded continents.

Whereas past planetary transformations have been related to game-changers, such as the advent of photosynthesis, the calming of tectonic (volcanic) activity, and so forth, and whereas the known recurring climate catastrophe of ice ages is believed to be driven by variations in solar isolation, the new “tipping points” spontaneously occur from the gradual changes of increased modern human or industrial activity, including: habitat destruction, burning of fossil fuel, population growth, and dispersal of toxic substances.

The new “tipping point” theory is not unlike the deluge of the Old Testament, which followed an accumulation of human depravity, except that no god is postulated, and building the Ark requires a centralized and globally restructured economy, handled by overarching elite private institutions, of course. War, disease, hunger … are all defeated under the same umbrella, death itself eventually.

The accompanying calls from establishment icons are often shrill.  In the words of Prince Charles, in 2009:5,6

"If we do nothing, the consequences for every person on this earth will be severe and unprecedented – with vast numbers of environmental refugees, social instability and decimated economies: far worse than anything which we are seeing today … We have 100 months left to act."

While the leader of the most warring nation on earth, President Barack Obama, concluded in his 2015 State of the Union speech:7

"No challenge  poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change"

The role of scientists

The scientists follow and are often not more contained than Prince Charles or President Obama:

Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point. Human impacts are causing alarming levels of harm to our planet. As scientists who study the interaction of people with the rest of the biosphere using a wide range of approaches, we agree that the evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life support systems is overwhelming. We further agree that, based on the best scientific information available, human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if we continue on our current path. Science unequivocally demonstrates the human impacts of key concern: Climate disruption – more, faster climate change than since humans first became a species.

We maintain that humanity’s grand challenge is solving the intertwined problems of human population growth and overconsumption, climate change, pollution, ecosystem destruction, disease spillovers, and extinction, in order to avoid environmental tipping points that would make human life more difficult and would irrevocably damage planetary life support systems.

But today, for the first time, humanity’s global civilization—the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded—is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems. Humankind finds itself engaged in what Prince Charles described as ‘an act of suicide on a grand scale’, facing what the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor John Beddington called a ‘perfect storm’ of environmental problems.

The most serious of these problems show signs of rapidly escalating severity, especially climate disruption. But other elements could potentially also contribute to a collapse: an accelerating extinction of animal and plant populations and species, which could lead to a loss of ecosystem services essential for human survival; land degradation and land-use change; a pole-to-pole spread of toxic compounds

The loss of biodiversity is one of the most critical current environmental problems, threatening valuable ecosystem services and human wellbeing. A growing body of evidence indicates that current species extinction rates are higher than the pre-human background rate, with hundreds of anthropogenic vertebrate extinctions documented in prehistoric and historic times.11

In fact, there is no science of a “tipping point” for earth biodiversity or for earth climate. No such testable theory has been elaborated. The entire notion of “tipping point” is hypothetical and tenuous. It is a product of bias to presume that a large and complex system (planet) would be susceptible to “tipping” rather than extraordinarily stable against internal superficial changes.  A recent paper describes how one might begin to define concepts or measures that would allow even discussing the topic of “tipping point” intelligently, for realistic ecological systems.

Furthermore, even among scientists, still getting their bearings, there is persistent disagreement as to whether species extinction rates are higher in recent decades. A critical review concludes:

"Net species gains or losses should be assessed with respect to common baselines or reference communities. Ultimately, we need a globally coordinated effort to monitor biodiversity so that we can estimate and attribute human impacts as causes of biodiversity change. A combination of technologies will be needed to produce regularly updated global datasets of local biodiversity change to guide future policy. At this time the conclusion that there is no net change in local species richness is not the consensus state of knowledge".

Reality check

There is a large structurally imbedded industry of doomsday narrative. In addition, individuals are reared in a dominance hierarchy and therefore constantly seek messaging about fitting in. The result is that we adopt the State religion. Even if the State is occupied by an exploitative elite, we continue to uphold and follow any State religion that has been sufficiently implanted.

In this case, the State religion is that we are cared-for by mother earth but that our bad behaviour is poisoning mother earth and that we are therefore all at risk, unless we adopt the new stringent conditions that should be imposed globally. Non-believers should be rooted out and isolated. We should demand that all our peers and our representatives do what is proscribed by the State religion.

Meanwhile corporate criminality, while dressed in the colours of the State religion, will continue at an accelerated rate, and our minds and bodies will continue to be occupied.

I say no. To escape this trap, we must realize that the planet is, well, a planet, with huge response capabilities; that the planet is far more resilient and robust than we imagine.

Habitat destruction and industrial practices are grotesque, and these cause real and significant harm to human communities and ecosystems — more so even than actual wars in the present era … although not more so than so-called economic sanctions and exploitative nation financing.  In contrast, “warming” itself cannot hurt the biosphere or humans, nor is the planet at risk of “collapse” from all the criminal practices. That is fabricated nonsense.

Our joint efforts should be on justice, attaining actual democracy, the elimination of criminal behaviour, extortion and exploitation, enforcement of reparations, enforcement of corporate transparency and accountability…

The problem is human behaviour against humans and nature, organized by an occupied dominance hierarchy, and the solutions are political; nothing to do with CO2, methane or anything else in the atmosphere.

SOURCE 





Joe Hildebrand on why the climate kids can’t win

Even a Warmist can see that the demands of Thunberg and her ilk are impossible

In the year 2000, more than 200,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to support Indigenous reconciliation and demand the Howard government apologise to the Stolen Generations.

I was one of them. It felt like a great movement, both symbolically and literally, an unstoppable force.

This brings us to Greta Thunberg, the electric sceptic who has electrified both the left and right like a 50 amp fuse.

Amid all the breathless outrage and hyperbole on both sides, there is one question that remains unasked and unanswered: What exactly is she trying to achieve?

Of course we know that Greta wants the world to stop warming and world leaders to make that happen. But how? And who? And by what means does she plan to persuade those she has denounced as self-serving money-grubbing environmental vandals to act?

Perhaps somewhere in the millions of words that have been written and spoken and chanted and shouted by her and her schoolyard climate strikers this question has been answered but for the life of me I haven’t seen it.

All I have heard is a lot of talk about how passionate the kids are and how wonderful that is. But passion on its own achieves nothing without a practical plan to back it up.

Romeo and Juliet were passionate and look what happened to them.

The hard truth is that unless it is directed towards an effective and realistic goal, passion is pointless. And that is the most baffling thing about the whole climate strike phenomenon.

Firstly, whose minds are they trying to change? The hundreds of thousands in the crowds? The evil capitalists they shout about? The so-called climate sceptics in the commentariat? The general public?

It’s a fair bet that the soulless capo-fascists are unlikely to have a Damascene conversion at the hands of some angry adolescents.

Meanwhile, the climate sceptics are having a field day skewering the inevitable wild claims that emerge from any teenage gathering. Just ask a 17-year-old how many roots he pulled at Schoolies.

And as for the general public, they’re already on board. Poll after poll has shown an overwhelming majority of people believe in man-made climate change and think something should be done about it. Their only question is what that something is and how much it will cost them.

Of course pensioners want their grandkids to have a good life but they also need to pay their power bills. Of course workers in mining towns would rather not scoop coal every day but they need to put food on the table.

So again: Who is the audience? Where are the votes? What is the plan?

The reason I want to know is because like most people, I believe in climate change. I believe humans are causing it and I believe something needs to be done about it. This is because I know that there are people smarter than me who have done the research and the vast majority of them have concluded that this is a problem we need to fix.

But I also know that unless Doogie Howser M.D. was a documentary series, not one of those people is a teenager whose sole qualification in global warming is knowing how to skip class on a sunny afternoon.

And all of my climate change-believing friends are equally perplexed: How on earth did a rational debate once led by professors in lab coats get hijacked by hysterical teenagers in hoodies? And how do they imagine the conversation will go?

“Hey presidents and prime ministers! You know how you ignored that massive body of evidence all those scientists gave you? Well we hate you so shut up and change your mind!”

If anything, the history of the climate debate has demonstrated time and again that the more extreme and apocalyptic the claims the more damage it does to the cause because when they don’t materialise, it gives sceptics bucketloads of ammunition to argue that the rest of the data must be bogus too.

Just look at how successfully the right has used Tim Flannery’s wildly inaccurate predictions to rubbish the whole climate argument. Or how celebrities and political leaders alike were busted by real scientists for using old photos and discredited claims about “the lungs of the world” in their frenzied rush to jump on the “Amazon is burning” bandwagon. Hasn’t that gone quiet.

The fact is that managing climate change is incredibly difficult and complex and the only certainty is that anyone who thinks it can be fixed by a hashtag or placard is 100 per cent wrong. A close friend of mine works for the UN helping to set up emissions trading and carbon abatement schemes for developing countries. He is one of the best people in the world at doing what he does and even he struggles to explain what that is in language an educated adult could understand, let alone an anxious adolescent.

And a US researcher recently crunched the numbers and found that in some cases, the recycling process could actually produce more carbon dioxide than just throwing recyclable materials in landfill. It is a difficult day for simple solutions when even recycling turns out to be bad for the environment.

And so, again, tackling climate change is complicated and often counterintuitive.

China produces the world’s greatest volume of CO2 because it’s the world’s biggest country whose economy has been exploding. Its per capita output is far lower than Australia and the US and it is doing more to tackle climate change than either nation.

In other words, China is at once both the problem and the solution. In a perfect illustration of this, the global monitoring program Climate Action Tracker noted China is simultaneously the world’s largest consumer of coal and the world’s largest producer of solar technology. It described it as “almost paradoxical”.

Now I’m not sure if any of the millions of kids on the streets came up with a fix for this paradox but if they did, they really should tell somebody.

And so the question remains: What do the climate change strikers actually think they are changing? Unfortunately, it certainly isn’t the climate and it probably isn’t anything at all. But still, I guess it’s better than doing drugs.

The good news is that older and wiser heads have been working on these questions for years, sensible scientists and pragmatic policymakers who are constantly racking their brains and pressing the flesh to come up with workable solutions to a problem that is as excruciating as it is existential.

And they are probably the sort of people who stayed in school.

SOURCE 





The Climate Crisis that Wasn't: Scientists Agree there is "No Cause for Alarm"

America, as well as many other places throughout the world, has witnessed mass protests, claiming catastrophic disasters if fossil fuels are not eliminated. However, only a very small percentage of protesters know the methods and science upon which they are protesting. This is dangerous to our society.

Foreseeing the potential for horrific political decisions based on inadequate science and mob rule, five hundred scientists and professionals in climate related fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which strongly states, “There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”

Thomas D. Williams, the Senior Research Associate at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, writes, “The signatories of the declaration also insist that public policy must respect scientific and economic realities and not just reflect the most fashionable frenzy of the day.”

Williams emphasizes that the essence of the Declaration is that general-circulation models are not competent. “In particular, the scientists criticize the general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is currently founded as ‘unfit for their purpose.’”

The Declaration adds that the models, which have predicted far more warming than they should, “are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” “they… exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.”

Again Williams writes, “Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models.Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.”

In America and many places on earth, the human caused global warming models and predictions are forged with political ambitions and lusts for power that will result in enormous disruptions to humanitarian, economic, and political institutions.

In the United States, the Justice Democrats are one of many organizations that are manipulating the masses to protest. The Justice Democrats are strongly supporting the Green New Deal, knowing that the alleged existential climate crisis is a great vehicle to move America away from small and limited government to socialism. Saikat Chakrabarti, former Chief of Staff to Rep. Alexandrai Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), revealed the alarmist agenda:

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, Chakrabarti said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Chakrabarti continued, “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

The Justice Democrats and Mr. Chakrabarti are small players in this dangerous climate hoax. The real threat comes from the meteorologists receiving government grants that manipulate the data claiming that there is an existential crisis that endangers all life on earth. Tony Heller explains how picking the start dates of climate indicators manipulates the trend line to show a deadly worsening climate. Just two examples: The start date for Arctic Sea Ice lessening is 1979 which was the peak of sea ice thickness. What was hidden from the public and policy makers is that in the early 1970s the sea ice was less thick than today. Heat Wave Magnitude is the second example. The start date is 1960 which shows a trend line of increasing heat. What was hidden from the public and policy makers was substantially higher heat waves going back to 1900.

These deceptions and general ignorance of how the climate models are constructed have caused everyone vying for the Democrat nomination for president to pander to these notions. Senator Warren was overtly playing the most fashionable frenzy of the day when she tweeted, “On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking—everywhere.” Such political action would most assuredly lead to devastating economic, personal and political consequences to every American and millions of people throughout planet earth.

Wisely, the “European Climate Declaration” calls for the Secretary-General of the United Nations to organize a meeting of scientists representing both sides of the debate in early 2020. The meeting is absolutely essential and time is of the essence. I suggest the format should be similar to a legal trial, with discovery and cross examination.

SOURCE 





Warning of 'Fukushima-style' disaster as Labor pushes back against plans for nuclear power plants in Australia to reduce greenhouse gases

A chilling warning has been issued of a 'Fukushima-style' disaster in Australia as the LNP continue to push to explore nuclear power.

Nuclear power is currently a banned source of power in Australia despite the country having the world's biggest uranium reserves, but the Queensland Government is looking to open a nuclear power plant in Maryborough.

Bruce Saunders, the Labor member for Maryborough in Queensland's Legislative Assembly, has slammed Keith Pitt - the LNP member for the federal seat of Hinkler - for his push to open the 'Fukushima-style' nuclear plant.

'Mr Pitt - the man behind it all - owes it to our community to declare where he sits in the widening rift that is LNP energy policy,' Mr Saunders told The Chronicle.

In 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was hit by the devastating tsunami in the region, causing a meltdown at the plant which necessitated the evacuation of all people in a 20-kilometre radius due to the release of large amounts of radiation.

It is considered the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power, behind the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor has called for a parliamentary inquiry into the viability of nuclear power to reduce greenhouse gases from reliance upon coal-fired power plants.

'Angus Taylor has said he's more than willing to consider nuclear, opening the door to a Fukushima-style disaster right here in Maryborough,' Mr Saunders continued.

Mr Pitt spoke out against the 'outrageous claims' and said he had the best interest of Queenslanders when it came to cheaper and reliable energy. 'I want cheaper power prices not cheap political point-scoring from Mr Saunders,' he told the publication. 

He stated that renewable energy sources are unreliable and don't meet the needs of stable energy supply. 'Renewables don't work 100 per cent of the time and there are businesses and industries that need reliability, so solar is just not suitable for them,' he told The Northern Star.

'I called for an inquiry into nuclear power to get the facts, to look at the new technology available and to have an adult conversation.

'I'm pleased Minister Taylor has asked the Environment and Energy Committee to consider the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power.'

SOURCE 

***************************************

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.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************