Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
– H.L.Mencken
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) failed to prove human CO2 is causing global warming as evidenced by their incorrect projections. Their hypothesis said global temperature would rise as CO2 levels increased. It hasn’t for 15+ years. It doesn’t matter where the heat went, their hypothesis that human CO2 is driving temperature and climate is disproved. The null hypothesis that it isn’t CO2, which they ignore, is proved.
CO2 was the premeditated IPCC target because it was the exhaust of industrialized developed nations. Maurice Strong said those nations were the problem for the planet and it’s our responsibility to get rid of them? Show their exhaust is causing runaway warming and you achieve the goal. The IPCC failure means CO2 and climate lost their potential as the vehicle for political change. What’s next?
Exploitation of fear about environmental problems kept shifting from ozone depletion, acid rain, desertification, rainforest destruction, global warming, sea level rise, climate change, and climate crisis, among others. In Farad Manjoo’s[1] post-fact society, water, like all previous environmental issues is used to push an ideology or political agenda with experts providing the ‘facts’. A synopsis of his book wonders,
“Why has punditry lately overtaken news? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well?”
Once the problem is falsely established, control is not far behind. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) needs a replacement. It must be a natural global resource, little understood by most so they can easily mislead transcend national boundaries and quickly raise passions and concerns. The target, water, is already in play.
Figure 1
UNEP, the agency that brought you Agenda 21 and the IPCC established The International Decade for Action ‘WATER FOR LIFE’ 2005-2015. On the 20th anniversary of World Water Day UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said, “Water holds the key to sustainable development,” “We must work together to protect and carefully manage this fragile finite resource.” The UN established a base of declining water quality, not of quantity, as shown in Figure 1. The focus is quality because there are no water shortages. There are regions of deficit and surplus, which change over time.
Environment Canada (EC) produced the map information, but their credibility is close to zero because of involvement in the IPCC from the start. (Notice “Insufficient data” is the largest region.) EC Assistant Deputy Minister Gordon McBean chaired the founding meeting of the IPCC in Villach, Austria in 1985. He was also instrumental in creation of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) that provided most of the IPCC 2007 Report on that region. It is a very inadequate Report.
Recently Gregory showed on Watts Up With That how EC’s climate model is the worst of any used by the IPCC. EC display their failures on their web page. Figure 2 shows their 12 month precipitation forecast on the top half and a map of the accuracy of previous forecasts on the bottom. Notice it is ”Not significantly better than chance” for over 90 percent of the map. Publishing these results shows either an incomprehensible level of arrogance or knowledge they won’t be held accountable.
Figure 2
As a climatologist I learned early that droughts are the most devastating climate events. One list of the top 20 world weather disasters of the 20th century illustrates the point. Two extremes dominated, first drought and second flooding. This led to teaching a Water Resources course at university for 20+ years. I served on the Manitoba Water Commission for 17 years resolving water conflicts. I was appointed Chair of the Assiniboine River Management Advisory Board charged with developing a management strategy for an entire drainage basin. The need was triggered by the severe drought of 1988/89 that produced the lowest flow on the river in 90+ years of record. Fortuitously, the river’s highest flow occurred just six years later, providing the basis for planning for natural extremes.
Figure 3
Water is not lost, only taken out of the Water Cycle (Figure 3) in one place and returned elsewhere. Like with the Carbon Cycle, we have virtually no measures of any segment. I discussed the limitations of precipitation data previously. They are worse for river flows, lake volumes or any other water data.
At the 2011 Heartland Institute Sixth International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, DC somebody asked about the next major environmental scare. I said, overpopulation would continue as the underlying theme, as it has from Malthus to the Club of Rome (COR) to Agenda 21, but water was the next target.
Malthus argued population would outgrow food supply. The COR argued it would outgrow all resources accelerated by industry, hence the demonizing of CO2 to achieve Maurice Strong’s goal. Paul Ehrlich linked food and water in his completely flawed book The Population Bomb. The COR listed water third after pollution and global warming as its target in the 1991 publication The First Global Revolution.
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
In UN’s Agenda 21 it’s a separate category in Chapter 18 – The Water Page.
18.3. The widespread scarcity, gradual destruction and aggravated pollution of freshwater resources in many world regions, along with the progressive encroachment of incompatible activities, demand integrated water resources planning and management.
It’s a false claim, like most assumptions made when environment and science are used for a political agenda. However, if the science doesn’t work there’s the standard fall back of the precautionary principle covered in Agenda 21, Principle 15.
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
They define “lack of full scientific certainty” and it becomes a conflict between genuine uncertainty and what is required to promote the political agenda.
All the terminology familiar to the CO2 issue is now in use for water. The Water Footprint of a product is the volume of freshwater appropriated to produce the product, taking into account the volumes of water consumed and polluted in the different steps of the supply chain. Like the Carbon Footprint it is a totally contrived and meaningless measure, but allows environmental guilt finger pointing.
Peak Oil was created to imply we were running out of the resource – as the COR Limits to Growth predicted. The term Peak Water has been put forward as a concept to help understand growing constraints on the availability, quality, and use of freshwater resources. Neither “Peak” is valid.
World Water Day was established at Rio 1992 but implemented first on 22 March 1993. On Water Day June 2012 in conjunction with Rio +20 they identified the following objectives as they already knew climate change was not unfolding as they predicted.
• Demonstrate to the broad range of stakeholders, particularly decision makers, that some of the major challenges facing humanity today relate to water management; this will be based on findings of the major UN-Water reports.
• Identify major water issues that connect with the themes of the Rio+20 Conference, particularly its link with the notion of green economy.
• Focus on the means of implementation, especially the action areas where UN organizations and agencies can act together through UN-Water.
These are similar global policy directions and takeovers promoted by the IPCC through the Summary for Policymakers (SPM).
In the US recently the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began the process of control over water similar to the one they followed for CO2. One commentator says this is ongoing.
A full scale attack by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to take control of all water from any source whatsoever is under way. What these agencies are attempting is an end run around water and land rights. These agencies are constructing regulations and fictional jurisdictional control.
Calling it carbon then defining it as a pollutant created deliberate confusion over CO2. The Canadian government listed it as a toxic substance – the terminology changes to suit the legal definitions in place. The EPA defined it as a “harmful substance” and arranged for the US Supreme Court to agree on that term thereby giving them control. The focus with water is quality under existing laws.
According to senior EPA officials, the rule, crafted by both the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, will provide greater clarity about which waters are subject to Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction and greater certainty about which activities require CWA permits.
Environmentalism was a necessary new paradigm hijacked by a few for a political agenda. The goal was political control with subjugation of individuals and their rights to a world government through the UN. Elaine Dewar, author of The Cloak of Green explained,
“Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”
Neil Hrab wrote,
“What’s truly alarming about Maurice Strong is his actual record. Strong’s persistent calls for an international mobilization to combat environmental calamities, even when they are exaggerated (population growth) or scientifically unproven (global warming), have set the world’s environmental agenda.”
Strong appeared to achieve his goal with CO2 through the UN, particularly the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that gave the IPCC effective control of national weather agencies and therefore national policy. Global warming seemed like an easy control agenda until nature took over. Instead of acknowledging their science was wrong the UNEP, IPCC and national environment agencies simply moved the goalposts to climate change and more recently to climate crisis. Now that is failing a move to a new goalpost, water, is underway to pursue the real objective – total control. As always it is cloaked in righteousness (green). Who could oppose a desire for clean air or water?
[1] Manjoo, F., 2008, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-fact Society.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It is VERY important for people to realise that there IS NOT, and NEVER CAN BE, a ‘water shortage’.
There are cubic kilometers of water for every person on the planet, and there always will be, because water just passes through people. It is never destroyed when it is consumed.
What there can be, and often is, is a shortage of water storage, processing and distribution infrastructure. This, of course, is not a real ‘shortage’ – it is a lack of investment. If we had the money (a small amount of what is being spent on AGW) we could provide water in abundance for every person on the planet, and no one need go short.
However, green plans involve NOT investing in new water infrastructure, but rather making people live with less water than they currently use. In the UK the EU is requiring people to use 20% less water – and the UK government are enforcing this simply by not building any new reservoirs as the population expands.
This is madness, but when you complain about it you are told that you ‘have to save water’. You don’t. Water is never destroyed. All you are doing if you don’t use so much of it is saving the water companies investment budget….
They’re dropping the CO2 meme because they knew all along it was all wet.
The Menken quote was absolutely spot-on. I feel certain that, if he were alive today, he would be laughing himself silly. It reminds me, sadly, of the old saying about the “leading cause of death” — even if the top 10, 50,heck 100 “leading causes” were successfully eliminated, there would always be another danger from which we *must* be protected. (“Leading cause of death now identified as slipping on wet leaves and falling on a random garden implement, during a weekend, in the months between September and November. Women and the poor most at risk.”) As a full-time freelance writer, I find myself baffled by the challenge presented me — I don’t seem to have the imagination to top any of this. I should just pack it in and do something easy, like be a scientist. I understand they are issued cool white lab coats and get to go on television.
Experience says that this “green” nonsense will slow down (but not stop) progress. To be sure, many will die because of “green” policies, policies that will enrich a new breed of charlatans. However, humanity will work around them all and will be better off tomorrow than it is today.
Dr. Ball: “.. moved the goalposts to climate change and more recently to climate crisis.”
I always saw it that the last of those was moving the goalpost fro ‘weather’ to ‘climate crisis.’ They’re synonymous in either case.
Bryan Johnson: “It reminds me, sadly, of the old saying about the “leading cause of death””
In software engineering, there’s an interesting discussion about this. If you keep going after the biggest flaws, you eventually get a system where all flaws are equally flawed. And from there where do you go? The solution in politics has been to go after causes of death that aren’t leading. That keeps a handy leading cause about for any time your poll numbers are sagging.
” I understand they are issued cool white lab coats and get to go on television.”
Even better if you thereafter put on a strange looking hat. Then they issue you a bullet-proof car, millions of loyal fans, and call you the Pope.
PLEASE team, be aware that we are talking about the crisis which will result from severe
mal-distribution of DHMO. DHMO must be regulated, as any fool already knows. Now, the UN has, at long last, recognized the DMHO issue as the priority it should always been.
Texas is leading the way, with a proposed constitutional amendment, prop six, to replumb excess from “rainy day” capacity into DHMO sequestration areas. Millions of dollars are being spent to persuade Texas voters to commit B -with-a-BIG-BEE billions of dollars to this heretofore unconstitutional goal. It’s somewhat odd for certain “coastal” thinkers (who don’t acknowledge Texas has a coast of its own) to consider that Texas might be in the historical vanguard of the political management of DHMO. But there it is.
We need to remember that the West, especially the US, is where the Marxian criteria of reaching a stage of technological development that would supposedly allow redistribution was met. Rather than admit the Governed/Governors/Redistribution to Latin America and Africa gambit, the bureaucrats just keep coming up with excuses of why administration via the OECD and the UN is necessary. And the rationales need to extend beyond nation-stat borders and thus require international administration by bureaucrats who can tout their links to local (ICLEI), state (eco devt schemes with China usually), and national.
Water also pulls in the desire to build regional societies around river watersheds instead of state or national boundaries. Like Cascadia extending into British Columbia. The Great Transition docs tied to the Stockhol Environmental Institute and its US arm, the Tellus Institute, outline 3 type of societies in the 21st century-Acadia built around self-sufficient communities built around watersheds is one of them. It may sound pie-in-the sky and it is but the OECD is using ed to try to create Mindsets in children that all these Statist controls and plans are necessary to Save the Planet.
The Low Band of the UN Population Survey is the only one that’s ever been close to accurate, and usually at the low edge. It now shows peaking at ~<8bn. in 30 years, declining thereafter, indefinitely. Absent Huxley's cloning vats or transhumanist antisenescence discoveries, the problem by 2100 will be depopulation, not over-population.
Countries far and wide need to start electing Libertarian types as their leaders who won’t be afraid to pull the plug completely on these ongoing scams. They also won’t be afraid to turf the UN and order them all out of their countries so that real prosperity can take place and freedoms restored.
The Republicans have to move considerably to the right or the TEA Party message is really going to start to resonate among regular people in the coming years.
For those inclined to demand credentials, it should be noted that Dr. Ball’s in this subject, as with Climate Science in general, clearly exceed and trump those of the UN sock puppets.
Ground water and surface water management would be a much better use of our tax dollars than tracking/attacking CO2.
Far easier to blame the bill paying population for water shortage than privatised companies for failing to invest in water resource infrastructure. The UK govts allowed the population to be increased through unchecked immigration, but doesn’t negotiate with the water companies to build more reservoirs.
There is no shortage of rainfall at the moment, so the issues will be ignored, until we have a dry spell.
Resources, especially water, have been fought over for centuries. Wars (large and small) have been waged over them.
Premise: When competition for resources is on the political agenda, war is not far behind.
Full disclosure: I am a shooter. I’ve been in a war, and I have killed. I don’t look forward to participating in another. Unfortunately, warfare over ideology, resources, etc. is what we as a species do, despite the wishes of various groups, and in many cases because of the wishes of various groups.
That said, I’m quite certain that warfare will continue to be waged into the foreseeable future and beyond. It will come to every nation and every continent, including the USA, in the future as it has in the past. Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I met Maurice Strong in the 1970s when I was a mineral economist with Canada’s Energy Mines and Resources department. He had just been appointed the first president of Petrocanada, a government owned oil company and he was being courted by the director of the division I worked for. He had come from launching UNEP and this new job was the beginning of his becoming a billionaire. He just seemed like a well connected civil servant at the time. Petrocanada’s HQ in Calgary was (is?) a rich red brick high rise with about an acre of red brick plaza around it. It was affectionately known as “Red Square” in the oil industry at the time. He blossomed into a world control freak after that gig. He’s ~85 – hopefully his water use isn’t far from over.
tallbloke: “There is no shortage of rainfall at the moment, so the issues will be ignored, until we have a dry spell.”
Interesting you should say that. In Colorado, for example, catching rain water in a bucket is illegal as it infringes on water usage rights. In the classic sense of ‘you took too much upstream to be permitted by those downstream.’
Either last year or the year before, I saw a report of the CBS evening news about possible problems with the earth’s supply potable fresh water. I knew right then and there the econs had their next scare when the CAGW fad passed. I don’t remember, but I might (or might not) have commented on it on this website. I guess in a few years the name of this website will be wetsupwiththat.com.
It will always be some environmental catastrophe that only de-modernizing and heavy taxation can fix. A leopard cannot change his spots, a tiger cannot change his stripes, and these people cannot change who they are.
“Demodernising” is exactly the goal. Not to sound too much of a conspiracy-minded observer (although I’m often enough accused of that), but aren’t the people who want *any* human influence on the earth to be banned — reversed — following a goal of the return of humans to a paleolithic level of hunter-gatherer civilization? It seems so, to me.
You could also include food as an item of control because there is a global attempt to improve people’s behavior towards food waste
“The null hypothesis that it isn’t CO2, which they ignore, is proved.”
illiterate.
The following treatise explains the rationale supporting global warming extremism – and it’s not about the environment.
In just a few more days it will be the 24th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Wall was opened on November 9, 1989.
Five months earlier, in July 1989 I had travelled through the Wall via Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin
I was with colleagues on a business trip. It was not a fun trip , but it was highly educational. East Berlin and East Germany were everything Ronald Reagan said they were – repressive, backward, and evil – families were spying on each other and ratting to the Stasi, the dreaded East German Secret Police. We left a day earlier than planned – none of us could stand the place any longer.
The reason I raise this point is that Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, made particular mention of the fall of the Berlin Wall in this essay written in 1994 – see paragraph 2 below.
Keep in mind that I am not saying this, rather I am quoting Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace – but I tend to accept his analysis.
For more evidence, read http://www.green-agenda.com/
Regards, Allan
***************
[excerpt]
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth.
The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tragedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are criticized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is absurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are successful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
**************
Cutting down trees is a very effective way of creating a water shortage.
1. Trees keep soil and air humid .
2. Trees intercept rain and reduce intensity of rain . Often rain intensity is greater than percolation rate , so run off occurs.
3. Rapid surface water flow Water run erodes soil and especially removes organic rich topsoil. Organic material helps to hold water.
4. Material from tree provides food for fungi which holds water in soil.
5. Providing cheap kerosene means people do not have to cut trees down to provide fuel for fire -major source of deforestation.
6. Increased CO2 causes deeper rooting of plants which makes them cope with less water .
Support planting of trees, affordable kerosene and increased CO2 in atmosphere will increase plant growth, rainfall in most drier areas and help to increase percolation of water into the ground.
Warmer, increased CO2 and more humid climate will increase plant growth and help to feed a growing population.
Satellites have shown a noticeable greening of sub Saharan Africa which means food for humans. As the fertile regions are probably reaching maximum production, any increase in crop yield from the much larger areas of lower fertility grassland ,Savannah and semi-desert will greatly help-after CO2 is often pumped into green houses!.
Decades ago, David Stephen, author of “String Lug the fox”, guardian of a nature reserve near Cumbernauld and friend of Marquis the wolf (who caught crows by twitching his tail to attract them until they were close enough to catch) said that the next great crisis for humanity would be over the availability of water.
He wasn’t talking about the total amount available, he was talking about the availability to people with regard to the control of supply by others – for example the diversion by people upstream denying access to people downstream – like on the Euphrates.
So maybe there is a grain of truth in this paper.
I like to think that he would have been a sceptic. He was certainly a realist.
At some point it will be necessary to purge these people – environmental extremists – from the government, the educational system and the media, if we don’t want them to drag us down to oblivion. Harsh? Not half as bad as what they intend to do to those of us that believe in liberty and prosperity. Why should we apologize for defending ourselves against them?
It is vital, then, for all countries to disconnect from the UN, ignore its directives, cut off its funding and let it die a death. It is the UN and its agencies which are the true enemy of mankind and civilization.
@Dodgy Geezer at 2:35 pm
there IS NOT, and NEVER CAN BE, a ‘water shortage’.
There can be a shortage of POTABLE water.
There can be a shortage of FRESH water.
There can be a shortage of FRESH water when and where you need it.
This is even under the classical economic paradigm that if the price is allowed to float, there cannot be a shortage of anything. If, as in The Flight of the Phoenix, you can be stuck in a desert, and be unable to offer any price to increase the supply of water to fill your needs.
All I need to know is just how much worse than we thought is it?