Via the Global Warming Policy Foundation
A careful look at the history of environmental activism shows how the movement has been unravelling. Now it seems to be dead in the water.
In 2012, three years into President Barack Obama’s first term, green activists are asking, “What went wrong?” Where are all the new laws and regulations regulating energy use and the natural resource production? Where are the public-private partnerships signalling a new era of enironmentalist problem-solving? Where’s Al Gore? Shouldn’t he be lurking over President Obama’s shoulder, smiling, as the President signs yet another green jobs bill into law?
The question is a good one but one not easily answered. In the decades since the birth of the environmental movement, something’s clearly gone wrong. Other movements pushing for political and social change have altered the national discussion and elected candidates at every level of government.
Look at the Tea Party. Born only in 2009, it’s pushed back against the agenda of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, forcing Congress to heel and almost sending the federal government into default.
But the environmental movement seems dead in the water.
Environmentalism Fails: Legislation
In late 2010 Al Gore offered three reasons why the U.S. Senate failed to enact into law a cap-and-trade bill: Republican partisanship, the recession, and the influence of special interests. He had a point. Despite endorsements from such Republican senators as John Warner, John McCain and Lindsay Graham, every effort to pass comprehensive climate change legislation during the preceding five years had floundered in the Senate.
In 2007 Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman (Independent) and Virginia Republican John Warner introduced a cap-and trade bill called the Climate Security Act. Their Lieberman-Warner bill was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee and sent to the floor by the committee chairman, Barbara Boxer of California. The bill’s advocates said “prompt, decisive action is critical, since global warming pollutants can persist in the atmosphere for more than a century.”
The Lieberman-Warner bill aimed to cap greenhouse gas emissions, lowering emission levels each year until 2050, when emissions were supposed to be down to 63 percent below 2005 levels. To achieve that goal, the federal government would issue right-to-emit permits to electric utilities and plants in the transportation and manufacturing industries. The bill also provided financial incentives to companies and families to reduce emissions.
The bill was doomed. Full Senate debate took place in the summer of 2008, when the average price of gasoline was well above $4 per gallon. Republican opponents successfully labeled it the biggest tax hike in history, one that imposed an enormous tax and regulatory burden on industries that would pass the cost burden onto consumers already struggling to pay for gasoline at the pump.
Republicans beat the 2007 climate change bill because they argued that it would raise gas and home heating prices, cost jobs and cripple the economy. It didn’t help that 31,000 scientists rejected the notion of man-made global warming in a letter signed and circulated two weeks before the start of the Senate debate.
The next attempt came in the summer of 2009. On June 26, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, otherwise known as Waxman-Markey after its authors, Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts. For the first time a chamber of Congress passed a law meant to curb carbon emissions linked to climate change. Yet the Senate once again refused to follow through.
The Senate version of Waxman-Markey was shepherded by Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, and Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman. (Sen. Warner did not seek reelection in 2008.) Once again, a complex and messy mix of partisan politics, constituent pressures, and special interests combined to thwart passage of the bill.
Even though the Senate was controlled by Democrats, the sponsors of the bill knew they needed Republican votes, which required that certain bill provisions would have to be modified or weakened. But every tweak of the legislation designed to placate a Republican risked losing a Democrat, and every Democrat lost meant finding another Republican.
Kerry, Lieberman and Graham began bargaining with lawmakers. Some Republicans wanted guarantees that the bill would subsidize nuclear power. Lawmakers catering to agricultural interests wanted incentives or offsets for farmers who would be required to purchase emissions-reducing equipment.
Gulf Coast state politicians wanted to protect off-shore oil drilling, and politicians from Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio refused to discuss anything that put restrictions on coal plants, which cap-and-trade does by definition. Every special interest had its own demands. For instance, the powerful Edison Electric Institute, which represents shareholder-owned electric power companies, wanted guarantees that carbon costs would never rise above a certain point. To cushion the blow of higher energy costs, it proposed that through the year 2030 electric power companies receive free emission credits worth billions of dollars.
The White House proposed a “grand bargain”: expand off-shore oil drilling in return for lawmaker support for cap and trade. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. A short time later an oil rig exploded into flames and the Deepwater Horizon well started gushing thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Under pressure from Senate Republican colleagues and his South Carolina constituents and suspicious of White House double-dealing, Senator Graham pulled his name from the bill, which eventually died without coming up for a vote.
Envirionmentalism’s Bright Beginnings Turn Pale
The sputtering of the environmental movement and the ignominious collapse of its signature legislation could not have been predicted. But a careful look at the history of environmental activism shows how the movement has been unravelling.
Like the civil rights and antiwar movements, environmentalism’s origins lay in the 1960’s. In June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio burst into flames. Toxic waste had so befouled the water that it ignited.
Only six months earlier the nation witnessed a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, the third largest oil spill in American waters after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. The imagery of burning rivers and miles of polluted beaches provoked public outrage and photos of dying sea birds covered in oily muck became a staple of nightly news coverage.
Highly visual incidents like the Santa Barbara oil spill and the burning Cuyahoga River didn’t create the modern environmental movement, but they were catalysts that thrust it into public awareness. Earlier, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring had claimed that man-made chemical pesticides like DDT were killing birds and other wildlife, and issues like air pollution and toxic waste aroused public anxiety. Groups like Get Oil Out! (GOO) and the Environmental Defense Center were created in the 1960s, and in 1972 California voters approved a ballot initiative creating the California Coastal Commission with vast powers to regulate economic activities and land use along the state’s coastline.
In April 1970 the first Earth Day was proclaimed by city mayors and celebrated on college campuses. Green activists established radical nonprofits like Friends of the Earth (1969), the Natural Resources Defense Council (1970) and Greenpeace (1971) which challenged older conservation groups to become more aggressive in lobbying politicians and harrassing corporations.
At the federal level President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order in 1970, and in that same year Congress authorized amendments to the Clean Air Act (passed in 1963) that imposed new regulations, the first of their kind, on industrial and mobile sources of air pollutants. The Clean Water Act (1972) and Endangered Species Act (1973) followed.
By the late 1970s environmentalists were trying to maintain their early successes, but the movement was increasingly institutionalized and bureaucratized. Most groups were headquartered in Washington, DC, where they spent their energies in fundraising and adapting to political pressures. The Carter administration created a Department of Energy and mandated corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards to make cars more fuel-efficient. President Carter tried to set an example by wearing sweaters and installing solar panels on the roof of the White House, but most Americans did not like being told to lower their thermostats and buy smaller cars.
In the 1980s and 90s environmentalism began to lose its glamour and popular appeal. Ronald Reagan put energy policy on the back burner when he became president in 1981 and he tried with limited success to emphasize deregulatory policies. Federal agencies were embroiled in constant litigation and controversy whenever they tried to limit environmental rulemaking. A new set of difficult and often unpopular issues-the ozone hole, global warming and population growth-crowded onto the environmentalist agenda.
The War on Terror dominated the public agenda during the presidency of George W. Bush despite efforts by Al Gore and others to focus public attention on global warming. Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and his efforts to attribute Hurricane Katrina, melting ice caps and summer heat waves to man-made climate change failed to generate the crisis atmosphere needed to achieve social and political change.
These days surveys show Americans worry most about the issues of war and the economy. The environment is far down on the list of concerns. In 2010 a Gallup survey reported that 48 percent of respondents believed the threat of global warming is exaggerated.
Public skepticism has been growing steadily since 2006 when the Gallup poll first reported that 30 percent of those surveyed had doubts about global warming. (The figures increased to 33 percent in 2007, 35 percent in 2008 and 41 percent in 2009.) Similar results were recorded in a March 2011 Gallup poll that asked, “How much do you personally worry about global warming?” Only 51 percent said they worried a great deal or a fair amount, a big drop from the 66 percent in 2008 who were troubled by thoughts of melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
Another indicator of waning public interest in environmental issues is a 2011 Rasmussen poll that asked likely U.S. voters to consider what played a bigger role in global warming: solar activity or human behavior? Sixty percent said it was at least somewhat likely that solar activity plays a role in long-term climate change. Only 22 percent said it was unlikely. This gives no comfort to environmentalists like Al Gore who argue that human activity is the number-one cause.
The Movement Runs Out of Gas
Americans’ interest in taking action against global warming is waning, but environmental groups insist that public opinion plays no role in explaining Congress’s failure to enact comprehensive climate change legislation. Instead, green groups attribute the failure to achieve their goals to the money and power of their opponents. According to their reckoning, environmental groups are stymied by what amounts to a conspiracy of the oil industry, global warming deniers, and the Koch brothers’ vast right-wing network.
In the summer of 2011, Dr. Matthew Nisbet of American University released a pioneering 80-page report, which undermines this argument. Nisbet’s report, “Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate,” rejects the argument that the environmental movement has been outspent by right-wing donors like the Koch brothers. It says the data is inconclusive on how much supporters and opponents of a cap-and-trade bill are spending to affect the outcome. For instance, Nisbet compared the budgets of the conservative movement (think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations) to national environmental organizations. He found that in 2009, major conservative outlets took in a total of $907 million in revenue, and spent $787 million. By comparison, green groups took in $1.7 billion that year and spent $1.4 billion. Another $394 million went specifically to climate-change related programs.
Nisbet also looked at lobbying. In the aggregate, conservatives spent a bit more: $272 million vs. $229 million. But in election spending, they far outspent environmentalists in 2010. For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $33 million, the Karl Rove-advised American Crossroads spent $22 million and its affiliated Crossroads GPS spent $17 million in political contributions. By contrast, the League of Conservation Voters spent $5.5 million, Defenders of Wildlife spent $1 million and the Sierra Club only $700,000.
However, state ballot initiatives tell a different story. California’s Proposition 23 is a case in point. The 2010 initiative, heavily funded by Texas-based oil companies, would have halted California regulations on greenhouse gas emissions until there was a decline in the state’s rate of unemployment. Supporters of the measure raised about $10.6 million. But opponents raised $25 million, with significiant sums from environmental groups. The National Wildlife Foundation reported spending $3 million, the National Resources Defense Council $1.67 million, and the League of Conservation Voters $1.1 million.
Nisbet also looked at foundation funding for climate change projects. What he found confirmed a 2007 study, “Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming,” which noted that philanthropists are strategic funders of environmental causes and seek to achieve specific policy goals.
It’s clear that overall, the environmental movement does not have a money problem. So what’s the problem? One prominent environmentalist, Daniel J. Weiss of Center for American Progress Action Fund, argues that the recession has played an outsized role in thwarting environmental goals. “It makes people more sensitive to the argument that various proposals will cost jobs,” says Weiss. “Oil and coal industries have made these arguments every timebut they’re falling on more receptive ears now.”
Tom Borelli, a climate-change skeptic at the National Center for Public Policy Research, agrees that a weak economy explains environmentalism’s downward spiral. “All along they were riding the wealth of our nation,” says Borelli. “Now the whole green bubble is exploding.” He points out that the movement’s energy agenda-the war on fossil fuels and the push for renewable energy-have always been unsustainable. “That’s where they failed.”
No One to Blame But Itself
But there’s yet another reason, one that activists are loathe to acknowledge, and it’s this: Their scare tactics have backfired. Environmental groups have done nothing but create enemies by labeling as “global warming deniers” anyone who dares to ask questions about man-made climate change. Critics like Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who in 2005 called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” remain a minority in Congress.
Far more typical is Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who in 2009 said, “The scientific aspect that I’m still reserving judgment on is the extent to which it’s manmade or natural.” Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey actually agrees the data is “pretty clear” that there has been an increase in the earth’s surface temperature, but he adds that “the extent to which that has been caused by human activity I think is not clear. I think that is very much disputed and has been debated.”
Extremist rhetoric has badly damaged the environmentalist cause. The Danish environmental writer Bjorn Lomborg and two enlightened environmentalists at the Breakthrough Institute, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, put the blame squarely on the environmental movement. It has no one to blame but itself.
In his latest book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, Lomborg observes that that there are more important scientific problems to tackle than global warming. Activists should work to provide clean water and address public health issues around the world. By calling for government mandates costing billions of dollars in an implausible attempt to lower the earth’s temperature Lomborg says environmental activists are squandering the public’s goodwill and exhausting its patience.
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger urged environmentalists to abandon their doomsday fantasies in “The Death of Environmentalism,” a 2004 paper they wrote for the Environmental Grantmakers Association. It made them outcasts in the environmental movement. Last February, in a speech at Yale University, they revisited the paper and concluded that the problems they identified had only worsened in the years since.
Nordhous and Shellenberger said that when Al Gore attacks Republicans for waging a war on science and calls on Americans to “change the way we live our lives,” he is undermining the public’s “need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order” and guaranteeing that millions of Americans will reject his counsel.
Greens reacted to these developments not by toning down their rhetoric or reconsidering their agenda in a manner that might be more palatable to their opponents. Instead, they made ever more apocalyptic claims about global warming claims that were increasingly inconsistent, ironically, with the scientific consensus whose mantle greens claimed.
In 2012, it’s clear that scare tactics and apocalyptic predictions have failed to persuade. The environmental movement is not gaining traction with either legislators or the public. As Tom Borelli puts it, “They’re now going to be playing defense. And they’re not used to that.”
Amanda Carey is a Washington, DC-based journalist and a frequent contributor to Green Watch.
…but bankers, wallstreet, foreign banks, car companies, unions, solar and windmills,, etc etc
In the decades since the birth of the environmental movement, something’s clearly gone wrong.
No, something’s clearly gone right–the truth. Congratulations, fellow WUWTers…
Gosh, Amanda makes all of that sound like it’s a bad thing!
Seriously, one could only wish that the situation for the extreme green movement was as dire as she makes it sound. I’m afraid the relatively quiet voices of reason still have a long way to go.
Wow, a journalist with her head in the game. I didn’t think any existed. Especially in DC.
As if the only issue the conservative think tanks and industry groups have on their plates is environmentalism. This grossly overstates the resources being spent on the anti-green side; the greens only focus on green issues, the conservative think tanks and industry trade groups have other missions as well. It wasn’t that long ago when the API, for example, didn’t do any appreciable lobbying at all; they were a technical group. To the extent that they’re doing any at all, it’s self-defense. Meanwhile, they still have these other functions to serve. And the greens have nothing to do but their agenda.
one small comment – the Macondo well suffered the blowout, the rig drilling the well was called the Deepwater Horizon.
I think that article is pretty fair, although there is one aspect of the thesis that is missing: that the case for catastrophic global warming has been revealed to be a sham. That the supposed consensus was confabulated. That the probity of the main actors in the AGW scare have been undermined by the ClimateGate emails.
Yes, there’s been a lot of opportunism from Republicans – but why is that surprising? The art of politics is taking up and using opportunities and converting them into power blocks. When opportunity arises the Democrats will do the same. And have done.
The AGW story is being sustained by federal money and once the Republicans work out how to close the spigot than Mann, Jones, Schmidt and Hansen will be yesterday’s men.
Frankly, I see it as a a case of extremism turning into hypocrisy.
It’s really hard to take seriously a movement to control the use of carbon when it’s progenitors are flying about to fancy hotels, etc. etc. If they were really serious about all of this they would be teleconferencing and that sort of thing. Instead, we get Al Gore’s “larger than life” home that doesn’t engender any confidence that I should do with less.
“Where’s all the socialist/statist donkeyshit we thought we were going to be shoving down America’s throat while insisting it’s prime beefsteak?”
Inconvenient truths bite!!
need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order
During the ascendency to power, a bogeyman is a frequent created target as one puts distance between one’s self and the purported threat; observe: negative political campaigning. When one actually wants to get something accomplished, clean up the environment for instance, the bogeyman can not be perceived to be winning or at least that perception is perpetuated by an incessant harangue of doomsday. IMO, to sustain public interest, there has to be accomplishments: pretty parks, a clearer view of the mountains, more deer in the forest, etc. The public, if they are to remain engaged should “think globally and act locally.” Recycling has become an increasing part of the American Way. Highway clean-up by volunteers and jailhouse residents have visible outcomes: positive. Environmentalism if it wants to take credit for accomplishing something, recycling and clean highways is a reasonable attribution. However, hooking one’s star to demonizing a trace gas’s catastrophic impact upon the weather 100 year’s hence, is, well, pie in the sky.
I have always resented it when some environmentalist calls me a NAZI because I dare question the scientific backing of whatever new regulation they want put in place. They want to define “clean” air as something that has never existed outside a laboratory, and “clean” water as something that has never existed outside a distilled water factory. There comes a point when the perfect becomes the enemy of the good and we have long passed the point of good. There are still some problems that need to be addressed. We need to watch what we dump into the ocean, for instance, but that doesn’t mean “no ocean dumping,” it means only put things in the ocean that biologic processes can accommodate in a reasonable time frame. We humans are grossly ignorant of the world around us and create boogeymen of imagination to cover that ignorance. Mankind is a part of nature, thus whatever we do is by definition “natural”.
In addition, most people think that we’ve already cleaned up the environment by huge amounts, which we have. Rivers are cleaner, air is cleaner, lakes are cleaner. The public supported the enviros in the past because the pollution was clearly present and it was clear that things had to change.
Now, all we have are ridiculous claims that the world will burn up in 50-100 years. The Greens have changed “global warming” to “carbon pollutIon” in the hopes of repeating their past successes, but the population has become much more wary of the Greens due to their outrageous claims, in addition to finding out that many “green” ideas have either been counterproductive (ethanol, anyone?) or misguided. Plus, the hypocrisy of the Green leaders makes it clear that they only want to make life more difficult for the masses, not themselves. The public thus now correctly views the Greens as just another lobbying group that is in it for themselves and not for the public at large, and the public rightfully looks upon them with suspicion and disdain. Yes, many of the public still live in the fantasy world that the Greens are just doing what is best for everyone, including the middle class, but most are becoming more educated about just what the “Green agenda” will mean: higher prices, higher taxes, fewer jobs, more restrictions. Most people look around and say, we’ve reached a nice balance between economic growth and public health, and spending more for “pollution control” just isn’t worth it.
Good timing! As of today, The Cryosphere Today says Global Sea Ice Area is above normal!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Thanks goodness. But they’re not dead enough. Why doesn’t the CONSERVATION movement get some momentum and take over their game? From my experience these guys are the TRUE lovers of the environment, and understand that man is not an evil scourge on planet earth, to be beaten into submission.
In 2008 Sarah Palin said virtually the same thing as Chuck Grassley in her interview with Charlie Gibson (and was excoriated for it by liberal MSM who also misrepresented what she had said). Gibson tries to nail her down in regard to McCain but she refuses to take the bait – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvB0lLnh74U
There was another interview of her by Gibson where she said something like we do not know whether the human component is causing 1% or 99% of the warming. Kudos to Sarah Palin for understanding the only sensible position a non-science oriented person can really have.
The radical green movement looks even more out of touch when one considers that there are genuine environmental issues to be addressed instead of the phony global warming crisis. Instead of dealing with real problems, the enviro-kooks hitched their wagon to the wrong star, and now they look like screaming ninnys. Such a waste, really.
Don’t fall for this story. It’s misleading. I understand the euphoria but they are working this like the EU, they are by-passing National Policy from National Governments. The UN is their avenue of choice as it’s unanswerable, unaccountable & unstoppable. And if we don’t watch out they will have sown us up before we are fully awake to what’s going on.
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“And that, in the end, is where the lie really is. In the attempt to sell us renewables the assumption is made that energy usage will halve. But energy usage halving has nothing at all to do with renewables, it has to do with energy efficiency.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/12/30/lying-with-numbers-green-energy-edition/2/
Interesting analysis, but I think she omitted the biggest problem of all: the movement long ago quit being about the environment and instead turned into a power and money grab for the politically well connected. Look at the author’s of Real Climate, for example: they no longer have any interest in the actual environment, if they ever did: the entire effort is a play to maximize grant money for themselves and to maximize profits for the corporations who will best be able to manipulate any new regulations to extort the maximum funds from the public. Look at the new so-called “carbon fee” the EU is trying to push on airline tickets. That has absolutely nothing to do with the actual environment, one would have to be a fool to think that policy would ever have any real world effect at all. But that’s not the point – the point is that it’s just one more extortion scheme to foist on the public, and to make them feel guilty if they complain.
The “environmental” movement no longer exists. It has been hijacked and consumed by frauds, charlatans, and grifters – and when they see there the profits are over, they’ll move on to something else and leave the “movement” in ruins behind them.
Did my earlier post wind up in the spam bucket because I said I was tired of being compared to a 1930s German National Socialist if I disagreed with an environmentalist on the scientific basis of their clamoring for regulation? I know certain words are charged, but I wasn’t using it to denigrate anyone.
[REPLY: The spam filter is not intelligent and can’t tell what is denigrating. We try to rescue comments such as yours in a timely fashion. -REP]
What went wrong, was true environmentalism was hi-jacked by left-wing ideologues who perceived it as a means to destroy capitalism and industry. Politicians of every stripe jumped aboard seeing a gravy train of taxes and government money being forwarded back into their personal coffers via contracts. And in fact agencies such as the EPA and lawsuits of a most obnoxious nature have stifled industry and jobs at every level of government much to the obvious delight of the left-wing and trial lawyers.. But the chosen bogeyman, AGW, was a weak foil. It failed to cooperate and fraud had to be introduced via alteration of historical data to maintain the pretense that normal weather was not so. But who are you going to believe, a ranting alarmist or your own eyes?
The money sucked up by these worthless research projects, the hoaxes, the fraudulent scientific papers, and the NGOs would easily have paid for the restoration of ancient fisheries, the rehabilitation of estuaries, the restoration of immense parts of Chesapeake Bay, the condemnation or market purchase of lands around the Everglades, and countless small projects of real environmental merit.
Judith Curry looks at this kind of error cascade here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/05/error-cascade/.
It is an ethics problem.
Just ask the good folks here:
http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2012/01/ethical-analysis-of-the-climate-change-disinformation-campaign-introduction-to-a-series.html
“Ethical Analysis of the Climate Change Disinformation Campaign: Introduction to A Series.”
Well, I would ask but for three days have not been allowed to post – even after becoming a “Friend of Penn State”.
Maybe it is a simple problem – I did want to drop a link to go with my point, “Rapidly rising sea levels!!!”
I guess the author is busy writing the next, doubtless edifying installment.
Oh, yeah, the link……
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
an obvious hotbed of denialism. That must be it.
“Green Movement Dead In The Water”
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That seems overly optimistic to me. I think they’ve just gone stealth. Where is the practical advance against social and economic incursions of the warmunists? The EPA is rubber-stamping for obama and the warmunists; drilling is halted; pipleline is in jeopardy; coal-fired power generation is hamstrung; no new nuclear stations for decades; public funds dumped into “green technology” scams. And I live in California – the green movement seems quite alive and well here.
ah- it will just be something else next year. they have to do something stupid with all the money the tax enthusiasts fling at them. casey anthony can’t provide the junkies their supply of 24/7 outrage all by herself. the public want value for their hard earned cash because they are thrifty and responsible – not to mention intelligent. that’s why they do it – it’s proven to work.
“it’s clear that scare tactics and apocalyptic predictions have failed to persuade.”
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And God bless them for making such wild assertions. Their maniacal lunatic assertions expose them for what they are…….. maniacal lunatics. 🙂
Well, it is nice to learn that I am not the only one who thinks the proponents of climate change are putting out a doomsday message.
When I tried explaining what made me a doubter over at Real Climate, Gavin Schmidt chastised me for a strawman argument. Well, specifically he only addressed one of my several examples – a 40 ft rise in sea levels. He said no one was claiming that. Which is kind of funny, as that’s exactly what David Archer is saying is likely – ie 10 meter rise. Archer goes on to say that 10 meters is a conservative number and if there is a tipping point, the rise could be in tens of meters. Perhaps I am in error for thinking Archer is associated with Real Climate. They do feature his books rather prominently.
BTW – a later comment attributing the 40 ft number to Archer was rejected. Imagine that.
This seems a strange piece in light of the new EPA guidelines which are going to shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants in the next few years, whether over particulates or mercury. The new regulations and laws are out there, and are going to hurt tremendously; to say that the movement is dead when their getting one of their fondest wishes realized is a bit strange.
Obama told the world he wanted to destroy the coal industry, and he is following through very nicely.
The problem is that environmentalists don’t actually need to win. They just need to be loud enough and obnoxious enough to prevent the implementation of policies our nation really needs:
Reduced regulatory burdens for mining and energy extraction.
Elimination of subsidies for “renewable” energy
Loans for expensive energy infrastructure like nuclear plants
Elimination of the corporate tax
Greatly reduced authority, and no unilateral powers, for the EPA
Quit giving tax money to environmentalist organizations so they can sue the government…..
We could be having an incredible energy revolution in this country if we could get the government out of the way. That will not happen with this stalemate and so we won’t get the cheap energy that we desperately need.
Not only are they playing defense, but they still seem to think that the best defense is a good offense. They’ll continue to fall behind until they abandon that notion.
Wait, you mean the “sky is (not) falling” Go figure the public isn’t buying into it! The biggest failure came from the public looking out the window for the past few years and seeing the real data of weather/climate. No amount of rhetoric or hyperbole of $lobbying can change what people see and know to be true.
Oh and Climategate1&2 of course exposed the scam for the world to see beautifully.
Thank you Anthony et al. The world owes you Bigtime!
Oh and climategate 1&2 showed the world the depths of deceipt from “the team” to hide the real world data from the world.
This woman complains about the failure of the environmental movement while the EPA and other federal agencies destroy the US with onerous regulations? What does she want, the government to just bomb us and get it over with?
In the early decades of the environmentalist movement, they achieved 95% of what most people understood the environmentalist movement to be about.
Since then they have sought to act not a green agenda, but a red one. In that effort, they have, thank God, failed.
The “environmental” movement is not unravelling, Ms. Carey’s crocodile tears notwithstanding. The EM was never about nature anyway. It has always been a (pseudo-scientific) front for authoritarian totalitarianism, and that epidemic infection is not diminishing at all.
I agree with Ann in L.A. You have the EPA completing the most onerous regulations on the power, refining, and drilling (fracking) industries based upon the skimpiest of scientific evidence. From the point of view of any rational Green advocate, it isn’t “What Happened?”, it is really, “Goal!!!! Game over! We won!”
“The “environmental” movement no longer exists. It has been hijacked and consumed by frauds, charlatans, and grifters – and when they see there the profits are over, they’ll move on to something else and leave the “movement” in ruins behind them.”
Exactly why Dr. Patrcik Moore (co-founder) of Greenpeace left that eNGO.
PS to JimOfCP at 10:25 am: They are already bombing us. My watershed was firebombed last summer by the Feds. On purpose, obviously – firebombing doesn’t occur by accident! We are like Vietnam here in Oregon. The US Govt is attempting to pacify us by bombing us. True fact. Coming soon to your neighborhood.
Very nice article. Here in Canada with total MSM onside for the green movement the greens are losing badly. One – PM Harper and his conservative party refusing to cower to the eco nuts and went so far as to remove Canada from Kyoto entirely driving a stake in that vampire’s heart. Two – to borrow from the ragin’ Cajun, James Carville, it’s the economy stupid! And here in Canada the oil sands play a major role in Canada’s export economy – in return allowing Alberta to send $22 Billion per year back into Canada in transfer payments that is shared amongst all the have not provinces and their citizens. Moreover, the oil sands employ hundreds of thousands in direct and indirect employment Canada wide and spend more billions for goods and services across the country. Despite the harsh rhetoric from ALL North American and world wide eco groups ganging up in the oil sands they have had little impact on the ground and are losing the battle here in the very heart of the green movement thrust. The vast majority of people in Canada see the benefits and back us all the way – they know our environmental record in the most stringent in the world in the oil business.
If the green movement cannot win against the oil sands, their chosen North American target, then the green movement is in serious trouble. How badly have the greens lost this war? The last two weeks of December alone a further $18.5 BILLION more invested in the oil sands – then there’s Iran. Threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz in their war games where much of the world’s oil passes through only highlights stable North American oil suppliers and here the oil sands play a huge role in the stable supply of petroleum products. Therefore world events such as I mentioned also put greens out of the game entirely – they have no answer to meet the challenges.
Then there’s the world economy – again greens have no answer to meet a real world challenge. Greens have no answer to combat unemployment, no answer to meet energy needs, no answer to more and more science coming out against them. In essence greens are being marginalized by events beyond their control. Perhaps the world itself has passed them by.
I am a retired professor of environmental engineering. I began my engineering education in 1961 just as the American environmental movement began to get traction. It had been in existence long before that and can be traced back at least to Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir.
Environmentalism must be distinguished from environmental engineering and science. Environmentalism is part of the anti-scientific, anti-rational Romantic movement. It reached its greatest peak in 1930-40 Nazi Germany when it amalgamated itself to Nazism, and Nazi Germany enacted virtually all of the Environmentalist agenda: localism, organic farming, eugenics, euthanasia, vegetarianism, animal rights, etc. No doubt Goebbels, Himmler and Eichmann regarded all this as nonsense, but Hitler was sympathetic. The horrors of Naziism discredited Environmentalism for a generation, but now it is back. As always, Environmentalism is a totalitarian political movement.
Naziism itself (like Fascism and Communism) was a form of totalitarian socialism, so one might equally say that the agenda is red, brown or black. But, this not a new development is goes back to Environmentalism’s roots.
“Environmentalism if it wants to take credit for accomplishing something, recycling and clean highways is a reasonable attribution. However, hooking one’s star to demonizing a trace gas’s catastrophic impact upon the weather 100 year’s hence, is, well, pie in the sky.”
Exactly. I have been an environmentalist since 1970 and yet I am a climate denier today. I want clean air and water, I want my environmental movment to go back to those tasks not saving the world through carbon credits, world governments and offensive World Bank backed programs like REDD.
I want my greenie movement back.
Is it possible all the lying has worn them down? From DDT to Alar … next stop global warning … It will wear anyone out.
There is also the point that the environmental movement achieved it primary aim. The air is cleaner, the water cleaner, the general environment is cleaner than it was in the 60’s. Basically by the late 70’s early 80’s the movement had achieved it’s main goal and that is the problem.
Yes there are things that can be done but it now requires greater and greater effort for less and less effect. Worse the cost in all areas goes up to achieve these improvements. It is because of that the green movement turned to scare story after scare story. After all if just using modern more efficient and better technologies is enough why do more? And that is the problem the green movement wants and needs to be relevant in an age when it has achieved it’s primary goal.
Gee, that’s an awful lot of words to describe the presumed death of climate fraud. (presumed, for exactly the same reasons Ann in L.A. noted above!)
Could not it have been shortened to, ” The Environazis predictions haven’t come close to realization, despite the hysterics, so no one believes them anymore.” ?
Oh, they are willing to keep up the story. It’s not going to go away.
Are they really any different than the preacher who predicted the end of the world three times in a row? People still believe in him and he still makes money.
That, in microcosm, is the “green” movement.
In reality it is the exact opposite. THEY are the ones imposing that organization’s methodology of attempting to shame and marginalize anyone who doesn’t agree with them. The primary message, (1930’s Germany), was that EVERYBODY ELSE EXCEPT YOU believes our ‘truth’ so… you are an impediment to the entire country and must therefore be a communist sympathizer.
Of course a lot of these eco-terrorists today are communists themselves so they’ve switched the name of the boogie man to “big oil” or “Koch Brothers”, etc.
I don’t think that environmentalism is dead in the water, I think the false mantras are now dead in the water.
Also, if the financial crash was designed to crush green industries at birth, it’s probably done a good job.
Thing is, I see this like the dot.com bubble in 2000. That was a disaster for duped investors, but did it stop the ICT sector? Like hell it did. Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft have all roared ahead.
What I think was stupid was the way the timetable was being forced. The 21st century is about developing the clean energy technologies at commercial prices. That takes a heck of lot longer than people realise, sometimes 2 generations.
Gene Therapy is another good analogy (my old research field in the 1990s). That was hyped far too fast, far too soon and one death of a patient caused the whole thing to bomb. But researchers hunkered down, learned their lessons and now you are starting to see a resurgence in what is fundamentally a good way to treat genetic diseases. It may take until 2050 to be fully exploited though…….
My thoughts: treat ‘environmental’/’green’ industries like any other area. Look for commercially competitive apps and don’t move beyond the research funding stage until the technology is commercially viable and scalable.
It’s basic common sense.
I think you’ll see recycling, sustainable construction and wave energy make their mark.
It may take longer for hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel and solar power to really make their marks……
If the Green ship is sinking why is US DOE still funding Phil Jones? See DOE response to my FOIA request:
TO: Robert Paglee
Subject: Financial Support/ Grants for Climate Research, Response to SMART Ticket#Hqdoclog2011-1208
1.0 Department of Energy, DOE, does (yes) provide financial assistant to British Universities, i.e Anglia University, UK.
2.0 SUMMARY:
POC; Phil Jones with Program, BER
Address: Norwich NR4 7 TJ, UK
Phone 441603591484
Type: Educational Grant
Amount : (2011) 198,485 (negotiated down from $207,887)
211,344 (cont. 2012 Negotiated from 217,956)
225,301 (cont. 2013 Negotiated from 226,264)
The Biological and Environmental Research Division, BER , regarding Climate Research and Grants Support can all be located under the Department of Energy, Office of Science website. There you can find a plethora of information regarding how to gain financial support and grants for Universities with funding opportunity announcement templates to view also. (http://science.energy.gov/programs/) select BER under programs.
BER has a list of standing Funding Opportunity Announcements listed in their website that you can view, offering what the paperwork you submit will eventually look like. You then will be instructed to go to the grants website to apply for any and all grants for your University on: http://www.sc.doe.gov/grants/
The Office of Science requires the submission of all financial assistance applications through Grants.gov.
Grants.gov allows organizations to electronically find and apply for competitive grant opportunities from all Federal grant-making agencies. Grants.gov is THE single access point for over 1000 grant programs offered by the 26 Federal grant-making agencies. Once you have entered all o fyour information the information will be forwarded to DOE grants office.
BER Offices can be reached directly at the Germantown Location at: SC-23 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, MD 20874 (301) 903-3251
There is a great new article about “postenvironmentalism and technological advance” that is a great segue from this.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/04/postenvironmentalism-and-technological-a
The biggest problem at the end of the day with the so called environmental movement is that it morphed from a legitimate concern regarding industrial pollution in the USA to a full blown dictatorship over our lives. In order to do this they had to destroy faith in technology, which government policy has tried its best to do over the last few decades. Fortunately some people are waking up.
The article states, “In 2012, three years into President Barack Obama’s first term, green activists are asking, “What went wrong?” Where are all the new laws and regulations regulating energy use and the natural resource production?”
I am reminded of the saying, “There are three kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who wonder what happened.”
The socialists’ biggest problem right now is that they have become disproportionately represented by Group #3.
This is a major problem for them, and we may indeed find solace in that fact.
But it is a temporary problem. They are not so incompetent that they are unaware of the problem, and they are surely taking steps right now to address it.
Step #1 for them is: redouble efforts to target the kids … especially those kids who attend public schools.
Celebrate the fact that a few rounds have been won. But don’t confuse that with a general victory.
RTF
It’s real simple what went wrong: They lied, and got caught lying.
I think it should simply be considered that environmental ‘alarmism’ is dead in the water. The environmentalist tree hugging greenies have simply cried wolf too often and the AGW dogmatic bandwagon was the equivalent of the ‘green’ saviour for environmentalists! But, as we all know, it has backfired, big style – and now the genuine environmental issues will be less ‘heard’ than before. Sad, because I am genuinely ‘green’ in the context that I believe that we should be careful with our planet and its resources – but every overhyped bit of ‘green’ news has just worn thin with the average joe! save this – save that – be less wasteful, etc, etc – and all the time politiucians and governments just use these issues as some tax generation mechanism! I still maintain that if the money spent of the AGW agenda had been spent of nuclear reactor type research, we’d all be feeling a lot more comfortable now – probably with the knowledge of power in reserve to cope with any warming OR cooling – (but of course, that’s a pragmatic approach to the ‘problem’ – something politicians and idealists would never take)
“What went wrong?” You can not fool all of the people, all of the time! Simple. Itwas was a scam and a lie. the turth will set you free. The fact is there is climate change, you only have to turn on the TV or radio to get the weather forecast. The climate does change, fact BUT CO2 is not the cause of AGW and AGW is the lie. I use to think it was the biggest con the world has very seen under MF Global when down. How its the 2nd biggest scam next to banking.
I had forgotten that the EPA was mandated by an executive order. Has congress since authorized the EPA by law, or is it still based on presidential EO? Perhaps a new president could make the EPA disappear late in Jan., 2013.
Tim
” …, every effort to pass comprehensive climate change legislation during the preceding five years had floundered in the Senate.” Dare I say, something fishy here?
If I go to a crowded place and scream BOMB!!!! At the top of my lungs most people will scream and run. I could probably get away with it several times but it is only a matter of time before people start to realize there was no kaboom. After some time even the very gullible will come to realize that it was a false alarm. That’s how I see the global warming movement. They have relied on scare tactics and used them over and over but now even the most dimwitted are starting to question. The most persuasive people can keep the masses panicked longer but even that will eventually wear off if nothing is happening. There are those people that will drink the Kool-Aid no matter what but those will be the vast minority in time. I predict we have seen the beginning of the end of the AGW movement.
This is unfolding just as I predicted years ago. When the environmentalist organizations decided to spend their political capital and goodwill on the phony case against the non-polluting carbon dioxide, it came at the expense of legitimate environmental concerns about real pollutants in air, water, and soil. These organizations, some of which I once supported, have squandered the public’s goodwill, and give every indication that they are willing to double down and squander the rest of it, in the name of a pure watermelon power play. It will be decades before a person who genuinely cares about legitimate environmental issues will be able to take the Audobon Society, the Sierra Club, the WWF, or Greenpeace seriously.
@Tarpon
“Is it possible all the lying has worn them down? ”
Unfortunately that is not the case with our Prime Minister down under.
Gillard THRIVES on lies and deceit.
and we look like being stuck with this momentous folly of a Carbon Tax :-(((
So academic misconduct played no role in this? Amanda Carey is a Climategate denier.
What it’s morphed into is a church, complete with cardinals and bishops, and catechism, and dogmas.
And heretics and sinners. Many of whom haunt this blog. And the crusade is running into resistance.
I wouldn’t characterize the movement as dead in the water, more like stagnant. It’s still a 6 billion dollar industry in the US and holding.
Contributions By Type of Recipient Organization
Environment/animals
2006: 6.6 billion 2.2%
2008: 6.58 billion 2%
2010: 6.66 billion 2%
http://www.nps.gov/partnerships/fundraising_individuals_statistics.htm
http://www.aafrc.org/press_releases/gusa/GivingReaches300billion.pdf
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908690.html
Until EPA has been neutered ie… carbon laws and Maximum Acheievalbe polices rescinded, and Lisa Jackson fired, the green movement is alive and well.
EPA needs to be completely overhauled. No rule that the EPA ever comes up with should be enforceable without first getting approval from both the house and senate.
I feel I can speak authoritatively on this subject…being dead in the water, that is…I have done some Post Doc studies at the School of Hard Knocks…according to my cv…anyway…
Its a funny thing…they change the name from ‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change’…but watch how that will backfire…via Joe EnRomm…or is that Joltin’ Joe Romm…
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/05/398463/2011-climate-bs-year-awards/
“The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011…”
Now as I understand the concept of climate, it changes every year…right?
Eventually people catch on…’you can take a boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy’…right?
They cannot in their minds decouple the concept of HEAT=BAD, so all BAD news must = Man Made Global Warming…right? (note, very scientific…I used formulas and everything)
So my hypo thesis…is this…once people clue in to the fact that a lot of the so-called BAD heat was FAKED…people might realize that HEAT does not always = BAD…right?
IF, all BAD is not always tied to climate change, THEN your boat:
“has a hole in it”
“is dead in the water”
“is up a particularly foul smelling creek”
“must have its rudder jammed”
“is turning WAY hard to PORT…like ‘extreme port-wing or something like that”
Same thing goes for ‘Think Progress’ and “Climate Progress’…once people realize that ‘Progress’ and the ‘Modern Progressive Movement’ has strong links to the earlier Progressive Movement, with their Eugenics, forced sterilization, ‘Ice Pic’ lobotomies of the mentally ill… Whats up with that?
Actually its WATTs…as in James Watts who along with Walter Freeman performed a lobotomy on Rose Kennedy in 1941. Walter Freeman and James Watts introduced the lobotomy in the US in 1936.
Don’t worry about the whole lobotomy thing…’it’s no big deal’ says Carl Spackler…They awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949 to the European dudes pioneering efforts in cutting out peoples brains…it was proven science! Ever wonder why it is only Progressive Presidents win Nobel Prizes?
I am just saying…
Andrew
btw, The School of Hard Knocks does not have a math prerequisite, so I never had to learn how to make one of those = with a slash… It might look better if it wasn’t faked…but I am Mann enough to admit my shortcomings…I think.
The environmental movement has committed Seppuku with a dull butter knife. By allowing themselves to be used “for the greater good” in a large lie they now have lost the best chance they had to make a positive lasting effect.
For those who are genuinely concerned about the environment and want to keep it healthy for all it must be very gut wrenching. To be lied to and used must leave a lot of them very angry. Sadly most can’t bring themselves to admit that they’ve been had. Denial is a very real human response to having the rug pulled out from under oneself.
Now if they could admit it, move on and channel that anger at those who lied to them. Then we might see some serious progress.
There has been so much dysfunction in Congress that it was even hard to get Federal $$ out to the people who needed it after some natural disasters earlier this year. A “non-political” circumstance, let alone global warming, has led to gridlock. I think this is part of the problem albeit not the only one when it comes to new environmental laws/action (as some responders have articulated above).
With respect, I disagree. My opinion is shaped by anecdotes.
So, I would appreciate feedback.
Specifically:
The AGW non-profit leaders have gained support from:
a. The League of Women Voters. The League gives its prestige, sponsoring numerous public events for the AGW crowd to present the AGW message.
b. The religious leadership is meeting across faiths to adopt a moral arguement for the various parishioners.
c. The local news, a Gannett publication has not moved, one bit off message.
d. Most importantly, the Democratic Party, at the state level understands the risk. They have responded by “doubling down” on the communications effort. In other words, they see the problem and will not let failure be an option.
e. Our local, “fortune 50” corporations have been steered into mega investments and will not write them off without a fight.
In summary, “they’re not dead yet”.
Well……for starters, the environmental movement can stop citing Al Gore. They should send him a Dear John letter and disassociate themselves from him. Al’s presence is getting a little long-in-the-tooth for the majority of people.
Secondly…..they could try getting back to being science based instead of activism…..again, something getting a little long-in-the-tooth with the majority of people.
Expunge the crisis based element from their ranks.
Then they could……but wait, there would already be nothing left.
Environmentalism has put the knife to its own throat and said, “Listen to us or the MOVEMENT gets it.”.
RIP.
Maybe soon we can get back to a common sense application of clean water/air/earth regulations that serve the people and not agendas.
The green movement has demonstrated why it not fit to exercise power.
It fully committed itself to bad science and fell into the role of the snake oil salesman. It labelled and attacked its opponents when it became difficult to defend its thesis. And its more extreme fringe abandoned any basic sense of humanity towards fair and reasonable dissent.
I once had modestly “green” sympathies, but found myself on the other side of the argument on the global warming catastrophe theory. That opened my eyes! I now tend to look at the green movement in the same way as weird cult members or those shady extremist political groups
It is not for me to tell them how to live their lives, but I don’t want them to have any influence over mine.
Lord Lawson of the GWPF is an unsung hero, in my opinion. Monkton is out there taking on all-comers in a no-nonsense brawling style, while Lawson works away quietly
As a Brit , I’m quite proud of both of them
The Environmental movement wanted a Global Theme or Issue because Globalization was the trend of the day.
It could have picked ‘water quality’…because water is ‘global’.
It could even have picked ‘air quality’ because air is indeed ‘global’.
Unfortunately (for it) the Environmental movement picked the theme of Global Warming.
You can see the attraction it held for them.
Vague existential threats are at the core of every millenarian cult.
When those threats fail to materialize…the cult dies.
Robert Doyle,
I agree 100% with your comment. And item B) on your list, I have experienced first-hand, and it should serve as (yet another) powerful wake-up call to any person of faith, about the times.
RTF
“Don’t worry about the whole lobotomy thing…’it’s no big deal’ says Carl Spackler…They awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949”
Hey didn’t the IPCC get a Nobel Prize too? Didn’t Al Gore share it with someone? Man, who was it?
What a fantastic article, I look forward to reading more of the same.
Don’t ever count out the sixties crowd of tree-huggers until they die (and maybe not even then)
.
They were taught that change – any change – is good. They were also taught in the sixties that they were so extraordinarily special that their every thought was vastly important.
They won’t go away anytime soon. The facts don’t matter to them – they are caught up in dooooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng something. That’s all that’s important to them. Oh, wait, I forgot – they also expect monetary compensation for every utterance, every web-posting, sit-in or march – special ppeople get tha kind of treatment, you know!
I predict that the next ruse might very well be a flurry of papers about: Climate Stagnation.
After all, Global Warming has morphed into Climate Change – but the Climate don’t seem to be a-changin’ on the minute timescales favored by the intellectual aristocracy.
So, Climate Stagnation it is. You saw it here first!
LOL
For every sincere environmentalist there are several business opportunists, political opportunists and academic opportunists masquerading as sincere environmentalists. That they’re just trying to sell a product, implement a political agenda or win a government grant has become obvious over time. Ordinary people know humans better than they know science and they don’t like the behavior of the supposed environmentalists. This causes them to lose sympathy for the environmental cause. It’s a good thing the warmists are wrong because they would have lost the public support no matter the science.
page488 says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:37 pm
“Don’t ever count out the sixties crowd of tree-huggers until they die (and maybe not even then)
They were taught that change – any change – is good.”
Yes, but you forgot hope…it sounds more…Progressive don’t you think?
I noticed many here are stating the green movement is alive, well, and still kicking. Yes, they’re still with us but what many of these posting have left out is the vast majority of western humanity is tuning them out more than every before. Even under Obama the green movement suffered severe set backs with the Chevy Volt crashing along with Obama’s high profile failures at choosing green companies. With the elections for the US well under way the republican party is putting even more severe pressure on the green movement and no green legislation is passing congress.
Moreover, world wide there is NO green movement in China, Russia, the Muslims world, or India. The US IS the green movement – will remain the heart and soul of the green movement for decades yet to come. There IS NO green movement worth its salts outside of the US other than the UK and Europe – however, the heart and soul of the green movement is also THE US Achilles heel and will be for the foreseeable future. And there the greens have done more damage to the US than in any other nation on planet earth. Industry is at a complete standstill, new energy exploration is virtually none existent, and new and even more onerous US government EPA regulations have US industry a walking dead men. In the US it is especially virulent with greens using US courts to bludgeon America as a nation. No other nation has courts used in this manner which is especially destructive to the US nation itself. So – – – YES, the eco movement has won outright in the US, Britain, and Europe – but at what cost?
But we must keep in mind the green movement itself isn’t the real culprit. The US, UK, and EU governments are all for holding to a harsh green agenda at the expense of every other societal need. The proof? Across the US Northern border Canada is under no such illusion and is thriving under a realists conservative government who pay no attention to the greens what so ever. And as always it is ultimately governments who make the rules of the game.
page488 says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:37 pm
“So, Climate Stagnation it is. You saw it here first!”
I saw it here first…ok…Surely you know I am joking…”and don’t call me Shirley”…moving on…
Stagnation rhymes with Stagflation…note that anyone would notice…I think.
Green Movement dead in the water? – absolutely not. It still has a firm grip on the neck of Europe and it is running amok with power in Australia after infiltrating into government by stealth and cannot be removed for another 18 months.
Perhaps the Canadians have shown us another Juno beachhead but those that oppose Green fanaticism are looking to the USA for leadership as to how it determines the future priorities in world order.
The first test is NOW. Will the USA join Canada, China, Russia and India and the dozens of other countries and take decisive action to prevent the EU’s attempt to impose its regressive green energy tax on all airlines operating into Europe?
If not and the USA meekly surrenders then CAGW alarmism will be alive and kicking for at least another decade. If so and the EU fails to impose its will then it will certainly be more than the beginning of the end for CAGW and it will fade slowly away.
Both the environmental activists and the union organizers are losing the support of the common man for the same reason, they’ve gone from being the solution to being the problem. Both movements started to give power to the majority of the common man to fight abuses by a select few that were causing widespread harm. And as LamontT mentioned in an earlier post, that earlier effort was successful, probably a greater success than the original organizers could have ever dreamed.
But the problem is that both the environmentalists and the unions abused the goodwill that came with that success. And through that abuse they have both become that which they hated, a powerful minority causing harm to the defenseless common man for the sake of maintaining their own power base.
The environmentalist movement had produced changes that cleaned up the air and water and more importantly changed attitudes about what was acceptable behaviour when it came to our effect on the environment. But they didn’t stop there. Now they have moved on to ever tighter regulation that is beginning to cause more harm than good, and that is where they are losing the common man. People will be with you when you are stopping waste from being dumped in a river, but when you start telling them which trees they can cut down in their own yards, you’ve overstepped. It’s one thing to ask a large company to spend money to change their methods and stop methods that are actually making people sick by contaminating their water supply. It’s another matter when you doubling the cost of everybody’s water bill to remove some natural contaminant that can only be detected by increasingly accurate lab tests and hasn’t been sickening anyone except in similarly exaggerated dosages in lab testing. Environmentalists had the support of the common man when their actions were making our lives noticeable better. Now that those real problems have been solved, the environmentalists are stretching to find imaginged problems to rail against to maintain funding and power. And their solutions to those imaginary problems are making people’s lives worse instead of better, and that’s where they are losing the support of the common man.
Similarly, the unions were originally formed to support the common worker in fighting abuses. But once those fixes became widespread, the unions kept inventing new problems that needed fixing until they became an abusive power in their own right. Many current unions seem geared towards protecting the privileges of a select few workers at the expense of others who might do the work better and cheaper. Even then, the unions will often sell out their own individual members if it comes to a choice between protecting the power of the bureaucrats running the unions and doing what would benefit the individual worker.
One of the great self delusionments of every generation is that the social, business and economic structures and organisations that they created during their younger and more vigorous years and which they do their utmost to retain must and will be carried on by the next generation.
Usually they are sorely disappointed as the next and newest generation is busy creating it’s own version of the world and life and just pays lip service to the previous generation’s demands that much of the societal structures they created be continued on in an barely changed form.
Which is why all those mass movements from down through history have only had a very limited shelf life of perhaps 20 or 30 years before they were eventually just ignored and died out.
That 20 or 30 year lifetime of most mass movements is about the length of time that the creators of a mass movement retain their influence and authority over the movement until finally age and waning influence catches up with them.
So it will be with the global warming beliefs and eventually most of the strictures of the current environmental movement.
Global warming as a highly emotive and cult like semi religious ideological belief system has been on the go since around 1990 and many of it’s original promoters and adherents are now well into the peak of their working lives and influence.
Soon for most of the major promoters of global warming, retirement will be coming around and they will then lose the base for their power and influence and will be fading into the history.
This has already happened with the environmental movements.
Such movements like the environmental one will continue on from that now past first generation for another couple of generations if the wealth, power and influence of the movement can be utilised and harnessed by the morally and ethically challenged second and third generation of opportunists that have had few scruples in seeking and gaining power over the movement as the founders move on or out.
The original aims of such movements are then almost completely corrupted as the new controllers run the organisation purely as an end in itself and as a wealth acquiring and a power and influence base for their own selfish ends. They no longer give other than lip service to the goals of the founders of the movement.
We see this in the history of communism and various other “isms’ during the 20th century and now we are seeing the same type of scenario unfolding in the environmental movements as the original founders fade out and the opportunist move in and control the environmental organisations. The so called environmental movements no longer seem particularly interested in the environment except as a highly emotive propaganda influence and a wealth creating oppurtunity.
The goals of the environmental movement’s present controllers now are the gaining of political power and influence and for the modern environmental movement opportunist, nothing else really counts anymore.
Like wise with the global warming / climate change meme.
As new science on the global climate comes to the fore and as the strictures against any doubting or skeptical considerations about CAGW as applied by the immensly influential Team at the top of the climate warming tree starts to diminish and as the corruption of climate science and science principles are increasingly revealed by the likes of release of the CG1 and CG2 -e-mails, and as the close connections between the biased and thoroughly bigoted upper echelons of the media and this same politically powerful and influential group of climate warming “scientists” are increasingly revealed, one sure way for a new Editor of a major media outlet and / or a new reporter to make a name for themselves is to start to openly question the whole global warming meme.
Once the rot starts then it becomes much easier for others in the media to also start to dig for fraud and corruption to try and make sure they are not left out in the cold in the new unfolding anti global warming paradigm.
Here in Australia, the journalist and commentator, Andrew Bolt is a classic case of how to make a big name and reputation for oneself by questioning the accepted and heavily promoted and grossly green based and authoritarian catastrophic global warming wisdom.
The truth of the matter is that after some 20 years since global warming first came up on the media’s radar, the careers and working lives of many senior Editors and a large swag of reporters who have just accepted and gone along without any questioning of the basis of the green and global warming claims and have heavily promoted the catastrophic global warming meme are now drawing towards the end of their careers.
The soon to be seen next generation of editors and reporters of the major media outlets will follow a very different lot of news scenarios and the catastrophic global warming / climate change meme in general will slowly be confined to the scrap heap of media and science history as the newest and next generations move onto their own pet ideals and goals.
All aided and abetted by the rapidly increasing number of news gathering and opinion publishing blogs rising up to challenge the traditional news gathering media model.
The next generation of the more traditional media editors and reporters will have to be very innovative and deliver news and opinions in a way that the public expects and will accept.
They will not be able to dictate their own biases and bigotry to the increasingly sophisticated and better informed public as has the media of the past.
The alternative for news media that can’t make this transition is to just fade away and disappear from history.
The successful news media of the future will leave the beliefs and closely held ideologies of the past generations such as global warming and crass authoritarian environmentalism to fade as always, into an increasingly irrelevant past.
That is the lesson that history has for us if we only want to seek to learn from that history.
Seems like my last couple of posts including one only a few minutes ago have gone into the spam bin even though my address is still identical to my few past posts.
Ann In L.A. says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:15 am
This seems a strange piece in light of the new EPA guidelines which are going to shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants in the next few years, whether over particulates or mercury. The new regulations and laws are out there, and are going to hurt tremendously; to say that the movement is dead when their getting one of their fondest wishes realized is a bit strange.
Obama told the world he wanted to destroy the coal industry, and he is following through very nicely.
It really amazes me that, the mostly union miners – UMW, still seem to support Richard Trumka and Oman. Is it not the job, of the union president, to protect the jobs of his members? Where are his comments regarding the shut down of coal burning electric generating facilities? Will this not lead to his union members losing jobs? He says he has Omans ear, so what is he doing for you?
I believe Trumka does not give a big rat’s behind about his dues paying members. All he wants is some sort of political job in the present Dem administration or future ones. I seem to remember a quote from his saying that he never was a miner and didn’t want to be one. He wanted to be, paraphrasing, an activist just like his hero, Oman.
If you union miners still feel comfortable in paying this persons salary, while he connives with the Oman to eliminate your jobs, so be it.
.
I got to the 4th paragraph and choked over this:
“Look at the Tea Party. Born only in 2009, it’s pushed back against the agenda of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, forcing Congress to heel and almost sending the federal government into default.”…
That should really read: Pushed back against the agenda of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats SPENDING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INTO DEFAULT!!!!!!!
Cognitive dissonance that can’t tell cause from effect. The Tea Party pushed a lot of Republicans out the door also. There are plenty of people of all stripes that can clearly see the problem.
We need to put partisanship aside and save the ship of state from these big spenders that are bankrupting the government.
Feeling better now, thank you.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/01/05/what-financial-meltdowns-teach-us-about-the-ipcc/
Richard G says:
January 6, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Cognitive dissonance that can’t tell cause from effect. The Tea Party pushed a lot of Republicans out the door also. There are plenty of people of all stripes that can clearly see the problem.
We need to put partisanship aside and save the ship of state from these big spenders that are bankrupting the government.
Feeling better now, thank you.
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
Excerpted from “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement”
written in 1994 by Partick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace
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 Tradgedy 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 critisized 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 adsurd 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 sucessful, 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.
timg56 says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:14 am
——————————-
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8719.html
The Long Thaw:
How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate
David Archer
“David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters.”
What went wrong with the environmental movement? Simple, they went off their rockers! They decided that the best “green” policies were those that destroyed the U.S. and other western economies. Using fraudulent “science”, they made a bogeyman out of a colorless, odorless trace gas. They made dire predictions about what would happen if their policies were not adopted – and none of their predictions have panned out. Slowly but surely, with the help of WUWT and other non-main stream media sources, the public is waking up to these fraudsters. And hopefully, at least for the U.S., next November we can toss enough of the watermelons out of Congress, and take the White House, to turn things around.
Interesting article and it may be somewhat truthfull in the USA but not here. In Australia the Green movement holds the balance of power in both the lower and upper houses of parliment and they are they determinded to see us leap back to the 1850’s as quickly as possible. Now I have no issues with thems that want to live in mud huts and commute to work by horse and buggy but that isn’t a life style I would choose for myself or my children to grow up in.
No, they are far from dead here.
In the 1970’s here in Oz we saw the radical greenies agitate for everything from “land rights for gay whales” to save the (insert cuddly animal here) campaigns, don’t dam rivers, don’t put a road in here and their latest lunacy is “Wild Rivers” legislation that even locks aborigines out of using tradional hunting and fishing grounds and so it goes on. Mostly they where ignored by the general population because it wasn’t happening in ‘my backyard’.
But now they have formed larger lobby groups and are bringing in groups such as PEW to lock up the Greart Barrier Reef. We have seen the sheep industry almost crippled by PETA etc so no they are far from dead here.
Various radical green groups have been threatening coal exports by chaining themselves to coal trains and machinery, painting the sides of coal carriers etc. A huge no no for the government as it relies so heavily on export dollars to prop up it’s failed social experiments that it has sent ASIO and Federal Police on to them to ‘monitor’ what they are doing. http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/government-looks-to-monitor-green-groups/story-e6frfku0-1226238675002 Yes it is only News.com.au and every story of theirs should be prefaced with “Once upon a time” but there maybe some truth to what they are reporting.
I believe that deep down greenies would do Australia some good. At about 8 feet down and 10 to the acre they would bring back some much needed trace elemnts for our poor soils.
Ann In L.A. said @ January 6, 2012 at 10:15 am
“Obama told the world he wanted to destroy the coal industry, and he is following through very nicely.”
So did Maggie Thatcher… and she succeeded.
…and Sir Git…would Maggie’s support be an example of the Law of unintended consequences…or something like that…coal…nuclear energy is better because acid rain is bad…ummm oh and the CO2 is bad too…as an afterthought…or was it the NEW flavor of the…past few decades.
Something like that I recall doesn’t Mockton deal with this stuff?
If it is dead in the water, we need to drag it out of the water, shoot it to make sure it is dead, drive a stake through its heart, burn it, irradiate it, then bury it.
Two hundred years ago it was Malthus! Forty years ago it was Paul Ehrlich.with his “Population Bomb.” Today it’s the Global Warming team. It’s all aimed at reducing the population of the masses. The only problem is that the masses have gotten smart. When we were farmers we needed large families to work the land but now that agriculture is industrialized 12 kids are no longer necessary. Now they are a burden. In all industrialized (second world) societies the birth rate has fallen to near or below replacement. The global population will rise for a while longer then begin to decline. Insufficient labor will become a problem. At that point Malthus, Ehrlich, Gore, Mann, etc. will become irrelevant. Unfortunately we will also stop dreaming of reaching the stars. We won’t need ” Lebensraum ” as we will have more than enough space for our population. I had hoped to reach Mars during my lifetime but I don’t think it will happen. For that I am sad. I had dreams……
Green Movement dead in the water?
Too many pistachios in their diet.
Time to flush and wash up…
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves.
There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour, or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike—taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire.
The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hill-side, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting.
Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars and arches—dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging—was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. In Marseilles that day there was a villainous prison. In one of its chambers, so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stare blinked at it, and left it to such refuse of reflected light as it could find for itself, were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and disfigured bench, immovable from the wall, with a draught-board rudely hacked upon it with a knife, a set of draughts, made of old buttons and soup bones, a set of dominoes, two mats, and two or three wine bottles. That was all the chamber held, exclusive of rats and other unseen vermin, in addition to the seen vermin, the two men./
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/963/963-h/963-h.htm
So what you are saying is that it is ‘the best of times and the worst of times’ for climate change…I think.
DonB in VA :
“For that I am sad. I had dreams……”
Maybe not in our lifetime, but our species has exploration in it’s blood. Once the current (and etremely counterproductive) fear based culture subsides, we will once again become curious and will probably settle the moon first. Perhaps Mars next. Not because we have to but because we want to.
There are some very fine and perceptive posts on this thread, and thanks to Anthony for initiating the discussion. The article itself is pretty lightweight, except that it provides a readable chronology of events in the US political system.
The parallels between unionism and environmentalism are illuminating. Both arose in response to a need for redress, and enjoyed broad support while they were doing that. But, both eventually entered the territory of diminishing returns, and became instead a haven for people seeking well paid jobs as a stepping stone into even better paid jobs, or politics. One feature they have in common is that governments took over their roles.
As a result, many environmental groups have been hijacked by extremists, desperate to find a role. Today I read in the Australian MSM that security and intelligence services are tracking groups that sabotage coal export facilities or try to prevent coal from reaching power stations. Immediately, the usual suspects claim that this is an outrageous attack on political freedom. Trying to cause power blackouts or costing the economy millions of dollars to no effect has nothing to do with political freedom, IMO.
In Australia, the union movement is split between the extreme green/marxist faction and the old fashioned let’s look after the workers faction. But a changing world will probably obliterate both of them (in the union sphere).
The discussion also highlights how genuine conservationists are fed up with the debate about the environment, climate change etc being framed in left/right terms. It is a pathetically inadequate explanation for people’s motivations and views. There are plenty of authoritarians at both ends of the political spectrum, and I for one want nothing to do with any of them.
“Lomborg observes that that there are more important scientific problems to tackle than global warming.” What’s even scarier, there are problems that are being attributed to global warming which, if that isn’t the real cause, are being left untreated, and will probably only get worse. Whereas if people searched for the real cause of such problems, there might be a fix.
For example, suppose coral reef bleaching really is a growing problem, and something else is the cause–perhaps overfishing, leading to some sort of ecological imbalance in reefs. If that is the case (and I have no idea, it’s just a what-if), then the reefs would truly be in danger.
JimOfCP says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:25 am
This woman complains about the failure of the environmental movement while the EPA and other federal agencies destroy the US with onerous regulations? What does she want, the government to just bomb us and get it over with?
=============================================================
It would be quicker and more merciful if they did. Death by regulation is slow and painful.
But I do care for my environment. I prefer to have it free of stinking stuff & poisons & deadly diseases, just don’t buy I have to go back to medieval practices to achieve that, for at that time the environment was full of all the maladies mentioned above while right now it looks neat and nice, with healthy trees & bushes all over the city. They are definitely greener than I remember from my childhood, even the heavy smoke of coal fired household stoves is gone.
CO₂ is the very raw material of life while fire use is the basic defining feature of human anatomy. Without it atrophic human masticatory muscles were entirely dysfunctional, therefore it would be impossible to maintain an enormous skull free of muscle cover, housing an able brain. Attacks on CO₂ emissions are attacks on human existence itself. We don’t just use fire, we have it in our hearts.
As for its overproduction, just wait for several decades until technology catches up with God’s molecular nanotechnology. As soon as it happens, airborne CO₂ becomes the single most valuable resource for economy (as it always was for ecology). Then we can start worry about abrupt CO₂ depletion of the atmosphere and develop procedures to replenish it as needed.
Geez, imagine that…,
To me there are two purposes for the existence of a Green Movement. One is to clean up the place, which to a large extent has already been very successful. Two is the political wing which are more focused on restrictions to business and industry, and not directly focused on the environment at all.
For the man on the street, he sees the first and is happy. The world is a lot cleaner now than when I was a kid. The man on the street sees on TV, proposals which will cost him money against his will for purposes not directly aimed at cleaning the environment (its already clean; and there are already plenty of laws in place:- they just need to be enforced and what we have will work).
I think it’s the forced costs on the community, the involuntary nature of the proposals, and the fact that most people are happy with how clean it is anyway. The little litter that remains is minor and temporary. All of the significant issues have already been addressed. Get out of my pockets, your just being greedy now.
“Now it [environmental activism] seems to be dead in the water.”
And now we must push it back into the hole from whence it came.
It’s rule and worth has ended.
…..green activists are asking, “What went wrong?” Where are all the new laws and regulations regulating energy use and the natural resource production? Where are the public-private partnerships signalling a new era of enironmentalist problem-solving? Where’s Al Gore? Shouldn’t he be lurking over President Obama’s shoulder, smiling, as the President signs yet another green jobs bill into law?
Answer to Q1, Q2 & Q3. Come to Australia and cry.
The EPA has in the last two years put in place regulations far more costly than in its previous history. Most of these regulations involve power plants, in particular those using coal. The interstate pollution rule, the very recent MACT rule, rules on cooling water, and, in a year and a half, a new rule on ozone. These rules will raise electricity prices in the midwest by around 25%, taking money out of people’s pockets, reducing expenditures and thus increasing employment.
That doesn’t sound like dead in the water to me.
True environmentalism will never be dead, but fake environmentalism assuredly faces natural correction. One possibility is that natural correction will take the form of competition from upstart environmental organizations that are built on superior, honest foundations. For example, a charter explicitly guaranteeing respect for nature (including natural climate variability) might represent a refreshing new option for potential donors who may, for a few examples, love naturally-forested parks & also insist on non-toxic drinking water, but demand absolute guarantees that their donations NOT be spent on climate alarmism (which fundamentally misrepresents nature).
“thepompousgit says:
January 6, 2012 at 5:01 pm”
Well, The Iron Lady did have some help from Arthur.
Think of a rubber band. You can stretch it and stretch it until it suddenly breaks and rebounds. The same goes for apocalyptic predictions and the political movements driving them.
James Hansen got the AGW ball rolling in the late ’80s and it culminated with Al Gore’s Oscar-winning feature length horror movie in 2006; both stretched the rubber band of truth. The Greens and Progressives got behind AGW early on because they recognized it was perfect Trojan Horse to effect their political goals.
The lead-up to the 2009 Copenhagen UN conference marked the high water mark of the AGW political movement as well as its Waterloo.
The lead-up to the conference stretched the rubber band even further with outrageous claims AGW caused everything from impotence to acne. Its Waterloo was the release of the Climategate emails that torpedoed the expected conference treaties and binding obligations. The Greens and Progressives, outraged having come so close and thwarted, redoubled their efforts stretching the rubber band.
A breaking rubber band is a discontinuity. Until it breaks, it follows an expected linear elongation versus tensile force relationship. When it breaks, all work invested and previous history is wiped out in a snap.
Substitute the public’s credulity for the rubber band. The public believes in scientists and their pronouncements. They believe the pronouncements even as each becomes more outrageous and stretches the rubber band further. It has a cumulative effect.
People’s credulity only stretches so far and then it breaks like a snapped rubber band. When it breaks, the polar attitude changes from “I believe you” to “I don’t believe a word you are saying”. It is an abrupt discontinuity and I think we are there now. It will take a long time before scientists are respected again; you cannot mend a broken rubber band.
There are a few key points that Carey misses. The first is that the public is firmly on board with environmental causes when it’s about real, visible and toxic pollution. After all, rivers should not be catching on fire from paper mill waste. But the more abstract and theoretical the environmental cause becomes, the more detached from it the public becomes. And global warming is about as abstract as you can get.
Second, the environmentalists are after a severe limit on our access to energy. This means inevitably an accompanying severe reduction in our standard of living. And it runs entirely contrary to our social beliefs, namely that our successors will be better off than we are. It doesn’t take very much for people to understand that following the prescriptions of radical environmentalism means that everyone is worse off, personally, financially. Increased costs are tough to sell in very good economic times. During a drawn out recession, it’s as dead as Marley’s Ghost. As long as the environmentalist message has increased poverty at its roots, they’re going nowhere on hyperdrive.
On 9/11, when congress was informed there was another plane in the air headed for Washington, you saw the politicians running for cover. The threat was real.
When the Hansens et al scream the end is near, 10,000 believers hop on fuel thirsty jets, head for Copenhagen and Durban and party. Al Gore, with his ill gotten millions, took a private jet. And let’s not forget his $10,000 electric bill to heat his pool.
How can these people be believed?
In Europe, the Green movement is not dead. It has wielded much power in Germany and still influences policy in the UK.
However, the public perception of the Green movement will take a hit, the more the Green movement alligns itself with AGW and the more ADW becomes discredited. The press are beginning to publish more stories about useless windfarms and these stories will damage the Green movement. Today, the press ran 3 different stories on windfarms. The First sgowed pictures of a couple of turbines that had their rotars blown off in the strong winds that the UK is experiencing. The second, dealt with how windfarms have had to ve closed down due to strong wind and are therefore not producing elecrity. On top of that, windfarms are being paid not to produce electrity even though they cannot produce any because it is unsafe to operate the turbines in the strong wind! This type of story really ridiocules windfarms. It shows how stupid the subsidy programme is, ie., to pay someone for not doing something which they are incapable of doing. It shows why electricity bills are increasing. The third story is about a windfarm operator being licences to kill eagles which are a protected species. That is really anti-green. It makes the RSPCB (Royal Socciety for the Protection of Birds) look extremely silly since they are promoting renewables such as windfarms even though windfarms kill a lot of birds and even though at least one operator has been given a licence to cull a protected species.
None of this is good publicity for the Greens.
This analysis missed out the real turning point on the demise of the warming frenzy.
It was the release of the infamous Climategate emails. The Copenhagen conference was a sure bet, not only to force the Kyoto non-signers into the fold, but to establish a new world order mandating the transfer of wealth from the productive nations to the corrupt beggar regimes of the world. But the publicity surrounding the devastating content on the emails, put a rapid halt to the proceedings. The untypical freezing and snowy weather there was like an excalmation point that put a literal chill on the entire affair. Al Gore, who had planned to sell and autograph his books for hundreds of dollars a pop, slinked off avoiding any contact with the press.
Copenhagen was the Waterloo of the warmist movement. Whoever obtained the emails and leaked them is the greatest hero of the 21st century.
Corky Boyd said:
January 6, 2012 at 10:01 pm
“Whoever obtained the emails and leaked them is the greatest hero of the 21st century.”
——————————–
Agreed! They should take algore’s Nobel prize away from him and give it to FOIA.org
Corky Boyd – don’t forget the M’s, and Anthony (and some others) as saviours of the modern world.
Just wanted to pop in and mention how much I have enjoyed all of these thoughtful comments
Robert Sykes says: January 6, 2012 at 10:45 am
Well stated, thank you.
The song Tomorrow Belongs to Me from the movie Cabaret.
The ‘environmental’ movement is inextricably bound to an ideology as are many government targetted & funded ‘youth’ programs and policies which began well before the e-mental movement.
Let’s hope that the tipping point of environmentalism has been passed. In Europe their fallacies about CAGW and nuclear power are still strong.
Skeptic talking points must be clear to laymen as environmentalists are professionals in propaganda. Feelings and repetitions are important part of good propaganda.
1. Warming is not a bad thing – mankind has prospered during the warm periods
2. Watch your wallet – this will cost a lot
3. Warming is small and natural
4. Look out of the window – no catastrophes of their prophesies have occured
5. They don’t believe in CAGW themselves, they just try to pocket your tax money
6. Solutions like windmills, cap and trade, .. don’t work
7. This is science and that is not
Cherry Pick says:
January 6, 2012 at 11:13 pm
“Let’s hope that the tipping point of environmentalism has been passed. In Europe their fallacies about CAGW and nuclear power are still strong.”
VERY well said…particularly because you are great at marketing…since you know how to drive traffic to your website…which is all in Finnish…except your 7 points…very good!
Seven can sometimes be a lucky number…except when it’s not…
Edit note: “Nordhous and Shellenberger said that when Al Gore” — Nordhaus
____
Because when it comes to Organizing and Taking Over, they’re babes in the woods. From Patrick Moore on out, they were simply overwhelmed and snookered. Up against people who live to subvert any organization that purports to be “for the public good”. Few or none have escaped.
Jessie’s post, above, has an unclosed bold tag. (tag inserted here: ►) Don’t know if this will help.
Don’t forget Ontario, the “Heartland”. It’s still ruled by the most clue-deprived government NE of California. It’s paying the price, but the Money Momentum is still there, and hard to stop. Once you’ve committed to thousands of windmills, you’re kinda stuck with them …
Don’t you buy that for a second. Anarchism is a temporary tool in the hands of statists who want to precipitate crises that force turnover of power to themselves. Google and read about the Cloward-Piven strategy: overload the ‘entitlement’ mandates and programs, cause collapse, demonized the system, replace it with a Progressive one.
typo:
demonizeddemonizeIn a way, it’s a bit saddening, like the history of what happened to left wing politics. If you take the trouble to research the appalling conditions Marx found in Victorian factories, you’ll have difficulty not agreeing with him that things were very, very bad for the workers who powered the new industrial system, and that something needed doing. (You’ll also realise that his opinion was that a system which treated its workers like this would necessarily collapse of its own accord – not, as latter-day Marxists made a matter of faith, that the system must be torn down and a new system imposed in its place; that was supposed to happen naturally.) The original analysis was reasonable enough; but was subsequently corrupted into the vile top-down, over-regulated systems which US right-wingers, in particular, rightly rail against. But socialism, underneath the hijack, is no more than a declaration that one believes in treating other people with respect. We are social animals, after all. Who’d want to be an ‘antisocialist’?
And so it is with environmentalism. No-one can deny that too many times, where there was profit to be made by doing it and no ‘inconvenient’ regulations applied, corporations have cheerfully trashed local environments and destroyed the lives of local peoples in the name of their cash profit. Look at what Shell has done to great swathes of Nigeria if you doubt that. Again, what started as a reasonable, human response of compassion for those who suffer needlessly, and outrage at industrial scale pollution, has been co-opted and corrupted into – guess what – a movement dedicated to vile top-down, heavily-regulated systems allowing the ‘enlightened ones’ to dictate to everyone else. Yet most of us – and I don’t just mean WUWTers – would acknowledge that we should treat our environment non-destructively. We social animals like a pleasant place to relax in. Who’d want to support trashing their environment?
Well, state ‘Marxism’ isn’t doing too well these days. Happily, people realised that iron control from above is simply not an efficient way of running things and that, for all the problems formerly authoritarian states now face, there are alternatives to that iron control. If corrupt environmentalism is also collapsing, part at least of the reason must be that more and more people are realising that the ‘solution’ being proposed for the ‘problem’ is the same top-down iron control, and are rightly rejecting it. It’s telling, and worrying, that residents of former Soviet states have expressed concern over what they see happening in the West. That the corruption of environmentalism has also done serious damage to the popular image of science in general is bad, but not, we may hope, irreversible; facts have a way of sitting there looking at you until you acknowledge them.
What we need to be continually on the alert for is that any basically reasonable idea, be it treating the people working for you with respect, treating the environment you live in with respect or whatever, has been hijacked by authoritarian extremists pumping out the powerful message that if we ‘just’ give them absolute power they’ll solve all our problems. Well, we all know what absolute power does, and it ain’t problem solving. It’s probably too late for either Marxism or environmentalism now, at least until later revisions of history conclude that both were originally founded on reasonable enough ideas. We need, meanwhile, to keep our sociopolitical antennae highly sensitised to the eternal lust for power exhibited by a small minority of people, and more quickly reject any movement which declares that it ‘only’ needs total control over us to create nirvana as defined (and disguised so as to sound good) by them.
As a socialist, I’m quite happy to see the corrupt authoritarianism which hijacked the originally reasonable idea die. As an environmentalist, I’m quite happy to see the corrupt authoritarianism which hijacked the originally reasonable idea die. Good riddance to both. I only hope that more of us wake up to the ever-present menace of authoritarianism taking over whatever reasonable idea turns up next, and find a way to stop it in its tracks once and for all. That’s why your lovely environmentalism died, Amanda: it lay down with dogs and became terminally infested with power-hungry fleas.
Check out how British wind turbines really perform when the wind blows…
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3986055/165mph-storm-wrecks-a-wind-turbine.html
richard verney says:
January 6, 2012 at 9:51 pm
“It shows how stupid the subsidy programme is, ie., to pay someone for not doing something which they are incapable of doing. ”
EU commission style economy. Barroso, Heedegard, and van Rompuy AND Merkel and Sarkozy KNOW NO BETTER. Like the epicycles of the CAGW theory, the economic disturbances of the Green Economy will continue to destabilize Europes economy.
We spend 10% of our GDP on energy in undisturbed conditions, so with all the capital misallocation, the politicians can easily leverage that up to 20 or 30%. The collapse of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland has a lot to do with the Green energy schemes.
A lot of nonperforming credits – but our media only says “housing bubble” and is done with explaining that; when in fact many billions of credit have been used to erect wind turbines and plaster landscapes in Spain with solar panels.
Green tech eats economies whole like gangrene.
Global Warming is the Vietnam of the environmental movement.
Since when does reducing expenditure cause an increase in employment? Wealth is created with ENERGY. The cheaper the energy the more wealth – the more buying of goods – the more employment to create the goods. Welcome to earth.
Richard G., amen. What Democrats fail to realize is that Tea Party’s biggest effect was/is a conservative revolt against a Republican establishment that keeps dishing up RINOs. Democrats need a Tea Party of their own. Maybe their version is Occupy Wall Street, who should take some lessons from Tea Party about affecting elections rather than traffic. THEN we’d have a national conversation about the very real differences between the two outlooks, rather than one politician after another being barely distinguishable from the guy we just voted out.
The Ds need to dump the Greens. Greens are much better at attacking policy than creating it, and much better at disrupting commerce than finding environmentally friendly ways to -increase- productivity and wealth creation.
Under pressure from Senate Republican colleagues and his South Carolina constituents and suspicious of White House double-dealing, Senator Graham pulled his name from the bill, which eventually died without coming up for a vote.
South Carolina has a growing population. Graham needed Cap & Trade to insure the nuclear power plants that were proposed in South Carolina would be economically viable. The price of coal has been increasing in the US for a solid decade with the increase most pronounced east of the Mississippi river. The new nuclear power plant in South Carolina doesn’t need ‘Cap and Trade’ to be economically viable.
Sometimes ‘market forces’ actually end up doing what controversial legislation might hope to accomplish. Coal’s share of the US electricity market has dropped from 49% to 43% in 6 years without ‘Cap & Trade’,
Cap & Trade permits in the US would be selling at zero value because coal use is declining anyway. The environmentalists have spent a lot of effort trying to pass legislation that would be ‘symbolic’ at best.
The reality of coal mining is we dig the easiest coal, closest to it’s intended place of use first. At this point in history the only ‘easy’ coal left is in Gillette,Wyoming which is a very long way from where most people live.
The mention of West Virginia reminds me of the late Robert Byrd. Whatever else you might say about him, he had the reputation of a savvy politician. So, how could he fail to notice, until actually faced with the legislation, that the administration he helped put into office was bent on destroying his state’s biggest industry?
Reason.com has an interesting review of the new book from Shellenberger and Nordhaus. Keep an eye on these guys, their ideas could become very influential once the current environmentalist paradigm has finished collapsing.
harrywr2 says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:24 am
“The reality of coal mining is we dig the easiest coal, closest to it’s intended place of use first. At this point in history the only ‘easy’ coal left is in Gillette,Wyoming which is a very long way from where most people live.”
This problem is solved by running 150 car coal trains from Wyoming to wherever I see a lot of coal trains in Texas. Southbound they’re loaded, northbound they’re empty.
harrywr2 says:
“Sometimes ‘market forces’ actually end up doing what controversial legislation might hope to accomplish. Coal’s share of the US electricity market has dropped from 49% to 43% in 6 years without ‘Cap & Trade’, ”
Sorry Harrywr2, it isn’t market forces driving the cost of energy from coal higher. It’s the EPA and their ridiiculous regulations. Coal is by far still the most economical source of energy if you would apply only reasonable regulations. There is no shortage of coal and one only has to look to China to see where they plan on getting vast quantities of reliable and cheap energy over the next 50 years to prove the point.
Coal has been “demonized” by the left and democrats.It is not market forces driving the cost of electricity from coal.
It’s really dead in the water? Truly? Then, this is a happy day!
But, has anyone told the US Environmental Protection Agency about this yet? Because, last time I looked, they’re still pushing through their own unilateral regulations shutting down whatever they can shut down in the name of lessening carbon dioxide generation.
I was thinking about planning a big “AGW Debunked!” party a few months out from today, but I’m going to wait a bit until I’m sure the EPA is going to let us keep our electricity. And our heat. And our cars. And farm-raised foodstuffs. It could end up being the grimmest party I’ve ever thrown.
Dead in the water…well maybe but they might start to make a big deal out of…Methane or something…Mann, can you believe these guys?
An Arctic methane worst-case scenario
Filed under: Climate Science — david @ 7 January 2012
“Let’s suppose that the Arctic started to degas methane 100 times faster than it is today. I just made that number up trying to come up with a blow-the-doors-off surprise, something like the ozone hole. We ran the numbers to get an idea of how the climate impact of an Arctic Methane Nasty Surprise would stack up to that from Business-as-Usual rising CO2”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-arctic-methane-worst-case-scenario/#more-10411
No comments on the thread over there…maybe we could give them a friendly spike on Alexa…just to share some love! In a ‘Summer of Love’ kinda way…Peace Mann!
“Let’s suppose the Real Climate started to get Web Traffic 100 times faster than normal TODAY. I just made that number up trying to come up with a blow-the-doors-off surprise, something like the “Mike’s Nature Trick. We ran the numbers to get an idea of how the Watt’s Up With That impact of an Web Traffic Methane Nasty Surprise would stack up to that from Business-as-Usual downward trending Real Climate Alexa stats…I mean it looks like a Hockey Stick facing left…”
” environmental groups have been hijacked by extremists”
oh, ha ha.
henry ford hijacked the car industry, too.
isn’t it always ‘radicals hijacked the religion of peace’? isn’t it always just a matter of spillng enough blood or money at the proper altar? it couldn’t be that every -ism is a religious machine made for the purpose of extracting sacrifice? nah- that would leave john q publique with nothing at all to believe in, wouldn’t it? that’s something devoutly to be feared by all – especially those who would claim morality as the justification for your sacrifice. why, the lawyers from fairfax california whose son became ‘the american taliban’ – they were profoundly pleased that ‘he had something he believed in’ – something a whole generation seems to feel a want of…
but snarlifying the term ‘extremism’ is necessary to elevate the notion of compromise. truth is absolute and extreme. if that can’t be compromised, how can virtue be reduced to a blend of this vice and that? sanity is absolutely extreme – if that can’t be compromised, what kind of society would we have? if the deranged are denied equal time, they’ll feel opressed. that makes the opressors liable for damages. but that’s where we go when we move from monotreme to extreme…
“Andrew Newb says:
7 Jan 2012 at 1:59 PM
Didn’t Pink Floyd write a song about this?
I think they did…”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-arctic-methane-worst-case-scenario/comment-page-1/#comment-224242
http://youtu.be/F7Q-41Rd_Bc
Pigs on the wing (part 1) Lyrics
Artist(Band):Pink Floyd
“If you didn’t care what happened to me,
and I didn’t care for you,
we would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain,
occasionally glancing up through the rain
wondering which of the buggers to blame
and watching for pigs on the wing.”
I took a screen shot of my post on “Real Climate”…it will be funny to see if they pull it…
Even funnier if somebody over their clues in…or is a Pink Floyd fan…
I mean doesn’t everyone know Pink Floyd and Flying Pigs are highly correlated?
Alcheson says:
January 7, 2012 at 9:40 am
Sorry Harrywr2, it isn’t market forces driving the cost of energy from coal higher. It’s the EPA and their ridiiculous regulations
Coal mine productivity east of the Mississippi has dropped from more then 4 tons per man hour to less then 3 tons per man hour in the last 10 years. The drops in productivity are for the most part a ‘World Wide’ phenomenon. I.E. We dig the easiest stuff out of the ground first.
West Virginan coal production peaked in 1997 at 181 million tons. In 2009 that was down to 144 million tons. http://www.wvminesafety.org/historicprod.htm
In China and Europe coal mine productivity is now measured in hours per ton. Rather then the American and Australian measurements of tons per hour. The average depth of a Chinese coal mine is now more then 500 meters.
Secondly, transportation costs for coal have increased because
1) Trains run on diesel and diesel is more expensive
2) The distance from mine-market has increased because productivity east of the Mississippi river has gotten so low.
Coal can be dug out of the ground in Wyoming at a handsome profit for $15/ton. To make a profit in West Virginia the price needs to be $80/ton. The ‘easy stuff’ is gone in West Virgina, we burned it all up.
I just read this very long article and must say I am not impressed. She has some very unwarranted interpretations and ignores all the GHG regs that are being enabled across the world at the state/province/city level, not to mention the Airline ETS thing in Europe (and of course, the fiascos unfolding in Australia and the UK). Here in Canada, our government continues to create new GHG regulations sector by sector across the country.
Vast sums are still pouring into the climate scare and, with public support for alarmism in the US now rising (see http://tinyurl.com/nej8zl), we have a long war ahead of us. It is just not true that we have even come close to “winning”, no matter what optimists like to assert.
Tom Harris
International Climate Science Coalition
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org
PS: Unfortunately, Carey’s article may be used now as a rallying cry for climate alarmist fund raisers, not to reflect what is really going on. I note its original source as http://capitalresearch.org/2012/01/out-of-gas-the-environmental-movemement-is-running-on-empty/ and I am suspicious they are spinning this topic in a way to boost their business (issuing an article like this gets a lot of attention, whether it is right or wrong, and so accomplishes great PR).
someone forgot
[FIXED. Thanks. -REP]
When Amanda Carey says “Green Movement Dead In The Water”, I think she should change it to “US Green Movement Dead In The Water”.
Because it is certainly not dead in Europe. It is alive and well.
And it arises from the inner urge from the human brain that we need a common organisation
( The State) to lead and control us all.
Well said, but there are a couple of things to add to the reasons why the environmental movement is dead in the water:
(1) The ideological, almost religious cast of the movement as it currently stands – all the talk of Gaia, etc. The American people, who are still, as a whole, religious (and even Christian, believe it or not) in character, are beginning to see the pagan elements of this movement in its worst manifestations. Environmentalism has offered itself as an alternative religion; most people see that as ridiculous and not to be taken seriously.
(2) Insofar as current environmental policy issues go, back in the 60s and 70s it was obvious something was wrong when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire and Lake Erie was turning into a large swamp instead of a lake. But now that positive actions have been taken, with (generally) positive results of cleaner air and water in the United States compared to previous decades, the question became, what do you do for an encore? As a result, the environmental groups look for new frontiers to conquer. In light of this goal, the reasons for the extremist apocalyptic rhetoric by many environmental groups are simple: they want to see things wrong that really aren’t; the love of the power and influence these groups achieved in the 1970s make them unable to see themselves as less relevant than in say, 1972. The persistence of this type of apocalyptic rhetoric also has roots in one central myth many of the activist groups have attempted to foster over the years – the myth (or goal) of a “pristine nature,” and the corollary that mankind is the only one responsible for whatever degradation is occurring in nature. This myth has been debunked to some extent, but it remains a troublesome issue. The goal is a false one, because as we have seen, the more policymakers try to further and further “clean up,” the more expensive and intrusive the planned solutions for a much smaller (or no real) benefit. The law of diminishing returns applies here in many respects. The people of the world, and particularly the American people in their current difficult economic state, are beginning to see this law of diminishing returns in action, and they do not like what they see.
Some stats about WV Coal:
Forty-three counties have reserves of minable (economic) coal. WV Coal Resource Table
There are 117 named coal seams in West Virginia.
Sixty-five seams are considered minable.
In 2009 coal was produced from 51 different coal seams in West Virginia.
The Pittsburgh coal seam accounted for nearly 31 million tons of production in 2009.
West Virginia has 4% of all coal reserves.
There is still an emormous amount of coal in WV. However, It is NOT market forces (lack of coal) making it expensive but rules and regulations put into place as to where and how you can mine have made it economically expensive to obtain. Examples: Mountain top removal mining is being shut down by EPA forcing more expensive methods to mine for coal; Ever increasingly stringent rules by EPA on sulfur make mining of more plentiful higher sulfur content coal non-profitable.
And as you have said “Coal can be dug out of the ground in Wyoming at a handsome profit for $15/ton.” Even this could undoubtedly be done cheaper if only reasonable environmental regulations were put place rather than regulations meant to “drive coal out of business”. After all, it was Obama who said that he would make coal power so expensive that it would drive coal out of business. He is instructing EPA to do just that.
I like this article better:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100127634/ha-ha-warmist-losers-for-you-the-war-is-over/
My take away from this is that it is probably not in your best interest to hire a “green” PR firm. They aren’t very good despite having the entire current administration behind them.
The bottom line is that the environmental movement, as with the EPA, if it is effective and successful will and should work itself right out of a job. It now has the appearance of seeking job security.
Real Climate Alexa Data:
Upstream Sites
Which sites did users visit immediately preceding realclimate.org?
% of Unique Visits Upstream Site
34.78% google.com
28.26% wattsupwiththat.com
13.04% scienceblogs.com
8.70% climateaudit.org
8.70% yahoo.com
6.52% twitter.com
WUWT sharing the Love with the Team!!
Steve C
“And so it is with environmentalism. No-one can deny that too many times, where there was profit to be made by doing it and no ‘inconvenient’ regulations applied, corporations have cheerfully trashed local environments and destroyed the lives of local peoples in the name of their cash profit. Look at what Shell has done to great swathes of Nigeria if you doubt that.”
I’m going to have to disagree with that. The problem in Nigeria isn’t solely the oil company’s actions. It turns out that the price of a barrel of oil is about $100 right now and 64.4% and 83.9% of the population live on less than 1.25 and 2 dollars a day. Or in short you can get three months wages by cutting into the pipeline and siphoning oil. Of course even with the price at a more normal level of $40 it is still worth a months wages.
Not surprisingly Shell blames the overwhelming majority of its problems on vandalism, theft and attacks by militants who want the oil wealth more fairly distributed/distributed to them/distributed to the locals. I trust them, if only because the amount of spills is ridiculously high (with oil loses probably exceeding possible saving on maintainance) which suggests the problem isn’t them cutting corners.
Any carbon tax bill will not soon pass in the Senate because heartland Senators (both Dems. and Reps.) who represent energy and farming states would be booted out of office if they voted for a carbon tax bill. Harry Reid never brought the Waxman/Markey bill to the floor in the Senate because at least eight Democratic Senators said that they could not support it.
Also recall that the Waxman bill passed very narrowly in the house! Had the Senate modified the bill to accommodate more conservative Senators, when it was returned to the House of Representatives it would have almost certainly lost the support of enough Dem. HRs to go down in defeat.
Also, note that Lieberman (an Independent) and Graham (a Rep.) both represent states that rely heavily on nuclear power. Both states wanted to construct additional nuclear power plants. However, to afford the current $10B per plant, they wanted government guaranteed funding to lower the interest rates on the bonds. The fact that they had horses of their own in this race was recognized by the other Republican Senators.
Cheap, clean natural gas has forever changed this game now! Obama is already lying low on his Gore_Bull warming rhetoric. He has apparently finally realized that he can not deliver much in the way of new alternative energy programs after the high profile failure of two of his pet projects. Since he needs to make sure he doesn’t alienate the left, I think that he w, so he will likely not promise that which he can not deliver even if he wins in Nov. I think that this entire era of global hysteria is about to just quietly fade into the sunset.
Any carbon tax bill will not soon pass in the Senate because heartland Senators (both Dems. and Reps.) who represent energy and farming states would be booted out of office if they voted for a carbon tax bill. Harry Reid never brought the Waxman/Markey bill to the floor in the Senate because at least eight Democratic Senators said that they could not support it.
Also recall that the Waxman bill passed very narrowly in the house! Had the Senate modified the bill to accommodate more conservative Senators, when it was returned to the House of Representatives it would have almost certainly lost the support of enough Dem. HRs to go down in defeat.
Also, note that Lieberman (an Independent) and Graham (a Rep.) both represent states that rely heavily on nuclear power. Both states wanted to construct additional nuclear power plants. However, to afford the current $10B per plant, they wanted government guaranteed funding to lower the interest rates on the bonds. The fact that they had horses of their own in this race was recognized by the other Republican Senators.
Cheap, clean natural gas has forever changed this game now! Obama is already lying low on his Gore_Bull warming rhetoric. He has apparently finally realized that he can not deliver much in the way of new alternative energy programs after the high profile failure of two of his pet projects. Since he needs to make sure he doesn’t alienate the left, I think that he will likely not promise that which he can not deliver even if he wins in Nov. I think that this entire era of global hysteria is about to just quietly fade into the sunset.