I’ve never done a double feature before where our Climate Craziness of the Week and Quote of the Week are one and the same. 350.org’s Bill McKibben gets this unique honor.
From the what universe does Bill McKibben live in department? While going on about heat waves, he comes up with the ultimate “I don’t understand science” zinger. How long before people stop listening to this guy? I would not have believed he’d be disturbed enough to write this if I hadn’t read it as a direct quote written by his own hand.
Hat tip to Tom Nelson.
Here’s the quote, its “Big Oil” irrationality on steroids:
…this industry, and this industry alone, holds the power to change the physics and chemistry of our planet , and they’re planning to use it. – 350.org’s Bill McKibben
I’m reminded of this:
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708473/quotes?qt=qt0198370
Here’s some excerpts from McKibben’s Rolling Stone article:
Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math | Politics News | Rolling Stone
warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
…
Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by midcentury and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees. (“Reasonable,” in this case, means four chances in five, or somewhat worse odds than playing Russian roulette with a six-shooter.)
…”The new data provide further evidence that the door to a two-degree trajectory is about to close,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist. In fact, he continued, “When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees.” That’s almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which would create a planet straight out of science fiction.
…
We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We’d have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate…Most of us are fundamentally ambivalent about going green: We like cheap flights to warm places, and we’re certainly not going to give them up if everyone else is still taking them. Since all of us are in some way the beneficiaries of cheap fossil fuel, tackling climate change has been like trying to build a movement against yourself – it’s as if the gay-rights movement had to be constructed entirely from evangelical preachers, or the abolition movement from slaveholders.
…Given this hard math, we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization. “Lots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business – pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops – and we pressure them to change those practices,” says veteran anti-corporate leader Naomi Klein, who is at work on a book about the climate crisis. “But these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It’s what they do.”…this industry, and this industry alone, holds the power to change the physics and chemistry of our planet, and they’re planning to use it.
…
There’s not a more reckless man on the planet than Tillerson…In December, BP finally closed its solar division. Shell shut down its solar and wind efforts in 2009. The five biggest oil companies have made more than $1 trillion in profits since the millennium – there’s simply too much money to be made on oil and gas and coal to go chasing after zephyrs and sunbeams.
…Until a quarter-century ago, almost no one knew that CO2 was dangerous…if their college’s endowment portfolio has fossil-fuel stock, then their educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won’t have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree. …we have met the enemy and they is Shell.
No, Bill, its you, and you may very well be insane. Get help.
I’d like to say that you can’t get any nuttier than McKibben currently is, but that would be untrue. But temporary: if you get nuttier, your friends do an intervention and you get help.
The conspiracy: oil companies shut down solar energy efforts because
1 they want to make less money with oil. Because solar is so cost-effective, while you sell it to the grid for the same price as you get at coal or NG-driven powerplants.. Or because
2) competing with oil, solar is so cheap that oil will be worth nothing, and they wish to avoid such a low-cost competitive energy source.
Which fantasy drives him? Has he ever worked in private industry, where profits are king? If solar repeats profits, they’ll do that, too. And if solar will become a competitor, they’ll want to be the best producer of solar panels around, and keep the costs up, like Apple does with its Mac.
Totally unhinged. The surprising thing is that this is in a WRITTEN form! it had to have gone through edits, re-writes and approval prior to publishing.
I bet he is scary at parties with adult beverages….
“No, Bill, its you, and you may very well be insane. Get help.”
He’s already insane. Appears his insanity goes back to him contracting Dengue fever in Bangladesh and the tirade of his CO2 AGW/CC rantings were born thereafter. So he’s got a mosquito in his bonnet blaming the ills and his misfortune on ‘evil’ CO2.
I have a ‘chance’ of contracting Dengue fever if I visit parts of tropical Queensland in Australia or go to Vanuatu or even the Cook Islands. So yes McKibben is insane and deluded!
Not nearly as crazy as what was quoted in the Onion:
“Our research indicates that Americans may have stumbled upon an extreme degree of ignorance and disregard for the plight of dying Syrians that we never before thought humanly possible,” said lead researcher Dr. Henry Mason
Trouble is they their brand of snake oil appeals to the larger proportion of students who are our future “thinking” class. I’ve been appalled by arguments from otherwise well educated young people. “Designer brains” are the new post normal inheritors of the intelligencia.
philwynk says:
July 19, 2012 at 12:55 pm
The level of hysteria is disturbing.
_________________________
It is not the level of hysteria that is disturbing, it is the fact it sees print in a rag aimed at teens and twenties and it adds more fuel to this fire.
from Jo Nova, a quote from Greenpeace.
This is inciting to riot and could be darn dangerous. A decade ago I have had several attacks by young Animal Rights fanatics over a period of three years. The attacks were aimed at having an innocent third party badly injured or killed and me sued. They finally managed to get 20 people hospitalized, a competitor of mine sued and the legislation they wanted passed. It has been over eight years and there have been no further incidents BTW. The lawsuit is still on going so I can say nothing more.
I have nothing but contempt for Bill McKibben, Mann, Jones, Black and the others who are too cowardly to doing anything but incite young folk to do their dirty work for them. People who use the young in this way deserve a special place in Hades.
Bath Salts get you every time
327 months. That would be 27.25 years. I believe it is therefore also safe to say that the 30 years from 1920 to 1950 were warmer than the depths of the LIA and the chances of that happening are much more astronomical. This is only half of the often quoted 60 year cycle. The odds of having 30 warm years seem very different if we talk about half of a 60 year cycle rather than 30 years or 360 months or 1560 weeks or 10957 days or 262,973 hours or….
Babsy says:
July 19, 2012 at 1:16 pm
“You can violate the laws of man. You can violate the laws of God. You cannot violate the laws of Physics (and we don’t know yet what they all are).”
Well said! And we have way too many “scientists” on this site who are skeptical of AGW while accepting present theories of physics as if they are dogma when as you say “we don’t yet know what they all are”.
Oh My….
He just doesn’t understand what a fool he is and never will. That Green Kool-aid has some serious side-effects, up to and including brain death (assuming it was more than a stem to begin with).
Sad these people have a public following that believes them.
Sadder that they are incapable of learning.
more soylent green! says:
July 19, 2012 at 1:10 pm
I recall in Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle, Dr. Felix Hoenikker invented a crystal called “Ice Nine” which changed the physical properties of water so that it had a melting point of 114.4 degrees F. (Presumably, there were 8 previous attempts to make this crystal.)
I didn’t really enjoy this novel very much, but it’s interesting to Google “ice nine” and read the theoretical basis for how something can change the physical properties of every molecule of water it comes in contact with…..
__________________________________________
The second company I worked for is infamous for doing this type of stuff with a chemical that used to be liquid at room temperature. Somehow they ended up with a crystal form of the stuff and “infected” everyone else. The trade name of the chemical was Vandride. It was a Liquid Anhydride Curing Agent For Resins.
@ur momisugly Werner Brozek
15,778,380 Minutes
946,702,800 Seconds
…
It should be mentioned that the comic Craig Ferguson is on the record that “Scotty from Star Trek is the only one we couldn’t understand back in the old country. I didn’t know he was meant to be Scottish. I thought he was a Pakistani guy that had a stroke.” Personally, I partially blame “Scotty’s” famous line in the ’60’s for my degree in physics in the ’70’s.
Then there was a Deep Space Nine episode where the certified insane Jack states the engineer was right, you can’t change the laws of physics… but you can Bend Them! Of course, Jack and his loony (in nice ways) genetically enhanced friends had a working demonstration of the bent laws of physics, which is more than McKibben has.
McKibben was here in tiny Nevada City in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills to give a chat last April, but I didn’t care to donate $20 to the cause to be able to hear it. Governor Brown was there, and as far as I can tell, he either believes, or wants to believe.
A nice summary of the insanity starts here, courtesy of a faculty member of a sponsor of the talk, Ananda College, which, while the home of many wonderful individuals, is somewhat responsible for our town’s nickname, Nirvana Silly:
http://bobyehling.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/bill-mckibbens-eaarth-message-its-time-to-act/
I don’t see why everyone has to be such big meanies…
He is just trying to save the world and all these evil deniers won’t fall in line….
Anyway, we have it straight from the eco-freak’s Twitter that this article is of vast world historical importance:
McKibben says “this is the most impt thing I’ve written in many years”
Bill McKibben @billmckibben
I think this is the most impt thing I’ve written in many years; I’d be grateful if people would spread it around http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
8:11 AM – 19 Jul 12via web · Details
“Re: 3.7 x 10-99, it could be that someone was using the “-” symbol in place of the more conventional “^” [“to the power of”]. I wouldn’t crucify the user for using the minus sign…..”
Ho ho. A misplaced logical NOT is the fundamental error, it makes truth into falsity and error into truth. Run with the big dogs’ logic or sit on the ‘painted porch’ (Stoa Poikile).
”The new data provide further evidence that the door to a two-degree trajectory is about to close,”
So, if we all try hard and increase are CO2 output so that we exceed this “tipping point” where it is too late to “do anything”, does that mean that these crazies will shut up and go away?
Right. Lets get on that then. Time to convert my house to a coal powered furnace.
For the past twelve years Bill McKibben’s age has exceeded the average of the previous forty years. He is really getting old fast. Little hope is left. It is getting increasingly likely that he will never be young again. Oh my. Send money, lots of money, real fast.
Gail Combs says:
July 19, 2012 at 2:42 pm
“We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
“And we be many, but you be few.”
This is inciting to riot and could be darn dangerous.
——————————————————————
I wouldn’t put too much into this bullying, these threats. To pursue this in any large degree would guarantee their downfall. Yes, there may be sporadic cases, but, in general the public would quickly see their true colors and demand immediate an end to any large-scale violence. Witness: When’s the last time you heard mention of the Occupy Movement?
In a free society, lunatics are generally tolerated, until the instant they become violent.
Talk about lost in his own personal paranoia
Vollidiot
For the record – “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Probably the most famous Pogo quotation is “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Perhaps more than any other words written by Kelly, it perfectly sums up his attitude towards the foibles of mankind and the nature of the human condition.
The quote was a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” It first appeared in a lengthier form in A Word to the Fore, the foreword of the book The Pogo Papers, first published in 1953. Since the strips reprinted in Papers included the first appearances of Mole and Simple J. Malarkey, beginning Kelly’s attacks on McCarthyism, Kelly used the foreword to defend his actions:
“Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.
There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.
Forward!”
—Walt Kelly, June 1953
You picked the wrong series. In Star Trek The Next Generation, there was an episode where Q loses his powers, and is reduced to being an adviser on the Enterprise. When faced with a vexing problem, he tells them to change the gravitational constant of the universe.
I was just looking back over Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource 2 where he spends quite a bit of time laying all the hyped up future catastrophes that Paul Ehrlich pushed that were quite wrong as the future unfolded. No real consequences for being consistently so wrong. In fact I wrote recently about the fact that Simon may have won the wager but it is Ehrlich’s desire to alter the nature of human consciousness that is being put in place via education.
McKibben’s work just seems to be more confirmation that as long as there is a pot of money to be gained from ignoring reality and trying to rig the economic and political systems, this sustainability nonsense will continue to be a threat.
The book I mentioned above, Capitalism at the Crossroads, even had Gore writing the preface on what a great investment sustainability will be. Giving the name of his investment group.
Good grief. But then I am still trying to get over Coke’s execs describing having had a formal agreement with GreenPeace for 10 years. Especially in light of those quotes I just read above.
I’m off to bed now. I shall be climbing 10 steps. The odds that I shall go up the 10 steps is (1/2)^10=1/1024. So evey night there is a 1/1024 chance i go to bed and yet every night i do. But to go up each night i must come down each morning (another 1/1024) longshot. So thats at least 1,000,000 to 1 each day. Now 365 days in a year that’s 10^(6*365) = 10^2190 to 1 so far more unlikely than the mere 3.7*10^99 to 1 that 327 consecutive months are above average.
My submission to the even more stupid than stupid probability competition ;>)
Once again, irony is lost on the counter-culture:
Witness Naomi Klein,, ranting against corporations.
No doubt she’s writing her book on a computer, a device that simply wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for corporations. She could go to pencil and paper, but again, they’re both produced by corporations. She’s probably using an operating system and word processing software written by corporations. If she’s using Open Office, it’s STILL from corporations even if getting a copy is free.
Then, she’s taking her masterwork to a book publisher, and last I checked virtually every one of them is a… wait for it… CORPORATION.
After having this book published, she’ll no doubt be dealing with other corporations for marketing and distribution. Because let’s face it, people don’t do this crap for free in any kind of volume.
After damning the corporations who allowed her to sell her anti-corporate work, she’ll no doubt use the money to purchase things like houses, cars, bedding, furniture, etc, ALL of which will be produced, marketed and distributed by corporations.
Yes, Irony. Just like the anti-corporate music produced for the last few decades that will ONLY be heard by consumers because of… corporations.
And people wonder why I believe that leftism is a mental illness.