Larry Bell has a great column at Forbes titled:
In Their Own Words: Climate Alarmists Debunk Their “Science”
Here’s a few gems from the first page:
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” (Wirth now heads the U.N. Foundation which lobbies for hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to help underdeveloped countries fight climate change.)
Also speaking at the Rio conference, Deputy Assistant of State Richard Benedick, who then headed the policy divisions of the U.S. State Department said: “A global warming treaty [Kyoto] must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.”
In 1988, former Canadian Minister of the Environment, told editors and reporters of the Calgary Herald: “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
I highly recommend this article, read it in full here, and bookmark it for future reference:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/05/in-their-own-words-climate-alarmists-debunk-their-science/
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
I’m a collector of alarmist quotes, so I also recommend the Forbes article. I like to string together a group of quotes that paint a sharp picture, that give the full argument, like showing the explicit advocacy of deception by nearly all the top warmist. Real Science did a post noting a recent alarmist prediction of doom, and my comment:
Scientists in the US [have presented the most dire picture of the disaster to come via climate change.] Oh, it’s the most dramatic yet, the biggest loudest Chicken Little example of shameless fear mongering yet… so that makes it true. No, they’ve been fear mongering for decades, and every prediction of doom that the warmist and ecoloon propagandists have made has failed to materialize. It never happens. Never. Every single prediction, going back decades, has fallen short, not one exception or two but no exceptions, none, every prediction has been completely off the mark. Not even close.
“[in twenty years {2008} ] the West Side Highway [and thus most of Manhattan] will be under water… ” -James Hansen, NASA, 1988
“[Inaction will cause]… by the turn of the century [2000], an ecological catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.” -Mustafa Tolba, 1982, former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program
“Demographers agree almost unanimously .. by the year 2000, the entire world.. [with exceptions] will be in famine.” -Peter Gunter, Earth Day 1970
“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” -Noel Brown, ex UNEP Director, 1989
“If present trends continue, the world will be .. eleven degrees colder by the year 2000… This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” -Kenneth E.F. Watt, Earth Day 1970
Please, no more!
Readers of this site will be familiar with most of the content, but this is a must-read. It is one of the most powerful and comprehensive exposures of the great climate deception that I have ever read.
I’ll try to read the full article but just a comment on the statement from the former Canadian Minister of the Environment that “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
As a science layperson but as a full time taxpayer and stakeholder, my opinion (vote) is once the science of extreme and catastrophic consequences of “global warming” is confirmed, then I and millions of others can have the discussion of how to adapt and deal with those consequences, incuding bringing about justice and equality. My opinion re the science is not worth anything but my opinion re the costs and impact most definitely is and politicians and vested interests would do well to remember that. Revolution has many faces.
Truly excellent article; the bits I liked best were:
As Greenpeace co-founder Peter Moore observed on Fox Business News in January 2011: “We do not have any scientific proof that we are the cause of the global warming that has occurred in the last 200 years…The alarmism is driving us through scare tactics to adopt energy policies that are going to create a huge amount of energy poverty among the poor people. It’s not good for people and it’s not good for the environment…In a warmer world we can produce more food.”
When Moore was asked who is responsible for promoting unwarranted climate fear and what their motives are, he said: “A powerful convergence of interests. Scientists seeking grant money, media seeking headlines, universities seeking huge grants from major institutions, foundations, environmental groups, politicians wanting to make it look like they are saving future generations. And all of these people have converged on this issue.”
So is alarmism a cult, or a scam, or both?
In Scotland we have a term for “the fight against ‘climatechange'”: “farting against thunder”.
Just be aware that some of those quotes are out of context. Most of them are utterly damning but you don’t want to give an easy win to the other side over one of these.
While I’m at it, if I could, let me add just one more comment, because ecoloon quotes are my bread and butter. A Real Science post on Joe Biden gave me the opportunity to add this: Some things we’d think Biden would have said, but…, amazingly, someone else did:
“A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect.” -Richard Benedik, U.N. / U.S. Bureaucrat
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” -Paul Watson, Co-Founder of Greenpeace
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations [for reducing CO2] upon the data. We’re basing them upon the climate models.” -Chris Folland, UK Meteorological Office
“Rather than seeing models as describing literal truth, we ought to see them as convenient fictions which try to provide something useful [propaganda].” -David Frame, Oxford U
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” -Daniel Botkin, ex Chair of Environmental Studies, UCSB
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC
“The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans.” -Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project
“Free Enterprise really means [giving the rich] the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings…Capitalism is destroying the earth.” -Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists
“Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed.” -Pentti Linkola, Finnish Ecologist
How many alarmists does it take to have an argument?
Just one …. and about 30 years.
Copenhagen summit – Tony Blair, then Prime Minister
[my bold]
Lots of similar and other damning quotes here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
Proof, if ever it were needed, that cagw was always a political issue, rather than a scientific one.
Many of these quotes have been posted here in WUWT previously, but this Forbes article gives a good opportunity to re- post them:
______________
”My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
”A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner,
Founder of CNN and major UN donor
”The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
”Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.”
Sir James Lovelock,
BBC Interview
”We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
Lead author of many IPCC reports
”Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton,
First chairman of the IPCC
”It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson,
Co-founder of Greenpeace
”Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
David Brower,
First Executive Director of the Sierra Club
”We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
”No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
”The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
”Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong,
Founder of the UN Environmental Program
”A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”If I were reincarnated I would wish to return to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh,
husband of Queen Elizabeth II,
Patron of the Patron of the World Wildlife Foundation
”The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the US. We have to stop these third World countries right where they are.”
Michael Oppenheimer
Environmental Defense Fund
”Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
Professor Maurice King
”Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
Maurice Strong,
Rio Earth Summit
”Complex technology of any sort is an assault on the human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
Amory Lovins,
Rocky Mountain Institute
”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. it played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
John Davis,
Editor of Earth First! Journal
“…the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” ~ David Rockefeller, June, 1991, Bilderberg Conference, Baden, Germany link
Thursday, 18 November 2010 13:16
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.
[Thank you to No Tricks Zone for listing this link.]
“PSU expert” Peter Buckland says “[Penn State is] arguably the most powerful institution in the state of Pennsylvania, maybe more powerful than the state government, because it can just tell the state government to go away all the time. When you have a university that powerful, the statement that you know like …climate change is real, we have people that tell us that it is real, and we have to take meaningful action, that pushes other institutions to do things. And it will push the political conversation some. If you have coalitions of every major research university in the country, saying that and broadcasting it very clearly and then embedding it in everything they do, it will change the civil-, it will change the society.”
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/07/april-2012-remarkable-statement-by-penn.html
**********************************
Here are a few more quotations, excerpted from
http://www.green-agenda.com
Now seriously, do you really think this is all about global warming?
Is it not possible that CAGW alarmism is just a smokescreen?
It must be obvious by now, even to the most stupid of warmists, that the world is no longer warming, and has not been warming for 10-15 years..
And the warmists are not all stupid, so what are they up to?
In their own words:
__________
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on
human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to
discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy,
because of what we might do with it.”
– Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the
worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
– Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the
equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another
United States. We can’t let other countries have the same
number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US.
We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
-Michael Oppenheimer,
Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty,
reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
-Professor Maurice King
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
– Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
– Dr David Frame,
climate modeler, Oxford University
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
-Al Gore,
Climate Change activist
“It doesn’t matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson,
co-founder of Greenpeace
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and
spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest
opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.”
-Al Gore,
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
“We are on the verge of a global transformation.
All we need is the right major crisis…”
– David Rockefeller,
Club of Rome executive member
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place
for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and
plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams,
free shackled rivers and return to wilderness
millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
Larry Bell and Forbes might get a lawsuit of their own:
“Michael Mann’s infamously flawed hockey stick paper”
When Moore was asked who is responsible for promoting unwarranted climate fear and what their motives are, he said: “A powerful convergence of interests. Scientists seeking grant money, media seeking headlines, universities seeking huge grants from major institutions, foundations, environmental groups, politicians wanting to make it look like they are saving future generations. And all of these people have converged on this issue.”
This article should be posted up on all church doors like Luthers edict . should be distributed to politicians etc everywhere.
If you deem and I do, that man made global warming was a fiction, a scam and a political fabrication from the outset.
An excuse, designed to provide and on the pretext of saving mother Gaia [see James Lovelock], for dumping coal and nuclear power generation and as a vehicle for the re-allocation of a vast financial transfer from ‘West to South’ – Western taxpayers to the ‘poor’. Then, this Forbes article tells you all you need to know – it is of little surprise to me.
For once, I’m going to defend Tony Blair
He is saying that even if certainty is only 80% compared to 95% (or whatever the real numbers are) we should still act. That is a perfectly defensible position even though you or I may disagree.
I don’t think Larry Bell’s title fits the quotes. No quote is debunking the science, they are merely showing some people having other motives but scientific ones to implement the same policy.
So some political backgrounds make it easier to accept some form of regulations and implicitely that might lower the bar for the burden of proof.
That’s what the quotes show: AGW makes them do things they wantend to do anyway. Therefore making them more likely to accept the theory.
That’s why nuclear is no favorit, it’s not something environmentalists wantend to do anyway.
Obviously this works both ways.
Libertarians and conservatives need more proof for AGW.
Therefore there is a correlation between political ideology and attitude towards AGW.
Hardly anything new.
That should not be confused with accepting or rejecting AGW ONLY for political reasons. (maybe some do, but one can’t generalise)
And it definitely shouldn’t be confused with “debunking the science”.
By the way, in an internet test I score between somewhere between Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi politically, but I consider myself a lukewarmer.
So exceptions are possible.
Then there’s the assertion in the November, 1980, issue of Fusion magazine (page 52): “When U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief William Ruckelshaus was about to announce his decision to ban DDT in June 1972, he confided to a friend, ‘There is no scientific basis for banning this chemical — this is a political decision.’ ”
The sustained defaming of critics, the refusing to share data/analyses, and the new-speak torturing of the meaning of “science” surrounding the decision to ban the use of DDT has been repeated regarding “global warming.” Our betters are always looking for ways to control us, for our own good, of course.
Reminds me very much of what one anti-smoking Dr said in the House of Lords when being questioned about the supposed dangers of second hand smoke – “So what if it’s bad science. It’s in a good cause.” There are many, many parallels I’ve noticed between the health alarmists and the warmists.
As others have noted, the material is not new. But the compilation and condensing of the material into a relatively short and easy to read article is what makes it newsworthy.
AndyL says:
February 6, 2013 at 4:24 am
‘For once, I’m going to defend Tony Blair
He is saying that even if certainty is only 80% compared to 95% (or whatever the real numbers are) we should still act. That is a perfectly defensible position even though you or I may disagree.”
Well then you shouldn’t get in your car to drive to work since this places you at risk. The fact that you will soon be impoverished is an unintended consequence, of course.
Eric Simpson says:
February 6, 2013 at 1:49 am ………………………….
“Free Enterprise really means [giving the rich] the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings…Capitalism is destroying the earth.” -Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists
————
At least no one is quoting Kenji.
I hope Kenji doesn’t publicly support this view from UCS?
cn
Wonderful piece, but I do wish the author would fix the ‘Peter Moore’ reference. His first name is Patrick. A little flaw, but a flaw nonetheless.
It is difficult to regard what they say as “damning” when you consider that their objective was thoroughly Satanic to begin with: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse?” 1990, Maurice Strong – UN’s first environmental chief.
Perhaps a WUWT “Reference Page” collecting and sourcing these and similar quotes would be in order…