The crisis is due not to climate change, but to actions taken in the name of preventing change
Guest Post by Paul Driessen
In his first address as Secretary of State, John Kerry said we must safeguard “the most sacred trust” we owe to our children and grandchildren: “an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”
Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. Little evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts, polar ice and temperatures or other weather and climate events and trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years.
However, we do face imminent manmade climate disasters. Global warming is the greatest moral issue of our time. We must do all we can to prevent looming climate catastrophes.
But those cataclysms have nothing to do with alleged human contributions to planetary climate systems that have always been chaotic, unpredictable and often disastrous: ice ages, little ice ages, dust bowls, droughts and monster storms that ravaged and sometimes even toppled cities and civilizations.
Our real climate crisis is our responses to Mr. Kerry’s illusory crises. It takes four closely related forms.
Influence peddling. Over the past three years, the Tides Foundation and Tides Center alone poured $335 million into environmentalist climate campaigns, and $1 billion into green lobbies at large, notes Undue Influence author Ron Arnold. Major US donors gave $199 million to Canadian environmental groups just for anti-oil sands and Keystone pipeline battles during the last twelve years, analysts Vivian Krause and Brian Seasholes estimate; the Tides Foundation poured $10 million into these battles during 2009-2012.
All told, US foundations alone have “invested” over $797 million in environmentalist climate campaigns since 2000! And over $19.3 billion in “environmental” efforts since 1995, Arnold calculates! Add to that the tens of billions that environmental activist groups, universities and other organizations have received from individual donors, corporations and government agencies to promote “manmade climate disaster” theories – and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Moreover, that’s just US cash. It doesn’t include EU, UN and other climate cataclysm contributions. Nor does it include US or global spending on wind, solar, biofuel and other “renewable” energy schemes. That this money has caused widespread pernicious and corrupting effects should surprise no one.
Politicized science, markets and ethics. The corrupting cash has feathered careers, supported entire departments, companies and industries, and sullied our political, economic and ethical systems. It has taken countless billions out of productive sectors of our economy, and given it to politically connected, politically correct institutions that promote climate alarmism and renewable energy (and which use some of this crony capitalist taxpayer and consumer cash to help reelect their political sponsors).
Toe the line – pocket the cash, bask in the limelight. Question the dogma – get vilified, harassed and even dismissed from university or state climatologist positions for threatening the grants pipeline.
The system has replaced honest, robust, evidence-based, peer-reviewed science with pseudo-science based on activism, computer models, doctored data, “pal reviews,” press releases and other chicanery that resulted in Climategate, IPCC exposés, and growing outrage. Practitioners of these dark sciences almost never debate climate disaster deniers or skeptics; climate millionaire Al Gore won’t even take questions that he has not preapproved; and colleges have become centers for “socially responsible investing” campaigns based on climate chaos, “sustainable development” and anti-hydrocarbon ideologies.
Increasingly powerful, well-funded, unelected and unaccountable activist groups and bureaucracies use manmade global warming claims to impose regulations that bypass legislatures and ignore job and economic considerations. They employ sweetheart lawsuits that let activists and agencies agree to legally binding agreements that leave out the parties who will actually be impacted by the court decisions.
The green behemoth wields increasing power over nearly every aspect of our lives and liberties, with no accountability for screw-ups or even deliberate harm to large segments of our population. All in the name of controlling Earth’s temperature and preventing climate change
Climate eco-imperialism impoverishes and kills. Climate alarmism and pseudo science have justified all manner of regulations, carbon trading, carbon taxes, renewable energy programs and other initiatives that increase the cost of everything we make, grow, ship, eat, heat, cool, wear and do – and thus impair job creation, economic growth, living standards, health, welfare and ecological values.
Excessive EPA rules have closed numerous coal-fired power plants, and the agency plans to regulate most of the US hydrocarbon-based economy by restricting carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, generating plants, cement kilns, factories, malls, hospitals and other “significant” sources. Were it not for the hydraulic fracturing revolution that has made natural gas and gas-fired generation abundant and cheap, US electricity prices would be skyrocketing – just as they have in Britain and Germany.
EU papers carry almost daily articles about fuel poverty, potential blackouts, outsourcing, job losses, economic malaise and despair, and deforestation for fire wood in those and other European countries, due to their focus on climate alarmism and “green” energy. California electricity prices are already highest in USA, thanks to its EU-style programs. The alarms are misplaced, the programs do nothing to reduce Chinese, Indian or global emissions, and renewable energy is hardly eco-friendly or sustainable.
Wind energy requires perpetual subsidies and “backup” fossil fuel power plants that actually produce 80% of the electricity attributed to wind, and blankets wildlife habitats with turbines and transmission lines that kill millions of birds and bats every year. In fact, industrial wind facilities remain viable only because they are exempted from many environmental review, wildlife and bird protection laws that are enforced with heavy penalties for all other industries. Solar smothers habitats with glossy panels, and biofuels divert crops and cropland to replace fuels that we have in abundance but refuse to develop.
Now climate activists and EPA want to regulate fracking for gas that was once their preferred option.
By far the worst climate crisis, however, is eco-imperialism perpetrated against African and other poor nations. When their country was building a new power plant that would burn natural gas that previously was wasted through “flaring,” President Obama told Ghanaians they should use their “bountiful” wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels energy, instead of fossil fuels that threaten us with dangerous global warming. Meanwhile, his Administration refused to support loans for South Africa’s critically needed, state-of-the-art Medupi coal-fired power plant, which the Center for American Progress, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club and other radical groups stridently opposed.
The actions ignored both the livelihoods and living standards that electricity has brought the world, and the millions of deaths from lung infections and intestinal diseases that these power plants would prevent.
Ready-made excuse for incompetence. Hurricane / Superstorm Sandy proved how “dangerous manmade climate change” can give politicians a handy excuse for ill-considered development decisions that increase storm and flood risk, failure to prepare their communities for inevitable severe weather events, misleading storm warnings, and slow or incompetent responses in their aftermath. Blaming carbon dioxide emissions and rising seas is always easier than manning up and shouldering the blame for Bloombergian failures. Citing IPCC computer forecasts of nastier storms and flooded coastlines likewise gives insurers a convenient excuse for hiking insurance rates.
When the conversation next turns to climate change, discussing the real climate crisis – and the true meaning of environmental justice – could open a few eyes.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
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“highflight56433 on March 8, 2013 at 7:47 am
lsvalgaard says:
March 8, 2013 at 6:51 am
Since we elect the politicians the fault is our own. We get the policies we deserve.
Amen…”
Hate to say it but I wouldn’t be quite so certain about that. Remember, Obama got his start in Chicago. He was lured here by the ‘fixer’ Tony Rezko who arranged for Obama’s purchase of a home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Rezko’s now in prison. In his formative years in Chicago, Obama was taken under the wing of Alice Palmer; Illinois State Senator in the capital in Springfield. Her district was the poor south side ghetto and, I believe, Hyde Park. Mel Reynolds was the U.S. Washington congressional rep for that district. He had to vacate his seat ’cause he went to prison. Alice Palmer maneuvered to run for Reynolds’ seat but was deterred when Jesse Jackson Jr. announced his candidacy. Palmer couldn’t compete with the Jackson name or war chest so she went to return to her state senate seat (Jackson now appears headed for prison). Barack Obama barred his former mentor from returning to her seat by allegations of voter fraud on Palmer’s part (the Chicago way) so her slithered into her senate seat un opposed. A few years later Illinois’s governor, Rod Blagoyevich would go to prison for attempting to sell Obama’s seat when he vacated it for the presidency. Got any ideas about Illinois politics? I don’t think these are the voter’s choices.
I don’t have the numbers in front of me anymore so I’m relying on my ageing memory but I believe 59 precincts in Philadelphia delivered around 16,000 votes to Obama and not one…not one…to Romney. That’s a physical impossibility. That’s fraud. In Chicago, I believe 37 precincts delivered about 13,000 votes to Obama and not one…not one…to Romney. A friend of mine who works for a bordering village of Chicago told me he had a co-worker tell him he voted 3 times for Obama. Now let’s talk about what’s been emerging from Ohio: double votes, triple, gosh, even sextuple votes.
Do you really think the voters have spoken?
In reply to Leif,
We only elect our politicians from the select few that are pre-selected to be allowed to run for office. The average American has no control whatsoever over who becomes President, and no control whatsoever over who is appointed to the Cabinet.
If anything, you can blame the people for allowing the politicians to shred the Constitution, but you cannot completely blame them for who gets elected. When you are continually given a choice of two idiots, one of the two idiots is bound to be elected, unless no one votes for either of them, which is what I would prefer to happen, but you aren’t ever going to see it ACTUALLY happen.
On a national level, the politicians who run for office are selected by their own parties, not by the people. In countries other than the USA, it is even worse than this. Blaming the people may be convenient for you, but it ultimately doesn’t assess, address, or help to SOLVE the actual problem.
I hereby commit to use no more electricity than John Kerry and his wife use in their five or so mansions, no more fuel than he and his wife use in their private jet and yacht.
God, I feel virtuous.
This is something frequently missed by alarmists.
One could be totally convinced by the ‘science’ and yet ‘resistant’ because you don’t see ‘green’ as the only solution. How did acceptance of the radiative properties of CO2 morph into unconditional acceptance of every whacked out scheme of ‘Big Green’? Or indeed acceptance of the schemes of every SIF on the Planet?
@ur momisugly lsvalgaard
Since we elect the politicians the fault is our own. We get the policies we deserve.
While I respect your opinion where Science is concerned – you could be stepping out on a limb with that one Leif. Then again there are a great many sites to which we might move the argument. Not here at WUWT though eh?
tony nordberg says:
March 8, 2013 at 9:03 am
(…..)
Can anybody point to such a report?
———————-
A great point. I have often wondered about the predictable sinusoidal rise of the CO2.
Years ago, about 1978 to be exact, I was doing CO2 measurements with an old “sniffer” device. I was testing boiler flue gases. Even though the fuel flow was constant, I had a hard time getting consistent CO2 readings. Maybe I did not have the “latest and greatest” equipment, but the rising CO2 graphs seem a little too perfectly repeatable to me.
Just look at the inaccuracies that been found with temp data….
[snip – sorry, but your name calling doesn’t do anything useful here, and if you want to call someone a cretin, at least learn to spell it correctly. – Anthony]
oldspanky says:
March 8, 2013 at 4:13 am
The political class seem to have no qualms at all about ripping up the sacred trust not to burden our children and grandchildren with a monstrous debt that exists beyond any shadow of a doubt. Why then do they get all dewy-eyed about taking care not to “burden” them with scarely discernable changes in the weather which in any case seem not to be developing? ”
Very well said!!!!
Just to be circumspect . . . He also said: “”
We cannot talk about the unprecedented changes happening on our planet, moreover, without also talking about the unprecedented changes in its population, another great opportunity at our fingertips. In countries across North Africa and the Middle East, the majority of people are younger than 30 years old – 60 percent under 30, 50 percent under 21, 40 percent under 18, about half of the total under 20. And you know what? They seek the same opportunities and the same things that you do: opportunity. We have an interest in helping these young people to develop the skills that they need to defeat the mass unemployment that is overwhelming their societies so that they can in fact start contributing to their communities and rebuild their broken economies rather than engaging in some other terrorist or other kind of extremist activity. For the first time in human history, young people around the world act as a global cohort, including many of the people in this room. They’re more open-minded. They’re more proficient with the technology that keeps them connected in a way that no generation in history has ever been before. We need to help all of them, and us, to use this remarkable network in a positive way.””
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/02/205021.htm
Got to admit it took me a while to find “an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”
But must point out that they are not hallmarks of dramatically changing climate . . . . unless he is saying “dramatically changing climate” was is and probably always will be the norm. How fast changes have come has always been a contention within science. Just like plate techtonics, which affect climate more than anthing I know of in the long term. . . . And as we have seen in geological time they can be very slow or very “dramatic”!
Like the speech, but can it be delivered . . . .
He does mention “But our work is far from over. Seven of the ten fastest growing countries are on the African continent. And China, understanding that, is already investing more than we do there. Four of the five biggest oil and natural gas discoveries happened off the coast of Mozambique last year alone. Developing economies are the epicenters of growth, and they are open for business, and the United States needs to be at that table.”
I do not see what the problem is Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow?
But, wanted to add on “Meanwhile back at the Farm”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_dei_Paschi_di_Siena#Hidden_losses_and_Bank_of_Italy_bailout_.282013.29
http://www.4-traders.com/BANCA-MONTE-DEI-PASCHI-DI-70626/news/Banca-Monte-dei-Paschi-di-Siena-SpA-Autopsy-points-to-Monte-Paschi-spokesman-suicide-source-16513127/
Talk about dramatic!
coeruleus says:
March 8, 2013 at 5:23 am
I’m glad that nothing about this post is in any way alarmist.
—————————————————————————-
The point of the post is the PURPOSE behind the alarmism.
On the one hand you have Mr. Driessen arguing, in an alarming way, about the use of climate alarmism to cause real harm to societies.
On the other hand, Mr. Driessen’s alarmism doesn’t have any motive other than to warn against that harm, i.e. his in not proposing taxes, prices hikes, new forms of governments, etc.
The difference seems clear to me.
Fred Berple: Emancipation proclamation was in 1862, not 1865. Big difference.
Doug Huffman; thanks very much for Crichton’s address. He’s the perfect guy to write that excellent piece.
I think Kerry is the same as Romney.
In love with the dollar and so self-justified in their upper-crust existence.
Two peas in a pod.
Bland with no swagger.
cn
Leif is under the delusion that there are free elections here. I’d like to give him a course in history to wake him up.
It certainly doesn’t surprise me. Money corrupts. Al Gore made a documentary telling the world about a planetary emergency caused by c02, He then takes oil money from Qatari oil backed Al Jazeera and buys 2 large homes is not a surprise. It’s always been about the money, scientific status and the green agenda. An unholy alliance of bankers, big oil, greens, journalists and politicians. Never in World history have so few been up against the might (and money) of so many and yet the many are failing so miserably.
Read and weep. [bold mine]
The problem with the last sentence is that it should add the environmental green movement. Future generations will be sickened by the display of bare faced greed and lies.
Must look!!
Rowan Atkinson on free speach…
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/rowan-atkinson-england-and-freedom-speech
News just in via nofrakkingconsensus, the IPCC is looking for ‘Expert Reviewers’.
Greenpeace activists anyone? WWF activists anyone? The system is political and it has been gamed from the start. Expect more howlers like glaciergate.
References:
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/03/06/ipcc-invites-in-the-activists/
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/in-short/ipcc-calls-for-expert-reviewers
Imagine in your home town if you had electricity but your 3 friends had not access to electricity. Imagine the same for the USA? Here are the shocking figures [no pun intended].
I want to hear from some of our regular green alarmist friends what they have to say about this scandal and what they propose as a viable solution. Solar? Wind? It’s smoke and mirrors with lots of hot air. Grrrrrr.
“That this money has caused widespread pernicious and corrupting effects should surprise no one.”
There’s also an interesting effect I’ve noticed that I can’t classify. Those that preach about Global Warming and that we must do something about it can also live very wastefully, drive an SUV, live in a large house, don’t donate to charities, and screw their neighbors every chance I get yet they would be seen as honorable people who cares about the planet and therefore all of humanity. But if a person questions Global Warming on i’s scientific merit, but drive an electric car, live in a small home and heat with wood, give generously to charities, and help every neighbor that they can, they are labelled as a denier, someone who is destroying the planet and doesn’t care about children’s future, and should be despised.
Can someone trained in psychology clue me into what this is called?
tony nordberg says:
March 8, 2013 at 9:03 am
Given that the climate has stopped changing, the only other measurement that the Great Hoax now depends on, is the series of CO2 readings from the Mauna Loa volcano. As I understand it, there is one instrument used for producing the reference gas, and another one on the top of the volcano.
As the world’s economy is directly affected by the readings of these two instruments, plus the post-processing of the data, it would seem obvious that there has been a really critical study of the the design and performance of these instruments and their place in the whole process of CO2 measurement and reporting.
There are actually multiple sites measuring CO2 and even some satellites – so you are looking in the wrong place.
Whenever you are given a hypothesis or a paper/report on scientific research, always look for assumptions; they should be listed but they are often glossed over.
The prime assumption made by CAGW proponents is that before ‘industrialization’ taken as AD1750 the atmospheric CO2 levels were low ~250ppm and the current levels of CO2 are ‘unprecedented’. This is based on cherry picked metrics.
The low levels of CO2 claimed to be ‘normal’ or ‘before the industrial age’ are based on bubbles in ice cores where the chemistry and diffusion of CO2 under pressure in ice for hundreds or thousands of years has been ignored as has the possibility of bubbles forming by gassing off as the cores were brought up to atmospheric pressure. There was also quite a lot of ‘Mike’s Nature Trick’ type playing with the dates of the cores to get the CO2 levels from the cores to match with the measured CO2 levels (one report was 75 years slip had to be ‘found’).
But there were many measurements of atmospheric CO2 before the ice cores. The levels can be found from plant remains by the density and size of stomata in their leaves and in the 19th and early 20th century many scientists including Nobel laureate chemists among others measured atmospheric CO2 using chemical means. These scientists had results showing concentrations that were not dissimilar to the current levels.
A German scientist Ernst George Beck collated these CO2 metrics (and that is all he did – collate other scientists metrics) and pointed out that the fundamental claim of ‘unprecedented CO2 levels’ since AD1750 appeared to be flawed. Thus the basis of the CAGW hypootheses was fatally flawed. For this Beck was excoriated by ‘the team’ to a level that even now truly scientific skeptics avoid using any references that include his name. This was totally unfair as it was not his research he was publishing but a collation of previous research.
See:
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
http://rense.com/general75/0223_inconvenient_gore.pdf
http://www.philosophical-investigations.org/Historical_CO2_levels
The CAGW community would love to debate Mauna Loa as it obfuscates a major and fundamental flawed assumption in their CAGW hypothesis.
(I would expect any response to my post here to be litttered with ad hominem against Ernst Beck but have no scientific arguments against the multiple historic metrics from other scientists that he reported. )
@ur momisugly David L; It’s a relatively new disease or syndrome known as Algoreiousupusrectumus Disease, or AD for short. I don’t think Obamacare covers it yet.
Great article, Paul. The thing that keeps me optimistic is knowing that although the alarmists are still raking in the cash, they are losing on-the-ground support hand over fist. We know this, or they wouldn’t have to fudge their viewing numbers, send out their bots or have their trolls come in, each pretending to be more than one person.
More and more ordinary citizens are waking up to the sham every day, so it’s only a matter of time.
Frankly, I’m waiting for the masses to rise up. It will be ugly, but I fear necessary. I hope I’m wrong, but I cannot see any other way to get those mitts out of the cookie jar. These people are not going to willingly pull back.
David L,
Okay, I’m not trained in psychology, but I know what I call this: modern leftism. It’s the same thing that is going on when someone is all about “racial equality” but considers people of other colors to be suitable only for servants and menial labor. In a similar vein, it’s an entire political movement that somehow believes that Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell weren’t actually black when they were associated with the Republican party.
I could list a lot more examples, and I’m sure you could too. In the old days it was called hypocrisy, but that word has now been judged by the “politically correct” crowd to only apply to some vague stereotype involving religious types and the people who actually do the work that runs the planet.
For those few who actually care, yes, this is what leftism has become. Maybe you lean politically left but aren’t like this… but this is what is waiting at the bottom of that long slide.
Paul Driessen said, “Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now
recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17
years.”
In recent months, many at WUWT have been bandying about this stuff
about no warming in 16 or 17 years. However, smoothed HadCRUT3
and UAH if similarly smoothed only show lack of warming for 11-12 years.