Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Josh Fox writing in The Guardian explains that anyone who doesn’t support Bill McKibben’s total ban on fracking is a denier – and mentions President Obama by name.
Fracking is a form of climate-change denial
Local communities are showing the courage to fight fossil fuel madness. We can all help them prevail.
Here’s one thing we don’t often want to admit: it is too late to stop many of the harshest and most destructive aspects of climate change from materialising. We’re out of time. Superstorms, droughts, floods, disappearing islands, coastlines and lost species are already here.
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Our movement and our scientists, by contrast, do have the courage to identify what needs to be done. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, estimates that we have 17 years to replace all fossil fuel infrastructure with renewable energy. That means no new fossil fuel projects. Period. We burn down what we have, and we build renewable energy sources as fast as we can. That means no new pipelines, no new fracking fields, no new offshore drilling, no new tar sands or coal mines.
That would mean no new fracking in the US or the UK. You cannot be a climate leader and support fracking: it is a new form of climate denialism. One only has to look at the brave stand people all across the world are taking to fight fossil fuel developments to see the kind of courage our governments lack but that the future will demand. Britain has seen protests in Balcombe in West Sussex, and in Blackpool, while in the US we have had brave pipeline fighters in Nebraska and Standing Rock reservation, North Dakota.
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Last week, even as superstorm Matthew bore down on America’s east coast, Barack Obama said at the premiere of Leonardo DiCaprio’s new climate change film that keeping fossil fuels in the ground isn’t practical, and that we have to accept fracking as a way to cut emissions because “we have to live in the real world”.
The real world, I assume, is the one that science is describing – that says we cannot develop more fossil fuels. The world Obama is referring to is something else – a bubble – in which fossil fuel lobbyists obscure the will of the people under their superstorm of campaign cash and political influence.
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In my view this Guardian piece is yet more evidence that green fanatics simply cannot be appeased. No matter how far you bend over for them, and President Obama by any measure has been pretty accommodating to the green movement, they always want more.
“In my view this Guardian piece is yet more evidence that green fanatics simply cannot be appeased.”
Yep. And unfortunately, there is really only one way to deal with them. You have to defeat them utterly.
Why call something that is red green? The attack on energy is political and is really an attack on the Western World. Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” — John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001
Santa Baby: you hit the nail on the head!
These people would have us all back in the caves, without light, heat, modern conveniences, powered transportation, telecoms, and society will have collapsed along with pensions, utilities, municipal services, food distribution, health-care and the ‘social-net’ in jurisdictions where that is pertinent.
In short, a reversion to the Dark Ages.
Which way do *you* vote?
R.
@ Ross King, : as long as they can live in mansions, be able to fly around the world and stay in 5 star hotels and have a small army providing them security and of course the lights, heat and food that goes with all the “hardships”.
I’m not sure that this is intended as an attack on the western world rather than capitalism generally.
These green zealots seem to naively imagine that if they scream and wail about CO2 they can destroy the capitalist system.
They have not got as far as working out what will replace to ensure everyone on the planet does not dies in massive conflicts as we fight each other to survive.
Neither do they stop to realise that China and India are not dupe and are no way going to destroy their own futures. All they are achieving is helping to push capitalism into countries with little or no environmental protection and are undoing half a century of success by the green movement in cleaning up industry in the west.
This article is typical of their hypocrisy:
The local opposition they are referring to is opposed to the perceived local risks of pollution by fracking. It is not about “bravely” scaremongering CO2.
Just look at the image at the head of the article. This campaign is NOT about CO2 or AGW or “fossil fuel madness”.
Spot on, Santa. The thing that gives the game away is the omission of certain countries from this quote:
The Guardian would have more credibility if it called out China and India as well. I bet that if those two countries discovered fracking as a solution to their power needs no-one at the Guardian would raise a finger against them.
In the ’70s (when global cooling was the mania) there were posters all about with the slogan:
“May all the anti energy activists freeze to death…in the dark!”
Watermelons, Green on the outside, Red on the inside.
They are quoting Bill McKibben as an expert?????
Does anyone actually care what a The Guardian thinks or says? It is a mouthpiece for Moronism (a religious cult of non-thinking peoples).
Frack, frack, and more fracking say the people of Texas! LOL
Yes. A lot of Watermelons care about what the Guardian says. And the Watermelons seem to have the bit in their mouth, at the moment.
…bit in their teeth…
A commenter at Jo Nova once used the term ‘malignant narcissism’, and that about sums it up. It’s not even about politics, just a need for validation and identity through control. These people (just like members of aggressive cults like ISIS and more benign ones like the JW’s or the University of Bristol) inhabit a world where deep down they feel small, frightened, threatened and unimportant, and single issue zealotry is a useful form of psychological defence.
It is a issue related to “paleontology”. Most of us believe we share a common ancestor, this is a mistake.
Some people are descendants of a self destructive dinosaur, known as the “Moron-adon”
michael 🙂
Hah Hah, good one!
Like it! Makes me think of DiCrapio as being ‘Moronosaurus Wrecks’.
Forget the Texans, they basically do have their State under some sort of rational control.
What about the North Dakotans; now there’s some folks who know about fracking, and having a great old time doing it.
They probably view California as something out of the Plasticene Age.
And yes the anti-fossillites of California, also made it clear to Secretary of Sate Alex Padilla that they are a no nukes bunch of idiots too.
It’s not about energy, and it’s not about climate.
G
R.O.Texas
If ” The Guardian ” gets its wishes, you will in the future, be able to find it hanging on the nail in the outhouse, and it is there not for reading !
The only promising development on climate change and politics is that Hillary Rodham Clinton is deciding to emphasize global warming as a campaign issue, with press conferences with Al Gore and such. The greens are such obvious fanatics any widespread exposure will draw a reaction (I hope!). The Guardian would also be opposed to HRC, as her position on fracking is the same as Obama’s.
Here’s what needs to be denied … Bill McKibben & his ilk need to be denied access to all fossil fuels & anything that comes from fossil fuels (gasoline, flying / jet fuel, plastics, electricity from fossil fuel, the internet (run mostly on electricity from fossil fuels,), etc etc.
Hypocritical fools!
+!
Okay, I’m biased. I worked for big oil…and liked it.
I want to know how Bill will like driving his fancy electric car on dirt roads when there is no more asphalt.
Or having to wait for the sun to shine or the wind to blow, in order to charge up his electric car.
+ 100!
Also food.
Fossil fuel powers farm machinery and the vehicles that transport food to stores. I often wonder if the greens think that food magically appears in stores.
They will simply make food and asphalt from wind and solar ! We just need more investment and innovation. You have not been paying attention, obviously.
The Greens have thought of that. Simply build the factories that make our food closer to the supermarkets that sell it!
New, Soylent Green!
Now with more girls!
Also available in Red, and Yellow.
What’s the difference between cagw zealots and caliphate zealots?
No amount of attempted rational discourse or appeasement will ever turn them from their religious fervor and aims to subjugate humanity to their credo.
Daesh and 350.org are different only in their methodologies, not their desired outcomes.
Stop pussyfooting around. Have a great big nuclear war. Solve the population problem, the climate problem, and wipe out the Middle East in one fell swoop.
The World has so lost track of the verities and the priorities, that a war is necessary to focus the minds of the ill-educated voters as to the realities of life: survival!
That was basically the argument (i.e. that a war is necessary) that led to the horrors of 20th century Europe.
Be careful what you wish for…..it maybe closer than you think.
you been reading killarys mails?
thats her A plan
actually its her B n C as well
Hillary is very likely to succeed at that.
Is the green rhetoric amping up both in terms of volume (of articles) and intensity (of stupidity)? The watermelons seem to be getting more desperate to pitch their meme.
” In my view this Guardian piece is yet more evidence that green fanatics simply cannot be appeased.”
Also evidence of a sense of desperation among the Kibbenites.
“Britain has seen protests in Balcombe…”
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/storage/thumbnails/902844-23308367-thumbnail.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1376423457970
“We burn down what we have, and we build renewable energy sources as fast as we can”
There is the problem in one nutshell. Folks like Josh Fox want to destroy performing assets and replace them with non-performing ones (maybe at best very low-performing assets) which have huge amounts of embedded energy content.
So he proposes that we immediately add vast additional C02 emissions and emit megatons of real pollutants so that there will be less energy available for our descendants. A societal death-wish.
Along the same lines, Germany burned more brown coal for electrical generation in 2015 than it did in 2011. This is what happens when you refuse to consider fracking and “burn down” functioning nuclear generation capacity.
Folks like Josh Fox just want their peers to admire them and nothing more – hence the endless green doomsaying pissing contests amongst the deeply insecure. Politicians and academics do insecure better than anyone else, therefore piss with the most damaging vigour – Guardianistas would just be grateful for anyone to notice how far they can piss. Getting drawn into the details of argument with people who don’t really understand or even care what it is they are arguing is a worthless exercise – better to call it out for what it really is.
wouldn’t burning down what we have place many tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, the very opposite of what they want?
This is all you need to know about Josh Fox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9CfUm0QeOk
He admits that his film Gasland was being economical with the truth. There was gas in the water before the fracking started. That is not how the information was presented in the film.
“…and “burn down” functioning nuclear generation capacity.” I am with you here. Reducing nuclear is crazy in the face of global warming.
It has nothing to do with “global warming”.
I am not referring to the reality or otherwise of warming, but for those that do believe that CO2 induced warming is a big problem it is crazy to shut down existing nuclear.
McKibben is the very definition of a fanatic. If you consider CO2 a pollutant (I don’t, but he obviously does), then fracking is the best option for his “salvation” in the medium term.
If we are going to combine fossil fuel with oxygen (burning) for generating electricity, then we need more fracking – not less. Methane is CH4. Burning methane yields two water molecules 2H20 plus one molecule of CO2. This is the best possible ratio if your goal is to minimize CO2 output. If you burn coal, then you have a much high percentage of you thermal output coming from combining carbon with oxygen rather than hydrogen. (This is due to all the carbon bonds in higher molecular weight hydrocarbons.)
Methane produces 40-50% less CO2/KW compared to most types of coal. It may produce up to 60% less CO2 to some lower quality coals or brown lignites.
If McKibben really wanted to reduce CO2, then he would embrace fracking and support phasing out coal-fired electricity generation for nat gas generation. We can then transition to non-hydrocarbon sources as the technologies become feasible.
I fear that he prefers to accumulate power to his acolytes, rather than provide actual beneficial power to starving Africans and Asians.
I find myself in agreement here. Fracking is a possible way to reduce carbon emissions whilst we transition to renewable energy.
We need to leave a lot of carbon in the ground. Better to leave more coal and less methane. If that methane is cheaper too, we get added benefits.
The downside is that by exploiting new resources we may end up leaving less carbon in the ground. This is a political problem, made much worse if people do not accept the need to leave carbon in the ground. If it seems likely that those that do not think we need to do so will prevail, then it may make political sense to fight fracking as a political battle one could actually win.
In summary, if we use fracked gas instead of other carbon sources, then it is fine. If we use is as well as other sources, then it is bad.
Your Greenie “logic” is twisted, being based on totally false assumptions. Go peddle it somewhere else.
We have now reached our goal of stopping global CO2 increase. Because that is what the EIA has said has happened for the last two years. The first time without an economic recession. They believe that economic growth has decoupled from emissions growth. http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2016/march/decoupling-of-global-emissions-and-economic-growth-confirmed.html. Moreover, this is confirmed by the US reached it highest emissions of Green House Gases in 2007 and has come down significantly since then, attributed mainly to the switch to natural gas for electrical generation. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-04… Europe has been even more effective in lowering its emissions http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhouse-gas-emission-trends-6/assessment
Thus even the most optimist of the IPCC scenarios was way to pessimistic
http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2016/march/decoupling-of-global-emissions-and-economic-growth-confirmed.html
Also the US Energy Information Administration said that US energy related CO2 emissions for the first 6 months of this year are the lowest since 1991 http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=28312
“Superstorms, droughts, floods, disappearing islands, coastlines and lost species are already here.” — explain to me which one of these are due to climate change. I see none. The “disappearing island” was debunked by the scientist who wrote the report.
..Thankfully, President Trump will start the pendulum swinging back in the RIGHT direction …! ;o)
He’s not a denier, just an idiot about climate like Hillary, Al Gore, EPA’s McCarthy, and all the others…
I always find comments like ” it’s too late to stop….” As a strange preamble to then say lets go 100% renewable. Why would one spend more trillions of dollars to change the weather if by their own admission it’s too late. It’s an acknowledgement that what is being advocated by climate activists is futile. Surely the money can be better spent on an ” end of the world party” and at least we can be fried to a crisp with a smile on our faces.
If you are a believer in climate change and you believe that we’ve passed the point of no return which seems a common meme , even for alarmists it’s time to tear up those cheques.
Great to see mental giants like Lenny DiCap leading the charge into oblivion.
Please comment on this post
Mick Greenhough
2015 – 009 Russian connection to Anti Fracking activists ? Posted on 29 January, 2015 | Leave a comment Political blog by Bishop Hill Antifracking: the Russian connection ? Jan 28, 2015 Energy: gas Foreign Via Instapundit comes an article from the Washington Free Beacon which reports that money is being funnelled to anti-fracking activists by a mysterious company in Bermuda with links to the Russian oil business:A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president of a London-based investment firm whose president until recently chaired the board of the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.The findings are based on a report by the US Environmental Policy Alliance. I don’t think a fire has been found yet, but the quantities of smoke are prodigious.Update on Jan 28, 2015 by Registered CommenterBishop Hill A little Googling shows that Hans-Joerg Rudloff, the chairman of Marcuard, a UK company named in the report, is a former director of Barclays Capital and a close associate of Suleiman Kerimov, who is a significant shareholder in Gazprom.
From: Watts Up With That? To: mickgreenhough@yahoo.co.uk Sent: Wednesday, 12 October 2016, 2:01 Subject: [New post] Did the Guardian just call President Obama a “Denier”? #yiv0844001359 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv0844001359 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv0844001359 a.yiv0844001359primaryactionlink:link, #yiv0844001359 a.yiv0844001359primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv0844001359 a.yiv0844001359primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv0844001359 a.yiv0844001359primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv0844001359 WordPress.com | Eric Worrall posted: “Guest essay by Eric WorrallJosh Fox writing in The Guardian explains that anyone who doesn’t support Bill McKibben’s total ban on fracking is a denier – and mentions President Obama by name.Fracking is a form of climate-change denialLocal co” | |
Wouldn’t surprise me at all. It’s just a continuation of what the old Soviet Union was famous for.
“Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, estimates that we have 17 years to replace all fossil fuel infrastructure with renewable energy …”.
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“… a few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up, to put it bluntly … if the next twenty years sees us pump ever more gas into the sky … continuing to burn ever more oil and coal…will lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with a similar temperature” The End of Nature Bill McKibben, 1989.
And in the forthcoming N H winter remember: “…it’s almost like a test…can you sit in a snowstorm and imagine a warming world?…if the answer is no, then we’re really in a world of trouble …” McKibben again.
Oops, I think I used the I… word instead of uninformed or knowledge-less…referring to our president and his friends, including Al Gore and Hillary…got zapped.
JPP
Phaedrus
October 11, 2016 at 5:58 pm
“To be an idiot implies some intelligence!”
Looks like someone else used the word “idiot”…I guess mine got lost in the mire…
Mine used the reference to the President and Hillary… and others…
I recently wrote a piece on the subject.
Google: “Denier Pride”
Bob Hoye
It appears we have a generation of anarchists opposed to all new technology, except cell phones. Fracking is not different that tertiary advanced recovery of oil, used for over 80 years. That also involves the use of detergents. Claiming they are now injecting sand is rather strange as that fouls well pipes.
“Claiming they are now injecting sand is rather strange as that fouls well pipes.”
They do inject sand to keep the fractures open. From Wiki “When the hydraulic pressure is removed from the well, small grains of hydraulic fracturing proppants (either sand or aluminium oxide) hold the fractures open”
Sand has been safely used in fracking since the 1960s and is very different than tertiary chemical/water floods that are applied at much lower pressures. At these pressures the rocks are not fractured.
“Superstorm” Matthew?
Obama does deny natural climate change.
PS. The more I find out about Hilary Clinton & the appalling things they got away with – the more sympathy I have for you in the US!
The rubbish that is in the Guardian on global warming is unfortunately the mainstream opinion in England. Any directive that comes from Brussels EU is immediately turned into law by legislation. We are the only country that has a Climate Change Act. We Follow them slavishly although we are not members of the inner Eurozone sanctum. We have no industry, refuse to develop resources, are practically bankrupt and deserve to be so.
No, It is very very far from mainstream, opinion among the people. Any UKIP canvasser will tell you that. It is simply The Message that the MSM are paid to promote.
Last week’s hurricane, in the deluded mythology of the climate fanatics is described as a “super storm”? How pathetic.
Amusing how the discussion is now purely about ad hominems instead of science.
??
The discussion of the alarmists. They act like children with a knee jerk reaction of “you stupid head” to everything that they do not like. The only difference is they use “denier” instead of “you stupid head”.
Sorry for the confusion – I sometimes put out a thought without any preamble which leaves others wondering what I am talking about. Thanks SMC for bringing up my opaqueness.
philjourdan,
Neither the Guardian and McKibben have offered any science to discuss.
They are religious fanatics demanding the world convert to the climatocracy.
The Guardian article has as much to do with science as a religious tract handed out on the street has to do with science. McKibben has as much to do with science as the sermon from a televangelist.
Obama, the real Flat Earth Society spokesman.
The Flat Earth Society: Still going strong.
Obama the spokesman, so what can go wrong?
All his “Carbon pollution”
is a Marxist collusion.
It’s food for the hungry, so let’s get along.
President Obama angrily blasted climate change skeptics during his energy policy speech Tuesday Jun 25 at Georgetown University, saying he lacked “patience for anyone who denies that this problem is real.”
“We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society,” Obama said. “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.”
O.K. I’ll bite. Who belongs to the true flat earth society? https://lenbilen.com/2013/08/05/obama-the-real-flat-earth-society-spokesman/
..Wow, great article, thanks..
Obama supports fracking?
I guess since he hasn’t tried to outlaw it all together, that means he’s a supporter.
Isn’t that the way the minds of fanatics usually work?
If you destroy the current infrastructure, where does the energy come from to develop any new infrastructure? Seems to me like a case of burning your bridges before you cross them.
“One only has to look at the brave stand people all across the world are taking to fight fossil fuel developments to see the kind of courage our governments lack but that the future will demand. Britain has seen protests in Balcombe in West Sussex, and in Blackpool, while in the US we have had brave pipeline fighters in Nebraska and Standing Rock reservation, North Dakota.”
These “people all across the world” are really a small bunch of radical Leftist environmentalists/alarmists. The author would have you believe that everyone in the world is onboard the anti-fracking bandwagon.
TA- great point- the climate obsessed delusion is multi-layered. They think they are part of some grand “people’s movement” and not the parasitic rent seeking motivated reasoning fanatics they actually are.
“We’re out of time. Superstorms, droughts, floods, disappearing islands, coastlines and lost species are already here.” Hmm, what happened to that 17 year grace period a few sentences back.
OK Bill, let’s see you prove that global warming has had anything whatsoever to do with droughts, floods, superstorms using empirical data.
How simple can it be. All the green heads stop using fossil fuel, then the fracking would not be needed.The peoble without electricity after Matthew are heroes and should celebrate all the fossil fuel they save, instead of wanting to get the electricity back.
I have not experienced any evil fossil fuel company that gave me free fuel to burn or use, so that i could destroy the climate.
Josh Fox was on BBC radio 4’s Today programme.
He said he’s an expert on fracking, he reads all the reports. He claimed there are 895 papers proving fracking is your worst nightmare.
He then went on to claim that groundwater sources are contaminated with benzene.
Has anyone ever told this celebrity village idiot that oil has to be refined to separate the fractions?