Guest opinion by Frits Bolkestein
In the early seventies, the world must have looked frightening to Dennis Meadows and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when they dealt with limits to growth. This was the title of their study, which was released in 1972 and which has become known as “The Report to the Club of Rome”.
According to the Report the world was in a mess because of environmental degradation, excessive bureaucratization, unbridled urbanization, widespread unemployment, alienation of youth, inflation and rejection of value systems. Profound adjustments had to be made before it was too late.
The Report dealt with the interaction of five critical factors: population growth, food production, industrialization, natural resource depletion and pollution. The conclusion was that mankind was heading for a period of great suffering because of lack of food, lack of raw materials and too much pollution.
In the Netherlands the report was followed in February 1972 by a study of the commission Mansholt, named after its president Sicco Mansholt (1908-1995). It consisted of members of ‘progressive’ parties: PvdA (Labour Party), D66 (Democrats 1966) and PPR (Radical Christians). The committee dealt with three central crises: nuclear war, the gap between the rich North and the poor South, and the finite nature of the earth or limits to growth. Half of the members of the committee would later become members of the Den Uyl government (1973-1977).
The commission Mansholt wanted a revaluation of the concepts prosperity and growth. The Netherlands had to set an example and learn to live within the limits that were inherent in the finite nature of our planet. Of course, this would mean a decline of our standard of living. But that was believed to be inevitable.
What has happened since? The “Report to the Club of Rome” predicted the imminent depletion of nonrenewable resources. Copper would be depleted in 36 years, gold in 11 years, lead in 26 years, mercury in 13 years, tin and zinc in 17 and 23 years respectively. However, this did not happen. Also oil, which according to the Report, would be depleted in just 31 years, is still produced. Thus, the Report had apparently seriously underestimated the potential of technology. But the media fell for it. NRC Handelsblad (a Netherlands quality newspaper), for instance, wrote about the Report under the headline “Disaster threatens the world”. (August 31, 1971).
Equally, the report by the commission Mansholt had little impact, because on the opening day of the session of the Netherlands Parliament in 1974, the Finance Minister, Wim Duisenberg (PvdA), called upon the population to spend more in order to sustain the economy. And the “New International Economic Order”, which was the “baby” of his comrade Jan Pronk, minister for development, perished ingloriously and had to give way to the “Old National Economic Disorder”.
A decade later we were alarmed that the soil under the dying forests in Germany was severely acidified. It was believed that this would also happen in other parts of Europe. This fear was reenforced by the emotional bond of the Germans with their forests. “Das grosse Waldsterben” caused panic, which also reached The Netherlands. The RIVM (National Agency for Public Health and Environment) and the environment ministry claimed that large parts of the forests were beyond saving. But an “ecological Hiroshima” has never happened. We know now that the forests in the Erzgebirge were exposed to extremely high SO2 concentrations. The trees, however, do not seem to suffer much from acidification. Anyhow, they are now in a better condition than ever.
Many doomsday scenarios circulated and were emphatically propagated by the media. I mention a few. (1) Global famine was inevitable. (2) A cancer epidemic caused by pesticides would shorten our lives. (3) Deserts would extend by 2 miles per year. (4) The mad cow disease would kill hundreds of thousands of people. (5) Computers networks would break down because of the millennium bug. (6) Nanotechnology would run out of control. (7) Glaciers would disappear (although more than half of their reduction dates back to the pre-1950 period). All this did not happen.
UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) predicted in 2003 that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010. In 2010, the organization retracted this prediction. Ten years ago, Al Gore predicted in “An Inconvenient Truth” that we would have reached a point of no return within ten years. But the global warming projected by the vast majority of climate models by far exceeded the observed rise in temperature.
Why do so many intellectuals take pleasure in predicting catastrophes? As regards scientists the reason is clear: he or she who predicts a catastrophe, will receive funds to study how to avoid such a disaster. According to the IEA (International Energy Agency) we will spend 2.3 trillion euro in the next 25 years to reduce the global temperature by less than 0.02 degrees Celsius.
Moreover, there are important industrial interests involved in investments that are supposed to combat global warming. But I suspect that these two causes, although true, do not offer the whole explanation. Two thousand years of Christianity has deeply implanted a sense of guilt and repentance in the psyche of Western man. We are guilty, so we deserve the disasters to which we are exposed. Unless we repent and follow the instructions of the prophets of doom.
In the seventies and eighties of the past century, many people, at least in the West, were very much concerned about all sorts of negative developments. Now, 35 years later, this is less the case. Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labour and child mortality decline faster than ever before. Outside the Middle East there are hardly any wars. Guerrilla movements seek peace. Our most important problem today is migration.
And what about global warming? During the first half of the twentieth century the temperature has risen by half a degree Celsius. Since 1950 the atmosphere is warming at a rate of 0.13 degree per decade. But between 1998 and 2013 the temperature of the atmosphere increased with only 0.04 degree. And the temperature has hardly risen over the past decade. The UN Climate Panel (IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) calls this a warming pause or hiatus – a pause which has not been predicted or projected by climate models. In any case, we are not on the verge of disaster, as is often claimed.
But is there no problem then? Vast amounts of anthropogenic greenhouse gases are annually released into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of such a greenhouse gasses, although not as strong as water vapor. Incidentally, the “greenhouse” is a godsend. If it did not exist, the average temperature on earth would be 18 degrees below zero. Moreover, CO2 is a building block of life. Without CO2 no plants, no animals and no people.
Analysis of data provided by satellites has shown that over the last thirty years the Earth has been greening – the vegetation on Earth has increased by 14 percent, half of which is believed to be caused by the increase of the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere.
If one wants to reduce CO2-emissions, the use of fossil fuels should be diminished and substituted by renewables. Wind turbines could provide renewable energy. But there is a snag: the European Emission Trading System (ETS) allows CO2 emission savings by one party to be offset by other parties, so that the total amount of CO2-emissions remains the same. This is called the “waterbed effect”.
What about the costs? The Netherlands National Energy Agreement was concluded in September 2013 between many interested parties, except engineers with know-how of the the technical options at hand and representatives of energy consumers and taxpayers who had to foot the bill. The costs are estimated to amount to 72 billion euro, of which 31 billion euro for wind energy.
Other experts have arrived at higher estimates. As far as wind energy is concerned, one should also take into account the cost of new infrastructure and back-up. If the wind does not blow or if there is too much wind, security of supply requires fossil-fueled back-up capacity. Moreover, according to the Netherlands “Green Court of Auditors” the turbines at sea deliver in 60 percent of the time no electricity. On land it is 75 percent. Anyhow, it is big money. Will it be used effectively?
In a letter to Parliament (File 32813, no. 121 of April 9, 2016) the Junior Minister for environment and climate, Sharon Dijksma (PvdA), has confessed that the billions invested in climate policy will have no measurable effect. This was stated in her reaction to a request by the climate lobby ‘Urgenda’ to the court in The Hague, to summon the government to an additional reduction in CO2 emissions than had been planned. The court conceded to this request. Apart from the fact that this is a constitutional monstrosity, what would be its effect? According to the government it would have resulted in an additional reduction of 0.000045 degree Celsius of global warming to 2100. That effect is too small to be detected.
The billions that are needed to realize the plans of the government with regard to wind energy, do not figure in the national budget. Energy consumers will have to pay for them through their energy bills. Users now pay an average of 40 euro per month. That contribution will progressively increase to 63 euro per month in 2020. In addition, the Energy Agreement imposed a contribution of 36 euros per month on citizens. Together is about 100 euro per month. These expenditures have not been discussed in Parliament. This means that the usefulness and necessity of these measures have not been subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
The climate summit in Paris (December 2015) was meant to “save the planet”. But it will fall short of its own targets. If all participating countries would do what they have promised the temperature in 2100 will be reduced by only 0.17 degrees. Will participating countries live up to their promises? The sad experience with the Kyoto Protocol tells us that this isn’t necessarily so.
The climate discussion is very politicized. A French proverb says: ‘Du choc des opinions jaillit la vérité” (“The truth emerges from the clash of opinions.”). So far the partisans of the AGW hypothesis (AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming) have not been willing to engage in an open an frank dialogue. For example, the IPCC claimed in 2007 that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by warming in the year 2035. It proved to be an alarmist typo. Such a typographical error could have been regarded as a peccadillo. However, the Chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, dismissed the criticism of the Himalayas prediction as “arrogant” and “voodoo science.”
Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and Special Representative of the UN on climate change, said in 2007: “It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation.
The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act.” It basically says: “I have made up my mind, do not confuse me with the facts.”
Many scientists and non-scientists would like to suppress a debate on climate. IPCC chairman Pachauri is just one of them. Some scientists have lost their funding and even employment because of their climate skepticism. Other scientists are afraid to come “out of the closet”. Censorship looms large in the field of climatology, which is not conducive to balanced decision-making. This is even more harmful, since there is a lot of money involved.
But perhaps change is imminent. The Netherlands Physical Society (NVV) held a meeting at the KNMI (the Netherlands Royal Met Office) in De Bilt in October 2015 with the intention to draw up a common statement. What was the outcome of this meeting? Its chairman Jan van Ruitenbeek decided not to make any public announcement, because due to differences of opinion in formulating a common position, the outcome would haven been a vacuous compromise. Indeed, a show of hands to establish scientific facts is absurd. Even the IPCC itself admits that there is a variety of possible outcomes.
Thomas Henry Huxley, a nineteenth-century scientist, said: “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
The construction and installment of wind turbines costs a fortune. It is obvious that lobbies try to influence the outcome of the political decision-making process. The German TV channel ARD has criticized the unprecedented political influence of the wind energy lobby on government policy. According to the ARD, people who resist the installation of wind turbines are put under heavy pressure to give up their opposition.
All in all, this whole discussion is similar to a religious dispute between climate alarmists as believers and skeptics as heretics. Why do so many intellectuals take pleasure in predicting catastrophes? Is it because they relish attention by the media? Or has it anything to do with Christian guilt feelings?
Frits Bolkestein.
Source:
The author, Frits Bolkestein, was leader of the Dutch liberal party, minister of Defense and Eurocommissioner. He is a political ’eminence grise’ in the Netherlands.
Translation courtesy of Hans. H.J. Labohm
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So which indicates more ignorance: 1) belief in the power of CO2 to destroy or 2) the belief that renewables are the solution? That’s a tough call.
It’s a living and the politicians love it so it has legs. That is no small consideration theses days. Whoops the president is no longer a politician.
For more ammunition against environmental excesses, the thread author should read Aaron Wildavky’s book, But Is It True? A citizen’s guide to health and environmental issues. Published in 1995, it’s a classic–or should be. A used copy is only $4 on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/But-True-Citizens-Environmental-Health/dp/0674089227/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484948719&sr=1-3&keywords=but+is+it+true%3F
For they stood upon the steps of the temple and did prophesy mightily unto the Children of Israel and, behold, those things came not to pass. Let them now be stoned as false prophets.
These pseudo intellectuals all ignored the technological component to growth, which means growth is UNLIMITED. Take for example the processing power of computers, which means massive increases in standards of living from increasingly fewer resources involved in their manufacture. Or increases in steel strength which mean structures can be built using far less steel. Steel roofing that used to be 0.9mm thick is now 0.2mm thick for instance. Or substitution of materials which is promoted by the market mechanism – when one material becomes too expensive, it is substituted by something cheaper.
These “limits to growth” theories are about as flawed as climate models.
“this whole discussion is similar to a religious dispute between climate alarmists as believers and skeptics as heretics”
That may be true in the wider realm, but in here the opposite is the case.
I think of myself as a heretic and take some pride in it friend, but you I view as a believer. The fact that you are not banned here as most of us are at site where you can comment should be evidence of who are the indoctrinated ones.
What he was conveying was that the CO2 climate emergency is like a religion in that you either accept it unquestioning or you become part of the “problem”. There is much to be debated about the current warming phenomenon for decades to come. “Settled science” is being used as a cover-term for “ideological agenda”.
What caused the other half?
Lack of use of wood as a fuel, due to the use of fossil fuels instead, combined with improvements in farming which mean more food can be produced from less farmland, again thanks to fossil-fuel derived fertilisers.
I can find lithographs of hillsides in my area from the 1800s that were completely denuded, but are now dense forest. The reason? Electricity and gas.
AP,
You haven’t said where you see hillsides from.
In the eastern USA, say for example western Pennsylvania where I am from, many trees were cut (various reasons — timber for boats on the Ohio River being one) and many small farms established. At various times, these small farms were given up, as was my grandparent’s farm, and the fields reverted to forests (sometimes with help). The history of “the big cut” in PA is interesting. Timing varied in the eastern states.
Aye, and longer growing seasons. We are indeed ungrateful for the interglacial we enjoy and untrusting of the great architect.
“Why do so many intellectuals take pleasure in predicting catastrophes?”
Because it is exciting and provides a chance to be a hero or heroine!
Count me in on that. I see climate alarmism as causing real catastrophes for the actual environment and catastrophic damage to the world’s economies.
i post here all the time in order to be a heroine.
I remember the club of Rome very well. I read much of their material and was worried to some extent. After all smart people computer models. Who could doubt the science of it. The science was settled.
Of course it didn’t turn out how they predicted. I wrote a blog on this very topic which compared the model outputs of the club of Rome to actuals and to climate models.
Club of Rome Computer Models Vs IPCC Climate Scientist Computer Models The Club of Rome was a group of MIT, Harvard and other professors, industry experts etc who crafted a computer model of the world and predicted the … https://logiclogiclogic.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/club-of-rome-computer-models-vs-ipcc-climate-scientist-computer-models/
As the author of this essay has said, we have been dragged through these predictions of catastrophe may times in the past–more times than I even want to talk about. To the best of my recollection, they have all been proven false. And now this latest generation of catastrophe prophets are doing it again with this theory of CO2-induced climate catastrophe. And they of course run to govt to ensure that the rest of us are all dragged along for the the ride.
A note to all the alarmist trolls here at WUWT: Those who fail to heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
Let me make one point, not particularly important, but I’d like to clarify.
It concerns this bit “Two thousand years of Christianity has deeply implanted a sense of guilt and repentance in the psyche of Western man. We are guilty, so we deserve the disasters to which we are exposed. Unless we repent and follow the instructions of the prophets of doom.”
This is a talking point of non-religious social scientists … but self-negating. Only the non-religious hold this view — not the religious.
“Why do so many intellectuals take pleasure in predicting catastrophes? Is it because they relish attention by the media? Or has it anything to do with Christian guilt feelings?”
More likely, it’s adrenaline addiction The ineffectual dwells on the possibility of disaster, is horrified, and soon is decks-awash in adrenaline. Every time he revisits the issue, he gets another fix. Soon, he can’t go an hour without returning to it. He must tell other ineffectuals, and THEY get hooked. It’s related to rage, drama, drug, and alcohol addictions, pathetic conditions that ruin lives. And other people’s lives.
It’s not Christianity. It’s the opposite: The diversion from Christianity and the return to the oldest religion: worshipping nature. The human destroying nature, and therefore a disease that must be controlled. Promoting Gaia or ‘Mother earth’. The human responsible for all things that happen. Placing the human in the center. Telling that some people are better than others, because they ‘do something’ for nature. They ‘care’. Whatever that maybe. Even past ‘big’ politicians can cry for our future, our children, on tv nowerdays. They have a ‘message’. You are guilty. Snif snif.
I agree that a lot of churches have misused sins to slam people with, but Christianity is about the relief of guilt, to form a base you can build a life on. Telling that every human is a child of God, and that every Child can return to his father. Telling that no human is better than another.
The focus on guilt is Evil. Guilt leads to fear. Fear can be used to control a lot of useful idiots.
Just express an idea, promote it, let it spin. Let it get momentum, until it gets a critical (human) mass, and than the mass will move on it’s own, like a giant wave. But one day it will be over. The wave will slam on the coast, or taken over by a bigger wave, or will just fade away in the ocean. But every wave has the potential to do a lot of damage.
It’s my hope that Trump is the first sign of a ‘coast’ 🙂
You are correct. If you look at nature religions, the relationship between people and the spirits of nature is one of propitiation, appeasement and guilt. The nature gods or spirits must be mollified or they will take revenge by causing some form of misfortune on the miscreant humans who were not sufficiently worshipful or did not do the correct rituals or make the right offerings before cutting down a tree or killing a deer, etc.
Christianity is overall a very positive religion, offering an intellectual basis for the equality of all people, and the virtue of charity – disinterested love and support for others regardless of their circumstances – which is a form of love that did not exist in European societies prior to Christianity. As a Christian, I have suffered far less guilt than I did as a teenager in the 1970s traumatised by reading the Club of Rome threats and feeling guilty that my own existence was helping to destroy nature. Thank God I got over that
My first job on leaving school and before university was to help investigate some of the Club of Rome claims at the request of what was then known as the Rothschild Think Tank. I learned the DYNAMO language in which their model was written, so as to understand it – and it ran on our IBM 370 at Harwell. I had to punch out the cards myself, although at least the cardpunch was keyboard driven, unlike the hand punches I had used at school. In conjunction with a multidisciplinary team, we sketched out an alternative model of resources which allowed for such features as market prices spurring exploration and development, technical change, recycling and much else besides. I contributed to model design and attributes, and then coded it in FORTRAN and punched out 4 card tray’s worth of program and data. We fed it with the best data we could find, and concluded that the Club of Rome were unduly alarmist, and that there was no need of panic. Prof Wilf Beckermann’s book came out shortly afterwards: I always remember him pointing out that London would be six feet deep in horse manure had the transport trends of the first quarter of the nineteenth century continued on their exponential path….
It was a very valuable life lesson, because it taught me not to accept argument from authority. Nullius in verba.
But, indeed, London is at this juncture six feet, erm, pardon me, two meters deep in horse manure. Horse manure in the form of the Climate Change Act, as well as the residuum of EU regulations, atop the usual bureaucratic nonsense to be expected of a government that consists of ‘two cheeks of the same arse.’
This article is significant because it was published in a main stream weekly (Elseviers weekblad) and was written by an important politician from the main political party that is presently part of the coalition government in the Netherlands. This government supports the Paris Agreement and is very active in promoting wind and solar energy. Bolkestein’s skeptic position may help to sow a seed of doubt about CAGW within the party.
Yes, Elsevier is a rare exception in the media landscape in Holland. Frits Bolkestein, for a while now stepped down from his former political career, does talk freely from the sideline. But the deafening silence all these years from his governing VVD party vis a vis this CO2 madness and the monstrosity of this recent “Energieakkoord” along the lines of the German “Energiewende”, taxing and suffocating our economy with billions and billions for years to come, will need more repair than just some opportunistic signaling shortly before the coming elections. It will need a turnaround just like in Britain and the USA. We will wait and see.
Frits Bolkestein – the former EU Commissioner for the Internal Market?
Yes. He is an independent thinker and I respect his open attitude and political stance. In fairness to him, he was always clear about his position. I feel after his political career more in an intellectual context that wasn’t picked up by the mainstream media and neither did it translate into common sense political choices by the VVD party, now still in bi-partisan coalition with the socialist PvdA governing our country. If they change their position on this because of the nearby elections and the Brexit and Trump effect, they will have a lot of explaining to do.
Fabricate/inflate ‘The Problem’, cause ‘The (over)Reaction’, then score the big bucks selling ‘The Solution'(concentrating wealth in your hot little hands of course).
As old as P.T. Barnum
the third time the boy cried ‘wolf’ there really was one.
The god father of this terrible science direction was Paul Ehrlich. A critical review if his work is long past due.
“Many doomsday scenarios circulated and were emphatically propagated by the media. I mention a few. (1) Global famine was inevitable. (2) A cancer epidemic caused by pesticides would shorten our lives. (3) Deserts would extend by 2 miles per year. (4) The mad cow disease would kill hundreds of thousands of people. (5) Computers networks would break down because of the millennium bug. (6) Nanotechnology would run out of control. (7) Glaciers would disappear (although more than half of their reduction dates back to the pre-1950 period). All this did not happen.”
___________________________________________
All this did not happen –
Just don’t let that scam happen again!
Your comment is awaiting moderation:
Just a citation of what you already shared:
what’s up with you.
v’
emotional bond of the Germans with their forests. “Das grosse Waldsterben” caused panic:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=DzmGWPe8N4qSsgHr3rLIAg&q=emotional+bond+of+the+Germans+with+their+forests.%2C&oq=emotional+bond+of+the+Germans+with+their+forests.%2C&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3
Moreover, there are important industrial interests involved in investments that are supposed to combat global warming. But I suspect that these two causes, although true, do not offer the whole explanation. Two thousand years of Christianity has deeply implanted a sense of guilt and repentance in the psyche of Western man. We are guilty, so we deserve the disasters to which we are exposed. Unless we repent and follow the instructions of the prophets of doom.
____________________________________________
Uh – no.
What about Contergan injured, what about Veterans with posttraumatic stress syndrome or simply invalid.
Nothing to do with Christianity, be aware Jesus metaphors:
never overcome human ‘rationalizing, reasoning’ :
– with Contergan: there you got it, your mama should have know better. Not my fault you choosed such mother.
– with veterans: yes the money. And adventures overseas .