Claims defy parody, as alarmists become more tyrannical and their policies wreak havoc
Guest opinion by Paul Driessen
Climate alarmism dominated the Obama era and run-up to Paris. But it’s at least as bizarre, dogmatic and intolerant now that: President Trump pulled the United States out of the all pain/no gain Paris climate pact; the US EPA is reversing anti-fossil fuel programs rooted in doom-and-gloom climatology; America is producing and exporting more oil, gas and coal; developing nations are burning vastly more of these fuels; Poland is openly challenging EU climate diktats; and German, British Australian and other politicians are voicing increasing concerns about job-killing, eco-unfriendly “green” energy.
With trillions of dollars in research money, power, prestige, renewable energy subsidies, wealth redistribution schemes, and dreams of international governance on the line, the $1.5-trillion-per-year Climate Industrial Complex is not taking the situation lightly. Climate fear-mongering is in full swing.
Tried-and-true scare stories still dominate the daily news, often with new wrinkles tied to current events. The Winter Olympics were going to take “a huge hit from our warming planet,” the pressure group Protect Our Winters warned us (yes, it’s an actual organization). Of course, that was before fiendishly frigid conditions repeatedly postponed events and drove spectators from PyeongChang slopes.
But of course, bitter cold is “exactly what we should expect” from the global warming “crisis,” said Climategeddon expert Al Gore, who got a C and D in the only two science courses he took in college. It’s reminiscent of dire predictions that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2010 (or 2015 or 2025), and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” (until record cold and snow battered the UK a couple years later).
We’re likewise propagandized constantly with deliberate falsehoods about “carbon pollution.” We burn carbon, in the form of hydrocarbons and coal. In the process, we emit carbon dioxide which is not a pollutant. It is the miracle plant food that makes life on Earth possible.
Other standard scares ignore the innumerable, monumental benefits of carbon-based fuels – and blame these fuels and CO2 emissions for planetary warming (and cooling), rising seas, forest fires, and every major problem from malaria to rainstorms, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes.
A newly discovered danger, say a couple researchers, endangers green sea turtles. Planetary warming is causing up to 99% of turtle eggs to hatch as females. It won’t be long, perhaps just decades, until “there will not be enough males” to propagate the species. Some “30 years of knowledge” support this thesis.
That would take us all the way back to 1988, a decade before the 18-year global warming “hiatus” that was interrupted by the 2015-16 El Niño; a half-century since the Dust Bowl and record high planetary temperatures of the 1930s; 40 years after scientists were convinced Earth was about to enter a new little ice age; and some 750 years after the 300-year-long Medieval Warm Period. One has to wonder how sea turtles managed to survive such previous warm spells – and cold periods like the four-century-long Little Ice Age, since cold weather apparently churns out only male sea turtles.
Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton asserted that women “will bear the brunt of looking for food, looking for firewood, looking for the place to migrate to when all the grass is finally gone, as the desertification moves south” because of climate change. Wrong. Entire families will continue to bear these burdens because of anti-energy policies imposed in the name of sustainability and climate change prevention.
(For more fearsome forecasts, see The Warmlist, a no longer complete, but still entertaining compendium of some 800 horrors supposedly caused by “dangerous manmade global warming and climate change.”)
The constant consternation strikes many as ridiculous. But others have become true believers – and have committed to not having children, not taking showers, de-carbonizing, de-industrializing and de-growing developed countries, shutting off oil pipelines, and other futile actions that bring no earthly benefits.
Our planet has certainly been warming. Thank goodness for that, because the extra warmth lifted habitats and humanity out of the Little Ice Age and its chilly, stormy weather, greatly reduced arable land, short growing seasons and CO2-starved crops. Powerful, uncontrollable natural forces drove that temperature rise. Earth may now face dangerous Mann-made global warming and climate cataclysms concocted by computer models – but no “unprecedented” or “existential” human-caused dangers in the real world.
Question or challenge climate crisis orthodoxy, however, and you will be vilified and face RICO prosecutions, bogus slander and SLAPP lawsuits, censure or expulsion from your university, attacks for sponsoring museum exhibits, or even “four hots and a cot” in a jail or a faraway gulag.
Thankfully, there are excellent antidotes: books by climatologists Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels, Jennifer Marohasy, Tim Ball, political observer Marc Steyn and others; and websites like ClimateDepot.com, WattsUpWithThat.com, DrRoySpencer.com and Global Warming Policy Foundation.org, for example.
For a concise, yet comprehensive, and eminently readable lay guide to real climate science, geologist Gregory Wrightstone’s Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know may meet your needs. Its 123 pages are organized into two sections and 30 easily understood chapters, written in plain English and complimented by over 100 colorful charts, graphs, tables and illustrations, covering all the common climate issues, fears and myths.
The book is capped off by a handy list of 60 inconvenient facts that eviscerate alarmist dogma, and15 pages of references. As Lord Christopher Monckton’s says in his foreword, Wrightstone has succeeded “splendidly” in reliably distinguishing myths from realities in the climate debate.
The opening section devotes 54 pages to explaining greenhouse and climate basics, showing how carbon dioxide is huge in planetary life but minuscule on the climate front, skewering the myth of a 400 ppm CO2 “tipping point,” analyzing climate models versus real world measurements of global temperature, and showing why and how water vapor plays such a vital and dominant role in weather and climate.
Carbon dioxide, he notes, is essential plant food that makes forests, grasslands and crops grow faster and better, with less water, and thus able to feed more people from less land. Figure I-15 summarizes data from 3,586 experiments on 549 plant species and depicts how crop yields would increase and generate trillions of dollars in overall monetary benefits, if CO2 levels rose by 300 ppm. His analysis of the “hockey stick,” computer models and temperature predictions is equally illuminating.
Part II of Wrightstone’s book examines the many assertions and myths of a coming climate apocalypse, and demonstrates why they fail to meet basic standards of scientific evidence and integrity. The opening chapter demolishes the phony 97% “consensus” of scientists who supposedly agree that humans are now the primary cause of extreme weather and climate change, ushering in a catastrophic future. Subsequent chapters address famines, forest fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, melting ice packs, rising seas, polar bear populations, and other staples of climate alarmism.
“Ocean acidification,” he points out, is a term deliberately chosen to alarm people about an imaginary problem. Being honest, and saying seas might become very slightly less alkaline (have slightly lower pH levels) from more atmospheric and oceanic CO2 in the coming centuries, wouldn’t suffice. Worse, an oft-cited study ignored a full century of readily available data, and instead used computer models to fill in the contrived “gaps” on pH levels. As Wrightstone suggests, many people would call it Climate pHraud.
The bottom line? Scientists still do not understand the complexities of climate and weather. They still cannot separate human influences from the effects of powerful natural forces that have brought often profound climate changes throughout history. There is no evidence of a coming climate cataclysm.
Spending trillions of dollars – and condemning billions of people to expensive, insufficient, unreliable, land and raw material gobbling wind, solar and biofuel energy – is not just unnecessary. It is immoral.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy and environmental policy.
https://www.npr.org/2018/02/17/584494192/snow-making-for-skiing-during-warm-winters-comes-with-environmental-cost
The irony is that whilst slamming Deniers as anti-science they appeal to their followers in wholly emotional ways – dying polar bears, all female turtles, children not knowing snow etc etc.
I suspect that they themselves are emotionally convinced rather than intellectually convinced as well, and that is why they react with such strange fury to any questioning of their position.
But what if children never see a snow covered male sea turtle eaten by a polar bear?
Now you can just, jolly well stop that.
If Polar bears eat the lovely little turtles how will the world continue to be held up in space? It’s turtles all the way down as every sentient person knows. Gawd, some people just want to watch the world burn I swear.
It’s going to happen the polar bears are going to walk there on the islands of plastic.
That same fury that envelops all dogmatists when their shaky beliefs are questioned.
And yet they are not portrayed as tantrum-throwing children in the news media. Strange…
It all makes sense if you look at the totality of what they believe.
Warmists who post here often reveal themselves in off-hand comments – statements like, “I argue with a ‘conservative’ friend'” – the upshot, obviously, being that skeptics are, by definition, ‘conservative’ (with, of course, all the stereotypical attachments that go with that label).
A lot of skeptics ARE on the conservative side of the political aisle – largely because that’s where the resistance has formed. What warmists don’t seem to get is that THEY are almost exclusively Progressive – with ALL those years of presumptions and stereotypes built into their world view.
This is why Progressives have lost independents.
Bottom line – a skeptic may have a wide variety of political opinions that could be defined as either right or left – usually with some basis in simple common sense – and you likely couldn’t identify them simply by their position on Climate Change.
A warmist, however… well, I daresay I could accurately predict what their opinion would be on almost ANY issue. All l have to do is check the opinion page on the Huffington Post.
That’s the hive mind.
“A warmist, however… well, I daresay I could accurately predict what their opinion would be on almost ANY issue. All l have to do is check the opinion page on the Huffington Post.”
You are just like “them,” then. Opposite sides of the same coin. You see people as the labels you’ve made up for them.
The hive mind just loves to make broad generalizations about others.
One of the main reason the topic is so partisan is that the FF/energy propaganda was/is aimed at the right. That’s who they funded for decades, though maybe not directly. ‘Dr. Michaels,” for example, was apparently one of their spokesmen in 1991 (along with Sherwood Idso) according to the document here http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/ice-ad-campaign/. One propaganda plan talks about finding several scientists to “train” for media interaction. Who are they? How many did they train? It makes me wonder.
There are a core of a dozen or two that are tied to a few or several think tanks involved in the fight against AGW theory.
It was a brilliant scheme to make it partisan, not only because those on the right are more prone to this (mis)belief, but because once it became such a hugely divisive political issue, it could no longer be discussed rationally. And once scientists were robbed of their credibility (through the same propaganda), there was no reason to talk. Deniers/skeptics/contrarians say scientists lie. Science is corrupt. Perfect! Then you can believe only the science you want to believe. It’s not only convenient, it’s utterly un-scientific.
+1 Kristi
I especify that I am referring to the “you are just like them then” part. The rest is highly questionable.
Now that thar is funny, Kristi complaining about others having a hive mind.
Notice how Kristi just assumes that everyone should believe the propaganda she’s trying to feed us.
Kristi – our newest little troll-flake – I’m inclined to be patient with you.
No. We’re not ‘opposite sides of the same coin’. What you’re seeing is people opposed to the rigidly close-minded. It forces people into the opposite position. But the progressive, intolerant mold comes first. Period. In almost every case, the histrionic accusations have been coming from one side – demands for imprisonment, censorship, Nuremberg trials – the very label ‘denier’ deliberately concocted for it’s Holocaust associations – you don’t seem to feel the stones you throw, do you Kristi? Or better yet, you disassociate with those who do – putting yourself up on that high moral pedestal beyond all reproach.
ALSO – when you’re talking about demographics and world issues, generalizations are perfectly acceptable – and are only called out by those attempting the ‘I’m rubber and you’re glue’ argument, or avoid acknowledging the accuracy of those generalizations.
You also missed the crux of my point – one side IS ideology based. The other isn’t.
Then you actually have the nerve to call out the ‘scheme’ to ‘make it partisan.’ Well, only from the side that has consistently done so. Hence the effort to label anyone who opposes the issue as ‘conservative’ (with all the stereotypes that go with THAT label) – in your world it’s apparently just a presumption. But as far as skeptics go, NO, honey. The AGW resistance is genuinely grass-roots. Independent researchers or even common observers noting how alarmist claims failed to materialize, how data was changed, how MEASUREMENT of the data was changed – retroactively, how the press nearly unilaterally endorsed the projected dogma, and did their best to bury very obvious shenanigans. Then throw in the incestuous relations between news outlets, politicians, Hollywood, and academia.
Then you jump into the crap about funding. Gee, let’s see if you can find a funding mechanism for greenie propaganda. I’ll cede to Anthony Watts about the amount of funding he’s received to prop up his ‘propaganda’. if skeptic ‘funding’ makes up 1/1000 of ‘Big Green’ I would be frankly amazed.
Climate scientists have robbed themselves of their credibility with propaganda and cant.
I believe the science for which there is evidence, that can be verified, not because someone in authority tells me so. And it’s amazing how often they’re wrong.
My only suggestion to you is that you actually question your presumptions – or even the fact that you have them. I promise you that I have, and I guarantee that most people here have as well. The result has made a lot of us cynical – even angry. But that’s the price of awareness.
Mark W – No, I don’t at all expect you to listen to me. It would be foolish to expect that!
I’m not feeding you propaganda, I’m talking about the propaganda that has already been fed you.
Mark W – No, I don’t at all expect you to listen to me. It would be foolish to expect that! I’m not feeding you propaganda, I’m talking about the propaganda that has already been fed you.
Kristi – we ARE listening to you. Perhaps you should return the favor.
Joel,
You only play into the idea I have of the most vehement of deniers. What a lot of false assumptions! Weird.
Take a look at how Canada’s Federal Minister of Environment has equated misogyny with climate change skeptics:
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/catherine-mckenna-climate-denial-misogyny-seem-go-together/
This is beyond ridiculous.
Thank you Paul Driessen – very well written and sensible.
Global warming alarmism is a costly, destructive fantasy that is promoted by scoundrels and embraced by imbeciles.
Natural variation, the null hypothesis. explains climate well enough.
To prove that humanmade global warming is significant, one has to disprove the null hypothesis, and it has all happened in the past – before the advent of fossil fuels, climate was warmer AND colder, weather was gentler AND wilder, CO2 was higher AND lower – and this old world just kept spinnin ’round. 🙂
_________________________
“There is nothing new under the Sun.”
– Ecclesiastes 1:4-11
These boys are witting and unwitting fraudsters supported by a gaggle of mindless hobgoblins who are scientific tyros at best. Ignorant Trotskyists at worst.
Oops. Too quick with the post button . . .
The period before the Industrial Revolution was the Little Ice Age and that appears to be the benchmark for an imaginary global temperature above which we mustn’t rise more that 2deg C. If we do rise above 2deg then all kinds of horrible catastrophes will happen and nothing good will come of it.
Just those two major legs of the AGW platform are enough to show how cheezy this whole thing is. Choose the coldest period in a millenium as the optimum and make unsupported apocalyptic predictions while ignoring the benefits of our energy revolution.
Anybody with the ability to spot a political agenda that is milking “The Science” for all it’s worth is a “denier” and should be shut up, locked up and likely beheaded.
These boys are witting and unwitting fraudsters supported by a gaggle of mindless hobgoblins who are scientific tyros at best. Ignorant Trotskyists at worst.
Ah yes, and as Driessen says “In the process, we emit carbon dioxide which is not a pollutant. It is the miracle plant food that makes life on Earth possible.”
I can’t believe he is so stupid he can’t see that we are pouring CO2 into the atmosphere at a far greater rate than plants can consume it. To use your words, he has to be imbecilic or a scoundrel.
Plants currently love the world we have brought about – it’s warmer, wetter, and has a huge excess of that lovely CO2. They’re in plant heaven – but it’s starting to look hellishly hot and humid for me, where I am.
Jack – your message is unclear to me. Perhaps we agree – or disagree.
BTW, don’t worry about it getting a bit warmer – if you need to worry about something, worry about it getting a bit colder.
_______________________________________________
I wrote the following on this subject on 18Dec2014, posted on Icecap.us:
On Climate Science, Global Cooling, Ice Ages and Geo-Engineering:
[excerpt]
Furthermore, increased atmospheric CO2 from whatever cause is clearly beneficial to humanity and the environment. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2 deficient and continues to decline over geological time. In fact, atmospheric CO2 at this time is too low, dangerously low for the longer term survival of carbon-based life on Earth.
More Ice Ages, which are inevitable unless geo-engineering can prevent them, will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations on Earth to decline to the point where photosynthesis slows and ultimately ceases. This would devastate the descendants of most current [terrestrial] life on Earth, which is carbon-based and to which, I suggest, we have a significant moral obligation.
Atmospheric and dissolved oceanic CO2 is the feedstock for all carbon-based life on Earth. More CO2 is better. Within reasonable limits, a lot more CO2 is a lot better.
As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on Earth, I feel it is my duty to advocate on our behalf. To be clear, I am not prejudiced against non-carbon-based life forms, but I really do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. They could be very nice. 🙂
Best, Allan
I can assure you Allan – we disagree. It’s crazy to say we are CO2 deficient, look around you man – my garden is growing so luxuriantly I can’t keep up with it. There is no danger here for life, but there is danger for species – ours just one of them.
Jack – I am pleased your garden is growing, but that says nothing about whether increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing dangerous global warming, and it is clearly NOT. Climate is INsensitive to increasing CO2.
I have written about the vital issue of “CO2 starvation” since 2009 or earlier, and others including Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, have since written on this subject:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/moore-positive-impact-of-human-co2-emissions.pdf
Executive Summary
This study looks at the positive environmental effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a topic which has been well established in the scientific literature but which is far too often ignored in the current discussions about climate change policy. All life is carbon based and the primary source of this carbon is the CO2 in the global atmosphere. As recently as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glaciation, CO2 dipped to its lowest level in recorded history at 180 ppm, low enough to stunt plant growth.
This is only 30 ppm above a level that would result in the death of plants due to CO2 starvation. It is calculated that if the decline in CO2 levels were to continue at the same rate as it has over the past 140 million years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two million years from now and would slowly perish almost entirely as carbon continued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments. The combustion of fossil fuels for energy to power human civilization has reversed the downward trend in CO2 and promises to bring it back to levels that are likely to foster a considerable increase in the growth rate and biomass of plants, including food crops and trees. Human emissions of CO2 have restored a balance to the global carbon cycle, thereby ensuring the long-term continuation of life on Earth.
[end of Exec Summary]
Low CO2 means no photosynthesis, and that means the end of all carbon-based life on Earth. During the last Ice Age, which ended only 10,000 years ago, atmospheric CO2 was so low that photosynthesis slowed to a crawl – it was close to an extinction event. In the next Ice Age, which is imminent, or the one after that, or the one after that, we could see the end of carbon-based life on Earth – due to CO2 starvation.
Regards, Allan
Allan, I can bring you good news – there is no danger of life dying out through lack of CO2. Through the agency of our most admirable scientific community, we understand very well the physical chemistry of carbon, and the ramifications of that chemistry for the environment here on Earth. Science is way ahead of those who actively seek to misunderstand the immense body of knowledge society has chosen to build through its support of scientific research.
Naysayers are already irrelevant, we understand how carbon works, and we can work with it. With intelligent management of carbon in the atmosphere we may see the end of ice ages, may see an epoch of unprecedented climatic stability.
The other option is to ignore the lessons of science and go headlong into calamity. That seems to be the option you are advocating.
Jack – it is your heroes the global warming alarmists who are worried about catastrophic warming and associated wilder weather in the future – not me.
It must be obvious even to you that these alarmists have a perfectly negative predictive track record – every scary prediction they have made has failed to materialize. As scientists, they are utter failures.
It appears you have completely bought into the alarmists’ faith-based nonsense, without doing any of your own investigation to determine what is actually happening. You are just repeating global warming nonsense, which by now has absolutely no credibility,
I suggest you read up on the scientific method, pick up a few advanced science degrees and then study this subject for a few decades as I did, before i wrote anything on the subject.
In summary, there is no credible evidence that Earth is, or will, enter into a period of catastrophic manmade global warming. None. It is incumbent upon the warming alarmists to disprove the null hypothesis – that current climate is primarily the result of natural, not manmade causes – and they cannot do so.
All this and more has happened before in Earth’s history, long before the advent of fossil fuels – and there is nothing new under the Sun.
OK Allan, I’ve had enough of this – I’m out!
You say “it is [ ] the global warming alarmists who are worried about catastrophic warming and associated wilder weather in the future – not you.”
But that is my point – you blithely dismiss good science and prefer delusion. The whole point is – you should be alarmed! The evidence is mounting daily.
You repeat the nonsensical mantra that “there’s nothing new under the sun” when we know that the solar system was formed and has undergone immense non repeating evolution and will eventually die as a very different beast to what it is today. Apart from the periodicity caused by orbital motion, we might borrow a true saying of stock market investors ‘Past performance does not necessarily inform future performance.’ Scientists are doing their best to peer into the near future by giving first principle its due weight. The people on this site prefer the false comfort of believing in mantras about comforting but false cycles.
Goodbye Jack.
You apparently have no scientific competence and have drank the warmist kool-aid.
Some reading material is included below for those who are worried about very-scary global warming,
The hypothesis of “catastrophic manmade global warming” is already disproved by actual earth-scale data since ~1940, where atmospheric CO2 has increased while temperature has gone down, up and sideways.
The hypothesis of “catastrophic manmade climate change” is so vague it is unscientific – it is the hypo that increasing CO2 causes everything – warmer, colder, wetter, drier, windier, etc. etc. It is drivel.
CO2, “the miracle molecule”, aka “the destroyer of worlds” – actually the basis for life on Earth.
Regards to all, Allan
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF SIR KARL POPPER
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-85729-950-5_18
Sir Karl Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of science in the twentieth century and probably of all time. He proposed that a scientific theory could not be proved but could be disproved or falsified. He claimed that ‘It must be possible for a scientific system to be refuted by experience. A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is’ (Popper 1963).
RICHARD FEYNMAN ON THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD (1964)
at 0:39/9:58: ”If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”
At 4:01/9:58: “You can always prove any definite theory wrong.”
At 6:09/9:58: “By having a vague theory, it’s possible to get either result.”
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“EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS” Charles Mackay (1841)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
Quotations
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”
“How flattering to the pride of man to think that the stars on their courses watch over him, and typify, by their movements and aspects, the joys or the sorrows that await him! He, in less proportion to the universe than the all-but invisible insects that feed in myriads on a summer’s leaf are to this great globe itself, fondly imagines that eternal worlds were chiefly created to prognosticate his fate.”
“We go out of our course to make ourselves uncomfortable; the cup of life is not bitter enough to our palate, and we distill superfluous poison to put into it, or conjure up hideous things to frighten ourselves at, which would never exist if we did not make them.”
“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”
Jack, that’s called summer. It happens every year.
Jack, your garden would grow even better with more CO2, there’s a reason why nurseries pump the greenhouses with CO2, up to 1200 to 1500 ppm.
Jack, how pray did life on earth survive back when CO2 levels were above 5000ppm?
The fact remains that current CO2 levels are the lowest ever seen on this planet.
Thank god. I for one am sick to death of listening to people try to claim that a atmospheric CO2 level 1/3 as much as any botanist or greenhouse operator could tell you is what the majority of plants are evolved (or designed) for is more then plant need, and a danger to the whole planet.
The startling ignorance and arrogance of those like Jack, who preach the Climate Faith to us unbelievers while wilfully remaining blind to how incredibly wrong most of their nonsense is, is horrifying. How can anyone think that spouting talking points they know nothing about, that are usually wrong, and they don’t even know how to defend, are going to change anyones mind?
>¿<
I find it fascinating how the only evidence he presented for a claim that plants don’t need CO2 to be higher than it is now, is that his garden is doing fine.
Unfortunately that’s the level of scientific knowledge possessed by most alarmists.
“For a concise, yet comprehensive, and eminently readable lay guide to real climate science, geologist Gregory Wrightstone’s Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know may meet your needs.”
That reminds me of what WUWT does. Any aspect of climate science will get a thorough airing on this website.
I, personally, think we skeptics are winning. 🙂
Winning? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I live in Finland and we preach about CO2 and the supposed dangers of climate change all the time. I just went to the museum of natural history in Finland there were a lot of talk of today’s climate change and how it’s supposedly killing species every year. Although, naturally the museum didn’t give any examples or cite any sources. Just said that “according to some estimates”. Typical weasel words. Our biggest entertainment “science” magazine said that people who are skeptical of dramatic climate change, are not “real scientists”. We basically never hear the skeptic point of view, and our supposedly “objective” media never discusses these issues.
Trump may be president and a climate skeptic but he is not very well respected outside US and skeptic bubbles. And I can totally see why. We finally get a skeptic as US president and he happens to be typical populist politician spouting nonsense most of the time, appealing to people’s emotions, and winning the election by fearmongering and turning the whole thing into Kardashian show. Maybe people would take his skeptical views more seriously if he acted more intelligently and wisely.
I say we are winning when the world’s top climate scientists, the media and the politicians admit that the science isn’t settled and the reality is much more complicated than they expected.
If there is one thing that Donald Trump isn’t – is a politician. Something I suspect that got him elected in the first place
This ignores the fact that We are depleting fossil fuel resources at a fast pace, and that eventually we do have to switch to something else.
Fossil fuels, including coal fired with significantly improved HELE technology are reportedly good for at least another 400-500 years. In the meantime, major advances in safer, more reliable nuclear power generation (uranium & emerging Thorium powered plants) are well advanced with many on stream already (+400 globally) and latest Gen IV planned for around 2030.
That “reportedly good for 400-500 years” is unreal. At this time worldwide refinery runs are running about 82 million barrels of oil per day. That figure barely increases. The “oil production” figures you see running at 97 mmbopd are inflated with liquids we don’t consider crude oil and condensate. Thus a lot of what you think you see is a shell game. The fact is that we aren’t finding crude oil and condensate at sufficient rates to replace production. And a lot of what tgey show as reserves are ghost figures. For example, Venezuela’s heavy oil is booked at almost 1/5 of total world oil reserves. Those figures aren’t supported by anything. They are political numbers.
The renewables crowd keeps quoting the supposed competitiveness of renewables, and cornucopians keep pulling numbers out of the air to back an irresponsible position. Both sides are wrong.
Regarding nuclear power, it’s not safe to start building nuclear power plants in third world countries which have substandard safety cultures and can go very unstable. As it is, I’m starting to see Trump as sort of an unstable nutty character, so I really can’t say I would like to see nukes being built in Cuba, Madagascar, or Indonesia.
Almost everything I read, all the models, projections and strategies are flawed because they are based on wrong asumptions.
Natgas is a clean great bridge to the Molten Salt Reactor. MSRs are very safe. The $100 trillion spend planned for zero emission RE is insane…Save the world $90 Trillion by building safe MSRs not massively unsustainable RE: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/05/monumental-unsustainable-environmental-impacts/
The Case for the Good Reactor https://spark.adobe.com/page/1nzbgqE9xtUZF/
Molten salt reactors have a lot of promise. They also have several significant engineering challeges to overcome. A good overview is the MIT spinout Transatomic Power white paper. Available free from their website.
It’s very reasonable, unless you are one of those people who can’t (or won’t) understand the difference between proven reserves and actual reserves.
Coal can be liquified to replace oil or gasified to replace natural gas. To prepare for the day when those run out, money should be spent on research on alternatives (as Lomborg urges), and on pilot projects, not on pushing ineffective current versions into production.
“And a lot of what tgey show as reserves are ghost figures. For example, Venezuela’s heavy oil is booked at almost 1/5 of total world oil reserves. Those figures aren’t supported by anything. They are political numbers.”
OTOH, lots of reserves are under-stated for economic / political reasons.
fernandoleanme February 19, 2018 at 4:36 am
“This ignores the fact that We are depleting fossil fuel resources at a fast pace, and that eventually we do have to switch to something else.”
You are simply dead WRONG
In the past decade the US has developed shale oil by fracking ( and is the world leader) and it now exceeds US normal oil production 5.2 million barrels per day vs 4.9 million barrels per day. And the production is increasing every month. 20 years ago there were books written about peak oil. They were all garbage then and they are garbage now. The reason the world will never run out of fossil fuels is that they are for the most part produced by bacteria (not by the bones of dinosaurs which greenies believe). Conventional oil discoveries around the world have leveled off only because new well drilling has decreased because of depressed oil prices. Gasoline prices are still way too high because governments insist on taxing the hell out of it. In Ontario we pay 43% tax on a litre of gasoline. and now new carbon taxes are going to skyrocket the price of gasoline along with everything else In the past 15 years electricity prices have tripled around the world because of the greenie nonsense. The green revolution is the new religion. Instead of worrying about CO2 they should worry about the real problem of treating the world oceans as a plastic garbage dump. I am against pollution but CO2 is NOT a pollutant. The world needs more C)2. Plant life is optimal around 1000 ppm CO2 we are a long way off from that.
So what you’re saying is, let’s just all give up.
Let’s not use the resources at hand to help drag developing countries into the 21st Century whilst the developed world transitions to nuclear energy, and eventually fusion energy. Then, as time moves on, the newly developed, wealthy, educated, culturally sophisticated countries can abandon dwindling coal and oil reserves in their transition to nuclear power.
Half the problem with this entire debate is the distortion of time. Sea levels won’t rise in an enormous tsunami, swathes of land won’t be torched overnight and hurricanes won’t devastate the world at the click of a switch. Oil, gas, shale products and coal won’t fall off a cliff tomorrow.
Everything in the debate is a gradual transition. Human nature is adaptive; we were once an almost entirely nomadic race until agriculture was developed, over hundreds of years. Like GW it didn’t happen overnight.
The other half of the debate is fear of change, perhaps by the committed agriculturist community, who have transitioned into sophisticated urbanites living in fear of losing their seaside and riverside prime properties. What would a nomad do, pack up and move to a more favourable site as climate changed the living conditions of his ‘static’ site.
And fear of change is probably the most incomprehensible and irrational fear as it brings about so much opportunity.
Change provides the opportunity for natural wealth distribution. The brave strike out, they develop their own products and services old money is willing to pay for. It’s how America grew. Perhaps the greatest example of peaceful wealth distribution the world has ever known.
So we save the planet by not using fossil fuels. And as the wealthy elite blast off in their spaceship to a new planet, as ours is engulfed by the sun, a voice pipes up and asks, ‘why did we leave our planet full? Why didn’t we use every resource available to ensure we has a fleet of spaceships for everyone. After all, it’s just going to get roasted by the sun anyway.’
Fern,
Nothing is ignored.
My car is getting old and worn out. I know I will need to get a new one soon. The infrastructure exists that allows me to buy a new car within a day of knowing that I need it. As such I think it would be very wasteful to go buy a new car today, and to park my existing old usable car in the side yard because it will someday not be useful.
And it would be completely asinine & idiotic to buy a new type of car that only runs three days a week, such that I need to keep and maintain the old car as a back-up; essentially paying for two cars when I can only use one.
with respect to fossil fuels, we won’t run out without warning. it will not be a precipice. the infrastructure exists that allows for common sense, phased replacement. when necessary.
Lemmings aren’t really hard wired to jump into the sea; some might but not all. You have a choice too.
The latest estimate is that we have about half-a-millennium of fossil fuels available which should give any decent scientist more than enough time to research and develop what will be needed to replace them.
PROVIDED they don’t all vanish up their own ***holes chasing the chimera of “climate change” and PROVIDED we don’t impoverish our great grandchildren and their great grandchildren by falling for the wholly mendacious eco-luddite arguments about CO2 and every other “kemikle” they can get away with demonising.
As Sheikh Yamani said 40+ years ago, “the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone, and what we might call the ‘Oil Age’ will come to an end before we run out of oil.” But he was working on the assumption that we would be sensible enough not to allow an obsessed minority to determine energy policy and to prostitute science to their own anthropophobic ends.
That’s wrong. See my comment above.
Just believing something to be wrong isn’t sufficient to prove it is wrong.
Since we began using crude oil, mankind has consumed an estimated 1 trillion bbls. Most estimates put remaining crude oil reserves towards the 2 trillion bbl mark so clearly we still have plenty of oil left. More speculative figures for the total global crude oil resource cite numbers like 10 – 16 trillion bbls.
I would hasten to add that much of the latter may not be recoverable, certainly not with today’s technology, but we are pretty smart when it comes to figuring out ways to get stuff we need. It’s also worth noting that, historically, recovery from oil fields languished in the range of ~35%. In other words, a field was considered depleted and abondoned with about two-thirds of the original oil in place (OOIP) left in the ground so there is huge prize for those who can figure out how to maximise recovery, even from old, defunct oil fields. Recovery from some fields, using improved methods, can exceed 50%………the North Sea’s Forties field currently boasts >60% recovery……but this depends on geology, the characteristics of the oil plus various reservoir (and political) factors. Recovery of natural gas, on the other hand, typically reaches 70-80% of the hydrocarbon in place and, as we should all know by now, we have vast amounts of natural gas available. Conservatively, we are looking at a probable 300 year supply of natural gas and, as I’ve pointed out before, that’s without considering access to natural gas hydrates which represent a far larger resource that the gas in conventional reservoirs and unconventional (shale) deposits.
So, in a nutshell, we have huge quantities of hydrocarbons on this planet and, if we continue to be smart, we’ll use them to provide us with cheap, widely-accessible and progressively-cleaner energy until they become uneconomic or until something better comes along.
One final point about your production vs refinery comparison. When we process crude oil, we get about 7-8% volumetric increase. This is thanks to the miracle of cracking which “cracks” heavy crude and can also add hydrogen to it, increasing the yield & thereby transforming a marginally-useful product (think Venezuelan crude) into motor gasoline, diesel and other essential fuels & feedstocks. So, from 1 bbl (42 gals) of crude oil, we get about 45 gals of useful products! Technology is truly amazing!!! : ]
Talk about demonizing!
The Other is Nothing to you, eh? There is no human there, it’s all a caricature.
“Anthropophobic ends.” What a lot of empty words, describing a fiction – and a boring one at that, so predictable is it.
I’m guessing Kristi has finally blown her last gasket. In the past her gibberish at least made partial sense.
Today, nothing.
I also find it funny, that Kristi, the lady who specializes in demonizing those who don’t agree with her fantasies is now complaining about demonization. Especially since it only exists in her mind.
SJWs always project. If they claim others are doing something bad, you can be 99% sure they’re doing it themselves.
Yes, nuclear obviously and they keep scuppering that as well.
Fernando, Yes. We will. Eventually. We can switch to other forms of energy slowly over the coming centuries as replacements that actually work are developed. To compare, the World Bank is refusing to fund building of coal power plants next to coal mines in third world countries, when that is literally all that they have to use.
That’s the problem with these scare tactics. Extreme exaggeration causes people to misidentify the best solutions and choose options that are clearly inferior.
Another way to state this is that our energy future will look nothing like what the renewables disciples are preaching now in even 100 years. The technologies we develop to provide energy will far surpass renewables, making today’s investment in renewables a negative return. The poor suffer the most from this.
John Harmsworth
Succinctly illustrated.
Renewables are an exercise in futility. A long abandoned technology, by people far less educated, but far more intelligent than our alarmist community.
‘I can grind wheat for flour, but only when the wind blows, else I starve’.
Nothing has changed.
‘……eventually we do have to switch to something else.’
Depends what you mean by ‘eventually’.
If ‘eventually’ is tomorrow, we’ve got a big immediate problem.
But if it’s in 100 years much less so.
Right now I think the outlook is about 200 years away.
I’m content to let my great-great-great-great grandkids start worrying about it.
Depends on the fuel. Crude oil production peaks around 2025,including unconventional (API<10, porosity <5%, permeability <10 millidarcies). Conventional peaked ~2008. Given the gamma function of TRR, we don’t run out for a century but prices will rise substantially. Thanks to fracking, more than a century to peak for natgas. Including all coal ranks and ‘dirt grades’ (sulfur and ash) perhaps 200 to peak although there are serious studies predicting it before 2100.
You may want to ‘stop talking and start reading’ for just a bit. Memes like peak oil have been around for over 100 years. Try reading The Club of Rome. You are right that eventually we will deplete reserves of fossil fuels, as we know them to be recoverable today, but you are pitifully wrong to dismiss the truth and the logic of those that have pointed out the logical future of energy sources and reserves we have yet to imagine.
I wonder what you would have said if, 5 years ago someone told you that the US would be producing more oil 5 years from now than it did when US production last peaked. Just one technology, fracking, created that miracle, and so far, just in the US. How much ‘new oil’ do you suppose is yet to be ‘discovered’ and become recoverable in the rest of the world using this technology?
According to the experts we should have run out of oil decades ago.
It’s like global warming, they just recalculate the date of disaster every time one of their predictions comes up wrong.
Here is your answer quoted from Wikipedia which the greenies believe is their bible. So if you cant believe the bible what will the greenies have to believe in? In the case of shale oil reserves even a non greenie like me agrees with Wikipedia. True to form the greenie that wrote this couldnt resist to qualify it by saying that the technology was too expensive to develop. he quoted the US Department of Land Management . “In March 2011, the United States Bureau of Land Management called into question proposals in the U.S. for commercial operations, stating that “There are no economically viable ways yet known to extract and process oil shale for commercial purposes.”]He wrote that in 2011. Since then shale oil has exploded in production levels. The head of United States Bureau of Land Management must have been a greenie.
Wiki states:
“Global technically recoverable oil shale reserves have recently been estimated at about 2.8 to 3.3 trillion barrels (450×109 to 520×109 m3) of shale oil, with the largest reserves in the United States, which is thought to have 1.5–2.6 trillion barrels (240×109–410×109 m3)”
Soooooooooo it looks like a long time before we run out.
Ah, but the Peak Oilers are quick to point out that shale oil isn’t REAL oil, so it doesn’t count. 😉 So their predictions haven’t really failed yet.
Kind of like how the Population Bombers claim Ehrlich wasn’t wrong, he just didn’t anticipate how much agricultural productivity would increase because of fossil fuels. Which we will run out of any minute, because of Peak Oil. And if we don’t we boil, because of Climate Change.
See, all the hobgoblins are related.
WE’RE DOOOOOMED
○¿●
We have hundreds and hundreds of years worth of oil, gas and coal.
I’ll let the people who live 500 years from now, who will use technologies we can’t even imagine, deal with that problem.
In the meantime we’ll create the wealth that will enable people to create the technologies to solve those problems.
MarkW
That’s exactly one of the key points that the Left doesn’t get. Wealth is a resource. Creating it now makes it available in the future to create what is needed. Destroying wealth by building and using inefficient energy infrastructure destroys wealth, crippling our future.
The Left and radical environmentalists are the same math and logic challenged people. Artistic types orbit around this mental territory as well, where “feelings” trump facts. We all want a clean , healthy environment. The best way to achieve that is to keep looking for better ways to achieve our goals. Renewables isn’t a better way. Cheap energy is the most important tool we have to build the future. Throwing away our tools is not the way forward!
And we are EXPLOITING that resource to make society richer.
From the History Repeats Itself file: You may want to ‘stop talking and start reading’ for just a bit. Memes like peak oil have been around for over 100 years. Try reading The Club of Rome. You are right that eventually we will deplete reserves of fossil fuels, as we know them to be recoverable today, but you are pitifully wrong to dismiss the truth and the logic of those that have pointed out the logical future of energy sources and reserves we have yet to imagine.
I wonder what you would have said if, 5 years ago someone told you that the US would be producing more oil 5 years from now than it did when US production last peaked. Just one technology, fracking, created that miracle, and so far, just in the US. How much ‘new oil’ do you suppose is yet to be ‘discovered’ and become recoverable in the rest of the world using this technology?
And yet we keep finding more “fossil fuel” despite all the restrictions on areas that are allowed to be explored,
let alone drilled or mined.
The “need” for sustainables is artificial. Burn that tree ring and the market will find the replacement that actually works.
fernandoleanme February 19, 2018 at 4:36 am
This ignores the fact that We are depleting fossil fuel resources at a fast pace, and that eventually we do have to switch to something else.
——————-
What is exactly a “fast pace”?
Market driven forces may eventually replace fossil fuels. What exactly is your point?
Why replace cheap, reliable energy for something else now?
It doesn’t make any sense, and globally harms the countries that adopts this economic suicide solution.
Fossil fuels definitely seem to be a “graceful decline” type resource. They are not going to suddenly run out one day, they will just get gradually more expensive over time as it gets more costly to recover them. That means economics will drive whatever replaces them without massive government interventions.
Indeed, what people don’t understand is that markets will take care of it, just like they have done many times in the past. If oil starts to run out, it will become expensive, which means that it will become valuable, which encourages people to find more of it, or find alternatives. And for the consumers expensive means that it will encourage people conserve that resource. That is what happened with coal and copper and numerous other resources. If oil is cheaper than the alternatives then we should use it. We don’t need authoritarian world government full of well meaning people. Government is a monopoly and without competition it’s often wasteful and inefficient.
“government full of well meaning people”
You are more generous than I.
Great article and some very useful links. Thank you.
When the discourse about any topic becomes one that pits “reason” against “dogmatic faith” — or “dogmatic faith” against “reason,” if you prefer, can “reason” ever have a chance of convincing “faith” that is much greater than a snowball’s chance in Lake Okeechobee?
If, for whatever reason, fossil fuel energy is removed from our energy menu, do you reckon the re-institution of institutionalized slavery would take very long to happen?
Looks like the alarmists at Amazon are not happy with ‘Inconvenient Facts’. From the Kindle version of the book on Amazon:
Item Under Review
This book is currently unavailable because there are significant quality issues with the source file supplied by the publisher.
The publisher has been notified and we will make the book available as soon as we receive a corrected file. As always, we value customer feedback.
I don’t know why you’d infer that Amazon is full of alarmists. Bezos’s only interest is in how much cash he can bring in.
If a submission is coded incorrectly or uses the wrong software, that may be a problem. Amazon is specific about the format of the electronic files it accepts and the word processing software. An alternative digital publisher is Kobo, and there are several other digital outlets not connected to Amazon.
However, if you’re self-publishing, it’s better to present it in both print and digital format, or if you suspect foul play, find a publisher who is more friendly to your needs.
I’m sure this is merely a technical problem with the $9 Kindle version. Amazon has published lots of climate-skeptic books.
Ditto. I had trouble with one of my Kindle book editions and just asked them for help with the problem. It was quickly resolved.
I agree that “Climate alarmism is still bizarre, dogmatic, intolerant.” However, I will add that humankind harbors many fears, superstitions and areas of intolerance as facets of our survival instincts as living creatures.
Does anyone know why this article has been removed?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/14/how-a-descent-into-climate-fanaticism-wrecked-a-family/
It was so helpful!
They probably threatened to sue
Not good to inform nut-cases where energy infrastructure might be attacked ? Best to be careful ?
This is The Orwellian Environment That Gave Us CAGW; Identity Politics and Consensus Don’t Belong in Science
To most people, Orwell, Rand, Vonnegut, Golding, and Huxley offered a warning – to Progressives, however, they offered an instruction manual. We are witnessing the Dystopia develop right before our eyes, and the ones responsible can’t be more obvious.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/this-is-the-orwellian-environment-that-gave-us-cagw-identity-politics-and-consensus-dont-belong-in-science/
Orwell, Rand, Vonnegut, Golding, and Huxley were just describing, pretty accurately, their current world, and of course it didn’t change that much.
They became famous because putting it in a pretended fiction allowed it to be read. We don’t even know of those who tried to expose the world as it was without the veil of future. Rand for sure tried, and it didn’t work. such work surely existed just as much as “Animal Farm” without the “animal” veil existed, but we don’t know of them. Truth is most of the time unbearable and unread.
Clinton asserted that women “will bear the brunt of looking for food, looking for firewood, looking for the place to migrate to when all the grass is finally gone, as the desertification moves south” because of climate change. Wrong. Entire families will continue to bear these burdens because of anti-energy policies imposed in the name of sustainability and climate change prevention.
_——–_——————-
Please suggest how you will get affordable power to remote villages. What will they use the power for? Who is going to provide the clean electric cookers, the fridges, the computers? How will they pay $0.10 to cook the family meal.using electricity. Who will pay the $0.20 for refrigeration running costs per day. Who will pay for the grid wiring to support small villages? Put the thermal generators near the remote villages?
Where will they find the water to enable thermal generators to operate when they do not have enough to drink?
Are you going to suggest move population to the coast where thermal stations can be built. Are you suggesting that the people should be put in factories run by this cheap power making cheap goods for the west?
Actually, yes. If we allow them to develop, they will create factories. They will become better. They will choose a superior form of life with better healthcare and lighter workload. Africa is held back by corruption, war, and excessive aid. There is a reason that they are poorer than any of the South Asian countries that were ravaged by war not fifty year ago.
As for the rest of your rant, it’s a matter of logistics. That is something local planners can handle. Outsiders attempting to micromanage will only make things worse.
Ben of Houston February 19, 2018 at 6:05 am
Actually, yes. If we allow them to develop, they will create factories. They will become better. They will choose a superior form of life with better healthcare and lighter workload.
_____
No they won’t. No external investors are going to invest in factories in a politically unstable Africa, and neither will locally funded African entrepreneurs.
“Clinton asserted that women will bear the brunt of looking for food, looking for firewood, looking for the place to migrate to when all the grass is finally gone, as the desertification moves south because of climate change.” Purely putrid climate change garbage along with the obligatory feminist nonsense.
I live in rural Western Canada. Cold winters, thinly populated and it it was subsistence agriculture a hundred years ago. Now even remote farms have power, gas, satellite tv and internet. Productivity is higher than ever. No aid was involved. We achieved this ourselves.
There is another factor. At various points in our development we sold bonds that greatly accelerated our development. The bonds were sold to people with excess wealth. The awful 1%. I will take this opportunity to thank them for their investment.
If you think this formula doesn’t work in the third world, please explain why. If corruption and oppressive elites and lack of rule of law is the problem ,I fail to see what paying triple for unreliable power will do to help.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe North Korea would be paradise if only they tripled the cost of power and made it even less reliable.
2/19/18 6 am MDT you CAN’T buy this book on Amazon! “Item is under review”
‘under review’? Here’s what I found on Amazon for the print copy:
Buy new $16.57
Temporarily out of stock.
Order now and we’ll deliver when available. Details
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Sounding a false alarm bell is a bad idea.
That’s just a technical problem with the Kindle version.
The subject defines religion, especially fundamentalism, that simple people prefer easy, fearful and emotional belief in as their justification to belong to a bubble belief tribal group, in preference to harder individual understanding and reason. Indeed they may not have the foundation to understand, hence are suckers for any pseudo science religion. Works every time for fraudulent power seekkers who want to control and exploit the wannabe zealots who chant the dogma for the greenpriest and other religions that tolerate no questioning of their phoney beiefs/pseudo science..
This well know reality is not the problem.
I suggest the majority of those without the necessary formation prefer their irrational beliefs to rational fact.
The problem is how to communicate with such people in any way that will allow their beliefs to be questioned?Above the level of primitive and irrational human emotional responses to ignorant fear and the received power of the tribal herd mentality and the justification this gives then to attack the individuals who question their beliefs with facts, because they cannot debate them on the facts. It is easy for the powerful to plant fraudulent beliefs and exploit such people through them, because they prefer to live that way.
Perhaps the answer is an emotional message to the contrary, that is something something the more rational here might miss? How do you deprogram a climate change zealot?
Simple” start with taking all modern conveniences away from him. Give him a year to live in the ‘natural’ way (no modern conveniences including plumbing, medicine, heat and cooking, period) and see how long he lasts.
Exactly right, Sara.
Again, see Clancy’s last 50 pages of “Rainbow Six”. Even without getting book, tune in to “Nked and Afraid” for a few shows and watch what people do when deprived of ordinary conveniences and thermostats for their HVAC. Even so-called outdoor folks have problems. You don’t even to need to go back as far as they do in the TV show or Clancy’s “solution”.
I think we need a board game, maybe, that shows the results of reverting to the 17th century technology and way of life in the “developed” countries. There are numerous countries that are still living like we in the U.S. did back in the 16th century, and Brian’s observations about “fundamentalism” seems to show the real problem. But it ain’t just “religion”, although there are some good examples of at least one religion that could the country doomed to a meager way of life for centuries past and into the future.
As far as arguing with a religious “creationist”, you cannot win. The Creator may have “created” all the layers of rocks and such with dinosaur bones alongside human tools and bones from eons ago, Oooops, figure a half dozen years ago. Likewise, climate effects of El Nino and volcanoes are in the noise level compared to the effects that all the evil gas we humans are emitting for the last 150 years or so. After all, the science is settled and 97% of the scientists agree.
Gums opines…
I agree, Gums, but I send them into a habitat based entirely on 12th century housing, when chimneys were first developed.
Up until the very early 19th century, a closed stove (what we take for granted now) did not exist. Food was cooked in the fireplace. That includes bread being baked in what would now be considered a countertop oven – an enclosed container – eggs being cooked in a pan near the fire in the fireplace, the roast (for the week’s meals) being turned on a spit with the drip pan under it in front of the fireplace. We can see kitchens in ancient settlements such as Pompeii that have a commode in the kitchen next to the food prepping place, and no, there was no sewage treatment, period. It all just went down a hole into a cesspit under the house.
I do not think that any CAGWer, Warmian or ‘bubble belief tribal group’ could manage it for even a week, not at all. They would have to be willing to give up everything they take for granted. I do not think they could do it for more than two days.
Everything that these very ignorant people take for granted now came into existence some time within the last 250 years, and the more modern stuff like electronic toys that they prize are a product of the last 10 years. And they’d have to give up all of that.
Some 15 or more years ago there was a show on public tv here in the US called “1870 House” or something to that effect. What it involved was several “contestants” (this being public tv there was no prize money) who had to live in a late 19th century home AND they could only make use of technologies that were available at that time. I can remember the wife having all kinds of grief just trying to keep the house clean without any electric appliances. And she just about went bonkers when she couldn’t get her hair clean with what passed as shampoo back then. The bottom line was that the people who had to live that way found it to be very difficult and at the end of the trail couldn’t wait to get back to modern civilization.
IMO having to live like that would cure probably 95% of all fossil fuel haters! It’s too bad that there isn’t some really effective way to educate people (especially young people) as to how hard life was before the industrial revolution (and especially after the time where electricity in homes was common).
Ah! How to get the soap out of your hair, when you’re used to using shampoo, a completely different surfactant that rinses clean. I love that part of the REAL world of inconvenient old-fashioned stuff.
When you wash your hair with soap instead of shampoo, the ONLY way to get it out of your hair in the rinse is to use a vinegar rinse after the soap is rinsed out. It’s part vinegar and partly water: 1/2 to 4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in 8 ounces of water, mixed and poured through the wet hair. If you have dry hair, use the lower amount, if oily hair, use the higher amount, but experiment to see what works best for your hair.
White vinegar is a great solution for cleaning furniture, along with furniture polish made with beeswax. 1/2 cup of white vinegar mixed with a 1/2 gallon of warm water will do the job, just don’t get the wood soaking wet. It’s meant to clean it, not flood the wood.
The “reality” TV show was on the U.S. PBS channel and was very interesting. You can buy a CD for the thing, but ain’t worth the $$$.
Some of the “families” looked great at the beginning but faded out as things went along. A few did great considering what they had to endure, especially once the summer ended. They were graded by some folks outta university as to whether thay would make it thru the winter. Oh yeah, no global warming yet and it gets nasty up there after November.
The scenario was based upon the “wagon train” travel to some of the northern Rockies like Montana/Idaho/Wyoming. So was neat to see what they brought. Biggest surprise to me was how the family from California’s suburbia adapted and the young ladies went back home and talked about how they wanted to get back to the “wild west” ( but with their hair blowers!!)
Gums sends…
Top Worldwide Scams and Lies
1) The idea of a supreme being
2) Man made (anthropogenic) global warming
3) CFC’s cause ozone holes. They are a minor cause compared to natural gases in the atmosphere. Ozone production varies over the earth atmosphere.
4) Dark energy and dark matter
5) The belief that digital music is better than analog. Digital music in reality is only a sampling of analog music.
6) Candles are harmless. They actually put billions of soot particles into your lungs.
7) Global poverty can be eradicated . All the world’s money supply leaves only $10,000 for each individual. That is nowhere near enough for individual retirement.
8) DDT and cancer. It was later shown to be harmless.
9) Acid rain is very damaging. The effects are very minimal.
10) Cell phone towers and cancer. No causation has been proved.
11) Statin drugs are necessary for heart patients. The side effects far outweigh any minimal benefit.
12) The belief that non-nuclear green energy can completely replace fossil fuels. Nuclear fission power will still be needed because wind and solar are intermittent commodities. Nuclear fusion will turn out to be impossible.
13) The idea that homosexuality is a choice or a disease.
14) Communism as an ideal society. In practice it only works with a dictator. 100 % socialism is impossible because there is no private wealth to pay for election campaigns.
15) The promise that any one new politician can radically change things. The only way that radical changes can occur are through dictatorships.
16) The belief that stock market regulators can stop insider trading.
17) The numerous fraudulent medical cure alls . Acupuncture is one of these.
18) Situps are good for you. They actually damage the spine.
19) The belief in any one of the more than 1000 conspiracy theories circulating on the internet
20) The belief that professional wrestling is real. Vince McMahon the president of WWE admitted in court that it was staged.
21) Large bank and financial firm bailouts will resolve a country’s fundamental financial flaws.
22) Governments can protect you against Bubbles and Ponzi schemes
23) Chiropractors can cure your aching back. Manipulative adjustments just bring on arthritis and inflammation.
24) The idea of a Santa Claus
25) Astrology tarot cards and palm reading can predict the future
26) The idea of free will. In actuality the brain creates an illusion of the self which actually doesnt exist.
27) Crime doesnt pay. For a counterpoint to this just examine places like southern Italy where most of the assets are owned by Mafia figures.
28) The belief in UFOs
29) The flat earth hypothesis.
“18) Situps are good for you. They actually damage the spine.”
Could you provide more info on that—ideally with a link. I’ve suspected something of the sort myself.
It really is fascinating how some people declare that anything they don’t understand to be a sc@m.
28) UFO’s definitely do exist. I’ll bet you my $5000 to your $20 and we will let the readers of this website vote on the logical proof that we both provide (about a page of narrative/logic proof). Half the pot goes to the website owner ….
Farmers and growers have for decades pumped carbon dioxide into greenhouses to enhance plant growth. Most indoor growers have CO2 between 800 and 1200 ppm. Some growers have used closer to 1500.
(Maybe they just haven’t heard about the “tipping point.”)
Whenever someone like Al Gore claims that some particular climate effect is “exactly what was expected,” they should be required to supply proof of that “prediction”- when and where it was made. In most cases it doesn’t exist.
You don’t get to bet on the horse after the race is run.
You think this will embarrass them? You are wrong
We had a Smith a week ago, who, when asked proof of prediction of the pause, produced a paper by known fakers of data where those liars claimed that the prediction was actually here, provided you go through some analysis of the data,
They are fine Texas Sharpshooters, apt at painting target right where some bullet fell.
“A newly discovered danger, say a couple researchers, endangers green sea turtles. Planetary warming is causing up to 99% of turtle eggs to hatch as females. It won’t be long, perhaps just decades, until “there will not be enough males” to propagate the species. Some “30 years of knowledge” support this thesis.”
A perfect example of the decay of the scientific method. The farce has now been going on as long as “The Mousetrap” which opened in London November 1952. This was the time Gilbert Plass was working with equipment like this;
http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1952/
to publish, in 1953, “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change”.
http://www.nndb.com/people/365/000275537/
As a consequence we now have an entire generation of scientists whose lives work is predicated on the veracity of the Global Warming Narrative. It has been observed of people who have bought a fake that the more they have paid for it, the less willing they are to doubt its provenance.
Even if their work is only tangential to the issue, however intrinsically, sound its value is vested in the cause.
Without the climate catastrophe it, and they, are worthless. No wonder they double down and resist the scepticism which should be their role.
They are like Wordsworths Sir Lancelot;
“His honour, rooted in dishonour stood.
And faith, unfaithful, kept him falsely true”.
Mt. Sinabung in Sumatra erupted again, this time sending an explosive volume of ash skyward to 16,000 feet. The first eruption a few weeks ago was not a one-shot deal.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/photos-indonesiasmount-sinabung-erupts-spews-towering-ash-cloud
I think volcanism is increasing in small increments, which will have a profound effect on the entire planet and it is being ignored as a factor. There are equally powerful volcanoes everywhere, some of them sitting on plate boundaries, that have been dormant/inactive for centuries and even millenia, which are showing signs of coming back to life.
This is all being ignored. Not a good thing to ignore what is right under your feet.
Check out the Emergency and Disaster Information Service (EDIS). Updated every 5 minutes.
The Ring of Fire is quite apparent.
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
When the sun sleeps the world erupts, this is part cause of the cooling when the sun is quiet.If our sun has another quiet cycle after this one our planet may get more angry.
“…The opening chapter demolishes the phony 97% “consensus” of scientists who supposedly agree that humans are now the primary cause of extreme weather and climate change, ushering in a catastrophic future…..”.
Ummm, I’ve been led to believe by a certain Rob Bradley (who appears to be in the alarmist camp) that there is no catastrophic element in man-made global warming. He gave me a pretty hard time about it in the earlier post about Michael Mann’s AAAS award.
As we all know, the alarmists are never, never ever wrong. So Paul, you must be wrong about the catastrophic part. LOL.
The “Faith-Based” Science; CAGW
Followers of the “Faith-Based” Science of Global Warming are worshiping to a false idol and being deceived by a false prophet. Just recently the now discredited American Association of for the Advancement of Science awarded the Temple of CAGW’s High-Pharisee Michael Mann a distinguished award. The award is blasphemy and an affront to all believers in … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/the-faith-based-science-cagw/
I love that STOP CLIMATE CRIME sign the guy is holding, all the while he heats his home, drives a car, uses electricity, wears clothes made of oil derived products, etc. what a hypocrite.
Climate alarmists have issued themselves licenses to be hypocritical. They don’t have any obligation to practice what they preach. Not having to explain themselves or answer for their hypocrisy must be very convenient for them.
It’s because they take the time to go to rallies such as this that they are entitled to use as much energy as they need.
They care, unlike those other heathens who must be punished.
“Scientists still do not understand the complexities of climate and weather.”
Those who have bought in to the IPCC’s self serving consensus don’t want to understand, for if they did, it would conflict with their bias.
The bottom line is that the Earth is a trivial thermodynamic system that obeys the known laws of physics and the IPCC, owing to its conflict of interest, has done its best to obfuscate this with layer upon layer of misrepresentation, misinterpretation and the dodgiest science ever conceived.
The IPCC is the Catholic church, circa 1400 A.D.
“Planetary warming is causing up to 99% of turtle eggs to hatch as females.”
How did sea turtles ever survive the Medieval, Roman, Minoan and Holocene optimums when temperatures ranged from warmer, to much warmer than today?
Add to that: How did sea turtles ever survive the previous intergalcial period, the Eemian, when temperatures where higher than today with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels?
And how did sea turtles ever survive the the previous galcial period since cooling is causing up to 99% of turtle eggs to hatch as males.
One thing that people, especially environmentalists tend to forget is that all such behaviors exist on a spectrum.
It is not the case that there is a magic temperature, below which all eggs will be male, and above which, even if only by a few thousandths of a degree, all eggs will be female.
The reality is this set point is set by an interplay of genes and varies from individual to individual.
If the world’s temperature did actually start to rise and it actually impacted the sex ratio of sea turtles, then those individuals who’s genetic set point produced more males at the higher temperature would have a decided breeding advantage. As a result, the next generation would have an over sampling of genes these genes.
When the world starts to cool, the opposite will occur.
Nature adapts. Its why there is still life on this planet after 4 billion years of extreme climate change.
Rainer: Er, they can swim…..grin
“Layperson climate” An essay In plain language examining the evidence for AGW, CO2 as a culprit, ocean acidification, etc. Less than a book and free.
https://goo.gl/cZvMbS
Regarding “Little Ice Age and its chilly, stormy weather, greatly reduced arable land, short growing seasons and CO2-starved crops”: The Little Ice Age didn’t change atmospheric CO2 much, it only dropped atmospheric CO2 by a few PPM according to ice cores.
The author of this article Paul Driessen is I assume the same person who dealt with Malaria problems in coldest Siberia a few years ago?
I have read todays post from Paul and copied it to computer and in time wiil purchase Gregory Whitestome’s book. It looks as if Gregory’s book is based around Earth Science which is where AGW should have started in the first place.
The state of play with the “Warmers” is now one of a calm exterior but inside pure panic. Given that Al Gore has made a fortune from having no formal education he has big problems as neither has President Trump. However the President holds the power and has already let it be known that he looks on AGW as a “Hoax”.
With a very cold winter in the North Hemisphere and with Sun Cycle 25 beginning to have an effect it makes for a very interesting future.
Sometimes I feel we are just pissing into the wind trying to convince people there is no climate Armageddon due to burning fossil fuels but the facts are s-l-o-w-l-y being recognized and the failed doomsday scenarios are piling up. I don’t think science will beat the AGW narrative with all the MSM support it has but common sense just may.
You get more and more brazen examples of this giant fraud everyday, and the oranized, paid for, internet intimidation that ipcc, and global alarm scientists are using, to keep their funding intact. Right now, there are paid thugs on YouTube trying not to win a debate, but intimidate people from challenging this nonsense.
I would think a 99:1 ratio of females to males would be a response to improved conditions for turtle breeding. It only takes one guy to fertilize a LOT of females. I’d think moving the other direction, with 99 males to 1 female would be the response to declining turtle conditions.
Sea turtles tend to be solitary animals, it would take a long time for one male to even find 99 females.
Of course the sea turtle who’s genes had a higher temperature set point (that is, one genetically programed to produce more males at the new higher temperature) their offspring would have a huge advantage in the next generation.
cave paintings threatened … one that caught my eye on the long list. Tragic !
Is mental decay on the list? — I didn’t read it all, obviously.
This illustrates the problem with attempting to be reasonable with the unreasonable. Anyone who has paid attention to any issue pushed by this personality type (currently manifested most often in Progressives) is that anything they get – even if it’s every damned thing on their list – is ‘just the beginning, just a bare beginning’ and they will have a new list tomorrow. In functional reality, it’s not compromise, it’s ratcheting.
The mechanism is simple. Remember, the warm-fuzzy is a fading high – addicts will need a stronger hit tomorrow.
How many people heat their homes with electricity even though electricity heating is near 100 % efficient? Not many of the 25% that live in places with a winter. That is because electricity has always been too expensive compared to fossil fuels. If you make electricity from fossil fuels you are paying for the conversion costs You might as well burn the fossil fuels to begin with. That is why people in cold climates in the winter use fossil fuels or they will freeze to death. Renewables wont save them from freezing to death because they are intermittent. You will always need either a hydroelectric , nuclear or fossil fuel backup. It is that simple. Most of the greenies in a cold climate today are using fossil fuels (except the ones with cheap hydro) to save him/her from freezing to death. What hypocrisy?
I believe that Mankind’s out of control population is not a very good idea because the Earth’s surface area is finite. I believe that burning up fossil fuels just a quickly as possible is not a good idea because the Earth’s supply of fossil fuels is finite. The AGW conjecture seems quite plausable at first but a more in depth analyssi of it uncovers very serious flaws I would like to add global warming as another reason to conserve on the use of fossil fuels but the AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and cannot be adequately defended.
The AGW coinjecture depends upon the idea that the insulation effects of the atmosphere is caused by a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. According to the conjecture these so called greehouse gases provide a radiant greenhouse effect that keeps the surface on the Earth on average 33 degrees C warmer than it would be otherwise. Calculations were made decades ago that a doubling of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere would cause a global temperatuere increase of 1.2 degrees C, ignoring any feedback effects. The change in global temperature caused by a doubling of CO2 is known as the climate sensivity of CO2. One scientist has pointed out the these radiametric calculations failed to take into consideration that a doubleing of CO2 would cause a slight decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere, enough to decrease the climate sensivity of CO2 by more than a factor of 20. So instead of a climate sensivity of 1.2 degrees C, we have a climate sensivity of less than .06 degrees C.
Then there is the issue of feedbacks. According to the AGW conjecture, CO2 based warming will cause an increase in H2O in the Earth’s atmosphere which will cause even more warming because H2O is also a so called greenhouse gas with LWIR absorption bands. In fact, for those that believe in a radiametric greenhouse effect, H2O is by far the primary greenhouse gas. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger absorber of IR then is CO2 and there is so much more H2O in sthe Earth’s atmosphere then is CO2. H2O averages between 1 to 2 percent in the Earth’s atmosphere globally while the level of CO2 is nomaly .04 percent. H2O based warming will cause more H2O to enter the atmosphere so much so that the possible effects of CO2 is insignificant.
What the AGW conjecture totally ignore’s is that besides being a so called greenhouse gas, H2O is a major coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. The over all cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly lower than the dry lapse rate so instead of the feedback effects of H2O amplifying the warming effects of CO2 by a factor of 3 that the AGW conjecture likes to assume, more realisticly H2O attenuates the warming effects of CO2 by a factor of 3, yielding a climate sensivity of CO2 of less than .02 degrees C, which is a trivial amount.
There is no real evidence in the paleoclimate record that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is evidence that increased temperatures result in more entering the Earth’s atmosphere which is because warmer oceans do not hold as much CO2 as cooler oceans but there is no real evidence that the increased amounts of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere have caused any warming. There is no evidence in the paleoclimate record that CO2 has any effect on climate.
A lot of work has been done with climate modeling. The IPCC has been supporting a plethora of climate models with the hope that they will provide evidence of the warming effect of CO2. The large number of these climate models is evidence that a lot of guess work has been involved. These large number of models have generated a wide range of results but thay all seem to have one thing in common. They have all been wrong. They have all predicted global warming that has not iaken place. These models all have the idea, that more CO2 causes warming, hard coded in which begs the question and renders the results useless. If anything these computer models show what would happen if CO2 did cause warming but becaue the results have been wrong if these simulations provide evidence of anything it is that added CO2 is not the cause of global warming. On the other hand others have generated models that show that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control.
A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of a radiametric greenhouse effect caused by greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass decreases cooling by convection. It is a convective and not a radiametric greenhouse effect that keeps a real greenhouse warm. So to in the Earth’s atmosphere. There exists a convective greenhouse effect caused by gravity and the heat capacity of the atmosphere that keeps the surface of the earth on average 33 degrees C warmer that if would be otherwise. All gases in the Earth’s atmopshere contribute to tis effect. This convective greenhouse effect is totally ignored by the AGW conjecture. 33 degrees C is the warming effect derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is the amount that has been measured. There is no additional warming caused by a radiant greenhouse effect. A radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, on Earth, or anywhere else in the solar system. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect but such a radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction. Hence the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction. This conclusion is all a matter of sceince.
There may be many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels, but climate change is not one of them.
The earth’s surface is finite, but we can create more. We do so every time we build a multi-story building.
The supply of fossil fuels is probably finite, however we have hundreds of years before it runs out. The best strategy is to use it now to create wealth, then our many times great grand children can use that wealth to create technologies that we can’t even imagine, to solve the problem when and if it finally does arise.
The amount of indoor space is still finite as is the mass of the Earth. Hundreds of years is not a long time at all. If mankind does not control his own population then nature will, catastrophically.
In a hundred years, most of the human race will be living in space… or in caves.
It’s truly ludicrous that, while we’re going through the fastest period of change in the history of the human race, some people believe they can make predictions about the future by simplistically extrapolating current trends.
Sigh. Time to throw this out again. Some perspective on carbon dioxide and global temperature.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
Note that the Earth displays a stable regime 15° Centigrade above current temperature.
And here is a reconstruction of how the continents were laid out during the Early and Middle Jurassic.
http://www.scotese.com/images/I180_zonef.jpg
So if the climate sceptics are right in their assertion that AGW is a hoax and a fallacy, and that renewables are only being taken up because of subsidies so the future lies with fossil fuels, then why is a country like Japan now making a decision that is fossil-fuel/nucleur- based energy policies are now outdated and the country needs to shift towards a strategy incorporating renewables? https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/02/20/japan-task-force-echoes-foreign-minister-calls-to-back-renewables-over-coal-nuclear-peoples-trust-toronto/
Politics. Encouraged by the one-way propaganda from our self-called “educated elites” in academia and politics and banking who make their power and money from “their power as political and academic elites” for the benefit of those in academia and politics and banking as “educated elites” ….
I really think is not quite what made them decide this but rather the cost benefit variables.
Yes. The cost-benefit analysis looks like this:
More subsidies from the politicians give more benefits to the people who donate power, money, access and promotions (media time and exposure) back to the politicians who control the subsidies and grants and the budgets for the academics and bureaucrats and companies who purchase the windmills. While causing greater costs to the people who are NOT the favored politicians in the favored states and provinces and in the favored businesses of the politicians who vote to control the subsidies! Cost and price of the electricity irregularly generated by the windmills is irrelevant. Damage caused by the windmills is irrelevant, their white pristine “image” of purity and wholesome fruit is all that is required.
This to me is a rather neat solution. If a fossil fuel advocates wants to use fossil fuel energy they can choose to do so – and probably pay more. If a renewables advocate wants energy from renewables then they also have this option. Keeps both energy consumer types happy:
https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/02/20/why-this-kentucky-entrepreneur-is-looking-beyond-coal-to-renewable-energy-forbes/
Nice idea. But the exact opposite is happening.
Your politicians (responding to pressure and publicity from the climastrologists’ bandwagon of catastrophe alarmists and subsidy-seekers in the academic and renewable industries) FORCE all of us (who pay the real bills and taxes) to buy at artificially-higher prices the electricity produced by the subsidized windmills and solar plants by mandated prices, while the damage and wear and tear caused TO conventional (fossil, gas turbine and nuclear) plants BY the subsidized and politicized renewables industry is ADDED to the lower cost electricity generated BY the reliable power plants, who now have less product they can sell.
At the meter, you cannot distinguish between solar power, coal-power, hydro-power or nuclear electrons.
The fact that you think at all, has yet to be proven.
To date all you have managed to do is regurgitate propaganda that you are paid to regurgitate.
[?? .mod]
MarkW
Can you get me copies of that W-2 you rather high-handedly claim is paying me? IRS ain’t gonna give me no credit without pay-per-proof evidence!
See, if I am getting paid from the supposed well-funded fossil fuel conspiracy against CAGW propaganda, why is it that I am freely donating to this site (and others such as CO2Science) but getting no money from them?
Just looking at the name of that web site is enough to prove that there is nothing worth reading there.
I do note that the troll wants to keep all of his subsidies in place. It really is fascinating how something that survives only through subsidies and mandates can be declared an economic success in the minds of socialists.
Oh great, another troll who believes that something is true or not based on how many self serving politicians buy into it.
Fact, reality … call it what you want. The replacement of a proportion of some fossil fuel energy with renewables is an immovable force so just get used to it.
And, since unreliable energy is so wonderful, we can scrap all the subsidies, can’t we?
Your question has no sense whatsoever. You think we will trust some political declaration cherrypicked and and highlighted by a site self naming itself mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com? seriously?
What we DO know for sure, however, is that Japan have a just as long track record of silly, self-damaging, decisions as any other country, including Pearl Harbor and the late Paris agreement.
3rd largest economy on this planet. This is an extremely successful, forward-looking country with a highly educated workforce.
Yet another example of how backward Trump and Pruitt’s advocacy of fossil fuels is looking when referenced against its global economic competitors.
But, Ivan, we can see why Japan has been struggling for years now. Why subsidies? What happens if they rely on wind? Or to you on a tight-rope with more gaps than rope? People die from your beliefs. Please spare us more pitiful stuff!