Green Weenie Award: Nuclear War Will Save Us!

Powerlineline’s Green Weenie of the Week Award has now raised the bar against which all green weenies will now be measured. ~ctm

From Powerline.

Posted on January 4, 2019 by Steven Hayward in Climate, Green Weenie Award

Green-Weenie-Mug-copyAs I suggested in my latest Loose Ends post earlier today, our standards for giving out one of our highly coveted Green Weenie Awards have been significantly raised. You can’t get one any more just for proposing a Green New Deal or something economically illiterate. You have to do a lot better than that.

Like Samuel Miller-McDonald, who writes at The Trouble today that perhaps the only hope for avoiding catastrophic global warming is for a nuclear war to reduce human population and consumption. You need to read the whole thing to appreciate its full dementia, but here is the climax of the argument:

One wrench that could slow climate disruption may be a large-scale conflict that halts the global economy, destroys fossil fuel infrastructure, and throws particulates in the air. At this point, with insane people like Trump, Putin, Xi, May, and Macron leading the world’s biggest nuclear powers, large-scale conflagration between them would probably lead to a nuclear exchange. . .

A devastating fact of climate collapse is that there may be a silver lining to the mushroom cloud. First, it should be noted that a nuclear exchange does not inevitably result in apocalyptic loss of life. Nuclear winter—the idea that firestorms would make the earth uninhabitable—is based on shaky science.

Um, isn’t the idea of nuclear winter based on the same climate science that is settled at the 97 percent confidence level? Oh never mind. To continue:

An [nuclear] exchange that shuts down the global economy but stops short of human extinction may be the only blade realistically likely to cut the carbon knot we’re trapped within. It would decimate existing infrastructures, providing an opportunity to build new energy infrastructure and intervene in the current investments and subsidies keeping fossil fuels alive. . .

Like the 20th century’s world wars, a nuclear exchange could serve as an economic leveler. It could provide justification for nationalizing energy industries with the interest of shuttering fossil fuel plants and transitioning to renewables and, uh, nuclear energy. It could shock us into reimagining a less suicidal civilization, one that dethrones the death-cult zealots who are currently in power. And it may toss particulates into the atmosphere sufficient to block out some of the solar heat helping to drive global warming. Or it may have the opposite effects. Who knows?

What we do know is that humans can survive and recover from war, probably even a nuclear one. Humans cannot recover from runaway climate change. Nuclear war is not an inevitable extinction event; six degrees of warming is. . .

It is a stark reflection of how homicidal our economy is—and our collective adherence to its whims—that nuclear war could be a rational course of action.

Now, I’m so old I remember when the most socially conscious people regarded the prospect of nuclear war with dread rather than hope. And perhaps we should be grateful for Mr. Miller-McDonald in making explicit what I put in boldface above—that the climatistas want to “shut down the global economy.” This is another good sign of how climate change has completely deranged some people.

And if this doesn’t merit a Green Weenie Award, I don’t know what would any more.

Read the original post here.

 

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Walter Sobchak
January 7, 2019 9:36 pm

Isn’t this the plot of a recent superhero movie?

Schitzree
Reply to  Walter Sobchak
January 8, 2019 3:56 am

Hey now, Thanos only wanted to kill off HALF the people. The Watermelons have it written in stone they’ll only settle for 95%.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uAdENYXaus4/VB7kxSiyX5I/AAAAAAAAJF0/QfRazch47G8/s1600/georgia-guidestones-top-commandments.jpg

~¿~

John Endicott
Reply to  Schitzree
January 8, 2019 10:04 am

Actually, Thanos wanted to kill off half of ALL LIFE in the Universe, not just half the people. Today’s lefties haven’t yet reached his grand heights (though not for lack of trying).

James Clarke
January 7, 2019 9:40 pm

“What we do know is that humans can survive and recover from war, probably even a nuclear one. Humans cannot recover from runaway climate change. Nuclear war is not an inevitable extinction event; six degrees of warming is. . .”

I don’t understand how 6 degrees of warming, mostly at night and mostly at high latitudes, forces the human race to extinction. What do we die from? Nice weather?

AGW is not Science
Reply to  James Clarke
January 8, 2019 10:00 am

Yeah, if we have too much nice weather, we’ll surely die en masse, kind of like when the first Matrix was too perfect and ideal, and the “hive” of human “batteries” rejected it. It was then replaced with the more realistic end-of-20th-century model complete with strife and suffering, and then all was well. We couldn’t possibly survive without the ability to complain about the weather, I mean come on!

John
January 7, 2019 10:30 pm

To the greens supporting this idea I would like to say: Please go first. Leave the planet if you think that’s best.

Hivemind
January 7, 2019 11:01 pm

a: “…humans can survive and recover from war, probably even a nuclear one.”
b: “Humans cannot recover from runaway climate change.”

Statement (b) doesn’t track from statement (a). The traditional nuclear winter theory is that the Earth would be cooled to the point that agriculture can’t feed the population. Climate change would increase the productivity of agriculture and feed many more people.

E J Zuiderwijk
January 8, 2019 1:18 am

Beyond demented. Criminally insane.

James Bull
January 8, 2019 1:33 am

So to “cure” the disease we must kill the patient sounds like a good idea to me?
In those famous words “what could possibly go wrong?”
I suppose that when you’re used to working with weird science the more batty ideas start to sound quite sane and reasonable.

HO HUM

James Bull

Mark Pawelek
January 8, 2019 3:12 am

He has the gall to describe people like “Trump, Putin, Xi, May, and Macron” as insane. Saying outrageous things gives one credibility in “Left-wing” circles, but fantasizing over how to out-do Mao, Stalin, & Pol Pot in the murder of innocents?

I wonder if the people who funded his PhD (by employing him) feel they got good value for money?

Rod Evans
January 8, 2019 3:59 am

What ever you do, don’t call him a Nazi. The lunacy of the left Greens never ceases to plumb new depths. Here in the UK, we now have politicians, a very outspoken politician demanding the police bring criminal actions against anyone who accuses her of being a Nazi. With this politician’s past activities and track record, being called a Nazi is a mild reflection of what the public actually think of her.
Regarding the choice between our current comfortable warm world, and the preferred nuclear winter option favoured by the Greens, put me into the warm world option.

Steve Reddish
Reply to  Rod Evans
January 8, 2019 11:00 am

“a very outspoken politician demanding the police bring criminal actions against anyone who accuses her of being a Nazi.”

Sounds like she earned the NAZI moniker.

SR

leowaj
January 8, 2019 4:33 am

Someone else already mentioned it but this article by this idiot marks the evolution of the Left into a death cult.

January 8, 2019 4:43 am

Fortunately both Jolly Joe and Edward Teller are dead.
Both were ready to do it.
There’s nothing new under the sun, APART FROM both Stalin and Teller had actually SEEN what a 400kT warhead can do.

I don’t see much more criminally insane than the USA and the USSR of the 50s and 60s polluting the entire earth with atmospheric testing fallout inc plenty of plut.

It was the biggest caesium 137 trace visible before our friends in Ukraine blotted it out, so much so, the wine trade use the presence or absence of proper “man made” radioisotopes for detecting fake wines claimed to be from before 1945-8.

Russell Seitz
January 8, 2019 4:54 am

John Tillman:

“Many of the same Leftist ideological purveyors of “nuclear winter” later jumped on the “global warming” band wagon…

Steven Schneider privately admitted that the NW Team might have the particulate physics wrong.”

This is utter nonsense. The Soviet point man seconding Carl Sagan’s hypothesis was Academcain Yuri Izrael, who authored a propaganda book based on the TTAPS paper entitled “Nuclear Night : Scientists’s Warning” He may be better known to Watts , who also was there as a lead speaker at the first Heartland conference, where he sang the praises of CO2 on behalf of his new employer Lukhoil.

Steve Schneider coauthored “Nuclear Winter Reappraised” the first serious policy journal takedown of TTAPS.

I’m hardly surprised by Tillman & CTM’s failure & CTM to mention any of the primary sources that laid out the scientific indictment leading to the nuclear winter crackup.Why read Nature, Foreign Affairs, Naturwissenschaften, The New Republic and the Journal of Geophysical Research when The Dailly Caller, The American Thinker, and The Telegraph will gladly not read them for you, sparing WUWt readers the effort of getting things dead wrong for themselves.

tty
Reply to  Russell Seitz
January 8, 2019 12:45 pm

No indeedy, Stephen Schneider thought that temperatures would only drop 10-20 degrees centigrade after a nuclear war.

”I would call it nuclear fall, not winter,” Dr. Schneider said in an interview. ”

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/23/science/nuclear-winter-theorists-pull-back.html

Tom in Florida
January 8, 2019 4:55 am

This is akin to killing someone to prevent them from committing suicide.

icisil
Reply to  Tom in Florida
January 8, 2019 8:11 am

It takes an idiot to raze a village to save it

(corollary to “It takes a village to raise an eejit”)

meiggs
January 8, 2019 5:02 am

Take the bag houses off the coal burners and let the ash filter out the sun if he thinks it’s too hot now….turn off the FGD’s one at a time until just the right temperature is achieved.

Bruce Cobb
January 8, 2019 5:26 am

It is a thought experiment, not unlike the infamous 10-10 video. They mistakenly believe that that absolves them. What it does though is once again expose the prolific and vile amount of hatred in the CAGW movement towards western countries, towards a free market economy, towards democracy, and essentially, towards humanity. In human history, I doubt we have seen the amount of evil and ill-will towards humanity, and all life as we have with the CAGW ideology.

Craig
January 8, 2019 6:01 am

“with insane people like … leading the world’s biggest nuclear powers,”

Says the person hoping for nuclear war.

RHS
January 8, 2019 6:16 am

I’d prefer they spend their time looking for Infinity stones than talk nuclear war…

icisil
January 8, 2019 6:23 am

I think the world would be far better off if we gathered all such people who think like this… and nuked it.

icisil
January 8, 2019 6:29 am

“gathered all such people”

should be: “gathered all such people into a place”

Rud Istvan
January 8, 2019 6:59 am

CtM, well spotted. Ridicule is an effective response to climate nonsense.

Farmer Ch E retired
January 8, 2019 7:01 am

An argument could be made that the Green New Deal would be more effective at destroying our infrastructure than a nuclear war.

3x2
Reply to  Farmer Ch E retired
January 8, 2019 7:14 am

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for President.

What could go wrong?

Richard Patton
Reply to  3x2
January 8, 2019 8:53 am

Oh, but the Constitution says she has to wait at least 6 more years (until she is 35), that’s unfair and immoral!

Lizzie
Reply to  Richard Patton
January 8, 2019 10:54 am

She can probably just identify as 35. Problem solved!

3x2
January 8, 2019 7:10 am

This has always been the bit about greenie weines that I have never understood… Why do they believe that they would ever survive some ‘post apocalyptic’ world?

Donald is more likely to be easy food in his desired future. Idiot.

3x2
Reply to  3x2
January 8, 2019 7:20 am

Wtf? None of that second paragraph was mine.

3x2
Reply to  Charles Rotter
January 8, 2019 7:40 am

Strange. It doesn’t even make any sense.

icisil
Reply to  3x2
January 8, 2019 7:59 am

Perhaps you intended that comment in response to some other comment, and didn’t follow through. Such things have persistence, and unless watched for show up in unintended places..

MarkW
Reply to  3x2
January 8, 2019 8:10 am

There’s a ghost in your machine.

Bear
January 8, 2019 8:43 am

Tisk, Tisk. The author has no conception of the ecological harm a nuclear exchange would cause. Besides, we’ve already got a system that has been shown to reduce populations by massive amounts. It’s called Communism. It caused the slaughter of over 100 million people and reduced the living standards of the rest. Just look at Venezuela. I’m sure the populations carbon footprint has been significantly reduced. Implement world wide and problem solved.

Reasonable Skeptic
January 8, 2019 9:09 am

What a bloody moron. If you want to destroy humanity to save the planet nuclear war is a really bad choice. What would be far better would be EM bombs that only destroy our electronics. Pop a dozen of two of those around the world and we will descend into an apocalyptic world where 90% of humanity would be gone within months.

This idiot can’t even save the world by destroying humanity efficiently so why would I think he is right?

Steve O
January 8, 2019 9:59 am

I’d like someone from the alarmist camp to reconcile the positions that things are so bad that nuclear war might be a positive thing, with the position that things aren’t so bad such that we can afford to give money to poor countries in hot climates — who can be expected to spend their reparation money on air-conditioning.
If things are really THAT bad, then we certainly cannot doom our species based on a desire to be “fair.” Why do such people never speak out against proposed wealth transfers?

And are the CO2 emissions savings we get from building windmills even as much as the CO2 emissions increases we can expect from such wealth transfers? Why not do neither and be just as far ahead?

Hotwater
January 8, 2019 10:18 am

Isnt this the evil villains plot in the movie Kingsman?