US Climate Scientist Channels Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King and J. Marshall Shepherd
Martin Luther King and J. Marshall Shepherd

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Re-interpreting the words of dead people as support for climate action.

Why Climate Change Would Have Alarmed Dr. Martin Luther King

Jan 19, 2019, 08:39am
Marshall Shepherd

As Dr. Martin Luther King’s National Day of Service approaches, I had an interesting thought as a scientist, writer, and human being. Climate change is one of the most significant challenges facing humanity, and its impacts stretch far beyond science. Climate change is often discussed from the lens of agriculture, energy, public health, national security, or weather disasters. However, the most recent U.S. National Climate Assessment report affirms previous studies that climate change disproportionately impacts marginalized, vulnerable, and disadvantaged populations of all races. The question that came to mind is “would Dr. King have been concerned about climate change?

I think the answer is resoundingly “yes.” There are clues in his writing and speeches that suggest that would he have been very concerned. A common misperception about Dr. King is that he fought for a specific group of people. Dr. King, like most great humanitarians, fought for anyone facing injustice. He likely would have been an activist for the planet once he saw who was most vulnerable (more on that shortly).

Five years ago, Forbes writer Alex Knapp featured this quote by Dr. King:

There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists,” he said. “But not between science and religion. Their respective worlds are different and their methods are dissimilar. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.”

This narrative clearly establishes that King, a man of the cloth, had no inherent problem or fear of science so let’s dig deeper to find clues about his possible perspective on climate change.

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/01/19/why-climate-change-would-have-alarmed-dr-martin-luther-king/#1328b35028a1

Nobody can know what Dr. King’s position would have been on climate change. But there is a real chance Dr. King’s concern would have been the deadly impact of climate POLICIES on poor people.

Back in 2008, efforts to increase renewable biofuel mandates led to a food crisis in poor countries.

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis

Aditya Chakrabortty
Fri 4 Jul 2008 04.35

Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

Despite leaking of the 2008 World Bank report, and rising awareness of the harm biofuels were causing, nobody pulled the plug.

Burning food crops to produce biofuels is a crime against humanity

Jean Ziegler
Wed 27 Nov 2013 02.49 AEDT

EU leaders must vote against a biofuels policy that is increasing world hunger and causing environmental devastation

Burning hundreds of millions of tonnes of staple foods to produce biofuels is a crime against humanity. Since 2007, the EU and US governments have given lavish support to agribusinesses to fill car fuel tanks with food – compulsory targets, and tax breaks and subsidies(pdf) worth billions annually. The result? Increased hunger, land grabbing, environmental damage and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

EU policies promoting biofuels have, since 2008, diverted crops out of food markets at the bidding of powerful agribusinesses, in their pursuit of private profit. This use of large quantities of food and commodity crops for relatively small amounts of transport fuel has had three disastrous consequences.

First is an increase in world hunger. Almost all biofuels used in Europe are made from crops, such as wheat, soy, palm oil, rapeseed and maize, that are essential food sources for a rapidly expanding global population. Europe now burns enough food calories in fuel tanks every year to feed 100 million people.

Moreover, prices of vital foodstuffs such as oilseeds are expected to rise by up to 20% (pdf), vegetable oil by up to 36%, and maize by as much as 22% by 2020 because of EU biofuels targets (those that are being reviewed). For slum dwellers across the world, who have very little money with which to buy food, this represents disaster.

Second is a massive new demand for land, destroying smallholder farms as well as habitats. Land speculators, hedge funds, and agro-energy companies have been at the forefront of a global rush for land that has forced hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers off their fields and taken away their livelihoods and water supplies. All too regularly across the world, but particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the monopolisation of land by large biofuel corporations is accompanied by violence: the victims are small farmers and their families.

Third is environmental devastation. The demand for additional land to accommodate EU biofuels plans means expanding cropland, which will result in felled forests, plundered peatlands and ploughed prairies. The evidence is increasingly clear that the climate change benefits of most biofuels are negligible or nil.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/nov/26/burning-food-crops-biofuels-crime-humanity

The author of the last piece was Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food between 2000-08, and former member of the advisory committee of the UN human rights council.

Would Dr. King have stood by and watched all that suffering, watched powerful politicians ignore climate policy induced famine afflicting millions of poor people who had no voice, without saying something?

Dr. King was born in 1929, so if he was still alive today, he would have a clear memory of the global cooling scare. Like many of us, he would remember watching Leonard Nimoy’s iconic documentary on global cooling – all that settled science certainty that we were on the brink of a new ice age, quickly swept under the carpet when the thermometers changed direction.

The problem with people like Professor Marshall Shepherd enlisting the dead to their cause, is everyone, myself included, tends to see the words of dead people through the lens of their own viewpoints. The dead are not available to correct any misunderstandings.

Dr. Martin Luther King might have been a deep green environmentalist; or he could have been a tenacious and outspoken opponent of climate policies which kill poor and disadvantaged people.

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2hotel9
January 20, 2019 6:22 am

Putting words in the mouths of dead men, another political ploy to support a political aim. As you state, Dr King would have been more concerned with the harm done to people by such policies, his stance on other policies and their effect on people pretty well shows that.

Trebla
Reply to  2hotel9
January 20, 2019 6:45 am

What woud Jesus have done about global warming? Just asking.

kent beuchert
Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 7:23 am

I assume Jesus would have been smart enough to realize it was a ploy by the elitists to
control the multitudes.

wws
Reply to  kent beuchert
January 20, 2019 8:01 am

WWJD – Where would Jesus Drill?

(that was actually a sign carried by a protester against some oil exploration company)

D. Anderson
Reply to  wws
January 20, 2019 9:32 am

Jesus put oil in Texas. The Devil put it in Saudi Arabia.

Craig from Oz
Reply to  wws
January 20, 2019 8:03 pm

Jesus wouldn’t drill.

Mortise and Tenon jointing on the other hand? Yeah, he would have been all over that.

R Shearer
Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 8:00 am

He would probably more truthfully call it cooling since it was warmer back then, but then this hypothetical is just as irrelevant.

Wade
Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 8:08 am

Jesus was strictly non-political. He refused to get involved in politics at all. Jesus refused to be made king, he refused call out Pilate in Luke chapter 13, he said to render unto Caesar Caesar’s things but God’s things to God. The only people he condemned were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the people who were supposed to teach God’s law but called anyone not trained by them as despicable. The early Christians were also non-political, obeying the government so long as it did not conflict with God’s laws.

Global warming is very political. As such, Jesus and the early Christians wouldn’t touch global warming with a 100,000,000 foot pole.

As a side note, I am always amazed how people who claim to be a follower of Jesus do not read and obey Jesus’s words. Just like people who follow Martin Luther King do not read his words. MLK would clearly condemn what people are doing in his name today.

Hivemind
Reply to  Wade
January 20, 2019 3:53 pm

Jesus knocked over the tables of the money lenders, ie profiteers.

Peter Pfeifer
Reply to  Hivemind
January 21, 2019 7:42 am

Those tables were in the TEMPLE. He didn’t go around turning over tables everywhere.

Gary Ashe
Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 8:11 am

Asked god if there was any truth in it

And Mr Mann would have replied of course it is son.

Kenji
Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 11:08 am

Well, if you consider Jesus to be a farce … an invention of man … and the source of so much suffering in the world? Then I would assume YOUR Jesus would fully embrace climate change as a vehicle to aggrandize wealth and power over the helpless serfs who cling to their guns and bibles.

However, if you believe that Christ was/is the living God of the Universe … then I would expect the CREATOR of the Universe would have a fairly decent handle on climate change, evolution, particle physics, and the Unified Theory. That Jesus would explain whether we were facing an existential crisis of a planetary nature … or whether our real danger was a spiritual one. That we so mocked our God, our creator (aka“sky daddy”) that we faced a far greater existential and eternal threat from our own arrogance, deceptions, and denials than a slightly warmer planet ever could.

If you have actually read the New Testament, then you would already KNOW that Christ was FOCUSED on our spiritual/eternal lives … not our temporary carbon existence.

Clay Sanborn
Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 9:09 pm

Jesus is God, creator of the Universe. Nature and Earth’s climate are His creation and under His control. We have nothing to fear from the climate.

Gamecock
Reply to  Clay Sanborn
January 23, 2019 6:02 pm

I thought God was God? The Son and Holy Spirit different.

It gets confusing when you stray from monotheism.

Gamecock
Reply to  Trebla
January 23, 2019 6:06 pm

You nailed it, Trebla. It’s a WWJD fallacy, but with Saint MLK substituted.

D. Anderson
Reply to  2hotel9
January 20, 2019 9:31 am

I wonder what TV shows Dr. King would be watching today.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  D. Anderson
January 21, 2019 5:24 am

I don’t think Dr. King would watch “entertainment” tv at all. Have you seen the depraved trash that passes for entertainment nowadays?

It’s no wonder many people can’t think straight after watching that kind of garbage for years. The more debauchery the better, the tv writers seem to say. Let’s tear down all the norms of society. Let’s foist our derangement on the rest of society, as being normal.

No, I don’t think Dr. King would be watching much of that. He would probably be preaching against it as being detrimental to a civlized society.

And God Bless Dr. King. I was sitting in JFK airport waiting for a flight when I heard the news of his assasination.

Those who want change should follow Dr. King’s non-violent example. Violence is for haters. Haters are the death of society. Dr. King knew this.

Kenj
Reply to  2hotel9
January 20, 2019 10:26 am

This sounds very much like the open borders advocates who … inconveniently … forget that Caesar Chavez (remember that Hispanic who we have a holiday for here in CA?) was 100% AGAINST open borders and illegals, as it destroyed wages for the working Hispanics in the State. Illegals undermined his drive for improving wages and working conditions.

Luckily, his attitudes toward illegal aliens is well documented, so none of this MLK Jr. – climate change nonsense can take place. Note that Caesar Chavez is never resurrected to advocate for open borders. Can’t.

Reply to  2hotel9
January 20, 2019 2:11 pm

Others can play this game too. Wouldn’t Hitler have been in favor of biofuels because of the adverse impact on “non-Aryans?”

Mike Ozanne
Reply to  Ralph Dave Westfall
January 20, 2019 10:46 pm

“Others can play this game too. Wouldn’t Hitler have been in favor of biofuels because of the adverse impact on “non-Aryans?””

Hitler would have been in favour of biofuels because the Wehrmacht was chronically short of Gasoline.

Ron Long
January 20, 2019 6:28 am

Science and Religion are not complementary, you cannot temper facts with values and get a scientific result. This is a perfect example of modern-day morphing of science into social science, or worse.

Newminster
Reply to  Ron Long
January 20, 2019 8:11 am

Sorry, Ron, science and religion are complementary. Science concerns itself with the physical world and can go no further. Religion concerns itself with the metaphysical or spiritual world and ought not to concern itself with science, except to the extent that the use or abuse or misuse of it impinges on the spiritual well-being of the person.

If I argue against climate science per se, I am doing so as a rational individual — at odds, as it happens, with my spiritual Leader — because I see flaws in the science itself. My religious belief tells me nothing about the science but it does tell me that if the science is used in a way which inevitably makes the poor poorer, especially if at the same time it makes others richer, then it is wrong.

But the arguments are separate … and complementary!

Ron Long
Reply to  Newminster
January 20, 2019 9:59 am

Newminister, your comments prove my point. It was discovered during the Manhatten Project that occult ideation and intelligence are inversely related, and that discovery is verified by all modern neuroscientific studies. This is not to say that some religions are not valuable as moral guidance, because some are, and if your religion makes you a better person I am totally in favor of it.

MarkW
Reply to  Ron Long
January 20, 2019 1:01 pm

Ron, why do you feel the need to propagate such lies? Especially ones that have been disproven over and over again.

Ron Long
Reply to  MarkW
January 21, 2019 3:43 am

Well MarkW, start with a google search of “Why Are Religious People (Generally) Less Intelligent?” in Psychology Today, and work your way through a grand collection of fMRI studies of religious ideation locations and construct in the brain and see if you can figure it all out. Again, for the record, I am not against religion, and actually celebrate those religions which promote good behaviour. Science is different than religion.

MarkW
Reply to  MarkW
January 21, 2019 9:55 am

It really is amazing how people take poorly done studies as proof of anything. I guess, when the purpose is to reinforce your own bigotries, anything will suffice.

MarkW
Reply to  MarkW
January 21, 2019 9:56 am

These studies remind me of other left wing nonsense.
They define intelligent as “believes as I do”. Everyone else is stupid.

MarkW
Reply to  MarkW
January 21, 2019 9:57 am

PPS: These same people “and magazines” a few generations ago were busy proving how non-whites were less intelligent. Using pretty much the same faulty methods.

Greg Woods
January 20, 2019 6:31 am

As my old grand dad used to say: There are only three sure things in this life: Death, Taxed and Climate Change…

Stonyground
January 20, 2019 6:33 am

It needs noting that the notion that biofuels are CO2 neutral is flawed. Yes the plants that are grown specifically to be turned into fuel extract CO2 from the atmosphere, but whatever else was going to be grown on the land that is used to grow them would have done that anyway.

Rocketscientist
Reply to  Stonyground
January 20, 2019 9:02 am

…and fallow land is not tilled, planted, nor harvested. Neither is there a harvest that must be processed for fuel extraction.
None of these things are free when you farm a field.
Leaving fields fallow, while perhaps good husbandry, is not farming.

Tom in Florida
January 20, 2019 6:35 am

Let us keep in mind that the reason the holiday is celebrated on the Monday after the third Sunday in January is because when the bill was passed the Super Bowl was always played on the third Sunday in January and the powers that be wanted the next day off.

JohnWho
January 20, 2019 6:38 am

If the climate was changing like Al Gore says, I would believe that Dr. Martin Luther King would be concerned about the climate and feeding the hungry.
If the climate was changing like Al Gore says, I believe there would actually be a 97% consensus.

If the climate was changing like Al Gore says, the intelligent folks here would be discussing the merits of each “save the planet” proposal.

If the climate was changing like Al Gore says, simply stated, the state of the climate discussion wold be
difference.

If the climate was changing like Al Gore says, President Trump would wear a “Make The World Great Again” hat. (OK, maybe not.)

If the climate was changing like Al Gore says.

Tom Halla
January 20, 2019 6:43 am

Martin Luther King did not seem callous enough to be a True Believer in the green blob.

Trebla
January 20, 2019 6:48 am

What would Jesus have done about global warming? He turned water into wine. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to turn CO2 into into beer.

Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 6:57 am

Yes, and if there is no bread, eat cake 😀

Rocketscientist
Reply to  Krishna Gans
January 20, 2019 9:06 am

…cake and beer, not such a good combination.
Pizza and beer, much better.
“Let them eat Pizza!”

MarkW
Reply to  Krishna Gans
January 20, 2019 1:02 pm

I’ve read that the cake being referred to here was the crusts that were cut off of bread before it was sold.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Trebla
January 20, 2019 8:07 am

Awesome plan! Let’s do that.

icisil
January 20, 2019 6:49 am

Settled science:

* Butter is bad for you, margarine is good; no, wait! margarine is bad for you, butter is good
* Egg cholesterol is bad for you; no, wait! egg cholesterol is good cholesterol
* Low fat, high carb diet is good; no wait! high carb diet causes obesity
* Use hand sanitizers to prevent infection; no, wait! hand sanitizers are useless
* Take all of your prescribed antibiotics to decrease risk of bacteria mutating into resistant strains, no, wait! Taking all of your prescribed antibiotics increases risk of bacteria mutating into resistant strains.
* Global cooling; no, wait! global warming

JohnWho
Reply to  icisil
January 20, 2019 6:57 am

JimG1
Reply to  icisil
January 20, 2019 7:42 am

Don’t forget to have your tonsils removed at the first sign of a cold and stop eating red meat as well!

Stonyground
January 20, 2019 6:54 am

The Ice Age video was interesting. The thing that I noticed about it was that it was quite speculative. There was none of the current hysteria that this stuff is definitely going to happen and that anyone who says otherwise is an evil science denier.

commieBob
January 20, 2019 6:57 am

Leaders like MLK Jr. are often exemplary and do actually care about their fellow humans. Like Jesus, they set an example that nobody lives up to.

Jordan Peterson observed that, although the leadership of the NDP (Canada’s socialist party) were wonderful people, the followers weren’t.

Peterson was also uncomfortable with many NDP activists, who were middle class and seemed to hate the successful, but also didn’t like the poor: “They seemed resentful and bitter and peevish.” link

“Resentful, bitter and peevish” is a horrible problem. It causes people to do horrible things and to condone horrible things done by others.

People who invoke the name of the great are more often than not those resentful, bitter and peevish petty people who would rather increase suffering in the world than grow a set and get on with their lives.

Latitude
January 20, 2019 6:58 am

“climate change disproportionately impacts marginalized, vulnerable, and disadvantaged populations of all races”

…so does lack of movie theaters

Greg Cavanagh
Reply to  Latitude
January 20, 2019 1:21 pm

When you think about it, everything that exists and everything that can happen, also affects people disproportionately. Nothing affects people proportionally.

Which identifies their claim as being words with no meaningful context. It is emotional blackmail only.

damp
January 20, 2019 6:58 am

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rocketscientist
Reply to  damp
January 20, 2019 9:14 am

True enough, however…
Gun powder is dangerous.
Gasoline is dangerous.
… many things that are ‘dangerous’ are also useful.

Lancifer
January 20, 2019 7:01 am

Dr. Marting Luther King Jr. was disillusioned with capitalism and often mentioned “democratic socialism” as being a desirable alternative. I would bet he would be in agreement with most modern “progressive” political views including “fighting” climate change.

Klem
Reply to  Lancifer
January 20, 2019 12:03 pm

Perhaps, but I really don’t think he was that stupid.

MarkW
Reply to  Klem
January 20, 2019 1:04 pm

At the time of his death, we had not fully learned what a disaster “democratic socialism” would be.

F.LEGHORN
Reply to  Lancifer
January 21, 2019 2:36 am

Dr. King was a registered Republican. Stop trying to rewrite facts because you think your ideas are “better”.

Bruce Cobb
January 20, 2019 7:10 am

As a deeply religious and spiritual man, MLK likely would not have been a big fan of either lying, or of the concept that the ends justify the means. All of which is to say, he most likely would not have supported the Climate Cause in any way whatsoever, and to so suggest is an outrageous insult to his memory.

Walter Sobchak
January 20, 2019 7:30 am

CAGW, or “Climate Change”, or whatever, is nothing more or less than the latest excuse for impoverishing, humiliating, and demoralizing the unruly lower classes.

In that, it takes the place of stuff that no one can say with a straight face anymore, like the divine right of kings and the inevitable progress of history.

The one tactic of the left (i.e. the elite that wants to destroy it inferiors) that has worked in the United States since the end of World War II has been to wrap itself in the garb of the Civil Rights Movement. Notice how they turned disbities, same sex marriage, and transsexulaism into “Civil Rights” issues.

The Civil Rights movement, was powered not by leftism, but by evangelical Christianity. That is why it could win such an overwhelming victory in a Protestant nation. It is not a coincidence that its most famous leader was a Protestant minister named after the founder of Protestantism.

It is true that Martin Luther King, Jr. flirted with leftism in the late 1960s. In that he was not alone. But, it is also true that he was a Republican. Whether or not he would have drifted leftward as he aged is impossible to know. Some people do, most wise up and see the repeated pattern of leftist failures and disasters.

But, what ever any man would or would not have thought about an issue that he never considered, “Climate Change” has Flat F****** Nothing to do with Civil Rights or the status of African Americans in the United States. The issues are completely orthogonal. And, the argument that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have agreed with it is irrelevant.

William Astley
January 20, 2019 7:35 am

King would be pro energy, same as India is now. This is not rocket science.

King cared about people. King would have spent the necessary time to have found out that CAGW is a scam, that hurts the poorest people in the world, the most.

King would see the real problems in the world.

For example, there are 1.3 billion people in Africa, almost all living in poverty. Africa needs cheap, reliable electricity and law and order to enable industrialization. They also need roads.

Cheap reliable electricity = Coal fired power plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Africa

“Energy in Africa is a scarcer commodity than in the developed world – annual consumption is 518 KWh in Sub-Saharan Africa, the same amount of electricity used by an individual in an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD – example is the U.S.) country in 25 days.[8] More than 500 million people live without electricity. Across the continent only 10% of individuals have access to the electrical grid, and of those, 75% come from the richest two quintiles in overall income.[9] Less than 2% of the rural populations of Malawi, Ethiopia, Niger, and Chad have access to electrical power.[8] Electrical provisioning in Africa has generally only reached wealthy, urban middle class, and commercial sectors, bypassing the region’s large rural populations and urban poor.[8]

… Even in the areas covered by the electrical grid, power is often unreliable: the manufacturing sector loses power on average 56 days out of the year.[9] In Senegal power is out 25 days a year, in Tanzania 63 days, and in Burundi 144 days.[8] Frequent power outages cause damage to sales, equipment, and discourage international investment.[11] According to the periodical African Business, “Poor transport links and irregular power supplies have stunted the growth of domestic companies and discouraged foreign firms from setting up manufacturing plants in the continent.”[8]

Despite its unreliability, electrical service in Sub-Saharan Africa also costs more than in other parts of the world. The protective tariff required in Sub-Saharan Africa is $0.13 USD, compared to $0.04–0.08 USD in the rest of the developing world. Additionally, one of the greatest challenges in an effort to create sustainable development in Africa is that many countries with exportable resources are land-locked without a system of transportation.[5] “

“Poverty in Africa is the lack of provision to satisfy the basic human needs of certain people in Africa. African nations typically fall toward the bottom of any list measuring small size economic activity, such as income per capita or GDP per capita, despite a wealth of natural resources. In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having “Low Human Development” on the United Nations’ (UN) Human Development Index were in Sub-Saharan Africa.[1]In 2006, 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa.[2] …

…In addition, Africa’s share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does.[4] “

dennisambler
January 20, 2019 7:41 am

Lisa Jackson linked “environmental justice” to the Civil Rights movement in a speech at Martin Luther King Remembrance Day 2012:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130729152004/http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/8d49f7ad4bbcf4ef852573590040b7f6/a4b8a7edc11799b2852579910059e8fe!OpenDocument

“There is something else we at the EPA owe to Dr. King and his legacy. It was the Civil Rights Movement that helped give rise to other movements in our history. The marches and demonstrations for equality and opportunity showed how effective those kinds of grassroots efforts could be on a wide range of issues. And environmentalism followed in the footsteps of the Civil Rights movement.

Today we continue to take direct inspiration from Dr. King, especially in our fight for environmental justice.
“Environmental justice is one of my top priorities for my time at the EPA, and it is something we are working to include in each and every initiative and decision the agency makes.”

HD Hoese
January 20, 2019 7:48 am

Dr. King was also old enough to remember the depression and WWII. Those I know of who did were well aware of what he fought for. I doubt if he would like what is going on today as I recall that he did not want revenge, but would appreciate the progress. Those of his age cohort knew what a crisis was.

R Shearer
Reply to  HD Hoese
January 20, 2019 8:17 am

Yes, this is all speculation, but I believe he would be suspicious of anything that is supported by the political party of his youth and adulthood, which was the party of the KKK, lynching and Jim Crow. It was the party that for most all of his life opposed his civil rights. I doubt that if alive, even today, that King would trust them.

Bear
January 20, 2019 8:15 am

I think King would have been a believer in CAGW, but would also have decried the actions to mitigate CO2 increase that harmed the poor. Hard to say what he would have been for, but my best guess is the redistribution of wealth to the areas that are “affected”.

Gary Ashe
January 20, 2019 8:22 am

Great replies guys.

But this is the thread winner considering the topic.
Dr King would almost certainly seen Marxists for whom they are.

”damp January 20, 2019 at 6:58 am
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.”

January 20, 2019 8:54 am

MLK was a Democrat and in today’s political environment, he would have likely leaned towards the Progressives/Socialists. Like any ‘good’ Progressive, he would not have a position on any issue counter to the party line.

While a 1970 MLK may have noticed and seen through the climate scare deception, a 2019 MLK would have faithfully accepted the deception as truth.

F.LEGHORN
Reply to  co2isnotevil
January 21, 2019 2:47 am

Wrong. Dr. King was a registered Republican. Do you really think he would have supported the party of Jim Crow and the KKK?

Reply to  F.LEGHORN
January 21, 2019 9:54 am

F.Leghorn,

There are unsupported rumors that he was a registered Republican, but it’s more likely he wasn’t a member of either party. Whatever his registration was, it didn’t seem to affect who he liked and voted for. While some of his surviving family tends to lean right and even endorsed Trump, he never did officially endorse a candidate, but was never actually silent. He did praise Kennedy in 1960 and Johnson in 1964 and is widely believed to have voted for those 2 candidates, although he turned against Johnson owing to the Vietnam war. Based on other public statements, he didn’t like Reagan or Goldwater, but did like Nixon and Rockefeller. Overall, he tended to be a political centrist with a proto-progressive ideology, but then again, there wasn’t as much difference between the two parties as there is today, the left wasn’t driven by identity politics and more people tended to vote for a candidate rather than a political party.

His social justice agenda based on ‘race reparations’ is more in line with today’s Democratic party and the means used by the UNFCCC to implement its agenda. Do you really think he wouldn’t have endorsed and/or voted for Obama?

2hotel9
Reply to  co2isnotevil
January 21, 2019 5:02 pm

Registered Republican. Please keep your history revisionist sh&t to yourself.

January 20, 2019 9:32 am

This and most likely the next decade are, and so is the generation of young people, in strong shadow of the GAFAM giants relentlessly promoting climate ‘anthropogenetics’. Not much can be done to change current course of the advocacy by the ‘committee of cardinals’ until solar thermostat turns itself down to the early 1800s setting.

rah
January 20, 2019 9:42 am

I am not going to pretend to have any idea where MLK would stand on “climate change”. I will however say without equivocation that the progressive left as a whole has no respect for accurate history. They started historic revisionism long before they started temperature adjustments. There are absolutely no empirical records or histories that are safe from then when they run counter to their current agenda.

January 20, 2019 10:01 am

Here is the claim: “There are clues in his (MLKing’s) writing and speeches that suggest that would he have been very concerned.”

This is pure speculation!

However, we do not have to speculate what would Jesus have said about climate change. He would not have been troubled at all by the scientists and their claims. In clear language he said, “He (God) makes his SUN rise on the evil and on the good, and sends RAIN on the just and on the unjust.”

Jesus spoke of the sovereign, all powerful Creator as the one who gives sunshine and rain. Rain is absolutely central to climate conditions – no PhD in climate science is needed to recognize this.

To think we humans can change the climate is simply arrogance and pride. It is only those who say there is no God who have reason to be worried. If they are right then our efforts to change the climate are ultimately pointless. But if they are wrong, the eternal God will confront them with their foolish efforts to play God.

R Shearer
Reply to  Michael in Dublin
January 20, 2019 10:41 am

Your position may be too rigid in at least with regard to climate.

You admit the importance of rain, and artificial rain is certainly within our capability and if practiced on a global scale could impact climate globally. I believe that intentional climate modification on large scale is possible and likely will be practiced in the future. Perhaps it could be through the combined application of regional weather modification, such as is possible today, or perhaps through space based amplification or attenuation of sunlight.

The question now is about inadvertent human caused change and it’s not arrogant or prideful to ask.

Reply to  R Shearer
January 20, 2019 1:35 pm

If the eyewitness accounts of the teaching of Jesus are correct then he clearly declared that the sovereign God is a providential God. If our future depended on the actions of people, history does not fill me with optimism because people are not naturally altruistic.

I believe it wiser to trust the actions of an all powerful and merciful God and learn to adapt to changing weather conditions rather than to be so arrogant to think we are able to make significant changes to climate zones.

Michael Jankowski
January 20, 2019 10:07 am

An immensely stronger case can be made for how MLK Jr would feel, speak, and act about abortion. Let me know when someone on the left side of the aisle writes that editorial.

January 20, 2019 10:08 am

“Dr. Martin Luther King might have been a deep green environmentalist; or he could have been a tenacious and outspoken opponent of climate policies which kill poor and disadvantaged people.”

I suspect he would favor the latter perspective.

ResourceGuy
January 20, 2019 10:16 am
Moderately Cross of East Anglia
January 20, 2019 11:15 am

97 per cent of the medieval warm period dead say it is better to be warm than cold , according to a recent UEA and Met Office style survey. Consensus so it must be true.

Latitude
Reply to  Moderately Cross of East Anglia
January 20, 2019 11:24 am

The LIA dead backup that consensus…..

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Latitude
January 20, 2019 11:32 am

…and they still vote.

whiten
January 20, 2019 11:18 am

Martin Luther King, a good man or a good person, no doubt at all about it.
Very important in your history, or your history books ppl…but even within that, where I may know no much about this King of yours, I think that I will not be wrong when considering that this guy with whole his beauty, bravery and selfless and extraordinary courage, he still is nothing to be compared anyway, or in any way viable considered as with any value of equality, in consideration with and about the real Dr. Martin Luther, under any circumstances.

Hopefully I am wrong.

cheers

u.k.(us)
January 20, 2019 12:49 pm

Have I crossed into some netherworld where MSNBC has taken over WUWT ??

January 20, 2019 12:54 pm

As with so many sayings these days, just what does “Civil rights” mean ?

We her in Australia have basically the UK legal system, and while at times we have Judges who try to see things “Their way, its simply appealed ” against and if its a State thing it will end up in a Federal Court. Here Federal trumps State law. Thank goodness we followed the UK rather than the odd USA system.

As for how Jesus might have seen things, what about his Dad, the all powerful, and the one and only “God”

By allowing all of these things to occur, such as fuel out of food, is he having fun at our expense or because someone, somewhere must have sinned , so we must be punished.

Anyway would not using such agro fuel simply return the CO2 which was what caused the plant to grow in the first place..

MJE

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Michael
January 21, 2019 1:37 am

No one mentions civil responsibilities!

January 20, 2019 1:52 pm

Amazingly consistently, every step that the Warmistas take to mitigate the effects of the non-existent Global Warming / Climate Change scare ends up enriching members of their own clique and reducing the living standards of the poor of the World. There is a connection here well worth looking at in detail.

January 20, 2019 3:04 pm

Nichalas its just a Scam, no different to the “Sub-Prime morgauge”scam which came very close to putting the Worlds financial sector into another “Great Depression of the 1930 tees.

We here in Australia have just had a Royal Commission into the financial sector, ie. the banks. So far, we are now waiting for the final report, but all the indications are that the Banks are no different to a gang of crooks who steal money from say “The Banks”.
But of course they are far too big to be punished, so we will have a number of top brass, who will do the honourable thing and retire, with no doubt a generous pension, then its back to business as usual.

MJE

Fredar
January 20, 2019 4:22 pm

I wonder what Martin Luther King would have thought about the video game Fortnite. I think he would have loved it.

Richard Hood
January 20, 2019 5:35 pm

I have developed hydrocarbon technologies to eliminate 85.7% of the worlds CO2 emissions, with no contribution from solar or wind power and electric cars. The government of Canada, apparently kicked me out of Canada because I was trying to save the bitumen production. I developed the ZEST™¹ (Zero Emissions SAGD Technology) Proces that makes Athabasca Bitumen 45% lower than the average US oil refined in 2005. (Kind of hard to shut down the production of that oil.) They can only hold that up until I get back in Canada. The rest of the technologies are available from me. any gas, liquid, or solid can be combusted to make power with absolutely no vapor emissions. We can also reduce the emissions of almost any oil by burning the rejects, petroleum coke, and asphaltenes without a sign of any vapor emissions. Contact me for more details at r-l-hood @ shaw.ca. When I get a US e-mail address, that one will cease to work.

[???? .mod]

Gary Pearse
January 21, 2019 1:32 am

Ironically, ‘dangerous global warming climate science’ is a шнутемаиs’ invention and they dominated it up until Climategate. шнутешомеи became more and more attracted to it for some reason, particularly after climategate, and they seem to always be the majority in protests (of all kinds). Maybe c-gate turned men off more. Early on, this was commented on and photos of meetings, conventions and the like became an embarassment for its monochrome constitution. Now, multi cultural climate pictures of meetings have become part of the fake news epidemic – more close-ups, panning large convention crowds is not done, now. The rich imagery has been removed from searches.

Still, nearly all the hysteria and cheerleading comes from the шнуте leaders of the meme, notably from UK, US and Germany. IMO Martin Luther King wouldn’t have supported the locking out of poor nations from development of their economies to “save the Planet” for the elitist neokolonialists, the burning of food for fueling North American and European cars, energy poverty that is killing the poor and elderly in cold winters, tufting and glazing the planet with windmills and solar owned by crony capitalists.

Shame on you Marshall Shepherd! You are a beneficiary of MLK’s brave work and you think he would go for this terrible enterprise that you have enjoined.

Tom Abbott
January 21, 2019 5:46 am

From the article: “his narrative clearly establishes that King, a man of the cloth, had no inherent problem or fear of science”

I’m wondering who Marshall Shepherd thinks has an inherent problem or fear of science?

He says that Dr. King is not like that but implies that others are. Is he talking about religious folks being afraid, or is he talking about “deniers” being afraid of science? Or both?

Perhaps he is implying that anyone who doesn’t believe in CAGW is afraid of science. That’s probably it. That’s usually what the alarmists say, isn’t it.

January 21, 2019 10:09 am

J. Marshall Shepherd was my manuscript editor at J. Applied Meteorology and Climatology. The manuscript was about systematic error in the global air temperature record.

It passed review after three rounds. Four positive reviews, and one insistently negative reviewer who supposed that statistical uncertainty bars are high-frequency temperature jitter.

But J. Marshall Shepherd decided that the careful calibration experiments of MMTS and other temperature sensors carried out by Kenneth Hubbard and Xiamao Lin, which I used to estimate instrumental error, applied only to those instruments at that site.

That is, he rejected the manuscript on the grounds that careful calibration of one MMTS sensor, for example, said nothing about the limits of accuracy of any other MMTS sensor.

J. Marshall Shepherd pretty much denied the general validity of analytical science to gain his end.

From his letter one couldn’t decide whether he really was that incompetent, or whether he had just found a convenient pretext to suppress an inconvenient conclusion.

In either case, his decision displayed scientific incompetence.

Supposing his decision was opportunism, though, it’s not surprising that J. Marshall Shepherd should go on to opportunistically abuse the memory of MLK to his own ends.

E&E eventually published the manuscript as two related papers, here (900 kB pdf) and here (1 MB pdf).

They show that the global air temperature record is too error-riven to resolve the rate or the magnitude of climate warming since 1900.