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 ShepherdAs 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.
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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 04.35Internal 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.
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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”.
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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 AEDTEU 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.
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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.
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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.
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.
“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.
Speaking of disadvantaged, I knew this was coming. This is the first early admission of it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-vehicles/small-electric-cars-may-be-unaffordable-for-some-vw-chairman-to-newspaper-idUSKCN1PE0EJ
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.
The LIA dead backup that consensus…..
…and they still vote.
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
Have I crossed into some netherworld where MSNBC has taken over WUWT ??
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
No one mentions civil responsibilities!
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.
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
I wonder what Martin Luther King would have thought about the video game Fortnite. I think he would have loved it.
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 @ur momisugly shaw.ca. When I get a US e-mail address, that one will cease to work.
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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.
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.
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.