By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
1. Introduction.
Ever wonder why extremists attack honest scientists who oppose global warming and climate change hysteria? Ever wonder why climate extremists refuse to debate the science?
It is because global warming and climate change alarmism was never about the science – it was always a false narrative, a smokescreen for the totalitarian objectives of the extreme left.
The novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, written by George Orwell in 1949, foresaw a time “when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism and propaganda”. It now appears that Orwell had remarkable foresight.
Here is the real “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, an interview that year with ex-KGB officer and Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who described their long-term program to ideologically undermine the western democracies. Jump to 1:07:30 for Bezmenov’s discussion of “ideological subversion”. It is all about manipulating the “useful idiots” – the pro-Soviet leftists within the democracies.
One commenter on the video wrote: “this is crazy, almost everything predicted by this guy is already happening.” Bernie Sanders, AOC and other socialist-Democrats are openly saying what Bezmenov predicted decades ago. The last democracies are under attack by leftist extremists.
All over the world, countries that once had a future have fallen into dictatorship, poverty and misery. It is notable that of the ~167 large countries in the world, most are totalitarian states, and all but “the chosen few” citizens of these countries suffer under brutal leftist dictatorships.
Radical greens have used wildly exaggerated stories of runaway global warming and climate change to stampede the gullible, in order to achieve their political objectives. The greens claim to be pro-environment, but their policies have done enormous environmental damage. Radical greens have also been destructive to humanity, causing millions of deaths. I wrote recently:
2. Radical Greens Have Cost Trillions of Dollars and Hundreds of Millions of Lives.
Here is some of the supporting evidence:
· The banning of DDT from ~1972 to 2002, which caused the malaria deaths of tens of millions of children, and sickened and killed tens of millions more of all ages;
Reference: “Silent Spring At 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson”, 21Sept2012
“Carson made little effort to provide a balanced perspective and consistently ignored key evidence that would have contradicted her work. Thus, while the book provided a range of notable ideas, a number of Carson’s major arguments rested on what can only be described as deliberate ignorance.”
https://iea.org.uk/publications/research/malaria-and-the-ddt-story
· The fierce green opposition to golden rice, actions that blinded and killed millions more children; References here, here, here and here.
· The misallocation of scarce global resources for costly, destructive intermittent ‘green energy’ schemes, which are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy;
· Properly allocated, a fraction of the trillions of dollars squandered on green energy schemes could have installed clean drinking water and sanitation systems into every community on the planet, saving the lives of many tens of millions of children and adults; the remaining funds could have significantly reduced deaths from malaria and malnutrition;
“Global Crises, Global Solutions”, The 1st Copenhagen Consensus. Bjørn Lomborg ed., 2004.
· The number of Excess Winter Deaths and shattered lives caused by runaway energy costs in the developed world and lack of access to modern energy in the developing world probably exceeds the tens of millions of malaria deaths caused by the DDT ban; Excess Winter Deaths (more deaths in winter than non-winter months) total more than two million souls per year, which demonstrates that Earth is colder-than-optimum for humanity;
· Indoor air pollution from cooking fires contributes to illness and premature death in the developing world, especially among women and children;
· In addition to runaway energy costs and increased winter deaths, intermittent wind and solar power schemes have reduced grid reliability and increased the risk of power outages;
· Huge areas of agricultural land have been diverted from growing food to biofuels production, driving up food costs and causing hunger among the world’s poorest people.
3. There is NO credible scientific evidence that climate is highly sensitive to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), and ample evidence to the contrary. Catastrophic humanmade global warming is a false crisis.
Competent scientists have known this fact for decades. In a written debate in 2002 sponsored by APEGA and co-authored on our side by Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Dr. Tim Patterson and me, we concluded:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Many scientific observations demonstrate that both these statements are still correct.
The current usage of the term “climate change” is vague and the definition is routinely changed – it is a “non-falsifiable hypothesis”. It is therefore non-scientific nonsense.
“A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” – Karl Popper
Climate has always changed. Current climate is not unusual and is beneficial to humanity and the environment. Earth is in a ~10,000 year warm period (‘interglacial’) within a ~100,000 year cycle of alternating glaciations and interglacials. A warm period is NOT a crisis. A glacial period (‘ice age’) with a 2 km thick continental glacier covering much of the world is a crisis.
The term “catastrophic human-made global warming” is a falsifiable hypothesis, and it was falsified decades ago – when fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2 increased sharply after ~1940, while global temperature cooled from ~1945 to ~1977. There is no credible evidence that weather is more chaotic now – both hurricanes and tornadoes are at multi-decade low levels of activity.
Even if all the observed global warming is ascribed to increasing atmospheric CO2, the calculated maximum climate sensitivity to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric CO2 is only about 1 degree C, which is not enough to produce dangerous global warming. Ref. here & here.
Global warming alarmism is based on the false assumption that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming. In fact, atmospheric CO2 changes lag global temperature changes at all measured time scales. Tropical Sea Surface Temperature changes, then tropical humidity changes, then atmospheric temperature changes, then CO2 changes, in that order.
Climate computer models cited by the IPCC and other climate activists employ much higher assumed sensitivity values that create false alarm. The ability to predict is perhaps the most objective measure of scientific competence. All the scary predictions by climate activists of dangerous global warming and wilder weather have proven false-to-date. The global warming / climate change alarmists have a perfectly negative predictive track record, so no sensible person should believe them.
Based on current knowledge, the only significant impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 is greatly increased plant and crop yields, and possibly some minor beneficial warming of climate.
4. Humanity needs modern energy to survive – to grow and transport our food and provide shelter, warmth and ~everything we need to live. Wind and solar power are too intermittent and too diffuse to be practical or effective. Green energy schemes have been costly failures.
Fully ~85% of global primary energy is from fossil fuels – oil, coal and natural gas. The remaining ~15% is almost all nuclear and hydro. Green energy has increased from above 1% to less than 2%, despite many trillions of dollars in wasted subsidies. The 85% fossil fuels component is essentially unchanged in past decades, and is unlikely to significantly change in future decades.
The fatal flaw of grid-connected green energy is that it is not green and produces little useful (dispatchable) energy, primarily due to intermittency – the wind does not blow all the time, and the Sun shines only part of the day. Intermittent grid-connected green energy requires almost 100% backup (‘spinning reserve’) from conventional energy sources. Intermittent wind and solar electrical generation schemes typically do not even significantly reduce CO2 emissions – all they do is increase energy costs and reduce grid reliability.
Claims that grid-scale energy storage will solve the intermittency problem have proven false to date. The only proven grid-scale ‘super-battery’ is pumped storage, and suitable sites are rare – Alberta is bigger than many countries, and has no sites suitable for grid-scale pumped storage systems.
5. The trillions of dollars of scarce global resources wasted on global warming hysteria, anti-fossil fuel fanaticism and green energy schemes, properly deployed, could have improved and saved many millions of lives.
About two million children below the age of five die from contaminated water every year – about 70 million dead kids since the advent of global warming alarmism. Bjørn Lomborg estimates that a fraction of these squandered green energy funds could have put clean water and sanitation systems into every community in the world.
Waste of funds and loss of opportunity due to global warming alarmism and green energy nonsense have harmed people around the world. In North America, Europe and Australia, trillions of dollars have been wasted on grid-connected green energy schemes that have increased energy costs, increased winter mortality, and reduced the stability of electrical grids.
In the developing world, the installation of electrical energy grids has been stalled for decades due to false global warming alarmism.
In the winter of 2017-2018, England and Wales experienced over 50,000 excess winter deaths (more deaths in the winter months than non-winter). That British per-capita excess winter death rate was ~three times the average excess winter death rate of the USA and Canada.
Energy costs are much higher in Britain, due to radical green opposition in the UK to the fracking of gassy shales.
The anti-oil-pipeline campaign has cost ~$120 billion dollars in lost oil revenues and destroyed ~200,000 jobs in Alberta and across Canada. This is an enormous financial and job loss for Canada. Canada, mostly Alberta, is the fifth largest oil producer in the world and the largest foreign supplier of energy to the USA. References here and here.
The funds wasted on baseless global warming hysteria, anti-fossil-fuel fanaticism and destructive green energy schemes, properly deployed, could have saved or improved the lives of many millions of people.
6. The conduct of climate activists has been destructive, deceitful and violent.
Global warming alarmists have shouted down legitimate debate and committed deceitful and violent acts in support of their false cause.
The Climategate emails provide irrefutable evidence of scientific collusion and fraudulent misconduct.
In Canada, skeptic climatologist Dr. Tim Ball and other skeptics have received threats, and buildings related to the energy industry including the Calgary Petroleum Club were firebombed. In the USA, skeptic scientists have had their homes invaded, and several highly competent skeptic scientists have been harassed and driven from their academic posts.
7. Radical greens have caused enormous harm to the environment, for example:
· Clear-cutting the tropical rainforests to grow sugar cane and palm oil for biofuels;
· Accelerated draining of the vital Ogallala aquifer in the USA for corn ethanol and biodiesel production;
· Clear-cutting forests in the eastern USA to provide wood for the Drax power plant in Britain;
· Destructive bird-and-bat-chopping wind power turbines.
8. Why are the radical greens so anti-environmental?
Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder and Past-President of Greenpeace, provided the answer decades ago. Moore observed that Eco-Extremism is the new ‘false-front’ for economic Marxists, who were discredited after the fall of the Soviet Union circa 1990 and took over the Green movement to further their political objectives. This is described in Moore’s essay, “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement” written in 1994 – note “The Rise of Eco-Extremism”.
For radical greens, it was never about the environment – the environment was a smokescreen for their extreme-left totalitarian political objectives. When radical green extremists take power, it will be ‘One Man, One Vote, Once’ – the end of democracy.
To understand radical green objectives, see http://www.green-agenda.com/, excerpted below:
· “The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations
· “We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
· “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
· “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
– Christopher Manes, Earth First!
· “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
· “One American burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say. In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”
– Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
· “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
· “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
– John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
· “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
· “The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival or millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth – social and environmental.”
– Ingrid Newkirk, former President of PETA
· “The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”
– David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, founder of Friends of the Earth
9. Conclusion
Radical green extremists have cost society trillions of dollars and many millions of lives. Banning DDT and radical green opposition to golden rice blinded and killed tens of millions of children.
Green energy and CO2 abatement schemes, driven by false fears of catastrophic global warming, have severely damaged the environment and have squandered trillions of dollars of scarce global resources that should have been allocated to serve the real, immediate needs of humanity. Properly allocated, these wasted funds might have ended malaria and world hunger.
The number of shattered lives caused by radical-green activism rivals the death tolls of the great killers of the 20th Century – Stalin, Hitler and Mao – radical greens advocate similar extreme-left totalitarian policies and are indifferent to their resulting environmental damage and human suffering… … and if unchecked, radical environmentalism will cost us our freedom.
The 1984 interview with Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov has been censored by YouTube as “Hate speech”, which it definitely is NOT.
I have applied to YouTube to have it reinstated, but in the meantime a shorter version is available at
Thank you, Allan
“Radical green extremists have cost society trillions of dollars and many millions of lives.”
This is perfectly true, but it is not by chance that they act like this:
– their main purpose (or the goal of those who advance behind these useful idiots) is to destroy Western civilization and reduce the world’s population.
All this tragedy is related to Malthusians (as was Hitler, Paul Ehrlich and his disciples, Holdren (Obama’s science advisor), most of the politicians who push the CO2 scam, organizations, as the UN, WWF, etc., billionaires as Ted Turner, etc.).
Radical greens are the useful idiots, the henchmen of an actually powerful and terrifying Malthusian movement which is spreading all over the planet, based on junk science falsified decades ago.
After the 3 days of a tiny heat wave in France (with fake records as at Gallargues le Montueux), one of the dumbest French greens declared : “This is a war … !”.
We will very soon hear from those same pychopaths that “The end justifies any means”.
A Final Solution
Had a recent conversation with a relative that worked on a committee last year advising the Trudeau government on how the world must restructure in the next 30 to 40 years. Many of the ‘good’ ideas the group discussed sounded like they came from Maurice Strong, Naomi Klein or the Club of Rome. It seems that economic man is the enemy and we have to have a strong global government to redistribute the wealth. He thought that this would entail a revolution in expectations of how one would live and would require strong controls on business, environment and people.
I’m afraid that it isn’t just the ecolunes anymore.
You have two excellent talking points:
Direct attack against virtue signalling might not be the best strategy.
I would propose doing our own virtue signalling with ideas of greening the planet with CO2 and prosperity. This also about educating the people about the carbon cycle. Hijacking the recycling meme to recycling carbon by simply burning it and letting plants to do the rest.
And who controls the propaganda machine ( education, the press, social media etc) ?
Who is providing the unlimited funding for this scheme? Who can print all the dollars needed to corrupt the system since 1913 ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
Federal Reserve? That was last year’s conspiracy. Allan places the blame squarley at the feet of the KGB.
“Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who described their long-term program to ideologically undermine the western democracies.”
Or are they the same thing? Maybe Allan could clarify that.
Loydo: conspiracy
Projecting again.
Distraction and re-direction.
It’s all he’s got left.
Yes and they have useful idiots in the National Society of Professional Engineers, editor of publications Dave Sigel never vets anything, such as this piece of work that appeared in NSPE Daily Deigns Daily Propaganda offering:
https://www.axios.com/paris-climate-target-energy-use-climate-change-8bfe89e4-2d19-4fe0-aea2-aa50b2efb615.html
Robert . How right you are…
“Bonus Presentation here: http://www.hiddensecretsofmoney.com Who owns the Federal Reserve? You are about to learn one of the biggest secrets in the history of the world… it’s a secret that has huge effects for everyone who lives on this planet. Most people can feel deep down that something isn’t quite right with the world economy, but few know what it is.
Gone are the days where a family can survive on just one paycheck… every day it seems that things are more and more out of control, yet only one in a million understand why. You are about to discover the system that is ultimately responsible for most of the inequality in our world today.
The powers that be DO NOT want you to know about this, as this system is what has kept them at the top of the financial food-chain for the last 100 years.
Learning this will change your life, because it will change the choices that you make. If enough people learn it, it will change the world… because it will change the system .
For this is the biggest Hidden Secret Of Money.
Never in human history have so many been plundered by so few, and it’s all accomplished through this… The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind.”
Who does the money printing to keep this scheme alive? America is broke and Big Government is expensive.
America is broke because Big Government is expensive.
I think you will find this presentation on the Fed interesting too, along with many other topics discussed by James Corbett: https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-292-century-of-enslavement-the-history-of-the-federal-reserve/
There is also the cost to common folk who have sacrificed their time freely to fight this nonsense. I’m not complaining – just saying that there are so many more causes that are more worthy of our attention, but we feel compelled to fight the insanity, so we engage in any way we can to try to get people to see reason. I don’t know at what level the battle will be won, but win it we must – because if alarmists succeed in electing another climate change maniac, I’m not sure we will ever win this battle. I believe there is a tipping point – but it has nothing to do with climate. It’s about common sense, reason, and control.
Now tell us how you really feel!
Great work Allan . . .
Yes!
Otherwise all these insistent self-esteeming substitutes for long proven real virtues, promising that we can make a personal difference by joining a historic movement of advancing cadres overturning what has actually benefited countless ordinary people (because we are so much wiser than all who preceded us), fueled by a blind emotive zeal, has been no walk in the park for those who suffer collateral damage from us. You don’t say. How about they get a real job rewarded for the regular performance of a service valued by someone.
Not that I give much weight to what “The Economist” says, their highest ranking “Full” democracies are the most radical purveyors of climate hysteria and repressive climate policies. Canada, Scandinavia, New Zealand, Oz, Germany etc.
Maybe democracy is not always rational.
Democracy is never rational because those who promise the most free stuff get the vote.
Of course they will always run out of other people’s money and then the private banking system (Federal Reserve) takes over. We The People are no longer in control.
Hi Sky,
The Economist went “full warmist hysteric” more than a decade ago, and I cancelled my subscription.
The referenced paper from the Economist is useful, but must be heavily discounted due to the far-left bias.
Same, cancelled my sub to the so called economist when I realized it was a radical leftist shill
Thank you for a superb reminder why anyone with a conscience should be resisting the disgraceful green monster. Your piece should be required reading in schools and colleges, but we living through a period of eco-fanaticism which crushes any dissent in the public domain and is the very opposite of true scientific or moral value. I fear the price of green deceit will be very much higher yet.
Allan,
Brilliant, thank you, and very timely.
I am in touch with my Member of Parliament in the UK over Theresa May’s astonishing pledge of £1Tn to support the Climate Change Act here. I received an encouraging response and he has passed my information directly to the Energy Minister for review.
Would you mind if I sent this to my MP, and I recall you have posted your resume here before which would be useful for me to append, can you direct me to it please. Or perhaps Anthony could pass my email address directly to you.
Regards.
Theresa May is just a puppet. Who controls these puppets?
Hi HotScot my friend,
You can forward this essay to anyone without my permission. It is also published without Comments at
https://thsresearch.wordpress.com/2019/07/04/the-cost-of-society-of-radical-environmentalism/
Some of my background is here:
“Summary of Award Nomination Documents:
Dr. David Devenny, P.Eng., P.Geol., Past President of APEGA, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, nominates Allan MacRae, P. Eng., for {awards}.
Some of MacRae’s achievements include:
A) Initiatives that drove major economic growth of Syncrude Canada, the Alberta oil sands and the Canadian economy
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, Allan initiated (or co-initiated) and successfully proposed three of the four major changes that drove the successful growth of the Alberta oil sands. Changes included new income tax terms, new Crown royalty terms and a low-cost 50% production increase that reduced Syncrude unit operating costs by 30%. Allan also recommended that Syncrude acquire new leases for growth, and technical innovations that improved performance and reduced costs.
Allan incorporated these initiatives into a comprehensive strategy for Syncrude, which was implemented and was instrumental in the successful evolution and growth of Syncrude and the Alberta oil sands industry.
The oil sands industry became the mainstay of the Canadian economy for 15 years, with over $250 billion in new capital investments and approximately 500,000 new jobs created. Canada became the fifth-largest oil producer in the world and the most successful economy of the G8 countries.
B) Actions that prevented a potentially catastrophic sour gas disaster at the Mazeppa project near Calgary
In May 2016, Allan MacRae, as an uninvolved citizen, became aware of unsafe operating procedures at the Mazeppa critical sour gas project near Calgary. At some personal risk, he investigated, consulted with trusted colleagues, and following the Code of Conduct of Alberta’s Professional Engineers (APEGA), he reported his concerns to the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), and followed up to ensure proper compliance.
The AER quickly shut down the Mazeppa project, and canceled all 1600 operating licenses of the parent company, which was placed in receivership and bankruptcy. The Managing Director was fined and sanctioned. This was the most severe reprimand of a company in the history of the Alberta energy industry. A 2005 analysis of Mazeppa wells by the Alberta ERCB concluded that an uncontrolled sour gas release would affect an area within a 15km radius and could kill or injure up to 250,000 people.
C) Service to Calgary’s Homeless
From 2002 to 2017, Allan was volunteer member of the Board of Directors of the Calgary Drop-in and Rehab Centre (“the DI”). The DI provides food, shelter and services to homeless single women and men.
According to Dermot Baldwin, the former Executive Director of the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre:
Early in Allan’s tenure on the Board, there was a critical shortage of funded shelter beds at the DI. Allan was instrumental in obtaining provincial funding to increase the capacity of the DI from 600 to 800 beds during that crisis, immediately before the onset of winter.
Later Allan steered the challenging sale of a building from the DI to Inn-from-the-Cold. That allowed homeless Calgary families to live in their own rooms, instead of staying in church basements and moving frequently from church to church.
During his tenure on the Board, the DI grew from 600 funded shelter beds to over 1200, and provided 1.2 million free meals per year. Allan served on the Board Executive, the Governance Committee and the Fundraising Committee, which financed the DI’s large real estate portfolio. The Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre is the largest such organization in Canada.
D) Provision of medical services to a remote native Amerind community in the High Andes, Jujuy Province, Argentina
Circa 1992, Allan co-initiated the re-discovery of a borate deposit in the high Andes of northwestern Argentina at 4200m elevation. The opening of the new mine caused medical care to be introduced to a remote native Amerind village.
E) Successful proposal for a new Tax Class 53 to assist Canadian manufacturing industries
In 2014, Allan proposed improved income tax terms for Canadian manufacturing industries, through his Member of Parliament Joan Crockatt. As a result, a new Class 53 CCA rate was introduced for a ten-year period in the 2015 Budget.”
************************
I recently resigned from APEGA.
Allan,
thank you. I will be forwarding all this to my MP who seems to have sympathy with climate sceptics.
Hi,
Agree with this, except golden rice. I’ve read that to get enough Vitamin A you would need to ear a week’s ration in one day. Vast majority of all genetic crops have less yield than locally grown crops.
How to give the poor a good source of vitamin A? Give them some pumpkin seeds to grow. Other vegetables also provide good amounts.
According to wikipedia, 144 grams a day would give enough vitamin A. The problem might be that vegetables just don’t provide enough calories for the land they take. Farmers there know their options better than we do here. Golden Rice is just another option. As long as the seeds are freely available and breed true, they should do more good than harm.
Rice forms PART of their staple diet. There is likely to be vitamin A in other foodstuffs but not enough. Including golden rice rather than white rice might be just enough to reach the health threshold.
To Rod Gill:
Andy Pattullo wrote here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/#comment-2680618
“I am not sure why Greg believes claims of “killing and blinding babies” doesn’t qualify as science. I am a specialist in infectious diseases and these facts are part of what I teach about the history of infections and policy decisions. The banning of DDT did indeed lead to a marked increase in deaths of infants and children in sub-Saharan Africa from malaria and, when DDT was reintroduced, those death rates fell dramatically. The ban itself was not scientific but emotional, based on unfounded claims of harm. Engineered rice which provides vitamin A to malnourished children in developing nations has proven benefit and can indeed prevent blindness and immune deficiency that will harm or kill millions of children. Radical environmentalists have done everything possible to prevent those children from being saved.”
Also, read all the references in my article about golden rice. I am appalled by the number of people who speak out against golden rice without doing their homework. Being indifferent to, or even encouraging the blinding and killing of children is NOT acceptable.
DDT as a vector insecticide didn’t really make it to central sub-Saharan Africa. In 1963, when Fred Soper’s UN-sponsored malaria-eradication program was gearing up to wipe out malaria south of the Sahara, they discovered most mosquito populations there were already resistant or immune to DDT, largely due to DDT overuse in agriculture.
Since the mosquitoes refused to die with DDT, there was nothing else to do but end WHO’s malaria eradication program, which Soper did in 1963 (Operations formally suspended by the bureaucracy in 1965, and by the board in 1969).
Consequently, anyone who claims deaths rose after DDT was banned, nine years later, is full of beans.
In reality, malaria deaths fell from the ban on DDT in the U.S., in 1972, to 1990, leveled off, and then started falling again in 1999. There was no spike in malaria deaths in any group due to the U.S. ban on DDT on U.S. farms.
Think about it for a minute.
1. Mosquitoes didn’t migrate from the U.S. to Africa (and malaria never returned to the U.S.).
2. U.S. suddenly had a lot of DDT to get rid of; USAID encouraged African and Asian nations to buy all they could, since DDT was never banned in Africa or Asia. U.S. sales to Africa continued until U.S. DDT makers got out of the business in 1984.
3. African nations weren’t about to give any special listen to Rachel Carson, if malaria threatened and DDT would work. Africans are not stupid as that claim assumes.
The U.S. ban on DDT was based on science. Every study of DDT and Silent Spring, from 1962 to the present day, finds that Rachel Carson was right about DDT, and still is. The President’s Science Advisory Commission said in 1963 that Carson was right, and recommended immediate reductions in use of DDT to save it for fighting vector diseases, and to save wildlife. The Mrak Commission, and then the Hilton Commission for HEW/HHS/EPA all confirmed Carson was right. Rule making hearings before EPA confirmed Rachel Carson’s accuracy. A literature search by Discover Magazine in 2007 found more than 1,000 peer-reviewed studies backing Carson’s work on birds, with nothing contradicting what she wrote.
Opposition to Rachel Carson, as Allan MacRae’s expressed above, is wholly emotional and political, based on no good science done anywhere at any time.
Is everything else he says similarly emotion-based, and contrary to science and history?
I see that another anti DDT liar has showed up with zero evidence to back it up.
What the Liar seems to have not realized that the EPA own science board didn’t recommend that DDT be banned, neither did the Judge who presided over the case. It was William Ruckelshaus who banned it on his own.
Meanwhile the liar make thumper claims without evidence and lies anyway since there were a lot of published literature showing DDT wasn’t the cause of the many claims as shown here:
EXCERPT:
III. EPA HEARINGS. DDT was banned by an EPA administrator who ignored the decision of his own administrative law judge.
17. Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney, concluded that “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man… DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man… The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife.” [Sweeney, EM. 1972. EPA Hearing Examiner’s recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings, April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32, 113 pages). Summarized in Barrons (May 1, 1972) and Oregonian (April 26, 1972)]
18. Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA administrator Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a single hour of the seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. Ruckelshaus’ aides reported he did not even read the transcript of the EPA hearings on DDT. [Santa Ana Register, April 25, 1972]
19. After reversing the EPA hearing examiner’s decision, Ruckelshaus refused to release materials upon which his ban was based. Ruckelshaus rebuffed USDA efforts to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that they were just “internal memos.” Scientists were therefore prevented from refuting the false allegations in the Ruckelshaus’ “Opinion and Order on DDT.”
https://junkscience.com/100-things-you-should-know-about-ddt/
Here is the Book REVIEW of DR. Carson’s Silent Spring:
Chemicals and Pests
J.L. Baldwin
http://bwcase.tripod.com/sci1962.pdf
Her book has been exposed for all to see here and in the link I already posted.
Your problem there is that humans are carnivores. I know, I know, this is something the UN and WHO would like to keep a dark secret, but biologically it’s true. Our brains have actually been shrinking, along with our bone density and muscle mass, since the time we took up agriculture and moved to eating cereals. That’s what the archeological record shows, hard to dispute. Additionally, deformities of the mouth and face, dental caries, infertility and dystocia, and most of our modern mental afflictions not to mention diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancers all show up within 10 years of a formerly isolated tribe taking up the diet of the modern, industrialized West. (Ref: Nutrition & Physical Degeneration, Weston A. Price). This was proven from Switzerland and Greenland to Africa and Australia.
The “plant-based diet” the WHO is trying to literally shove down everyone’s throats is going to result in a world population of low-energy, weak-minded, low-libido and fertility, docile humans whose primary concern in life will be the getting drugs and supplements to offset this purposely created “Save the Planet!” mess, and guess who’ll be controlling those? Perfect Malthusian storm, seems to me! Y’all get back to me with how those pumpkin seeds work out for ya . . .
The “plant-based diet” the WHO is trying to literally shove down everyone’s throats is going to result in a world population of low-energy, weak-minded, low-libido and fertility, docile humans whose primary concern in life will be the getting drugs and supplements to offset this purposely created “Save the Planet!” mess”
Oh, I see you mean Millenials.
Nuttiness on steroids.
7. Radical greens clear-cut the tropical rainforests and drained of the vital Ogallala aquifer.
Etc, etc, etc.
All driven by the KGB and “their long-term program to ideologically undermine the western democracies”.
What I want to know is: who are the leaders of these “radical greens” that are taking over the world causing whole countries to “fall into dictatorship, poverty and misery” (like… what are their names) and exactly how did the KGB manage to brain-wash them? And how come you managed to figure all this out but no actual credible investigative journalists could?
They don’t come much dumber than you, do they?
It takes a lot of training to act that dumb.
“no actual credible investigative journalists”? Sure, just disbelieve any sources not aligned ideologically with yourself, and one can make that statement.
What evidence would you ask for? It is rather like dealing with a Jehovah’s Witness, or a Stalinist. As your ideology is incapable of responding to the real world, you can be smug in your weltanshaaung.
Loydo:
“What I want to know is: who are the leaders of these “radical greens’…”
Loydo – see http://www.green-agenda.com/ – there are many names for you to ponder.
Furthermore:
[excerpted from https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-june2019-final-.pdf ]
17. Commentary concerning global warming and climate change catastrophes are typically political propaganda, not scientific reality.
The leaders of the radical greens typically know they are misleading the public. The Climategate emails provide irrefutable evidence of their misconduct. Their followers typically believe the falsehoods, and apparently do not have the education or the intellectual ability to do otherwise.
Reference: https://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/
Reference: https://www.thegwpf.com/climategate-a-scandal-that-wont-go-away/
Reference: http://www.theclimategatebook.com/about-the-book/table-of-contents/
As I thought – zero evidence, just a list of references to opinion pieces, mostly your own.
The weird part of all this is your belief that the KGB kicked the whole thing off – based entirely on something you heard on Youtube.
Just wondering Loydo….As a true believer how many human lives are you willing to sacrifice? Ten or perhaps hu hundreds of millions?
Hi Griff
(Loydo is NOT Griff) SUNMOD
A straw diversion rebuttal. Do we really need their names?
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/04/communist-party-flag-burning/
It’s just another identity political culture, it isn’t a conspiracy when vast groups share the same belief system. There are some neophytes and day dreamers even in the communist movement. That doesn’t make it net less destructive or dangerous for those who oppose them.
That was explained in the article.
Try reading for comprehension next time, instead of just cherry picking parts to complain about.
Just How many times does this need repeating.
DDT has not been banned for mosquito control. DDT became ineffective at killing mosquitos when mosquitos became immune to its effects.
DDT did not just kill mosquitos.
read it here:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/ddt-chronicles-at-millard-fillmores-bathtub/
How many times does this need repeating.
It wasn’t banned, the US just told anyone who used it they wouldn’t get any more foreign aid.
Thank you Mark – ghalfrunt is repeating one or the many specious “Big Lies” of the radical greens.
Lying is one of the few things the radical greens are good at – they are Masters of Deceit.
Read Andy Pattullo’s comment here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/04/the-cost-to-society-of-radical-environmentalism/#comment-2738059
Nope. USAID’s policy was to sell as much US-made DDT as possible, until US makers stopped making it in the USA.
Only for a brief time during the George W. Bush administration did USAID NOT push DDT use to fight malaria — and the Bush people finally admitted they didn’t know why.
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/usaid-policy-statement-on-ddt-and-malaria-control/
“Winter Deaths (more deaths in winter than non-winter months) total more than two million souls per year, which demonstrates that Earth is colder-than-optimum for humanity;”
————————————
the earth is too hot in some places to support human life (food and water for example)
the earth is too cold in some places.
So just how do you propose stopping these winter deaths?
just how do you judge the optimum whe be are already too hot and too cold?
The point that you work so hard to miss, is that when people have to choose between heating or eating, they die.
Thanks to the global energy scam, energy prices have risen to the point where millions are forced into such decisions.
“For radical greens, it was never about the environment – the environment was a smokescreen for their extreme-left totalitarian political objectives. When radical green extremists take power, it will be ‘One Man, One Vote, Once’ – the end of democracy.”
———————————————–
wow! I think your conspiracy bias is may be showing a little bit(!!!!!!)
With no warning by WUWT, I am surprised that such a ludicrous unsupported piece of conspiracy text got published here
Once again with the cherry picking.
Your question was answered in the article.
HotScot July 5, 2019 at 1:36 am
Would you mind if I sent this to my MP, and …
—————————–
good grief. Why would you want to be tied into this conspiracy theorist. You need incontrovertible data to change a policy (unless Boris gets in!)
But apparently you don’t need incontrovertible evidence to make it in the first place!
ghalfrunt
I have incontrovertible evidence:
No one in the history of mankind has ever demonstrated, by empirical means, that atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm.
The ONLY direct observation of increased atmospheric CO2’s effect on the planet is that it has greened by 14% over 35 years of satellite observations. Two continents the size of mainland USA worth of greening according to one NASA scientist.
These simple facts alone means there is something more behind the climate change scam. Allan’s post simply points to some reasonable conclusions, none of which are without considerable evidence.
Moderately Cross of East Anglia July 5, 2019 at 1:23 am
Thank you for a superb reminder why anyone with a conscience should be resisting the disgraceful green monster. Your piece should be required reading in schools and colleges,
——————————–
It should be shown in schools and colleges as an example of a well developed and extreme conspiracy theory – nothing else.
Back those Marxist claims with proof and thing may be better.
ghalfrunt – four comments from you already, and more to come?
I will only allow myself one response to a troll today, and have already used it up above with Loydo. Read that response.
“Progressive” is the new word for Marxist. Do you think that Bernie Sanders and AOC are Conservatives?
🙂
And Marxist need money too. Loads of it.
The proof was provided. Surprised you managed to miss it.
Allan you have written a very good summary of how we have got to this place in time .
You have provided numerous quotes from people who have been in powerful positions and some quotes from some that still are very powerful and the media loves to fawn over.
Then along comes Loydo who resembles the description of the useful idiot .
People like Loydo and there are millions of them cannot think for themselves and really believe that the threat of CAGW is real and if the world leaders do nothing the world will end.
As for radical greens take a look at the Democratic line up for the presidential election in the USA .
As I have said before if these radical greens or any one else who really believed that fossil fuels were doing real harm they would be shouting for the world to adopt nuclear power to produce reliable energy to power the world.
They will not advocate nuclear so that is proof that they want to destroy western democracies with the help of useful idiots like Loydo that have no idea how food gets to the supermarket and how all goods and services in the modern world depends on cheap reliable energy
I’m just being a little bit skeptical Gwan.
skep·ti·cal
/ˈskeptək(ə)l/
adjective: sceptical
1. not easily convinced; having doubts or reservations.
You should try it.
Now that thar is funny.
Meantime back on planet Earth…
Anchorage hit 89 degrees Thursday to break the all-time highest temperature ever recorded at the official recording station. The previous record was 85 degrees set on June 14, 1969.
4 degrees is not “breaking” it is smashing. Pesky, radical, green, human-loathing, marxist meteorologists.
Finally, for once, a nice summer day in Anchorage. Haters, tho, resent people enjoying some brief, nice weather.
Meanwhile, here in Calgary, 10 degrees latitude further South, it is 9 C, should be 20, we have zero media reports on the “cold wave”…
weath·er
/ˈweT͟Hər/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: weather
1.
the state of the atmosphere at a place and time as regards heat, dryness, sunshine, wind, rain, etc.
“if the weather’s good we can go for a walk”
Can you say “weather”?
I knew you could.
Yeah, and it’s 48 deg. F in Calgary. It should be in the high 60’s or low 70’s.
So Loydo, by your argument, the planet is cooling. 🙁
“Anchorage hit 89 degrees Thursday to break the all-time highest temperature ever recorded at the official recording station. The previous record was 85 degrees set on June 14, 1969.”
WOW! Talk about a long time frame! How long has the official recording station been recording? And where is it situated? Does it tell us what the temperature there was 200 years ago? 500? 1000? No? Not much good for “all time” records then, is it.
It really is amazing how weather becomes climate whenever it suits the trolls purpose.
Just a few months ago Loydo was one of those who were going on and on again about how a few record lows meant nothing.
So, a one-day temperature record break disproves something. Wow, such idiocy and lack of common sense is hard to imagine. Remember how at the beginning of June everyone in Europe was talking about the record cool weather, and asking if summer was actually going to happen?
Do you think, maybe, that temperature records (which have only been more precisely calculated in the last 100 years or so) are variable enough that it is fairly easy to break such a record every 50 years or so without any problem? Without regard to any factor such as CO2?
Moreover, to repeat the refrain you folks make every time we hear when we hear talk about record cold: weather is not climate. How about you try following your own advice sometime? And try understanding that weather, along with climate, does change all of the time without regard to what YOU think may or may not cause the change. One day does not a proof make, so stop being disingenuous.
Of course the fact that the “official” site is highly contaminated with both UHI and micro site issues is completely ignored by the troll.
All that she cares about is that the data supports her position. That the data be true and accurate is not a requirement.
An absolutely brilliant article and many well-informed comments.
The Llodos of the world will be the first to cry foul and beg for mercy when their backs are against the wall.
This must become the mainstream resistance talking points for the GOP and what remains of global conservative thought.
We’re far from it.
This is among the best summary articles ever posted at WUWT.
The other side of this is that the Greenbeans and Warmunistas and all of them that want to rid the Earth of humans forget that they’re hoomans, too, and they’ll have to go. They should all volunteer to be first in line, from the top (UN/IPCC/ all the rest) down.
If they do that, and we see it happening, then I’ll believe they are sincere.
Starting a new Algorebull religious order isn’t easy, you know.
The Warmunists and their fellow travelers like to call just about everyone who isn’t socialist a Nazi.
The Marxist death toll now exceeds 300 million with the last 50 years of brutal (to 3rd world humans) anti-human environmentalist extremism’s “collateral damage”. The Nazi’s could only dream of such destruction.
The last 25 years these enemies of humanity and freedom have doubled down on their blitzkrieg toward a totally enslaved world population. Climate is currently their strongest tool. Yet, I see almost no organized action to forcefully combat this fraud.
This Climate fraud scheme is an admirably clever political tool. Climate is too complex for ANYONE, including the current batch of scientists, to fully understand, so it’s very difficult to have a public argument against thousands of corrupted scientists who are supported by unrelenting propaganda from liars in the MSM. The Climate fraud is still gaining strength even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the science is wrong and their remedies (renewables and regulation of energy use) will not even come close to meeting CO2 emissions goals…even if there was a real Climate Crisis.
The last barrier to this universal Socialist serfdom are Hillary’s Deplorable people who are naturally suspicious of liberalism. It may not be enough.
That’s a good point doc, keep in mind the Deplorable don’t what their Social Security benefits limited to their contributions either.
I don’t see much progress with ethanol subside reductions, farm subsides or the size of governments.
The “barrier” you referenced may have fallen in the 1930’s in part to the aftermath of the First World War globalization. Of course there was plenty of decline and social rotting before that conflict.
There was still an intellectual class of Roman’s in the 3rd century AD talking about the “Republic” even if they had no living memory of one. It had fallen 400 years earlier. On dark days that’s where I think we are. It’s already a collectivist tyranny in many ways. Skeptics are playing the role of “White Russians” outside Moscow in 1918. Their dislike for each other exceeded the horrible future assured by irrational communism.
Climate socialists control the MSM messaging, academia, many government agencies including those backing the “science”.
The society at large?
About one in five in public High School think the sun revolves around the Earth. Even more think larger objects fall faster then smaller one. Many can’t find Germany of a wordless global map. What X and Y Chromosomes imply? Let’s not even go there.
If there is any hope skeptics have to cure themselves first about what controls the debate results. I doubt a plurality who would support the articles conclusions even if they in private agreed with the facts contained. That’s where skeptics are in this society.
Here’s an example of what happens when Eco-extremists are given free reign:
https://fasmovin.com/f/it-doesnt-look-right
I’m just going to throw this out there to the Greens ….. given that most of them believe that life on earth is just some coincidence of time, the result of random development with no real purpose ….. why is it so important to save life on earth? Who cares if billions of species go extinct? …. or even all species for that matter, …. their existence is pure accident, and since there is no ultimate purpose, time itself would have no memory of their existence …. and frankly wouldn’t care that it had no memory of their existence because it has no memory to begin with.
Simply put, there is no ultimate moral code, therefore there cannot be any moral basis to save life on earth as life itself is a pure accident. Our own existence is meaningless, and as such it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t exist, and it won’t matter that our great great great great great grandkids won’t exist either. …. and we won’t be around to care if they don’t exist! ….. so put in 2 words ….
So What?
Just sayin’
Dr Deanster July 5, 2019 at 7:16 am
I’m just going to throw this out …
“So what?” Is an excellent response to quite a bit of the nonsense from our friends on the left.
You have exposed the fundamental contradictions of the radical and environmentalist Left in one fell swoop.
All that means is this: for them, meaning derives from having power and control over lives as well as “politics,” i.e., everything, under their definition. That is all that matters to them, which is why they are willing to say and do anything to advance that cause, regardless of any internal or external logical contradictions that are identified.
A history of banning of DDT: It was only ever totally banned in 26 countries, most of which don’t have much malaria, and I have yet to hear of any of those being lifted. Also it did not get less banned after 2002, as exemplified by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants which took effect in 2004 and banned DDT worldwide for all use except vector control.
More standard green falsehoods from Donald L. Klipstein. DDT was effectively banned from 1972 to 2002 and malaria deaths ~doubled. Most of the deaths were children under five years of age, just babies for Christ’s sake!
As Mark explained above , DDT “wasn’t banned, the US just told anyone who used it they wouldn’t get any more foreign aid.”
Andy Pattullo wrote here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/#comment-2680618
“I am not sure why Greg believes claims of “killing and blinding babies” doesn’t qualify as science. I am a specialist in infectious diseases and these facts are part of what I teach about the history of infections and policy decisions. The banning of DDT did indeed lead to a marked increase in deaths of infants and children in sub-Saharan Africa from malaria and, when DDT was reintroduced, those death rates fell dramatically. The ban itself was not scientific but emotional, based on unfounded claims of harm. Engineered rice which provides vitamin A to malnourished children in developing nations has proven benefit and can indeed prevent blindness and immune deficiency that will harm or kill millions of children. Radical environmentalists have done everything possible to prevent those children from being saved.”
I am appalled by the number of people who repeat the green falsehoods about DDT. Being indifferent to the killing of children is NOT acceptable.
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng. – 5 hours ago July 4, 2019
“WRONG”, ……if there is an order, the correct order is:
“Sea Surface Temperature changes, then CO2 changes, then tropical humidity changes, then atmospheric temperature changes.”
And the past 60 years of “steady & repetitive” bi-yearly (seasonal) cycling of an average 6 ppm of atmospheric CO2, …… as defined by the Keeling Curve Graph and/or the Mauna Loa Record, ….. is factual scientific evidence that the bi-yearly (seasonal) cycling of water temperature of the Southern Hemisphere ocean waters is responsible for said ingassing/outgassing “cyling” of atmospheric CO2.
Factual evidence that discredits your claim that ….. “changes in atmospheric CO2 ppm track behind changes in near-surface air temperatures” ….. is explicitly portrayed by THIS PROXY GRAPH that contains the “plotted” 1979-2013 UAH satellite global lower atmosphere temperatures ….. and the 1979-2013 Mauna Loa mid-May “max” CO2 ppm data.
One would have to have a severe case of cross-eyed dyslexia to claim a correlation between the plotted temperature and CO2 on the above cited graph.
Cogar – I’ve provided you with all the evidence but you appear to be innumerate.
Stop posting your aggressive, false drivel.
“ Cogar – Stop posting your aggressive, false drivel.”
So, MacRae, ….. the only CYA you got is to claim that these 60 years of NOAA’s complete monthly average Mona Loa CO2 ppm data …… is nothing more than “false drivel”????
Allan, iffen that’s your “story” and you’re “stickin” to it, …… so be it.
Providing you the “opportunity” to further your knowledge of science is all that I am capable of doing.
Cheers
Leaving aside the scientific issues, if I may, I would like to state more concern with the threat to tolerance within an open society.
Regrettably, I think we have all heard MacRae’s warming many times, yet it never reaches the ears of those we rely on to restrain the savages at the gate. Here is what Karl Popper had to say about these threats to a free society, in which limits on free speech and belief must be vanishingly remote. Paradoxically, however, we still need them. Justice Louis Brandeis warned in his “fire in a crowded theater” concurring opinion (Whitney v. California) that except in a genuine emergency can the only proper action is more speech. Who defines an emergency, and then what?
Karl Popper, familiar to these pages, expressed what may be the remote but necessary limitation on free expression. He referred to it as the ultimate paradox of tolerance.
“Unlimited tolerance,” he wrote , “must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant and [we] are not prepared to defend … against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. … As long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.”
And here is his critical limit: “But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.” (Karl Popper, introduction, “The open society and its enemies.”)
It’s a chilling and accurate article. The real issue is why they’ve made so many gains and in fact are the base of the global progressive ideology?
This gets to the other important topic of the divide among the natural opposition. Why hasn’t it stopped such a transparently fraud and corrupt climate/socialist agenda?
Why do you so many skeptics cling to the technical science weeds approach to resistance and are offended by the clear political undercurrent of the green culture formation???
It leads to a much larger conversation why society becomes defeated, nihilistic and self destructive. Greenshirts are symptom like some many other forces but they aren’t the cause. To me, it seems economic development and technology displacement drive productivity gains but predictably displace and have unintended consequences. You can refer to D.H. Lawrence as a commentary of later 19th century industrialized disaffection with displacement. It was that era that cultivated Marxist and progressiveness as virtue.
As example, computers and AI have created another displacement today and more importantly the perception of the future. It doesn’t matter what the production rate is or what the material benefits average. The society losses faith, live in fear and some gravitate to extreme political cultures with substitute religious overtones. That’s pretty much what he modern left represents.
This is obviously a partisan left link and I’m not agreeing to all the subtext. It does, perhaps inadvertently touch on a similar question;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-american-conservatism-failed/2019/07/04/bf221ddc-9dd7-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6aefaa072926
Why do socialist win? Why are Greenshirts a growth group?
The AGW debate is being decided by the sides people which people choose to associate. That’s far different then how most skeptics perceive the moving parts of the debate. It’s something that core greens never forget and why they grow.
Zakaria is making a bit of a straw out of conservatism but if what you advocate doesn’t meet the needs of so many, people look for the alternative. His inference that President Trump was delivering to harder conservatives is nonsense. Many disaffected progressives are in the Trump coalition. There’s more to the cultures then the actual position on the size of government involved.
I just present the topic to skeptics that they ask themselves what the undecided are going to gain defeating Greens other then higher collective productivity? If you expect to win the politics as a logic contest again consider the history of that.
“· Indoor air pollution from cooking fires contributes to illness and premature death in the developing world, especially among women and children;
· In addition to runaway energy costs and increased winter deaths, intermittent wind and solar power schemes have reduced grid reliability and increased the risk of power outages;
——————————————
just hoe is power going to be provided to developing world in such a way that it can be affordable to the humans there?
Infrastucture is vulnerable and expensive. Wages are poverty level and will not pay for neither cooker nor fridge. Nor will it pay the production cost of the electricity. And in some locations where will the water come from to operate the turbines and cool the steam?
Just how much aid has been stopped by the trump administration?
Where are these impoverished humans to get money from?
Do you have evidence of runaway costs and power outages? The cost of electricity in UK has matched the cost of gas (the prime source for electric generation in the uk) for most of the last 20 years:
the last major outage in uk was caused when a nuke an coal powered station went off line within minutes.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100206093023/http://nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/E19B4740-C056-4795-A567-91725ECF799B/32165/PublicFrequencyDeviationReport.pdf
The same way it was provided to the rest of the world. By building out from population centers to the rest of the country.
Of course left wing efforts to make electricity more expensive and less reliable will make this process more difficult. As intended.
Once again the troll assumes that unless aid comes from government, no progress is possible.
We now have a *less* reliable grid? You’re either very young or your memory is the thing that is becoming unreliable. Off-grid power has improved a bit since Grandpa hooked the Wincharger to the batteries to run the RCA radio, a few lights, and the cream separator. Adding 6 KW of solar to a 6 GW grid can’t have more effect than adding a clothes dryer, can it?
Randy, your comment is specious nonsense.
Electrical grids have been seriously de-stabilized by adding significant amounts of wind power.
Germany almost crashed their grid during Christmas 2004.
See Figure 6 at http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
South Australia has experienced two month-long grid outages.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/22/victims-of-the-south-australia-statewide-blackout-to-sue-wind-farm-operators/
__________________________
Excerpt from
“CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY”
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
pdf:
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-june2019-final-.pdf
Excel spreadsheet:
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-june2019-final.xlsx
12. FOSSIL FUELS COMPRISE FULLY 85% OF GLOBAL PRIMARY ENERGY, UNCHANGED IN DECADES, AND UNLIKELY TO CHANGE IN FUTURE DECADES.
The remaining 15% of global primary energy is almost all hydro and nuclear.
Eliminate fossil fuels tomorrow and almost everyone in the developed world would be dead in about a month from starvation and exposure.
Despite trillions of dollars in squandered subsidies, global green energy has increased from above 1% to below 2% is recent decades.
Intermittent energy from wind and/or solar generation cannot supply the electric grid with reliable, uninterrupted power.
“GREEN ENERGY” SCHEMES ARE NOT GREEN AND PRODUCE LITTLE USEFUL (DISPATCHABLE) ENERGY, because they require almost 100% conventional backup from fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro when the wind does not blow and the Sun does not shine.
There is no widely-available, practical, cost-effective means of solving the fatal flaw of intermittency in grid-connected wind and solar power generation.
Hydro backup and pumped storage are only available in a few locations. Other grid-storage systems are very costly, although costs are decreasing.
To date, vital electric grids have been destabilized, electricity costs have increased greatly, and Excess Winter Deaths have increased due to grid-connected green energy schemes.
Reference: “Statistical Review of World Energy”
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
Reference: “Wind Report 2005” – note Figs. 6 & 7 re intermittency.
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
Specious nonsense vs 14 year old report on wind power from 2005? OK I didn’t read all of that.
Yes, there was a 4000 mw slew rate in output over 10 hours at Christmas 2004. Twice daily changes in demand in Ontario are larger, and happen more quickly, but they have a LOT of hydro. Even then, it seems from the IESO site that they have to curtail a lot of night-time wind and nuclear during spring and fall, and burn natural gas on low wind days.
The idea that *any* wind or solar will destabilize the grid is at least as ridiculous as the Greenpeace nonsenae that wind and solar will completely replace fossil fuels and nuclear power anytime soon, or ever.
The wind power in Australia didn’t cause the blackout after some transmission towers dropped during a storm, and didn’t prevent it. 9 of 13 sites tripped so 4 didn’t, and that kind of weakens the argument againat all wind turbines as grid destabilizers more than a little. They don’t regularly black out the state at random times during the workday, do they? I recall a few major blackouts in North America that happened before the wind age. Seems like wherever there isn’t much hydro to manage the variability it’s going to take other technologies to manage load and maintain grid frequency
Regardless, I think there should be a lot more nuclear in Canada, but i’m not an expert – and still can’t see how a thousand 6kw clothes dryers switching on randomly is so much worse, different, or more measurable than a thousand 6 kw solar arrays tapering off randomly when a cloud passes over.
just hoe is power going to be provided to developing world in such a way that it can be affordable to the humans there?
Infrastucture is vulnerable and expensive. Wages are poverty level and will not pay for neither cooker nor fridge. Nor will it pay the production cost of the electricity. And in some locations where will the water come from to operate the turbines and cool the steam?
Europe, America, Japan & other countries didn’t have electric infrastructure, cookers or fridges at the end of the 1800s. But they modernized (and there weren’t other countries that already were to help them). How did they do it?
beng
Europe, America, Japan & other countries didn’t have electric infrastructure, cookers or fridges at the end of the 1800s. But they modernized (and there weren’t other countries that already were to help them). How did they do it?
———————————
on the backs of underpaid workers down the pits and in the factories.
And creating massive pollution.
Should we not help the humans to bypass the pollution?
But also the climate and population centres in these countries enable simple power distribution.
Today every one seems intent on making and keeping their money. I was brought up in the countryside in the 50s 60s. it was not until mid 60s that electricity was brought to the hamlet. This was effectively paid for by taxes on the better off – my farmworker father could not afford it.
The claim that workers were underpaid is one of the lies that the left uses to justify their desire to steal from those who work.
The workers were paid based on the value of their labor, just as they are today. The difference is that the lower technology of the day meant that their labor wasn’t worth as much.
Likewise the pollution was also mostly due to the technology of the day.
Like all left wing trolls, ghalfrunt assumes that as long as you have enough government, you can create miracles and instant wealth.
Well said beng135,
My ancestors emigrated from the UK between 1852 and 1863 to New Zealand with no money and landed in an extremely undeveloped country . They rolled up their sleeves and found work in different occupations .
On both sides of my family they became wagoners shifting supplies inland from the ports and carting wool and timber from the back country .
In the early 1900s the government was constructing railways and my great grand parents and grand parents went farming in the North Island .Bush country was being balloted and was felled and burnt and the ash grew pasture for 20 years till it was exhausted .This was hard work and totara trees were sawn by hand and split for fence posts and wire and staples were purchased to construct miles of fencing over very steep land in many cases.
I was born and brought up high on Mount Pirongia on a farm that my grandfather had taken up in 1904 .
I remember power lines being erected up over the farm in 1948 (at the age of 5 ) and that was when we were able to have the luxury of a refrigerator a washing machine and an electric stove .
The point that I want to make is that New Zealand was at the end of the world when a sailing ship took between six and twelve weeks to sail from Europe .
Immigrants came from around the world and if they were prepared to work they could wrest a living from the land or in the towns providing services and goods .
New Zealand did have a gold rush in Otago in the 1880s but other than timber, flax , fishing and whaling there were few natural resources except a benign climate.
New Zealand is now a modern country but our government is pushing us to the left and seem to be determined to undermine our farming with ridiculous requirements to reduce methane emissions from farmed livestock which if carried through will reduce stock numbers up to 47% by 2050 for no gain .
Gwan — correct, hard work & determination. Those not willing to do so have no one else to blame but themselves.
Loydo
Above you state that the “Federal Reserve is last year’s conspiracy”.
Nah–it’s been a conspiracy since it was formed in 1913.
The original promoters knew that financial setbacks preceded recessions and hardship. Their reasoning was that the Fed as “lender of last resort” would prevent financial setbacks and this would prevent recessions.
There has been 18 recessions since the Fed opened its doors for depreciation in January 1914.
As Feynman would say–the theory doesn’t work.
Great article Allan.
The short form, being Gang Green, unchecked, will destroy civil society just as gangrene will kill the man.
Perhaps we failed society,we who protected the useless and clueless from their own ineptitude,encouraged them to find jobs in the civl service and similar parking spots.
On the work site we so often made the dangerous klutz the safety officer as a form of defence.
Now look at work place safety and society.
Darwin was right ?
Canada is front and centre in this Kleptocratic fraud.
Fraud is government policy.
Climate Change?
Water Wet?
The logical result of unchecked bureaucratic growth.
A country declining under endless regulation and rule of incompetency.
As the percentage of working persons employed by government increases,it becomes highly unlikely that that percentage of the voting population will vote for less government.
And we are a long way past 1 in 10,which is probably the limit of affordable dead weight in a society.
I recall that Racial Carson of “The sea around us” and her last book
“Silent spring” , may have been affected by the recent death of her husband
from Cancer.
She became concerned about the story of birds eggs being weakened and
then breaking, she said that it was DDT, being that birds were nearly at
the top of the tree of life, so accumulated the traces of DDT.
There is no doubt that DDT was overused. I recall the story of a greengrocer
who dipped all of his cabbages in DDT, and told the customers how safe his
produce was.
She was just one of many who were concerned at the overuse of DDT. A bit
like today at the concern of the overuse of anti biotic.
Like so many well meaning people she was used by the early Greens come Communists as a means to their ends.
MJE VK5ELL
True of many things, once something is cheap and widely available, it becomes over- or mis- used. DDT, Glyphosate, antibiotics, sugar, gasoline / diesel, electricity. Sometimes a little provides great good, and a lot more becomes quite harmful.
Randy – a very poor analogy, especially when you added “gasoline/diesel, electricity” to your list.
Consuming too much water or table salt will kill you too, but it proves nothing.
Jevon’s paradox. Making cars and ships more efficient leads to higher consumption, not less. Asia’s cities are covered in smog because of efficient liquid fuel prosuction and efficient vehicles. DDT was a great improvement over arsenic and nicotine powder. But inevitably idiots get their hands on things they don’t understand. 80% of Alberta’s conventional oil is now gone. Not going to grow back – sold off cheap and now we will have to buy it back dear. The natural gas is going the same way, it only feels like an infinite aupply during this supply glut. The screaming emotional panic of the radical environmentalist may be fueled by ignorance, poor math skills, and foreign propaganda and influence. But the business-as-usual knowing complacence of Canada’s foreign controlled energy industry in the face of declining reserves and rising consumption may not end well. If you think you have a proof that radical environmentalists sunk Manitok and Trident and not declining production, institutional environmentalism, and competition, I’d like to see your working out.
Randy you wrote:
“Jevon’s paradox. Making cars and ships more efficient leads to higher consumption, not less. Asia’s cities are covered in smog because of efficient liquid fuel production and efficient vehicles. DDT was a great improvement over arsenic and nicotine powder. But inevitably idiots get their hands on things they don’t understand. 80% of Alberta’s conventional oil is now gone….”
OK so far, and I don’t have time now to pursue this further with you, but I do know this:
I don’t know Manitok but I had Trident as a client for a short while – I fired them because they had no credibility. But much better companies than Trident have gone under because of the wild swings in commodity prices. As soon as prices plunge, the banks pull the loans on the juniors, even the good ones. We need patient capital in Alberta.
I published in the Calgary Herald in 2003 that Alberta needed to follow Quebec’s lead, and collect our own income taxes and start our own pension plan. We need to keep the money in Alberta, rather than giving it away to the rest of Canada – a million dollars per Alberta family-of-four since 1961 – about a trillion dollars in total.
All that money has enabled the rest-of-Canada, including the feds, to grow bloated civil services and dysfunctional policies – Alberta has financed the Canadian welfare state.
Well, fair enough. Capital would have to be patient, indeed, to accept years of losses with little chance of improvement, only to eventially win a cleanup liability after depletion beyond all hope. It’s not impossible that the landlocking of oil and gas will have a similar effect to the marketing restrictions that the Wheat Board imposed on the west, or the softwood lumber tariffs illegally charged by the US – diversification, higher efficiency, and added value in processing. Maybe we could be making plastics and refining fuel, instead of exporting raw gas and bitumen at a loss. Maybe the rules should allow shutting in wells when product prices are too low, without then forcing abandonment and reclamation. Maybe those rules could stay linear assessment tax for the inactive period. Less now for more later, instead of nothing now, or forever. Or we could just say that a few protesters chanting about whales at the coast destroyed it all… after the oil was mostly gone, and weren’t nothing anyone could do different.
” I had Trident as a client for a short while – I fired them because they had no credibility. ”
…
Allan, you are the first person that I’ve ever heard of that fires their client. Usually it works the other way, where the client does the “firing.”
Keith – I’ve fired several clients in my time. If they lack credibility, all that happens when I represent them is I hurt my own credibility – and that can do me a lot of harm.
The best was an oilsands start-up – when I called their President to terminate our relationship, he got all upset, and ranted “You can’t fire me, I want to fire you!”, to which I had to explain to him “It’s about the passage of time, Mike. I’ve already severed our relationship, so it’s a bit too late for that.” He did not appreciate the comment – no sense of humour.
Randy wrote:
“Or we could just say that a few protesters chanting about whales at the coast destroyed it all… after the oil was mostly gone..”
That statement contains two major falsehoods:
1. There is plenty of oil left in Alberta and Sask – but it’s heavy.
2. The anti-pipeline movement was funded by $600 million of foreign funding.
Let’s end this discussion – you are not being honest.
1. Yes, i should have specidied ‘convemtional’, and the heavy crude is not as valuable, harder to handle and transport, and can’t be refined as easily as light oil.
2. Every industry in Canada has an ongoing propaganda war to fight. One day they’re whining about cheese, then it’s no fair that we have more trees to make lumber, or iron ore, or hydro power, or aluminium, or blackberry phones, or ATI video cards, or basic medical care.
The root cause of Alberta’s current petroleum battle is more likely a massive, but probably temporary abundance of cheap shale oil and associated gas down south.
If not for that, where would prices be? North of $120 a barrel? With $5 or $10 natural gas? Would the US have put the Hollywood propaganda machine in high gear to slag Alberta oil, and embargoed Venezuela if they were short of fuel to plant crops? I doubt that.
Randy, most of the issues you list are not significant. As a former Chairman of the Syncrude Technical Committee and member of the Syncrude Management Committee, I know that the refining of heavy crudes is well-understood and well-managed by upgraders and refineries in Canada and the USA.
The anti-pipeline movement IS vitally important to Alberta and Canada. The anti-pipeline thugs were funded by $600 million in foreign money, and have cost Canada $120 billion in lost oil revenues. The net beneficiary has been the USA and most of the funding came from there. The Alberta government is now conducting an official inquiry into this misconduct.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/alberta-announces-public-inquiry-into-shadowy-foreign-funding-of-environmental-groups
The $120 billion in lost oil revenues is an enormous loss for a relatively small population like Canada’s – proportionally, that would be like a $1.2 trillion loss for the USA..
The anti-pipeline thugs are guilty of treasonous crimes against Canada. Fortunately, it is not up to me to decide their fate, because I would imprison or hang the lot.
Yes of course refining and upgrading of heavier crudes is well understood. It’s also not free and takes significant energy, isn’t that a significant reason for the price differential to other crude streams?
Is that taken into consideration in calculating the $120 billion number? Is someone using the equivalent of the selling price of #1 wheat and the cost of growing #3 feed?
Is the $120 billion gross lost sales, or the estimated lost profit? ‘Cause it seems to me that the ROI to US Big Oil on their $600 million investment would come from keeping the price high in North America to maintain their seller’s market of energy in short supply.
The $120 billion of lost revenue is the difference between what Alberta/Canada could sell our heavy or upgraded synthetic crude at export prices vs the discounted landlocked price we get now, in the absence of export pipelines to tidewater.
Including lost Royalties and Taxes, ~all of this $120 billion is lost “profits” to industry and governments (whose share including Royalties and Taxes is about half, at these oil prices).
Our upgraded synthetic crudes typically have higher yields (of high-value products) than conventional light crudes because synthetics contain no heavy ‘bottoms’, and typically synthetic crudes get a premium price in the market.
Our heavy crudes provide excellent high yields (~110%) if hydrocracking is used, and lower yields (~87%) if coking is the primary upgrading technology. The low price of our diluted bitumen is driven by the market – it takes a much more capital-intensive refinery to upgrade the heavy crudes, and not every refinery is equipped to upgrade major volumes of heavy.
The bottom line is Alberta and Canada have fumbled the ball – our governments and industry have allowed us to be scammed out of $120 billion, because nobody was minding the store. We should have built these pipelines a decade ago.
This was not rocket science – industry and government should have foreseen this phony green crisis long ago and prevented it.
Here we go again – another specious anti-pipeline lawsuit from the radical greens. My understanding is that the TransMountain pipeline expansion will actually reduce total tanker traffic in the area, because this pipeline will also supply oil to Washington state refineries, reducing the number of tankers supplying those refineries with oil from Alaska and elsewhere.
As I wrote in my above article, radical green environmentalism was never about the science – it was always a false narrative, a smokescreen for the totalitarian objectives of the extreme left.
The TransMountain oil pipeline expansion has been delayed for about a decade, and other much-needed pipelines have been cancelled by our village-idiot Prime Minister, who has packed his cabinet and close advisors with green extremists.
The science of pipelines is quite simple: “Pipelines are cheaper and safer than all other forms of oil transportation.” Twelve accurate words that refute a decade of wasted legal wrangles and related falsehoods that have cost Alberta and Canada ~$120 billion.
The alternative to pipelines is shipping crude by rail, which is more dangerous and results in greater volumes of oil spills – and there are no major restrictions to shipping oil by rail.
Our industry and governments need to respond much more forcefully to these extremists attacks on our economy, which have cost $120 billion, destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs and created great hardship for Albertans and Canadians.
Conservationists file legal challenge to Trans Mountain reapproval over whales
July 8, 20192:43 PM The Canadian Press
https://boereport.com/2019/07/08/conservationists-file-legal-challenge-to-trans-mountain-reapproval-over-whales/
Conservationists file legal challenge to Trans Mountain reapproval over whales
July 8, 20192:43 PM The Canadian Press3 Comments
A aerial view of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain marine terminal, in Burnaby, B.C.
VANCOUVER – The federal government is facing a new legal challenge after it approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion for a second time.
Ecojustice has filed a motion to the Federal Court of Appeal on behalf of Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the Living Oceans Society asking for leave to launch a judicial review of cabinet’s decision.
Raincoast says in a statement that it will argue cabinet failed to comply with its responsibility to protect critically endangered southern resident killer whales when it reapproved the project June 18.
This is the second time Ecojustice has gone to court on behalf of the conservation groups over the pipeline expansion.
In August, the federal court struck down the government’s previous approval of the project, ruling the marine environment hadn’t been considered and Indigenous consultations were incomplete.
Margot Venton, nature program director for Ecojustice, says in the statement that cabinet cannot justify approving the project legally or morally.
“The government itself says endangered southern resident killer whales face imminent threats under their current conditions. This iconic population simply cannot handle increased, unmitigated threats from the Trans Mountain expansion,” she says.
*************************
I say let’s refine it all here, and sell it by the litre, and charge a carbon tax only on product shipped out of province. Use the asphalt left over to fix the roads, and the money to pay the paving crews.
Great article but perhaps it’s time to fight fire with fire? The greens use their crystal ball to predict future catastrophe so why shouldn’t we? How much human and environmental destruction can we expect in the future if they have their way?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/04/big-oil-goes-big-green/#comment-2695722
I suggest it is time for major push-back – since 2013 or earlier I’ve been advocating for Civil RICO lawsuits in the USA against wealthy institutions who benefitted from the global warming scam.
If anyone is seriously interested in funding this approach, contact me through my website.
Allan
What’s your website address?
Hi HotScot – Click on my name on any post on this page and it will take you there.
Then go to Contact Us and fill in the form.
Watch this video:
Antifa Origins & Tactics Exposed, After Andy Ngo’s Assault At Portland Protest—Jack Posobiec
Excerpt from my paper:
7. Radical greens have caused enormous harm to the environment, for example:
• Clear-cutting the tropical rainforests to grow sugar cane and palm oil for biofuels;
• Accelerated draining of the vital Ogallala aquifer in the USA for corn ethanol and biodiesel production;
• Clear-cutting forests in the eastern USA to provide wood for the Drax power plant in Britain;
• DESTRUCTIVE BIRD-AND-BAT-CHOPPING WIND POWER TURBINES.
________________________
Today from the GWPF:
Press Release 08/07/19
THE APPALLING ENVIRONMENTAL COST OF WIND ENERGY
A new publication from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reviews the impact of wind energy on the environment and finds that it is already doing great harm to wildlife.
“THE IMPACT OF WIND ENERGY ON WILDLIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT” contains contributions from both researchers and campaigners, with a focus on birdlife.
Professor Oliver Krüger describes his cutting-edge research, which has shown how birds of prey and ducks are being killed in their thousands in Germany. The risk to these species is so great that there is a possibility of whole populations being wiped out.
Klaus Richarz, the former head of a major bird reserve in Germany, describes how windfarm operators are evading strict compliance with the rules, to the detriment of both birds and bats.
Dr Peter Henderson, of the University of Oxford, reviews the effects of wind turbines on a wide variety of animals. He suggests that death toll on bats may already be ecologically significant:
“About 200,000 bats are annually killed at onshore wind turbines in Germany alone. These numbers are sufficient to produce concern for future populations, as bats are long-lived and reproduce slowly, so cannot quickly replace such losses.”
Lastly, Paula Byrne of WindAware Ireland describes how windfarms in her native country have desecrated landscapes, and have even threatened the endangered Nore Freshwater Pearl Mussel.
With an extraordinary expansion of renewable energy planned, there is potential for these serious environmental impacts to become catastrophic.
THE IMPACT OF WIND ENERGY ON WILDLIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT (pdf)
https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=cf732b0514&e=da89067c4f
Throughout this week, GWPF will be releasing a series of publications and videos on the subject of renewable energy’s impact on the environment.
Contact
Dr Benny Peiser
Global Warming Policy Foundation
55 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QL
The madness lives and its name is macron.
The move, which will take effect from 2020, will see a tax of 1.5 euros ($1.7) imposed on economy-class tickets on internal flights and those within Europe, Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne said. … Shares in Air France fell sharply, down almost 4 percent to trade at 8.54 euros.
vor 1 Stunde
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&ei=G7okXfeAH6-f1fAPuPKP-A8&q=macron+new++CO2+tax+on+flights&oq=macron+new++CO2+tax+on+flights&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Andrew Montrose has written an excellent 27-page report for the GWPF entitled “Green Killing Machines” at
https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=8aa38e61ae&e=da89067c4f
[excerpt]
7 Conclusions
David Mackay knew all this. Just before his untimely death he gave an interview to the environmentalist,
Mark Lynas. A report of the encounter quoted him as follows:
“There is this appalling delusion that people have that we can take this thing that is currently
producing 1% of our electricity and we can just scale it up and if there is a slight
issue of it not adding up, then we can just do energy efficiency. . .Humanity really does
needs to pay attention to arithmetic and the laws of physics – we need a plan that adds
up.”
It must be clear that the renewables sums do not add up (and indeed that many green
organisations pay no attention to arithmetic!). Mackay was convinced that the future lay
with nuclear power and fossil fuels, the emissions of the latter mitigated with CCS.
Nevertheless, the ‘appalling delusion’ that the future will be powered by renewables still
forms the central plank of the energy policies of almost every UK political party. Almost every
green NGO still claims to support the idea too. ‘The UK can be almost entirely powered by
renewables’, says Greenpeace. ‘We can now see a future where almost all our electricity
comes from the wind, wave and sun’, says Friends of the Earth (a very different tale to
the results they published for the 2050 Calculator, in which fossil fuels continue to provide
around 40% of supply, most of it imported). Only the ‘miraculous’ intervention of CCS
prevents this being a problem.
We expect little from militant campaigning groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the
Earth. Their continued existence depends on maintaining a steady income, which depends
in turn on being able to scare members of the public into handing over their money. However,
we normally expect higher standards from the more ‘respectable’ participants in the
environmental debate. So it is hard to understand why the RSPB and the CPRE are willing to
continue to support the expansion of renewables.
It is beyond doubt that onshore technologies such as wind, biofuels and solar, if deployed
on the scale envisaged by these two organisations, would have an appalling effect on the
natural world. The birds and rural landscapes that these two eminent bodies claim to protect
would suffer unimaginably.
And the reality would be much, much worse than this. The environmentalists’ plans rely
on fossil fuels equipped with CCS for a very significant proportion of their energy supply:
40% in the plans of FoE and CPRE. Yet CCS is currently a mirage, and an extraordinarily expensive
one too. So the output of renewables would almost certainly have to be at nearly
twice the level in these plans, which, as noted above, already assume reductions in demand
that border on the absurd.
If the country really were powered by renewables on the required scale, the result would
be devastation. Tens of thousands of square kilometres of the UK would be ruined. The wilful
blindness of the RSPB and CPRE to the wholesale destruction they are supporting is wholly
culpable. It appears as if they have simply decided to betray their members and sacrifice
what they were sworn to protect, because some scientists told them it would be hotter in a
century’s time. How shameful.”
______________________________
Sections 4, 5 and 7 of my above paper briefly summarize the same subjects.
https://thsresearch.wordpress.com/2019/07/04/the-cost-of-society-of-radical-environmentalism/
[excerpt]
4. Humanity needs modern energy to survive – to grow and transport our food and provide shelter, warmth and ~everything we need to live. Wind and solar power are too intermittent and too diffuse to be practical or effective. Green energy schemes have been costly failures.
Fully ~85% of global primary energy is from fossil fuels – oil, coal and natural gas. The remaining ~15% is almost all nuclear and hydro. Green energy has increased from above 1% to less than 2%, despite many trillions of dollars in wasted subsidies. The 85% fossil fuels component is essentially unchanged in past decades, and is unlikely to significantly change in future decades.
The fatal flaw of grid-connected green energy is that it is not green and produces little useful (dispatchable) energy, primarily due to intermittency – the wind does not blow all the time, and the Sun shines only part of the day. Intermittent grid-connected green energy requires almost 100% backup (‘spinning reserve’) from conventional energy sources. Intermittent wind and solar electrical generation schemes typically do not even significantly reduce CO2 emissions – all they do is increase energy costs and reduce grid reliability.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/01/who-would-have-thought-nations-with-more-renewables-have-more-expensive-electricity/
Claims that grid-scale energy storage will solve the intermittency problem have proven false to date. The only proven grid-scale ‘super-battery’ is pumped storage, and suitable sites are rare – Alberta is bigger than many countries, and has no sites suitable for grid-scale pumped storage systems.
5. The trillions of dollars of scarce global resources wasted on global warming hysteria, anti-fossil fuel fanaticism and green energy schemes, properly deployed, could have improved and saved many millions of lives.
About two million children below the age of five die from contaminated water every year – about 70 million dead kids since the advent of global warming alarmism. Bjørn Lomborg estimates that a fraction of these squandered green energy funds could have put clean water and sanitation systems into every community in the world.
Waste of funds and loss of opportunity due to global warming alarmism and green energy nonsense have harmed people around the world. In North America, Europe and Australia, trillions of dollars have been wasted on grid-connected green energy schemes that have increased energy costs, increased winter mortality, and reduced the stability of electrical grids.
In the developing world, the installation of electrical energy grids has been stalled for decades due to false global warming alarmism.
In the winter of 2017-2018, England and Wales experienced over 50,000 excess winter deaths (more deaths in the winter months than non-winter). That British per-capita excess winter death rate was ~three times the average excess winter death rate of the USA and Canada.
Energy costs are much higher in Britain, due to radical green opposition in the UK to the fracking of gassy shales.
The anti-oil-pipeline campaign has cost ~$120 billion dollars in lost oil revenues and destroyed ~200,000 jobs in Alberta and across Canada. This is an enormous financial and job loss for Canada. Canada, mostly Alberta, is the fifth largest oil producer in the world and the largest foreign supplier of energy to the USA. References here and here.
The funds wasted on baseless global warming hysteria, anti-fossil-fuel fanaticism and destructive green energy schemes, properly deployed, could have saved or improved the lives of many millions of people.
7. Radical greens have caused enormous harm to the environment, for example:
• Clear-cutting the tropical rainforests to grow sugar cane and palm oil for biofuels;
• Accelerated draining of the vital Ogallala aquifer in the USA for corn ethanol and biodiesel production;
• Clear-cutting forests in the eastern USA to provide wood for the Drax power plant in Britain;
• Destructive bird-and-bat-chopping wind power turbines.
*********************************************
I wrote in this article “The Cost To Society Of Radical Environmentalism”:
“For radical greens, it was never about the environment – the environment was a smokescreen for their extreme-left totalitarian political objectives.”
Now AOC’s Chief -of-Staff is saying the same thing. No surprise here!
Regards, Allan
OCASIO-CORTEZ’S CHIEF OF STAFF ADMITS WHAT THE GREEN NEW DEAL IS REALLY ABOUT — AND IT’S NOT THE CLIMATE
[excerpt]
July 11, 2019
5:06 PM ET
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” is more about drastically overhauling the American economy than it is about combatting climate change, her top aide admitted.
Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, made the revealing admission in a meeting with Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s climate director in May. A Washington Post reporter accompanied Chakrabarti to the meeting for a magazine profile published Wednesday.
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts.
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” Chakrabarti added.
Full article at
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/11/saikat-chakrabarti-green-new-deal/?utm_medium=email
And the hits just keep on coming! This ~6-minute video from the GWPF is worth watching.
I wrote in this article:
8. WHY ARE THE RADICAL GREENS SO ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL?
Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder and Past-President of Greenpeace, provided the answer decades ago. Moore observed that Eco-Extremism is the new ‘false-front’ for economic Marxists, who were discredited after the fall of the Soviet Union circa 1990 and took over the Green movement to further their political objectives. This is described in Moore’s essay, “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement” written in 1994 – note “The Rise of Eco-Extremism”.
http://ecosense.me/2012/12/30/key-environmental-issues-4/
….
To understand radical green objectives, see http://www.green-agenda.com/,
__________________________
GWPF Press Release 12/07/19
NET ZERO AND THE INDUSTRIAL RUINATION OF THE COUNTRYSIDE
NEW VIDEO DOCUMENTS DEVASTATING IMPACT OF RENEWABLE ENERGY EXPANSION ON UK WILDLIFE AND COUNTRYSIDE.
London, 12 July: The accelerating deployment of massive wind, solar and biofuels farms all over the UK are devastating our natural environment and wildlife.
The UK government’s ‘net zero’ agenda has committed Britain to phasing out all forms of fossil fuels. Yet the accelerating deployment of renewable energy projects all over the UK are devastating our natural environment and wildlife.
Thousands of square miles of countryside are being industrialised by the deployment of huge solar and wind farms as well the rapid expansion of biofuel crops cultivation.
This short video gives a snapshot of the scale of both the planned transformation of the landscape, and the departure of green organisations from their founding purpose to protect Britain’s wildlife and natural heritage – a cause which has been abandoned in favour of alignment with the government’s climate and energy policies.
Video here:
https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=fd6ba988cd&e=da89067c4f
see also two new papers:
• Green Killing Machines: The impact of Renewable Energy on Wildlife and Nature (PDF)
https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=d8b6edf6f4&e=da89067c4f
• The Impact of Wind Energy on Wildlife and the Environment (PDF)
https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=9c7df1c86a&e=da89067c4f
Global Warming Policy Forum
London SW1P 3QL
This worthwhile video, produced by a group called Proud To Be Canadian, “talks about how the Canadian energy industry is changing the world and how it is time to stand up and be proud of our industry!”