Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As Michael Moore extends free viewing time for his blockbuster “Planet of the Humans” for another month, George Monbiot has launched a savage attack against Moore’s film, accusing Moore of perpetuating racist colonialist tropes.
Some Monbiot quotes;
“The only concrete proposal in your film was that there should be a mass die-off”
“Population growth is what people reach for when they don’t want to face structural and systemic problems, problems such as capitalism. Population growth is what people reach for when they want to kick down, not kick up.”
“What we see is a phenomenon of comparatively wealthy white people saying we’re not the problem, our consumption growth isn’t the issue, its those people breeding, they are the problem. This claims is inherently racist, rich white people blaming poor brown people for an environmental problem which is mainly created by rich white people. This emerges from a very long standing discourse, a discourse which really arose from colonialism, and was used as one of the justifications for colonialism. …”
Strong words from Monbiot. In my opinion what we are seeing is utter desperation in the face of Moore’s catastrophic exposure of the green failure to deliver a viable alternative to fossil fuel.
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What a self important, misguided little worm Monboit is. The race card? really?
Is that the best he has to offer?
Just one more navel gazing, group thinking, science denying, hysterical catastrophist who willingly avoids looking a little deeper into the subject so he can safely ”maintain the rage” in his insular little circle of ignorant inner city bliss.
Just like so many other ”journalists” I hear commentating on climate change every day. They ”just can’t understand the psychology of the deniers” don’t you know!
This kind of garbage just turns my stomach.
Monbiot’s logic seems to be it more important to be seen to “be doing something” rather than doing something useful. He appears to be resentful that most of the virtuous planet saving activities are being shown up for the useless follies they are. There are a lot of potential solution to the alleged problem, however none will be acceptable to the Kool Aid drinkers, they only want to hear their own nonsense echoed back.
Meanwhile the grand CO2 reduction experiement proceeds apace. Mauna Loa and Cape Grim continue track along established trends. Awkward, why are we stressing about man made CO2 again?
During the past several months when Human CO2 emissions have been drastically reduced beyond even the most optimistic forecasts of the Kyoto and Paris protocols, caused by industrial shutdown due to Coronavirus panic, this didn’t actually lead to any subsequent reduction in the Mauna Loa figures though.
Isn’t this proof enough that such measures are entirely futile anyway? The World should abandon those boondoggles with immediate effect, and de-fund the so called IPCC and its series of expensive bunfights and travelling freak shows.
We could use some of the Trillions of Dollars saved, to actually improve the lives of large numbers of poor hungry “brown people”. Sorry for suggestion, but that’s just my overbearing imperialistic racism speaking.
You’re not going to significantly help any of those people as long as their corrupt governments are still in power. The money will be funneled away, or the equipment sold or left fallow until its useless.
What we need then, is for teams of imperialistic overbearing racists to take charge and kick out those avaricious dictators, or at least pension them off into some dachas, and employ and house those “brown people” and pay and feed them ourselves. Ooerr, wait a minute that’s colonialism isn’t it, and that’s a very very bad thing to do.
On Moonbat I defer to the words of Clive James
“ the Guardian, which entrusts all aspects of the subject to George Monbiot, who once informed his green readership that there was only one reason I could presume to disagree with him, and them: I was an old man, soon to be dead, and thus with no concern for the future of “the planet”. I would have damned his impertinence, but it would have been like getting annoyed with a wheelbarrow full of freshly cut grass.
ROFL 🙂
In the 70’s I was involved in a top-level discussion that summarized the factors leading to excessive population growth. Juxtaposed in this is improved medical care provided by missionaries of colonial powers, and cessation of much tribal warfare (almost a national sport for “men” to show their manhood). But the underlying factor was the lack of Social Security. When before you were likely to lose half your kids to illness or slave traders, you needed more to make it likely someone will be around to care for you when you hit old age [your 40’s?]. A short survey in this area will show you that colonial powers, later Crown corporations, and Wall Street Bankers eclipse Climate Change as the greatest threat to Man (and Woman) kind.
In developed countries, US, England, Australia, (not New Zealand) and much of Europe, the desire to profit by developing forests into housing units requires continued population growth. Not farm workers, but consumers. I prefer not to call this Eminent Domain or Highest Economical Use but rather Environmental Destruction.
–Some Monbiot quotes;
“The only concrete proposal in your film was that there should be a mass die-off”–
I thought the stupid knew “alternative energy” didn’t work, and the the “mass die-off was actually the plan.
Why else do think China one child policy and abortion {mostly for non whites} is what they love.
Anyhow, we are in an Ice Age. warming has never been a problem.
And we continue to cool from the Holocene Optimum and past interglacial periods have been much warmer than present global temperature. AND when they were the warmest periods of past interglacier, we still were in a Ice Age, or it was still cold, or planet has been much warmer, when it was not in an Ice Age.
Now, what is an Ice Age. Other glaciers, what is an Ice Age is a cold ocean. If Oceans were 5 C, it’s still a cold ocean. Presently our ocean is 3.5 C, and impossible to warm oceans by 1 C within centuries from Sunlight. Massive volcanic activity- it’s possible. Huge impactor, it’s possible. But such huge space rock impacting or massive volcanic activity, is by itself The Problem rather than some warming of the Ocean.
Of course they are solution to reducing CO2 emission- such as nuclear power- which has reducing CO2 emission and air pollution for decades. And safer way of getting energy- compared with wood burning or Coal burning or other “fossil fuels”.
But better solution than nuclear energy, involves space exploration.
Despite being paid enough money, NASA has failed for decades to adequately explore the Moon to determine whether it has mineable water.
Having a market for water {anywhere} in space and using water to make rocket fuel- and thereby also have energy market in space- is the direction toward unlocking basically an infinite energy resource. Or enough energy to provide abundant energy for humans with populations well over 10 trillion. Or you can’t really say that about the potential of nuclear energy. unless it’s fusion nuclear energy. But Earth would get simply too crowded with 10 trillion people on. Earth would be ok with 50 to 100 billion people, assuming they also living on the ocean.
gbaikie posted: “Despite being paid enough money, NASA has failed for decades to adequately explore the Moon to determine whether it has mineable water.”
Not true. In October 2009 (a little over ONE decade ago), an impactor released by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) blasted a bunch of water into space after slamming into a permanently shadowed region of Cabeus Crater, which lies near the moon’s south pole. This was the first experimental verification by NASA that large quantities of water (ice) existed on the Moon. There were earlier indications—but not robust evidence such as LCROSS provided—that the Moon contained some amount of water, such as from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument, which flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft (India’s first moon probe), and orbited the Moon from November 2008 through August 2009.
— source: https://www.space.com/41554-water-ice-moon-surface-confirmed.html
The first direct evidence of water VAPOR near the Moon was obtained by the Apollo 14 ALSEP Suprathermal Ion Detector Experiment, SIDE, on March 7, 1971 (nearly five decades ago!). A series of bursts of water vapor ions were observed by the instrument mass spectrometer at the lunar surface near the Apollo 14 landing site.
— source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water
P.S. Outside of NASA, the first direct evidence of water on the Moon came the Soviet Luna 24 probe that landed at Mare Crisium, took samples from the depths of 118, 143, and 184 cm of the lunar regolith, and then took them to Earth. In February 1978, laboratory analysis of these samples were published showing they contained 0.1% water by mass. Spectral measurements showed minima near 3, 5, and 6 µm, distinctive valence-vibration bands for water molecules, with intensities two or three times larger than the noise level.
— source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water
–gbaikie posted: “Despite being paid enough money, NASA has failed for decades to adequately explore the Moon to determine whether it has mineable water.”
Not true. —
Nothing you cited as anything to do with whether the Moon has mineable water.
It’s part of an argument that NASA as failed for decades to adequately explore the Moon to determine whether it has mineable water. If NASA wanted to determine whether the Moon has mineable water it would send exploratory missions to the lunar polar regions surface- and it hasn’t.
Sigh.
Let me make something clear. Governments don’t mine, but governments can help determine if something is mineable. NASA’s charter would include activity which includes determining if something is mineable in Space. And NASA has continued to fail to do this.
NASA has reported in the past, that the Moon doesn’t have any mineable water, and having a water concentration of .1% water by mass, would the same as saying that lunar water is not mineable.
Anywhere on Earth has more than .1% water by mass.
One could argue, people have, that 1% water by mass is not mineable. Soil with less the 5% water by mass will not allow plants to grow- or if area where plants are growing, it’s area with more than 5% water by mass. Or, 1% water by mass are very dry regions on Earth.
A region of the Moon if it had 1% water by mass, might be mineable, but 10% water by mass would be more likely to be mineable. If lawn didn’t have rain or sprinklers turned on for a week, it probably has at least 10% water by mass.
Most people knowledgeable about whether the Moon is mineable, would say that lunar water is worth about $500 per kg. Or you get as much water as thought you needed, it would be worth around this price- it would be good price. Or there wasn’t enough water to buy or there was too large amount available, this affects it’s value.
$500 per kg is 1/2 million dollars per ton and one would buying by the ton.
The lunar polar regions could have 10 billion tons water. A billion tons of lunar is NOT worth 5 x 10^14 dollars nor is 1 million tons of lunar water worth 5 x 10^11 dollar but probably worth more than 100 billion dollars. But 10,000 to 100,000 tons of water should be worth 500,000 per ton or $500 per kg. So, 10,000 tons is worth about 5 billion dollars. And 10,000 tons of rocket fuel is worth about 15 billion dollars. NASA might imagine that 10,000 tons of lunar rocket fuel is worth 150 billion dollars. But NASA does not need 10,000 tons of rocket fuel on the Moon, but could need 100 tons of rocket fuel and 100 tons of lunar rocket fuel and for 1.5 billion dollar would seem like a steal.
So NASA lunar base over a period of 5-10 year period could use 100 tons of lunar rocket fuel and 100 tons of water.
Anyhow to mine lunar water one can not depend on the limited demand of lunar water and rocket fuel that NASA could have. You have to create demand- as all business, do.
Anyhow, $500 per kg is a guess estimate of a market price. And everything is a market price.
And to do it, one will have to get to point of mining about 1000 tons of lunar water per year.
Which means you could start with as little as say 50 tons of water per year but within 10 years you would planning and be ramping up to more 1000 tons per year. And in first 3 years you will be in the red, but by 3 years you have at least demonstrated path of having more value- which roughly means you created market demand, and predictably you going to have much more market demand in the future {or you are a growth company}.
What Herr Monbiot and his idiot brethren don’t understand, is that we don’t need to be reducing CO2 at all, because geological processes have been locking it away for millions of years into solid rocks! CO2, the gas essential for life in the Biosphere, has never been so low as in the past few thousand years. When it does fall below a certain level, then plants will not grow, and there will be nothing left to eat on the land. Sea life will continue for a time after that, but eventually all that CO2 will be converted into shells of sea creatures, and when they die, falling to the sea bed, where it is turned into solid rock, trapping the CO2 for millions of years. Only mindless cretins would want to hasten that process.
A common bit of bad thinking.
X says “P is so” or “We’ll do P”.
I say “That’s wrong” or “That won’t work”, and then explain why I say that.
X replies “So what’s your answer?” or “So what will work?”, with the implication that if I haven’t got answers, my initial criticism must be rejected and we should continue with P.
Monbiot, a ruling class man (£30k a year school) , son of a vice chair of Tory Party, descended from aristocracy has always avoided eugenics arguments however his mentor, Sir Crispin Tickell very much supported it.
Sir Crispin Tickell, member of the eugenics Huxley clan.
He is also a patron of population concern charity Population Matters, (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust), and told Radio 4’s Today programme that the ideal population for Britain could be around 20 million. As a member of Lord Rogers’ Urban Task Force, Tickell counselled against spreading cities saying that we need denser living, that young adults should not expect to leave home straight away, and that older relatives could live in ‘granny flats’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin_Tickell#Public_Impact
Monbiot is right about Moore-is-less – Malthusian ideology has given him a bad case of Moresles.
It is ironic that Sir John Schellnhuber , CBE, dubbed by the Queen in the Berlin Embassy, 2004, is the leading eugenics spokesman – his “optimum” population was declared to be 1 billion. This Commander of the British Empire, got to write the Pope’s “Laudato Si” a paean to Gaia, and author Merkel’s Energy Transformation, before she fired him, likely for above views. Sir john also founded the Potsdam Climate Institute.
Malthus, a parson of the Queens very own Church, made a religion out of Imperial colonial policy.
So it is clear Monbiot knows exactly the aristocracy and its shenanigans.
I suggest Moore confess at Canterbury, and ask forgiveness – he might even be granted a CBE?
I have never bothered listening to Monbiot before. I just assumed, working for the Guardian, he’d be a bit silly. This is a first for me. I had no idea how silly he turns out to be.
Don’t you just love the arrogance of the Greens?
Monbiot ends his piece to camera saying, if you retract what you have said Michael, we will all love you again.
Someone needs to let Monbiot know, being loved by him or any of the other Green zealots for that matter is not a valid reason to promote unscientific garbage, called man made climate change.
Hasn’t the global shutdown effectively falsified AGW theory?
Despite the largest industrial collapse of all time global CO2 concentrations haven’t altered a jot. Human influence is therefore exposed as absolutely irrelevant compared to natural variations.
This huge collapse which delivered a non-existent reduction in global CO2 cannot simultaneously be too small to impact global CO2 but large enough to imperil the planet. Cognitive dissonance squared!
Game over.
How old is George Monbiot? He writes as if he were seventeen, which is the age when you go around pouting because the world is not fair. To the juvenile mind, communism seems perfectly fair, which is the basis of its popularity. Capitalism is not fair, but produces so much more human happiness that all sentient adults are eventually forced to admit that it is a wonderful system, including the people who are less rewarded by it than Henry Ford.
Mr. Monbiot is free to emigrate to Russia, or China. But I don’t think he will.
Communism aims, in theory, to improve the lives of the vast majority of people in all countries.
In an astonishingly short time (since Mao’s death) the communist Chinese government has brought good housing, transport, full employment, education, and the comforts of modern living to almost all of its population. It has used communist ideas to do this – paid for “Communism with a Chinese face”, i.e., Capitalism.
Mexico Says “Hasta La Vista” To Inefficient Green Energies. Could Be “Death Knell” For Renewables”
By P Gosselin on 22. May 2020
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German public broadcasting Deutsche Welle (DW) here reports how Mexico has decided to end its transition the renewable energies, angering activists and investors.
The move, DW reports, “is scaring off environmentalists and investors” and could be the “death knell for renewable energies.”
Apparently President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had traveled to Oaxaca and saw how the local hills were blighted by wind turbines, commenting: “These windmills are spoiling the landscape” and “produce very little energy.”
Wind energy is notorious for its inefficiency, unreliable supply, high costs, blight to the environment and health hazards. Moreover, the business has been taken over by crony capitalists out to make a killing on the massively subsidized projects. In fact, as Michael Moore’s latest film shows, green energies aren’t really green at all.
The move by the Mexican government has angered green energy activists and investors. Another reason cited by the Mexican government is “grid instability”.
The reform will have some impact on German investors, DW reports. For example: the Potsdam-based company Notus, who since 2014 has been planning five solar and wind power plants. Now their future remains uncertain.
“The new directive could be the death knell for renewable energies,” DW reports. “Protest letters from the Canadian and European Union embassies refer to 44 ongoing projects worth USD 6.8 billion.” Another problem is Mexico’s power grid is not designed to handle the massively fluctuating power fed in by wind and sun.
Though DW suggests that the return to fossil fuels is going to mean higher costs for Mexican consumers, most results from around the world suggest the opposite is the case. Germany, for example has committed a whopping 1 trillion dollars to green energies since 2000, yet today the country has among the world’s most expensive electricity prices for consumers. Annually tens of thousands of households see their power cut off because they can no longer afford to pay the power bills.
Mexico is wise to move to a source of energy that is plentiful, affordable, stable and one that doesn’t destroy the environment on a massive scale.
Except in the few windiest spots, turbines consume more energy to build, install and maintain than they produce over their lifetimes, while releasing super GHGs, plus the CO2 produced in making the concrete for their bases.
Not to mention the massacre of millions of often endangered birds and bats, to the betterment of insect pests. While blighting the landscape. Environmental disasters.
When people don’t dispute your central points but call names instead it means you’ve won the argument.
Monbiot is sooooo tedious as he tries to purge his misplaced guilt by forcing on the rest of us
George Monbiot wearing what appears to be a Nylon jacket.
==========
Its OK because underneath he has a hair shirt.
From the article: Monbiot: “The only concrete proposal in your film was that there should be a mass die-off”
I get the feeling Monbiot doesn’t like human beings.
Monbiot is right. If you want a low carbon economy, you have two choices: (1) Malthus and the Middle Ages (deindustrialise, depopulate) or (2) nuclear. Moore and Gibbs chose 1. They chose poorly.
https://youtu.be/VA7J0KkanzM
Poor old moonbat. He takes himself so seriously but doesn’t realise that he is joke.
May I say that I’ve rarely seen a more chilling and hateful video. This ranks up with the 350.org exploding children video. He claims that truth is false and that false is true. Stop being persuaded by the truth and come back to the dark side.
Things like this actually frighten me.
It is quite scary to watch how Monbiot is misinterpreting Moore’s statements. Of course, a state of desperation is very clear. When there is no way to defend your point and motive, people try to divert the attention towards irrelevant direction. The issues, he is pointing at was discussed in completely different context in the film. I am sure people can understand his psycology behind those accusion and it exposed how helpless those corrupt people are.
Moore used 10 year old data, and a loser solar thermal project example, meanwhile here is a 1.35 cent/kWh project:
Abu Dhabi has set a global record-low solar price as authorities confirmed the winning bid in a 2-gigawatt tender. Upon its expected completion in mid-2022, it is slated to be the largest single-site solar energy project in the world. The Al Dhafra project had five bidders, with the lowest offer coming in at 1.35 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-largest-solar-project-will-also-be-worlds-cheapest
But Robert it will never be reliable and that is why the figure you present is irrelevant when it’s not producing power, which is the case for the majority of the day!
That aside it does more damage to the environment by way of additional mining and covers more area then any other form of power source. The area coverage in itself is destroying ecosystems, and they still haven’t worked out what to do with it at end of life. Enormous energy is required if you recycle properly and at a high cost. Part of the process is as toxic as separating out the rare earth elements after mining. Much of it cannot be recycled and is going to landfill.
Have you lost sight of why renewables were created? Except of course to make obscene amounts of money for a handful of people, and that money comes from taxpayers by way of government subsidies! We are being swindled. On top of that they simply don’t pass the test! There is nothing positive about renewables.
Nuclear energy is really the best solution if you actually think that CO2 is a problem. It is clean, reliable and produces less waste than renewables.
Gee, we have never once heard inflated claims for a solar installation
What model did they use, models being garbage
GIGO