Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Forbes has published an apology by high profile environmental activist Michael Shellenberger for his role in helping to create the climate scare, and his explanation for why he chose to speak out now.
24 views|Jun 28, 2020,06:48pm EDT
On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare
Michael Shellenberger
I write about energy and the environment.On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.
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I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.
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I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions
But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”
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But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.
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Read more:https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/06/28/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare/(Backup PDF Available Here)
Michael Schellenberger has provided a more complete explanation in his new book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
Reading Schellenberger’s full apology in Forbes, I was pleasantly surprised how close his views are to mine. Despite Schellenberger’s highly commendable views on nuclear power, I assumed he was still an alarmist when it came to his views on anthropogenic CO2 emissions. I was wrong.
I am sorry I made an incorrect assumption about your views on climate change Michael.
Update (EW): The original Forbes link seems to have died. A backup copy is available here.
UPDATE2: Forbes has pulled his article, see Tweet below. – Anthony
Michael Shellenberger, How about adding one more “fact” to your initial list:
* CO2 (or Carbon) is not the control knob for global warming / climate change.
– JPP
Is this the start of the Michaels’ migration from sinners to saints? Two down one to go. Will Mann join them in their Damascene conversion, or is that being too optimistic? As repenting requires a certain amount of humility, not to mention honesty, I don’t think the Hockey Stick Kid will be coming into the light anytime soon.
A nice review from one of my favorite climate scientists:
“In this engaging and well-researched treatise, Michael Shellenberger exposes the environmental movement’s hypocrisy in painting climate change in apocalyptic terms while steadfastly working against nuclear power, the one green energy source whose implementation could feasibly avoid the worst climate risks. Disinformation from the Left has replaced deception from the Right as the greatest obstacle to mitigating climate change.”
— Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The so called “disinformation from the right” only existed in the minds of the socialists in the first place.
PS: There was never any climate risk in the first place. The left had to apocalyptic, because reality wasn’t scary at all.
The claims that we had to keep temperature increases, first under 3C, then 2.5C, the 2C and now 1.5C were never backed by any science. The warmunists never even attempted to justify these numbers. They just asserted them over and over again, hoping that the big lie would eventually stick.
The planet has spent most of the last 10,000 years 3 to 5C warmer than it is today, and life flourished.
“Disinformation from the Left has replaced deception from the Right as the greatest obstacle to mitigating climate change.”
Kerry Emanuel diverting attention from his own part in the tragedy.
Kerry is a climate modeler who never ever published a modeling paper showing physically valid uncertainty bars.
After years of detailed focus on AGW and considerable exposure to climate modelers, my view as regards them and science is that the honest are incompetent and the competent are dishonest.
It’s the only explanation of these extraordinary circumstances that makes sense.
The “climate scare” was a counterproductive first-order forcing of acute phobia, division, and inaction.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Welcome to the world of reasoning adults, Michael Schellenberger! Welcome!
Really? You think this is growing up? Looks to me like someone who games the system is just using a new strategy to continue to game the system. Actually, it isn’t that new. He’s been warming up for the change for a few years now.
Anyway, he’s the adult who has figured out that most people act like children and the trick is to put yourself in a situation where you can tell the people/children what to think. Reasoning adults? Sorry. That is largely fantasy. Appeals to emotion are what really drives things.
I don’t know the gentleman, but his article does not say much that he has not been saying for the past few years.
While Forbes has pulled the article – which does indeed read like a puff for a book – it has left the title on the search page for his Forbes contributions – see here:
https://www.forbes.com/search/?q=Michael%20Shellenberger
Maybe a storm in a teacup?
Will I accept Mr. Shellenburger’s apology? Um. . . no. I am without sin on the subject of climate alarmism, and therefore feel qualified to throw the first stone, and then go back to the gravel pit and load up my slingshot.
I read the whole apology, and he cops to allowing other environmentalists to lie without publicly defying them because he was unwilling to pay the costs in lost friendships and professional hardships. Okay. He doesn’t admit to lying about alarmist claims himself but, unless he had an abrupt epiphany, at some point he said things in public that he privately doubted. That’s lying, pal.
Allowing others to be destroyed because you don’t want to lose the friendship of evil people, is not exactly a shining moral moment either.
Michael Shellenberger: “Climate change is happening.”
Not the way you mean it, it’s not, Mike.
And now that you admit the alarmism was knowing fakery, how about a sincere apology for collusion in all those excess Winter fuel poverty deaths.
I am really not sure this is an epiphany.
https://edmontonjournal.com/business/local-business/david-staples-if-anyone-can-persuade-trudeau-to-end-his-disastrous-spirit-quest-on-renewable-energy-its-michael-shellenberger
Like Wigley, Emanuel, Caldeira and Hansen (yes Hansen), he supports nuclear energy.
Jack, there is more to this than support for nuclear…
I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public…
I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism…
But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist.
Did you miss the parts about badly misleading the public, and scaring the public over misplaced alarmism?
Nice shark jump Jack! LOL
Except he didn’t jump the shark, he landed half way !
As usual. 🙂
The editor’s at Forbes just earned the “chickenshit of the Year” for pulling the original op-ed. Pathetic!
How long before Shellenberger’s Wikipedia article gets edited or deleted?
So how many hours was this posted before the firemen showed up to burn the books and take him in custody?
LoL
(well at least I hope that’s just an “LoL”, a sci fi “Fahrenheit 451” reference – you never really know these days, do you ..)
We need to get moving. We have almost lost control of all electronic communication systems.
CAGW is only one issue. It was, however, the super power excuse help big brother take over communication systems, legal system, and governments.
The solution to CAGW was impossible. Zero emissions was never going to happen. And it will soon be impossible to talk about….
There has been a 20% cut in revenue (most states and most cities) and our governments are frozen…. And the communication system is busy attacking the President and pushing one party.
The green stuff just makes electricity ridiculously expensive and destroys a country’s economy and damages the environment.
CAGW is a dangerous meme that takes over and destroys democratic countries.
That was the purpose of CAGW.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/KQnVEMOOYuJd/
Planet of the Humans
The free internet has become ‘politically’ filtered and controlled.
Where it is no longer possible to find information that is off ‘script’….
Google searches will not locate Breitbart articles.
The exact title of a Breitbart article on let’s say foreign money paid to Bidden relatives, anti-police movement brings up articles from Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Washington Post…
So what we are talking about is corruption at the highest level of our government …..
And a dangerous, foreign country that has bought and control of one of our two parties.
….. And as that subject is off script…. It is hidden.
“Google searches will not locate Breitbart articles.
The exact title of a Breitbart article on let’s say foreign money paid to Bidden relatives, anti-police movement brings up articles from Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Washington Post…
So what we are talking about is corruption at the highest level of our government …..
And a dangerous, foreign country that has bought and control of one of our two parties.”
I heard a report the other day talking about the large percentage of foreigners who are imported into the U.S. to work at our large tech companies, and that got me to wondering if some of the censors empolyed at Google and Twitter and Youtube are even American citizens.
Are foreigners deciding what we can and can’t talk about? Yes, they are! Foreigners from another nation, and/or homegrown foreigners from this reality we live in, are censoring us.
Tom–this is true. I sell books on recovery at Amazon and Facebook–12 step recovery. For years it has been fine, then suddenly they both started refusing my ads and promotions–why? Because the “don’t accept books on drugs!” This is RECOVERY–It is foreign teams and people from other cultures and they do not understand that addiction is a health care issue and ads on recovery books are not books about drugs. It is infuriating because I can’t get to a rational person from our culture to be on the review team–just makes me want to scream. So my business is censored by people with a script who can’t be reasoned with.
” To err is human to forgive divine. ”
Let’s give him a chance and see how he works out.Meanwile,why not bombard every newspaper,every media outlet with the news of his”defection? “
What in the world happened to Forbes? They used to be a conservative outlet, but now it’s all leftist garbage, and now this. Is Steve Forbes no longer involved?
It caught the Soros Marxist flu just like the Washington Post, Drudge and many others.
Forbes was bought out by a main land Asia based investor group in 2014.
I sent a note to Forbes magazine:
Dear Forbes,
I am seriously disappointed in Forbes for having removed Michael Shellenberger’s recent article. I read it in full and find it a thoughtful and IMPORTANT contribution to the debate about climate change and its impact on our environment and societies.
Shellenberger’s perspective is important and needs to be seriously considered, not extirpated.
I cannot imagine a good reason for you taking that action except extreme cowardice.
What has journalism come to?
Shame on you!
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Does anyone have a personal email address for Steve Forbes? I’d like to send something he might actually read himself.
Watching this all unravel reminds me of the recent ESPN documentary on Lance Armstrong:
30 for 30: ‘LANCE’ | ESPN
You can just feel the relief from Armstrong and the whole US Postal Squad, derived from not having to “keep the secret” any longer. Lance even says in the documentary: “I know this cost me a 100 million dollars and my entire livelihood, but I would not trade in a million years the position I am in now verses where I was then.” And the entire US Postal Team echoed those sentiments. You could just feel the palpable relief coming off the screen.
So I imagine, the same pressures and gnawing feelings must be eating at guys like Schellenberg, etal.
Most of them went into science to find the “truth”, no matter where it led them, and the whole CAGW movement has derailed that opportunity and the life fulfillment that goes along with it.
So, if anyone is reading this, and is a scientist or advocate from the CAGW side, and is trying to decide what to do, watch “30 for 30: Lance”.
Yeah, thanks ‘Shill’enberger. But you’re decades late and several billion dollars short. I might forgive you if you can arrange a refund of every penny of carbon tax I have ever paid, directly or indirectly. Oh, and there’s nearly 8 billion people behind me asking for the same.
Huh. Exactly the same things being said by Pielke, Curry, Spencer, Linzen, Christie, Ball, Ride, et al. Amazing coincidence, that.
Not exactly. Pielke still thinks CO2 is a problem, Curry might as well. So they are similar to Shellenberger, not sure about the others.
–Pielke still thinks CO2 is a problem, Curry might as well. So they are similar to Shellenberger, not sure about the others.–
Yes a lot think CO2 is a problem.
It seems these three should be aware that we are in Ice Age.
If they agree that we living in Ice Age.
Why is CO2 levels a problem.
Also when they see such terms as “climate optimum” I wonder what that means to them?
Is it, “That is what people once mistaken assumed, but they were wrong about warmer being better”
And would they like to change, “Holocene climatic optimum” to “Holocene climatic terrificum”.
Was just the Germans who wanted warmer conditions {Germans= bad}?
It seems if you in an Ice Age and you know you in an Ice Age, I you think CO2 causes warming, then don’t you want warming?
What do they think, when they encounter a expression “tropical paradise” or tropical island paradise.
What is the average temperature of any tropical island paradise?
What is the average temperature of where they are currently living?
When have choose what room temperature they want, what temperature do they want?
What minority wants to live where it’s colder.
Average temperature of the country of Mexico is just over 21 C.
Is the fundamental problem with Mexico related to there average temperature is more than 11 C warmer than the US. Or 25 C warmer than Canada?
How about India with it’s average temperature of a bit lower than 25 C [77 F}.
Africa is said to be the hottest continent in the world, is the Africa continent doomed because it too warm. And btw it’s always been “too warm”. Did humans leave Africa because it was too warm?
Do they know that global warming is largely about warming polar regions- do they know what the average temperature is in the polar regions?
Well, we can skip the continent of Antarctica, but it’s not warming and it’s very, very cold.
So in terms warming it’s largely thought that the arctic regions going to warm.
And still frozen tree stumps in Arctic, and they were growing trees during Holocene climatic optimum. Is there some thing to fear if it gets warm enough so trees can grow once again in these frozen regions in the future?
I would say the general problem is many people don’t know what global warming actually is and don’t that we living in the coldest time period in Earth history.
What does living in coldest periods of Earth history look like?
Well, it has lot of deserts. Africa has big desert.
Which not to long age was grasslands- and in even warmer periods, had forests.
Humans evolved in Africa in period when forests were were giving way to grasslands- or global cooling. One can say “modern human” is Ice Age creature, but came from Africa, so was tropical creature which developed technologically over millions years into what is called modern human and all this occurred within the Ice Age.
Because they were a technological creature, they were capable of living in regions which were not warm.
I think he would find it refreshing to discover just how many “climate deniers” are into conservationism.
And sadly, how much the climate alarmists have contributed to ongoing harm to our biosphere.
We love clean air and water as much as anyone else. We want our forests preserved and a rich natural legacy for our children. We want our oceans to be clean of trash. And animal populations to thrive.
But when they control the media and the messaging, no one hears that.
I believe that something truly amazing is happening. We’re seeing the beginning of the end of extremist Environmentalists. That is superb because we need environmentalists just not the movement that has been hijacked by the loony left.
No we dont need environmentalists ,we need a reduction in environmental rules and laws that have destroyed industries, over regulated farming , we need a frame work of basic environmental rules,that allow prosperity.
We dont need a Phoenix environment group emerging from the ashes to be taken over,radicalised and see us back to the position we are in now.
The article is still available on Forbes if you just hit F9 (in Chrome or Edge) and read it in the “Immersive Reader”.
Forbes has deleted the article.
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Just type F9 and you can see it.
Available in pdf form from Tallbloke
https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/schellenberger-apology.pdf
Grab a copy, pin to the wall, everywhere. 🙂
You got to wonder how a business magazine gets away with a anti business left turn
The article has been lost down the Forbes memory hole. More self-censorship.