A recent paper published by Cambridge University Press titled Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change is raising serious and worrisome questions about the role of academia in our national political debate on climate change.
The paper was written by Ross Mittiga, who self-describes as an “assistant professor of political theory at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, specializing in climate ethics.” He also labels himself an “environmentalist, vegan, and occasional gadfly.”
Mittiga’s paper explicitly argues society must prioritize climate action over democratic principles and adopt an authoritarian government if society fails to politically act on climate change. Or, in the words of the political left: “my way or the highway.”
This is disturbing because it completely ignores the will of the people to self-govern, favoring a totalitarian approach in order to tackle what Mittiag deems a “climate crisis.”
Key points of the paper in the abstract:
Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means.
The problem with Mittiga’s paper is that he doesn’t offer up a single reference or shred of evidence that a “climate crisis” actually exists. It appears he simply assumes it to be fact-based on the frequency of political discussions that have embraced the term for several years.
If a “climate crisis” actually existed, there would be human impact data to support the claim. Yet, Mittiga cites no such evidence.
However, this lack of evidence did not stop him from making this bold claim:
“A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety.”
We should be able to test the “graver threat to public safety” that the “climate crisis” supposedly creates.
If the global “climate crisis” was causing public safety to suffer, we’d surely see an increase in global deaths related to supposed climate driven events. To determine if this is true, we turn to data collected by the most trusted global database on events that create mortality, the International Disaster Database.
This database covers all types of natural disasters, including meteorological, hydrological, geologic, and volcanic.
Dr. Bjorn Lomborg has been tracking climate-related disasters from the database since 1920. This includes floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures. His conclusion from the data is clear and simple: fewer and fewer people are dying today from supposedly climate-related natural disasters.
As seen in the figure, the trend is clear.
Lomborg writes:
Over the past hundred years, annual climate-related deaths have declined by more than 96%. In the 1920s, the death count from climate-related disasters was 485,000 on average every year. In the last full decade, 2010-2019, the average was 18,362 dead per year, or 96.2% lower.
This is even true of 2021 — despite breathless climate reporting, almost 99% fewer people died that year than a hundred years ago.
Why is this consistently not reported?
In the first year of the new decade, 2020, the number of dead was even lower at 14,885 — 97% lower than the 1920s average.
For 2021, which is now complete, we see an even lower total of 6,134 dead or a reduction since the 1920s of 98.7%.
The media reported on many deadly weather and climate-related catastrophes in 2021 — the deadly US/Canadian heat dome and heat wave, huge wildfires in the Western United States, the December 2021 tornado outbreak in the United States, large-scale flooding in Europe, and the Valentine’s Day winter storm. All of these events and related deaths are included in the disaster database and the graph.
And there are other disasters. Many people in the West never saw media reports of the disastrous floods in India during the monsoon, which killed more than a thousand people. Or the flash floods in Afghanistan, which killed dozens. Or the typhoons that hit China, Vietnam, Indonesia and India, killing a total of 776 people. The database also has more than 200 other catastrophes in 2021.
There is a known bias in the database where there is much more reporting on heat deaths, but recent science from the prestigious medical journal The Lancet reports that globally, cold deaths outweigh heat deaths 9:1, suggesting that “global warming” isn’t as big a problem for human mortality as we’ve been told.
The number of reported weather disaster events is increasing, but that is mainly due to better reporting, and better accessibility, i.e., the 24/7/365 CNN effect. Just because such events are reported more today doesn’t translate directly to more events resulting in more deaths. In fact, the opposite is observed in the data.
Illustrated by the mortality data portrayed in the figure, it is simply incontrovertible that disaster-related deaths have declined, and have done so dramatically. This is because our wealthier, technologically advanced, and more resilient societies are much better able to warn for such events, protect their citizens, and mitigate damage and deaths. In fact, recent peer-reviewed science demonstrates a “decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability is evident.”
So, I ask, where is the so-called “climate crisis” that is portrayed as a certainty by Mittiga in the Cambridge University Press?
According to the disaster database, there isn’t any “climate crisis” at all. In fact, during the 40 plus years of modest warming during which we have been told that global warming aka “climate change” will worsen the human condition, mortality has improved dramatically.
Sadly, and frighteningly, as illustrated by Mittiga in the Cambridge University Press the green socialist left is increasingly embracing tyranny in the form of authoritarian power to act on their viewpoint on climate change. But clearly, real-world data don’t support their viewpoint let alone their call to action.
And from the other end, he presumably thinks that crisis can be averted by reductions in CO2. Any suggestions about how to do that? (Given uncertainty about human influence and Asian coal burning, no chance, 2ppm a year for ever, hopefully)
Well, for three or four centuries, anyway, to reach the optimum level for most plants.
Cambridge University is the world renown university for the best (or was it worst) trained Russian spies.
It held the record in the ’30s, but has long since relinquished it to American universities for CCP spies.
With all Chinese made i-phones around, spies have become just a prestige status symbol, rather than the useful tools of information acquisition.
Good point, Vuk. It’s about the same as horse drawn carriages being replaced by the automobile.
But the tree letter agencies that still employ spies are at least keeping them off the dole.
[Man holding sign: Unemployed and homeless]
I’m trained to kill you with your own shoelace or your fly button. Would you please drop some spare change into my hat? Bless you. kind sir.”
I’m not exactly sure what’s to become of all those spies, given the state of modern technology.
Nope. Any professional greenhouse operator uses CO2 cannons (yes that is the correct name) to up the CO2 content to 1200 ppm, about 3 times the average atmospheric content.
If they do not do this, it is impossible to run a greenhouse business. Fact.
Yes: very simple. Get all the Greens together and tell them that their continues existence on this planet requires that they sew their mouths shut.
This is why walling them up in their own cities, with no chance of escape, is a really, really good idea.
I have seldom been as disgusted as I am with that bunch of loons. Thanks for posting that article, Mods.
This the reason for Ark B.
At 2ppm per year, we might be in a bit of trouble starting in about 100,000 years.
Let’s all just stick around to see if you’re right, Mark. 😜
In a chaotic system like climate putting one of many input variables back to how it was, say 200 years, previously is no guarantee that the system will return to that starting point
Ben,
You are right.
Even if we knew with certainty what the – here – CO2 level was in 1822.
Auto
There’s absolutely zero evidence to rule out it being colder in 2100 than today. CO2 in such conditions could sequester itself in the oceans, thereby dropping atmospheric CO2 without us doing anything.
With the recent admission by GISS’s Gavin Schmidt, that climate models are running away too hot “and we don’t know why”, it is clear that the dark side is becoming concerned that the jig may be up with the Crisis Anthro Global Warming ‘hypothesis’. Several trillion bucks has been spent and everyone knows whose responsible for that.
I offered my puny advice during the Dreaded Pause that smart climateers would best be heading for the exits. Most have persevered!
That would fall under the description of an oxymora.
We need CO2 for life to exist on this planet. And if levels drop to much we freeze.
Not really. We starve if CO2 get below about 180ppm. Plants cannot live below that treshold. Life as we know it will vanish from planet Earth.
Also: there is no known relation between CO2 and Temperature.
If you have PROOF otherwise, please share
The solution is always the same: communism !! How that’s supposed to worj always remains a mistery, but that does not deter the Climatards from repeating the mantra of their church.
Pathetic actually
Hunger for power is a common affliction among assistant professors of political theory. COVID lockdowns and mandates have gone to their swelled heads. giving them fevered visions of unbridled control, in which the levers are all in their sweaty hands.
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since…it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.”
Sir Roger Scruton RIP
Right on!
“Intellectuals” think they, not captains of industry, who actually provide goods and services that people want at prices they can afford, should control the means of production and distribution.
The mad, deluded, criminal fools!
The Khmer Rouge sure showed the intellectuals of Cambodia how this all turns out.
Yes, Drake! The KR did in people wearing spectacles surmising that they must be intellectuals. The great civilizations like dynastic Egypt probably were brought low over the first millennium of the Common Era by selective culling of intellectuals.
The real worry today is that intellectuals deserving of the label have been largely culled out by the education system, K-Grad School, (or self-silenced) and platoons of ersatz, idiot, asterisked PhDs are being cranked out to replace them.
Holiday in Cambodia anyone?
https://genius.com/Dead-kennedys-holiday-in-cambodia-lyrics
Sure it exists. Exclusively in computer models. Perhaps when we’re all absorbed into the metaverse, we’ll finally be able to see it.
Don’t worry. The metaverse will have the CAGW Doomsday Death Cult evidence and dogma baked in from the start.
“adopt an authoritarian government”
This has been the end game and real motivation behind the CAGW scare-fest as expressed and implied numerous times by Gore, Kerry, Scoldilocks, etc. as well as our resident trolls. They cannot accomplish their goals through the electoral process, so by any means necessary. The end justifies the means.
So is Covid 19 just a warmup exercise? Sure looks like it.
The first warmup exercise that I know of is the “ozone hole” scare. It was a perfect test case – nobody knew anything about it before satellites found it and everyone knew what a sunburn felt like. A couple of data points were used to predict worldwide catastrophe instead of waiting for a proper scientific explanation and more data. Governments went for it to test their power and it worked. We got crappy replacement chemicals that have done nothing to “save” the natural phenomenon but have ironically increased greenhouse gas emissions.
The end game shown by the ozone hole scare was when nobody talked about it anymore because the “solutions” were implemented and they declared “mission accomplished”. Unfortunately the climate solutions either don’t work (e.g., carbon capture) or the outrageous cost/benefit ratios have been exposed (e.g., this winter’s reduction in fossil fuel heating). This gives me hope that maybe the climate crisis can be extinguished before too much more damage occurs.
This gives me hope that maybe the climate crisis can be extinguished before too much more damage occurs.
________________________________________________________
It’s reached too big to fail status. It won’t be toppled until it’s done a huge amount of damage. The 246 deaths in Texas last February, Germany’s soaring electric bills or any other cost that can be laid at the feet of the Green Mob so far isn’t anywhere near enough damage for average citizens to hit the bricks and risk their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.
I too think it will take some serious casualties before the scam dies.
The idea of linking every adverse weather related event to Climate Change has delivered tremendously for AGW protagonists. The GW part of AGW no longer matters.
A key issue here is that the UN runs the AGW show now and the coddled dictators that infest this domain have little respect for the lives of ordinary people. Many have never needed to front an electorate and those who have in past lives are now above that tedious bit of public life. Creaming off climate ambition will be a never ending source that keeps giving.
I think Trump was on the right tack when he defunded the WHO. The whole UN should be defunded and all the little dictators sent home to make a living from whatever useful skills they have.
The GW part of AGW no longer matters.
_______________________________________________
Yes, that’s why the media chose to switch from Global Warming to Climate Change.
“mission accomplished”, but, of course we still have a gaping Ozone Hole.
How about ethanol, just drove by a brand new Exxon advertising Ethanol free gasoline. Remember white gas, all so employed need to explain the history of the petroleum industry in order to keep their jobs.
Ethanol free gas is much better for your small engine equipment, ATVs, snow blowers, lawn mowers, etc. Much more expensive depending on your location since a separate delivery system is required.
I thought it was DDT, based on the deeply flawed political alarmist tome Silent Spring? That one certainly achieved many, many millions of child deaths, so it was also the most successful.
I agree – followed rapidly by all the Club of Rome nonsense. “Funny” how all the Misanthropic Marxist Malthusians maintain credibility after so many failed predictions.
The hope at the United Nations was that it could seize power through “human caused” climate change. Thankfully, in COP26 they literally “shot their wad”. They have not been able to even make human caused climate change stick when the Sun is knocking them down with a Solar Grand Minimum.
The thing is – these guys are the useful idiots of authoritarians. If they somehow managed to help dictators seize control of power, they would be the first ones sent to the gulags – because they would pose a threat to their power.
You don’t need that “because”, 20th Century history forcefully bears you out. The Soviet Union is only one example.
“adopt an authoritarian government”
This can only work if you adopt an altruistic authoritarian government. And where ya gonna find that? What existing government is so selfless that it would be the ideal government to run the world? If you just want authoritarianism, put Kim Jong-un in charge and see what happens.
I don’t know about that, (hope I don’t mess the formating up…)
<blockquote>Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.</blockquote><cite>C.S. Lewis</cite>
I guess the blockquote and citation tags don’t work here.
Close enough, point taken.
Hey, why not try to divert attention from the fact that “climate crisis” is a stupid, juvenile but dangerous libtard joke.
Do we really need universities where students and lecturers are woefully deficient in the ability to reason carefully and logically?
Do we really need universities where those who reason carefully and logically are slandered and silenced?
No. The next Republican president should pass a law requiring universities to surrender their “endowments” to taxation and terminate the student loan program. Require all loans to be repaid, then let the crappy so called higher learning institutions provide tuition help. After about 5 years, when tuition has dropped 30 to 50% and enrolments have dropped about the same, there is a chance that the universities will get rid of all the crap departments and get back to what they were in the early 60s.
Otherwise require any university who accepts US student loan money to guarantee that the student, once matriculated, will be able to get a job that will pay enough to repay the loans. If not, the university MUST repay the loans.
While doing this, all diversity training at any business or government agency that receives federal funds are to be ended. If an agency/company refuses, then a 10 year hiatus on federal funds. That would apply especially to the military/industrial complex and All local and state governments. That would remove the attraction for otherwise possibly intelligent people to go into those fields. Since big military hardware companies are likely to fight this mandate, use the power of the SEC to remove the boards and management if they fail to comply.
Drake, some good ideas. I would add to these that young people need to start by working for a company for a year or two before going to university – in some low entry level job. Proving themselves and discovering what the work is all about, they will make far better students who are focused and have the backing of their company. This will sift out all the dumbed down pupils and students that current get pushed through the system.
I hope someone is ‘triggered’ by the thought of such tyranny and has it banned from the university.
‘triggered’, now there’s an interesting thought…
OMG – PLEASE stop mislabeling weather related anything as “climate” related. You’re just feeding the propaganda machine!
There ARE NO “climate events.”
There ARE NO “climate related” deaths.
It’s ALL weather, not “climate.”
Agreed, but to counter their argument, you have to speak in their language…otherwise they don’t absorb anything. Lomborg understands this.
NO! Don’t speak their language, put their terms and what what they say in quotes, and point out why it’s wrong. Otherwise don’t bother.
I second that!
That’s what I keep stressing when people talk about “climate change”. It’s an ambiguous term … equivocation … meaningless. I also do the same when people use ‘gender’ when they mean sex. Gender is a linguistic term denoting masculine, feminine or neutral words … not humans.
You can always tell a climate activist, you just can’t tell them much.
Unless we are very lucky with the weather, there will probably be a cold-weather-and-green energy crisis in Britain and Germany this winter, due to their over-reliance on grid-connected intermittent wind power generation.
It is too late to recover now, and if the polar vortex dips south into western Europe their Excess Winter Deaths will soar.
Governments were well-advised of this impending crisis many years ago, but thought they knew better. Britain is now rushing to re-start some coal-fired power plants. Germany, inexplicably, has just shut down three nuclear power plants.
RECORD SNOW SWEEPS U.S., DRIVES NORTHERN HEMISPHERE SNOW MASS 450 GIGATONS ABOVE 1982-2012 AVERAGE; + SCANDINAVIA SUFFERED COLD DECEMBER AS ARCTIC AIR WAS CONFINED TO THE NORTH
January 6, 2022 Cap Allon
Also, Arctic Sea Ice is at a 17-year high, and accelerating; plus Greenland SMB sees a big uptick. #GrandSolarMinimum
Makes for observing with mix of anticipation and concern – if it occurs I hope people are able to survive.
Yes, climate is a human derived construct.
There is only weather and we can’t control the weather no matter how many virgins we sacrifice.
How about if we sacrifice totalitarian assistant professors of political theory?
How would that work exactly? Do we toss them into the eye of a hurricane? or tie them together to create a solar shield in space? or sequester their carbon in the Marianas Trench?
Soylent Green!
Although low protein content, because vegan.
I’m against death penalty (or sacrificial religious practices). I think it would be better for… future weather and climate (among other things) that said professors would be compelled to earn their bread entirely by doing a productive work, for instance, as fruit and vegetable pickers.
I second that purpose!
That’s odd, because I would label him as “an overeducated, brainwashed, humanity-hating, democracy-hating, ignorant moron”. Oh well, different strokes.
No doubt he has his preferred pronouns in his bio.
He should identify as “ijit”.
The evidence (hard data) against ‘climate change causing increasing deaths’ is unassailable. Has Prof. Mittiga and the Cambridge University Press been called upon to retract their falsified paper?
I’d have to disagree; limitations on free movement and association have merely delayed, not prevented, the spread of the pandemic. The 1911 pandemic was done in two years without such government dictatorship, COVID 19 is still going strong.
LMFAO. If you accept the pseudoscience and propaganda as being factual. Here in reality, not so much. There is no “climate crisis,” no matter how many times they shout it in the “news.”
The REAL climate crisis will begin when the current interglacial ends.
It sure would be nice if climate scientists would address this while whining about the Precautionary Principle.
” limitations on free movement and association have merely delayed, not prevented, the spread ”
Have they delayed? I don’t think so…
“Those who sacrifice Liberty for the false promise of security deserve neither.”
CAGW has never been about “saving the planet” (eye roll), but rather an act of tyranny by Leftists to usurp power and control, and stealing $100’s of trillions of taxpayers’ money…
At least Leftists are starting to be open about their true intents..
Now that COVID has devolved into another common cold virus, and can’t be further exploited to waste $trillions, Leftists will return to CAGW as their go-to raison d’etre to inflict their tyranny..
Leftists are so predictable.
Simple solutions are often under-utilized.
Oh, you wish.
They are now pretty much fully accepting a requirement for three vaccinations every year for everyone. I suspect four will become the norm. Far too many $s yet to cream off this to let that fat juicy cash cow out of the paddock.
Never was there anything so obvious to intelligent people.
If the number of deaths was calculated on a per capita basis, the drop would be even more dramatic.
The problem with Mittiga’s paper is that he doesn’t offer up a single reference or shred of evidence that a “climate crisis” actually exists. It appears he simply assumes it to be fact-based on the frequency of political discussions that have embraced the term for several years.
So, I ask, where is the so-called “climate crisis” that is portrayed as a certainty by Mittiga in the Cambridge University Press?
_____________________________________________________________________
The answer you’re going to get is, “It’s common knowledge” Just do a Google [News] search on “Climate Change” Most people have too much to loose to really get involved in taking any action against the propaganda, and the “Cancel Culture” is making sure that remains the case.
Losing your job because you pipe up is usually not prudent. Just ask Dr. Peter Ridd. This is no doubt true for all levels of education. Other professions will no doubt be affected in the future. The Cambridge paper is merely attempting to legitimize the Cancel Culture’s attack on free speech.
“President” Biden spoke a long time today about the January 6th 2021 demonstration in the Nation’s capital. He said it was an armed insurrection which it was not. It’s plain that this will escalate to the point that any future public action opposing the Democrat Party is going to be dealt with in a similar fashion. Considering the killing of Ashli Babbitt, the Capitol Police are looking more and more like the American Gestapo.
The DC police also probably beat Rosanne Boyland to death.
And if the thought police ask you your opinion on climate change, just say, “I agree with you, and I think we should do more, but first we need funding.” and hold out your hand as if to receive funding. And if s/he repeats the question, just repeat the answer.
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
And Chile just elected a far left socialist as president.
He’s a 35 year-old former (he says) Communist.
Unfortunately Chile is once again going down the path of destruction that will require a Pinochet to turn things around. Chileans apparently lack a learning curve.
Most Boric voters weren’t alive in 1973. My wife, just a year younger than Boric, voted for Kast, but her mom (who experienced Allende) and two sisters voted for the Commie.
The only bright spot is that he doesn’t have full control of Congress. That might change under the new constitution, liable to be Far Left and get approved, given Boric’s margin of victory.
I was working in Chile during the period of the national referendum “Si” [yes] or “No” about Pinochet remaining in control.
The only region which voted Yes was #9, Araucania (capital Temuco), in which violent Mapuche protestors are active, where I used to live.
El Crisis Climatico es mañana….
According to Wiktionary a gadfly is
Socrates:
Yep, that sounds about right
So what does friend griff have to say about this?
I’m not taking bets that he doesn’t comment.
He’ awaiting instructions
Mors tyrannis
It’s all about the tyranny. “Climate change” is just the handy excuse of the moment. Wannbe tyrants and their sick sycophants will use any excuse to foist power trips.
Mittiga fails from the beginning by suggesting that the notions of “safety and security”, which are entirely subjective concepts, can be determined by some higher authority. Government interventions into those concepts should be entirely determined by a democratic process.
“Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security.”
What a monster! It’s not just that “contemporary literature seems to suggest not”, but that all of the arguments throughout history that purport to support political coercion can be readily refuted. A recommended read is Michael Huemer’s ‘The Problem of Political Authority’.
Ross is a posterboy for ‘the Perfect Latin American Idiot’.
Ross Mittiga makes a major mistake in thinking. Just because an “authoritarian” approach is taken, that does not make it legitimate.
A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government.”
There was nothing done, at least in the US, to make these limitations “legitimate”. They were simply “spoken from the throne” so to speak. In a Republican form of government a vote by both houses of government in addition to approval by the President is required to validate the lockdowns. That never happened.
The reason that there was no consensus in society that national force was needed internally to enforce limits on free movement association. This was emphasized by the nearly uniform approach in the unelected parts of the government to approve the restrictions, All the policies were made simply by saying “it is so”.
The problem was confused by poorly done statistics used to support the illegal sanctions on the peoples’ rights.
Sorry Ross, bu saying “I’m right” doesn’t “make it so” as it does in a monarchy or communist, socialist, strongman governance.
I believe that’s all you need…
Me thinks this gadfly would have better luck with the livestock . I find this kind of “look at me” bully very unattractive and in need of some Play Doh and a bottle. Projection at this point is getting real old. We are awake and know this whole thing is nonsense. As things get better they say it’s much worse, such BS but again a nice place for the gadfly to hang out
Anthony:
Your title of the article is complete crap, please change it. Your comments are perfectly sound. Agree there are loada woke folk in Cambridge (my Alma Mater) but the University itself is NOT “Pushing for Tyranny in the Name of Climate Change“. The University Press is, simply, a publishing house which means it certainly doesn’t endorse the content.
KUTGW. ATB & KBO. Best for 2022
Cambridge University Press is an actual department of the U.ofCambridge. The U.ofC. Vice-Chairman Toope is quoted on their own website on 20 Oct.2020 stating the merging of C.U.Press and the Cambridge Assessment was “… in response to a growing desire … to engage with Cambridge ….”
That’s fine but CU press is still a publishing house and it has no editorial function and certainly does not, through its publications, reflect any official views of the university. In this instance, all it has done is to publish (and not endorse) a paper by a Chilean academic.
To repeat, I have no issue whatsoever with the points Anthony makes, only the implicit guild by association and apparent conflation of Cambridge with a Chilean University, which is incorrect.
Majoring in Climate ethics? And I thought the basket-weaving major was absurd….
He couldn’t pass the qualification for basket-weaving, women’s studies was oversubscribed so he opted for the only other program which would take him.
So now the left wing dingbats want to go from socialism to communism and they’re open about it.
This is the second article this week with some academic communist wanting to run an authoritarian government to control us. Are they really so comfortable that they are coming out of the shadow with their true goals?
Additionally, I disagree that COVID has provided legitimate authority for the government to force these limitations on freedom. Want to recommend reduced contact and movement, fine. Want to force limited movement, that is not in your power (or at least shouldn’t be).
Finally, one last thought:
Good news! Once something reaches 97% we all know that you are no longer allowed to question it. It is done, settled, and grounds for being banned for life to argue with it! Severe weather no longer exists by the rules set forth by the IPCC!
It certainly appears so. The silent majority needs to speak up.
The climate crisis is, as Hermann Hesse wrote…
For madmen only
I have seen several other comments like this (not “peer-reviewed published papers”), so it seems like it has become time for the gloves to come off and for the people pushing the climate change meme to be clear what they want, and have always wanted. No more obfuscating. They can’t claim that the “deniers” have been wrong about the real motives of the climate change proponents..
It is all about control. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Marxism is the tyranny of the intellectuals, that, once democracy is overthrown, is replaced by the tyranny of a dictorship, while the intellectuals are posted to the gulags.
It’s a pity we cant cut out the middle part.
That’s the endpoint. Initially, the relatively small minority that constitutes the State needs the intellectuals to keep a much larger productive majority pulling on the oars. However, while ‘democracy’ exists, this is an unstable condition that evolves towards totalitarianism, at which time the unproductive and unnecessary intellectuals are liquidated.
It’s the cognitive dissonance that blows me away every time I hear this garbage. Look around for two seconds. Which govts are taking climate change seriously – democracies or authoritarian states? Guys like this have no voice in authoritarian states.
”specializing in climate ethics.”
Could someone explain to me what that even is supposed to mean??
I mean, could it mean that you are not allowed to swear at alarmists? Or you attire must be correct?
This guy knows nothing about climate, but he sure knows how communism works.
Socialists will be Socialists. Always the language of fear. Always forcing others. Always threats of violence. Always driven by imaginary enemies.
Socialism fills about half of all publications on mental illnesses.
Socialists agree by the way
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339541044_Mental_illness_and_the_left
The only thing left for normal people to do is to make sure the Socialists get the care they need in well guarded and closed-off hospitals.
Remember what Lenin said: the goal of Socialism is Communism .
Act now while you still can.
Tyranny in the name of “CAGW”?
Hmmm …. one aspect of tyranny is to silence all opposition.
One aspect of real science is to test all hypothesis or theories and oppositions to an hypothesis or theory to see if they hold up.
If they hold up, science has gained.
If they don’t hold up, science has gained.
It would seem that “Climate Science” has been promoting tyranny all along.
(“The Cause”?)
Cambridge University was a hotbed of useful idiot spies for the Soviet Union in the height of the Cold War. I guess the ideological tradition persists with Cambridge U Press accepting this juicy bit.
The cat is out of the bag.
He writes what others think too.
Here is more insanity but perhaps worse:
Extract from New Scientists 26 Sept 2015
‘When right is wrong’
“In June, a new voice backed up what many scientists have been saying for a while – that climate change is caused by human activity and we have a moral responsibility to tackle it. In a historic edict, Pope Francis warned that failing to act would have “grave consequences”, the thrust of which would fall on the world’s poorest people. His words came as a stark reminder that global climate change is among the most pressing moral dilemmas of the 21st century.”…
…”Take BankTrack, a global network of NGOs that exposes banks involved with projects that threaten the environment and human rights. BankTrack has looked at banks lending to the coal industry, a major source of global carbon dioxide emissions and compiled a list of the top “climate killers”.
It’s manifesto is simple: “By naming and shaming these banks, we hope to set the stage for a race to the top, where banks compete with each other to clean up their portfolios and stop financing investments which are pushing our climate over the brink.
However, harnessing the power of rational reflection, collective identity and shame may not be the only options for the would be moral revolutionaries. In their book Unfit for the future, philosophers Ingmar Persson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Julian Savulescu of the University of Oxford argue that our moral brains are so compromised that the only way we can avoid catastrophe is to enhance them through biomedical means..
In the past few years, researchers have shown it might actually be possible to alter moral thinking with drugs and brain stimulation.”
There’s no way that they could achieve that. They’d have to firstly get people used to being forced to accept regular injections of unknown drugs.
Oh, wait…
“severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government.”
Take that and compare it to the words written in the Declaration of Independence on the reason for governments:
“…that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..”
Limitations on free movement and associations may be techniques used by governents but they are certainly NOT legitimate in a free society.
This is what happens when belief in nonsense like the “greenhouse effect” actually having something to do with the energy balance on earth.
Earths energy balance is regulated by two dominant ocean temperature regulating processes with limits of -2C and 30C – end of story.
Wherever there are progressives there is totalitarian hate-mongering fascism.
It’s like the stench of feces and it gets worse every hour of the day.
For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means.
Which implies that authoritarian power is sometimes preferable to a “crisis”. Can you name any crisis in the last few centuries that was worse than authoritarian governments? Any crisis that was fixed by authoritarian government? For bonus points, list the numerous crises that were created by government, authoritarian or otherwise. Hint: skyrocketing energy costs in Germany.
If no one can actually measure any suffering caused by your “crisis”, maybe it’s all in your head. Like mental illness.
The penultimate sentence is perhaps bass-ackwards;
It’s more a case of the left embracing climate change to act on their viewpoint on tyranny in the form of authoritarian power….
Fortunately there are some sane people in the UK like L-Sumption
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amDv2gk8aa0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lXAA7ZOROc
The only reason why Britain never became a dictatorship in the past was because of the total blinding incompetence of the bureaucracy
It also held true mostly in the days of the empire..
I think this is the second posting of a piece about this paper, and I commented on the first one, but my comment seemed to vanish.
You can see immediately that the paper’s argument is fallacious by looking at it as a 2 x 2 matrix. We have authoritarian countries that are or are not reducing emissions, and similarly we have democratic countries that are or are not reducing.
If you just fill in the names, you find that there is no correlation between authoritarian administration and emission reduction.
For instance, India (democracy) is not reducing. China (authoritarian) is also not reducing. The US and UK (democracies) are reducing, or at least committing to it.
If all the Western countries adopted some authoritarian and non-democratic form of government, there is no reason to think that those governments would be any more disposed to emission reductions than the present ones. There is also no reason to think that an authoritarian India or a democratic China would change their approach from their present ones.
Governments, whether authoritarian or democratic, face a simple problem: they cannot make the case that emission reduction is in the national interest. The problem is, paradoxically, worse for authoritarian regimes, because they have a limited amount of goodwill in the first place. Authoritarian regimes generally succeed only because restrictions on freedom are tolerated in exchange for prosperity.
China’s problem, even if they believed in climate alarmism, which the evidence is they do not, is that to reduce emissions would stop economic growth in its tracks, and the regime’s bargain with the population is that they will always deliver economic growth. Break that bargain and they will end up with large scale unrest and no way to regime change other than large scale disorder.
This problem will remain even if China were to democratize. The same exact problem faces India, even if it were to become a regime run by a self-perpetuating authoritarian oligarchy or a dictatorship. The regime would be unable to put a stop to rising emissions because of the economic consequences, which would very soon turn to popular unrest.
Paradoxically, because in democracies people elected their governments, they have greater trust in them, and so the governments can get away for a while with more craziness. So we see the Green New Deal proposals in the US or the crazed Net Zero proposals in the UK which are more or less passively tolerated by most of the population.
But as the costs and the futility of these proposals starts to dawn on the electorate, either the governments will change direction or they will get voted out of office. So in the end I don’t believe any of the Western countries will actually manage to implement their net-zero plans.
But its not a problem with the form of the regime. The problem is that the proposals are mostly impossible to implement, and if implemented do not do what they are claimed to do locally, and even if they did, would not have any material effect on climate. No government can make any convincing case for the reduction proposals. This in the end means that whether its a democratic or authoritarian regime, in the end it just isn’t going to happen.
The author of the paper doesn’t seem to have any idea how policy and government work in modern societies. What sunk the Soviet regime was in the end the loss of belief in Marxism-Leninism. It became apparent to both population and regime that it didn’t work. Exactly the same thing will happen to everyone who tries to implement emission reduction by any of the measures currently being proposed. It will not not work, and if they persist beyond a certain point, there will be regime change.
And both democratic and authoritarian regimes will see that coming, and will back off. Want an early example in democracies? Look at the EU latest change on gas and nuclear. Expect the UK to back off from net-zero sometime in the next year, too. And Biden has already had the emission aspects of his plans shot down. And the proposals on Government green electricity will end up withering on the vine, too.
I can see revolts against any authority based moves. Protest like you haven’t seen before. Violence as in the old red underground violence except done efficiently. As it is even Germany is turning against the green movement. Coal is already showing its head. And there will be deaths from the cold. The EU has already had to back track on natural gas, thank goodness. Electric heating is expensive and in efficient.
But just don’t make Cambridge University Press destroy all remaining copies of this book.
From Wikipedia:
In 2007, controversy arose over the Press’s decision to destroy all remaining copies of its 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, by Burr and Collins, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz. Within hours, Alms for Jihad became one of the 100 most sought after titles on Amazon.com and eBay in the United States. The Press sent a letter to libraries asking them to remove copies from circulation. The Press subsequently sent out copies of an “errata” sheet for the book.
The American Library Association issued a recommendation to libraries still holding Alms for Jihad: “Given the intense interest in the book, and the desire of readers to learn about the controversy first hand, we recommend that U.S. libraries keep the book available for their users.” The publisher’s decision did not have the support of the book’s authors and was criticized by some who claimed it was incompatible with freedom of speech and with freedom of the press and that it indicated that English libel laws were excessively strict. In a New York Times Book Review (7 October 2007), United States Congressman Frank R. Wolf described Cambridge’s settlement as “basically a book burning”. The Press pointed out that, at that time, it had already sold most of its copies of the book.
The Press defended its actions, saying it had acted responsibly and that it is a global publisher with a duty to observe the laws of many different countries.
Surely the biggest reason to cut the people out of the loop is that when push comes to shove – ie the bills start to come in – the people rapidly lose their enthusiasm for supporting global warming and for the measures that would allegedly stop it.
If a “climate crisis” actually existed, there would be human impact data to support the claim. Yet, Mittiga cites no such evidence. …….
I have tried for over a decade now to get any explanation of how hot spots in the file earthobservatory.nasa.gov/global-maps/AMSRE_SSTAn_M can be caused by either poorly insulated homes or road vehicle. The answer I get from both from the BBC and my MP is the same that the science its beyond question according to their advisers and I must get past my climate change denial or the world is doomed.
Should we assume Mittiga would approve of Pinochet?
Probably not.
This article is consistent with the original intent of the cadre of folks at the UN and The Club of Rome who sought global authoritarianism in the 1970s. In the Club’s first publication, The Limits to Growth (1972), the group set out to divide the world into ten economic regions. In its second major publication, The First Global Revolution, they linked their agenda to Global Warming as a “new enemy” that suited the purpose. IPCC administrator Ottmar Edenhoffer infamously revealed when he was elevated to a Working Group Chair position that the COP was not about environmental issues but the “redistribution of the world’s resources through climate policy.”
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”
Churchill
Well they just have to ram these things through for everyone’s own good and no further correspondence will be entered into-
If North Hertfordshire are serious about their commitment to tackling the climate change emergency action is required now to dramatically alter the current path of future greenhouse gas emissions within the district and nationally
Hertfordshire: Plans submitted for solar farm on green belt land – BBC News
Same deal with the ocean floor bladders and the infrasound affecting the sea life whales and dolphins-
The Latest Energy Storage Gizmo Is An Ocean Battery (cleantechnica.com)
Even though-
That’s a significant advantage. Here in the US, pumped hydro has been the number one bulk, long duration storage technology for many years, and it will probably continue to maintain that status. However, it will be difficult if not impossible to build any significant number of new pumped hydro reservoirs.
due to the green NIMBYs that again must be jackbooted for pumped hydro as this is a climate emergency
Of course, you can’t just plop down huge undersea structures just anywhere without running into environmental impacts and competing commercial uses.
Of course you can. Just send in the truncheon goon squad and lock up the eco-terrorists if they get in the way of the climate crisis and settled scientists.