h/t J Boles, PJ Media; “… humanity is inexorably threatened by humanity itself …”. John Kerry speech 24th August, with fun annotations to hilight his ridiculous mistakes.
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at the Scottish Global Dialogues in Edinburgh, Scotland
Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for inviting me to share some thoughts with you today. Mark Muller Stuart, I am especially grateful for your role in making this possible, and thank you to the Signet for hosting.
First Minister Humza Yousef: thank you for your generous introduction.
And thanks to all of you for taking time away from the frolicking of the festival and for having the common sense to use the Signet Library as a refuge. I see a number of familiar faces…It’s great to be among friends, both old and new.
I was reading the lineup at the Fringe Festival: death-defying acrobats, famous actors, side-splitting comedians, clowns…It’s like being back in American politics.
It is particularly appropriate to be here in Scotland where, less than three hundred years ago, from Hutton to Hume, groundbreaking thinking contributed to the enlightenment not just of a country or continent, but of civilization itself.
It was here that James Hutton first found in the exposed rock face of Jedburgh, scientific proof visible to the naked eye of the transition from ocean bed to land, back to ocean bed, and finally evidence of the land he could see and experience and which we still treasure today.
In so doing, he may well have been the world’s first climate scientist.
The Enlightenment transformed thinking to win acceptance of the principle that science-based evidence, not vested power promulgating its own tradition, is the foundation of the laws of the universe. It won broad acceptance for the notion that any theory should be established by observation and that hypotheses should be tested against the evidence.
Hutton, David Hume and Adam Smith were not alone.
Across the sea, in 1755, an earthquake flattened Lisbon, set it aflame, and then caused a massive tsunami that swept the Tagus (TAH-Gus) River into the city, killing more than 40,000 people.
The ruling order said there was only one explanation as there had been for every earthquake or flood that preceded it: divine retribution for earthly pride and sin.
But Voltaire stood up and argued that science and evidence proved that nature’s hand, not the hand of a vengeful God, was responsible for the movement of the earth’s crusts and that if we studied the earth’s plates, we might avoid future massive loss of life. His advocacy triumphed in a principal debate of the day.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, in 2023, we again stand on the precipice where Hutton and Voltaire once stood.
Despite a vast array of empirical facts beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt, despite thousands of scientists’ lifetime work accumulating hard data, and without a single piece of peer reviewed, documentation to the contrary, we are again witnessing another moment in which the persuasive force of evidence and with it, earth’s future hangs in the balance.
All because some extremist political voices, holdout nations, and vastly vested interests have declared war on facts and science. All because they distort for political or personal gain what science and common sense dictate we humans must do to put our house in order. These interests would choose a destructive status quo over the opportunity to build a clean energy economy which can rescue our future, put millions of people to work and leave us all safer, stronger, and more secure.
Without facts or economics on their side, they flatly deny what is happening to our planet and what we must do to save it.
They incite a movement against what they falsely label “climate change fanaticism,” as they conveniently forget that the dictionary definition of a cult is the dismissal of facts in devotion to a lie.
While they refuse to accept the facts behind the increasingly obvious damages of the climate crisis, they lash out at the truth tellers, and label indisputable evidence as hysteria.
They compound the already difficult challenge of the climate crisis by promising to do more of exactly what created the crisis in the first place.
So now, humanity is inexorably threatened by humanity itself—by those seducing people into buying into a completely fictitious alternative reality where we don’t need to act and we don’t even need to care.
But just as clearly as Hutton could see in the layers of the rock face, Mother Nature is now sending an ever more desperate distress signal about the coming catastrophe as community after community, event after event confirms the excruciating spread of threatened and even uninhabitable places.
In Iraq, in the home of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which I remember as a school kid learning was the cradle of civilization, a recent article quoted a science teacher who stated: “Nowhere has water…Everyone who is left is ‘suffering a slow death.’” Just consider the scene: waterless, unlivable villages near the Euphrates River where families are dismantling their homes, brick by brick, piling them into pickup trucks — window frames, doors and all — and driving away.
These, my friends, are the real faces of the climate crisis. Now, magnify those lives by millions.
Around the world, people are moving because they can’t grow food, because they are flooded, because they can’t live and work in the extreme heat, because the air they are forced to breathe is clogged with pollution that kills someone prematurely every five seconds around the world.
The climate crisis is not just a passing environmental impact event happening in a few selected places. It is global and indiscriminate in its consequences. It can hit almost anywhere at any time. Just look at Pakistan and an out-of-control flood displacing over 30 million people in a matter of hours.
In northwest China, temperatures have climbed to over 52C while in southern China, typhoons have killed dozens and displaced tens of thousands.
Wildfires have torn across the Mediterranean from Greece to Algeria, spreading as far as Syria, where the UN has said 800,000 people living in camps are in danger.
Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have averaged over 88 degrees F—and off the coast of Florida they reached a possible world-record 100 degrees F. In cities like Phoenix, 30 consecutive days of 100 degrees F temperatures have caused some people to literally turn nocturnal, starting their days after the sun has gone down.
These are not just simple weather events. These are once in a lifetime catastrophes happening regularly now and they are a manifestation of the profound changes taking place on our planet.
Think about it another way: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that since the beginning of 2020, a billion-dollar climate disaster occurs somewhere on the planet about once every 18 days. And yet the cost in human lives and livelihoods is even greater.
No one living these tragic realities doubts for an instant that the climate crisis is real, or that it is here now and getting worse tomorrow.
None of the destruction unfolding daily should be a surprise to anybody. Scientists have been predicting it now for decades.
Except for one big difference. Now it is all unfolding even faster and more severely than was forecasted.
And what’s really disturbing, as heat records were being broken globally in unprecedented sequence, continent to continent, scientists who have spent a lifetime tracking this human made crisis described themselves as “alarmed” and “terrified.” As one said unequivocally, “we are now in uncharted territory.”
Why are we in uncharted territory? Because we are now on the precipice of tipping points—the point at which events can simply unfold of their own momentum—the point at which our reckless abuse of an ecosystem has unleashed forces of nature way beyond our control.
These moments of irreversibility will over time mean the loss of glaciers critical to the feeding of rivers which in turn sustain much of the world. It means the shifting or drying up of rivers, sea level rise that will be catastrophic because the Arctic, already warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, or the Antarctic will melt at increasingly threatening pace with sea level rise measured in meters not feet.
No one can predict with certainty the exact pace and scope of this unraveling.
But common sense tells us inaction doesn’t have a prayer of stopping it.
Those who promote procrastination, delay and denial will wind up at the bottom of the dustbin of history. But it is up to us to decide whether they’re going to drag the rest of civilization down there with them.
By denying or downplaying the problem, naysayers are prepared to accept that younger generations already alive today won’t inherit anything resembling the world that belonged to their parents and grandparents.
Unless we—all of us— start doing more, faster, now, future generations will trade the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, for struggle in the pursuit of survival. Merely staying alive is not the legacy any of us should want to leave to future generations.
And how could we dare to when the solution is so clear.
The climate crisis is the result of the unabated burning of fossil fuel, deforestation, and potent superpollutants from industry and agriculture. That’s it. That’s the whole of the climate crisis. Those emissions form an ever-increasing blanket of greenhouse gas pollution which traps the heat. Damage done.
We humans are trying to bend the very laws of physics, chemistry and mathematics rather than apply them, and that’s breaking our planet.
It should be obvious by now. We have better choices, and they are very simple: stop using fossil fuels—unabated fossil fuels—capture the entirety of their emissions, and cut methane and other climate superpollutants for the fastest climate benefits.
I believe we’re on the cusp of change in the speed of this transition. In a little less than 100 days COP28 will convene in Dubai. And despite the troubled road that has brought us to this point, I think in this moment we have a unique opportunity to significantly accelerate this transition to a clean energy economy.
We are at a different moment than we have ever been. There is more than hope. There is progress.
And in these next days, on the road to COP 28 and at the COP itself, we have the potential to reach a different kind of tipping point—a tipping point in the speed and breadth of our response.
Thanks to the Paris Agreement, we have the chance to assess our progress through a review called the “Global Stocktake,” a report card to see how we are all doing together, taking into account the latest science.
When the Paris Agreement was written in 2015, we set out to limit temperature rise to well below 2 degrees C and to pursue 1.5 C as our priority.
While we’re significantly off track, still the Paris Agreement has achieved a great deal. It has created a framework that is our best hope for winning this battle. The 1.5 degree limit on warming, Net Zero emissions, the Global Stocktake—these ideas all come from Paris.
After the COP in Glasgow in 2021, the International Energy Agency determined if everyone did what they promised, we would limit warming to 1.8 C degrees by 2050. After Sharm el Sheikh last year, that projection dropped to 1.7 degrees of warming.
The problem is, not everyone is doing what they said they would or doing what the IPCC report demanded, and we are currently on a track with emissions rising, not falling.
What we already know from our own personal stocktakes is that we are behind and at COP 28 we need to universally raise ambition and propel implementation. Like Hume and Hutton, we are compelled to respond to the evidence we have. And that evidence tells us every country on the planet with significant emissions and emerging nations must kick into higher gear.
I take encouragement though that we are now seeing many more reasons for optimism. Remember, not everything has to be done by COP 28, let alone in the next seven years. We need to be on the right trend line. The science dictates that we all need to achieve a minimum 45% reduction by 2030 and then get firmly on the road to net zero by 2050. On that goal, there are a number of encouraging advances.
First, we are seeing renewable energy deploy faster as both the result and cause for further price reductions.
Since 2009, the cost of solar has decreased 83%; in that time, the cost of producing wind power has gone down more than 50%; and in the last three decades, the cost of lithium batteries has fallen 97%.
The marketplace will increasingly deploy capital to these sectors and that will add even more speed to the transition. The pace of electric vehicle manufacture and sales will result in a decrease in demand for fossil fuel and this will send a powerful demand signal to the marketplace about the economies of the future.
In the United States, under President Biden’s leadership, the Inflation Reduction Act, along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, are already having a profound positive impact—driving over a trillion dollars in clean energy investment by decade’s end.
We’re also witnessing extraordinary progress in wind power with increasingly larger turbines producing more and more energy from fewer machines. Wind works, and the faster we can get the permitting and deploy it the sooner we will offer Mother Nature the space and capacity to heal.
Two years ago, as we approached COP26 in Glasgow, China and the United States joined together to agree that there should be no more foreign financing of coal fired power plants. Now is the time for all of us to join together and take a more critical step. There should be no more permitting of any new unabated coal fired power anywhere in the world. Period.
Knowing what we know are the impacts and given the alternative options, there is no rational reason for contributing more to the problem by turning to the world’s dirtiest fuel burned in the dirtiest way.
In the United States, renewables are the largest source of new energy, and renewables account for nearly 90% of all new power capacity globally, and Scotland also is playing a part in that.
What is clear now is that the marketplace has made its decision and no politician—in the US or elsewhere—can reverse the course we are on. I am absolutely convinced we will get to a low-carbon, no-carbon economy. I am not convinced that we will do so in time to avoid the worst consequences of this crisis.
That remains our challenge, though there are increasing ripples of hope.
In Nigeria, a courageous decision by the new President to reform fossil fuel subsidies will save the country billions of dollars and is poised to unleash a new clean energy investment boom that Bloomberg estimates will see Nigeria’s solar capacity grow over 2000% by 2030.
The fastest growing heat pump market in the world in 2022 was Poland, which more than doubled its supply, while also pushing ahead with nuclear as a key source of zero emissions energy.
This past year we saw two historic experiments—one in the US, and one in the UK—produce net energy gain from a fusion reaction, a major milestone on the quest to commercialize abundant clean energy from fusion.
This year, more money—$1.7 trillion worldwide—will be invested in clean energy technologies like wind, solar, EVs and batteries than is invested in fossil fuels.
One of the greatest restraints on progress in this transition is the lack of adequate financing. Trillions of dollars in private capital have been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for greater confidence before betting on the net zero transition. We need to be more creative in derisking these investments and creating pools of concessionary funding which will give confidence to investors.
The Biden Administration is helping lead a global effort that will significantly expand the amount of low-cost credit available to countries for climate action through entities like the World Bank, which under the new leadership of Ajay Banga, is leading the charge to unlock billions in new financing.
We also can’t achieve our goals without the fossil fuel industry itself. The industry must step up and have a clear road map that aligns with Paris, Glasgow and Sharm el Sheikh. And, in the next weeks we have an opportunity to set out a real plan. If they are at the table, we can take massive steps forward.
I restate what I said earlier: this is one of the most dangerous moments in human history. But it may also be the greatest moment of opportunity for human advancement. We have the chance now to write a future filled with choices that make life cleaner, healthier, fairer, and safer.
One thing people have proven throughout history is an incredible capacity for innovation. The fact is that an amazing amount is happening now on multiple fronts.
We are well into an energy transition which can and should be the greatest economic opportunity since the Industrial Revolution.
Just think about it. Building a smart grid, installing new transmission lines, deploying solar fields, wind farms, adjusting infrastructure for electricity, renewing transportation, constructing efficient buildings —all of the enterprise of this transition will demand—electricians, heavy equipment operators, plumbers, steel, aluminum, concrete and cement workers and plants, architects. Every layer of economic endeavor will be engaged in this transformation. This should excite the imagination, not depress us.
But this is much more than just an economic opportunity.
It is, above all, an opportunity to redefine our relationship with the future itself, because the future is what we’re fighting for. The battle may be pitched in the present but it’s going to be won in the days and decades ahead.
I know it may feel intangible or ethereal to imagine a planet in distress. It seems beyond comprehension. There are lots of granular, here-and-now things we are all asked to do in life: like go to work, pay the bills, raise a family, be a good citizen. And in the course of all that it’s pretty hard to grab onto the fact that all of humanity is actually in peril but Hume, Hutton, and Smith, whose names are on this building, they kept arguing, they kept innovating, and they prevailed.
And they didn’t actually have on their side what we have.
They were defending science and reason in an era where people were still told and almost universally believed that the Earth might be flat, that the planet might be held in the palm of one giant beast, and that disease would be cured by bleeding and life restored by a mighty bellows pumping air into the dead.
Well, we have our own new breed of doubters but what do we have on our side? 350 years of proof-of-concept, from antibiotics, moon landings, a vaccine to fight a pandemic, so that we are empowered to take the biggest leap forward for all humankind when we listen to science and reason, and act on it.
Two hundred years ago, an admirer of The Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, wrote: “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
Right now, the science and the knowledge are unequivocal.
You’ve got to admit, it’s difficult to be so consistently wrong in such a long speech – but Kerry has proven equal to the challenge. There is no evidence of a climate crisis. As for Kerry’s green revolution, the reality is green energy investment is a government funded chimera, which will dry up and blow away as soon as politicians stop paying for it. Otherwise, why would investors be sitting on the sidelines, why would green entrepreneurs have so much trouble accessing finance?
If anyone has any suggestions for WUWT links which should be added as annotations to Kerry’s speech, please post in comments.
If you click and hold the titles in the links, Android chrome presents a menu asking if you want to open the link. No idea why Android chrome is being odd about it, and not simply opening the links.
Could be a security feature.
Allows one to verify that the URL you are going to, is the one you wanted to go to.
The QR reader on my phone recently started displaying the URL and asking for confirmation prior to accessing the site.
A number of restaurants had been placing a QR at the tables so that customers could pull up a copy of the menu. In a number of restaurants, scammers had covered over that QR with one of their own that took customers to the scammers web site that loaded viruses on their phone.
He is right about everything except who the real climate deniers actually are…Mann, Kerry, NYT …..
Rod Evans
August 29, 2023 12:11 am
Reading this John Kerry speech, reminds me of historic facts about developed societies that can not be removed, History happened.
He speaks as all delusional presenters must, with emphasis often using inverted truth because they have no respect for truth and reality. He claims opponents of his Climate Crusade are guilty of that which he is patently guilty of, i.e. denying science.
He brings to mind Cicero’s speech to the Roman senate ‘The enemy Within’. Kerry walks among us, dresses like us. he looks and speaks as we do (well almost). His whole existence is funded by public money which he squanders with no concern. Jetting across the World, delivering doom mongering speeches based on lies and false image, all selected to enhance the doom he wishes to spread.
Sadly as history has shown us, and without exception, all civilisations fall.
With Kerry’s ongoing efforts supported by the Biden administration’s Great Reset agenda, Western civilisation has never been in such peril. A challenge lies ahead mostly for our children. The challenge is nothing to do with climate, it has everything to do with stopping a political movement determined to destroy the fabric of developed society.
The strange part is, the very people advancing the decline believe they will be unaffected by the social revolution they are demanding?
I guess it is a flaw in the mind of such people? They are unable to recognise truth. They are so blind to their own inevitable demise, as they build the funeral pyres they hope or imagine are just for others….
Seeing as we are insulting the performance of the comments section today (WordDepressed), I object to having to read all that Kerryisms before I could get to the good stuff (comments) but then, after I read every comment to make sure I am original, I have to scroll all the way back up to leave my mark against the postbox! Unacceptable!!!
Anyway, did anybody else catch the bit where disappearing glaciers will dry up the rivers that feed the majority of earth?
I mean, really, has this man ever seen a map? Also, I have not sworn this much at one speech, ever. This is a special kinda stupid, and people voted for it…
Kerry is singularly incapable of recognising the truth. He would not see death when it stares him in the face.
CampsieFellow
August 29, 2023 2:41 am
John Kerry can’t even speak good English: “First, we are seeing renewable energy deploy faster..” What exactly is the renewable energy deploying faster? Perhaps he meant: “First, we are seeing renewable energy being deployed faster..” Also, the faster we deploy renewable energy the faster we need something reliable to replace it when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Is that happening, John?
Yeah, and Kerry lied about wind and solar being cheap.
I think he lied in about every sentence.
CampsieFellow
August 29, 2023 2:55 am
John Kerry is a history denier: They (Hutton, Hume and Smith)were defending science and reason in an era where people were still told and almost universally believed that the Earth might be flat, Apart from that just being absolute rubbish, has Kerry never heard of Francis Drake? Does Kerry believe in conspiracy theories? Does he believe that Drake did not really circumnavigate the world but made the whole thing up? Drake circumnavigated the world between 1577 and 1580. David Hume was born in 1711. Adam Smith was born in 1723. Hutton was born in 1726. Get a grip, John, your version of history (and much else) is sheer fantasy. Anybody in the mid-eighteenth century suggesting that the world might be flat would have been regarded as an absolute crank.
I think you will that the continuing claim that the earth was flat and Drake had not circumnavigated the globe were lies and misinformation spread by the tobacco industry…
Yep – insidious people. Shakespeare only wrote ‘Hamlet’ after receiving huge funding from the fledgling tobacco industry!
SwampeastMike
August 29, 2023 2:56 am
I watched and listened as the rallying cry went out to the “left” in the 1990s that success was only to be gained by adopting the practices employed by the “successful” religious right.
Assume you are on the moral high ground. Promote your beliefs as a matter of faith.
I no longer listen to either side! That’s why I appreciate places like this–a place where I can see matters of science presented as matters of science and not faith. It’s up to my experience, judgment and observations to determine which, if either, “side” represents reality.
It was a long time before I understood what the terms modern and postmodern mean. I used to read around the terms, because they seem like vague notions created to mean what the writers of their era wanted to lump into them. Also I thought Naked Lunch was barely readable, but the book tried to get at the same idea with the term liquifactionist. I still don’t like that book, but I do now understand the concept better.
Words capture people into membership with either “side”, thinking its possible to see an actual “reality”. This is not an advocation of relativism and the absence of truth. I’m only questioning whether I could know it if I heard it.
The left’s rallying cry was not new on the 1990’s or 1960’s or in 1789, though “the science” seems to have defeated “the faith” around that time in popular culture. Be careful not to abandon “the faith” for worry of sounding dumb. There has to be a source of right and wrong, and humanity can’t source it.
Since FLOP26 Kerry, Carney et al have a problem – BRICS, not interested in “climate”.
A successful BRICS enlargement by 6 new nations this week as Kerry waffled prompted a NATO tantrum – All BRICS founders, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa are targeted for breakup, or as NATO says decolonization. Twitter X exploded with this : https://twitter.com/GunterFehlinger/status/1695038452335571055
In other words accept Kerry’s rant or else NATO will break up your countries.
NATO will break up these countries into helpless regions anyway. Capiche?
Not a surprise for anyone lately. https://t.me/magadan_magadan/3892
For those paying attention, uh, somewhat less lately. Lukin was making fun of hypothetical political formulae for county-scale “patriotism” in particular and the setting derived from that in general back in 2000: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2926822
Is war still possible? JK’s era had drafts. Few Americans under 50 would go along with it unless a foreigh nation invaded. Ukraine-Russia lost the battle of public interest to repetitive snarking about 3-year old stories.
Hence NATO and the current expansion. Other NATO countries will supply the manpower and the US will supply armaments, it’ll be Ukraine over and over again.
The Climate Change Alarmists who are trying to stop Fossil Fuels are driving the developing nations into the arms of Russia and China, because Russia and China don’t discourage the use of Fossil Fuels by these nations, who need Fossil Fuels in order to thrive.
The Western Democracies are filled with foolish/dangerous politicians who are leading us down the Road to Ruin with their war on Fossil Fuels. The developing nations say “no, thanks” to this lunacy and form alliances that will allow them to have the energy they need.
About 75 percent of Americans say we are currently on the wrong track. I’ll bet that percentage is pretty much the same for other Western Democracies, too.
Something has to change to alter this course of self-destruction. Our current crop of politicians are not getting the job done (with a few exceptions).
When the new BRICS group see those maps, they know they are targets no matter what they do, fuels, climate or otherwise. Any attempt to accommodate, deal, bargain with the Empire, will not work.
They know either they hang together, or they will for sure hang separately.
Ring a bell?
But that’s the main point of the Strange War Z: USA fails to protect an obvious puppet regime or enforce their delusional visions on non-vassals. Russian aircraft blows away an American spy drone, while the desperate failed comedian flails around and blows delusions one after another like a small kid blowing soap bubbles, each helpfully spread around by the Independently Same-Minded Press.
China had much the same kind of a show set up in Taiwan, though now it seems paused, presumably for popcorn-selling season.
Others watch all this and go “hmm…”
The most likely “game over” scenario for New World Order is a chain reaction of coups overthrowing the puppets. Which will happen once those involved will be sure the proverbial 362.8 kg gorilla is too ill to come and beat them up for this (give or take a year). If “sanctions” fail to enforce it (India already laughed in their face) and NATO fails to enforce it, what’s left?
Hence such tantrums every time someone shows that there is fairly good life outside the Clown World, rather than only Mordor and North Korea.
Greg61
August 29, 2023 6:00 am
It’s interesting that several cult leaders are pivoting all at once to the idea that it is dangerous to allow ‘the poors’ to vote. Bill Gates, John Kerry, Klaus of the WEF among others. Does this mean they are starting see sufficient pushback globally to their agenda to stop it?
They are seeing pushback from the developing nations. A lot of pushback. That’s why they are complaining.
They are not seeing pushback from their domestic populations. So they can’t be complaining about that. They are getting everything they want domestically under Biden and the radical Democrats, and the European policians are imposing their will on their populations.
Authoritarians like Gates, and Kerry look for oppotunities to impose their will on others, whether the opportunity is climate change or any other subject.
Good Cop Kerry, Bad Cop Fehringer have IQ’s just above room temperature Centigrade, definitely not Fahrenheit nor Kelvin! Adding room full of these geniuses still has the same IQ.
A NATO honcho Fehringer history lesson to make Kerry blush :
“I apologize for all Colonial crimes during European Imperialism from 1492 to 1975 I am deeply sorry I apologize But please that is now 50 years ago The only colonial powers left today are Russia, China, Iran and to some extent India and Brazil I call fight today colonialism!”
What could be more blatant – it was never about “climate”.
It was here that James Hutton first found in the exposed rock face …
Bruce Cobb
August 29, 2023 7:45 am
I’m so glad Kerry knows what a cult is. Too bad he doesn’t know that he’s in one.
And while we’re on the subject of definitions, I wonder if Kerry knows what gaslighting is, seeing at it’s one of his favorite tactics.
ResourceGuy
August 29, 2023 8:06 am
So now it’s a tag team effort to destroy American businesses, Kerry/Biden/EPA and the Chinese.
I read yesterday that investment in China is down 83 percent, and the article said that last year over 10,000 Chinese millionaires had left China, and they estimate that 13,500 Chinese millionaires will leave China this year.
China is having some big economic problems. The natives are restless. The authorities are nervous.
Clearly, John Kerry is really trying to upset the Chinese with that talk about “they flatly deny what is happening to our planet and what we must do to save it.“
Kerry must be talking about the Chicoms because nobody in the United States, other than those at a few websites,and Trump and Vivek, deny Kerry’s claims about the climate.
I’ve been listening to Fox News since I woke up this morning and all they are reporting on is Hurricane Idalia, and they are trying desperately to make it out to be an unprecedented storm.
The Fox News weather guy that is always standing in knee-deep water when he reports, was up to his usual histrionics.
At least they have not said “climate change” yet. I’m sure the other channels have said it a million times in connection to Hurricane Idalia.
Rud Istvan
August 29, 2023 10:58 am
Excellent post. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals #5: Ridicule. Kerry makes an easy target.
Voltaire on Earthquakes: he laments the capriciousness of nature, and dismisses the idea that Lisbon may have been more sinful than any other major city of the time.
Say ye, ‘er that yet quivering mass of flesh:
“God is avenged: the wage of sin is death”?
What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In his long poem “On the Lisbon disaster; or an Examination of the Axiom, “All is Well” (1755), Voltaire (1694-1778) laments the death of “a hundred thousand whom the earth devours” and reminds us how fragile human life is and how close we all are to death from “such cruelties of fate”:
In his later writings Voltaire referred to it repeatedly but his most extended commentary was in a long poem he wrote on it which had the rather odd subtitle “or an examination of the axiom, all is well.” As in his philosophic tale Candide, or Optimism Voltaire wanted to attack the complacency of many European thinkers such as Leibnitz that “this was the best of all possible worlds”. Voltaire thought the earthquake had a very different lesson, namely that nature can be capricious and does not respect human life. If there were to be a happier, more prosperous, and more just world, it would have to be one created by human activity.
Voltaire today – “shit happens”. MSM anyone?
Such a deep knowledge by mocked by the great scientist Gödel : “Who ever became more intelligent by reading Voltaire’s writings?”!.
Kerry has Ketchup on his hands.
And he wants more.
spren
August 29, 2023 3:57 pm
You shouldn’t have covered all of his moronic speech. He’s so concerned that he flies everywhere in his private jet. This low-level human being has always been one of the most despicable people you could find. He is a scumbag, so it figures Biden would utilize him.
I’m so tired after at least four decades of hearing about this overwhelming evidence that’s never provided. I’m so sick of hearing these morons calling for us “to take action” without them ever clearly defining what that means and what it’s results will be. So, Lurch, you want to eliminate or reduce CO2, well idiot, what exactly will that accomplish? Notice they never tell you that – only that we have to do it. We need to tell these idiots to STHU and leave us alone. First live the way you are asking us to do, and then, maybe, we might listen to us. But you continue to live lives of luxury in your seaside mansion estates, fly your private jets, travel at will to all corners of the world, while you idiotically tell us to just hovel in our humble homes. Well, you can all do something anatomically impossible to yourselves.
“This low-level human being has always been one of the most despicable people you could find. He is a scumbag, so it figures Biden would utilize him.”
Yes, “birds of a feather, flock together” as the old saying goes.
Oriel Kolnai
August 30, 2023 8:06 am
Kerry says that science must be ‘based on evidence’ according to Hume. But Hume admits this makes science an entirely private affair because it employs the notion of cause and effect, which we cannot see/ hear etc. since it is inside the head.
After Hume, this objection was answered by claiming that we can check the veracity of observation against group beliefs. If they fit what everybody else thinks, then they can be said to be true (and we can thus see into others’ heads). This is what Kerry means by ‘true’ science – general agreement.
So if everyone claims to be a poached egg (or men claim to be women) it’s true if enough people agree.
So much for Einstein, Bohr, Hooke, Pasteur etc. all of whom disagreed with the consensus, yet whose ideas when tested turned out to be true.
TBeholder
August 30, 2023 12:19 pm
“Envoy for Climate”? The rest is same old, same old.
The logic of the witch hunter is simple. It has hardly changed since Matthew Hopkins’ day. The first requirement is to invert the reality of power. Power at its most basic level is the power to harm or destroy other human beings. The obvious reality is that witch hunters gang up and destroy witches. Whereas witches are never, ever seen to gang up and destroy witch hunters. By this test alone, we can see that the conspiracy is imaginary (Brown Scare) rather than real (Red Scare).
[ . . . ] The primary technique is to present the natural order of human society, which the revolution has in fact totally overthrown—an order in which the young respect the old, the inexperienced follow the accomplished, and dogs obey their owners—as the existing order. The professional witch-hunter, who is in fact a petty bureaucrat, a tool of power and a bully for hire, appears to himself as a sort of daring rebel against the great conspiracy. Moreover, because this natural order both used to exist, and is always striving to spring up against Horace’s pitchfork, it can be portrayed as the ruling order with great fictional nuance and detail—even after a half-century plus of permanent revolution.
Furthermore, if you can present a natural force as a human force, it is possible to attribute almost infinite power to the witch conspiracy. Jews, for example, cause droughts. It’s easy to see how strong the Jews are—it hasn’t rained for a month! Throw the Jews down the well!
― Technology, communism and the Brown Scare by Mencius Moldbug
The links to articles don’t work – at least, on my Android phone using Chrome.
If you click and hold the titles in the links, Android chrome presents a menu asking if you want to open the link. No idea why Android chrome is being odd about it, and not simply opening the links.
Could be a security feature.
Allows one to verify that the URL you are going to, is the one you wanted to go to.
The QR reader on my phone recently started displaying the URL and asking for confirmation prior to accessing the site.
A number of restaurants had been placing a QR at the tables so that customers could pull up a copy of the menu. In a number of restaurants, scammers had covered over that QR with one of their own that took customers to the scammers web site that loaded viruses on their phone.
The biggest irony to me is that he’s right.
Except HE is the climate denier.
Yah, it’s a confession!
He is right about everything except who the real climate deniers actually are…Mann, Kerry, NYT …..
Reading this John Kerry speech, reminds me of historic facts about developed societies that can not be removed, History happened.
He speaks as all delusional presenters must, with emphasis often using inverted truth because they have no respect for truth and reality. He claims opponents of his Climate Crusade are guilty of that which he is patently guilty of, i.e. denying science.
He brings to mind Cicero’s speech to the Roman senate ‘The enemy Within’. Kerry walks among us, dresses like us. he looks and speaks as we do (well almost). His whole existence is funded by public money which he squanders with no concern. Jetting across the World, delivering doom mongering speeches based on lies and false image, all selected to enhance the doom he wishes to spread.
Sadly as history has shown us, and without exception, all civilisations fall.
With Kerry’s ongoing efforts supported by the Biden administration’s Great Reset agenda, Western civilisation has never been in such peril. A challenge lies ahead mostly for our children. The challenge is nothing to do with climate, it has everything to do with stopping a political movement determined to destroy the fabric of developed society.
The strange part is, the very people advancing the decline believe they will be unaffected by the social revolution they are demanding?
I guess it is a flaw in the mind of such people? They are unable to recognise truth. They are so blind to their own inevitable demise, as they build the funeral pyres they hope or imagine are just for others….
Seeing as we are insulting the performance of the comments section today (WordDepressed), I object to having to read all that Kerryisms before I could get to the good stuff (comments) but then, after I read every comment to make sure I am original, I have to scroll all the way back up to leave my mark against the postbox! Unacceptable!!!
Anyway, did anybody else catch the bit where disappearing glaciers will dry up the rivers that feed the majority of earth?
I mean, really, has this man ever seen a map? Also, I have not sworn this much at one speech, ever. This is a special kinda stupid, and people voted for it…
Excellent post by the way!
b
Thanks Bill 🙂
Kerry is singularly incapable of recognising the truth. He would not see death when it stares him in the face.
John Kerry can’t even speak good English:
“First, we are seeing renewable energy deploy faster..”
What exactly is the renewable energy deploying faster?
Perhaps he meant: “First, we are seeing renewable energy being deployed faster..”
Also, the faster we deploy renewable energy the faster we need something reliable to replace it when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Is that happening, John?
Yeah, and Kerry lied about wind and solar being cheap.
I think he lied in about every sentence.
John Kerry is a history denier:
They (Hutton, Hume and Smith)were defending science and reason in an era where people were still told and almost universally believed that the Earth might be flat,
Apart from that just being absolute rubbish, has Kerry never heard of Francis Drake? Does Kerry believe in conspiracy theories? Does he believe that Drake did not really circumnavigate the world but made the whole thing up?
Drake circumnavigated the world between 1577 and 1580. David Hume was born in 1711. Adam Smith was born in 1723. Hutton was born in 1726.
Get a grip, John, your version of history (and much else) is sheer fantasy. Anybody in the mid-eighteenth century suggesting that the world might be flat would have been regarded as an absolute crank.
I think you will that the continuing claim that the earth was flat and Drake had not circumnavigated the globe were lies and misinformation spread by the tobacco industry…
Yep – insidious people. Shakespeare only wrote ‘Hamlet’ after receiving huge funding from the fledgling tobacco industry!
I watched and listened as the rallying cry went out to the “left” in the 1990s that success was only to be gained by adopting the practices employed by the “successful” religious right.
Assume you are on the moral high ground. Promote your beliefs as a matter of faith.
I no longer listen to either side! That’s why I appreciate places like this–a place where I can see matters of science presented as matters of science and not faith. It’s up to my experience, judgment and observations to determine which, if either, “side” represents reality.
It was a long time before I understood what the terms modern and postmodern mean. I used to read around the terms, because they seem like vague notions created to mean what the writers of their era wanted to lump into them. Also I thought Naked Lunch was barely readable, but the book tried to get at the same idea with the term liquifactionist. I still don’t like that book, but I do now understand the concept better.
Words capture people into membership with either “side”, thinking its possible to see an actual “reality”. This is not an advocation of relativism and the absence of truth. I’m only questioning whether I could know it if I heard it.
The left’s rallying cry was not new on the 1990’s or 1960’s or in 1789, though “the science” seems to have defeated “the faith” around that time in popular culture. Be careful not to abandon “the faith” for worry of sounding dumb. There has to be a source of right and wrong, and humanity can’t source it.
Since FLOP26 Kerry, Carney et al have a problem – BRICS, not interested in “climate”.
A successful BRICS enlargement by 6 new nations this week as Kerry waffled prompted a NATO tantrum – All BRICS founders, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa are targeted for breakup, or as NATO says decolonization. Twitter X exploded with this :
https://twitter.com/GunterFehlinger/status/1695038452335571055
In other words accept Kerry’s rant or else NATO will break up your countries.
NATO will break up these countries into helpless regions anyway. Capiche?
Maps of NATO’s dreams :
This from NATO Enlargement honcho Fehringer from Austria.
Not a surprise for anyone lately. https://t.me/magadan_magadan/3892
For those paying attention, uh, somewhat less lately. Lukin was making fun of hypothetical political formulae for county-scale “patriotism” in particular and the setting derived from that in general back in 2000: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2926822
The mask has slipped and now the gloves are coming off as well. It’s going to get messy.
Kerry is the velvet glove on the NATO iron fist.
Is war still possible? JK’s era had drafts. Few Americans under 50 would go along with it unless a foreigh nation invaded. Ukraine-Russia lost the battle of public interest to repetitive snarking about 3-year old stories.
Hence NATO and the current expansion. Other NATO countries will supply the manpower and the US will supply armaments, it’ll be Ukraine over and over again.
The Climate Change Alarmists who are trying to stop Fossil Fuels are driving the developing nations into the arms of Russia and China, because Russia and China don’t discourage the use of Fossil Fuels by these nations, who need Fossil Fuels in order to thrive.
The Western Democracies are filled with foolish/dangerous politicians who are leading us down the Road to Ruin with their war on Fossil Fuels. The developing nations say “no, thanks” to this lunacy and form alliances that will allow them to have the energy they need.
About 75 percent of Americans say we are currently on the wrong track. I’ll bet that percentage is pretty much the same for other Western Democracies, too.
Something has to change to alter this course of self-destruction. Our current crop of politicians are not getting the job done (with a few exceptions).
When the new BRICS group see those maps, they know they are targets no matter what they do, fuels, climate or otherwise. Any attempt to accommodate, deal, bargain with the Empire, will not work.
They know either they hang together, or they will for sure hang separately.
Ring a bell?
Wow, NATO has so much power. If they want a country broken up, it’s broken up.
bonbon, if anything, the lack of success by China and Russia has made your paranoia worse.
500,000 uniformed dead is only a bump on the graveyard, sorry, road for these.
Inspires gender-composition-vs-culture-and-politics thinking.
But that’s the main point of the Strange War Z: USA fails to protect an obvious puppet regime or enforce their delusional visions on non-vassals. Russian aircraft blows away an American spy drone, while the desperate failed comedian flails around and blows delusions one after another like a small kid blowing soap bubbles, each helpfully spread around by the Independently Same-Minded Press.
China had much the same kind of a show set up in Taiwan, though now it seems paused, presumably for popcorn-selling season.
Others watch all this and go “hmm…”
The most likely “game over” scenario for New World Order is a chain reaction of coups overthrowing the puppets. Which will happen once those involved will be sure the proverbial 362.8 kg gorilla is too ill to come and beat them up for this (give or take a year). If “sanctions” fail to enforce it (India already laughed in their face) and NATO fails to enforce it, what’s left?
Hence such tantrums every time someone shows that there is fairly good life outside the Clown World, rather than only Mordor and North Korea.
It’s interesting that several cult leaders are pivoting all at once to the idea that it is dangerous to allow ‘the poors’ to vote. Bill Gates, John Kerry, Klaus of the WEF among others. Does this mean they are starting see sufficient pushback globally to their agenda to stop it?
They are seeing pushback from the developing nations. A lot of pushback. That’s why they are complaining.
They are not seeing pushback from their domestic populations. So they can’t be complaining about that. They are getting everything they want domestically under Biden and the radical Democrats, and the European policians are imposing their will on their populations.
Authoritarians like Gates, and Kerry look for oppotunities to impose their will on others, whether the opportunity is climate change or any other subject.
Good Cop Kerry, Bad Cop Fehringer have IQ’s just above room temperature Centigrade, definitely not Fahrenheit nor Kelvin! Adding room full of these geniuses still has the same IQ.
A NATO honcho Fehringer history lesson to make Kerry blush :
https://twitter.com/GunterFehlinger/status/1695733432045752800
“I apologize for all Colonial crimes during European Imperialism from 1492 to 1975 I am deeply sorry I apologize But please that is now 50 years ago The only colonial powers left today are Russia, China, Iran and to some extent India and Brazil I call fight today colonialism!”
What could be more blatant – it was never about “climate”.
bonbon, the only person who can make Peta look rational.
Pointing out that Kerry is a con man, and climate grifter is not lashing out it is stating cold hard facts.
I’m so glad Kerry knows what a cult is. Too bad he doesn’t know that he’s in one.
And while we’re on the subject of definitions, I wonder if Kerry knows what gaslighting is, seeing at it’s one of his favorite tactics.
So now it’s a tag team effort to destroy American businesses, Kerry/Biden/EPA and the Chinese.
story tip
Commerce says US firms complain China is ‘uninvestible’ (yahoo.com)
I read yesterday that investment in China is down 83 percent, and the article said that last year over 10,000 Chinese millionaires had left China, and they estimate that 13,500 Chinese millionaires will leave China this year.
China is having some big economic problems. The natives are restless. The authorities are nervous.
Wow, just about everything he said is wrong and not just wrong but superficial.
Clearly, John Kerry is really trying to upset the Chinese with that talk about “they flatly deny what is happening to our planet and what we must do to save it.“
Kerry must be talking about the Chicoms because nobody in the United States, other than those at a few websites,and Trump and Vivek, deny Kerry’s claims about the climate.
I’ve been listening to Fox News since I woke up this morning and all they are reporting on is Hurricane Idalia, and they are trying desperately to make it out to be an unprecedented storm.
The Fox News weather guy that is always standing in knee-deep water when he reports, was up to his usual histrionics.
At least they have not said “climate change” yet. I’m sure the other channels have said it a million times in connection to Hurricane Idalia.
Excellent post. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals #5: Ridicule. Kerry makes an easy target.
Voltaire on Earthquakes: he laments the capriciousness of nature, and dismisses the idea that Lisbon may have been more sinful than any other major city of the time.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/voltaire-laments-the-destruction-of-lisbon-in-an-earthquake-and-criticises-the-philosophers-who-thought-that-all-s-well-with-the-world-and-the-religious-who-thought-it-was-god-s-will-1755
Say ye, ‘er that yet quivering mass of flesh:
“God is avenged: the wage of sin is death”?
What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In his long poem “On the Lisbon disaster; or an Examination of the Axiom, “All is Well” (1755), Voltaire (1694-1778) laments the death of “a hundred thousand whom the earth devours” and reminds us how fragile human life is and how close we all are to death from “such cruelties of fate”:
In his later writings Voltaire referred to it repeatedly but his most extended commentary was in a long poem he wrote on it which had the rather odd subtitle “or an examination of the axiom, all is well.” As in his philosophic tale Candide, or Optimism Voltaire wanted to attack the complacency of many European thinkers such as Leibnitz that “this was the best of all possible worlds”. Voltaire thought the earthquake had a very different lesson, namely that nature can be capricious and does not respect human life. If there were to be a happier, more prosperous, and more just world, it would have to be one created by human activity.
Voltaire today – “shit happens”. MSM anyone?
Such a deep knowledge by mocked by the great scientist Gödel : “Who ever became more intelligent by reading Voltaire’s writings?”!.
Yes, and certainly no mention of plate tectonics.
Voltaire said admirable things but he also said some things. Candide did not do much for me.
“and dismisses the idea that Lisbon may have been more sinful than any other major city of the time.”
I love it! That would have been my attitude, too.
Kerry has Ketchup on his hands.
And he wants more.
You shouldn’t have covered all of his moronic speech. He’s so concerned that he flies everywhere in his private jet. This low-level human being has always been one of the most despicable people you could find. He is a scumbag, so it figures Biden would utilize him.
I’m so tired after at least four decades of hearing about this overwhelming evidence that’s never provided. I’m so sick of hearing these morons calling for us “to take action” without them ever clearly defining what that means and what it’s results will be. So, Lurch, you want to eliminate or reduce CO2, well idiot, what exactly will that accomplish? Notice they never tell you that – only that we have to do it. We need to tell these idiots to STHU and leave us alone. First live the way you are asking us to do, and then, maybe, we might listen to us. But you continue to live lives of luxury in your seaside mansion estates, fly your private jets, travel at will to all corners of the world, while you idiotically tell us to just hovel in our humble homes. Well, you can all do something anatomically impossible to yourselves.
I figured make the whole thing available in all its glory, that way nobody could suggest left out the important part.
More is always better.
“This low-level human being has always been one of the most despicable people you could find. He is a scumbag, so it figures Biden would utilize him.”
Yes, “birds of a feather, flock together” as the old saying goes.
Kerry says that science must be ‘based on evidence’ according to Hume. But Hume admits this makes science an entirely private affair because it employs the notion of cause and effect, which we cannot see/ hear etc. since it is inside the head.
After Hume, this objection was answered by claiming that we can check the veracity of observation against group beliefs. If they fit what everybody else thinks, then they can be said to be true (and we can thus see into others’ heads). This is what Kerry means by ‘true’ science – general agreement.
So if everyone claims to be a poached egg (or men claim to be women) it’s true if enough people agree.
So much for Einstein, Bohr, Hooke, Pasteur etc. all of whom disagreed with the consensus, yet whose ideas when tested turned out to be true.
“Envoy for Climate”? The rest is same old, same old.