A Short Political History of Climate Change

Bill Ponton, Princeton Venture Advisory (Sept ’24)

We often attribute the longevity of communist states in the 20th century to the repression practiced by those regimes. This is undeniably true, but we grossly underestimate the fact that many people living under those repressive regimes derived meaning from being part of those socialist experiments. To just say that those people were brainwashed too easily dismisses why people might feel the need to be part of something bigger than themselves. Darryl Cooper does a good job trying to explain the mindset of those wedded to a socialist ideology in his recent Martyr Made podcast series, God’s Socialist: The Rise and Fall Of People’s Temple.

Towards the end of the 20th century, passion for environmental causes displaced much of the socialist fervor of an earlier period. Environmental poisoning has been the overarching theme of the environmental movement, but the targets chosen for demonization changed over the years. The list of targets includes DDT, asbestos, nuclear power, CFCs, acid rain and more. In retrospect, the struggle against these things may not have satisfied fully the quest by movement members for self-meaning in the way that socialism had for a previous generation. The movement craved for an existential environmental threat that would infuse more passion and meaning to their fight. However, there was already an existential threat of global annihilation from nuclear war that hung over mankind. The environmental movement was going to find it hard to come up with an existential threat that topped nuclear armageddon, but with the introduction of climate catastrophism they were on their way to success.

Starting in the 1970s, there emerged two competing versions of climate catastrophism. One was man-made global-warming and the other was man-made global-cooling. According to the theories, the world was to be consumed either by fire or ice. For the environmental movement, it was important to emphasize the man-made nature of the threat. If it had not been man-made, it would not have fit their preferred narrative that man is evil and poisoning the environment by his greedy capitalist endeavors. They were not interested in being in the vanguard of movement that would spread fear about the end of Holocene period and the advent of an ice age if it were just a natural happening.

Both man-made global-warming and man-made global-cooling theories held sway with environmentalists during this early period. Activists, masquerading as scientists, got to work providing justification for their pet fears using computer models that simulated their preferred outcome. By the mid 1980s, the man-made global-cooling theory had been discarded in favor of man-made global-warming by the right-thinking people within the environmental movement. In the 1990s, in a move that both George Orwell and Karl Popper would have found amusing, anthropogenic global warming was rechristened as climate change, an ambiguous term that gave no indication of which direction the climate would change.

Today, climate catastrophism has adherents spread throughout all western institutions. The list of institutional bodies that they influence, or control is lengthy. They have embarked on a program to decarbonize the industrial world in a quest to avoid climate catastrophe. They deny to others, and themselves, that their program will have any deleterious side effects on the economy in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They display the same fervor that an earlier generation of socialists and communists showed in the 20th century. One should not forget about the social experiments that these earlier group of true believers ran on a global scale and the misery that they brought to millions.

When does the fantasy end for them? It doesn’t. They derive life’s meaning from this endeavor. They will try to implement evermore convoluted net zero schemes in the hope that one will work. It won’t. Their bossiness and show of moral superiority will become intolerable and like an earlier generation of socialists and communists they will leave misery in their wake.

2

A Short Political History of Climate Change
Bill Ponton, Princeton Venture Advisory (Sept ’24)
We often attribute the longevity of communist states in the 20th century to the
repression practiced by those regimes. This is undeniably true, but we grossly
underestimate the fact that many people living under those repressive
regimes derived meaning from being part of those socialist experiments. To
just say that those people were brainwashed too easily dismisses why people
might feel the need to be part of something bigger than themselves. Darryl
Cooper does a good job trying to explain the mindset of those wedded to a
socialist ideology in his recent Martyr Made podcast series, God’s Socialist: The
Rise and Fall Of People’s Temple.
Towards the end of the 20th century, passion for environmental causes
displaced much of the socialist fervor of an earlier period. Environmental
poisoning has been the overarching theme of the environmental movement,
but the targets chosen for demonization changed over the years. The list of
targets includes DDT, asbestos, nuclear power, CFCs, acid rain and more. In
retrospect, the struggle against these things may not have satisfied fully the
quest by movement members for self-meaning in the way that socialism had
for a previous generation. The movement craved for an existential
environmental threat that would infuse more passion and meaning to their
fight. However, there was already an existential threat of global annihilation
from nuclear war that hung over mankind. The environmental movement was
going to find it hard to come up with an existential threat that topped nuclear
armageddon, but with the introduction of climate catastrophism they were on
their way to success.
Starting in the 1970s, there emerged two competing versions of climate
catastrophism. One was man-made global-warming and the other was man-
made global-cooling. According to the theories, the world was to be consumed
either by fire or ice. For the environmental movement, it was important to
emphasize the man-made nature of the threat. If it had not been man-made, it
would not have fit their preferred narrative that man is evil and poisoning the
environment by his greedy capitalist endeavors. They were not interested in
being in the vanguard of movement that would spread fear about the end of
Holocene period and the advent of an ice age if it were just a natural
happening.
Both man-made global-warming and man-made global-cooling theories held
sway with environmentalists during this early period. Activists, masquerading

as scientists, got to work providing justification for their pet fears using
computer models that simulated their preferred outcome. By the mid 1980s,
the man-made global-cooling theory had been discarded in favor of man-made
global-warming by the right-thinking people within the environmental
movement. In the 1990s, in a move that both George Orwell and Karl Popper
would have found amusing, anthropogenic global warming was rechristened
as climate change, an ambiguous term that gave no indication of which
direction the climate would change.
Today, climate catastrophism has adherents spread throughout all western
institutions. The list of institutional bodies that they influence, or control is
lengthy. They have embarked on a program to decarbonize the industrial world
in a quest to avoid climate catastrophe. They deny to others, and themselves,
that their program will have any deleterious side effects on the economy in the
face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They display the same fervor
that an earlier generation of socialists and communists showed in the 20th
century. One should not forget about the social experiments that these earlier
group of true believers ran on a global scale and the misery that they brought
to millions.
When does the fantasy end for them? It doesn’t. They derive life’s meaning
from this endeavor. They will try to implement evermore convoluted net zero
schemes in the hope that one will work. It won’t. Their bossiness and show of
moral superiority will become intolerable and like an earlier generation of
socialists and communists they will leave misery in their wake.

2

A Short Political History of Climate Change
Bill Ponton, Princeton Venture Advisory (Sept ’24)
We often attribute the longevity of communist states in the 20th century to the
repression practiced by those regimes. This is undeniably true, but we grossly
underestimate the fact that many people living under those repressive
regimes derived meaning from being part of those socialist experiments. To
just say that those people were brainwashed too easily dismisses why people
might feel the need to be part of something bigger than themselves. Darryl
Cooper does a good job trying to explain the mindset of those wedded to a
socialist ideology in his recent Martyr Made podcast series, God’s Socialist: The
Rise and Fall Of People’s Temple.
Towards the end of the 20th century, passion for environmental causes
displaced much of the socialist fervor of an earlier period. Environmental
poisoning has been the overarching theme of the environmental movement,
but the targets chosen for demonization changed over the years. The list of
targets includes DDT, asbestos, nuclear power, CFCs, acid rain and more. In
retrospect, the struggle against these things may not have satisfied fully the
quest by movement members for self-meaning in the way that socialism had
for a previous generation. The movement craved for an existential
environmental threat that would infuse more passion and meaning to their
fight. However, there was already an existential threat of global annihilation
from nuclear war that hung over mankind. The environmental movement was
going to find it hard to come up with an existential threat that topped nuclear
armageddon, but with the introduction of climate catastrophism they were on
their way to success.
Starting in the 1970s, there emerged two competing versions of climate
catastrophism. One was man-made global-warming and the other was man-
made global-cooling. According to the theories, the world was to be consumed
either by fire or ice. For the environmental movement, it was important to
emphasize the man-made nature of the threat. If it had not been man-made, it
would not have fit their preferred narrative that man is evil and poisoning the
environment by his greedy capitalist endeavors. They were not interested in
being in the vanguard of movement that would spread fear about the end of
Holocene period and the advent of an ice age if it were just a natural
happening.
Both man-made global-warming and man-made global-cooling theories held
sway with environmentalists during this early period. Activists, masquerading

as scientists, got to work providing justification for their pet fears using
computer models that simulated their preferred outcome. By the mid 1980s,
the man-made global-cooling theory had been discarded in favor of man-made
global-warming by the right-thinking people within the environmental
movement. In the 1990s, in a move that both George Orwell and Karl Popper
would have found amusing, anthropogenic global warming was rechristened
as climate change, an ambiguous term that gave no indication of which
direction the climate would change.
Today, climate catastrophism has adherents spread throughout all western
institutions. The list of institutional bodies that they influence, or control is
lengthy. They have embarked on a program to decarbonize the industrial world
in a quest to avoid climate catastrophe. They deny to others, and themselves,
that their program will have any deleterious side effects on the economy in the
face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They display the same fervor
that an earlier generation of socialists and communists showed in the 20th
century. One should not forget about the social experiments that these earlier
group of true believers ran on a global scale and the misery that they brought
to millions.
When does the fantasy end for them? It doesn’t. They derive life’s meaning
from this endeavor. They will try to implement evermore convoluted net zero
schemes in the hope that one will work. It won’t. Their bossiness and show of
moral superiority will become intolerable and like an earlier generation of
socialists and communists they will leave misery in their wake.

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September 15, 2024 2:38 pm

R. J. Rummel Death by government.

Rummel estimated that a total of 212 million people were killed by all governments during the 20th century,[3] of which 148 million were killed by Communist governments from 1917 to 1987

SCInotFI
September 15, 2024 2:39 pm

Beautiful reasoning, and answers some of my questions regarding “why?” by connecting major historical events to the current climate cult. I only hope you are correct that this madness will reach its own end in destruction.

Reply to  SCInotFI
September 15, 2024 5:41 pm

Probably it will be destructed by the next wave of nonsense.

Reply to  SCInotFI
September 16, 2024 4:07 am

It’s a fault of human nature and will continue to the end of the human race. Maybe genetic engineers can fix it. They need to find that bad gene.

Bob
September 15, 2024 3:30 pm

Very nice. I agree with everything you said. The most important thing here is government. Without the power and force of government these environmental/socialist/marxists mongrels can think and believe anything they want, it means nothing. But with government doing the heavy lifting for them they have become a force to be reckon with. We need to get the government out from under their influence and all of this nonsense goes away. That means we need to stand up to our governments and show them how weak and easily they have been influenced by a bunch of charlatons.

Reply to  Bob
September 15, 2024 7:25 pm

Campaign contributions decide many of the policies that politicians favor.

Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 4:08 am

especially a small number of the largest ones!

another ian
September 15, 2024 3:46 pm

Formatting?

Seems there is repetition and a lot of white space there

Curious George
Reply to  another ian
September 15, 2024 4:05 pm

Literary stuttering. Visit a doctor.

Reply to  another ian
September 15, 2024 5:11 pm

I’m getting the huge white gaps too, copied to a word doc so I could read it.

Reply to  bnice2000
September 16, 2024 4:08 am

Still there as of Monday morning.

mleskovarsocalrrcom
September 15, 2024 4:01 pm

What I find hard to believe is there are that many useful idiots in the world willing to blindly follow the AGW cult. I understand how the media has been bought off but the amount of politicians is astounding.

Scissor
Reply to  mleskovarsocalrrcom
September 15, 2024 4:53 pm

Eventually, they run out of other people’s money, unfortunately it “can run on for a long time.”

Reply to  mleskovarsocalrrcom
September 15, 2024 5:44 pm

The history of humanity is, in no small part, a history of destructive fantasy obsessions.

Reply to  AndyHce
September 16, 2024 4:10 am

In geologic terms, it was just an instant ago that we came out of the trees- frightened apes with a rich imagination.

Reply to  mleskovarsocalrrcom
September 15, 2024 7:29 pm

The rich who control the politicians with their campaign contributions are hoping to make $US trillions in profits from “Climate Change” spending

Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 4:11 am

Lots of talk lately about who’ll be the first trillionaire. No doubt it’ll be somebody making it due to the climate lunacy.

corky
Reply to  mleskovarsocalrrcom
September 15, 2024 11:14 pm

Politicians are the ones with control of the (taxpayers) money, hence they are the primary target.

corky
Reply to  corky
September 15, 2024 11:16 pm

I should also say that politicians are fantastically gullible, the most perfect of perfect idiots.

Mr.
September 15, 2024 4:05 pm

Funny, I was only mulling over in the shower this morning how we’ve all been sucked into the global warming / climate change / climate emergency / net zero scam by the global control ambitions cabal (UN, WEF, EU wallahs, politicians, bureaucrats, and assorted anti-humanity lunatics).

If it wasn’t human-caused climate catastrophe that they were using to leverage control, power, treasure all around the globe, it would some other from of contrived hobgoblin existential threat.

What would happen if we all agreed to just completely ignore all their prognostications in the msm and other mass media, and carried on with our lives “in ignorance”?

(I know, I know – they’d still tax the bejeezus out of us, and make us miserable that way)

Scissor
Reply to  Mr.
September 15, 2024 4:55 pm

CDC says that it’s time for every person over the age of 6 months to get another covid “vaccine.”

Mr.
Reply to  Scissor
September 15, 2024 5:38 pm

YOU . ARE . KIDDING . Scissor?

Reply to  Scissor
September 15, 2024 6:46 pm

Donald Trump was responsible for about 1 million extra US deaths compared with Japan by convincing his supporters to not wear masks.

Trump’s failure to unite the American people against COVID-19 resulted in about 1 million extra US deaths due to his follows not wearing masks and spreading virus particles instead of letting the mask contain them compared to Japan where almost everyone wore masks.

The US had 3,642 deaths per million people, the US population is about 335 million people, and the US has had about 1.2 million deaths.

In Japan almost everybody wore masks and they had 595 deaths per million people and if the US people had worn masks like the Japanese we would have had about 200,000 deaths 595 deaths per million times 335 million equals 199,325 deaths from COVID-19 instead of 1.2 million deaths..

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Mr.
Reply to  scvblwxq
September 15, 2024 8:30 pm
Reply to  Mr.
September 15, 2024 8:43 pm

Right. Wearing a mask to block a virus is like wearing chicken wire to block a mosquito.

Derg
Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 2:38 am

Extra deaths 😉

Scissor
Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 4:33 am

The rates of cases and deaths in Haiti, where the only treatments and precautions used involved voodoo, were far better than even in Japan, e.g., 3000 cases and 74 deaths per million.

0perator
Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 12:23 pm

People saved or created?

Eamon Butler
Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 4:24 pm

Complete nonsense. Masks were probably the single biggest cause of the spread of the virus. Wearers thought they were invincible and so they ignored all other advisory measures like social distancing.
Also, wearers believed the mask was for their protection. All advice was that it was supposed to prevent the wearer from transmitting virus. However, All advice was for complete isolation if you tested positive.In other words, once you knew you had the virus, you were not supposed to mix with the public even wearing your mask. This implies, the mask was somehow magic as it was only effective as long as you didn’t know you were positive.

Reply to  Mr.
September 15, 2024 8:42 pm

They have police power. The squeeze will be continuous and eventually at the point of a gun.

Reply to  Mr.
September 15, 2024 10:47 pm

we all agreed to just completely ignore all their prognostications in the msm and other mass media”

Exactly what a lot of us do… not from ignorance, but from knowing what’s going on.. !

sherro01
September 15, 2024 4:43 pm

Bill,
Apart from Holocene correctly being an epoch, not a period, we are in accord.
The minds of too many people have been impregnated for decades with a moral imperative of “environmental protection” that created agencies like EPA and gave them strong powers to tell us what we can and cannot do, or be punished.
The main social change I have seen in my 83 years is an increase in people paid to tell others what they can and cannot do. This weakens the actuality that most people survive without this imposition. So it is in industry.
Most of the “successes” that EPAs might claim are fictitious in the sense that industry had already planned and was executing rehabilitation. Some projects awaited income to generate funds. EPAs picked on these and ordered action and a different expenditure timetable.
Others from industry might agree with me or not. Some will be so conditioned that they have not even thought about it.
The outcome is that the life of EPA is over. We should concentrate on getting on without it and with the unwise advocacy that environment protection is king. It is not. It is an expensive frivolity. Geoff S

Reply to  sherro01
September 15, 2024 5:14 pm

the life of EPA is over”

Particularly as most of their current actions DESTROY the environment, rather than protecting it.

Reply to  sherro01
September 15, 2024 5:35 pm

You have lived through 2.78 (i.e., 83 yrs/30 yrs) climate cycles. What climate changes have you experienced so far?

I have lived through 2.67 climate cycles in Burnaby, BC. Compared to ca. 50 years ago, the winters are now warmer and there is much less snow. There has been less rain. There is drought in most of BC. This is not good. BC Hydro has spent about $500 million on importing electricity.

Mr.
Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 15, 2024 6:21 pm

Burnaby was far less developed 50 years ago Harold.

UHI is exponential.

Reply to  Mr.
September 15, 2024 7:40 pm

I have lived mostly in the Park Crest area. A lot of extra UHI heat comes from Vancouver blown east by wind from the ocean. You live Burnaby?

Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 15, 2024 10:49 pm

You bring up a point that a lot of people don’t seem to grasp.

The UHI effect travels with the wind, so even thermometers not in the central UHI zone can be quite badly effected.

Reply to  bnice2000
September 16, 2024 12:02 am

I wonder how much the temperature data is corrupted by the UHI effect.

BTW: Scroll down and click on the link to the late John Daly’s website. Check out the “Station Temperature Data”, and the charts for Alice Springs and Brisbane.

Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 15, 2024 7:19 pm

Sherro lives in Australia. The average has trended up but summers cooler and winters warmer.

Peak sunlight has been making a gradual shift northward for the past 500 years. It will continue for another 9,000 years. As the NH oceans warm up, the snowfall is trending up but it is not yet overtaking melt apart from Greenland and a few northern slopes near the Arctic Ocean in Alaska. The permafrost measuring station on Marmot Mountain in Canada was trending up until it was buried.

 the winters are now warmer and there is much less snow.

Sounds terrible that you have to endure warmer winters with less snow. I guess you miss the healthy exercise of gathering wood for heating and shovelling snow.

When you are sitting outside enjoying your winter warmth, spare a thought for your fellow Canadians in Montreal and Edmonton. Montreal is now spending $200M per year on snow removal. Edmonton almost $70M.

sherro01
Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 17, 2024 3:26 am

Harold,
I have no memory of living through a change of temperature around me that might be named climate change. The climate has not changed enough to feel.
Geoff S

Reply to  sherro01
September 15, 2024 6:47 pm

Early in last August, I informed you that the late John Daly’s website “Still Waiting for Greenhouse” had been taking down. Fortuitously, I have discovered that it has been archived at: appinsys.com/Global Warming. You can still access the site with:
“Still Waiting for Greenhouse” or http://www.John-Daly.com.

The “Station Temperature Data” is valuable resource of empirical data that can be used to prove that CO2 does not cause global warming. You should do the following: Go to the website and retrieve the charts for Death Valley and Brisbane. Notice how flat the plots of the various temperatures vs time are. Thus it can be concluded that CO2 does not cause any warming at these sites.

I would like obtain the recent temperature data for Death Valley to 2023 but I don’t how to do this. However, I going to contact Anthony or Roger C. about this.

Do think you can obtain the recent data for data for Brisbane? If there has been no or little warming, you might be able to use the data to shut down the greens and the crazy politicians in Canberra.

sherro01
Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 16, 2024 4:54 am

Harold,
Thank you for your comment. I never did meet John Daly, sadly. However, I have done a vast amouint of work likje hois and more, on the official daily raw temperature record of well over 100 BOM station sites.
For example, here are 28 graphs about heatwaves in our 6 State capitals plus Darwin and Alice for coverage.
If you really want Brisbane data, I can email it to you if you send me an address. sherro01 at outlook dot com
Do keep up your commenting. Any good idea is always welcomed. Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/eightheatwave2022.xlsx

September 15, 2024 4:53 pm

Nuclear armageddon is unthinkable. Efforts like the doomsday clock to keep the notion front and centre have not been very effective.

The great benefit of climate armageddon is that there is always somewhere experiencing weather than is not average. Every day, there is a news article that can be hyped as proof of climate change. And the narrative is so pervasive that the only thing causing climate change is man.

August in Australia was unseasonably warm most of the time – yep, due to climate change. Then September has so far been unseasonably cold – yep climate change. Climate Change™ is the gift that keeps giving.

In June, the wind turbines in Australia did not produce much power – yep due to climate change. In September, wind turbines had to be shut down due to gale force winds – yep, climate change.

And the fools pushing all this nonsense do not see the utter stupidity in making a critical service dependent on the weather. The Australian grid operator’s quarterly repots read more like weather reports than power systems reports. Prices were high because – there was not much wind or it was warm so demand was high or it was cold so demand was high or strong winds caused power line towers to topple or a storm front caused a sudden drop in rooftop output when there was insufficient running reserve. Climate Change™ is the excuse for every government failure.

Reply to  RickWill
September 15, 2024 5:19 pm

August in Australia was unseasonably warm most of the time”

I think it was more an August of two parts.

The first half was cool, and drizzly, then the latter half was gorgeously warm and sunny.. more like early summer.

I suspect if you could split the data you would have a near zero anomaly for the first half then an anomaly possibly twice what was recorded for the whole month for the second half.

If September keeps going as it is, not only will its anomaly drop right back down, but it could end up being cooler than August was on an overall basis.

September 15, 2024 5:24 pm

Part of the problem is the “Greta Thunberg syndrome” Can you believe Greta turned 21 January 3 of this year. All of the climate activists suffer from this disease. The other part of the problem is the “I’m on the payroll” syndrome. Money becomes available for the “crisis of the day” which draws people like ants to honey.

Reply to  Danley Wolfe
September 15, 2024 10:28 pm

Greta who?

September 15, 2024 5:40 pm

Is this extremely annoying repetition of the material within an article a defect of the software or is there some loopy overriding psychological malfunction that purposefully creates it?

Any why, as in this case, are graphics sometimes just totally blank spaces?

Reply to  AndyHce
September 16, 2024 2:07 am

Maybe this is an attempt by warmists hackers to sabotage this site. They install so much blank pages that the computers go into overload and freeze up. We here at WUWT are their mortal enemies.

September 15, 2024 6:38 pm

China has done well under socialism. Their life expectancy has risen from 43 years when socialism started to 77 years now, compared to 76 years for the US.

From Wikipedia:
“China has the world’s second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP,[279] and the world’s largest in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP).[280] As of 2022, China accounts for around 18% of the global economy by nominal GDP.[281] China is one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies,[282] with its economic growth having been almost consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978
Nonetheless, international surveys show the Chinese public have a high level of satisfaction with their government.[201]: 137  These views are generally attributed to the material comforts and security available to large segments of the Chinese populace as well as the government’s attentiveness and responsiveness.[201]: 136  According to the World Values Survey (2022), 91% of Chinese respondents have significant confidence in their government..” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

corky
Reply to  scvblwxq
September 15, 2024 11:34 pm

They didn’t do so well with Mao Zedong. Today they have totalitarian capitalism.

Reply to  corky
September 16, 2024 12:12 am

Indeed, and huge demographic problems, more than any other country.
Mao sits on top of the pile of ruthless ideologues way above Hitler and Stalin.

Reply to  ballynally
September 16, 2024 4:19 am

When confronted by Russia- and Russia’s threat to nuke China, Mao said he didn’t mind if Russia did that- it would lower China’s population and be a good thing.

SCInotFI
Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 4:01 am

That’s IF you can believe the Chinese respondents were able to be honest……!

Reply to  scvblwxq
September 16, 2024 4:18 am

When you start a zero – almost any attempt at building an industrial society will be an improvement. It’s also been said that Russia, after it’s revolution, developed rapidly. But it would have anyway, just a few decades later than the West.

sherro01
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
September 16, 2024 5:09 am

JZ,
Around 1994 I made a number of private trips to China, mostly Yunnan province, to see the acceleration of the development that the East of China was having, with a 2-year lag to Yunnan in the far West. I wanted to forge joint ventures in mining, but at crucial times the Aussie miners with the finance got wet feet and nothing happened.
The Chinese I met were usually like the CEO of a medium to large corporation here. In every instance, i was treated with utmost cordiality. Data I requested was happily and promptly provided, some of it of value to competitors if leaked. The people knew quite well where their plans were taking them and they had the capability to execute them at a rate 2 to 3 timnes faster than the Aussies. (It was interesting to see major new roads, 6 lane or more, hundreds of miles long, being built mainly with hands, chains and bamboo baskets while big dozers were left idle on the side much of the time. The concept of unions was also left by the roadside).
It surprises me not that China has done so much in so little time. People are concerned primarily with increased national hence private wealth filling their minds instead of bullshit stuff like net zero carbon and first nations and socialist politics.
I met quite a few bright cookies with whom I would have loved to work, had it been possible. Geoff S

Reply to  sherro01
September 16, 2024 9:06 am

Nobody works harder than East Asians. No wonder Hah-vid tried to discriminate against them- or their favoritism based on criteria other than talent would be difficult.

September 15, 2024 6:53 pm

“They deny to others, and themselves, that their program will have any deleterious side effects on the economy in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

That thought might be on life support in some countries. German youth have thrown Greta overboard and are pushing back hard against green extremism as they watch their future going down the drain. It sounds like the movement has legs.

Reply to  Ollie
September 15, 2024 8:11 pm

Unfortunately, they had to learn the hard way!

SCInotFI
Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 16, 2024 4:02 am

That’s the only way they will learn

Reply to  SCInotFI
September 16, 2024 4:20 am

reality bites

Richard Greene
September 15, 2024 8:17 pm

WUWT may have a goal of one worthless article each day.

This is it the one for today

No science
No data
Sections repeated several times

In the 1970s scientists wild guessed the rate of future global warming at an average of about +3 degrees C. per CO2 x 2

The actual warming rate from 1975 to 2024 was about +2.4 degrees C. per CO2 x 2 based on most likely exaggerate surface measurements.

That is a coincidence, not science. And blaming almost all the warming on manmade CO2 is an exaggeration.

The most important point is that warming was claimed to be bad news and had to be stopped. The truth was the actual warming was good news and we hope it continues.

The actual warming was mainly warmer winters in colder nations, just as one would expect from greenhouse gas emissions. But there was also some daytime warming from less air pollution, which is good news and from fewer clouds, which is a natural change.

The global cooling crisis predictions in the mid-1970s were promoted by a tiny percentage of scientists, certainly under 5%. Most scientists since the 1950s predicted global warming from CO2 in their studies, which got no mass media attention. Roger Revelle may have been the first scientist to speculate that warming could be a future problem. But at the time. scientists still had something called uncertainty.

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Reply to  Richard Greene
September 15, 2024 10:58 pm

RG makes it a goal to have at least one very stupid comment a day.

No science.

No evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2.

Denial of the real effect of cloud cover.

Denial that humans only produce 4% of the total CO2 flux.

You cannot use the surface stations to say CO2 is causing the warming because it is mostly urban and data manipulation..

And the UAH data shows warming only occurring at El Nino event… no CO2 causality.

(still waiting for empirical scientific evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2)

The actual warming was mainly warmer winters in colder nations, which is exactly what one would expect from urban densification and population growth increasing the urban warming effect.

Pretending it is caused by CO2 is complete nonsense.

Reply to  bnice2000
September 16, 2024 1:29 am

Harold the Organic Chemist Says:

At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is 426 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has 0.838 grams of CO2 and has a mass of 1.29 kgs at STP.

For a sunny day with a temperature of 70 deg. F and a RH of 70%, the concentration of H2O is14,780 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has 14.3 grams of H2O and a mass of 1.20 kgs. The amount of CO2 in this warm air is 0.78 grams.

The amount of the greenhouse effect (GHE) due to H2O is given by:
% GHE for H2O = moles H2O/moles H20+moles CO2 = 0.79/0.79+0.02 X100= 97.5

This calculation assumes that H2O and CO2 absorb about the same amount of IR light. Actually, H2O absorbs much more IR than CO2. This small amount of CO2 can heat up such a large amount of air by only a very small amount.

You should store this comment and keep it handy for future discussions.

The claim by the IPCC since 1988 that CO2 causes global warming is a lie.

hiskorr
Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 16, 2024 7:05 am

And remember that each of those grams of water vapor is transporting over 500 times the energy as a gram of CO2! The water cycle rules climate. “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” is the common climate comment. It, and the wind (energy transport) are the heart of the “feels like” weather report!

Trivial temperature changes to a minuscule atmospheric component, on a planet with surface temperature ranging from 233K to 313K at any one instant, cannot drive “climate”, either locally or globally!

Reply to  Richard Greene
September 16, 2024 12:43 am

RG: Go to this website: http://www.John-Daly.com. From the home page, scroll down to the end and click on “Station Temperature Data”. On the World Map, click on North America and then click on Pacific. Finally, scroll down and click on “Death Valley”.

The graphic shows plots of the average annual seasonal temperatures and a plot the average annual temperature from 1922 to 2001. These plots are fairly flat. In 1922 the concentration of CO2 was about 300 ppmv, and by 2001 it was 370 ppmv. Thus, I have concluded that CO2 did not cause any “global warming” at this desert site.

Go to Australia, and check out the chart for the famous Alice Springs. There has also been no “global warming” at desert site since 1879.

You should read some of the essays at this site, and then come back here and tell us what you have learned.

Reply to  Harold Pierce
September 16, 2024 3:03 am

RG is totally fixed in his brain-washed AGW mantra.

Incapable of learning anything !!

sherro01
Reply to  Richard Greene
September 16, 2024 5:23 am

RG,
The global cooling crisis predictions in the mid-1970s were promoted by a tiny percentage of scientists”.
Not here in Australia, where I was rather involved in these events. Golbal Warming morphing to Climate Change got a slow start here because so many people in influential positions treated it as the nonsense that it is and leaned to the cooling story, small though it was, or to no story.
We let the danger grow because we always thought it would fail. (Still do, but it is taking too long). Then I started to meet the heavy elites who had been hatching big plans quietly. When they flashed big money the movement started getting bigger faster than we had imagined. It grew in publicity by blocking major projects, not by promoting good new projects. It is now money, power, corruption, lies,pop-science, blame game, capture of politicians. Have you ever seen greens express the usual human features like happiness, eager anticipation, desire to help fellow man, enthusiasm for the ideas of others, love of babies, radioactivity?
Geoff S

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Richard Greene
September 16, 2024 9:54 am

It would otherwise be a fair assessment of the ARTICLE in review, except the article itself was themed to the POLITICAL HISTORY and therefore would necessarily not have science and data.

Yes, there was excessive repetition.

That does not make the article worthless.

September 15, 2024 10:37 pm

How the world fell into Mass Formation / Delusion during the covid madness (Mattias Desmet and Ivor Cummins) :

Reply to  Petit-Barde
September 15, 2024 10:55 pm

What kind of psychological profile can resist such a totalitarian surge? (Ariane Bilheran, French graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm), clinical psychologist, Doctor of Psychopathology and philosopher) :

SCInotFI
Reply to  Petit-Barde
September 16, 2024 5:47 am

Excellent interview – buying his book 👍

September 16, 2024 12:03 am

The issue is that many marxist activists were fighting against the ‘capitalist’ establishment, even though the same establishment incorporated social reform programs which established a platform of Social Democrats which was broadly supported. The trouble is that current ‘leaders’ have been brainwashed, sorry, educated in the late 60s, 70s and 80s to feel guilty about humans destroying the Earth, the Garden of Eden and might not even be aware of the shift because it happened gradually. They too want to find meaning in an atomised world. It is therefor akin to a true religion without calling it so. Those who propose the most stringent climate measures do not expect to follow the rules themselves. We see the same corrupting elite taking care of themselves that every other religion displays.

September 16, 2024 12:46 am

Something funky with the website today. The white space as already pointed out. And I was logged out and had to reset password (I stay logged-in by default)

September 16, 2024 12:47 am

this quote from CS Lewis is apposite

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. 

observa
September 16, 2024 3:36 am

When does the fantasy end for them? It doesn’t. 

‘The last straw’: Andrew Bolt criticises Brendan Kerin’s controversial AFL semi-final speech (msn.com)

Woke lies are different truths for different folks and woke lies matter.

observa
Reply to  observa
September 16, 2024 7:20 pm

PS: It’s like the old Soviet for the plebs in the stands-
Tony Jones outlines ‘the problem the AFL MUST address’ as Aussie broadcaster wades into Welcome to Country ceremony that has sparked outrage (msn.com)
Which is why they want to control the internet space now.

Sean Galbally
September 16, 2024 4:16 am

NET ZERO FOLLY

As most self respecting scientists know, man-made carbon dioxide has virtually no effect on the climate. It is a good gas essential to animals and plant life. Provided dirty emissions are cleaned up, we should be using our substantial store of fossil fuels while we develop a mix of alternatives including nuclear power to generate energy. There is no climate crisis, it has always changed and we have always adapted to it.  In the Ordovician ice age atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were 4000 ppm and have been 15 times higher than now. There was no industrial revolution then to be the cause . The present quantity of man-made carbon dioxide is insignificant compared with water vapour or clouds which comprise a vast majority of green-house gases. Man has no control over the climate. Statistically we are overdue a period of cooling.The sun and our distance from it have by far the most effect. Most importantly, the Net-Zero (carbon dioxide) Policy will not do anything to change it. Countries like China, Russia and India are sensibly ignoring this and using their fossil fuels. They will be delighted at how the west is letting the power elites, mainstream media and government implement this Policy and the World Order Agenda 21/2030, to needlessly impoverish us as well as causing great hardship and suffering.