Essay by Eric Worrall
Would a society where climate dishonesty is unacceptable deter climate skeptics?
Why the ‘Me Too’ movement should be a warning to those lying about climate change
In his latest book, author and academic Mike Berners-Lee calls for a ‘climate of truth’ from business, politicians and the media
At a glance
- Author and academic Mike Mike Berners-Lee believes dishonesty about climate change and other challenges facing the world is behind the lack of progress in reducing emissions and tackling wider problems such as pollution and nature loss
- He insists change is possible, but calls on everyone to be more truthful, and to call out the media, business and policymakers when they are being dishonest
- Regulation, in conjunction with high penalties and strict enforcement, is necessary to ensure business is delivering on environmental stewardship, he says
“A couple of decades ago, it was considered pretty normal by many celebrities that every now and then a bit of groping went on,” Mike Berners-Lee tells me. “Now, it is pretty clear to every BBC personality it would be the end of your career — and if you were found to have stood by while someone else was getting up to it, you would also be in very hot water.”
…Berners-Lee’s latest book, A Climate of Truth, concludes that central to our inability to get to grips with the “deadly polycrisis” we are in — one that includes climate change, biodiversity loss, food security concerns and permanent pollution — is a pervasive lack of truthfulness from policymakers, business and the media.
…
He cites the greenhouse gas emissions curve, which shows that despite 29 climate change COPs and a 30th in the offing, emissions continue to rise. “This is a reality we need to face up to: the process isn’t working. The best thing that came out of COP29 is the understanding that the process is broken.” It is also being “subverted by companies that can’t be trusted”, he adds.
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Read more: https://www.sustainableviews.com/why-the-me-too-movement-should-be-a-warning-to-those-lying-about-climate-change-c781857f/
Mike Berners-Lee wrote “There is no Planet B” and a bunch of other climate crisis books, so I think its fair to describe him as a bit of a fixture in the radical environmental movement.
But the fact is the truth is already coming out about climate change.
Reuters recently admitted Net Zero is a failure.
Climate alarmism has also been exposed by an entire year of temperatures greater than 1.5C without any of the predicted major climate disasters.
Silicon Valley has all but stopped pretending to care about climate change.
Despite all this, I am not accusing Mike Berners-Lee of being a liar. Reading Climategate convinced me climate radicals actually believe what they are preaching.
The problem is not that they are lying, the problem is they are wrong.
One of Freeman Dyson’s great disappointments was his political fellow travellers are caught up in climate groupthink. Dyson described seeing this kind of baseless groupthink many times in the past, mostly amongst the Astronomy community. It happens when scientists fall too much in love with their models, and begin confusing models with established fact.
Given the world has now experienced 1.5C warming without any of the predicted disasters, at least no more than usual, will academics like Mike Berners-Lee find the courage to admit they were wrong? You might think the answer is an automatic never, but we have had at least one example of a high profile academic who had the courage to face the truth.
By the mid 2030s it won’t matter what climate alarmists say or believe, the world will have moved on. Climate alarmism has all but run its course, many new voices are now casting doubt on the most extreme climate predictions. But a decade of continued high energy price misery is a long time to wait for people struggling to pay their energy bills.
Every academic who adds their voice to climate skepticism will help shorten the suffering of those still trapped in societies where climate alarmism dominates government policy.
Let us hope Mike Berners-Lee and his fellow academics take inspiration from James Lovelock, and find the courage to admit they were wrong.
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‘Climate change’ is not a ‘challenge’ for humanity. It just happens and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Get used to our impotence and stop pretending.
Climate Micawbers eagerly anticipate a disaster to grotesquely prove a point.
Still waiting…
James says, in his essay on Emerson, that in the background that formed him was
….the primitive New England character, especially during the time of its queer search for something to expend itself upon. Objects and occupations have multiplied since then, and now there is no lack; but fifty years ago the expanse was wide and free, and we get the impression of a conscience gasping in the void, panting for sensations, with something of the movement of the gills of a landed fish.
That is recognizably the root of the current cultural problem. Progressivism has descended from New England into exactly that sort of free floating moral energy, a conscience in search of objects on which to exert itself. The enduring impact of New England on the wider American culture was guaranteed by its providing a huge proportion of teachers for many decades. Things like that fix a culture. There’s a landscape of invisible ridges under water which constrain currents.
We are still living with the moral restlessness that James diagnoses, and its not going to stop. Even after global warming and net zero have faded, something will arise to take their place. Gender and race have been examples, but there will be more. I don’t think there is anything to be done about it, the rather brutal populist rejection of woke by Trump and his allies will not affect the underlying situation, though it may arrest the current manias.
And we should recognize that idealism of this sort, depending on the object it chooses, can be a force for good. Its just that when it goes off the rails, it really does, and the same impulse which accomplished great things when it abolished slavery and reformed civil rights can also take a country over the cliff when applied to BLM and idealizing Putin and the wilder shores of gender.
Put Quality first, and what is Good and True will follow.
Personal integrity means you should not need ‘me too’ or any other kind of official or substantive platform when faced with a real true fact requiring you to distance yourself from the lies being told about it.
It is always tougher to do it on your own but that is why it makes you feel much, much better when you do do it. And, over time, you find who the free thinkers are. Like the choice between an easy path and a hard path the former often disappoints whereas the latter sticks in your memory..
I wish writers would drop the word “small” and just leave the acronym and term as “modular reactors” or “MRs”. The important distinction is the modularity, not the size
A modular reactor can be any size whatsoever. Modularity means that the reactor modules are manufactured in a controlled environment in a factory, just like a modular anything, like a home, to a standardized design and using standardized manufacturing processes … then brought out to the reactor site and plugged in. Making licensing much simpler than dealing with all the one-off designs that have prevailed so far in the nuclear power energy. MRs can be 50 MWe, or they can be 500 MWe. The upper limit is only the transportation system used to move the MR to its site and place it in a “socket”.
Very large reactors can be moved on barges, just like we move ships and modular bridge sections around on barges. The reactor vessel and the equipment it contains is not actually that large and heavy. The shielding is the most massive and heaviest part of a reactor plant, but it can be delivered separately and in sections, if necessary, and installed around the reactor pressure vessel (assuming a PWR design is used). In fact water makes a great shield, especially for neutrons, and the US Navy uses water filled tanks for much of their shielding.
If you need 1 GWe, use two 500s. If you need 500 NWe, use one 500, or two 250s or whatever combination works.
In remote areas where power needs are not massive, certainly a small MR can be very useful. And there is a need for such small MRs.
Everyone needs to be more truthful, especially quackademics like Bonehead-Lee.
“Silicon Valley has all but stopped pretending to care about climate change.”
Good observation, Eric! This meant a lot to carry Trump back to the presidency, in my opinion. They seem to have finally understood that you can’t run data centers or chip fab facilities on pretend energy sources.
This is relevant to several of today’s posts: https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Ato-2025.pdf
I do not understand how an academic like Mike Berners-Lee can believe that we can do something about the climate. He cannot have researched the overwhelming evidence that it is not man made and cannot be corrected by man. We adapt as we always have done, but there is no climate crisis. One can only assume that his department is funded and therefore influenced by those who have an agenda.
the reality is that 90% of these folks are fraudsters … we can just assume they all are and find the good ones later …
The problem we face and the problem our children will face in their future is epitomised by politicians like Ed Miliband.
There is a man fixated on left wing political dogma, who sadly lacks the intellect to question the scientists and pseudo scientists that advise him.
He has bought into the Green agenda making it his personal political calling. He put the 2008 Climate Change Act through the UK Parliament which was then used by the later Tory PM Theresa May, to append the Net Zero legislation to. She did this using a statutory instrument thus avoiding any debate in the House of Commons on its validity or its impacts ion society.
When you have someone as intellectually compromised as Milband is, having a role of responsibility and able to enact his ill considered policies, we clearly have a problem.
As far as those like Berners Lee are concerned, they fit neatly into the category so nicely defined by Mark Twain. “It is easier to con someone than to convince them they have been conned”.
I say this having transitioned from an Observer/Guardian reader in the 1980s through 1990s (but no longer). As a reader of Gaia and as a life long naturalist, I have transitioned into a naturalist who now sees the reality, sees the ongoing false propaganda put out by the left wing champions, like the BBC.
As an engineer who knows the physical limits here on planet Earth. Those limits allow me as a parent to sleep easy at night, knowing the threat to humanity does not come from the climate or from CO2.
It seems like honesty could be a double edged sword. I’m fine with requiring climate realists to tell the truth (I think most of them already do) as long as we also require climate alarmists to stop lying and exaggerating. Let’s stop with the nonsense about increasing hurricanes, huge sea level rise, etc. I’m sure that some of them believe their own press, but some have to know they’re lying.