Time for a mid-term review of the runners and riders for the Eco Crackpot of the Year awards. Competition gets fiercer every year, but past standards are high. Who can forget such pure barking madness in 2019 when Clemson University philosophy professor Todd May asked if mass human suicide might not be a bad thing? To be fair, he did accept that the policy would cause “significant suffering” among those who had much to lose by dying.
Exeter University Associate Geography Professor Saffron O’Neill is attracting a lot of early interest with her suggestion that news reports of heatwaves illustrated with photos of people enjoying themselves in the sun are a dangerous distraction from the realities of climate breakdown. Such images, she said, can hold the same power as tanks in Tiananmen Square. Two years ago, O’Neill said a “solution” to the dissemination of climate misinformation might be “fines and imprisonment”. Misinformation she defines as casting doubt on “well supported” science theories. It is an attempt to “discredit” climate science – the word “discredit” presumably applying to those who dispute popular hypotheses of which she approves.
Exeter University is a strong stable. Over in the politics department, computer models are being developed by Associate Professor Travis Coan to track down “climate disbeliefs”. According to the heresies being collated are suggestions that climate moves in natural cycles, the Sun plays a part, carbon dioxide was much higher in the past, CO2 starts to lose its warming effect beyond certain levels and water vapour has a part to play in the weather. The fact that Coan has simply collated the central issues facing every inquiring atmospheric scientist in the world does not seem to have occurred to the academic.
Forgive the crudity, but one can’t help feeling that O’Neill and Coan are taking the piss – or at least they would be if they were making a new craft beer in Singapore from urine and sewage. In a reported attempt to be environmentally friendly, a local brewery is using the recycled water called NEWater to produce a beer called NEWBrew. Craft brewer Brewerkz states that it is a “highly quaffable beer” that is perfectly suited to Singapore’s tropical climate, “with a smooth, toasted honey-like aftertaste”.
Moving on, Bournemouth Council deputy leader Mark Howell suggested to an environment committee in January that the “issue of the carbon footprint and methane of pets” needed to be addressed to meet a carbon neutral target. According to Howell, it was “a big elephant in the room” and politicians were afraid to raise it for fear of a backlash. Climate journalist Paul Homewood led the charge, asking if we should shoot all the wildlife that abounds in Britain. “The thought that nutters like Mark Howell can get into positions of power should frighten us all,” he understandably concludes.
One proposed solution to mitigate the extrusions of all those burping and farting animals is to fit methane filtering masks. If it was successful, it could even be applied to humans – after all, the masking habit has been catching on of late. British start-up ZELP (Zero Emissions Livestock Project) has developed a face mask for ruminants to capture a portion of methane. The initiative was awarded the Terra Carta Design Lab award, which forms part of Prince Charles’ Sustainable Markets Initiative. Journalist Ross Clark spoke for many when he commented, “I feel sorry for the cow”. He went on to note that animals don’t tend to like wearing stuff on their faces. “I should think the first thing they are going to try and do is scrape that thing on a fence post, and the fields will be left full of plastic masks,” he added.
Not that there will be many cows left if armed militias start roamed the countryside in the wake of a climate change catastrophe. This was the January prediction from a report funded by the Met Office and produced by academics at the University of Exeter (quelle surprise) and Edinburgh, in association with a forecasting group Cambridge Econometrics. In one bizarre scenario, called Regional Rivalry, the English revert to hunter-gathering and feudal warfare after 2040. Tap water becomes unsafe to drink, the NHS collapses, child labour returns, as does bartering. “Before the end of the century, military groups… rise to de facto power and compete for control and natural resources, creating their own feudal semi-independent micro-states with their own laws and means to enforce them,” quotes the Spectator.
Perhaps the Met Office ought to stick to its regular adjustments of the global surface temperature – 30% extra heating added in the last 10 years, along with decreases in past recordings. Fantastical stories seem to be its new stock-in-trade.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Priceless.
Can anyone tell me what an associate professor is? Something that merely and correctly was once called a Senior Lecturer.
Since the word “Professor” has been so massively devalued (think Witty and Vallance for starters…..), why would anyone want to be associated with it?
Is an “associate” something or other just an apprentice?
Hunter gatherer by 2040, an Ice age looming then?
No, just civilisational collapse at the hands of a doomsday cult.
‘Carbon footprint and methane of pets’. Oh ha ha. My husband and I fart ten times more than our dogs, and their carbon footprint is shared with ours – they haven’t yet bought their own house and car anyway.
‘The NHS collapses…’ well, I thought it already had, to be honest.
As I sit indoors watching the blustery, rather chilly wind battering my poor delphiniums, I honestly wonder where summer has gone (well, it never really started) and ponder if we are in for an absolute stinker of a winter, with snow and frost like ’47’ or ’63’
Anyway I will be ordering plenty of coal asap.
England will revert to hunter-gathering by 2023 in response to the engineered food crisis.
Actually I know someone who used to go poaching for pigeons and things. I hope I won’t be needing to get tips from him…
“Moving on, Bournemouth Council deputy leader Mark Howell suggested to an environment committee in January that the “issue of the carbon footprint and methane of pets” needed to be addressed to meet a carbon neutral target.”
Blimey, don’t give the CCP ideas…
I can well believe the bartering notion; how else will those of us ineligible for a QR code (if linked to digital currency) manage to transact?
We have a water filter now as I don’t fancy the tap water. Have even started gathering herbs to make my own cough and cold remedies.
No immediate plans to snare rabbits, though – but where does the child labour come in?
Well they are using children in the lithium mining industry for all these lovely ‘green’ cars the world wants so much.
Too bad they won’t have the electricity for them. I suppose they could always go back to coal fired power stations…
Lithium is extracted from brine in South America and mined in Australia https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium-mining-what-you-should-know-about-the-contentious-issue.html
It’s cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo that use child labour.
but where does the child labour come in
Medieval trait would be my guess. This means children would basically be treated like smaller adults at about 14. OTOH, they wouldn’t be working in the sense of 19th century chimney sweeps, more also go hunting (or do soldiering in auxiliary roles).
Quoting from the recent paper of the retired German professor: According to the IPCC, both humans and animals will need to stop breathing by 2100 to save the planet.
I will definitely have stopped breathing by then.
They are right, thanks to Net Zero lunacy.
And it is the aim of the Ecozealots to reduce Humanity to Hunter/gathering to be in harmony with Mother Earth.
The problem is re hunter / gatherer skills, 99.9% of the population wouldn’t know where to start. I wonder how many could skin a rabbit or a pheasant or could gut a bird or fish.
Planning ahead, I have invested in a large book off amazon with all these skills in it. I won’t be able to rely on YouTube any more on how to do this stuff. I consider it a small insurance policy. I will then barter my expert knowledge for remnant tins of beans with fellow survivors of this impending apocalypse, because I’ll be buggered if I’m eating pigeon. It tastes like shit.
Actually I enjoy pigeon. Quite liverish but very gamey and tasty if cooked nice and pink.
These meat eaters can’t agree on anything!
They have enough of a mental puzzle removing the packaging from their ready meals!
I am quite at home preparing small game for the table, and have been known to collect road kill pheasants as long as they aren’t too damaged. I suppose I could do larger animals, but you need some strength to deal with things like deer, (or some kit to lift it with), strength I don’t have.
However, I have a bit of a rare skill in that I can train a horse to harness. I used to use a horse and vehicle for local shopping and the pub in the 70s. Happy days.
The problem is re [a lack of] hunter / gatherer skills
No the problem is the exact opposite:
That the great mass of humanity is now willingly throwing away millennia worth of technological progress (especially that brought about by the fossil fuel powered Industrial Revolution) and heading rapidly back to its materially and socially hugely primitive and insecure hunter gatherer roots.
All under the auspices of the false, ultra-materialist (worshipping the physical earth instead of the non-physical spiritual dimension) and nihilistic Green religion.
99.9% of the population wouldn’t know where to start. I wonder how many could skin a rabbit or a pheasant or could gut a bird or fish.
There is absolutely no need to harm any animals in order to sustain human existence, and it is a very positive thing that most people would find carrying out such horrible activities to be repulsive (even though most are not yet vegetarian, at least they’re heading in the right anti-cruelty direction).
You know how cows spend their entire day eating grass? You have time to do that?
Give me animal protein and iron and fat any day. Just only kill what you can eat.
‘You know how cows spend their entire day eating grass? You have time to do that?’
Not only do I not have the time, but (literally) not the stomach(s) for it…
‘Give me animal protein and iron and fat any day’
What’s wrong with non dead-animal protein, iron and fat (including milk, cheese and eggs as well as legumes, grains, nuts etc)?
‘Just only kill what you can eat.’
Well instead of getting all daubed, furred and speared up for an exhausting few days hunting down some elusive and unpleasantly bloody and internally organed living creature, why not just pop into your local Morrison’s for a tasty cheese salad sandwich washed down by a bottle of chilled fizzy apple juice?
In spite of the Stone Age vibe on this thread (one shared by the same ‘woke’ eco movement which is confusingly also being vehemently criticised) I’m not prepared to give up on civilisation just yet!
I get squeamish when my wife asks me to put a roast in the bag chicken in the oven. I’ll take responsibility for the non-hunting tasks I think; I’ll do the cave paintings.
As much as I like the idea of returning to a hunter gather lifestyle – I’ve already scoped out where I’m building my hill fort to retreat to with my loyal band of vaccine survivors – I think we will all be wiped out when the nuclear power stations melt down because we’re all too busy chasing rabbits with spears.
Does anybody believe we’d be allowed to hunt for our own food without some woke activist scaring off the prey and telling us all to be vegans?
They’ll get a flint tipped arrow in their face. I’ll be a crack shot by then.
We’ll all be dab hands with a sling given the abundance of masks that could so easily be converted.
Yes – plenty of toxic blow darts lying around too.
I am considering a crossbow. I have a niece whose partner is ex forces and I might have a word about shooting lessons.
YES! I want one of those.
Considering that animal right’s activists are the natural inverse of apex predators, I doubt these people will bother us for long. They’ll probably all get eaten by stray cats.
Just like magic one has appeared on this page already telling us we don’t need to eat animals to survive.
you jolly well will need to eat animals to survive when the shit hits the fan. I’d like to see these vegan types scrabbling around for the odd crab apple and digging for burdock roots. They’ll starve to death over one winter.
Of the few people I know who are veggie I don’t know any who have much knowledge about food and diet.
I’ve been a vegetarian for about 35 years. Now, I feel like the fourth industrial revolution has bum rushed the show and I find myself on the side of the carnivore. Won’t make me eat meat though. However, when the shit hits the fan I will feel no compunction about dispatching radioactive squirrels.
I award this thread the Thread of The Week Award, Awarded Weekly on A Week By Week Basis
Agreed! Good ones are few and far between these days!
Someone should write a sitcom about a group of liberal hunter-gatherers living in post apocalyptic Britain trying to appease the gods of climate and covid and gender politics whilst hunting for plant based meat substitutes.
A mini series – it would be implausible for them to survive six episodes.
The pilot episode will consist of 5 fresh faced graduates who’ve just moved into a flat together. None of them can cook and they’re debating about which supermarket is most likely to offer the best selection of meat shaped non-meat products (because although people don’t want to eat meat it still needs to look like a meat product).
Anyway, the episode ends with them all dead from starvation having only been able to agree, as the hunger set in, that they would be helping the planet by being dead.
Roll credits…
Under Agenda 2030 we will all be banned from the rewilded countryside, instead holed up in ‘smart cities’ in tiny boxes eating mass produced bugs and lab meat. I am a country person from birth and at 69 would rather take my own life than exist instead of live.
It’s going to be pretty difficult to go hunter-gathering the vegan burgers we’re all supposed to be eating.
‘Look at Airports across the UK. That’s the new normal, The Great Reset, that’s Build Back Better’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGF6podo7gE
Mark Steyn gives his take on the big bag build-up at airports across the UK as travel chaos ruins summer travel plans for thousands of people.
GBNews
Stand for freedom & make friends with our notorious
Yellow Boards By The Road
Friday 1st July 4pm to 5pm
Yellow Boards
Junction B3430 Nine Mile Ride &
New Wokingham Road
Wokingham RG40 3BA
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10.30am to 11.30am
make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Henley
Mills Meadows (bandstand) RG9 1DS
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
“Saffron”, a name that conjures up images of upper class airheads. “Associate Professor of Geography” a title which says they don’t want to leave school and contribute to the productive part of the economy. Together they make me think of ensuring my daughter will avoid applying to this university as its academic standards are non-existent.