Ahead of COP27, the ecologist Dr. Susan Crockford has launched a hard-hitting attack on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the World Economic Forum (WEF), King Charles and Sir David Attenborough. The two men are said to “parrot WWF activist nonsense” that they naïvely accept as science. Dr. Crockford is an acknowledged zoology expert on polar bears, whose work on their recently growing Arctic populations has effectively removed them as a green poster story. She says it is clear that many of the goals of the WWF are shared by the WEF, and these complement the vision the King and Attenborough share for the future. “They all want a return to a world with fewer people that live meagre, circumscribed lives, while the rich carry on their jet-setting ways.”
Dr. Crockford writes that when the WWF began promoting itself as a scientific authority a dozen or so years ago, these “naïve elite boosters” accepted it without question, parroting unsubstantiated WWF climate doomsday talking points at every opportunity. In her view, these men don’t speak with an authority of their own on this topic, “they use their exalted positions to assist the WWF and others achieve their utopian dream: destroy for others the capitalism that created their own wealth and power”.
Population growth has long been a concern of Attenborough’s. In 2011, he was reported to have said that “he couldn’t think of a single problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve if there were less people”. In 2013, he made the crass remark that it was “barmy” for the United Nations to send bags of flour to famine-stricken Ethiopia. At the time this invoked comparison with Sir Charles Trevelyan, the civil servant during the Irish famines of the 19th century, who saw the starvation as retribution on the local population for their moral failings and tendency to have numerous children. But to counter all these Malthusian notions, there is the considerable evidence that population numbers fall as societies become wealthier. Increased care of the environment is also a feature of wealthier societies, as individuals no longer need to scavenge the land and wildlife to survive.
King Charles, meanwhile, is not a fan of ‘consumerism’. In a speech in 2009 as the then Prince of Wales, he calculated that “we had just 96 months left to save the world”. Capitalism and consumerism had brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, he claimed, adding “we can no longer afford consumerism” and that the “age of convenience” was over. Of course this only applies to loyal British subjects. Since his recent accession to the British throne, His Majesty has added greatly to his personal portfolio of staffed mansions and palaces. In 2017 it was reported that he had complained that his seat on a first class flight was “incredibly uncomfortable”. This of course is not a recurring problem, since his preferred mode of transport is the private jet.
According to Dr. Crockford, the King will lobby again this Friday for a collective world vision at a COP27 reception at Buckingham Place. Certainly the wording in the communication below suggests a highly political gathering, reviewing the progress and plans for the implementation of the command-and-control Net Zero project. This project is one of the great political issues of the age, since it calls for the removal of 80% of the world’s energy within less than 30 years, and its replacement with unreliable windmills and other yet-to-be-perfected sources of kinetic and solar power. Huge changes in societal and economic lifestyles are inevitable.
Dr. Crockford notes that she has spent years showing that conditions in the natural world are not as bad as Attenborough and the WWF insist and so do not warrant the extreme solutions proposed by King Charles, the WEF and many who will attend COP27. For more than a decade, she continues, the WWF has been wealthy enough to employ people with degrees in conservation biology, who we are encouraged to think of as unbiased scientists rather than activists with university degrees. Research projects are funded by the WWF and we are encouraged to think of them as “unbiased studies rather than exercises in circular reasoning”. The very nature of the organisation, she argues, means that all employees and associates have a skewed vision of the world and an agenda that must be served, which tends to distort any research before it can even begin.
Attenborough is said to hold the WWF in high regard, even after it morphed from a conservation fundraising organisation into a billion-dollar conglomerate that requires many millions of dollars in annual donations just to cover operating expenses and lobbying activities. Not being a scientist himself, he trusts the scientific authority of the WWF. If it says a sixth mass extinction is imminent, or that unsustainable human activity is pushing the planet’s natural systems that support life on Earth to the edge, “he not only believes them but enthusiastically passes along the message”, says Dr. Crockford.
The Daily Sceptic reported on Monday that a further group of hundreds of scientists had signed the World Climate Declaration (WCD), which states there is no climate emergency. The scientists, led by a Nobel physics prize-winning professor, note that climate science has “degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science”. Social media critics claim the WCD is not signed by any ‘climate scientists’, by which they mean people with conservation and renamed geography degrees. It is however signed by an increasing number of people with qualifications, research experience and top academic posts in pure sciences such as chemistry and physics. I imagine His Majesty’s invitations are in the post.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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A very helpful example of pseudo science.
It’s the kind of garbage collectivists lap up while searching for policies to solve social problems. We’re all, not just the homeless, like little lab rats on which they can act upon to “make the world a better place”.
This is similar to the Universal Basic Income which is another fraud. Hand every person £1K per month on top of the welfare system which sets a minimum level of income. Ridiculous. If you are homeless you cannot be handed cash. You need to repair many other issues first. The Welfare state is broke and broken. Enough already.
UBI would actually be better than the current welfare system. No means test, no discrimination, no perverse incentives.
There are big differences in why people might be homeless (or appear to be). Complex mental or physical health issues make some people unsuitable to ‘normal living’. Given social housing or sheltered accommodation and these people will still find their way back on the streets. Similarly there are the drug addicts and alcoholics that exhibit severe anti-social behavioral traits that money alone wont fix. Then there are the ‘professional’ beggars, there are also those exploited by criminal gangs in what is known as modern slavery.
Only anecdotally, but in a country like the UK with it’s generous welfare system and councils having a statuary responsibility to house anyone – I cant think of any reason why a person could be on the streets for lack of money. The first time in my life I saw real, genuine hardship was on a stag-do in Eastern Europe and ironically also in the supposedly wealthy USA.
FYI, you can watch Eva Vlaardingerbroek’s new (35min) documentary about the sorts of people living on the streets across Germany here. You will not be in a rush to visit after watching this. She speaks German too, clever lass. I can’t see how major cities in the UK would differ much from this tbh. Worth watching.
https://twitter.com/EvaVlaar/status/1703157698219458989
The study may not have been perfect, but Occam’s Razor would say that giving them unconditional cash DOES make them better off on balance, at least at the margin. I know conservatives don’t like the idea of “something for nothing” (unless they themselves benefit directly from it, and not “those people”) and think that everything must have more strings attached than a spider’s web (often conflating the normative with the descriptive), but come on now. Behind such opposition, I detect “the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism” that is causing such cognitive dissonance.
Well this conservative doesn’t like the idea of giving his money away. Occam’s razor would suggest to me that in the long run, giving people money without giving them other help does more harm than good.
1) No one in favor of it, including the authors, is saying they should be denied other help. That is a straw man, as we can walk and chew gum at the same time. 2) The money can simply be created, like all money is when you really look at it, so you don’t have to “give away” your own money if that bothers you. 3) And finally, as the late, great John Maynard Keynes famously said long ago, “in the long run, we are all dead”.
(Mic drop)
“2) The money can simply be created, like all money is when you really look at it, so you don’t have to “give away” your own money if that bothers you”
I don’t have the ability to create money, so giving mine away does bother me. Money can be created with a printing press, value can only be created through work.
This study has already been savaged in the Canadian and other media.
One was the pre-screening – everyone with addiction or mental issues were excluded. Only shorter-term homeless were excluded.
“age 19 to 65, homeless for less than 2 y (homelessness defined as the lack of stable housing), Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and nonsevere levels of substance use (DAST-10) (21), alcohol use (AUDIT) (22), and mental health symptoms Colorado Symptom Index (CSI) (23) based on predefined thresholds”.
There were many dropouts from the study etc.
“Of the 732 participants, 229 passed all criteria (31%). Due to loss of contact with 114 participants despite our repeated attempts to reach them, we successfully enrolled 115 participants in the study as the final sample (50 cash, 65 noncash0”
There were many problems with this study.