In 2020, Dr. Matthew Wielicki, then still an Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Alabama, noticed a great deal of anxiety in his students. On the one hand, this was understandable, as the world was just entering the Covid crisis and there was a lot of ignorance and fear about the disease in society at large. However, the anxiety that Wielicki noticed among his students had another cause – fear of climate change and the climate crisis. “And they really were convinced that the planet was going to end in a decade or in 12 years or whatever the clock somewhere in New York on the side of a building said,” says Wielicki. There were female students who were on the verge of tears, saying that even though they came from large families, they didn’t want to have children because of the climate crisis. “They just couldn’t imagine bringing a child into a world that’s going to end at some point because there’d be too much CO2 in the atmosphere,” Wielicki recalls. He admits that, as a father of two, it was very heartbreaking to hear. “I couldn’t believe that the field that I was in, earth science, geology, was essentially tricking young students into believing that there was a crisis so big that it should be the number one thing that they think about when they’re planning the rest of their life, and whether or not they should have a family,” he says.
Climate crisis science: models predict the future
This is why Wielicki himself took a detailed look at climate-related issues and started explaining them to his students, as well as talking about them publicly on social media. For young people, the problem is that climate is only discussed in terms of crisis and disaster. For example: what should a young person think when he hears the world’s political leaders like UN Secretary-General António Guterres claim that humanity is on the highway to climate hell? Wielicki says there is little reason to blame the young who attack artworks with tomato soup or glue themselves to the pavement when they hear this. They’re passionate, and the constant proclamation of climate crisis and doom tells them that this is the right thing to do. They are also told that the same climate hell hypothesis is supported by ‘science’. But the problem is that the actual scientific evidence does not support the catastrophe we are being told is happening.
The trouble with today’s climate science, says Wielicki, is that it relies primarily on predictions of the future or climate models. There are different models, some of which we can clearly see have been proven wrong to date, i.e., they predicted too much warming. Wielicki points out that any model is only as good as the assumptions which it is based upon. “We can tweak these models to give us essentially any result we want. I always tell people, that look, all models are wrong, but some are useful. I think models are useful for sure, but never will a model outweigh the observable data,” Wielicki explains. “You cannot convince me that the environment is in a crisis or an emergency until you show that to me in three metrics – severe weather occurrences, the cost in insurance and loss of life. We have not seen any increase in any of them,” Wielicki says.
According to Wielicki, since 1880 the average temperature of the Earth has risen by 1.2-1.5 degrees, based on various measurements. What impact has this had on society? “If you look at that data, it’s very difficult to find any metric which would define the state of the planet as a crisis or an emergency or a catastrophe or anywhere near collapse – yet these are words that are used a lot in the media,” Wielicki says, adding that even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t actually use such words in its reports.
Fewer deaths due to weather
Wielicki cites the example of extreme weather events, which are constantly talked about as one of the inevitable consequences of climate change. In reality, we are not seeing an increase in extreme weather events or the associated increase in social damage. According to Wielicki, over the last quarter of a century, since around 2000, the number of natural disasters has decreased. At the same time, however, mankind has been spewing record levels of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere, mainly as a result of China’s rapid industrialisation. Since mainstream climate science sees CO2, especially the human emissions of the gas, as the main cause of climate damage, which should also bring us extreme weather events, there is an immediate and obvious contradiction there, but this is not being discussed or taken into account.
Secondly, Wielicki gives a simple example of how the number of people who have died as a result of bad weather and natural disasters has changed over the last 100 years. “We’ve reduced the deaths associated with weather-related disasters by 96% or 98%,” he notes. On the one hand, this may show that the number of extreme weather events has decreased somewhat, but on the other hand, it certainly shows that humanity is better able to cope with such disasters. The role of cheap and available energy in this coping, i.e., fossil fuels, should not be underestimated either. Stronger buildings, the ability to move people quickly away from the storm areas, the provision of effective material help or, for example, medical aid to the affected areas, etc. – all this can be achieved if you have the resource of energy to do it.
So, according to Wielicki, the data show that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have gone up somewhat over the last century or so, and that the planet as a whole has warmed a little, but not that we are heading for a catastrophe. “There’s no other metric that would argue that society is somehow being harmed right now by the 1.5°C or whatever degrees of warming we’ve had since 1880,” Wielicki says.
“We need to be resilient”
As a geologist, Wielicki undoubtedly has a better-than-average understanding of how our planet has evolved in the first place, and how its climate has been in a constant state of flux. Today’s climate science, however, links climate change primarily to the increasing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, especially its anthropogenic component. Scientists who doubt or dispute this are labelled climate deniers. Wielicki points out that we know very well from Earth’s relatively recent history that major climate changes, such as the Medieval Warm Period (ca. 950-1250) or the subsequent Little Ice Age (ca. 14th to mid-19th century, precise timing depending on the location), occurred without any significant change in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere. “If there’s anything that I argue, it’s that we need to be resilient. We should stop pretending that if we changed or lowered our emissions the climate would stop changing. That’s the true denial of climate right there,” Wielicki says. “What we need to accept is that regardless of the CO2 in the atmosphere, we are going to have climate change and those shifts could occur over timescales of decades or centuries, and we should be prepared. And being prepared means we need access to cheap, reliable energy,” he adds.
But the world is moving in the opposite direction under the leadership of today’s political leaders. One of the main objectives is to fight CO2 emissions and to do so by phasing out fossil fuels, among other measures. However, according to Wielicki, the planners have not quite thought everything through. First of all, wind and solar power are unreliable substitutes because they can only be produced when the conditions are right, i.e., when the wind blows and the sun shines. In addition, they need constant support from the taxpayer, because when they can be produced, i.e., sold as energy to the grid, the price of electricity on the market will be low since there is a lot of it at that particular time. So in order for investors to build up these capacities, they need price guarantees from governments or taxpayer support. And on top of that, you still need to additionally build up controllable capacity to ensure that electricity is always available.
Wielicki also says that we need to understand that fossil fuels are not just liquids that we put in our cars at the petrol station but are essential to many aspects of our lives. “About four billion people on the planet are being fed off of agricultural crops that are being fertilised with synthetic fertilizers that are being created from fossil fuels. So you can’t just look at one side of a picture,” Wielicki explains, adding that the increases in atmospheric CO2 levels have actually also increased yields.
In addition, Wielicki says, it is worth thinking that we need to replace many of today’s fossil-fuel-based materials in everyday use, such as plastics, lubricants, oils, chemicals, etc., with new ones if we really want to phase out fossil fuels. “We have to ask what are the benefits that fossil fuels have given the society? And then let’s weigh that against the possible detrimental effects that these climate models argue will happen, but haven’t happened in the observable data yet,” he says.
The rise of the new green colonialism
Programmed into this whole Western orientation towards CO2 reduction, Wielicki says, is hypocrisy on several levels. For a start, it’s worth recognising that by reducing CO2 emissions in Europe or North America, we have effectively decided that we do not produce the goods we need here, but will produce them elsewhere in the world. “We pat ourselves on the back and say: look, we’ve lowered our CO2 emissions by this much! But all we’ve done is essentially offshored that industry to China and India, They do it dirtier. They have no regard for things like environmental policy. And so the global CO2 is going up faster than ever,” Wielicki notes.
While the big Asian countries are ramping up the use of coal to satisfy their energy appetite, many African countries don’t have a similar option. According to Wielicki, this is directly linked to the UN’s policy of not wanting these countries to increase their use of fossil fuels. This means, for example, that farm work that is done elsewhere by tractor still has to be done by many Africans with their hands. A large proportion of Africans also have little or no access to electricity. Food is cooked indoors on open fires, burning dung and wood.
The resulting smoke leads to respiratory illnesses and many people die as a result. All this could be easily avoided, according to Wielicki, by giving them access to propane bottles and gas cookers. “It might make them breathe easier at night. It might make their health better. But it’s going to increase the atmospheric CO2, and that is something we can’t have. These poor people must suffer and live in poverty because we need to save the planet. It’s so hypocritical,” Wielicki says.
What’s more, according to Wielicki, our hypocrisy lies in the fact that at the same time, we want to mine the minerals we need for our own energy transition, such as cobalt, in that very same Africa. “We’re switching to very mineral and energy intensive technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles. And we’re taking all of these raw materials from Africa,” he says. “I think this is going to be, probably, the legacy of this green revolution. I call it the new green colonialism. It’s unfortunately going to keep hundreds of millions of poor people in developing nations in poverty for decades longer than they ever needed to be,” Wielicki adds.
Climate change as a game of money and power
Various examples like this suggest that it all is not being done to somehow increase human welfare and save the climate, but there are other reasons. According to Wielicki, this is illustrated by the fact that we are being offered ever more fantastic solutions to the climate crisis and global warming. For example, the Bill Gates-backed plan to cool the Earth through geoengineering, the idea of spraying sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere and reflecting the Sun’s rays back into space before they reach the ground. What could go wrong?
Gates is also an early investor in other well-known ‘climate technologies’. One of these involves using large fans to try to capture CO2 from the air and then turn it into rock. This is an extraordinarily expensive operation, but in reality the profits of the billionaire venture capitalists who develop it and initially invested in it are paid for by ordinary citizens – the U.S. taxpayer is already subsidising the CO2 capture plants under construction to the tune of billions of dollars. Wielicki says it is comical to listen to Gates himself boast that because he pays for CO2 capture, it offsets the CO2 emissions of his own private jet flights.
“Can you imagine if you came home and you’re like: ‘I know sweetheart, I cheated on you but look: I bought into this cheating capture, so it doesn’t count. Because I paid this guy and he’s not going to cheat on his wife, and that allows me to cheat on you. So it’s all good.’ It’s so absolutely ridiculous,” Wielicki observes. He also points out that removing CO2 from the atmosphere in this way is a complete waste of money. “It’s like trying to empty the ocean one spoonful at a time. The amount that they’re capturing is so minuscule. And the amount that they’re spending to capture it – I mean, CO2 is the new gold, platinum, because of the cost of that. What a waste of money. Plant some trees,” Wielicki says.
According to Wielcki, money is a major factor pushing the ongoing ‘green revolution’. But most of the money that is being made is not actually in such CO2 capture technologies and similar projects. It is in energy and transport. “The energy sector is one of the largest sectors in any country’s economy. Transportation comes a close second a lot of times. Radically transitioning and reinventing the energy and transportation sectors has a huge amount of potential for money, for wealth,” Wielicki says.
In addition, governments can also raise tax revenue through climate policies. This in turn means, says Wielicki, that, alongside money, a key driver behind these processes is the empowerment of governments, whether through additional taxation or simply by increasing control over people’s lives. “There is no process in the economy, including your bodily processes of just breathing and eating and breaking wind, unfortunately, that doesn’t produce a greenhouse gas,” Wielicki notes. While normally most people would oppose a government plan to interfere more in their lives, now people are being swayed because it is supposedly about saving the planet. “This is the perfect tool for government to interject itself into people’s lives. What you buy, what you eat, what you drive, where you shop, the type of job you have, the type of furniture you buy, where you recreate,” Wielicki adds. The climate, he says, is like a front, a Trojan horse for building a system like socialism.
The politicisation of science
The collusion of money and power has also led to a situation in which climate scientists, irrespective of the actual data, are essentially being asked to tacitly acknowledge a climate crisis with catastrophic consequences. Failure to do so will have consequences – being labelled as a climate denier, loss of funding and jobs, etc. Such scientists are also no longer welcome to publish their work in respected scientific journals, which is also a major setback for their scientific careers. The funding of universities and research institutions as a whole could also be at risk if the basic positions everybody needs to take today on climate issues tend to be denied by someone within the institution.
Wielicki calls such a situation “politicisation of science”, whereby a manufactured consensus is created on a particular issue and all scientists are required to accept this consensus. Understandably, science, which is supposed to consist of the constant testing of different hypotheses and ideas, of arguing with each other, and of the pursuit of truth, becomes, in the course of such a process, unscientific, ideological or simply a matter of faith. On the other hand, creating such consensus is about the control of information, which allows the wider public to be offered a story that coincides with the aims of the powers that be. The reputations of scientists who disagree with this story or with the adopted consensus can be destroyed by declaring them to be disseminators of misinformation. “We saw that with Covid. That was a rapid politicisation of science. And we’re seeing it with climate change. Climate change has been a little bit more slow in moving into politicisation of science,” comments Wielicki, who has also been publicly smeared for his scientifically sound positions on climate.
Wielicki’s resignation from his job at the university is also directly linked to this politicisation of science. No one was directly driving him away, but in a situation where his own Chair and even the university President were receiving weekly emails and phone calls about his “unacceptable views on climate”, he saw no point in continuing – he would probably not have been given a tenured academic position anyway. In addition, he had long been averse to the so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies implemented by the U.S. universities, which means that more attention is paid to a student’s racial or ethnic origin than to their skills, knowledge, commitment and effort, with those classified as ‘minorities’ being given an advantage in access to studies. Criticism of this policy also made him apparently uncomfortable for the university.
Although Wielicki comes from an academic family, grew up on campus and was destined to have a career like his parents, he says he has no regrets about leaving. He says that his true vocation as a researcher or teacher is to share information, and he can now do this even more successfully than before through the articles he publishes on his Substack Irrational Fear. He cites the example of how, in the past, he might have been happy if his published research had been cited 150 times, but now, thanks to social media sharing, some of his articles can be seen by 50,000 people in just a few hours.
Wielicki is also, of course, pleased that he was able to reassure his young students, to whom he started to explain climate change in a fact-based manner. “This is the first generation, these young 20 year-olds, who have essentially been told that the planet is going to end since they’ve been old enough to understand and read and write. This has been pounded into their heads. It must be just so exhausting to have been told that the planet’s going to end forever. What ambition do you have to sacrifice now and to do things that will ensure a better life for your future, like getting a good education or going to the gym and eating healthy? No, the planet’s going to end. Screw it. I’m just going to eat chips and play video games and wait for the planet to end,” Wielicki says, describing the potential predicament of many of these young people. “We’re robbing them of their ambitions,” he adds, noting that bringing a perspective that didn’t tell young people about the imminent demise of the planet was refreshing to them. “The idea that humans are like a parasite on the planet, that’s just not an idea that really tracks well with young people. They’re tired of that. They don’t believe that,” Wielicki says.
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It is a stupid word anyway. The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa mentioned it in one of his films. A twig is easily broken but many twigs together are hard to break.That is the meaning of the bound branches. Like a family and Japanese ‘fascism’ has always had a family feel. I would rather live under a Shogunate than live under the WEF. Safetyism becomes such a habit. The emasculation of a population is easier then you think because you are pushing at an open door,.If you want to keep a young lad strong and vital then you need to put him through his paces.
Well this ought to please Nazi Faeser. The intimidation appears to be working as not everyone wants to gamble with their family’s safety. Nice bit of projection from the Leftard government and their bitches, the MSM, here too;
”A successful entrepreneur who was running for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in district elections says he is withdrawing his candidacy due to serious threats to his family.
The 40-year-old Matthias Beerbaum cited “threats against and danger to” his family, although he did not give specific details surrounding the potential threat. He said the decision was not easy for him, but he did not want to deal with endangering his family.
“This should not happen in a democracy,” he announced in a press release on Thursday evening last week.
The threats against his family come at a time when the media and the government have compared the AfD to the Nazi party and claimed the party is “anti-democratic.” Many within the left-liberal ruling coalition are now calling for a complete ban on the opposition party due to its popularity in the polls. At the same time, the country’s far-left interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has called to shut down bank accounts for those who donate to “extremist” right-wing parties and, in conjunction with the federal police and the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), plans to initiate a series of new laws to target the opposition.”
https://rmx.news/germany/this-shouldnt-happen-in-a-democracy-afd-politician-withdraws-from-election-race-after-threats-to-his-family/
Filthy communist bitch. Doing her party duty. We arenliving in a re-comnunising Europe. Very dangerous times
Nationalism is a blunt and clumsy tool but given the nastiness of the refinement of the system it is simply the only thing left. We all sit back and experience ourselves growing poorer. We got used to that in 2008 and now we are told to get used to successive waves of it. We have British families who are living on the streets or who can’t afford to live. How much longer do you think that you can keep up the spiel? That we are the country with the best of everything? They always go too far. We are a sick and demoralised population but they are really taking the Mick now and I sense that people are beginning to ken it. Even the huge white clots in the venous and arterial system – this is becoming mainstream.
In the UK I believe we had a coup executed so perfectly that nobody noticed. Kwarteng was removed and Hunt, his economic opposite installed, and then Truss was removed and a WEF puppet moved into place. All carried out by a bit of hedge fund market manipulation.It is beyond me that hardly anbyody bats an eyelid at this.
Eugyppius’s analysis is a good read but it only really holds if you believe that governments and not corporations/banks wield the ultimate control. I’m with Simon Elmer and Agamben. It’s the return of fascism, Mussolini style.
I think this explanatory approach is far too complicated. Faeser’s plans aren’t referred to as fascist by our so-called “anglo-saxon friends & allies” because of something they are but because of something she is, namely, German, be it in name only and probably very much against her will. Everybody who was born after 1945, more so if he was born in global Anglo-Saxia (whatever became of the Normannic conquerors we don’t know) was brought up on a constant ideological and cultural diet of “Nazi Stuff” were evil German Nazis are always getting beaten by the anglo-saxian knights in their shining armour fighting for all that is good, just and beautiful in the world¹. On top of that comes the political sphere where “Nazis” are still everyone’s most beloved universal villain, not the least of a certain state in the middle-east which will take German money with one hand and conduct anti-German propaganda campaigns with the other.
The long and short of that is that, for the typical Anglo-Saxian, Germans simply equals Nazis and things will likely remain in this way for at least some time to come. Hence, when Faeser clumsily imitates the US democrats, eg, believing in the panacea of tightening weapon law to solve all interesting social ills, that’s obviously evil and since she’s German, this proves that she’s Nazi. And that’s all.
Da drüben hassen sie uns und dagegen gibt es, wenn man nicht verächtlich sein will, nur ein Mittel: Furchtbar zu sein.
[Jünger, „Feuer und Blut“]
¹ This propaganda campaign has been running since 1914, originally using Huns instead of Nazis as the latter term didn’t yet exist at that time. Its substance hasn’t changed.
Boring twaddle.
I’m sorry if I failed to enterain you. This might have been caused by me not trying.
“for the typical Anglo-Saxian, Germans simply equals Nazis” – This is not true.
I don’t know how representative this school of thought is, however, the Mogwai-text above which starts with Nazi Faeser is a nice example of it. Faeser is a SPD-politician, ie, the from the original socialist German party and her political goals are closely aligned with those the US democrats. This means she’s a dedicated antifascist and antinationalist and isn’t exactly friendlyly (?) disposed towards Germans she basically considers the enemy. Yet, she’s being labelled as Nazi. As this certainly cannot be because of her politics, her German heritage would seem to be the reason for it.
Hitler was a leftist, he adhered to 8 out of 10 points of Marx communist manifesto dropping only the property theft and inheritance theft parts of the manifesto. There is no such thing as the far right, this would be a society with no state, rather communism and racism are two sects within the left that seek to entirely dictate citizens lives. Socialists need to own Auschwitz as much they own Stalin’s great terror.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html
Out of my head, I can immediately tell that he also certainly didn’t plan to collectivize farming in order to turn a bunch of family-run, relatively small agricultural businesses into large units of industrialized agricultural production in order to eliminate the difference between urban and rural areas. He was in favour of the exact opposite of that.
In order to address the remainder of this load of tosh (the article, there are some remarkable phantasists on the current political right), it’s sufficient to say that Hitler denounced Marxism in the strongest terms in Mein Kampf as he believed it to be the final stage of the Jewish world conspiracy for total domination of the world by Jews and effective elimination of the German race.
It’s not tosh read the article. You’ve bought a left/right paradigm that makes no sense. If the left see the answer as being the state, and right the answer self reliance. How can far right be the complete control by the state? That’s a philosophical contradiction in terms. The other clue is Hitler called himself a socialist, but according to you apparently he wasn’t.
You are also ignorant as well rude. The Reichsnährstand had legal authority over farming with price controls, and conducted command and control policy over farming determining what seeds were sown, fixing prices, overseeing all production. You know rather like erm a command and control economy. That policy led to food shortages as early as 1936.
The origin of the political terms left and right was the sitting order in revolutionary national assembly of France. On the left sat the people who were in favour of a democractic republic and on the right, the more conservative ones who wanted to keep a constitutional monarchy. 20 century American neoliberals with their weird ideas about ‘statism’ weren’t represented because this ideology didn’t exist yet.
BTW, it’s rude to comment on other people instead of their opinions. The latter is just critcism.
Don’t be so rude then. I’m perfectly aware of the origin of left thanks. In practical terms how left and right manifest themselves is exactly as I describe. It’s perfectly obvious fascism is a leftist philosophy, it’s just communism with slightly less theft of property.
I wasn’t commenting on you. And referring to an article written by someone else which starts with an obviously invented quote — the one about Hitler having learnt a lot by reading Marx which makes no sense at all as Marx published tomes about economic theory and not revolutionary politics, that would have been Lenin – as tosh is entirely appropriate, because it is tosh.
In practical terms, the neoliberals are targetting conservative voters and hence, they seek to label their theories about radical change of society as right and everyone who opposes them as left. This makes no historical sense and hence, it’s best ignored. Especially since it has a decidedly Marxist tinge to it as they’re really aiming for the Marxist Paradise regained! state of a state-less society of autonomous communities.
Communism just with private property is contradictio in adiecto (English contradiction in terms) because the abolishment of private property is the very core principle of communism. Without it, it isn’t communism.
Touching moment not long ago when my new twenty-something son-in-law, who I think is a wonderful boy, reacted to something I mentioned (probably too casually) about Hitler being fundamentally a leftist with “Wait, no that’s wrong – I did this in my A-levels – he was an extreme right-winger.”. Bless.
https://youtu.be/hTXSKaogA2c?si=fKsKfgzTZj1GzTNz
The MET up to no good again with one of their dubious “officers” making up their own laws.
Frightening stuff.
No, no, no. Hitler was a radical Marxist. Nazis were socialists. Its in the darn name of their parry. They didn’t come up with their name as a joke. A true far right would be extreme free enterprise people who would almost want no government interference in anyone’s life at all.
Comkuniam and Nazism were both branches of leftism. Hitler controlled industry and people’s lives by implementing controlling policies and laws. He behaved almost exactly like communists did and do – control people and things by making more and more constricting laws against whatever they do not want or like. This is why the left always throws around their interpretation of the nazis as far right, fascists. To sow confusion in our minds.
See this article from the Independent, back when it was somewhat open minded and unleftist.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html
And this excellent video from Tik
https://youtu.be/0q16cq25SCY?si=Keun2_sxKXDQLzJ0
I generally agree with Eugyppius, but in this case I think he has confused two separate ideas. Perhaps this comes from his German viewpoint.
Fascism is the concept that the State should rule, in cooperation with privately owned and run businesses. Mussolini’s Italy was fascist.
Wartime Germany, on the other hand, was Nazi, or National Socialist. National Socialism is similar to fascism, but not the same.
It seems to me that Nazism is more collectivist than fascism. It desires complete suppression of individuality so that all individuals become part of the State, whereas fascism envisages more a complete cooperation of individuals so that they are all aligned in the same direction.