Late last year, Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary for Global Communications at the United Nations, told a World Economic Forum ‘Disinformation’ seminar that we “own the science” around climate change, and we think the world should know it, so we partnered with Google to ensure only UN results appear. Needless to say, this arrogant claim merely hints at the scale of disinformation practised by global elites in pushing numerous messages designed to spread fearful command-and-control societal propaganda.
PR Flak Fleming also noted that the UN worked with Tik Tok on a project called ‘Team Halo’ to boost Covid messaging. This was said to be another trusted messenger project, “where we trained scientists around the world and some doctors on Tik Tok, and we had TikTok working with us”.
With climate, as with some of the Covid narrative, science has long taken a back seat. Any scientific findings that suggest human-produced carbon dioxide is not the overriding thermostat that determines the Earth’s climate are either insulted or ignored. Only ‘settled’ science messages from presumably ‘trained’ scientists are allowed. It is perhaps no accident that Google’s capture by the UN came at a time when it ‘demonetised’ a blog detailing the global satellite temperature record. This work by two scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, is the most accurate record of global temperature. As we have seen, it shows considerably less warming since 1979 than surface datasets, that have been adjusted upwards on a retrospective basis. Google took its action on the patently false grounds that the page was supplying “harmful claims“.
Of course, much of this narrative is indicative of a desire by elites in an inter-connected world to enforce more controlling collectivism on local and international populations. Green politics mostly arose on the Left, attracting activists who have always sought collectivist approaches to often messy, individualistic human activities.
We must be grateful to the Guardian for providing a ‘long read’ (how your correspondent suffers for his art) detailing the way that political activists infiltrate the climate debate in order to push this long-cherished, capitalism-hating political narrative. “One of the goals of system change is to supersede individual virtue,” writes U.S. correspondent Rebecca Solnit (pictured). By “individual virtue”, of course, she means individual choice. “Electrification will have happened because of the collective action that takes shape as policy and regulation,” she adds.
Solnit quotes the climate writer Mary Heglar, who suggests that for too long the climate fight has been limited to scientists and policy experts. What we “desperately need” are more artists. Solnit suggests “winning” the popular imagination by providing new stories on climate. Already, she says that “climate denial” has been rendered largely obsolete by climate-driven catastrophes promoted by activists and journalists. By this, she refers to the non-stop pseudoscientific attribution of every bad weather event to humans burning fossil fuel. We have to find stories of a liveable future, “stories of popular power that motivate people to do what it takes to make the world we need”, urges Solnit.
Stories, it might be noted, that persuade people to give up products that work like gas boilers and internal combustion engines, in favour of manifestly inferior substitutes. Stories, for instance, as spun by Solnit, that suggest mining for lithium and cobalt will be an “inevitable part of building renewables”. Thus important questions over the finite supplies of both these materials, and the use of children to mine cobalt, are conveniently ignored. It is estimated that 225 tonnes of the Earth’s crust must be disturbed to supply just one 1,000 pound car battery, but Solnit points to the “far vaster scale and impact of fossil fuel mining”. Of course it can be argued that the modern-day extraction of oil and gas is a remarkably clean process, requiring little more than a hole in the ground. No children need die in the process.
Old-school Marxists have always relied on demonising the rich to promise a better future for all. So Solnit runs with the story that we need to punish the rich with their large carbon footprints, and “the global majority don’t need to change much”. This is highly disingenuous. Lifestyle changes proposed by green elites become more extreme by the month – this month, meat off the menu because cows fart, next month, dangerous fertilisers and farms impounded. Billions of people will be affected by diet, travel and energy bans and restrictions, and billions more will be denied the life-enhancing progress enjoyed in the industrialised countries over the last 200 years.
Last year, green elites were shocked by polling evidence that suggested four in ten people across five continents believed climate change was mainly due to natural causes. This despite decades of climate catastrophising to promote Net Zero policies. The 30-country IPSOS survey found that the level of climate scepticism was very similar in all age categories, but there was wide divergence when political leanings were taken into account. Across seven countries surveyed, 28% of supporters of the Left were sceptical of human-caused climate change, a figure that rose to 50% of those on the Right.
The underlying climate message is hard-core Marxist. Recognising the reality of climate breakdown means limiting the freedom of the individual “in the name of the wellbeing of the collective”, Solnit states. There is another way to count wealth and abundance for the many including “meaningful work and purposeful lives”, she suggests.
You will be happy in your work and prosperous, declared the Communist posters of old. “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”, muttered citizens of the old Soviet Union quietly among themselves.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Delingpole said so in his excellent book watermelons. I was once a brain washed climate bedwetter but when one looks at the geologic climate history it’s very obvious this is a scam.
For me, I think it was largely the realisation that when every other cause promoted by the progressive establishment was anti-human and based on lies, for climate change to be the sole exception looked implausible.
For somebody who’s in a hurry and can’t take the time for a deep dive into climate change attribution (which some should certainly do) I suggest there are two relatively easy tells that it’s a scam:
1) There’s been no cost benefit analysis for the appallingly damaging proposal to wind down fossil fuels, which remain 80%-90% of the energy supply for most countries, before the alternatives are available at sufficient scale.
2) The out of context reporting of bad weather events (never good weather events) to make them seem unprecedented or part of a trend, which they aren’t when seen in context, and changes in the colours used on weather maps during hot weather. If that’s the best evidence they can provide after all the money that’s been spent on climate change research, then it’s probably not a problem.
The other way to know is when the government and their experts tell you it’s for your safety. Instant alarm bells.
So true
Watermelons: green on the outside, RED on the inside.
I was once (over a decade ago) a die hard climate alarmist, and if I still believe what I believed all those years ago I may well have being gluing myself to roads or chucking soup at works of art. When you truly believe the more extreme claims of climate alarmists it is genuinely scary. I remember reading a book by James Lovelock which ended with a fictional account set in the future he claimed we faced due to global warming involving a group of people trying to reach the arctic as it was the last habitable place on Earth and the 6 or 7 billion people who couldn’t get there were doomed to die young. This terrified me and I came to the conclusion that anything, including full blown communism would be a better alternative.
I mention this to make the point that comparing climate alarmism to Marxism goes both ways. Maybe some Marxists are using climate alarmism to promote/justify their agenda. At the same time some climate alarmists might see Marxism as the only solution, and may not even realise that they’re preaching Marxism, and see it as preferable to billions of people dying
Well you learned an important lesson——–“Do not Believe things”. —–Try to know or not know, but do NOT “believe”. ——-Believing things is RELGION. —-PS James Lovelock recently admitted that he and others preaching about the climate that they were WRONG. He says he wrote books about the climate changing dramatically because of CO2 but now admits that “It just hasn’t happened”——The idea that we are changing the climate with our use of fossil fuels is a plausible one until you look at the data and the evidence. There is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event as CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. When the facts don’t fit the theory, then that theory is WRONG. It does not matter how many bureaucrats stand at a podium. It does not matter how many “scientists” preach their “official science” which is really just modelling full of assumptions and speculations for political purposes. And when you understand those politics, you realise that climate is being used to create a world run by unelected unaccountable bureaucracy controlling all aspects of our lives. This is clearly not about the climate. It is about the world’s wealth and resources and control of that. Some may call it Climate Marxism. ——But feel free to choose whatever term you want, but it certainly is NOT science. It is pseudo science used to manipulate the public where most are too busy with work and family life to question every issue
“I was once a brain washed climate bedwetter”
I am very fortunate. Never in my life have I believed in ‘climate change, global warming’ or whatever other BS they want to use.
Agreed, Huxley.
And beyond the fundamental implausibility of CO2 as climate control knob, there is the fact that the High Priests of the GangGreen cult are obvious charlatans and liars who have always refused to debate or to show their ‘working out’
But even that pales beside the rush to Ruinable Energy.
The Chinese proverb advises making sure the new pair of shoes are OK before throwing away the old ones.
The tell for me was the medieval warm period and the frost fairs on the frozen Thames. I mean clearly it has been far colder and far hotter in the UK than it is now.
And the fact that they have been screeching that we’re all going to die for my entire life.
I was told at school in 1986 that temperatures would be as hot as the equator in Devon and Cornwall in the winter by 2000. Sitting here on the Devon/Cornwall border right now, it’s bloody freezing outside, as usual. The weather is as miserable as it’s always been in winter. Every generation is told they’re 10-15 years of extinction. By the time they get there and realise they’ve been hoaxed, another generation is behind them, convinced ‘The End is Nigh!’ I believe in caring for the land, which means farming it and not chucking poisons around willynilly – in other words, being careful, respectful and thinking things through. CO2 is a convenient bogeyman. Like Alexander ‘Boris’ Johnson’s COVID-19 ‘invisible mugger’ it’s an invisible force created to scare impressionable young children.
It is just about other people getting the money, power or fame.
With the authoritarian and socialist consequences along the way and on top of it.
But how of all people can a Tory government pass a law that forbids me to let my property, or forces me to change my functioning central heating?
On top of that, what they want me to do soon is often technologically non-existent and won’t be, makes no sense at all technically and actually worsens the substance of a house and the health of its inhabitants.
How anyone can still believe in anthropogenic climate change, after reading the excellent Ian Plimer article in today’s Round-Up, or in the CO2 hoax after reading the same author’s piece on it, or the recent Lindzen/Mannheimer ones, is beyond me.
But then, the younger the dumber these days, and as they now also fully believe the many absurdities they have been indoctrinated with, they will also commit many atrocities.
JayBee – where could I find the articles you referred to, by Plimer, Lindzen and Mannheimer? Thanks
Start with will happer. His talks articulate the scam very clearly.
Plimer’s books are all available via Amazon, or any other book supplier
I enjoyed this clip posted on YouTube by The Heartland Institute 4 years ago, wherein climate experts point out that the Earth has been warmer than today for more than 90% of the last 10,000 years and for more than 90-95% of the Earth’s 4.6 billion year existence.
It’s quite a good response when the climate catastrophists argue that we are experiencing record temperatures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqejXs7XgsU
Most of the time on earth there was no ice at the poles. You will find that every claim about climate change is a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency but with no evidence at all for it.
At the core, Marxism is an utopical theory how mankind achieve paradise on earth. That’s certainly not the plan of the would-be planet-savers.
I suspect they think they can achieve paradise for themselves…at our expense.
Me too.
But another opinion I have is that political discussions are best kept free of well-known -ism-terms. I don’t care if the Nazis did A (Hitler used flushing toilets) or the Bolsheviks did B, I care if A and B make sense (or not).
Yes, I think that’s a very good point
Marxists have been looking of ways to push their agenda on the world for decades.
In 1996, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev emphasized the importance of using climate alarmism to advance socialist Marxist objectives: “The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order.”
Qiuote from: In Their Own Words: Climate Alarmists Debunk Their ‘Science’ (forbes.com)
All those fossil fuels found under the deserts of the middle east, were once forests – so the experts tell us. Well to go from greenery to vast swathes of sand must have taken a change in the climate – in this case by rather a lot of degrees of it, not just a couple as all the alarmists are worried about. And this occurred without the burning of fossil fuels, pointing to a rather more natural occurence. Also pointing to the theory of increased CO2 and a climate catastrophe being BS.
The climate change agenda may have been exploited by Marxists but my take is that the ideology is sustained by kneejerk wet liberals in the upper income bracket or at least their parents are.
A lot of what I think are quite damaging trends are sustained by kneejerk wet liberals who are determined to seem (to their friends and to themselves) NICE. I guess it’s nice to be nice, but I think it’s overrated and the pursuit of the appearance of niceness at all costs leads people into supporting idiotic causes.
It is interesting to observe variations in trends like vegetarianism in different countries. The most inteersting finding to my eyes was how easy it was to push people in a certain direction. When I moved to Scaninavia they ate whale and wore seal and so did I. But there is a sense of this globalist attack everywhere; I feel pretective of Scandinavian countries like Odin said. Listen to Odin he won’t let you down but you really have to listen.
|Like Solzhenitsyin said of Latvians, yes there are good and bad in all people but he never met a bad one. Believe me if it came to it I woulf fight for the Norwegian people until the death.
I owe Norway so much and I will use every ounce of my energy to make that clear. I don’t care how long I have to wait to go there again. I can tell you straight as an Englishman that the Norwegians are a fine people.
This was obvious from the start. It was communism rebranded. Net Zero Marxism in fake green
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
I’m in my early 60s. The climate now is the same as it has been throughout my life. We get an occasionally very hot spell in the summer; an occasional very snowy winter; sometimes heavy rain which causes flooding …. and I agree that the flooding has become more frequent but that is due to human activity (or lack of it) in dredging rivers, building on flood plains, concreting inappropriately for convenience etc.
The Climate Change Scam is straight out of Animal Farm: the Elite Prize Pigs who preach at us have no intention of changing their lifestyles. The lesser animals must do all the sacrificing “for the greater good.”
It is obviously about POWER, CONTROL and MONEY. And if you vote for a branch of the Westminster Uni-Party, you’re endorsing it.
Is there a small typo at the start of the 2nd paragraph? “PR Flake” would be a better description for the Under Secretary for Global Communications at the United Nations? PR is the most worthless of all jobs. If your organisation is doing something good the world will find out about it naturally. Similarly if you’re doing something bad. All PR people do is lie; a.k.a.being economical with the actuality
The climate change religion is the first step to feudalism.
When a country like the UK is prepared to spend a couple of trillion on something that will have no effect, then you begin to realise that the purpose of that spending is NOT what is claimed. ————If you don’t realise that then you deserve all the impoverishment coming your way. I saw on TV a person called Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute claim that although the UK could make little difference to global climate because we are only responsible for less than 1% of human CO2 emissions, we should still proceed because we should “lead the world”. —Are you kidding me? We should spend 2 trillion for NOTHING to eco posture on the world stage? The UK has a health service on its knees. We have no control over who arrives in the country. We have doubled energy prices with absurd climate policies so that the poorest cannot afford to heat their house. ——We are in no position to be leading the world.
I think the Net Zero climate change agenda is Malthusian rather than Marxist, see https://metatron.substack.com/p/why-do-so-few-of-the-general-public?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2.
‘…he concludes that this isn’t about the planet, but rather the boredom of the bourgeoisie, “and they don’t care who has to pay to alleviate it”.’
The key to understanding the afflicted climate activist is the expression on his face if his pet bogey is undermined for a moment.
It is otiose to try to persuade him that his fears are unfounded. The best you can do by that approach is to unbalance and thereby terrify him for a moment, after which he will hate you. He must externalize his pent-up malice, or it turns from below on him.
If you want to defuse the climate alarm you must give its zealots some other reason to believe mankind is wicked and must atone by totally changing his way of life.
Remember the global cooling scare of the early 80s, the imminent new ice age? Can’t we get that going again?