Only in America. The recent Heartland Climate Conference in the ‘Free State’ of Florida was about much more than its headline billing. It was about a confirmation of traditional American values, free enterprise, free speech, patriotism, the nuclear family and tolerance for religious faith. In short, everything the modern Left despises. Climate change’s cult worship of a new religion of Gaia is just another stick to beat America’s traditional values and impose the collectivist new order of societal control of all thought, word and deed. Nothing like this ferocity of opposition is to be found in Europe. In the U.K., the number of elected Conservative politicians genuinely pushing back against the Left’s destructive agenda can be almost counted on the hand of Dr. Ian Plimer’s sawmill worker.
This is not a gathering of conspiracy nuts. There are no rabbit holes to escape from the reality of basic, hard sceptical science in this gathering. One of the seminar rooms was named in memory of Walt Cunningham, a physicist, past conference attender and an all round American hero having piloted the first Apollo mission. A climate sceptic and realist who did believe man went to the moon, a view shared, understandably, by fellow sceptics Buzz Aldrin and Apollo 17 scientist Harrison Schmitt. The latter, incidentally, helps confirm Plimer’s illustrated suggestion that geologists who believe humans cause all or most climate change are in exceedingly short supply.
One particularly insidious way the Left seeks economic control is through environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores. These enable unelected supra-national interest groups to change financial systems and traditional ways of assessing risk and allocating capital. This is a planned move away from shareholder capitalism to ‘stakeholder’ collectivism, where companies are punished if they fail to show sufficient subservience to climate and social justice issues.
Last year, Marlo Oaks, the Utah State Treasurer, pulled $100 million from Blackrock, one of the foremost promoters of ESG investing. Companies like Blackrock are not just holding shares in companies, they are engaging with them and changing them, said Oaks. Using the example of ExxonMobil, he noted that companies like Blackrock forced it to sell assets, which promptly ended up under Chinese control. “This engagement is undermining America,” he charged. When you shut down alternative viewpoints, you destroy innovation, he said. You end up with ‘experts’ running society such as the WEF, UN and the EU. “They all do such a wonderful job,” he added (to laughter).
Already there are a number of examples of the chaos that ESG is starting to cause with the catastrophe in Sri Lanka being the most prominent example to date. In April 2021, the Sri Lankan Government went down the ESG route at the urging of various international bodies and banned chemical fertiliser. Needless to say, crop production fell off a cliff with food shortages and hunger, followed by political collapse as the then president was run out of town. The Netherlands is following a similar EU directive and ordering massive cuts in the use of nitrogen fertiliser. Netherlands is a major world food grower and exporter, but its Government is driving many of its farmers off the land.
What is the problem with nitrogen you might ask? It comprises 78% of the atmosphere and plants, which take it from the soil, cannot grow without it. Well, it combines with oxygen and forms nitrous oxide, which, of course, is a greenhouse gas, sometimes known as a ‘satanic gas’. David Legates is a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware and he notes that because of margin of error considerations, climate models do not actually calculate any warming effect. In fact, in the atmosphere, nitrous oxide accounts for just 334 parts per billion. If you want to stop N2O in the atmosphere, you have to stop agriculture, argues Legates. At the heart of this war on fertiliser is a grim Malthusian notion. If you cut down on its use, you will reduce the world’s population. Since the 1960s, world food production has soared and the number of people in poverty around the world has declined. If they get away with a fertiliser ban, they will kill half the planet, Legates noted.
But, of course, in rabbit hole territory we have the increasingly fanatical George Monbiot in full St Simeon Stylites mode climbing onto his Guardian perch to demand an end to farming. Useful of course to Bill Gates, whose Foundation helps bankroll the newspaper with millions of dollars, and is reported to be the biggest buyer and owner of farmland in America. Bill, at least, still seems to think that people will need to eat – and who better to provide when all the new innovative plant and insects diets are introduced?
Dr. Patrick Moore spoke about the benefits of genetically modified crops, noting that most fruits and vegetables had been purpose bred to have the traits we desired. He noted the campaign against Golden Rice, which is modified to introduce beta-carotene and help the body produce vitamin A. Golden Rice, he noted, would have saved the eyesight of countless people in the developing world who rely on white rice as a staple food. The banning move is led by Greenpeace, a movement he helped establish in the 1980s. “It is a crime against humanity for which they should be punished,” he thundered.
Lord Monckton has been a leading figure in British politics and journalism for many years. He is credited with the maths behind the current eight years and five month pause in global temperatures. Christopher Monckton also calculates that it is impossible to get to Net Zero once the cost of running an electricity grid with over 30% wind and solar is taken into account. Already, he noted, Britain was losing all its heavy energy dependent industry due to the high cost of electricity. But it gets worse. The metals required to get to Net Zero are too scare. There aren’t even enough metals for the first 15 years of zero fossil fuel. Then all the batteries and wind farms have to be replaced.
It’s all climate BS, a less polite Monckton might have remarked. But this, as caught recently on CNN, is the opinion of Republican Senator Ron Jackson. He is a noted opponent of U.S. Covid policy, arguing that many of the pandemic measures didn’t control the virus, but controlled the economy. In a keynote address, he told delegates that a word that defined science was scepticism. “I’m a sceptic about all those climate predictions from the Malthusians and doom mongers. Just all those failed predictions ought to open peoples’ minds to the fact that they are wrong,” he said.
He went on to warn about the threat the Left poses today. “We are voting ourselves into poverty,” he said. Conservatives just do not get that everything the Left does is to control their lives. When they are in power, they implement “crazy” policies. They defund the police, fail to prosecute crime and allow sex and drug trafficking across an open border. Whoever thought we would have to defend the nuclear family, or that gender-changing drugs would be given to children? We were engaged in a fight for freedom, he said. “It has been depressing to see how many people are willing to give up their freedoms in the face of climate propaganda,” he remarked, but the fight must be won.
Climate change has corrupted science, he continued. The mainstream media is in the hands of radical Leftists, and children are being indoctrinated in the schools. As in the U.K., he might have noted, the U.S. electricity grid is vulnerable to “green energy crap”. It’s insane, lunacy, crazy – how are you going to get rid of fossil fuels? he asked.
Again, as in the U.K., the mainstream media makes it all look normal, Sen. Jackson concluded.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Just to be clear. Malthus thought humans would outgrow their capacity to sustain themselves. He didn’t advocate sabotaging our productive capacity to reduce the population.
That’s a modern day psychopathic ideology.
Although nitrous oxide is indeed a powerful (but relatively short-lived) greenhouse gas, the controversy in the Netherlands is only indirectly to do with climate change. The proposed restrictions are the consequence of a Dutch Court ruling on the government’s response to the EU Birds Directive of 1979 and the Habitats directive of 1992 – neither of which mention climate change. The court ruling was based on the concern that Dutch intensive use of fertiliser and livestock (the Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter) was endangering the large number of protected areas in the country. Nitrogen compounds used as a fertiliser and also nitrogen compounds created as a by-product of animal farming creates a number of pollutants such as ammonia and nitrous oxide which in excess are destructive both to natural environments and eventually to agriculture. It is also true that the nitrous oxide resulting from this will make it hard for the Dutch Government to meet its climate change targets.
(The fact that Nitrogen is 80% of the atmosphere is utterly irrelevant and presumably thrown in for dramatic purposes. Nitrogen gas is stable and does not form compounds such as nitrous oxide.)
Not sure why anyone would object to your post. It’s pretty interesting information.
Agriculture and agricultural science is quite capable of dealing with the nitrogen run-off issue, it is just that it will take more time than the climate zealots are prepared to allow. When nitrogen fertiliser was cheap and nobody cared then of course it was spread with gay abandon. Fertiliser is now expensive and people now do care and so we need to farm differently, we can do it but as we saw in Sri-Lanka you cannot do it overnight.
There is a dairy farm in South Devon that is carbon negative but getting to that position takes time and effort.
I agree, except I am not aware of any evidence that the government’s absurd decision to switch to organic overnight was related to climate change. As I understand it, it was largely a panicky overreaction to a desperate shortage of foreign currency reserves (fertilisers were a massive import cost) and chronic kidney disease among farmers (wrongly attributed to chemical fertilisers).
As far as I am concerned anybody claiming to be “carbon negative” is away with the fairies and as much of a lunatic as those spouting net zero crap.
Hear hear
This is not a gathering of conspiracy nuts.
No – just a group of people who believe that most of the world governments, most of the world’s scientific institutions, most of the world’s Universities, the United Nations, etc are part of “a cult worship of a new religion of Gaia which is just another stick to beat America’s traditional values and impose the collectivist new order of societal control of all thought, word and deed.”
That’s a somewhat lyrically worded version of Are by-and-large controlled by babyboomers originating from the 1960s counter-culture[*] which seems true to me.
[*] This term really ought to be interpreted literally: It’s not supposed to mean alternative culture but opposed to culture.
Apologies if I read a tone of sarcasm in your comment, but groupthink, with all the appearance of cult worship, can take root on a massive scale, across multiple powerful institutions, in a self-perpetuating manner – the last century gives us an abundance of examples to pick from. The difference now is that in our interconnected world, national borders can no longer act to contain outbreaks of totalitarianism – at least not to the same degree.
It’s unlikely every Russian in every influential position in the early 20th century was an avowed Communist or held much truck with Marxist ideals or Lysenkoism. Over time, people sensed the way the wind was blowing and fell into line with the pull of the societal Lorenz attractor, probably because at first compliance offered better prospects for success, and later because it offered better prospects for staying alive.
The idea that similar phenomena to Stalinism or Nazism couldn’t recur on a global scale is naïve. The rise of agenda led post-normal science, political gangsterism, neutering of popular dissent, psychological destabilisation through organised propaganda, anti-democratic consolidation of power in unaccountable supranational organisations, reorientation of conventional statism to service the interests of these organisations, along with other glaring red flags makes it not unreasonable to believe it might be.
You are right. I was being sarcastic and I apologise.
Group think is a possibility but it works both ways. A group which is so diverse as all the people that believe that AGW is happening and is a serious problem would be a world first. Group think amongst the Sceptical Community is far more plausible.
More to the point, the truth does not depend on the opinions or political motives of opinion holders. Trying to relate opposing views of the science to some grand design to impose a collectivist view on society is almost guaranteed to obscure the evidence and arguments with emotion.
People and organizations can have a view or ideology that gives them more power and control.
It depends what is meant by ‘conspiracy’.
Those groups are not diverse in their ideology – more control over other people’s lives to force them to conform to their ideology.
They do not want other opinions so they resort to censorship.
Schwab of the WEF has written a book about it – ‘The Great Reset’.
A person may or may not agree with it but it’s not a ‘conspiracy’ theory to believe that groups/people/organisations want more control over people’s lives to move towards their ideology, which some call ‘woke’ or ‘progressive’.
As openly admitted by Canadian Maurice Strong, who started all this GangGreen crap off, went on to organise the Kyoto COP and helped set up the UN IPCC. Strong admitted that the object of the exercise was nothing to do with the Environment, it was to export the West’s wealth. After millions of dollars unexpectedly stuck to his fingers whilst running the ‘food for oil’ UN scam after the Iraq War 2, he fled to his chums in China and settled there. Allegedly dying. If you believe the CCP’ story.
Then there is Christina Fugueres, one time head of the UNFCC, which controls the IPCC. A Costa Rican Marxist, she admitted that the “Climate Change” program had nothing to do with the Environment (again), the whole basis of the racket was the need to change the dominant economic basis for development (i.e. Capitalism.)
Not forgetting Edenhoffer from PIKS (the Potsdam GangGreen outfit), again confirming the same.
Like Schwab. Conspiracies in plain sight.
You’ll be telling us next that the collected Covid Geniuses actually saved millions with their safe and effective vaccines, their granny saving lockdowns and masks.
Hoorah for Ferguson and Michie.
Sarcastic? You’re darn tooting, I sure am.
Well you don’t have to consider that there might be this world wide conspiracy. Just go visit UN and WEF websites and you will see they are telling you how they want to govern the world. It is no secret. It is al there in black and white. But as someone pointed out “It is quite remarkable to base policy on something for which there is no evidence”——–This idea that all institutions of science and or of education and all experts and scientists all agree on something is simply the “Argument from Authority”. Matters of science are not decided by a show of hands. The issue of climate is POITICISED, and when that happens truth is not the priority.
I am sorry I don’t have time to respond to all the interesting comments here. However, I would like to respond to your point that this an argument from authority.
It would be an argument from authority to say all these institutions tell us that AGW is real therefore it is real. But that is not what I am saying. I am disagreeing with the hypothesis that the AGW is a global left wing political movement (whether it be true or not) and pointing out what an implausible hypothesis that is taking in not just WEF and the UN but wildly different governments round the world (some of which are war with each other), and highly respected apolitical institutions such as the Royal Society and US National Academy of Science.
(Separately of course I absolutely deny there is no evidence for AGW – there is a mountain. But that is a very big rabbit hole of a discussion)
This presumes that those societies are not political.
In fact they are political because they’re pushing a ‘woke/progressive’ ideology.
If you don’t agree with their ideology you don’t get grant money, you don’t get a job and you are censored.
A person may or may not call it a ‘conspiracy’ but the censorship and pushing of an ideoloy is a fact.
As for AGW there is no substantial proven evidence that humanity is causing any significant climate change.
There are many websites that show this but only those that push the unproven ideology of humanity-caused climate change/global warming get govt money and media publicity.
People may or may not call it a ‘conspiracy’ but it is a fact – don’t toe the ideology and you get censored and no money from the powerful authorities.
As for AGW there is no substantial proven evidence that humanity is causing any significant climate change.
I would like to debate that – but only if you agree in advance that not to invoke argumentum ad hominem i.e. what matters is the evidence not who presents it.
I do not say that AGW is an “Argument from Authority”. ——-What I am saying is that people who claim that it all must be true because a lot of alleged scientists, experts and assorted Institutions and governments say it is true is “The Argument from Authority”——-Things are not true because a lot of people say so. There is no empirical evidence that humans are causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate. There are computer models, there are speculations, there are assumptions. But none of that is evidence of anything. If you have a “mountain of evidence, then I would like to hear it, but remember models are not science and are not evidence. For every bit of evidence you think you have I can give you some that global warming is not a climate emergency. It is in my opinion a manufactured crisis for political purposes, and that is simply confirmed by officialdom refusing to allow any other point of view and TV channels, mostly to the progressive left, questioning none of it. In science you question everything. If you cannot question it because authority denies it then it is a pretty good sign you are not dealing in science.
I agree that “things are not true because a lot of people say so”. However, there is masses of empirical evidence that human activity is changing the climate via the greenhouse effect – how dangerous that is, is more debatable. This evidence is not confined to models (They are mainly there to try and predict the detail.)
I think what confuses people is they expect to see a single clinching proof of the hypothesis that human activity causes global warming. What you actually get is an accumulation of evidence of parts of the hypothesis.
For example:
While the lower atmosphere has been warming the upper atmosphere has been cooling. Exactly what you would expect with greenhouse effect.
Temperature increases have been taking place just a strongly for night-time minimums as for daytime maximums. Again exactly what you would expect.
Analysis of top of atmosphere radiation shows that there is no radiation escaping in just those frequencies you would expect with greenhouse effect.
“Empirical evidence” means evidence acquired either by observation or by experiment. ——-So there have been no experiments done on the planet, so that just leaves “Observational Evidence”. ———Greenhouse gas theory states that if the warming is caused by the greenhouse effect then that warming should be mostly about 10 kilometeres up. (Often referred to as The Hotspot) But the slight warming has been mainly at the surface, which would tend to indicate that any warming is simply not greenhouse warming. There is also no observational evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate. There is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event as we are often led to believe. Even the IPCC say they have low confidence that storms floods, droughts etc are getting worse because of human activity. There is no observational evidence that the rate of sea level rise is increasing as would be expected if we had been warming the planet for over 100 years as claimed. So we have a theory and that theory is being exploited for political purposes, but no real observational evidence to back it up. Just because something warms does not mean humans warmed it. There is currently nothing unusual or unprecedented about current temperatures or climate. If the facts don’t fit the theory then the theory is wrong. We are spending trillions reorganising the global economy all based on some very dubious science . No one in their right mind would do this unless their motives were not as they claim they are. This issue is highly politicised and only by understanding those politics can you hope to understand what is really going on here.
It cannot be ignored nor that it has an enormous effect that this so called $cience is being driven by close to a trillion dollars a year in funding. The effort to stifle and censure opposition is active and obvious. There has been well documented catastrophic world ending climate claims for over 50 years whose sole purpose is to generate fear and funding. So let us believe all these government and activist funded institutions are impervious to this and it really has nothing to do with politics! I don’t think so.
I am intrigued by the trillion dollars a year. What is included? What are your sources?
Net Zero alone in the UK is estimated to be going to cost between one and two trillion. Our government have no idea how that Net Zero can be achieved, and no cost/benefit analysis was ever done. Not one single politician of any major party asked a single question. It was simply waved through. Technolgies required to achieve this fantasy are not even remotely likely to be available, but that does not seem to matter as governments ploughs ahead putting the UN agenda of Sustainable Development first and its citizens last. Only one or two countries are treating their populations with utter contempt like this and are prepared to lower their standard of living under false pretences that there is a “climate emergency”, and ofcourse the Uk would have to be one of them ofcourse. But insofar that there is some global warming, then that warming is a global problem and cannot be solved by a country like the UK acting unilaterally and pretending they can “save the planet” all by themselves.——–You are being disingenuous to try to pretend vast sums are not being spent on this issue all based on “official science” rather than “science”.
Thanks for your lengthy reply but nowhere could I find an answer to my question – which was in two parts:
Tx
On the Sri Lankan situation a work colleague who is Sri Lankan and lives there reckoned the government did not have enough money /foreign currency to pay for imported fertiliser so they banned it to save face. I think their lack of fX was due to the collapse of tourism during the lockdown.
Net Zero just means Zero Freedom Zero Wealth
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It is quite amazing how powerful propaganda really is. Which is why governments love using it. It is so powerful it has vast amounts of people clamouring for their own impoverishment all based on NO EVIDENCE SCIENCE and computer models all full of assumptions where not a single one of them has been remotely accurate. We see people gluing themselves to roads and buildings so sure that the world will end and millions will die. Sea levels will engulf coastal communities, and drive inland over the tops of hills, yet upon closer inspection we see that sea level rise is only about 7 inches per century with no sign of the rate of sea level rise increasing. Oh, and by the way sea level has been rising for about 12,000 years in this Interglacial period. If I were to ask some dimwit sat on the road with glue on their hand what an “Intergalcial” is they would probably think I was talking about Star Wars or something. How can so many people allow themselves to be misinformed to this extent? Well there are many explanations and theories. The obvious one is ofcourse the massive amount of climate scaremongering on mainstream TV News where every bit of extreme weather from anywhere in the world is beamed straight to all our living rooms via cable TV. All the pronouncements from Liberal Progressive Bureaucrats standing at a podium to present their “Official Science” as Ultimate Truth that no one can or should question. But let’s just remind ourselves that in science, if that is what it is about, then you question everything. The fact you cannot question any of this “official science” on Mainstream News Channels simply reveals it isn’t about science and NEVER WAS.
Just a thought to Daily Sceptic. —-It might be better to have the newest comments appearing at the top rather than bottom as the default
Credit where credit is due; Ian Plimer is not just a Dr. he’s a Professor Emeritus
Unfortunately maybe only an economic collapse will show that the climate change, ESG, ‘Green’ advocates are wrong.
Unless it hits people in their pocketbooks, wallets, some people do not pay attention.