It’s not just the Democrats. It’s the climate changed obsessed Green movement in general, it’s all politicians and high profile world leaders who are increasingly, either unwittingly, or knowingly, being sucked into this dangerous cult, who are advocating and in many cases implementing its insane policy prescriptions for averting an imaginary climate catastrophe.
The quote is from Oppenheimer of course, somewhat liberally translated from the original Sanskrit verse of the Bhagavad Gita when Krishna reveals his terrifying, magnificent, wondrous true form to his disciple Arjuna.
But it is terrifyingly apt. The Green movement is, literally, becoming death and the potential destroyer of this world of plenty. In supposedly trying to save the environment, it is degrading and destroying the environment; ‘our house is on fire’ says Greta and, quite literally, Greens are making sure it burns to the ground by implementing crazy environmental policies and opposing sane, practical measures which reduce the risk of devastating wildfires. Also, as Tony Heller notes, if we stop using fossil fuels, completely eliminate them from modern life, then we will die. It’s as simple as that.
The catastrophic Australian wildfires are the latest, terrifying example of what happens when Green ideologues are let loose, first to dictate what is ‘best’ for the environment, then to scream madly that climate change is destroying the very environment which they negligently failed to protect from a dangerous combination of foreseeable very dry, hot weather and an army of copycat psychopathic firebugs. Then they screech even more dementedly from the windows of their unassailable ivory towers in the media, in NGOs and in academia that it’s all the fault of the anti-climate big fossil fuel companies and their paid shills in government.
We’ve probably never had it so good as we have in the last decade, notes Matt Ridley:
Let nobody tell you that the second decade of the 21st century has been a bad time. We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.
Efficiencies in agriculture mean the world is now approaching ‘peak farmland’ — despite the growing number of people and their demand for more and better food, the productivity of agriculture is rising so fast that human needs can be supplied by a shrinking amount of land. In 2012, Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and his colleagues argued that, thanks to modern technology, we use 65 per cent less land to produce a given quantity of food compared with 50 years ago. By 2050, it’s estimated that an area the size of India will have been released from the plough and the cow.
Land-sparing is the reason that forests are expanding, especially in rich countries. In 2006 Ausubel worked out that no reasonably wealthy country had a falling stock of forest, in terms of both tree density and acreage. Large animals are returning in abundance in rich countries; populations of wolves, deer, beavers, lynx, seals, sea eagles and bald eagles are all increasing; and now even tiger numbers are slowly climbing.
Greens and the climate crisis doomers don’t see it like this. They see a world on fire, ravaged by storms, heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas, which will only get worse. In every bad weather event, they see confirmation of their pessimistic world view and the opportunity to ascribe blame to the capitalist, fossil fuel polluters who are ravaging the world with their selfish excesses. Not only are they exploiting these natural weather events and their impacts for political gain, but they are actively making their impacts worse with their ludicrous ‘environmental’ policies:
I don’t fully buy into Matt’s optimism because many iconic species are on the brink of extinction due to hunting, exploitation and habitat destruction, there are still millions living in poverty and facing starvation, death and disease because of political corruption, poor management and greed, but it is undeniable that today’s fossil-fueled, technologically advanced world is generally a vast improvement on even the world that existed 50 years ago. But undeniably, some things have got worse. Undeniably, climate change has not made things worse; it has very likely contributed in no small measure to making things better.
Climate crisis fanatics are cashing in big time on the real human misery and environmental catstrophe of the Australian bushfires. It’s quite a sickening spectacle, especially as it is Green policies which have contributed to this avoidable catastrophe.
Karen Stenner is a “political psychologist and behavioural economist” – putting her dubious talents to good use I see. Ali Milani is a “UK Labour Councillor and activist” – enough said. What these people are doing is propagating extremely damaging political propaganda and very possibly encouraging acts of environmental terrorism by arsonists and by mad Greens dictating insanely destructive Green policies. Because there is little doubt that Green policies are to blame for the severity of these wildfires and there is no doubt whatsoever that arsonists are responsible for lighting many of them. Bolsonaro even went so far as to accuse NGOs of deliberately lighting the Amazon fires earlier in the year, which climate activists also capitalised upon. Perhaps that was stretching it a bit, as no hard evidence seems t have been forthcoming, but it would not surprise me in the least if at least some of the psychopathic firebugs who have devastated the Australian landscape and its wildlife and burned peoples’ homes to the ground, even killed people, might have been tempted to do so to ‘prove a point’ about climate change. Look at XR. Some of those people are seriously unhinged, convinced that billions will die soon. So what’s a few lives now, a few million hectares burned to the ground when weighed against the loss of billions of lives and the incineration of the entire planet in a few years time?
Update: 1/1/2020
If you look really closely, it’s not obvious at first, but you can see the resemblance of this gormless pair of environmentalists – pictured protesting against controlled burns in September – to the Goddess Kali who is another divine embodiment of Lord Krishna:
If you still can’t see the resemblance then remind yourself that the forest behind them is now completely, utterly incinerated for miles around, scorched earth, burned even down to the microbes in the soil. It will not recover for many years and there won’t be heard the sound of sweet little baby birds twittering for many springs to come. Because these jokers and others like them protested against controlled ‘cool’ burns.
One of the protestors is alleged to have said to the ABC:
“I’m more worried about climate change, and the impact the burns are having. I’m worried for my grandchildren.
“The mulch is the only moisture on the ground and we don’t want them to burn away that mulch.”
I don’t think I have ever felt so incensed by the stupidity of Greens.
Climate Scepticism 
I agree. A brave new world.
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Great post. Hopefully 2020 will be the year enough people begin to see clearly and reject the apocalyptic claptrap of the elites and their lackeys.
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No idea if this is a realistic estimate or not, But, if it is, 480 million animals, nearly half a billion, dead, because Greens abandoned sane land management policies, because the Australian continent became very hot and very dry as Australia is wont to do every now and then, because psychopaths thought it would be a good idea to set fire to dry brushwood on the outskirts of town.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/australian-bushfires-new-south-wales-koalas-sydney-a4322071.html?fbclid=IwAR3YgS4bPDNm7YZecI9LdHsoWFD0rS1eal_ZY3xTaC3VEElWY0fLYR8EEjA
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Well, these fires need 3 things: fuel, dry weather, and a spark.
Dry weather – long periods of it – happens every year in fire-prone places.
The fuel is our fault for not using controlled burns, or conversely, for putting fires out when they start.
The spark is mostly provided by a human, and most of the remainder is accidental but human mediated (e.g., electrical fault; one wildfire in California recently started by a burst tyre).
Of course, our green friends concentrate on the weather – as coincidentally perhaps the hardest of the three factors to control, if controllable at all. If they believe that returning CO2 to 280 ppm will have the slightest effect on these fires, they are foolish indeed.
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Interesting to reflect on how we got to this point. The partisan parochial nature of the media could be largely to blame. The Guardian/BBC/Australian ABC etc. only ever report the the catastrophe. Reporting otherwise usually gets labelled “Denial” despite the facts
Matt Ridley’s recent piece explaining how we are actually living in the best of times (although not great for everyone) but most people think otherwise is because basically good news is not news. Since we are constantly bombarded with images of climate catastrophe, it is all too easy to make the sort of cognitive errors people like Lewandowski accuse skeptics of making. Even someone like Steven Pinker gets climate change wrong – he overstates the risk in his otherwise excellent book, which reflects many of the same points made by Ridley.
Bizarrely, the green/left seems to think that the media is not pushing the case hard enough, even though virtually the only climate change news available is the “crisis”
https://theconversation.com/why-is-climate-change-still-not-top-of-the-news-agenda-123800
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ABC are actually now deleting old posts which showed Greens protesting against controlled burns. Thread.
They are on the run.
* It turned out to be Spring 2019. Even more damning.
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Here is the author of that Twitter post, expanding upon the issue. Truly shocking. Idiotic Green/climate change protestors are complicit in the deaths of half a billion animals and the destruction of entire ecosystems, not to mention the loss of human lives and the destruction of property.
https://caldronpool.com/abc-deletes-story-about-climate-protesters-halting-protection-burns-prior-to-devastating-bushfires/amp/
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There’s an irony here – organisations such as the UNFCCC are calling on the world to recognise the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples. Here’s a typical example:
https://unfccc.int/news/values-of-indigenous-peoples-can-be-a-key-component-of-climate-resilience
And yet when it comes to controlled burning in Australia, the greens won’t learn from the Aborigines, and when it comes to effective forest management in the US, they won’t learn from the Apache.
It’s obviously the wrong kind of indigenous wisdom – way too practical and off-message.
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The propaganda machine is already rolling on into the New Year:
https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/31/global-warming-make-weather-britain-even-colder-scientists-warn-11981031/
“It’s feared that climate change will make hot countries totally uninhabitable. But global warming could end up having the ironic effect of making the weather in Britain and north-western Europe even colder.
This part of the world is warmed by the North Atlantic Current which transports warm water from the Gulf of Mexico towards Europe. Scientists suspect that freshwater released by melting glaciers in Greenland could ‘interfere with this ocean current’. Researchers from the University of Groningen and Utrecht University ran a simulation of the current and found there’s a 15% chance of it slowing down over the next 100 years.”
This is a recycled meme of course and is a pet theme of Stefan Rahmstorf, (Potsdam and Real Climate).
This was a letter on the subject in 2004, from Carl Wunsch, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology” in “Nature” 428, 601, April 8, 2004:
“Gulf Stream safe if wind blows and Earth turns”
“Sir – Your News story “Gulf Stream probed for early warnings of system failure” (Nature 427, 769 (2004)) discusses what the climate in the south of England would be like “without the Gulf Stream.” Sadly, this phrase has been seen far too often, usually in newspapers concerned with the unlikely possibility of a new ice age in Britain triggered by the loss of the Gulf Stream.
European readers should be reassured that the Gulf Stream’s existence is a consequence of the large-scale wind system over the North Atlantic Ocean, and of the nature of fluid motion on a rotating planet. The only way to produce an ocean circulation without a Gulf Stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth’s rotation, or both.
Real questions exist about conceivable changes in the ocean circulation and its climate consequences. However, such discussions are not helped by hyperbole and alarmism. The occurrence of a climate state without the Gulf Stream anytime soon – within tens of millions of years – has a probability of little more than zero.”
And also, “The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 128(586): 2563-2586), 2002. Richard Seager et al
Richard Seager is a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: “The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth.”
The media however, will foster the perception of a Gulf Stream at risk. A Tyndall paper from 2004 had several take-away statements, including:
“In this paper, we explore under what conditions belief in global warming or climate change, as identified and defined by experience, science and the media, can be maintained in the public’s perception.
We suggest that, in the realm of the public, forces act to maintain or denounce a perceived reality which has already been constructed. That is, an issue introduced by science (or media for that matter) needs continual expression of confirmation if it is to be maintained as an issue.
As the science itself is contested, needless to say, so are the potential policy changes. So how then do people make sense or construct a reality of something that they can never experience in its totality (climate) and a reality that has not yet manifest (i.e. climate change)?
To endorse policy change people must ‘believe’ that global warming will become a reality some time in the future.
Only the experience of positive temperature anomalies will be registered as indication of change if the issue is framed as global warming.
Both positive and negative temperature anomalies will be registered in experience as indication of change if the issue is framed as climate change.
We propose that in those countries where climate change has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon, unseasonably cold temperatures, for example, are also interpreted to reflect climate change/global warming.”
In 2006, Labour’s favourite think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, had the following advice for public agencies interfacing with the public:
“…it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won.”
“This means simply behaving as if man-made climate change is real, and that individual actions to prevent further change will be effective. The UK Government’s new climate-change slogan – ‘Together this generation will tackle climate change’ (Defra 2006) – is but an example of this approach. It constructs…its own factuality.”
It has been a very successful strategy, with the full co-operation of the MSM and politicians, eg:
IPPR Environmental Justice Commission – Ed Miliband and Caroline Lucas, plus an IPCC author and XR activist, Farhana Yamin. https://www.ippr.org/environment-and-justice/commissioners/
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Thanks to Greta and her XR friends many members of the human species feel threatened and project their fears upon the whole animal kingdom. Reports by actual zoologists are more objective
https://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/0c2f60c1-e6de-489f-ae3e-d08b73db7f70/Red%20List%20all%20Species%201870%20on-0003.jpg/:/rs=w:1280
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Dennis, I think it is a reasonable assumption that scientists are very much aware of the possibility of cooling in northern Europe in the coming decades, especially during winter, due to a reversal of AMO from warm to cold and a possible sharp downturn in solar activity. It would not surprise me in the least if the consensus climate change industry is preparing its arguments/laying out the groundwork for the ‘warming causes cooling’ propaganda meme, i.e. a predicted slowdown in AMOC due to influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic. In fact, I think they’ve known this for years, but now that the phase change of AMO is actually happening and solar activity is currently flat-lining, they’re getting worried that the next very severe winter might be just around the corner. The trend to cooler may be very gradual, but it will only take one or two historically cold winters (coupled with power outages and sky-high electricity prices) for the public to start questioning the validity of man-made global warming and the supposed ‘solutions’ for preventing it.
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Ron, many of the 19th and early 20th century recorded extinctions of species were as a result of introduced predators and novel diseases on remote islands. Those populations were uniquely vulnerable. Still, if nothing is done to halt the rapid decline of large mammals particularly, due to hunting, exploitation and habitat destruction, I think we may see a wave of extinctions in the wild at least of many mammals during the 21st century, which is not good. Idiots like Greta and XR are diverting attention away from the real issues facing wildlife and habitats by banging on continuously about the mythical ‘existential crisis’ of climate change. As we’ve seen also, Greens are actively contributing to the destruction of wildlife habitats.
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Biden must have an agenda, or else is seriously confused – or both.
What he should be saying is: “we’re all dead” if we DO stop using fossil fuels. But then he’d be politically dead as a candidate to oppose Trump.
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Posted an update 1/1/20. It’s going to be one of those decades.
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keep up the good posts debunking the MSM bias Jaime & all involved with the site.
happy new year to all 🙂
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My guess is asking committed greens to study history regarding Pol Pot, who imposed green living on Cambodia, would not result in many afflicted greens having an “ah ha” moment.
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There’s going to be hell to pay in Oz over the role Greens have played in opposing sensible fire prevention measures. They’re not going to get away with it by simply trying to blame climate change for the wildfires. Having said that, plans are clearly afoot to perform a formal attribution analysis in order to discover what role climate change played in the dry, hot weather which has clearly created the conditions necessary for the spread of these wildfires. No doubt, if any link is found, the Graun will be the first to scream it in lurid headlines from the ideologically soiled pages of their disreputable, biased, unscientific rag, closely followed no doubt by the rest of the media. It won’t be straightforward though:
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I’m wondering how many Councils in Australia prevented pre-Summer under-growth burn offs in private lands and state forests. Many Oz Councils have signed on to UN Agenda 21.
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My guess is many Beth.
“Forest fuel levels have worsened over the past 30 years because of “misguided green ideology”, vested interests, political failure and mismanagement, creating a massive bushfire threat, a former CSIRO bushfire scientist has warned.
Victoria’s “failed fire management policy” is an increasing threat to human life, water supplies, property and the forest environment, David Packham said in a submission to the state’s Inspector-General for Emergency Management.
And he argued that unless the annual fuel reduction burning target, currently at a minimum of 5 per cent of public land, “is doubled or preferably tripled, a massive bushfire disaster will occur. The forest and alpine environment will decay and be damaged possibly beyond repair and homes and people [will be] incinerated.”
https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bushfire-scientist-david-packham-warns-of-huge-blaze-threat-urges-increase-in-fuel-reduction-burns-20150312-14259h.html
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https://twitter.com/neiljetel/status/1212793443384213504
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They’re going to have to re-think ‘climate sensitivity’…
On the Apparent Relationship Between Total Solar Irradiance and the Atmospheric Temperature at 1 Bar on Three Terrestrial-type Bodies
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=161&doi=10.11648/j.earth.20190806.15
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Not a word about any of this from IPCC AR6 lead author and ‘award winning climate scientist’ Joelle Gergis.
As a climate scientist I am wondering if the Earth system has now breached a tipping point.
OMG, bad weather, huge fires because stupid Greens didn’t clear the brush from forests known to be at high risk of wildfire and they blocked access routes. OMG, it must be a TIPPING POINT!
As Australia’s climate continues to warm, the most intimate places of human safety – our very homes – are being threatened in an increasingly dangerous world.
As a climate scientist, the thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by today’s standards will seem sedate in the future. What’s unfolding right now is really just a taste of the new normal.
Uh-oh, it’s the dreaded ‘new normal’ again! Oh, please, not the ‘new normal’!
At this point I could restate all the lines of scientific evidence that clearly show the links between human-caused climate change and the intensification of extreme weather conditions not just in Australia, but all over the world.
But I won’t because there’s really not much ‘evidence’ at all.
To avoid sounding like a broken record, instead I will say that as a lead author on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report of the global climate due out next year, I can assure you that the planetary situation is extremely dire.
It’s no exaggeration to say my work as scientist now keeps me up at night.
God help us and science if people like you are pretending to be scientific ‘experts’ and writing up major UN scientific reports on the climate, that’s all I can say, apart from agreeing with you that you should be kept awake at night if you write irresponsible, pseudoscientific garbage like this for a living.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/03/we-are-seeing-the-very-worst-of-our-scientific-predictions-come-to-pass-in-these-bushfires
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Did someone say something about not learning from history?
Click to access fighting-fires.pdf
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@Jaime
thanks for the Joelle Gergis link – partial quotes
“To avoid sounding like a broken record, instead I will say that as a lead author on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report of the global climate due out next year, I can assure you that the planetary situation is extremely dire.”
“Rapid climate change has the potential to reconfigure life on the planet as we know it.”
is it just me or does she “sound like a broken record” that skips over bits she would not like to hear?
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Climate extremists want to do to the world’s economy what they are doing to the world’s forests.
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Hunterson,
“The very worst interpretation is that Mr. Carney is in fact aware of the source data but chose to make hysterical claims to promote a personal political agenda”.
Exactly what is happening with the Australian arson fires.
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Richard Betts, Met Office scientist, who appeared on the news today to be interviewed about the possible role of climate change in the Oz fires, says that accusations of reduced fuel load clearance are a popular conspiracy!
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@Jaime
Richard should refer to this post from NALOPKT – https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/12/24/green-ideology-not-climate-change-makes-bushfires-worse/
if he thinks these people are “conspiracy theory nut jobs” – “The NSW Volunteer Fire Fighters Association (VFFA) is an independent volunteer organisation representing the views and issues that affect volunteer rural fire fighters in NSW”
he needs to explain why, or retract or clarify his statement ASAP.
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And/or Dr Betts could do worse than read some of the old literature on aboriginal fire management, fire frequency, intensity and patch size and how that has changed since the arrival of the Europeans, and the evolutionary ecology of Eucalyptus spp. while he’s there.
The pronouncements of some folk, whose ignorance of the subject matter ought to perhaps inspire in them a tad of modesty!
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