David Suzuki Foundation disavows Suzuki's warning that 'pipelines will be blown up' if there is no climate change action - "The David Suzuki Foundation has distanced itself from environmental activist David Suzuki’s warning that “pipelines will be blown up” if political leaders do not act on climate change. During an interview with CHEK News on Saturday, Nov. 20, Suzuki warned that “if our leaders don’t pay attention to what’s going on” there will be “pipelines blowing up” without elaborating further. A video broadcast of the remarks shows Suzuki wearing a white jacket bearing the David Suzuki Foundation logo. Two days later, on Nov. 22, the foundation, an environmental non-profit headquartered in Vancouver, put out a statement on Twitter denying any involvement in the claims, explaining Suzuki spoke on his own behalf and not for the organization. Their founder, it said, was not making a “direct threat to destroy fossil fuel infrastructure.”... Suzuki said violence within the environmental movement is already happening, although he identified police actions against anti-logging protesters and anti-gas pipeline protesters as the culprits."
David Suzuki apologizes for saying pipelines could be 'blown up' - "2016, when Suzuki opined that former prime minister Stephen Harper should serve prison time for "wilful blindness" to climate change"
From 2021
Luckily the left supports him. Because incitement to violence is only wrong when the left doesn't support it
Sir David Attenborough: we must act on population - "Turning to population, Sir David went on to say “in the long run, our population growth has to come to an end.” Attributing population growth partly to increases in life expectancy—”people like me are living longer than we did“, Sir David told the BBC that our rate of increase is “alarming”. Crucially, he stated: “Although people say ‘in the long run, we are going to stabilise’, they’re going to stabilise, as far as I can see, at a rather higher level than the Earth can accommodate.”... Population Matters’ fundamental message is the one previously articulated by Sir David: “All of our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder – and ultimately impossible – to solve with ever more people.”"
When I said environmentalism was misanthropic, I was told there was no evidence for that
This ties in to leftist anti-natalism
Why eco-activists are so hostile to humanity - "Something like class war has broken out on the streets of London. On one side stand working people fighting for their right to do their jobs, to attend to their daily business without hindrance. And on the other side there’s the green movement’s plummy predictors of eco-catastrophe. Those Tarquins and Matildas, often privately educated, who think the Industrial Revolution was the worst thing that ever happened and that we’ll all shortly be consumed by a climate apocalypse of the grubby masses’ own making. Once again the working classes are standing up to these silver-spoon prophets of doom, and I am here for it. Just Stop Oil, an offshoot of the lunatic group Extinction Rebellion, is blocking roads around London. It is demanding that the government cease all production of fossil-fuel energy. Yes, in the midst of an energy crisis, with many folk unsure if they’ll be able to keep the heat on over the winter, these upper-middle-class activists are essentially saying: ‘Let’s produce less energy!’ ‘Let old people freeze to death’ is all I’m hearing. Unsurprisingly, people with jobs and lives are not happy about all the road-blocking. Today some of them took direct action... As one angry bloke yanked one of the am-dram doomsters off the highway a woman said: ‘Oh my God, you’re hurting him, stop it.’ To which the man replied: ‘Get off the fucking road then.’ I want that on a t-shirt. I encountered a Just Stop Oil roadblock on Shaftesbury Avenue on Sunday. Again it was a battle of the classes. Young working-class men in building gear pleaded with the eco-hysterics to let them go home. The protesters, in the pained, paternalistic tones of a headmistress reprimanding a wayward schoolboy, told the men that they were carrying out this protest for their good and for the good of the planet. ‘You fucking muppets’, one of the men said. Just Stop Oil isn’t only inconveniencing working people, people who are economically and socially productive. They’re also harming the ill and vulnerable. Today they blocked both a fire engine and an ambulance. In one extraordinary clip a man can be heard saying to the protesters: ‘Somebody’s sick, get off the road! Somebody’s unwell, are you guys silly?’ With extreme callousness, a protester replies: ‘If somebody’s sick, they shouldn’t be driving.’ Patiently, their agonised accoster states the obvious: ‘No, they’ve got a passenger who is sick. Are you silly?’ Imagine the level of self-righteousness, and general inhumanity, a person must have reached to block the path of the ill, and then mock the citizen who asks him to take pity on the ill and let them pass through. In another video, a man says: ‘I have to go to hospital for an appointment, I’m deaf, let me get on with my life and stop interfering with us.’ He later appeals to the crowd – some people clearly still understand the importance of social solidarity – and says: ‘Where’s the police? What are we paying our taxes for? To have our lives inconvenienced by these idiots? This is wrong.’ It was an impromptu speech that cut to the heart of why people are so angry about all this. They feel their lives are being disrupted by the neurotic well-off, and that the authorities are not doing enough to sort it out. On Sunday a copper pushed me off the road – as I was patiently explaining to the protesters that they are a menace to the rights and livelihoods of working people – and left the protesters in place. (Many were subsequently arrested, of course, after a period of time.) I, for one, feel a strong sense of pride over the revolt against Just Stop Oil. This is direct action. It echoes earlier people’s uprisings against Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain. Who can forget the cry of one of the men who dragged an Insulate Britain muppet off a road in October last year in order that an ambulance could pass through... the inconveniencing is the point. The barely concealed disdain for the throng is the main thing. The scorn they clearly feel for us competitors in the rat race driving around town and doing our silly jobs is central to their entire outlook. Environmentalism is fundamentally an anti-people movement, and that’s why Just Stop Oil – like XR more broadly – is so content to piss people off. At root, environmentalism is an anti-modern, anti-masses ideology. It views humans as virtually a plague on the planet. We buy too much, drive too much, waste too much. Everything we do is measured, not by how much joy or importance it has in our lives, but by the ‘carbon footprint’ it leaves behind. Having kids, going on holiday, driving to work – our every endeavour is viewed as a carnival of pollution. And when you view people as a pox, as the authors of apocalypse, you’ll end up feeling very little indeed for their lives and their aspirations... When you see the human race as a problem, you’ll soon start to hate human beings."
Meme - "Human bad"
"A World without Bees *desert*
A World without Trees *smog and skyscrapers*
A World without Humans *paradise*"
RizzTheLightning: "What's funny is there's a paradox here that makes this self-defeating. The image implies the bottom scene is good because it's beautiful, but this is a subjective classification by humans. Thus without humans, there would be no one to observe the world and find it beautiful or good."
Meme - "BUT IF WE DO NOTHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, COASTAL CITIES LIKE NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO WILL BE UNDERWATER!"
*pondering with amused look*
Disclose.tv on X - "NOW - EU will propose a "mandatory target for reducing electricity use at peak hours" in order to "flatten the curve.""
Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da _beast630: "Western environmentalism is just a woke waste of time, unless there is some proposed REAL /actual way to deal with China, India, rising Africa, etc."
Noah Smith @Noahpinion : "Now here is a chart
All the World's Carbon Emissions. % of total global emissions in 2021
China - 30.9%. India - 7.3%"
Shuaiyb Newton, Esq. @ThyCoffeeGuy: "I'm sure the climate activists will be making their way to China to block traffic and destroy national treasures."
War of the eco-warriors: XR vows to prevent Just Stop Oil from disrupting London Marathon - "An eco-rift has broken out between Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil - dubbed the 'War of the Wazzocks' - over whether to disrupt the London Marathon.
Net zero ‘will keep interest rates higher for longer’ - "Net zero will push up the cost of borrowing as countries and companies ramp up spending on green technology, according to a top Bank of England official. Megan Greene, a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), said policymakers were likely to keep interest rates higher for longer because of the “green transition”. The American economist said a renewed focus on defence spending and net zero would require significant investment. That could help to reverse a global trend towards higher saving, which has helped to keep average interest rates down. She said the net zero transition meant rates were likely to remain “restrictive” – bearing down on economic activity – for longer."
Just blame greedy companies for the costs that climate change hystericists are imposing on everyone. And this is to ignore the problems you get when investment is directed in unproductive directions
More Perfect Union on X - "Shell just posted $6.2 billion in profit in the third quarter alone. Then they immediately announced a $3.5 billion stock buyback. They've also confirmed that they will cut 200 jobs in the low-carbon solutions department next year."
Sweet on X - "Shell also just pulled out of its agreement re wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts. Shell was boo hoo hooing about the unexpected costs, said it will gladly instead just pay the penalty for cutting and running. #CorporateGreed 🤬"
Greedy companies are more evil than they are greedy, which is why though low carbon is the future they're cutting jobs there
Thread by @80000Hours on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "We’re often asked: “So you care about the long-term future. Why don’t you recommend that more people work on climate change?”... 5 reasons climate change is a strong choice, but not always the best:
1) We think that climate change is much less likely to cause human extinction (< .01% chance in the next century) vs other anthropogenic risks like pandemics or AI (@tobyordoxford estimates total existential risk in the next 100 years as 1 in 6).
2) Climate change might have significant indirect effects...
3) On the other hand, all risks have indirect effects. E.g. a pandemic could also increase instability and the chances of conflict. It’s not clear the indirect effects of climate change are larger than the indirect effects of other problems facing humanity.
4) Climate change is far less neglected than other major global issues. Current spending is over $640 billion a year. Compare that to ~$100 million for AI safety. There may be some important neglected areas though, like specific tech (e.g. hot rock geothermal).
5) But climate change does seem more tractable than other risks."
Clearly they don't trust the science and are climate change deniers!
Questioning the climate science orthodoxy in Glasgow - "True, there is no dispute that the climate is changing; it has never been static. While many scientists say the world is warming, even this is not certain. The real question, however, is whether climate change is catastrophic for mankind. Happily, there is no indication it is. Average global temperatures rose about 0.6 degrees Celsius during the 20th century. Over the same period, life expectancy doubled. Per capita income, meanwhile, increased by almost an order of magnitude, to $6,500. Agriculture flourished. The last century was not alone in human flourishing accompanying warming. The end of the "little ice age" did not cause a decline in global health. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency’s integrated assessment models have shown net benefits of warming through the middle of this century. While the climate summit’s headliners say that human activity and carbon emissions cause climate change, they cherry-pick evidence. The failure of models to predict accurately suggests a major problem in the theories that Biden and his team embrace as fact... Here is the problem: Physicists pursue knowledge by designing experiments in which they isolate single variables. Meteorologists and other climate scientists have difficulty doing this when the atmosphere is their laboratory. They may believe they are looking at a single variable, but a dozen other factors may be at play about which they have no knowledge. What looks definitive in the laboratory seldom is in the real world. Computer models are only as good as the data upon which they are based. Politicians in Glasgow seek two outcomes: First, they promote alternative energy while reducing carbon emissions and the use of fossil fuels. The problem here, however, is that whether nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, or geothermal, alternative energy also has practical and environmental drawbacks. Environmental awareness and willingness to act increases with affluence — to raise the price of energy and undercut economies may do the environment more harm than good. As for alternatives, each has an environmental cost, be it in terms of the mining and metals needed to construct efficient panels or batteries, the impact on migratory animals, or the problem of nuclear waste. Biden, Kerry, the pope, and the U.N. secretary-general may mean well, but constant exaggerations and crying wolf do more harm than good. It is illogical to blame extreme weather events on warming, and then blame their absence on warming as well. Likewise, attributing horrific storms, heat waves, and cold snaps to climate change fails when many records for extreme weather are more than a century old. Take Scotland: Less than two months ago, the BBC headlined that Scotland had seen its "hottest September day in 115 years." If climate change is responsible, then why was it more than 3 degrees Celsius warmer in 1906? Many alarmist headlines about coral reef death and wildfires, meanwhile, are equally unsupported by fact. While Biden declares, "We must listen to science," he and other grandstanding politicians now appear deaf. True science questions every assumption; it does not seek to shut down debate. The Glasgow conference’s approach to science has more to do with a Dark Age approach in which assumption became religious truth, rather than the Enlightenment’s more genuine approach to knowledge."
Escape the Echo Chamber - "We are living in an unscientific era. There is no open debate on global warming. If global warming is increasing at the rates the activists state then every country should be installing nuclear power plants. If the seas were rising as fast as the activists predict then the government shouldn't be subsidizing flooding insurance for coastal homes. Instead, new homes are being added in the supposed danger zones. If farm land is getting warmer then why isn't the government funding the northern migration of crops? If we've already failed at preventing global warming for most of the century, why aren't we installing mitigation programs to adjust to the inevitable? Meanwhile, we are seeing politicians set goals of reducing carbon emissions by 50% within nine years, an impossibility. Politicians have also been calling for retrofitting every building in America to be more energy efficient, without the blue collar workers to do it, when a fraction of that money would fund enough carbon emission free nuclear plants to power the country. We are making science-free decisions about the future and it's a mess."
Car Dealers to Biden: EVs Aren’t Selling - "Dealers have a 103-day supply of EVs compared to 56 days for all cars. It takes them on average 65 days to sell an EV, about twice as long as for gas-powered cars. EV sales are slowing though manufacturers have slashed prices and increased discounts. Consumers paid on average $50,683 for an EV in September, compared to $65,000 a year ago. The reason, as the dealers explain, is that “early adopters formed an initial line and were ready to buy these vehicles as soon as we had them to sell.” But most consumers aren’t “ready to make the change,” in part because EVs are still too expensive. Many apartment renters also don’t have garages for home charging, and public charging networks are spotty with one in four not functional, according to one study. “Customers are also concerned about the loss of driving range in cold or hot weather,” the auto dealers say. “Some have long daily commutes and don’t have the extra time to charge the battery. Truck buyers are especially put off by the dramatic loss of range when towing.” The dealers want the Administration to “tap the brakes” on its proposed tailpipe emissions rules that would effectively mandate that EVs comprise two-thirds of car sales by 2032. Auto makers might meet the government’s quotas in leftwing cities where Teslas are a political fashion statement, but price and convenience matter more elsewhere. A new study from the University of California, Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas finds a “strong and enduring correlation between political ideology and U.S. EV adoption.” About half of EVs registered as of last year were to “the 10% most Democratic counties, and about one-third to the top 5%,” the study notes. This suggests “it may be harder than previously believed to reach high levels of U.S. EV adoption.” The dealers’ letter is an important political signal that progressive climate coercion isn’t as popular as Democrats think. Americans don’t like to be told what to do or what they must buy. As the dealers put it, “many people just want to make their own choice about what vehicle is right for them.” Imagine that."
EDITORIAL: Electric vehicles? Let the buyer beware - "Aside from the fact they cost more and have less range than conventional cars, here’s another reason to be wary of running out and buying an electric vehicle despite massive government hype to do so. A survey by Consumer Reports released last week found that owners of EVs for the past three model years reported 79% more problems with their cars than owners of conventional internal combustion engine vehicles powered by gasoline... “Most electric cars today are being manufactured by either legacy automakers that are new to EV technology, or by companies … that are new to making cars,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing for Consumer Reports. “It’s not surprising that they’re having growing pains and need some time to work out the bugs.” He said some of the most common problems reported by EV owners were issues with electric drive motors, EV batteries and charging, the latter related to the vehicle itself, rather than with home or public charging stations... while “Tesla powertrains are now pretty solid for the most part … Tesla owners report a lot of build quality issues including irregular paint, broken trim, door handles that don’t work and trunks that don’t close.” The Consumer Reports survey suggested car buyers should be particularly wary of plug-in hybrid vehicles, whose owners reported 146% more problems than owners of gasoline-powered vehicles. By contrast, owners of traditional hybrid vehicles, which have both a conventional powertrain and an electric motor but do not require plug-in charging, reported 26% fewer problems than owners of gasoline-powered vehicles. “Automakers have been making hybrids long enough that they’ve gotten really good at it,” Elek said. Traditional hybrids, unlike EVs and plug-in hybrids, do not qualify for government subsidies."
I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped | Rowan Atkinson | The Guardian - "When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be. As you may know, the government has proposed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The problem with the initiative is that it seems to be largely based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a car’s operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe. Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions, which is a welcome development, particularly in respect of the air quality in city centres. But if you zoom out a bit and look at a bigger picture that includes the car’s manufacture, the situation is very different. In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are nearly 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one. How so? The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: they’re absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of 10 years. It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis. Unsurprisingly, a lot of effort is going into finding something better. New, so-called solid-state batteries are being developed that should charge more quickly and could be about a third of the weight of the current ones – but they are years away from being on sale, by which time, of course, we will have made millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries... We need also to acknowledge what a great asset we have in the cars that currently exist (there are nearly 1.5bn of them worldwide). In terms of manufacture, these cars have paid their environmental dues and, although it is sensible to reduce our reliance on them, it would seem right to look carefully at ways of retaining them while lowering their polluting effect. Fairly obviously, we could use them less. As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible. A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it’s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there’s nothing in a barrel of oil that can’t be replicated by other means... Friends with an environmental conscience often ask me, as a car person, whether they should buy an electric car. I tend to say that if their car is an old diesel and they do a lot of city centre motoring, they should consider a change. But otherwise, hold fire for now. Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn."
Interestingly, he wrote 2 very similar articles that were released at around the same time. The Daily Mail version came out 4 days later - maybe he was upset at how much editing the Guardian version had, but mainly it's just a small comment about charging infrastructure
ROWAN ATKINSON: Our honeymoon with electric vehicles is over so hang on to your old petrol motor | Daily Mail Online
Oddly, someone replied to this claiming that he wouldn't feel this way if he'd driven a Tesla. As if Teslas are immune to all the problems he highlights, most of which are inherent to electric cars
Tesla Owner Shocked By $21,000 Repair Bill After ‘Driving In The Rain’ - "A Scottish couple is letting the world know about their discontent after being quoted £17,374 (equal to around US$21,200 at current exchange rates) to replace their Tesla Model Y crossover’s batteries. The reason their EV’s power supply needed replacing? For driving while the weather was bad, they claim."
Work resumes on $10B renewable energy transmission project despite tribal objections - "The tractors are back at work clearing land and building access roads for a $10 billion transmission line that the Biden administration describes as an important part of the nation’s transition to renewable energy. But Native American leaders have vowed to keep pushing the federal government to heed their concerns about the project cutting through a culturally significant valley in southern Arizona... In New Mexico, the route was modified after the U.S. Defense Department raised concerns about the effects of the high-voltage lines on radar systems and military training operations. Environmentalists also were worried about impacts on wildlife habitat and migratory bird flight patterns in the Rio Grande Valley. There are similar ecological concerns in the San Pedro Valley."
When multiple liberal priorities conflict. The solution will be to blame whitey
Raymond J. de Souza: The climate farce in the air-conditioned desert - "One document included the interesting detail that Abu Dhabi’s national oil company was proposing to broker a deal to sell Canadian liquefied natural gas to China. That might explain why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to sell Canadian natural gas to Germany. Why sell to German allies in the open when you can sell secretly to Chinese communists under the cover of the desert night?... While the U.A.E. confederation is a petro-state, Dubai itself is not oil rich. Abu Dhabi has over 95 per cent of the U.A.E.’s reserves. Dubai thus opted for tourism, and is now a global hub for transport, luxury travel and high-end consumption. The existential question is whether Dubai should exist. To live in the desert is energy intensive, and to live indulgently in the desert ought to be a scandal for the climate activists here this week. The question of life in the desert was looked at entirely differently when the vulgarity of Las Vegas was vomited forth and, more happily, when the Zionist dream was achieved by making the desert bloom. Then it was thought to be praiseworthy, a testament of human imagination, ingenuity and industriousness. Most people who visit Dubai today regard the Emiratis impressive achievement in that light. To the climate change conferencing class, though, the very idea of Dubai ought to be offensive. Philosophizing is hard to fit into a packed schedule of receptions, but there are searching questions to be asked. Life is energy. Less energy means less life — at least it does in Dubai, where carbon emissions were low when nothing had been built among the dunes. Those same questions apply elsewhere, such as in Canada’s Far North, or, more urgent for our prime minister, in electorally vulnerable areas where home heating oil is more expensive. Is COP28 therefore a waste of time? It doesn’t have to be. Greta Thunberg will have a chance to learn from Arab leaders who have made peace with Israel."
GOLDSTEIN: Emissions keep rising and we keep paying - "With global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions expected to reach their highest level ever this year, the UN will open its 28th annual gabfest on climate change in Dubai, United Arab Emirates... With 70,000 people attending — everyone from jet-setting politicians to bureaucrats to billionaires to global celebrities to environmental activists and protesters — it will generate a massive carbon footprint over the next 12 days. It will be presided over by Dr. Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, known as Adnoc, amid reports by the BBC and Centre for Climate Reporting, citing leaked documents, that the UAE “planned to use its role as host of UN climate talks as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals.”... what the UN climate crowd never seems to comprehend is that you can’t lead on climate change unless you lead by example. That “rules for thee but not for me” doesn’t work. It just makes people increasingly cynical about what the UN is trying to sell, especially when what its trying to sell is a higher cost of living. These annual UN meetings, known as the Conference of the Parties are dinosaurs, extravagant and unnecessary in the age of instant global communication. They send out the message that since the UN has never changed its approach to addressing this issue, why should anyone? This annual, heavily subsidized, festival of indignation has gone on every year since 1995 — COP 1 — in Berlin, Germany. Since then the UN has set down in some of the world’s most exotic tourist locales, from Buenos Aires to Marrakech, from Paris to Milan, from Cancun to Copenhagen, from Bali to Lima, to tell the rest of us to do what they say, not what they do, when it comes to lowering missions."