Environmentalism is a revolt against the people - "To understand the green movement, really understand it, you could do worse than look at the photographs of today’s vast tailbacks on the M25. Here were thousands of ordinary people – workers, deliverymen, mums and dads, holidaymakers – delayed for hours by the self-righteousness of middle-class greens. Activists from a group called Insulate Britain – which, almost comically, agitates for the insulation of British homes – blocked various junctions on the M25, causing distress to people who had places to be. It was eco-elitism distilled: the sanctimonious zealots of the green religion disrupting the lives of the plebs to make some daft point. Environmentalism is a revolt against the people Share Topics Politics UK To understand the green movement, really understand it, you could do worse than look at the photographs of today’s vast tailbacks on the M25. Here were thousands of ordinary people – workers, deliverymen, mums and dads, holidaymakers – delayed for hours by the self-righteousness of middle-class greens. Activists from a group called Insulate Britain – which, almost comically, agitates for the insulation of British homes – blocked various junctions on the M25, causing distress to people who had places to be. It was eco-elitism distilled: the sanctimonious zealots of the green religion disrupting the lives of the plebs to make some daft point. The first notable thing about today’s act of public nuisance masquerading as a protest was the hilarity of the campaign group itself. Remember when radicals fought for higher wages or better working conditions or for a revolution to replace capitalism with something else? Not anymore. Today’s self-styled militants demand the insulation of houses... Also notable is the irony of supposed planet-lovers causing so much pollution by forcing hundreds of cars and trucks to sit still for ages, chugging fumes into the air for nought. Well played, greenies. But the most striking thing about these kinds of protests is their sheer arrogance. Their inherently anti-democratic, anti-masses nature, where the aim is always, but always, to inconvenience the little people and teach us a lesson... It often seems as though environmentalism is the mask class hatred wears in the 21st century. Climate-change alarmists really seem to have it in for ordinary working people. Consider Insulate Britain’s parent group, the posh death cult that is Extinction Rebellion, whose Wicker Man-style prancing about on the streets of London seems expressly designed to disrupt the lives of people with jobs. Remember when XR twits mounted a tube train at Canning Town, only to be dragged down by angry working-class people who, funnily enough, don’t like being pontificated to by middle-class misanthropes at 8 in the morning. XR has also inconvenienced the working men of Smithfield Market, to make a point about the meat industry or something. It’s always been this way. One of the most media-flattered green groups of the 2000s was Plane Stupid, a bunch of borderline aristocratic greens who were forever moaning about ‘cheap flights’. They openly demanded an end to the ‘binge-flying’ of the kind of people who attend stag nights in ‘Eastern European destinations chosen not for their architecture or culture but because people can fly there for 99p and get loaded for a tenner’. One of Plane Stupid’s leading agitators is now high up in Extinction Rebellion: Tamsin Omond. She’s the granddaughter of a baronet. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Of course it isn’t actually surprising that environmentalism so often looks like a revolt against the masses, an uprising of the elites against the throng. After all, greens’ greatest hatred is of mass society – with its industry and factories and supermarkets and cars – so it makes sense that they bristle so intolerantly against the inhabitants of mass society. It’s snobbery dolled up as radicalism. Which is why I was delighted to see footage of an angry driver trying to drag the Insulate muppets off the M25"
Edmonton mom angry after environmentalists deflate her SUV tires - "A group of environmentalists is going around Edmonton and other Canadian cities deflating people’s tires if they drive gas guzzlers like SUVs – but one woman believes their tactics are hurting their cause... A letter was left on her SUV from a group called “The Tire Extinguishers.”... “If they just left a flyer saying they feel my vehicle is a gas guzzler, I would have read it,” she said. “But because they made me angry, I don’t want to listen to what they have to say.” The website for the “The Tire Extinguishers” says the group does this to defend themselves against climate change and air pollution, vandalising personal property for the very purpose of ruining the SUV owner’s day... Dozens of deflations by this group have been reported in B.C. and Ontario too... EPS did confirm there was a tire slashing event on Sept. 18. In total, 13 vehicles had slashed tires in the Delwood community... Andrew Aparvary, who lives in Delwood, says families are being hurt by these tactics."
These terrorists are all over the West
Group claims responsibility after second instance of SUV tires deflated in Waterloo region - "The group claims to avoid targeting vehicles used by people with disabilities, work vehicles, vans and regular-sized cars."
Vigilante climate activist group deflates Bay Area SUV tires - "The U.K.-based group made their U.S. debut over the past few weeks by deflating tires in Chicago, New York City and Scranton, Pennsylvania... “We want to make it impossible to own an SUV in the world's urban areas. Deflating tyres repeatedly and encouraging others to do the same will turn the minor inconvenience of a flat tyre into a giant obstacle for driving massive killer vehicles around our streets”"
Wyoming Co. D.A. warns of environmental extremists deflating, slashing SUV tires in NEPA - "Wyoming County District Attorney Joe Peters is warning residents in NEPA that the international group "Tyre Extinguishers" has made its way to the area, slashing and deflating tires on SUVs in Scranton."
Climate activists slash tyres of SUVs across UK town leaving notes with dramatic warning - ""Bigger and bigger cars are dominating our towns and cities, and all so a privileged few can flaunt their wealth"... Hundreds of vehicles in affluent parts of London, Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool and Brighton have already been targeted."
Once again, protecting the environment is at least partly motivated by hating rich people. Ironic given that these activists are often rich themselves
Climate Protestors Deflate Tires on 600 SUVs Across Europe - "A European climate activism group called Tyre Extinguishers have been campaigning against the ravages of climate change by deflating the tires on SUVs all across Europe. Last night was their biggest night yet, the Guardian reports, with the group airing out the tires on more than 600 SUVs across nine different European countries... the group claims it hit utility vehicles in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Canada"
Jennifer Elle on Twitter - "My cousin posted on Facebook asking why her energy bill is so high. Yes, that’s $71 of carbon tax on a bill that’s $128 worth of gas use."
Damn greedy companies!
Experts fear wind farm surveys are confusing whales after seven washed up and died last month - "Seafreeze Fisheries Liaison Meghan Lapp said the Biden administration is so far refusing to investigate a possible connection between the rampant whale deaths and the underwater surveys.
What happens when charismatic megafauna and "climate change" clash?
Greta Thunberg on Twitter - "Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening. Climate protection is not a crime. #LuetziBleibt #LuetziLebt #KeepItInTheGround #ClimateJustice"
Ben Shapiro on Twitter - "I am sorry you were brutally posing for smiling photographs with the authorities. I only hope you never have to relive that trauma."
Meme - Seth Dillon @SethDillon: "Every five years she has to delete the tweets from five years ago saying we only have five years left."
Greta Thunberg: "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years."
6/21/18
This Tweet has been deleted."
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, A Taliban show of force in Afghanistan - "'Occasionally, people rush up to Greta in floods of tears, overjoyed simply to be in her presence. Others come to her in despair, sharing their own fears about the future of the planet, reaching out for any sign of hope. Once an airline pilot approached Greta, to ask for her forgiveness. This is my job, he said. And I'm so ashamed. Don't be, she told him.'"
Telling portrayal of climate change hysteria as religion
Thirty new honorary doctorates to be conferred in the Conferment Jubilee | University of Helsinki - "Faculty of Theology to confer eight honorary doctorates on 9 June 2023... Greta Thunberg, activist"
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Greta Thunberg is no longer a child and more she of making adult mistakes. She is now arguing the use of unlawful activities in functioning democracies, which I would assume would include violence and property destruction. She states that illegal activities are what produced civil rights. That’s not true. In the U.S., it was the Klan that was using illegal activities to keep minorities down. Civil rights came as a result of legal efforts. Studies have shown that violence and illegal activities consistently reduces support for a cause and hardened opposition. When the battlefield weapons are violence instead of argument, the strongest will ultimately win regardless of virtue. If the strongest support the change then it would have happened without the “need” for violence. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this. He worked to change minds in order to change a flawed system."
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "The World Bank is marketed as a multi-national effort to reduce poverty and promote economic development in under developed countries. The U.S. has the authority to choose who leads this organization. It appears that the Biden administration is going to choose a World Bank leader that will shift the organization’s top goal from poverty reduction to global warming. This is bad luck for the worlds poorest as money is diverted from impactful programs that help the poor to create cleaner but expensive energy that will hinder efforts to eradicate poverty. The effect of this change on global warming will be minimal because of the minuscule affect the worlds poorest have on gross carbon emissions."
Terence Corcoran: Flagship climate craziness - "When the International Energy Agency was created in 1974, through the political manipulations of U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger under president Richard Nixon, the objective was to set up an American-controlled organization that would help maintain security of oil supply in the wake of the 1973 OPEC embargo that had artificially created an energy crisis and triggered a 300 per cent increase in the price of crude. Almost 50 years later, the organization initially charged with avoiding an oil supply shock on Tuesday called for an immediate global shutdown of new investment in oil and other fossil fuels... The IEA is the new OPEC, but more powerful, influential and dangerous as it aims for a massive makeover of world energy markets... “A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector,” should be thoroughly read for what it is — a spectacular road map for collective planning insanity to fight climate change by eliminating fossil fuels and replacing them with technologies that, for the most part, do not exist. By 2035, the IEA’s new report claims there will be no sales of new internal combustion engine passenger cars, and by 2040, the global electricity sector will reach net zero emissions. But the IEA itself concedes that the alternatives to the fossil fuels are currently technological and economic fantasies. In another report last month, the IEA spent 280 pages explaining how converting the global auto industry to electric vehicle production will require transformations that are unprecedented and unplanned for. As I noted in this space last week, EVs require six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired power plant. Where will all these minerals — copper, magnesium, lithium, nickel, cobalt, rare earth elements — come from? Who knows? Certainly not the total-control agitators at the IEA. While they call for a complete overhaul of global energy systems, they warn of a lack of investment, possible disruptions, potential vulnerabilities, and “damaging outcomes for our economies and the planet.”... The IEA is a master of a certain form of institutional advocacy double-think. “All the technologies needed to achieve the necessary deep cuts in global emissions by 2030 already exist.” But massive government subsidies and regulations are needed to roll out demonstration projects on low-carbon electricity, new battery systems and other transformative technologies that are not quite ready for prime time. The scale of the investment transformation called for by the IEA is unprecedented. Clean energy investment will have to soar from a little more than $1 trillion annually to more than $4 trillion by 2030, bringing total annual energy investment to $5 trillion. That’s a lot of money diverted from other uses and plowed into chasing net zero. The IEA gets around the prospective lost investment in other sectors by claiming the new energy cash will bring economic benefits “as the world emerges from the COVID-19 crisis.” The claim is that all the new green net zero investment will create millions of jobs and put the global GDP four per cent higher than it would be based on current trends. How much confidence should the world’s citizens place in 10-year economic projections produced by an agency that is selling a major restructuring of the world economy? Then there’s the little problem of global co-operation so that each country takes the right steps"
From 2021
Revealed: Proposed petrol and diesel car ban in towns and tax hikes - how climate change action strategy will affect you - "Almost every aspect of our daily lives will be affected by a new climate strategy launched by the Government today. Motorists and businesses will feel the brunt of tax hikes unless they actively invest in going green. The Government plans to force petrol and diesel cars off our roads, introduce new buildings regulations and change the school curriculum in a bid to counteract climate change. The plan has a major emphasis on the transport sector. Proposals include banning petrol and diesel cars from town centres around the country... Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the government wants to “nudge” people and businesses to change their behaviour in order to tackle climate change... While a "congestion charge" for traffic in central Dublin has been floated in the past, this plan goes much further with a suggestion for legislation banning petrol and diesel cars from town centres altogether."
From 2019
Delay in ban on new fossil-fuelled car sales branded ‘hugely disappointing’ - "Electric vehicle association says Ireland had ‘opportunity to lead the way’ as Brussels tells Government to delay measure until EU-wide ban in 2035"
Reality Is Often Disappointing
Meme - "Since I cant afford gas I'll just go out and buy a $100K electric car."
Rationing: a fairer way to fight climate change? - "World War II-style rationing could be an effective way to reduce carbon emissions, according to new research from the University of Leeds. In a paper published today in the journal ‘Ethics, Policy and Environment’, academics argue that rationing could help states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rapidly and fairly... According to the researchers, it’s likely that rationing would accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy and more sustainable lifestyles"
The green future is a nightmare
YOU SAID IT: Trudeau does it again | Ottawa Sun - "Estimates show Trudeau has spent more than $100 billion chasing his new green deal while declaring a war on fossil fuels and raising carbon taxes. At the same time, Canada has lost hundreds of billions in foreign investments in the resource industry. Trudeau’s ideologically driven and economy-killing obsession with eliminating carbon at all costs is killing needed business and investments from friendly nations elsewhere. Canada should be supporting our key allies and helping our own flagging economy."
Creaky U.S. power grid threatens progress on renewables, EVs - "The decrepit power infrastructure of the world’s largest economy is among the biggest obstacles to expanding clean energy and combating climate change on the ambitious schedule laid out by U.S. President Joe Biden. His administration promises to eliminate or offset carbon emissions from the power sector by 2035 and from the entire U.S. economy by 2050. Such rapid clean-energy growth would pressure the nation’s grid in two ways: Widespread EV adoption will spark a huge surge in power demand; and increasing dependence on renewable power creates reliability problems on days with less sun or wind... The federal government, however, lacks the authority to push through the massive grid expansion and modernization needed to withstand wilder weather and accommodate EVs and renewable power. Under the current regulatory regime, the needed infrastructure investments are instead controlled by a Byzantine web of local, state and regional regulators who have strong political incentives to hold down spending, according to Reuters interviews with grid operators, federal and state regulators, and executives from utilities and construction firms... Another steep challenge: Getting renewable power to population centers. Locating massive wind farms and solar facilities near cities and suburbs brings its own set of political challenges. Solar installations, which require vastly more land than comparable fossil-fuel facilities, are already facing intense political opposition in rural America from residents who say they mar the local landscape and culture as developers buy up farmland. Locating renewable facilities in far-flung locales, in turn, requires reliable nationwide connections to move the power around the country. Right now, much of the available renewable power is trapped in various regions."
When they admit that "progress" has huge problems
The joys of federalism
Vertical farms tried to grow lettuce indoors. Now many are failing - "Climate change might make growing produce indoors a necessity. But despite taking in more than a billion dollars in venture capital investment, most companies in the industry seem to be withering, unable to turn a profit on lettuce... In theory, there are enormous benefits to indoor farms. They often use 90% less water than traditional farms; right now, most lettuce in the country is grown in drought-stricken California and Arizona. Growing inside can avoid outbreaks of E. coli and diseases like a plant virus that recently devastated lettuce grown in California’s Salinas Valley, pushing up prices. Indoor farming also eliminates pesticides and reduces fertilizer and keeps it out of rivers. Lettuce grown near Boston or New York City can avoid traveling thousands of miles from Western fields, saving gas and staying fresh longer. It’s possible to grow delicate, flavorful foods that otherwise wouldn’t survive a long trip through the supply chain. And as climate change makes extreme heat, drought, and flooding more likely, growing inside could become a necessity for some crops. But in practice, you end up with a head of lettuce that must bear many costs. Farms in warehouses—which typically have multiple layers of plants stacked toward the ceiling in each row, which is why they’re often called vertical farms—are expensive to build and run... Lights alone are expensive... Running air conditioners and other equipment adds to the energy used. Adding renewable energy outside can help—and reduce the carbon footprint that goes along with that energy use—but putting a few solar panels on the roof can’t cover the total amount of electricity needed. “In a typical cold climate, you would need about five acres of solar panels to grow one acre of lettuce,” says Kale Harbick, a USDA researcher who studies controlled-environment agriculture. A hypothetical skyscraper filled with lettuce would require solar panels covering an area the size of Manhattan... when companies each build their own technology, expenses balloon. “There are many reasons why they’re doing it, but one of the reasons is because they know that Silicon Valley investors won’t invest in a farm, but they’ll invest in a tech company,” says Henry Gordon-Smith, founder of Agritecture, a firm that consults on urban farming projects. “In reality, these companies overspend on R&D by crazy amounts, and then say, ‘Oh, shit, that didn’t work.'” Startups often later incorporate more outside tech, he says, but keep the narrative that they’ve designed a full system from scratch... Its farm proved that automation could run its operations. But it also had to pay the high salaries of a team of robotics and software engineers. “When you have a commodity-type market such as leafy greens, it’s really hard to find enough margin to be able to have your unit sales cover the cost of the broader enterprise”... Bigger farms could help, he says, so companies could sell more product. Some farms in the U.S. might also move toward a model often used in Dutch greenhouses, with a much smaller staff. “The overhead to run the farm is a lot lower because there’s no corporate offices,” he says. “There’s an outsourced technical support staff team and outsourced IT team. The manager of the entire facility is also the head grower, who is also the person who pays payroll.” Some American startups also have a suite of well-paid executives even before they’re making a profit. “A lot of these companies are still floating on venture capital,” says Stein. “What’s the first thing that they do? They hire all their friends. And they blow out the administrative salaries on the operating side.”... The high costs of building and running the facilities mean that it’s also difficult for local indoor farms to compete with the cost of lettuce grown in California, despite the expense of trucking field-grown lettuce across the country. The production costs outside are lower because of cheaper land, far less energy use, and lower total labor costs. A 2020 study from Cornell University estimated that lettuce from indoor farms in Chicago or New York was more than twice as expensive to produce as lettuce grown and delivered from the West Coast... many investors don’t really understand this space, and that they’re often drawn to the sexiest, most revolutionary technology, rather than more incremental improvements and business models that are already proven, like lower-tech greenhouses. It’s also hard to make money selling baby greens rather than a high price-point item like cannabis—or even just more expensive produce, like berries"
Most "sustainability" is unsustainable without subsidies
Bjorn Lomborg on Twitter - "Whenever you think the climate alarmist narrative can't get more silly — it manages to do just that. (PS, article actually concludes scenario is "unlikely" and "global warming seems unfavorable to the parasite" — but only towards end)"
"The Last Of Us? How Climate Change Could Spawn A Deadly Zombie Fungus"
Climate Activists Blow Smoke on Wildfire Fears - WSJ - "Add wildfires to the long list of natural disasters that are overhyped in climate coverage. It scares adults and kids alike, as when Rep. Katie Porter’s (D., Calif.) 9-year-old daughter worries: “The Earth is on fire and we’re all going to die soon.” This simply isn’t true. In the early 1900s, about 4.2% of land world-wide burned every year, as you can see on the nearby graph. A century later, that had dropped almost to 3%. That decline has continued through the satellite era, and 2021 is likely to end with only 2.5% of the globe having caught fire, based on data through Aug. 31. This data is entirely noncontroversial. Even a report from the World Wildlife Fund—chillingly subtitled “a crisis raging out of control?”—concedes midway through that “the area of land burned globally has actually been steadily declining since it started to be recorded in 1900.” Human ingenuity gets the credit: People have moved from hearths to power stations, converted untamed land into protected farms, and created enough excess wealth that societies can increasingly afford to defend our surroundings with fire suppression and forest management. Climate studies that predict significantly more fires typically ignore this history. They model only temperature changes, excluding what people might do in response... Much of the media coverage of wildfires is similarly ignorant of data. The Los Angeles Times’s entire front page screamed about “California’s Climate Apocalypse” last fall as wildfires burned through the state. But those fires look unremarkable in historical context. Before 1800 wildfires on average burned between 4.5% and 12% of California each year, far more than the 4.2% of the state consumed by the “climate apocalypse” in 2020. While the share of the U.S. burned by wildfires has risen since the 1980s, influenced in part by climate change, that’s not the whole story. Fires in the U.S. today burn less than a fifth of the area that was scorched each year in the 1930s, and an expert panel found that the recent uptick is mostly the result of poor forest management. Perhaps the best example of unwarranted media histrionics came in response to Australia’s 2019-20 fire season. Papers plastered their covers with images of the destruction, capped with headlines such as “Apocalypse Now,” “Terror Coast,” and “This is what a climate crisis looks like.” Yet satellite measurements show that total burned area that fire season was one of the lowest Australia had seen in the last 120 years. In the laconic phrasing of this year’s annual environmental report by Australian National University, the 2019-20 fires were “well below average.”"
Anyone who disagrees that climate change is causing every disaster to become worse is a Climate Change Denier
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Why use food for fuel? - "'A biofuel that was an intentionally grown crop, and it wasn't coming at the expense of anything else, that's a really big if, that biofuel was perhaps 40% less carbon intensive than gasoline... however,
if we look at what was happening back in the 2000s was new land was being put into production in places like Brazil, and that land was often previously nature. It was either rainforest or the so-called ciratto [sp?], the mixed grasslands. And so you need to know what was going on in that land beforehand. If that was a rainforest where there's huge trees storing lots of carbon, you have to take into account that lost ecological productivity and that loss of standing carbon... about the worst thing you can do is cut down an existing healthy rainforest... what we found is that ethanol was frequently no better and in some cases it was worse than gasoline.'"
Climate change means people need to starve - and the climate may not even be better off
Leonardo DiCaprio attends eco fashion awards in LA after travelling 12,000 miles in 2 weeks by jet - "Leonardo has been an outspoken advocate for environmental issues throughout much of his career... Leonardo previously came under fire for his lengthy trips via private jet in short spaces of time. In 2016, he reportedly flew 8,000 miles via private jet from Europe to New York City to accept an award for his environmental activism... While in 2014, he made a speech in front of the United Nations about climate change after marching with 400,000 others on the streets of New York. But the Hollywood star's own jetset lifestyle reveals a double-standard on the issue of climate change - as he boasts a number of homes, and later made the private jet trip. After causing a wave of controversy with the trip, he appeared keen to make amends in 2021 - travelling commercially to Glasgow for the COP26 eco summit"
