How Dare You?

By Sherri Lange March 31, 2023

“What is  fear designed to do? Control, and incidentally generate profits. “Fear is one of the most powerful human emotions. While highly useful in situations where threat of immediate harm exists, it is the most debilitating and dangerous of emotions when present unnecessarily.”

While some of these imagined fears are of one’s own making, many are the consequence of narratives created by those in positions of power. Individuals looking to take advantage of, and manipulate others, have long realized the power of fear.  When one is gripped by fear of a threat, real or imagined, their rational and higher cognitive capacities shut down, making them easily manipulable by anyone that promises safety from the threat.“

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear”, wrote the 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke.

While some of these imagined fears are of one’s own making, many are the consequence of narratives created by those in positions of power. Individuals looking to take advantage of, and manipulate others, have long realized the power of fear.  When one is gripped by fear of a threat, real or imagined, their rational and higher cognitive capacities shut down, making them easily manipulable by anyone that promises safety from the threat.“

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear”, wrote the 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke.

A DELETED TWEET, AND A FEW ADMISSIONS; Is Greta Thunberg evolving?

However slowly, Ms. Thunberg, now 20, is now forced to adjust her views and statements. Yes, industrial wind turbines harm reindeer, and she admits we have to adjust the end point for the demise of civilization. It is no longer 2023, as was indicated in a famous Tweet, now deleted.

A tweet by Greta Thunberg, 2018

“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.”  (Editor’s comment: oh, that would be, right about now? I’d delete that one, too.)

Unrelenting trembling and fear. A book by Greta Thunberg and colleagues: The Climate Book.

Greta Thunberg, 20,  has written a few essays, and, assembled quite a few “snack size” essays by others,  humbly called, The Climate Book. Not surprisingly, it is getting favorable reviews, generally. Kirkus Reviews calls it, “Vital reading for anyone who cares about the planet.” The reviewer calls it, “brilliant” and an “alarming narrative.”

“The brilliant and alarming narrative tells it like it is: Though politicians, fossil fuel stakeholders, and other relevant entities have known for decades that a warming climate will have devastating results for Earth, most have done little about it. “It is my genuine belief,” writes Thunberg, “that the only way we will be able to avoid the worst consequences of this emerging existential crisis is if we create a critical mass of people who demand the changes required.”

Many of the contributors, some considered illustrious, outline the tipping points already reached: oceans degraded, forests plundered, fauna decimated, retreating, cruelly de-homed. Extinctions. These are true and frightening on their own. All of these essays add to the climate catastrophe theory: we are going “to hell in a handbasket.” Imminently.

It’s an ambitious undertaking: more than 100 climate essays from veritable bona fide established mainstream Climate Gurus, authors, pundits.

However, the intellectual shortcomings of the presentations are profound.

THE TIPPING POINT, AND THIS TIME WE MEAN IT, we think! (IPCC)

Rockström, a contributor to The Climate Book, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, indicates the world is coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”.

Tipping Points reflect a point in time where a “threshold” is reached and irreversible, self-perpetuating changes occur. For example, these can be from deforestation, and usually reflect an inability to neutralize or absorb carbon. Needless to say, fossil fuel use is the big culprit in the scenario, and the attack on Big Oil has been merciless. Carbon is obviously a wily and treacherous beast to be tamed. Captured. Net Zeroed.

The Tipping Point usually refers to a climate warming number, assigned variously, and capriciously, or inaccurately.

“The persistent march of a warming climate is seen across a multitude of continuous, incremental changes. CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Ocean heat content. Global sea level rise. Each creeps up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.”

Many believe this Tipping Point has been reached in several fashions, and that the “house is now on fire.”

According to a 2009 paper on the use of the term “tipping points” in climate science and the media, a presentation (pdf) in 2005 by Dr James Hansen of Columbia University’s Earth Institute helped “initiate a tipping point trend in climate change communication that was quickly reflected in public debate”. 

In Hansen’s talk – a tribute to scientist Prof Charles Keeling, given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting – Hansen warned that “we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption”.

By its Fall Meeting of 2008, the AGU had an entire half-day session dedicated to climate tipping points. A Science briefing about the meeting declared that “tipping points, once considered too alarmist for proper scientific circles, have entered the climate change mainstream”.

The authors in The Climate Book, call for collective action globally, carbon reductions, an end to fossil fuels, and post haste.

However, as most now agree, carbon is not a poison. These projections, and energy policy repercussions, are serious, damning, and hypocritical in the highest. Damning nations to energy poverty, crippling all with unobtainable ridiculous targets that have zero bearing on reality.

GRETA AND THE IPCC AGREE; WE HAVE MORE TIME

But now, Greta herself admits that we have “more time,” and the world will not be destroyed by 2023 after all. The assumptions in many/most of the essays rely on the Emergency of Climate: the world will end shortly, unless we ACT.  Indeed, this week,  the IPCC issued again, for the 666^th time, that we are doomed, and within striking distance of terminal disaster. “The house is on fire,” kind of thing. (Let’s remember how many times they have said this.) However, the caveat that we can control the “weather,” and with HEAVY mitigation, and investment in wind, solar, storage, and carbon capture, bring the earth’s temperatures within a certain threshold, is strikingly odd as well. Now it’s a time bomb, but with a survival guide, and “we can bring it (the temperature threshold) down.”

“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which this week released its final “synthesis report”, marking six years of work by about 700 scientists.

“Today’s IPCC report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb,” he said. “It is a survival guide for humanity.”

….

 “This is the final warning to limit the climate warming,” Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.

“In the next 10 years, we’ll overshoot that 1.5-degree threshold, but then we can bring it back down again — with heavy climate mitigation, heavy investment in renewable energy and also carbon capture and storage,” she said.

Now as we can easily note, “tipping points” are facilely discussed, perhaps not too alarmist at all, and mainstream conversation.

A YOUNG CLIMATE CELEBRITY HOUND, GRETA SUGGESTS HER ACTION COURSE

 In The Climate Book, predating the IPCC latest report, which is really a summary, Greta admonishes that we should eat no meat (or we are F^^^ed), travel by air less if not at all, aim towards net zero by 2050, use EVs, and of course, use renewables, which she says, will be inevitably producing most of our energy: as well, we should give up flying, insulate our homes, and use low carbon materials. One or two of these are reasonable suggestions.

Inside all of this idealism and much misplaced ideology, is a sincere, albeit hysterical, childlike persona, hyper charged on her disability, Aspergers, her “supercharger” she calls it; a young lady who can yet stand up and attempt to protect the reindeer herds of Norway from dangerous, harmful industrial wind towers.

Science News extols the virtues of this Thunberg Climate Compilation:

That sobering fact (of inevitable rises in temperatures) makes clear that climate change isn’t just a problem to solve someday soon; it’s an emergency to respond to now. And yet, most people don’t act like we’re in the midst of the greatest crisis humans have ever faced — not politicians, not the media, not your neighbor, not myself, if I’m honest. That’s what I realized after finishing The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg.

The urgency to act now, to kick the addiction to fossil fuels, practically jumps off the page to punch you in the gut. So while not a pleasant read — it’s quite stressful — it’s a book I can’t recommend enough. The book’s aim is not to convince skeptics that climate change is real. We’re well past that. Instead, it’s a wake-up call for anyone concerned about the future.

Some might find the “read” stressful for other reasons than jumping off the page, gut punching perceived realities of what is “climate” prophecy coming of age: a total disaster, the end of all. Every essay ends with or subtexts the admonition that we must act now:  We must cut gas emissions, end our addiction to oil, NOW. It is, after all, an EMERGENCY. (One essayist, Johan Rockström, indicates this is an ethical “existential fork in the road.” {p. 33, The Climate Book})

In addition to her own essays, front pieces to sections, are essays by Margaret Atwood, George Monbiot, Bill McKibben and Robin Wall Kimmerer, to name a few. One of the authors,  Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the Universities of Manchester, Uppsala and Bergen, posits that : “Wealthy nations must eliminate their use of fossils fuels by around 2030 for a likely chance of 1.5C, extending only around 2035 to 2040 for 2C.”  It’s astonishing how these contributors are able to express with such certainty and precision, an end of world scenario.

(The book presents a broad scope of Climate Pundits or theorists, including esteemed author Margaret Atwood, and Bill McKibbon, The End of Nature. An “Everything Bagel” of Climate Fear.)

Greta Thunberg in this book shows her lack of understanding of complex natural forces, and a meagre display of critical thinking about climate. In The Climate Book, Greta has arranged a potpourri of aching and fear. It’s an unfortunate blend of hysteria and lack of clarity, facts. It is not at all, “brilliant,” but it is “alarming” indeed, in the scope of misunderstanding, and unfortunately the spreading of it. “A fashionable scare story” by well-intentioned people.

A BEWILDERING MIX OF MISREPRESENTATIONS

Just a few of the numerous facts missing from the compilation of 103 essays. There are to my estimate, at least a hundred missing “thoughts,” errors. For heaven’s sake, let’s stop demonizing carbon.

1. Carbon is a beneficial element of life. It has been vilified and blamed for rising waters, all manner of catastrophes. In reality: Carbon is not the enemy.  Most now realize it is a resource and a tool. See the Clintel report: There is no Climate Emergency.

“A global network of over 1501 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

• The concern about rising sea levels is misguided and incorrect. See Judith Curry’s report:  Dr Curry says the idea is so outlandish, we can’t even assign “a probability.”

“Subsequent to the IPCC AR5, there has been a focus on the possible worst-case scenario for global sea level rise. Estimates of the maximum possible global sea level rise by the end of the 21st century range from 1.6 to 3 meters [5-10 feet], and even higher. These extreme values of possible sea level rise are regarded as extremely unlikely or so unlikely that we cannot even assign a probability. Nevertheless, these extreme, barely possible values of sea level rise are becoming anchored as outcomes that are driving local adaptation plans.”

Additionally, many if not most agree these natural variations are not anthropogenic in nature.

It is useful to quote a little more, as this one item is a driver for the fear complex of climate. Judith Curry’s report ascertains: Let’s remember Al Gore’s warning that the polar icecaps were melting, and New York City would soon be submerged.

 Whether recent global sea level rise is unusual. At least in some regions, sea level was higher than present around 5000 to 7000 years ago. After several centuries of sea level decline following the Medieval Warm Period, sea levels began to rise in the mid 19th century. Rates of global mean sea level rise between 1920 and 1950 were comparable to recent rates. It is concluded that recent change is within the range of natural sea level variability over the past several thousand years. 2. The extent to which recent global sea level rise is caused by human-caused global warming, relative to natural causes of global sea level rise. The slow emergence of fossil fuel emissions prior to 1950 did not contribute significantly to 19th and early 20th century sea level rise. Identifying a potential human fingerprint on recent sea level rise is confounded by the large magnitude of natural internal variability associated with ocean circulation patterns. There is not yet any convincing evidence of such a fingerprint on sea level rise associated with human-caused global warming.

(Most of the projections, “strain credulity.” Like drinking from a fire hose. A few more of the most egregious misrepresentations follow. This is a mere sample.)

• Natural disasters attributed to hypothetical warming are not valid. “Global warming” has not increased natural disasters such as tornadoes, floods, fires, hurricanes. Indeed, many now believe global cooling may be more likely.

There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.

• Joe Fone, author of Climate Change, Natural or Manmade illustrates a climate romp through time. He “expertly guides us through the maze of climate claim and counter-claim to reveal the uncomfortable truths about climate change some would prefer us to ignore.”

What are those hidden agendas, that untether us from reality? Is the research politicized, questionable, and what does the history of climate show us. I highly recommend this book! You will never hear the words “climate change” again in the same way. Fone goes further and calls the climate hysteria, an adept mechanism at monetizing, a scam. Joe Fone also denies the anthropogenic link to climate verities.

• Friends of Science indicates that phrases such as “We are out of time,” and “Our House is on Fire,” add to the frenzy that has distorted our ongoing responsible efforts to manage an achingly complex, changing world. I would add, these unhelpful hysterical phrases do nothing to solve very real problems. (Global warming, is not one of these problems.)

As Friends of Science Society has shown in various videos, the public theme of climate emergency and that “Our House is On Fire” appears to stem from the “Climate Mobilization” project of clinical psychologist Margaret Klein-Salamon. The false claim of a ‘climate emergency’ theme, unquestioned by most mainstream media, was picked up by Greta Thunberg and her millions of followers, cross-promoted by the carbon offset business group “We Don’t Have Time.” 

There are literally millions of sources correcting the hype on perceived imminent global climate catastrophe. Some of these are recorded in this excellent recent letter by Doug Brodie to Sir Edward Mountain and the Scottish Government’s Net Zero, Energy, and Transport, Committee. (The world is pushing back on hysterical “reports.”) Brodie suggests we ignore these climate misinformation reports entirely.

From the Doug Brodie letter:

Just this week the UN IPCC issued a hysterical new report repeating their previous climate misinformation nonsense, which strangely never gets challenged by Ofcom or the paid-for globalist fact-checkers, calling for emissions-cutting efforts to be “super-charged”. The mainstream media confirmed that they are bought-and-paid-for globalist shills by bigging it all up and not questioning the obviously false narrative. This panic is very strange given that global temperatures have flatlined (net) for all of this century, with global cooling (as in the 1960s and 70s) the most likely scenario over the next few decades as the naturally cyclical Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (which the UN IPCC choses to ignore) goes through its cold phase. The following bullet points show just how annoyingly detached from reality the UN IPCC has become. It’s high time we ignored them completely. 

This is a letter worth circulating.

CONCLUSION

Greta herself lives in a world of dysfunctional IPCC high octane incorrect assumptions, ideologies, often coming increasingly smack against other realities, because of her ‘star’ status, in a very public manner. Note the protest against wind turbines in Norway: the reindeer need to be protected. (Greta is a serious promoter of wind and solar, those miracles of renewables that she says can rid us of fossil fuels. Not.)

Greta, now talk about wind turbines and the bird and bat kills, the whales and other marine animals beaching worldwide from sonar testing, noise from drilling for turbines, and vibrational dislocation and ensuing deafness. A deaf whale is a dead whale.  Then do a survey of loss of natural habitat, loss of communication with family groups, loss of ability to reproduce. Yes, extinction for some. Many species now. Then talk about the unreliability, the cost, and the human cost, the fact that wind turbines ARE fossil fuels, start to finish. Maybe that’s the next book.

Greta Thunberg wants us to hope. But she says we must create our own hope.

“To me, hope is not something that is given to you, it is something you have to earn, to create,” she writes. “It cannot be gained passively, through standing by and waiting for someone else to do something. Hope is taking action.”

It is our hope that this young person, courageous enough to sail across 3,500 miles of open ocean and eat freeze dried vegan meals from often single use plastic bags, (prepared via fossil fuel technology), will begin to look at the facts of climate, embrace real information, not just opine on antiquated passé incorrect climate hysteria/frankly, lies.

The Climate Book, is a book in the total “service of fear.”   It is not based on truth about how carbon works or what it is, how fossil fuels are essential for a very long time, and what alternatives are: look to new nuclear, please. It is a cantata of panic and frenzy, sometimes eloquent, but ultimately based on falsehoods, or factual blankness.

Perhaps her next book  could examine the impacts of climate theories and policies on the poorest of the poor worldwide. Trillions or quadrillions spent on combating Carbon, pledged emissions reductions, convoluted oppressive mandates and inarticulable incalculable subsidies to useless harmful methodologies. (See wind and solar. See Battery Energy Storage Systems. See CO2 and net zero mandates. See State Wide, Country Wide restrictions, even coming to you soon, no gas stoves.) Even thinking of doing reasonable math on the costs of subsidies, and the road maps to Net Zero suggested by many,  could give one a massive headache. (We could recall Upton Sinclair, who wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”)

The good intentions in The Climate Book, do not, could not, begin to mitigate the incredible harm of climate policies worldwide. Indeed, this book contributes to the ride to ruin. The Climate Cult Circus, will be one of the most pitiful, painful examples of human derangement, with ruin and suffering in its throes.  

This well-intentioned, flawed book gets an F from this reader.  

Will we ultimately remember the words of Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist:

“What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”

We invite you, Greta, to repeat every night, ten times before sleeping: “There is no Climate Emergency, there is no Climate Emergency.” This might re-position your mind to a gentler sleep. Let go your Messianic Urges to save the planet. Climate Altar sacrifices of uncountable dead wildlife, communities forced to live with dangerous ILFN and damaged health,  the planet’s vastness and beauty condemned to death, an unnatural vacuum, a cemetery, a moral desert, is not saving the planet. There is no respite after the deconstruction of life itself. This is the legacy of “wind and solar” renewables, which you are promoting as a panacea.

Richard Lindzen again:  “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

We should have seen the IPCC fantastical tales and wind/solar/battery/ carbon hating culture/ disaster coming. We should have anticipated an anxious generation of Gretas. It’s been a long time coming.

Calling The Climate Book a “wake up call,” as one reader remarked, makes us think that indeed, we have failed our children. Indoctrinated them, made them shuttered from critical thinking and logic, rendering them hyper fearful, and preparing them to perpetuate uber harm to the world.

Zina Cohen has written Greta’s Homework: 101 Truths about Climate Change that Everyone Should Read (Especially Hysterical Hypocritical Mythmakers.) She writes:

…there is no doubt in my mind that she has, quite unnecessarily, terrified millions of children around the world who now also believe that climate change threatened their world. Ms Thunberg has, I fear, done considerably more harm than good. By scaring a whole generation of children, Ms Thunberg has created an epidemic of fear and anxiety….I hope when this fashionable scare story is over, maybe Ms Thunberg and many other children, will be able to enjoy life a little more.”

ADDENDUM ONE

Deck of the “Good Ship Greta.”

Did Greta Thunberg’s boat have a diesel engine?

“In addition to solar and hydro power, the craft is equipped with two diesel 30hp engines, according to Multihull Central, a boat-reviewing site, as noted by climate skeptic Tom Nelson.Nov 14, 2019” (Diesel was also used for docking and leaving.)

The picture Greta would like to present is of carbon neutral travel.

“ But there’s another side to this eco-friendly journey: Two crewmembers had to fly across the Atlantic to New York to bring the boat back, and two of the crewmembers that made the original voyage had to fly across the Atlantic from the US to return home. That’s four flights to keep Greta from making two.  We won’t even mention the train trip Greta took to get to Plymouth, England, in order to set sail, nor will we mention the numerous freeze-dried meals, which we assume are encased in some single-use plastic product, which by our estimations, the two-man crew, Greta, her father, and some cameraman documenting the experience equated to over 200 meals. We also won’t talk about how Greta will return home, since the boat has since returned to Europe.

In a nutshell, the 5,337-kilometer flight times four people generated 2,134,800 grams of C02 by our calculations, just for the flights alone. (Our emphasis)

ADDENDUM TWO

Contributors to The Climate Book

https://www.instagram.com/p/CkNeY0oDzkH/

Includes: Michael Oppenheimer, Naomi Klein, Margaret Atwood, Bill McKibbon, Ketan Joshi, George Monbiot, Michael Mann.

ADDENDUM THREE

Bjorn Lomborg Declares “False Alarm” On Climate Hysteria. See link.

https://www.hoover.org/research/bjorn-lomborg-declares-false-alarm-climate-hysteria

This week, a conversation with Bjorn Lomborg, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and one of the foremost climate experts in the world today. His new book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, is an argument for treating climate as a serious problem but not an extinction-level event requiring such severe and drastic steps as rewiring a large part of the culture and the economy. Bjorn responds directly to some of the most vociferous climate policy critics, including Greta Thunberg, author David Wallace-Wells (The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming), and proponents of the Green New Deal. We also discuss some promising emerging technologies and why worst-case scenarios are often just that—scenarios that are used to motivate the public into action but are not in fact likely to occur. It’s a sobering and even-handed discussion on climate that does not include apocalyptic endings for the planet. 

Richard Lindzen, a Harvard-educated American atmospheric physicist who has published more than 200 scientific papers and books:

1. “What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”

2. “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

3. “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”

4. “Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life.” (MP: Of course, you also control people.) (Our emphasis)