Climate change has been reignited by the claims of a greenie activist, Michael Shellenberger, who claims he has solutions to the arguments about the warming of the planet. His statement about his ideas is in the form of an apology for being so alarmist in the past, but has now seen the light. The statement is entitled: “On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare.”
It is really an advertisement for his new book: “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”
In Independent Australia, 3/7/2020, Steve Bishop posted a review of an article about Shellenberger published in The Australian. Bishop’s review is entitled: “Murdoch press supports ‘reformed climate activist’ Michael Shellenberger.”
“The mainstream media press published an attack on climate science by a supposed environmentalist who is, in fact, a nuclear lobbyist, writes Steve Bishop.
“The Australian [1/7/2020] misled its readers this week when it carried a major article purporting to be written by a climate activist who was, as it turned out, admitting climate science was bunkum.”
Bishop also reveals that Shellenberger has been exposed long ago in 2010 by the Public Interest Research Centre.
Another review of Shellenberger’s statement was written by John Tierney in the Wall Street Journal, 21/6/2020 (a Murdoch publication).
When Robert Hunziker read the Wall Street Journal review of Shellenberger’s statement, he says he realised that Shellenberger had “missed the target by a country mile.”
He gave an example of Shellenberger’s misinformation when Shellenberger writes:
“No, climate change has not caused an increase in the frequency or intensity of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes. Really? Nebraska, Missouri, South Dakota, Iowa, and Kansas re the Great Flood of 2019, the longest flood on record?”
“Shellenberg, who evidently promotes industrial action as humanities saviour, actually suggests, not facetiously, capitalist entrepreneurs saved whales by discovering cheap substitutes for whale oil, like petroleum.
“… and not to worry about plastics as sunlight and other forces break down the substances…
“… and solar and wind power are impractical and damage the environment requiring vast amounts of land and harm flora and fauna…
“While industrialisation causes a short-term rise in carbon emissions, in the long term it’s beneficial to the environment as people move to cities, allowing farmland to revert to nature, as prosperity enables them to switch to cleaner and more compact forms of energy.”
By that, Shellenberger means nuclear power – and accompanying nuclear weapons!
“Based on Tierney’s review”, says Hunziker, “Shellenberger is simply one more lifeline for the fossil fuel industry and Wall Street’s neo liberal dreamland advocacy.”
Hunziker is critical of:
“Wall Street and its kissing cousins the Wall Street Journal responsible for promoting the neoliberal leviathan that ‘sucks up’ to fossil fuel interests and literally destroyed America’s middle class and unions and checks and balances on pollution by shipping US manufacturing offshore to the lowest common denominator of wages and avoidance of environmental regulations.”
And Hunziker is critical of environmentalists as well.
“Climate activists have been warning about the overheating of the planet for decades, ever since Dr James Hansen’s testimony before Senate in 1987: “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now!”
“The truth of the matter”, says Hunziger, “is environmentalists have not screamed loud enough to make a difference as greenhouse gases are presently at all-time highs after three decades of screaming, but not loud enough!”
Hence the title of Hunziker’s article: “Arctic Heat Overwhelms Green Infighting.” The evidence is there all over the planet and the environmentalists are squabbling and arguing among themselves.
But, someone like Shellenberger accuses the environmentalists of alarmism, catastrophe and apocalypse. He says that the greenies are scaring the children.
But Shellenberger himself might well be afraid of Greta Thunberg and the hundreds of thousands of young people around the world marching to protest the lack of real action on climate change – and they are certainly not embracing the Shellenberger solution of nuclear power and nuclear arms.
Meanwhile, says Hunziker, people live in ‘fabricated/artificial lifestyles’…
”This artificiality breeds ignorance and stupidity, as reflected in political elections”.
“Ecosystems are coming apart at the seams, which Shellenberger ignores and refutes by advocating, as core values, industrialism and fossil fuels and nuclear over renewables and economics. He misses the important point as far as the biosphere is concerned. Salvation for humanity and for the planet is dependent upon tossing out the entire neoliberal experiment in favour of eco economics that favours natural and human values over profits and inane infinite growth schemes.”
He goes on to list numerous examples: of dying fauna, high temperatures, ice melts on a massive scale, permafrost gases, heat threats to human health, droughts…the things about which environmentalists need to shout more loudly.
Hunziker finishes with a postscript:
“A fact worth repeating time and time again because it is not going away: According to NOAA Climate.gov, ‘In fact, the last time the atmospheric CO2 amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3 degrees C (3.6 -5.4F) higher than during the pre-industrial era, and sea level was 15-25 metres (50-80 feet) higher than today. The lag effect is in process.”
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