The media’s obsession with cataclysmic climate change is matched only by their fixation on unreliable wind and solar power as the only solution.

That narrative has been tortured for over more than 20 years, now. But even among their own ilk, the “only more subsidies for wind turbines and solar panels will save us” narrative has worn thin, of late.

Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans lifted the lid on the cynical and manipulative crony capitalists profiteering from the climate industrial complex that they helped to create. For his trouble, he’s been effectively censored by the media, with his movie pulled from YouTube and other platforms, simply because the fact that renewable energy is an enormous moneymaking scam, doesn’t fit the narrative. Australians won’t find any reference to Planet of the Humans on ‘their’ ABC or SBS, ordinarily the natural vehicles to carry Moore’s anti-capitalist, chip-on-his-shoulder, rhetoric.

Michael Shellenberger, once worshipped by America’s green-left, has found himself in the same territory. His troubles started with his essay – Sorry, But I Cried Wolf on Climate Change – a warts and all apology for whipping up climate change hysteria and a precis of his latest work, ‘Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All’.

Shellenberger, obviously no fool, was alive to the tactics employed by the mainstream press to marginalise, de-platform and ultimately cancel anyone deemed to be ‘problematic’, whether for spouting inconvenient truths or simply failing to support the party line.

When a couple of the usual suspects from Australia’s green-left propaganda outfits (the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian) tried to verbal him, he caught them out at their own game. We’ll leave the delicious telling of that story to The Australian’s Chris Kenny in the second article below. But first, here’s Chris Mitchell with some insight on what we’re all up against.

Stoking fear a fool’s game in climate change reporting
The Australian
Chris Mitchell
6 July 2020

Once-sober media organisations that distinguished themselves from racy tabloid television and newspapers now prefer panic to accurate and sceptical reporting.

Sceptical is not a popular word among young, activist journalists who should have been social workers. But it was a quality that news editors, sub-editors and executive producers used to bring to the craft. Now it’s the reverse at what were once considered up-market publishers such as the old Fairfax papers and the ABC.

Panic is most obvious in reporting about climate change, where our ABC never misses an opportunity to publish wild claims no serious scientist believes. But the bias towards panic is ubiquitous: it was obvious at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when claims of 150,000 dead here and emergency ICU wards overflowing within weeks were pumped out across the Fairfax papers and the ABC.

The trend towards “panic journalism” follows the empowerment of young reporters who have seen little of life and are no longer protected by editing processes that have been cut to save money. This column has argued publishers embrace this collapse in standards because they see it as a marketing tool in a fragmented media landscape. People who are disposed to moral panic about race, climate or capitalism love to consume media that confirms their bias. But it is a fool’s game. Mainstream media is just surrendering its trust advantage to social media extremism. The facts will eventually become clear, and there are early signs this is beginning to happen.

While journalists who bother to read scientific reports for themselves always knew much of the reporting at left-wing media was wildly exaggerated, even some climate activists are now seeing through the lies of Extinction Rebellion, the linking of CO2 emissions to individual bushfire and storm events and other claims not supported by science.

The propagandist filmmaker Michael Moore kicked this off with a film showing the downside of renewables — Planet of the Humans. The film would have been largely unnoticed but for demands by warming zealots that it be banned. People decided to watch it for themselves.

The film shows pretty much what this newspaper has been saying, correctly, for two decades. Renewables do not provide reliable baseload power. They are expensive and only viable with government subsidy. And they are beloved by rich bankers because they provide high taxpayer-subsidised rates of return.

As this paper revealed at the time of the launch of hybrid cars in Australia, even motor vehicle renewable technologies have enormous carbon footprints in their manufacturing, in mining for the rare metals they rely on and in the case of electric cars in the baseload power they need to recharge. They are a con. Environment writers at Fairfax, the Guardian and the ABC won’t call the facts out.

Last week readers of this newspaper were told about a new book by US environmental activist Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. Shellenberger admits he was part of a movement that knew it was grossly exaggerating the facts, and much of what he tells readers has been reported by this newspaper for 20 years.

For him, the scaring of children around the world with false facts was too much. Yet when this column and other journalists at News Corp papers have told the truth about the RCP8.5 scenario used to justify false claims of a 2030 climate emergency they have been either ignored or ridiculed in the left media, most prominently by ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry.

As this column has explained before, RCP8.5 is not a serious scenario but the top-end outlier of four different IPCC scenarios. It is not where the IPCC says the world is tracking. It assumes coal use will increase by almost 400 per cent by 2070 and no nuclear, renewable or gas power generation will be brought on stream to mitigate emissions. It is at odds with the facts already.

Australians are less familiar with another climate panic defection. Zion Lights, the 34-year-old former spokeswoman for the UK Extinction Rebellion group so beloved by Guardian Australia, was so appalled by the movement’s misleading approach to science she quit late last month to become a lobbyist for nuclear energy. After reading up on the benefits of zero emissions nuclear power she said: “The facts don’t really change, but once I understood them I did change my mind.”

Journalism’s litany of environmental lies extends far beyond bogus extinction stories, the failure to analyse renewable power accurately, blind hatred of fossil fuels and childish enthusiasm for hybrid cars. Dozens of false claims about the state of planet Earth have been run, but not corrected when they prove false.

Some truths not in Shellenberger’s piece here last week:

• The Guardian reported to enormous publicity in 2010 the Greenland ice sheet was melting and global sea levels could rise by 7m. Since then Greenland’s temperatures have returned to 1930s levels and Greenland’s glaciers stopped retreating seven years ago. Not much reporting of that
• As this column said last year, most of the world’s coral islands, especially those of the South Pacific, are not sinking, according to research from the University of Auckland. Now a new study led by the University of Plymouth and reported in Science Advances shows wave action on reefs off such islands actually builds up sediment levels and helps to raise island surfaces.
• A new paper in the journal Science, “The internal origin of the east-west asymmetry of Antarctic climate change”, suggests “the current asymmetry of Antarctic surface climate change is undoubtedly of natural origin because no external factors (eg orbital or anthropogenic factors) contribute to the asymmetric mode”. Data from historic samples suggests climate fluctuations in the tropics such as El Nino and the Southern Oscillation Index are a factor in different rates of warming.
• Despite years of credulous media claims that India and China are moving away from fossil fuel, the opposite is true. Last month Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India, with the fourth largest coal reserves in the world, was launching commercial auctions to unlock coal reserves from “years of lockdown”. Bloomberg analyst Michelle Leung said she expected China’s next five-year plan to target 1300 gigawatts of coal capacity, up from 1050 today. China is also expanding construction of coal-fired power plants. After adding 29.9gW last year Bloomberg said construction already under way in May would account for an extra 46gW. But every ABC business journalist I ever hear insists coal is a “stranded asset”.

Shellenberger attributes climate panic to Malthusian fear. Thomas Malthus wrote in the 18th century that food production would not keep pace with population growth. He did not foresee population rises would slow as societies got richer and failed to account for human improvement in agricultural production. Fear in the face of difficult problems is easier for the media to sell than understanding.
The Australian

Environmental convert Michael Shellenberger turns the tables
The Australian
Chris Kenny
5 July 2020

Apart from alerting the world to the fake news of climate hysteria, Michael Shellenberger last week gave us a masterclass in how to deal with jaundiced journalism. For daring to challenge the catastrophist zeitgeist on global warming, this highly credentialed environmentalist has quickly become a prime target of the green left media.

Rather than accept their attacks and skewed reporting, Shellenberger has exposed their tactics, demonstrated their cowardice, and offered full transparency and accountability. He is forcefully trying to change the media climate.

Shellenberger’s strategy is worth noting as a template or a guide for tackling biased media. Let me explain how this unfolded.

Despite a long interest in environmental issues and the climate debate, I have to confess I had not heard of Shellenberger until last week. On Tuesday morning I read, via social media, about the piece he had written for Forbes.com previewing his new book, Apocalypse Never: why environmental alarmism hurts us all.

A lifelong environmentalist, who has published a series of books and been declared a global environmental hero by Time Magazine, Shellenberger was now apologising for his activism. His book accuses climate activists of exaggerating the threats and turning their backs on obvious solutions, such as nuclear energy.

The Forbes.com piece was strong and replete with good sense while playing into all the main threads of the climate policy debate, but an additional controversy was brewing because, in yet another example of our stifled cancel culture, Forbes had taken it down. Immediately, I decided to editorialise on the issue, quoting Shellenberger’s piece, for my SkyNews program The Kenny Report that night, and organised to interview him from California the following day.
The Australian

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A few days ago Dr. Willie Soon pointed out on the social media site Parler that it is impossible to remove the term “Denier” from the Wikipedia entry for Sallie Baliunas.

I should have stated more clearly the big problem in Wiki related to William Connolley; the tyrant at Wiki

None of us can correct for the entries calling us climate change deniers: start with Robert Carter and Sallie Baliunas.

Source: Parler / Willie Soon

Baliunas’ Wikipedia description contains the line “Baliunas is a denier in regard to there being a connection between CO₂ rise and climate change, saying in a 2001 essay with Willie Soon …”

So I decided to perform an experiment. As a long standing if infrequent Wikipedia editor, I updated Sallie’s Wikipedia entry to read “Baliunas disputes there being a connection between CO₂ rise and climate change, saying in a 2001 essay with Willie Soon …”, and added an explanation to Sallie’s talk page (a secondary page associated with all Wikipedia pages, where people can leave comments).

Removed the word “denier”

People who dispute the connection between climate change and CO2 find the word “denier” offensive, many climate skeptics believe “climate denier” is an attempt to link the concept of disputing the consensus to “holocaust denial”. Is it really necessary to use the term “denier”? By all means describe the views of other scientists of this position, but surely it does no harm to avoid using a term which the subject of the article might take to be a deliberate antagonism.

Wikipedia editor Hob Galding (Hob admits this is a pseudonym) changed the entry back the next day, and offered the following explanation.

They find it offensive? So what? I find their existence offensive, but I don’t expect them to do anything about it. They exist, I am offended, end of story. And they? People call them deniers, they are offended, end of story? No, they keep whining that people recognize them for what they are. They are still deniers. It is the correct term used for such people. It is the term used in reliable sources. —Hob Gadling (talk) 11:49, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I responded with some examples demonstrating attempts to link disagreeing with the alleged climate consensus to holocaust denial.

Disappointed Hob. Is it the goal of Wikipedia to be deliberately provocative and offensive towards the subjects of Wikipedia posts, for the crime of holding an unfashionable scientific view? Is the penalty for having the wrong scientific theory to be smeared as being comparable to those who deny that NAZIs murdered millions of Jewish people? There are a number of examples of academics or prominent journalists comparing or linking the idea of “climate denial” to “Holocaust denial”:

“The deniers of climate change are cut from the same cloth as Holocaust deniers. They’ve never been to the death camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau, so what they haven’t seen does not exist. The global warming deniers—the Koch brothers, for example—see only what they want to see.”^[1]

“Instead of dishonouring the deaths of six million in the past, climate deniers risk the lives of hundreds of millions in the future. Holocaust deniers are not responsible for the Holocaust, but climate deniers, if they were to succeed, would share responsibility for the enormous suffering caused by global warming.”^[2]

“Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.”^[3]

Regardless of the original intent or meaning, the term “denier” in the context of “climate denial” has become inextricably associated with the NAZI holocaust, thanks to its use by prominent journalists and academics. Its use in Wikipedia, against victims who are powerless to remove this label, whose crime is to hold an unfashionable scientific viewpoint, is just a form of bullying. Eric Worrall (talk) 14:09, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

1.  Charles R. Larson, Professor Emeritus, Washington University

2. Clive Hamilton / Hamilton: Denying the coming climate holocaust

3. George Monbiot / Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.

I obtained these quotes from a longer list published on WUWT in 2014.

Someone spoke up in support of my point;

On 20 January 2020 Wiki5537821 changed “skeptic” to “denier” without explanation in the edit summary. It would be nice to see one. The reference later in the paragraph to a 2002 article, which should be linked to here rather than the current dead link, says things like “that exceedingly small positive trend is probably not the result of human activities”, i.e. Ms Baliunas believed there is warming and “probably” is a skeptical remark not a denial. Hob Gadling has re-inserted “denier” without seeking consensus first, and so far doesn’t have it — although I’m not interested in the WP:LABEL aspect that Eric Worrall seems to be alluding to, I agree that the earlier wording was better. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:02, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

“Hob” provided the following response;

I don’t think “capitalismmagazine” is a reliable source for scientific subjects. —Hob Gadling (talk)

15:30, 12 July 2020 (UTC) Boo hoo, poor anti-science loons, being compared with anti-history loons. See here: the section “no neutral POV” is pretty much the same as sections in Talk pages about climate change deniers. Like identical twins!As I said, we say what reliable sources say, and they call it “denial”. Denialism is a thing, and climate change denial is a big part of it. Don’t blame Wikipedia for common usage. Wikipedia does not pander to fringe groups: we do not call evolution “just a theory” because creationists are offended if we don’t, and we do not claim acupuncture is science because quacks are offended if we don’t. Read WP:LUNATIC.Climate change denial is not just “unfashionable”. That is not how science works. It is indefensible. If you want to be treated like real scientists, behave like real scientists. Do not just steal e-mails, cherry-pick quotes, cherry-pick data, cherry-pick studies, cherry-pick scientists, accuse innocent scientists of fraud, harrass them with legal shenanigans, bribe politicians, and so on. All the despicable methods deniers use have earned them the word “denier”. Instead, do real research, without any dirty tricks, and publish it in bona-fide scientific journals. (Of course, this will not work, since you are wrong and the data are against you, but it would be the honest way to do it, the way that does not get you called “denier”.) —Hob Gadling (talk) 15:30, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Maybe this story will have a happy ending. The Wikipedia community might ultimately decide that “denier” (aka “holocaust denier”) is too loaded a term to use to describe a scientist who disagrees with their colleagues.

But as Hob explained, Wikipedia community guidelines have a backdoor clause which provides cover for those who enjoy using loaded language and revel in repeating academic insults. Under the rules, “Hob”, hiding behind the anonymity of a pseudonym, is allowed to use nasty pejorative terms in Wikipedia, providing a “reliable source” (as defined by the Wikipedia community) has already used such terms in public to attack the target of their slur;

BLPs [biographies of Living Persons] should be written responsibly, cautiously, and in a dispassionate tone, avoiding both understatement and overstatement. Articles should document in a non-partisan manner what reliable secondary sources have published about the subjects, and in some circumstances what the subjects have published about themselves. Summarize how actions and achievements are characterized by reliable sources without giving undue weight to recent events. Do not label people with contentious labels, loaded language, or terms that lack precision, unless a person is commonly described that way in reliable sources. Instead use clear, direct language and let facts alone do the talking. BLPs should not have trivia sections.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons

Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia’s parent organisation) states “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.”.

However as Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger points out, one of the core policies designed to support this ideal, the policy of Neutral Point of View, died out a long time ago, and was replaced by “the utterly bankrupt canard” of avoiding “false balance” (h/t Charles).

Wikipedia Is Badly Biased

MAY 14, 2020|IN WIKI, KNOWLEDGE, INTERNET|BY LARRY SANGER

Wikipedia’s “NPOV” is dead.¹ The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy. There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call “false balance.”² The notion that we should avoid “false balance” is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy. As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science. Here are some examples from each of these subjects, which were easy to find, no hunting around. Many, many more could be given.

…

Read more: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

Wikipedia’s apparent betrayal of their founding ideal will likely be their downfall. As editors become bolder in venting their personal prejudices, under the guise of avoiding “false balance”, a growing number of Wikipedia’s target audience will become alienated by Wikipedia community’s intolerance.

“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.” – without the bullying and hate speech.

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Guest Essay by Kip Hansen – 13 July 2020

 

 

The New York Times’ Climate section is a source of continuing amusement for me.  This one made me laugh out loud.

In an exhibition of astounding audacity, the New York Times’ Editor of the Climate Desk, Hannah Fairfield, stages what is billed as a “debate” about moving forward with solutions to climate change.

Let me be perfectly clear, this is a fake debate – no debate takes place.  Having given up the standards of professional journalism almost entirely, the Climate desk has moved on from misinformation, disinformation and fake news to . . . . Fake Debates.

If you have one and a half hours to utterly  waste, you can watch the whole thing here.

Not only does the Times falsely claim that this represents some kind of debate, they can’t even  count to ten – there are only six guest speakers and Hannah….and when I attended elementary school in the 1950s, six plus one made seven (it may be the “new math”, similar to that being used to count “New Covid Cases”).  Oh well, almost nothing else in the video is true either.

We do get good insight into why the New York Times publishes so many Climate stories that are absolutely nutty [my psychiatrist friend assures me that this is a perfectly acceptable term in the mental health field] .    Hannah Fairfield, the Editor of the Climate Desk, states in her introduction:

“Our mission is help readers understand their world and how Climate Change touches all parts of it.  Like the science of Corona-virus, the science of Climate Change is very clear…the world is warming dangerously, humans are the cause of it, and a failure to act today will deeply affect the future of the Earth.”

“The devastation of Covid-19 has forced  change for all of us.  Much of it has been swift and startling.  To combat corona-virus, governments poured money into rescue.  Companies adapted their goals and production; central banks permitted exceptional stimulus packages, and societies mobilized to shield the most vulnerable.  Have these dramatic actions given us a blueprint for mobilizing action against Climate Change?  Is this an opportunity for a new path forward that puts accelerating Climate Change solutions squarely in the middle?

We know that Climate Change requires exponential solutions and that’s what we’ll focus on today.  The global response to corona-virus can be the beginning of the economic, technological and society [sic] transition that will allow us to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the next 30 years, helping us to avoid the worst effects of Climate Change, and limiting the global temperature rise in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

This introduction informs us that the Times’ Climate desk thinks its mission is to produce propaganda supporting  just one side of the real climate debate  and a rather radical version at that, one which goes beyond even IPCC memes.    The latest version of  an acceptable editorial narrative on climate change  is that “the governments of the world took over ordering individual people’s lives and  destroying the economy for their own purposes – presented to the public as protecting them from Covid-19 – and so governments could, should and must do the same to “save us from Climate Change”.  The apparent theory is that as government actions regarding Covid have already wrecked so much of the world economy – wrecking it even more in the battle against (mostly imaginary) future climate change is a “no brainer” (well, it is, for those with no brain or suffering a total lack of Critical Thinking Skills and/or  those whose own personas have been overwhelmed by GroupThink – h/t Judith Curry).

Hannah F

airfield seemingly went to great lengths to make sure that her panel consisted of radical Climate Change Warriors  who would all agree with her stated purposes.  The panel consists of:

Nigel Topping – “UK climate action Champion”

Christiana Figueres  —   Introduced as the Co-Founder of Global Optimism    Better known as the Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

“I’ve never been asked why I it [the Climate Change issue] is important to me.  …because, isn’t this the most important  thing that every single human being should be focused on?  …. is the future of the human race?  ….   we’re talking about human survival.”

Bertrand Piccard  — of the  Solar Impulse Foundation  and the World Alliance for Clean Technologies

(if you’ve watched any episodes of the Netflix series “Space Force”, you might be able to identify this guy)

Alexandra Palt   —  L’oreal Group  —  Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer     — included, as the PR wonk of a beauty products company, I suppose, because appearances are so very important.

Dayna Cunningham –  Executive Director of CoLab, MIT

“The Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) is a center for planning and development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning “.  They  apparently focus a lot on painting  murals on buildings….. “promoting democratic engagement and urban sustainability in communities facing disruptive moments, we strive to produce shared wealth and collective well-being.”

Johan Rockström  — Director of the  Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Those familiar with some of these names might guess that this massively stacked panel recommends that governments take over private industry and private lives and Save The World From the Humans.

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Author’s Comment: 

Hannah Fairfield’s introduction is so full of nonsense that I could have written a whole essay on it alone:

1. The Science of Corona-virus is anything but “very clear” – the medical world barely understands what it is, where it came from, how it spreads, why it infects some without symptoms and kills others,  and is at an impasse on treatment.  Early and preventative treatments have been politicized out of use in some countries while being front-line successful treatments in others.
2. Climate Science is likewise not “very clear” – “dangerously warming”??? “humans are the cause of it”???
3. “…societies mobilized to shield the most vulnerable.”???  King Cuomo (governor of the State of New York) sent sick elderly patients to die by the hundreds in death-filled  nursing homes while keeping kids, who are the safest group, out of schools and confined at home.
4. “We know that Climate Change requires exponential solutions….”??? What, in heaven’s name, might “exponential solutions” be?

Enough, what the world does not need is destructive Covid Madness Solutions to be added on to what are already societally-suicidal Climate Change Madness proposals.

I can only hope that sanity to returns to our local, regional, state, national and international leaders before they do permanent damage to the great enterprise of human civilization.

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