Manhattan Contrarian:
Is man-caused climate change a crisis that requires immediate action to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions to save the planet? Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a frequently-repeated phrase that he uses on this subject, which is “I’ll believe that it’s a crisis when the people who claim it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”
Plenty of people have pointed to extreme examples of the “do as I say, not as I do” syndrome in the climate wars. Twenty-three thousand people (23,000!!!!) jet off to Bonn to cook up schemes to force others to fly less. Al Gore has a 10,000+ square foot house that uses more than 20 times the amount of energy as the average American home — and that’s just one of his multiple houses! And so forth. But just because these people behave this way does not necessarily mean that they don’t believe their own propaganda; it may just mean that they believe that the burden of sacrifice needs to be on you rather than on themselves. But are there some of their actions that go further and prove that they really know that it’s all bullshit?
Because it’s hard to get people too worked up over the idea that the temperature might rise a couple of degrees — or even three! — the big scare story always tends to revert to sea level rise. Antarctica is going to melt and we’re all going to drown!! Or something like that. An article from the Guardian a few days ago (November 3) is typical of the genre:
Hundreds of millions of urban dwellers around the world face their cities being inundated by rising seawaters if latest UN warnings that the world is on course for 3C of global warming come true, according to a Guardian data analysis.
The article comes with plenty of photoshopped pictures of your favorite city deep under water. Here’s one of the South Beach area of Miami:
OK then, undoubtedly the progressive climate-alarm-believing elite would situate themselves well away from the dangerous coastlines at some respectable higher elevation. Actually, not at all. The progressive and supposedly climate-alarm-believing elite clusters itself just as close along the coastlines as it can get: New York, LA, San Francisco, Seattle. In New York and San Francisco particularly, favored perches of the alarmists line up right along the waterfront. Tenants of my own office building — no more than about 30 feet above mean high tide in downtown Manhattan — include Vox Media. Or consider the Goldman Sachs headquarters, just a couple of hundred feet inland, and barely elevated abov the sea:
I guess that tells you what the smart money thinks. Would they really have put a billion dollar building there if they thought there was anything to this sea level rise thing?
Or consider the case of nuclear power. If carbon emissions really were a huge existential crisis, there is exactly one way to replace the energy we currently get from fossil fuels with energy that is sufficiently abundant and reliable, and reasonable enough in cost, to be a real way to power a modern economy for the entire world. That is nuclear. (By the way, I’m not saying that I am a fan of nuclear power. As far as I’m concerned, we should take what the market provides without government meddling and subsidies, and likely that is almost entirely fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. But what I am saying is that if climate alarmists think that it is absolutely essential to de-carbonize the world economy, then there is only one way to do that without destroying it, and that is widespread adoption of nuclear power.)
Undoubtedly then, the people who are really concerned with climate crisis should be advocating loudly for expansion of nuclear power to replace fossil fuels. Funny, but you literally can’t find that. Yes, there are a few examples of lonely individuals out there making this point, but literally no example from any major environmental organization. For instance:
Natural Resources Defense Council? “Expanding nuclear power is not a sound strategy for diversifying America’s energy portfolio and reducing global warming pollution.”
Sierra Club? “Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer. The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.”
Greenpeace? “Greenpeace got its start protesting nuclear weapons testing back in 1971. We’ve been fighting against nuclear weapons and nuclear power ever since.”
Union of Concerned Scientists? “Current security standards are inadequate to defend nuclear plants against terrorist attacks.”
You could go on with this as long as you want.
So what’s going on here? There is no way to avoid the conclusion that the biggest promoters of the climate scare don’t actually believe their own propaganda. But there are several other reasonable hypotheses for why they continue.
Some idiots beleive that animal agriculture is destroying the planet never mind for the fact that its been practiced for thousands of years some belevie that DDT was bad all becuase of Carson’s Lies and Junk Science and Al Bore claimed the Arctic would be Ice Free by now just like with the Rain Forests so many were suckered by their Save the Rain Forests fake campaign that just proved what P.T. Barnum was meaning when he said THERE’S A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE then Acid Rain and all the rest of their poppycock. I live is a mostly agricultral area and we used to have some Eco-Wacko group in my little town(Etna,CA)their HQ was made from Wood with a Wooden fsh shaoed sign and their leader lives ina Log Home and had a second home with a Wood Burning Water Heater their group disbanded around 2001 after they had the water cut off to the Klamath Basin Farmers over two worthless Trash Fish(Short nosed and Lost River Suckers)and a Salmon(Coho)which can be bought at any grocery store or super market
I believe this was a component of the Uranium One scandal (in addition to the Clinton’s putting millions into their ATM), to reduce the amount of available uranium for nuclear power. But, no doubt about the hypocrisy and transparent true motives behind the global warming scam.