In a recent article in The Australian, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg outlines what the climate cancel culture will do to a person when they get a platform to talk about the factual side of climate alarmism – climate realism citing real world data.

Dr. Lomborg was recently invited by Duke University to give a lecture about his latest book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.

It seems reasonable enough. After all, college campuses are supposed to be centers for diversity of culture and thought, right?

Well, not so much when facts get in the way of a socially driven narrative. A group of climate student activists and professors – some who write for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – publicly demanded his lecture be canceled.

The Durham Sunrise Movement published an open letter in the Duke University Chronicle saying:

“The undersigned call on the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke to end its conflicts of interest by denying platforms to Koch-funded diffusers of misinformation. We call on Duke as a whole to commit to its professed academic standards and deny platforms to climate deniers.”

That “Koch-funded diffusers of misinformation” is a typical denigrating label used by people without a factual argument to demean anyone who questions the severity of climate change. I myself have been a victim of that label, even though the Koch brothers have never given me a dime nor have they ever corresponded with me.

Thankfully, Duke didn’t cave to the activists’ craven arguments. You can watch the whole lecture here on YouTube (or at least until they take it down).

But what is most interesting is that Lomborg isn’t a “climate denier” or even a “skeptic.” He simply says that while climate change is happening, we don’t need to panic, and we can manage much of it through mitigation and adaptation. After all, humanity has survived and thrived during changes in climate over the past 2,000 years, when we were less technologically equipped to do so than we are now.

The screeching academic activists that dominate the climate conversation want dissent eliminated, leaving themselves the only ones authorized to tell you how scared you should be of “climate change.” We shouldn’t let them eliminate dissent, otherwise we’ll be wasting trillions of dollars on ineffective climate policies that won’t really do much.

Yet, climate activists tell us, if we don’t spend everything on climate now, nothing else matters, because they believe climate change threatens our very existence. As President Joe Biden says: climate change is “an existential threat”. That’s why they think they have the moral high ground – because they are “saving humanity” and therefore should use cancel culture to extinguish dissenting voices.

That is a classic case of noble-cause corruption.

According to Wikipedia:

“Noble cause corruption is corruption caused by the adherence to a teleological ethical system, suggesting that people will use unethical or illegal means to attain desirable goals, a result which appears to benefit the greater good.”

Collusion and corruption go hand-in-hand with the climate cancel culture, because they believe their viewpoint is morally superior to anyone else.

Meanwhile, the Earth doesn’t care and the biosphere is happily absorbing the extra carbon dioxide to help plants thrive, greening the Earth throughout this century.

But they won’t tell you such happy news, because a greener Earth is apparently a thing not to be discussed in the rarefied air of academia.

The post Climate Realism Meets Cancel Culture at Duke University appeared first on Climate Realism.

via Climate Realism

By Anthony Watts -March 30, 2021

Climate Realism Meets Cancel Culture at Duke University

See more

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd has stated that a blood clotting problem which led to a vaccine recipient being hospitalised was likely linked to the Astra-Zeneca Covid-19 Vaccine. Note the USA mostly sources vaccines from Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer.

Melbourne blood-clotting case ‘likely’ linked to AstraZeneca vaccine, Deputy CMO says

By Michael Doyle

Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer says it is “likely” there is a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and a Melbourne man being hospitalised with blood clots.

…

“Given how consist of the clinical features are in this case, with some similar cases which have been seen overseas, it is likely that this case, which is reported, is related to the vaccine,” he said.

He said investigations were ongoing.

…

“The risks of serious side effects remain very low,” Professor Kidd said.

“But safety is paramount, which is why ATAGI and the TGA continue to do due diligence on this case.

…

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-03/blood-clotting-case-likely-linked-to-astrazeneca-vaccine/100047490

It is obviously unsettling to read about cases of adverse reactions, but in my opinion the balance of risk still favours vaccination. The original Covid death rate was around 2%. Although improved therapeutics have brought the Covid death rate way down, the health risk associated with catching Covid appears to be significantly worse than the risk of a severe adverse reaction to the vaccine.

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April 3, 2021 at 04:12PM

In the next ten years, Australia will close a couple of coal plants, while Africa will build 1250.

Africa is going to double its energy and almost all the increase is coming from fossil fuels. This is hard to explain, given that renewables are “free” and Africa is poor. But at the end of the decade unreliable renewables will still make less than 10% of the energy in Africa.

Thanks to the GWPF:

Fossil fuels to dominate Africa’s energy mix this decade – report

Power Engineering International 

A new study into Africa’s energy generation landscape uses a state-of-the-art machine-learning technique to analyse the pipeline of more than 2,500 planned power plants and their chances of successful commission.

The study predicts that in 2030, fossil fuels will account for two-thirds of all generated electricity across Africa. While an additional 18% of generation is set to come from hydro-energy projects. These have their own challenges, such as being vulnerable to an increasing number of droughts caused by climate change.

This is only the start. Most countries in Africa are not even in the race yet:

South Africa alone is forecast to add almost 40% of Africa’s total predicted new solar capacity by 2030.

Five years ago TonyfromOz looked at Niger — a nation of 17 million people and estimated that the entire country used about as much electricity as Dubbo, Australia, a town with about 40,000 residents.

As Matt Ridley says: Africa Needs To Be Rich – Rather Than Green

REFERENCE

Alova et al (2021) A machine-learning approach to predicting Africa’s electricity mix based on planned power plants and their chances of success, Nature Energy volume 6, pages158–166(2021)

NASA — Africa: https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/79000/79793/city_lights_africa_8k.jpg

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April 3, 2021 at 12:56PM

Reposted from The American Institute for Economic Research

Robert L. Bradley Jr. – April 2, 2021

At an environmental forum, Julian Simon once asked: “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” 

After a roomful of hands shot up, Simon then asked: “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” Encountering silence, he followed up: “Is there any evidence I could give you—anything at all—that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?”

After more silence, Simon answered: “Well, excuse me. I’m not dressed for church.”

Today’s Church of Climate holds three resolute beliefs:

1. The human influence on climate is pronounced and controlling
2. That influence cannot be positive or benign, only catastrophic
3. Global governance can and must solve this problem

Square this with the impressive, even stunning, statistics of human betterment since the Industrial Revolution, especially in the last 75 years. One would think that these parishioners should be relieved, even happy. But theirs is an anti-humanist philosophy, not to be debated but worshipped. It is a creed that sees nature as optimal, not to be violated by humankind. Deeply pessimistic, it is the deep ecology worldview.

Optimal Nature

Optimal nature lurks behind the current climate debate. As Yale climate economist Robert Mendelsohn noted in The Greening of Global Warming (1999: p. 12): 

There is an unstated myth in ecology that natural conditions must be optimal. That is, we must be at the top of the hill now.

Back in the 1970s, a new Ice Age was feared from sulfur dioxide emissions from coal plants, the Global Cooling scare. Even offsetting forces were rejected by Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren (Ecoscience: 1977, p. 686):

There can be scant consolation in the idea that a man-made warming trend might cancel out a natural cooling trend. Since the different factors producing the two trends do so by influencing different parts of Earth’s complicated climatic machinery, it is most unlikely that the associated effects on circulation patterns would cancel each other.

To members of the Climate Church, the planet “has been delivered in perfect working condition and cannot be exchanged for a new one.” An issue of World Watch magazine, “Playing God with Climate,” scolded man for interfering with the Earth’s default condition.

Deep Ecology

A radical wing of the modern environmental movement rejects an anthropocentric (human-centered) view of the world in favor of an ecocentric view.

In contrast to shallow ecology, concerned with pollution and resource depletion in the developed world, deep ecology defends “the equal right” of lower animals and plants “to live and blossom.” Deep ecology rejects what it sees as a master-slave relationship between human and nonhuman life. States Arne Næss (in Peter List, Radical Environmentalism: Philosophy and Tactics, 1993: p. 19):

Deep ecology stresses the interrelatedness of all life systems on Earth, demoting human-centeredness. Man must respect nature as an end in itself, not treat it as a tool of man. The human ego and concern for family and other loved ones must be joined by a similar emotional attachment to animals, trees, plants, and the rest of the ecosphere.

To hurt the planet, then, is the same as inflicting bodily harm on oneself. “In the broadest sense,” state Bill Devall and George Sessions (Deep Ecology, 1985, p. ix), “we need to accept the invitation to the dance—the dance of unity of humans, plants, animals, the Earth.” To get to this point, we need to “trick ourselves into reenchantment” (p. 10) with nature.

The platform of the Foundation for Deep Ecology (“a voice for wild nature”), formulated by Arne Næss and George Sessions, condemns the current interaction of man and nature and calls for population decreases and lower living standards. In its words:

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves … independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
5. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures … will be deeply different from the present.

The platform goes on to state that radical change is necessary, “appreciating life quality … rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living.”

From Al Gore … 

Al Gore’s angst about “dysfunctional civilization” crosses over into deep-ecology metaphysics. “Our civilization is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself,” Gore stated in Earth in the Balance (1992):

This addictive relationship distracts us from the pain of what we have lost: a direct experience of our connection to the vividness, vibrancy, and aliveness of the rest of the natural world. The froth and frenzy of industrial civilization mask our deep loneliness for that communion with the world that can lift our spirits and fill our senses with the richness and immediacy of life itself.

Eschewing incrementalism, Gore called for “bold and unequivocal” global action where “the rescue of the environment” is “the central organizing principle for civilization.”

That “central organizing principle” is what Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek could not have envisioned: a global central planning where each and every economy of 196 sovereignties must be coordinated via taxes, tariffs (“border adjustments), and efficiency mandates to reduce, and even reverse, the emissions of the green greenhouse gas in particular, carbon dioxide (CO₂). 

… to Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature(1989: p. 216) fingered the “terminal sin” of man’s altering nature and complained that “the greenhouse effect is the first environmental problem we can’t escape by moving to the woods.” He lamented how “the cheap labor provided by oil” makes the “deep ecology model” difficult to fathom, much less implement” (p. 200).

McKibben in a recent New Yorker column put more of his climate cards on the table: “If one wanted a basic rule of thumb for dealing with the climate crisis, it would be: stop burning things.” The combustion era must reach “a swift end,” whether it concerns oil for transportation, natural gas or coal for electricity, wood fires in the home, or grilling outdoors. Don’t light a match either.

Humanistic Alternative

Getting humans back in the picture, philosopher Alex Epstein reminds all that untamed nature is not only of benefit but also perilous. “If good and evil are measured by the standard of human well-being and human progress,” he states, “we must conclude that the fossil fuel industry is not a necessary evil to be restricted but a superior good to be liberated.” In this regard, “We don’t need green energy–we need humanitarian energy.”

Epstein then reverses the climate narrative:

Nature doesn’t give us a stable, safe climate that we make dangerous. It gives us an ever-changing, dangerous climate that we need to make safe. And the driver behind sturdy buildings, affordable heating and air-conditioning, drought relief, and everything else that keeps us safe from climate is cheap, plentiful, reliable energy, overwhelmingly from fossil fuels. 

In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel warns against the stasis mentality—the belief that “a good future must be static; either the product of detailed, technocratic blueprints or the return to an idealized, stable past” (1998: xii)—versus dynamism, which embraces “a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition” (xiv). 

Philosophy, not only economics and political economy, matters in the global warming/climate change debate. Start by checking your premises—and those of your intellectual opponents.

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April 3, 2021 at 12:25PM