The Lomborg Convergence
The "Coal for Africa" aka Ecomodernism campaign has run head on into its internal contradictions with the emergence of Pope Francis' new encyclical, totally exposing the common roots of climate change denial and luckwarmerism. The twitter is ablaze.
It is really hard to tell who is the most angry at the exposure of their moral corruption, the Steve Milloys or BTI guys or the Bishop Hills. Twitter tells all
From Votaire to Hitchens, the belief in progress has for hundreds of years been synonymous with renouncing Catholicism & the Pope.But he's not! Church is all about materialism — for the priest class. $10 - $15 B in assets. @nils_gilman @jneeley78
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Pope's Leaked Encyclical: Popes says we have a harmful 'culture of waste.' Uh, we call it an economy.
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32 comments:
I'm not surprised they drag out the old anti-Catholic stuff. Every time I think the deniers can't sink any lower, they surprise me. Of course, it's hard to get lower than threatening a professor with a noose, as the LaRouchie did in Australia. Or threatening to gang-rape a scientists's children (also Australia). Or... Well, you get the picture.
I'm just amazed that supposedly serious people aren't even trying to sound less crackpotty than those who typically comment on Bishop-Hill. Bizarre.
I recommend tossing the freshly-popped corn in a mix of smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, salt and a pinch of brown sugar.
@BBd
I am not sure about the brown sugar but everything else sounds great.
Pity Miloy is not as reasonable.
I am - gobsmacked.
As usual some preliminary draft (and it is clearly quite preliminary), is brought out for ridicule by the ridiculous right and all sorts of BS follows.
There is a point at which this behaviour is criminal. This point is not even visible in the rear-view mirror any more.
I don't really care what the Pope or the rest of his institution thinks about reproductive rights, gay marriage, etc. Given the behavior of many of his appointed representatives around young children, I don't regard his care for the future as genuine.
I long ago decided to discount Catholic doctrine on everything else. I am not going to start now that they have an opinion on climate change. I wouldn't place a bet based on the church's opinion on the Super Bowl either.
Milloy must be some vengeful god's gift to the communitarian left:
The Cold War won't stay won for long with idiotarians running around who have no idea that materialism is too imporant to be left to the Marxists .
Especially the ones who have rediscovered semiotics.
Nobody cares about your religious prejudices, Tom.
Tom doesn't "really care what the Pope ... thinks ..." but thinks that it's important enough to comment on what the Pope thinks. Doubtless, the Pope doesn't really care what Tom thinks.
I wouldn't place a bet based on Tom's opinion on the Super Bowl either. But I would place a bet on Tom's doctrine on climate change.
I was just reading some of the comments at the Guardian. The quality of the denier comments is outstanding as always. "The Pope is a communist from Central America." was one I really liked. The poster's rant went downhill from there.
I like pope Francisco.if he piles it on by advocating family planning and human rights then I may even buy me a little Francisco coffee mug. But I don't see anything wrong with coal for Africa. It resonates better than "solar panels for Congo", which might as well be shortened to "die".
FL: I don't see anything wrong with coal for Africa.
BPL: What part of "continued use of fossil fuels will completely collapse global civilization in our lifetime" do you not understand?
But the ineffably tedious Fernando is a denier, BPL.
He denies physics and the consequences of denying physics all in one carious breath.
There's no reasoning with self-satisfied imbecility on this scale. All the Fernandos of this world can hear is the sound of their own smug blathering. You might as well be talking to a cat.
Unrelated to the post. Whilst me and my better half were driving around looking at real estate we stumbled across this street.
http://s11.postimg.org/5ihw9obxv/rabbit.jpg
Lagomorphs everywhere.
When the Heartland Institute put up their billboard comparing climate scientists to Unabomber Ted Kasczynski, I thought that were I a denier I would have refrained from pointing out that you gotta be crazier than ol' Ted to doubt AGW. Tom's comment leads me to wonder about his peculiarities.
I have now come up against deniers hissing about 'paedophilia' as a 'response' to the imminent encyclical enough times to recognise this as a meme in the making.
For sheer vileness, it takes some beating. I speak as an atheist, btw.
Here, BBD. Place this on your bookshelf next to Desmogblog's denier database. One of the two is worth something.
http://bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbylastName-E.html
Keep it up, Tom.
You are making my point for me most eloquently.
Who is 'nobody'? You? You speak for nobody? Or everybody?
Anybody but yourself, eh?
In the matter of bad news, two items:
UK wind mess (I am deeply suspicious and wish somebody like John Mashey would find and expose the money; they're promoting impractical solar, Chinese nuclear (notably unsafe) and fracking on the moors; re the latter, I was a little startled from Guardian comments elsewhere by. the universal ignorance about fracking prevalent over there, they just want it and think it's wonderful.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/18/tories-end-onshore-windfarm-subsidies-2016
Please read it all. The Scots are particularly exercised, as it was their capture of the opposition vote that allowed Cameron his lofty perch; he can't be unseated for five years and has the bit in his teeth. Monbiot and Russell Brand were sadly funny on the subject of Cameron and the banksters a while back.
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Item 2, more relevant to topic, is a DotEarth from last night (I've quit over there but this is egregious): an interview with Holthaus promoting coal for India. Now I get it, they need A/C and people are dieing, but it's typical Revkin, underhandedly misguiding.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/exploring-the-popes-moral-push-for-climate-and-energy-progress-a-holthaus-revkin-chat/
OTOH, Revkin is getting no attention there, so perhaps that is an excellent answer to his nonsense: ignore it. He also appears to promote "concentrated" farming.
The money thing on UK wind is nasty and I have a feeling there is a shoe to drop there if someone could find it.
Susan Anderson,
Since Andy seems to want to turn up the heat on the subcontinent by turning down the thermostats in buildings on the subcontinent, maybe we should suggest that India build a giant refrigerator and cool the place down by leaving the door open. Suggest it and see if he bites. That is about the level of thought he often applies.
Snarkrates, I must have failed to make it clear that it was past time for me to leave DotEarth and I have done so.
I hope you will take a look at the UK wind item. I tried to make it a link but it wouldn't work, so it will have to be copied and pasted.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/18/tories-end-onshore-windfarm-subsidies-2016
The Revkin was an afterthought, just another example of his MO. Caricaturing his position does not work. His specialty is the reasonable "practical" (luckwarmer) tone. There is a group he lets hold sway that police the comment section, and I had been there too long, so they exploit me. Nobody's perfect.
An absence of comments would be ideal; WattsUp denial domination has made lots of clicks; it takes each person a long time to realize boycott is best (and I should talk).
Susan, you lasted longer than I did. I gave up on Andy during climategate, and when Heartland declared him a useful idiot, that clinched it.
Susan
The Tories have been gunning for onshore wind for a while now, with plenty of behind-the-scenes help and encouragement from the GWPF, which everybody knows but cannot directly prove fronts for the fracking industry.
Middle England hates windfarms and has money and voting clout, so there's a simple political gain there for the Tories to cut the onshore subsidies as well as the usual grease from vested interest.
This cut was always on the cards if the Tories got in with any sort of majority at the last election. The only surprise was that they did.
I'm going to be annoying and repeat that low per-capita emission countries like India, IMHO have the right to increase their emissions UNLESS those of us in high emissions countries offer them a better deal. Whether it's in their interest to increase emissions, especially from coal, is a separate and more complex question.
Not sure why Holthaus emphasizes AC for India - lighting, power for small workshops, and refrigeration are much more important energy needs.
Thanks again. I knew about the Tories and wind, but still think there's corruption to be unmasked and it might be of some use. Some of you may not know that Fergus Brown is now the UK manager of Leitwind, and is doing well. AFAIK, it's an excellent firm.
As to India and A/C and DotEarth, please beware of my sloppy simplifications. I've kind of got the answer on that, though I'm not going over there to post it. Basically, the problem with the monsoon and excessive heat is more attributable than most local weather to ongoing global warming, so an increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions to address the symptoms makes the disease worse.
Meanwhile, there are many better more local ways to help. However, I have to note that a friend's son just shipped a whole lot of coal widgets to India, so whatever is right to be done has been overwhelmed by business as usual.
Brian: low per-capita emission countries like India, IMHO have the right to increase their emissions
BPL: States don't have rights. People do. Once you say the state has rights that can be enforced against individuals, you've got the Soviet Union.
And the atmosphere doesn't care which country a carbon dioxide molecule came from. They are all, in the context of global warming, equally destructive. There is no individual right to hurt other innocent people.
Brian: "I'm going to be annoying and repeat that low per-capita emission countries like India, IMHO have the right to increase their emissions UNLESS those of us in high emissions countries offer them a better deal. Whether it's in their interest to increase emissions, especially from coal, is a separate and more complex question."
What's annoying about your assertion is the notion that rights are somehow independent of interests. IMNSHO, India has neither more nor less "right" to increase its per capita GDP by increasing its per capita GHG emissions than the US does. And it's no more in India's interest to do so, when global costs and benefits are counted, than it is in ours.
Had I read BPL's reply to Brian before I posted mine, I probably wouldn't have bothered.
Those who don't know history, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Milloy?
London, 1952: http://www.history.com/news/the-killer-fog-that-blanketed-london-60-years-ago
Donora, Pennsylvania, 1948: http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/DonoraSmog.html
Just remember that the demon spawn of Ayn Rand and Gordon Gekko that is currently known to us as the "neoliberal" has as a sacrament that "Greed is Good". The Pope reckons it as one of the 7 deadly sins.
Now when considering the longevity of cultures and the religions that support them one has to observe that there is NO major religion (surviving religion) that has ever allowed that "Greed is good". They don't agree on much and go to genocidal war against one another with distressing haste, but they ALL agree on that.
THEY all survive. Yet there is no example of a pure libertarian/neo-liberal society lasting long enough to make a difference to history. They collapse and disintegrate because inequality and divisiveness are really very very poor foundations for any cohesive society. Good for having civil wars, secessions and failed states, but to last?
Nope.
The US is alone now, in its denial. This is not the same as being number one. :-)
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