Sunday, September 12, 2021

Yesterday I gave a talk and warned that when the pandemic ends, climate change is likely to be the next "crisis" used for social control.

And I just came across Michael Crichton's 'Author's Message' from the book State of Fear, which elaborates on my concerns:


AUTHOR'S MESSAGE

A novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues. I have been reading environmental texts for three years, in itself a hazardous undertaking. But I have had an opportunity to look at a lot of data, and to consider many points of view. I conclude:

- We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it. In every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainty.
- Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause.
- We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a four-hundred-year cold spell known as the "Little Ice Age."
- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon.
- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.
- Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, de facto proof that nobody knows. But if I had to guess-- the only thing anyone is doing, really-- I would guess the increase will be 0.812436 degrees C. There is no evidence that my guess about the state of the world one hundred years from now is any better or worse than anyone else's. (We can't "assess" the future, nor can we "predict" it. These are euphemisms. We can only guess. An informed guess is just a guess.)
- I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I suspect that the principal human effect will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.
- Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.
- I think for anyone to believe in impending resource scarcity, after two hundred years of such false alarms, is kind of weird. I don't know whether such a belief today is best ascribed to ignorance of history, sclerotic dogmatism, unhealthy love of Malthus, or simple pigheadedness, but it is evidently a hardy perennial in human calculation.
- There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban horse transport in the early twentieth century.
- I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don't think we have to worry about them.
- The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism. Public education is desperately needed.
- I conclude that most environmental "principles" (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world. It is a nice way of saying, "We got ours and we don't want you to get yours, because you'll cause too much pollution."
- The "precautionary principle," properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle. It is self-contradictory. The precautionary principle therefore cannot be spoken of in terms that are too harsh.
- I believe people are well intentioned. But I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.
- I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don't.
- In the thirty-five-odd years since the environmental movement came into existence, science has undergone a major revolution. This revolution has brought new understanding of nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, chaos theory, catastrophe theory. It has transformed the way we think about evolution and ecology. Yet these no-longer-new ideas have hardly penetrated the thinking of environmental activists, which seems oddly fixed in the concepts and rhetoric of the 1970s.
- We haven't the foggiest notion how to preserve what we term "wilderness," and we had better study it in the field and learn how to do so. I see no evidence that we are conducting such research in a humble, rational, and systematic way. I therefore hold little hope for wilderness management in the twenty-first century. I blame environmental organizations every bit as much as developers and strip miners. There is no difference in outcomes between greed and incompetence.
- We need a new environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations. We need more people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens. We need more scientists and many fewer lawyers.
- We cannot hope to manage a complex system such as the environment through litigation. We can only change its state temporarily-- usually by preventing something-- with eventual results that we cannot predict and ultimately cannot control.
- Nothing is more inherently political than our shared physical environment, and nothing is more ill served by allegiance to a single political party. Precisely because the environment is shared it cannot be managed by one faction according to its own economic or aesthetic preferences. Sooner or later, the opposing faction will take power, and previous policies will be reversed. Stable management of the environment requires recognition that all preferences have their place: snowmobilers and fly fishermen, dirt bikers and hikers, developers and preservationists. These preferences are at odds, and their incompatibility cannot be avoided. But resolving incompatible goals is a true function of politics.
- We desperately need a nonpartisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research to determine appropriate policy. Scientists are only too aware whom they are working for. Those who fund research-- whether a drug company, a government agency, or an environmental organization-- always have a particular outcome in mind. Research funding is almost never open-ended or open-minded. Scientists know that continued funding depends on delivering the results the funders desire. As a result, environmental organization "studies" are every bit as biased and suspect as industry "studies." Government "studies" are similarly biased according to who is running the department or administration at the time. No faction should be given a free pass.
- I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
- I personally experience a profound pleasure being in nature. My happiest days each year are those I spend in wilderness. I wish natural environments to be preserved for future generations. I am not satisfied they will be preserved in sufficient quantities, or with sufficient skill. I conclude that the "exploiters of the environment" include environmental organizations, government organizations, and big business. All have equally dismal track records.
- Everybody has an agenda. Except me.

4 comments:

  1. Do not discount the broadband scheme. Which may be related to the great big reset. Maine seeks to populate our islands year round. To get summer residents to stay year round requires modern convinces like internet employment.

    Going into the 2021 school year take note how quickly schools shut down in person learning in favor of remote.This generates funding for remote capabilities and trains the future internet workforce. Not to mention normalizing the new “normal”.

    If you look on indeed for employment in Maine you will find that cell phone tower and fiber optics installers lead the opportunities. One would think healthcare and research biologist would be hot jobs right now considering all the covid ‘cases” in Maine but no, Maine needs cell towers and fiber optic cables.

    This is a scam of epic proportions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You just keep on researching Meryl, whilst we continue to obliterate ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Have you seen this article Dr. Nass? I think you'll like it.

    Covid, 9/11 & Forever War
    https://off-guardian.org/2021/09/13/covid-9-11-forever-war/

    ReplyDelete
  4. On Earth’s ever changing climate.
    For those that remember. 1986 was the year that the Reagan administration stopped funding civilian nuclear power and handed it over to free enterprise (and removed liability from vaccine manufacturers). Because nuclear power had become unpopular, what with Three Mile Island and other nuclear incidents around the world, a sweetener was thought to be necessary to encourage private investment. The ‘unique selling point’ (to use a sales and marketing term) that was seized upon, was that nuclear didn’t produce CO2. As the UK Prime minister Margaret Thatcher and West German Chancellor Willy Brandt were both keen supporters of nuclear power, they thought that the US government idea of encouraging private investment by way of awarding ‘Carbon Credits’ was a good one. These credits were not intended to stimulate investment in renewables. [ I don’t remember now if this renewables anomaly crept in via a Pork-Barrel-Deal or sloppy legislative wording]. Yet, the politicians and big business quickly realised that there was great opportunities for ‘sweet deals’ (financial term for easy money) to be made from trading in these credits. What’s more. If one didn’t have any carbon credits, then millions of dollars worth of them could be created out of thin air (no pun intended) just by ‘creative accountancy’ and moving ‘dirty industries’ to China. The rest is history. All our fields of science/politics/finance/healthcare/defence are now corrupted by corporate self interests.
    Note: The temperature graphs issued by the IPCC often say ‘Based on actual temperatures’. For those that haven’t inquired into climate models, these graphs are the actual temperature graphs ‘after’ being adjusted to fit the CO2 dependant modelling. Normally, when the data doesn’t fit the model, scientists change the model. In modern climate modelling — they change the data! So the Earth climate is in fact still following the predicted pattern before the corrupt CO2 scientism took off. Also, with the Atlantic oceanic currents slowing down and about to collapse from their current far northerly routes, it looks like we could be back in the ice age very soon. All this can be checked, together with how many academics have lost their funding and been sidelined for pointing out the bad science that the Anthropogenic Warming Crises has be founded upon. For anyone interested, this article published in Reading University’s Debating Journal give the gist of the bad science and from there, the physics can be found on Google Scholar.
    https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/666002/21b43e1b155051227ef2981acd52c254/19-16-292-C-Corbyn-data.pdf

    ReplyDelete