Editor’s note: Civilization is in free fall, and most people do not accept that. Humans will have to use a lot less energy. That future is hard for people to grasp. They will need to adjust their expectations of how reality is going to look. This will require going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining(excuses), depression, and acceptance. We can still create social relations that can improve the world through policy and interactions. Remember the win is always in the movements struggling together with others toward those victories, the fighting against the fascism of industrial civilization.
By Paul Mobbs, The ‘Meta-Blog’, issue no.14, 7th May 2020
Being ‘well known’ in eco-circles, you sometimes get strange, often unsolicited stuff arriving in your inbox. This, however, was something I’d been hoping for: A chance to view, and thus review, ‘Bright Green Lies’ – Julia Barnes’ new documentary about the environmental movement and its support for renewable energy.
‘Planet of the Humans’ (PotH) was entertaining. At a general level, it was factual, albeit a polemic expression of those points. But its protracted period of production meant that it lacked coherence, and thus left itself open to easy criticism.
Those criticisms when they came, however, fell directly into the lap of the central argument of the film: That mainstream environmentalists distort facts to promote an erroneous vision of the measures necessary to ‘save the planet’.
It wasn’t just Josh Fox, backed by green entrepreneurs, engaging in a cavalier reshaping of facts and quotations to blacken the name of the film. Our own George Monbiot engaged in his own well-honed distortion of fact and quotation via The Guardian (symbolic of a number of their recent failures) in order to try and prevent people from watching the film on this side of the pond.
‘Bright Green Lies’ is very different: Like PotH, once again it presents the personal viewpoint of the director, Julia Barnes. Unlike PotH, though, it has a very different tone, building upon the immediacy and well-researched content of the eponymous book by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert – all of whom appear in the film.
You get the core of the film’s argument over the first five minutes, as the four main protagonists set out their respective take on the ‘bright green’ position [time index in the film is shown in brackets]:
Barnes: “People rarely question the solutions they are taught to embrace, but with all the world at stake we must start asking the right questions. There is a push for a 100% renewable world, and after the research I’ve done for this documentary, I want no part of it. I did not become an environmentalist to protect my way of life or the civilization in which I live. I did it because I am in love with life on this planet and because the world I love is under assault. This film is for those whose allegiance is with the living world. Those who would do whatever it takes to defend it.”[02:26]
Jensen: “You will have hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets of Washington, or New York, or Paris; and, if you ask those individuals ‘why are you marching?’, they will say, ‘we wanna save the planet’. And if you ask them for their demands they will say, ‘We want subsidies for the wind and solar industry’. That’s extraordinary. I can’t think of any time in history when any mass movement has been so completely captured and turned into lobbyists for an industry.”[03:49]
Keith: “The environmental movement used to be a very impassioned group of people who cared very deeply about the places we loved and the creatures we loved. What happened, though, in my lifetime, was that this movement which was so honorable and impassioned, it turned into something completely different. And now it’s about protecting a destructive way of life, while it destroys the creatures and the places we love. It’s all become, ‘how do we continue to fuel this destruction?’ as if the only problem was that we were using oil and gas.”[03:16]
Wilbert: “The natural world isn’t really part of the conversation anymore. Kumi Naidoo, the former head of Greenpeace, I was watching him being interviewed the other day. He was saying, ‘The planet’s going to survive, the oceans are going to survive, the forests are going to survive, it’s really about can we save ourselves or not’. And I just saw that and I’m thinking, what the hell are you saying? … This is someone who’s considered to be one of the top environmentalists in the world and he’s say- ing we don’t have to worry about the forests or the oceans? I mean, that just betrays a complete lack of empathy and connection to the natural world. I don’t know how you could possibly say that when we’re in the midst of the Sixth Great Mass Extinction, and it’s being caused by industrial culture. It’s being caused by the same institutions, the same economies, the same systems, the same raw materials, the same extractive mindset, that is being used for these renewable energy technologies.”[04:36]
Environmentalism is a ‘class’ issue
My introduction to ‘environmentalism’ started before I’d seriously heard the word; growing up in a semi-rural working-class family who grew their own food, kept chickens, and foraged. Likewise, coming into contact with ‘mainstream’ environmentalism in the mid-1980s introduced me to the concept of ‘bright green’ before I’d heard that term either.
If there’s one general criticism I have (in part because the book, too, glosses over it), it is the failure to explore the class bias of environmentalism. It is dominated by the middle class (and in the UK, led by the upper-middle class); and so the economically ‘aspirational’ middle-class values suffuse its agenda. That’s overlooked in the film.
That this movement should innately favor individualist materialist values, over communal or spiritual ones, should therefore be of no surprise. That does not condemn these groups, or render them incapable of change. What it makes them do is reflect a narrow focus on both concerns and solutions. More importantly, in a mass political society, it makes it difficult for them to have empathy with a large majority of the public – and that hampers their ability to make change.
That bias towards affluence informs their ideological values, which in turn have come to dominate contemporary environmentalism. As said in the film:
“Bright Green Environmentalism is founded on the notion that technology will solve environmental problems; and that you can, through 100% recycling, through wind and solar power, have an industrial economy that does not harm the planet. Deep ecology is the belief that we need to radically change the way society functions in order to be sustainable.”[05:30]
The spectre of this early ideological differentiation has haunted the movement. Just as Keith outlines, for me it became evident around 1988 to 1990. Figures such as Jonathon Porritt and Sara Parkin sought to divest the movement of its ‘hairshirt’ image and put it on a ‘professional’ footing. As a self-acknowledged ‘fundo’ (the pejorative term used for deep green ‘fundamentalists’ in the Green Party at that time) that didn’t enthuse me one bit.
That ‘professionalised’ approach (for which, read compromise with neoliberal values) would slowly percolate through the movement over the next decade. And with it, the compromise that has stalled more radical responses to ecological issues ever since. That failure has, in part, only escalated these historic internal tensions – tensions that this film, almost certainly, will inflame.
First ‘green consumerism’, and then ‘sustainability’, foundered on the reality that the movement’s role as a ‘stakeholder’ in government and industry programs produced little change. Today, the issue at the heart of this internecine contention is renewable energy – and whether it is a realistic response to the Climate Emergency or just another distracting ruse.
I think this film is a good contribution to that contemporary debate. If only to make many people aware that this debate exists, and so cause people to look at the academic research in more detail.
As Barnes succinctly put it: “We are told that we can have our cake and eat it too.”[01:59] And yes, this really is all about cutting the ‘cake’ of affluence. But the film’s criticism of consumerism was couched in a generic “we”, and therein lies its failing.
When it comes to consumption it is not an issue of ‘we’. It is about how an extremely narrow social and economic elite exploit the majority by giving them the ‘illusion of affluence’. Albeit one that is today precariously founded upon deepening debt and doubtful economics (a ‘deep’ issue in-and-of itself).
By not making the case that it is a highly privileged minority causing/benefiting from ecological destruction (see graph below), the film and book miss the opportunity to state arguments such as:
- The most affluent 10% of the global population (OK, that’s mostly us!) cause half the pollution;
- But even within these most affluent states, national inequality means wealthy households emit far more pollution than the poorest;
- Hence pollution is absolutely associated with economic inequality and consumption; and,
- That this skew means the most affluent states must reduce consumption by perhaps 90%!
“The ocean is the foundation of life on this planet. The fact that we’re losing it at the rate we are is alarming. I think part of the reason we’re failing is that we ask what is politically possible more often than we ask what is necessary.”[41:37]
Simple logic demands that this minority urgently change their lifestyle, lest the majority, threatened by ecological breakdown, seek to rest it from them. It is how they do this which is another live issue. Frankly, that’s not going too well right now:
Currently, Western states are seeking to repress protests against the climate emergency, to forestall calls for more radical change; While at the same time, billionaires create bunkers in remote locations to survive any future backlash from the dispossessed majority. This creates a powerful incentive for the ‘impoverished majority’ to rest control away from the economic elite driving ecological breakdown. The reality is, though, neither Greenpeace, WWF, nor even Extinction Rebellion, are likely to pick up that banner any time soon. Their failure to recognise affluence as a driver for ecological destruction negates their ability to act to stop it. Instead tokenis- tic measures, like renewable energy, supplant calls for meaningful systemic change.
Economics versus ecological limits
About halfway through, Max Wilbert elucidates a truth that doesn’t get nearly enough exposure:
“When people talk about 100% renewable energy transition to save the planet, to save civilization, what they’re actually talking about is sustaining modern high-energy ways of life, at the expense of the natural world.”[26:38]
I’m sure a number will recognise that from many of my previous workshops. In fact, I’ve just had a Facebook post blocked for, ‘violating community standards’. The offense? It linked to a summary of the research making this same point, and it’s not the first time that’s happened. It’s a touchy subject!
In 2005, my own book, ‘Energy Beyond Oil’, visited many of the issues explored in the film/book. In far less detail though, as there was nowhere near the quantity of research evidence available back then. What that also highlights, though, is how over the interim: ‘Bright green’ environmentalism has been unable to comprehend the message from this new research; while at the same time deliberately deflecting people’s attention towards points of view which have a questionable basis for support.
On that point, I think Max Wilbert gives a most eloquent view for how mainstream environmental- ism sold itself on the altar of green consumerism:
“They want us to believe that consumer choices are the only way we can change things. But if we accept that then it means that they’ve won because we’re defining ourselves as consumers…I have to buy things within this culture to survive, and that is not something that defines me or my power as an actor in this world. I would say much more fundamentally I am an animal. I have hands. I have feet. And I can walk places. And I can do things. And I have a voice. And I have the ability to speak with people and build a relationship with people. And I have the ability to organise. And I have the ability to fight if need be. These are all much more important than my ability to buy or not buy something.”[48:28]
Since ‘Planet of the Humans’, many on the ‘bright green’ side of the aisle have learned a lesson. Their hysterical condemnation of the film, to the point of calling for it to be banned, only served to feed it greater publicity, ensuring more would see it.
Their lack of response this time is perhaps also due to how well the film exposes the fragility of their arguments. One of the bright points in the film was the way in which ‘deep green’ criticisms were dove-tailed alongside interviews with those they criticised – amplifying the substance of the disagreement be- tween each side.
I think my favorite was the segment on Richard York’s research, showing that growing renewable energy actually displaces a very minimal level of fossil fuels. When York’s point was put to David Suzuki, his reply, which I too have often received, was, ”So what is the conclusion from an analysis like that, we shouldn’t do anything?”[24:08]
The film brilliantly explodes this false dilemma. When pushed, about needing to tackle things systemically rather than just trying to influence behavior, Suzuki’s response was, “Yeah, there’s no question our major impact on the planet now, not just in terms of energy, is consumption. And that was a deliberate program…”[24:26]
When it comes to the ‘liberal’ solutions to the climate crisis generally, I think Lierre Keith gives the most perceptive criticism of the simplistic, ‘bright green’ arguments for change[1:03:23]:
“[Capitalism] takes living communities, it converts those into dead commodities, and then those dead commodities are turned into private wealth. And a lot of people think, well, if we just make that into public wealth, we all could get an equal piece of the pie, that’s the solution. The problem is that’s not go- ing to be a solution because you’ve still got the first two parts of that equation. Why are we taking the living planet and turning it into dead commodities? That’s the problem…It’s the fact that rivers, and grasslands, and forests, and fish, have been turned into those dead commodities, that’s the problem.”
Jensen then bookends Keith’s point with another, straightforward invalidation of the basic premise of the bright green approach[1:04:33]:
“What do all the so-called, ‘solutions’, to global warming have in common? They all take industrial capitalism as a given, and so conform to industrial capitalism. They’ve switched the dependent and the independent variables. The world has to be primary, and the health of the world has to be primary because without a world you don’t have any economy whatsoever. And the bright greens are very explicit about this. What they’re trying to save is industrial capitalism, industrial civilization. And that’s my fundamental beef because what I’m trying to save is the real world.”
Climate inequality meets decolonialism
Jensen makes an interesting observation towards the end of the film:
“The thing that blows me away is the lengths that people will go to avoid looking at the problem. That they will create all these extraordinary fantasies in order to do something that’s not going to help the planet so they can avoid looking at the real issue. Which is that industrial civilization itself is what’s killing the planet.”[59:40]
Likewise, Barnes astutely characterises the basic block to progress toward the near end:
“Bright green environmentalism has gained popularity because it tells a lot of people what they want to hear. That you can have industrial civilization and a planet too. It allows people to feel good about maintaining this destructive way of living and to avoid asking hard questions about the depth of what must be changed.”[1:05:04]
For me, though, it was Keith’s discussion about what it is ‘civilization’ is based upon[1:00:02] which brought a long overdue argument into circulation: Criticism of the ‘resource island’ model for the modern city, and its inherent link to the global expropriation and exploitation of land. Driven by the wealthiest ‘city’ state’s need to maintain consumption, the inherent ‘neocolonial’ aspects of international climate negotiations are something the climate lobby too often overlook. Especially in relation to issues such as carbon offsets, the global allocation of carbon budgets, and their inherent global inequality.
At some point environmental groups must call ‘bullshit’ on these whole neocolonial proceedings, and start giving equal value to all humans, irrespective of their present-day privilege. More importantly, we have to give ecological capacity, currently occupied by human societies, back to natural organisms to allow them sufficient space to live too.
Before ‘Bright Green Lies’ turned up, I had just seen Raoul Peck’s excellent, ‘Exterminate All The Brutes’. Coming to the end of ‘Bright Green Lies’, what startled me was how the two films arrived at a very similar place. Both showed similar blocks toward acceptance of the radical change required, around both ecological change and decolonialism.
To understand Peck’s film it helps to have read, ‘Heart of Darkness’. In structuring the film around the characters in that book, and contrasting it to The Holocaust, Peck shows how indifference to European and US colonialism enabled The Holocaust to take place [Episode 4, 46:57 to 54:11]:
“It is not knowledge that is lacking… The educated general public has always largely known what atrocities have been committed and are being committed in the name of progress, civilization, socialism, democracy, and the market…At all times, it has also been profitable to deny or suppress such knowledge… And when what had been done in the heart of darkness was repeated in the heart of Europe, no one recognized it. No one wished to admit what everyone knew.
Everywhere in the world, this knowledge is being suppressed. Knowledge that, if it were made known, would shatter our image of the world and force us to question ourselves. Everywhere there, Heart of Darkness is being enacted…Black Elk, holy man of the Oglala Lakota people, said after the Wounded Knee Massacre, ‘I didn’t know then how much was ended… A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. The nation’s circle is broken and scattered. There is no centre any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.’”
There are uncomfortable parallels between Peck’s insights into Holocaust denial, the denial of the crimes of colonialism, and the everyday denial of the damage that affluence and material consumption are causing to the entire planet. From the horrors of resource mining to the devastation of the oceans by plastics, such evidence represents a constant ‘background noise’ in the modern media. A noise people have learned to ignore, in order to keep functioning amidst the cognitive dissonance of their everyday, disconnected lives.
As Peck says, “It is not knowledge that is lacking”. People are aware. The fact that they will not engage with the issue, as outlined in ‘Bright Green Lies’, is that people innately know the extent of their own complicity. To do so, ‘would shatter our image of the world and force us to question ourselves’.
We do not need more ‘evidence’. The block to ecological change is not simply a lack of ‘knowledge’. It is that many all too well understand the reality of what stopping the ecological crisis would entail. Trapped by their subconscious fear of what that would mean personally, they cannot see a solution to the psychological dependency engendered by consumerism and industrial society.
Mainstream environmentalism, as the film outlines, is its own worst enemy. In advocating ephemeral, consumer-based solutions to tackling ecological breakdown, it creates its own certain failure. Unfortunately, unless the counter-point to that, the ‘deep green’ argument, is able to give people the confidence to accept and let go of industrial society, it will not make progress either. I think this film almost gets there; but we need to focus far more on the workable, existing examples of people living outside of that system to give people the confidence to make that internal, ‘leap of faith’. For those who want to follow this road, and perhaps provide those examples, this film is a good starting point to build from.
Released under the Creative Commons ‘BY-NC-SA’ 4.0 International License
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Deep Green Resistance, the News Service, or its staff.
No change in who owns what can possibly make a global civilization of 8,000,000,000 people sustainable. That is a simple fact of nature. It makes no difference if the economic system is capitalist or socialist. The small number of rich people are not the whole problem. The large number of poor people are a much bigger problem. Unless the population is reduced by a very big percentage, and SOON, it will not matter what the consumption habits are.
And to try to save civilization is a mistake anyway. The sooner it collapses, the better off the natural world will be and the same goes for the few who survive the collapse. Instead of trying the impossible, to make civilization sustainable via social changes, the right thing to do is to try to speed up the inevitable collapse.
Another issue is that the current demonization of CO2 as a so-called ”greenhouse gas” is incorrect. CO2 is not a major problem. It is not a greenhouse gas and is not affecting the climate. The main drivers of klimasturtz are nuclear technology, electromagnetic technology, deforestation, livestock grazing, large urban areas, damming of rivers, and other misuses of the earth that have little or nothing to do with emissions of any alleged ”greenhouse gases” from combustion of coal and oil.
How much energy is used and what sources are used to provide it do not matter much. Neither does it matter who uses most of it. And changing the social system to wrest power away from the current owners of this planet will not help anything. What will help is the ending of civilization and the recycling of most of the humans back into the food chain where they belong.
Tzindaro saying CO2 “is not a greenhouse gas and is not affecting the climate” is a very black and white statement. That said reducing CO2 is not a panacea for reducing climate change.
A paved city or a clearcut cannot absorb water. Human activities have accelerated the water cycle increasing floods and droughts. The amount of land cleared increases every hour and day. CO2 is icing on the cake of destruction that civilization causes.
Also true that communism, capitalism or any other “ism” is equally destructive to the environment. However growth based capitalism is supercharged consumption compared to the standard of living in communist countries.
AS far as climate change is concerned, I agree it is happening, I agree it is a serious problem, and I agree it is caused by humans. But I do not agree it is caused by CO2 or by burning of coal and oil, I do not think the earth is getting warmer, and I do not think there is anything that can be done about it. In particular, nothing can be done to stop it by any laws that could be passed or agreements between governments to stop burning of fossil fuels.
Climate breakdown is mainly due to nuclear power and associated sources of radioactivity. The next most important problem is mainly poor land use polices, including damming of large rivers, deforestation, livestock grazing, plowing, monocropping, paving, large urban conurbations, etc. There is probably some impact from air pollution, but the idea of a greenhouse effect from CO2 and other combustion products is vastly overestimated. I would not consider it worth worrying about in the context of all the more serious sources of the problem. Carbon emissions have little or nothing to do with it.
The breakdown will continue to escalate until civilization collapses. The only question is if that will happen in time to prevent the collapse of the biosphere along with it. Until then, playing silly games by trying to get political rulers who have no reason to care what you think to pass silly laws against harmless trivia like CO2 is a useless hobby that is not going to have any effect.
In any case, there is nothing any government can do about the climate. No conceivable political program can do anything about it, so it is not an issue. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless of who is president or who is in Congress or what anyone believes. The situation is out of control and nothing can change that. So climate is not a political issue.
Fraking is bad and should be stopped. No question about that. But in context, it is a very minor problem compared to most of the others. There are a number of more important environmental issues and nobody is mentioning any of them. Issues that something COULD be done about but are not being addressed include fishing, GM crops, cattle grazing, nuclear reactors, military use of radioactive weapons, logging of old growth forests and destruction of tropical forests for palm oil plantations, wildlife poaching, especially for the Oriental medicine market, and of course the really BIG one that no politician will touch: overpopulation.
Taking all these issues into consideration, it looks to me as if there is no mention of the environment in this campaign and there is not going to be any.
The environment is not an issue in this campaign.
The current hysteria about CO2 and so-called greenhouse gases is a major threat in itself. The end point of all the anti-greenhouse gases propaganda will be more nuclear reactors that will make things worse and attempts to tamper with the remaining atmosphere by so-called geoengineering. That will probably finish off the atmosphere and make it unable to recover.
There are many more than two possibilities, depending on how you frame the question. It may be happening, but may not be caused by CO2 emissions, in which case anything you do on the assumption that CO2 is the cause will be useless. And, in fact, may even be worse than what would happen if you did nothing.
There is no disagreement on the question of IF climate change is happening. I agree there is a major climate catastrophe now underway. I also agree that it is NOT caused by any natural factor such as changes in the energy output from the sun, underwater volcanoes, or any long-term natural cycle. There is a breakdown of the atmospheric stabilty going on, it has been gathering speed and intensity for several decades now, and it is being caused by human civilization. On those points there is no disagreement.
But when it comes to the MECHANISM by which human civilization is harming the atmosphere, there is room for discussion. I do not think the release of CO2 from burning of oil and coal is the most important part of the cause. In fact, I see no evidence that burning coal and oil has anything to do with what is happening to the atmosphere. The hypothesis that CO2 has a greenhouse effect is just that: A hypothesis. And it cannot be tested, so it is not a scientific hypothesis all all. There is no way to do an experiment to see if added CO2 in the atmosphere has any greenhouse effect or not.
The whole climate change issue has little or nothing to do with what is happening in the atmosphere. It has been politicized to the point where it is nothing but a political litmus test to tell where you stand on a long list of unrelated issues on the political Left-Right spectrum. It is not about science and no amount of evidence serves to convince anyone on either side.
But even if CO2 did cause a greenhouse effect, there is no reason to think ending burning of coal and oil would do anything about it. There are simply too many other factors that would not be influenced by ending the use of coal and oil as fuels.
For example, the common and widespread practice in Africa, Asia, and South America of setting bush fires every year. Huge areas are set on fire each year by local people to clear away vegetation and start new grass growning for their cattle. Other large areas are burned to clear jungles for small-scale farming by local peasants. These deliberately set fires probably release as much CO2 as coal and oil in the industrialized countries do.
Another big contribution to the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is fishing. The humans have already cleaned out most of the big fish in the oceans. Big fish eat little fish. Little fish eat plankton. So, with fewer big fish to eat them, there will be more little fish to eat the plankton. Plankton eat CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into marine biomass. With less plankton, there will be less CO2 scavenged from the atmosphere. And with 2/3 of the earth’s biomass formerly in the oceans, that is a LOT of CO2 that is now being left in the atmosphere instead of being removed by plankton. Probably more annually than the total released by industrial combustion of oil and coal.
These two factors alone are sufficient to show why ending the burning of coal and oil will not have enough effect to matter even if the greenhouse gases theory was correct. Nobody is saying that to stop climate change commercial fishing must be stopped. And nobody is saying that to stop climate change, natives in third world countries must be forced to stop traditional fire-setting customs. All you ever hear on the issue is that burning of oil and coal must be ended, but never all the other things that add at least as much CO2 to the air as coal and oil do.
The emission of CO2 from the fires is not having as much effect on the total temperature balance of the earth as the particulate soot they produce. These small particles of solid material fall somewhere, and if they fall on ice or snow they absorb heat from the sun and make the ice or snow melt faster. This is something that CAN be tested, and having seen many times how much sooner dirty snow melts than clean snow, I have no doubts about it. The altering of the albedo of the polar regions and mountain glaciers by fallout of soot from large forest fires is almost certainly a more significant cause of icefield meltback than the alleged greenhouse effect that nobody can see.
If CO2 has any effect on the climate, dogs and cats are another part of the problem too. In the United States alone, domestic and feral dogs and cats eat 20% of the total protein produced. That includes a lot of cat food. And cat food is usually fish. So a very significant percentage of the fish catch is going to feed pet cats.
Dog food is mainly beef, and grazing of beef cattle is a very big contributor to environmental devastation. It also releases a lot of allegedly greenhouse gases such as methane into the atmosphere. But I have not yet heard anyone campaigning against people keeping pets on the grounds that pets cause more CO2 in the atmosphere. The attacks are all on the oil and coal industries and on people earting meat, not on keeping pets that eat fish or beef.
The breakdown of the stability of the atmosphere has been going on since the start of the Atomic Age, and is mainly due to the increase of a radioactive gas called Krypton 85, which is not found naturally in the atmosphere of this planet except in tiny trace amounts, but is now found in amounts millions of times that which existed before 1945. Kr85 is released during the recycling of nuclear reactor fuel rods and there is no attempt made to contain it because it is light, so it goes up to the upper air where it cannot come in contact with any form of life.
Kr85 is a radioactive gas, and that means it is composed of CHARGED PARTICLES. And if you remember more of your high school physics class than most people do, when charged particles enter the field of a magnet, they migrate to the poles. The earth is a giant bar magnet, so most of the Kr85 ends up at the poles.
Tropical storms that form along the equator are highly charged systems and travel farther towards the poles in both hemispheres in years when there is more solar flare activity, which means more charge at the poles since the poles are where the stream of solar energy reaches earth. As added charge from the collection of Kr85 at the poles builds up, tropical storms are attracted more strongly towards the poles and transfer more tropical heat from the tropics to the Temperate Zones and Polar Zones, giving the illusion of the earth getting warmer.
So the real reason for the melting of polar ice is not greenhouse effect from burning coal and oil; it is radioactivity from nuclear reactors.
The first time I heard of the greenhouse gases ideology was at an environmental conference workshop held by a woman from a group in Seattle who flew to Tennessee just to give that workshop and left immediately afterward without staying for the rest of the conference. When I raised several objections to her preposterous claim that combusion of coal and oil were causing the climate to heat up via greenhouse effect from the CO2 released, she had her stock answer ready: I was corrupt and in the pay of the oil and coal industries and she even had a term for people like me who were lying to confuse the public: she called us “confusionists”.
Since I knew perfectly well that I was NOT being paid by anybody to say what I had said, I was not inclined to believe the rest of what she had to say either. And in the years since then, nothing has changed my mind. And I have continued to refuse to be bullied into conforming and agreeing with an idea that has so many holes in it that you could throw a dog through it without even aiming at one.
There is a big effort being made by somebody to convince the world that greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, from burning coal and oil are a major environmental threat. That is simply not so.
But what IS so, is that no matter how much propaganda you hear about “renewable energy” the most important result of this campaign in the real world will be to make nuclear reactors look clean and safe by comparison. Hundreds of new nuclear reactors are going to be built to replace the power plants that burn coal or oil. Maybe renewable sources COULD be used, but that is not going to happen. What is going to happen is more nukes will be built.
And I am suspicious enough to think that is the real reason for all the propaganda about coal and oil causing climate change. It is all intended to undermine oposition to nukes. And it has done such a good job that it has been the most successful propaganda campaign in history.
And I suspect that the ultimate reason for that is not to generate electrical power, but to create radioactive material for military uses. If you read a few of the scientific journals in fields like nuclear engineering, you can see that what the environmentalists call “nuclear waste” and consider a problem, the people working in the field of nuclear engineering call “reactor PRODUCTS” and consider a good thing; a valuable by-product of the generation of electricity that can be used for countless purposes that require radioactive materials.
And the most important of those uses are the military uses. Not only nuclear explosives, but the insideous “area interdiction” weapon called “depleted uranium” for artillery shells which are producted from recycled nuclear reactor fuel rods and have now permanently poisoned most of Iraq and Afganistan with radioactive dust that will remain toxic forever and keep on killing whoever and whatever lives there for thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of years, longer than human civilization has existed.
THAT is the most probable motive for demonizing coal and oil burning: to justify building more nuclear reactors to create more radioactive poisons for military use by the American Imperialist war machine.
The correlation of warming temperatures with the Industrial Age is co-incidence. The Little Ice Age began around 1450 and began to end around 1840 or so. The more relevant data show there is a stronger correlation of warming with the Atomic Age, which began in 1945, but really got underway in 1949 when both the USA and the USSR started their nuclear testing programs.
Insurance company statistics show that from about 1830 to 1950 the number of claims for lightning-related damage remained the same, and since 1950 have dropped by about 35%. That shows a very clear relationship between the use of nuclear technology and the behavior of the atmosphere. The increase of conductivity of the atmosphere from increase of Kr85 means that small charges bleed off continuously and do not build up to the point of a sudden sharp discharge as a lightning bolt.
I might have been in too much of a hurry in presenting only one small part of the reasoning behind my contention that radioactivity affects the atmosphere. In fact, I have seen many different cases of atmospheric effects from radioactivity and / or high voltage electrical devices and some of them were very dramatic indeed. But I have only presented you with one small bit of the large body of evidence, not mentioning all the other reasons for thinking radioactivity has meteorological effects.
The effect on frequency of lightning was first noticed by me when I realized that there was a lot more of it when I was growing up in New England than there is today. I asked a very old woman and she told me that she remembered the same thing: there used to be much more lightning.
So I started asking other older people, old enough to remember the 1940s and early 50s, and they all told me the same thing. So I asked the late Bernard Vonegutt, who was the leading atmospheric physicist in the country, and he told me it was impossible to know because there was no data from years ago to compare with today’s number of lightning strikes.
I then contacted an insurance company that got started in the 1830s and the head of their actuarial department thought the question was interesting and looked it up for me. He then told me that the number of claims for lightning-related damage had remained stable from the 1830s until around 1950 and had since then gone up by 35%. I asked him if perhaps more buildings are using lightning rods today and he said they were always a requirement for insurance coverage. I also asked if there has been any improvement in lightning rod technology and he said they are still the same as when Ben Franklin invented them.
The time-frame is a good match for the start of the intensive atomic bomb testing program that got underway in 1949. But this is only the tip of a very big iceberg. ALL nuclear or electromagnetic irritation causes atmospheric damage. I have sat under a high-tension power transmission line and watched for hours as every single cloud passing by broke up at the same spot. And pilots know that high-powered radar at airports has effects on clouds.
And there are many correlations between nuclear reactors starting up and droughts. Every time a new reactor goes on-line, there is a drought to the east of it. Always to the east, the direction the atmosphere travels in the Temperate Zone.
In the 50s, a lot of people thought the series of bad droughts the USA had were being caused by the nuclear bomb testing program. A few articles got published in some journals, but then the government unleashed a barrage of propaganda to convince the public and the scientific community that was not so. The evidence got burried and no scientist could get anything published on the subject or get a grant for research unless he was on board with the nuclear testing program.
The military are not any more stupid than anybody else; they are just better armed and able to do more damage by their stupidity.
My conviction that radioactivity has an important role in weather is not based on statistics alone. I have seen things happen in the sky right in front of me in response to radioactive or electrical stimulation. These responses of the atmosphere to energetic triggering events were obvious enough and repeatable enough that anyone who saw them would either be convinced or would have to be in denial. No statistics needed. One afternoon spent looking at the sky near a radar installation, nuclear reactor, powerful radio transmitter, or high-tension powerline is all it takes.
Can Man Change the Climate? : P. Borisov : Free Download …
Soviet academic P. Borisov wanted to melt the Arctic icecap to warm up Siberia for farming. He had an incredibly wrong idea of how to go about doing it, but his study of what the probable benefits would be if it was done remains valid. That shows how wrong the currently popular idea is that a warmer world would be a disaster. In fact, the last time the poles were ice-free, during the Climatic Optimum from 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, was the best time in millions of years for nearly all ecosystems and most species. A return to that climate regime would be one of the best things that could happen to the biosphere of this planet.
But that is not what is happening. Contrary to the hysterical nonsense that the earth is getting warmer, the fact is that it is getting colder on average while becoming more random, chaotic, variable, and unreliable. The German word, Kilimasturtz is the best way to describe what is actually happening to the weather. There is no exact equivelent term in English.
Most forms of life could adapt very well to a warmer habitat, but there is no way to adapt to a random one that varies greatly from day to day. It would be a good thing if the doomsters were right and the earth was getting warmer, but it happens that they are wrong and it is not getting warmer. And what is actually happening is worse than the warming they fear.
If you are interested in this issue, read this book.
Can Man Change the Climate? : P. Borisov : Free Download …
My position on all issues at this time is that none of them matter anymore. The climate collapse is going to render all large-scale agriculture impossible within a few years and there will be a short period of chaos and fighting over food until most of the current vastly overgrown population has recycled each other back into the food chain where they belong. Then the planet can start the long process of recovery from the invasion of the humans.
The only thing worth doing is try to protect as many species as possible and as much wilderness land area as possible until the collapse happens so there will be more of the biosphere left to recover after the end of the Human Age.
NO other issue matters!! This civilization is not going to last much longer, so forget about trying to save it and make plans for what will come after it.
But there are still some things that could be done to mitigate the effects, even if nothing can prevent them. One of the most important is to preserve as much as possible of wilderness areas and as many species as possible to act as seedbeds after the collapse and recolonize the rest of the earth. The more species there are remaining afterwards, and the more land area that remains relatively undestroyed, the sooner the recovery and the more complete it will be.
Another very important project would be to strongly oppose any nuclear technology. A nuclear reactor is a nuclear bomb going off in slow motion and the results are to same.
Another important task is to prevent the mechanists from trying to engineer a technological fix for the climasturtz by tampering with what remains of the atmosphere. There is already too much schlimbeserung human intervention in the atmosphere and any attempt to fix things by mechanistic science will make things a lot worse and delay recovery much longer.
The Human Age will be over soon, but it is still possible to preserve enough of the biosphere to enable it to regenerate afterwards. At least somewhat, although not entirely. But that will depend on the degree to which wilderness areas and wildlife can be protected untill the collapse of human civilization–otherwise known as the disease called the Humanpox.
The whole environmental movement has been hijacked by the cleverly engineered panic about the myth that greenhouse gases from combustion are heating up the climate and the equally absurd notion that a warmer world would be a bad thing. Neither of these claims is true. They are being advanced by the nuclear industry to make the public accept nuclear power as a ”safe, clean, and green” alternative.
The greenhouse effect of water vapor is around 100 times as much per unit volume as that of CO2, and there is at least 100 times as much of it in the atmosphere, so there is about 10,000 times as much greenhouse effect from water vapor as from CO2. And since the amount of water vapor fluctuates from year to year by at least 15%, any effect from CO2 would be undetectable.
If you seal a greenhouse air tight and pump in added CO2 the plants will grow bigger. But there are millions of old farmers and gardeners who are old enough to remember 50 years ago and none of them reports his crops are growing bigger now than they did then.
We are being told that a few degrees warmer planet would be a disaster, but the climate of the last few centuries has been an anomoly. In the Late Middle Ages the climate was several degrees warmer than it has been since, and in the Climatic Optimum, between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago, there was no pack ice in the Arctic Ocean and the tree line extended right up to the shores of that ocean in both North America and Siberia. Anyone claiming that a warmer earth would be harmful to the biosphere should be asked to explain those facts.
The real issue that environmental activists must face up to is the huge overgrowth of the human population, far more than the world can support regardless of whatever lifestyles anyone adopts.
There is little or no truth to the often-heard leftist mantra of ”capitalist greed” as the explanation for environmental destruction. 8,000,000,000 humans will destroy nature under any social / economic system and with any lifestyles. But my experience if I mention overpopulation in environmentalist circles is that sooner or latter someone will accuse me of racism and compare me to the Nazis.
To have any hope of effectiveness the movement must give up these two myths: that climate collapse is due to greenhouse gases and that eco-collapse is due to a few rich bastards who want more money. A strong movement to depopulate the world might still work even in the short time that is left, but so far I see no movement even talking about these matters.
If the world climate really was getting warmer that would be a good thing for most life forms. In the Climatic Optimum period, from 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, there was no ice in the Arctic Ocean in summer, the tree line extended right up to the shore of the Arctic Ocean in both North America and Siberia, and the coastlines of Greenland and Antarctica were ice free. Almost all forms of life would gain in range and numbers from a warmer climate.
But the world is not getting warmer. The over-all change is that, with more and greater fluctuations, it is getting colder, though that is hidden by the transport of tropical heat toward the poles due to the higher charge of the poles that attracts them. That increased charge at the poles is caused by the release into the atmosphere of Kr85 during the reprocessing of reactor fuel rods.
Modern meteorology is based on two main falacies: That the motion of air masses and storm systems is due to temperature differences, and that raindrops form because of condensation around nuclei. Both of those notions are wrong. The heat engine theory underlies all the nonsense about global warming and it is contrary to the evidence, but it is impossible to get any meteorologist or physicist to look at that evidence. The same goes for the easily disproven concept of condensation nuclei being needed to create raindrops.
But the scientists have the attention of the rulers and they are serving their military masters, so facts do not matter to the people who decide what to tell the public. And now refusal to go along with the claims of science is being defined as a human rights violation and to avoid that label the political rulers will violate the rights of everyone.
We can expect rationing of fuel, limits on travel, limits on how warm you can keep your house in winter, food rationing, and numerous other tyranical laws in the name of protecting the fictional ”right to a cooler climate”. And any politico brave enough to say anything against it will be labeled as ”on the far right” and a ”science denier”.