Environmentalist — becoming a dirty word

Once upon a time, nearly everyone was environmental. After the first glorious Earth Day fully 78% used the term to describe themselves. Incredibly in 1991 just as many Republicans identified as environmentalists as Democrats did.  Now only 42% of all Americans would use the term.

The long term trend appears inescapable. The Republicans are about 20 years ahead.

Environmentalist, Gallup poll, USA, political grouping. 1989 - 2016.

It’s been a quarter century of Great Global Warming politicization.  The trees, corals and cuddly polar bears have been worked on high rotation in the bun-fight for the tax-pie, profits, and dinner-party-status-points. Environmentalism came to mean something else.

In 1989 41% of Americans said they were a “strong environmentalist” and only 20% said they were “not an environmentalist”. In 2016, only 23% were “strong environmentalists” and an amazing 57% said “not an environmentalist”.

The decline has happened across all age groups.

Source Gallup Poll : Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted March 2-6, 2016, with a random sample of 1,019 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

h/t GWPF

8.7 out of 10 based on 59 ratings

118 comments to Environmentalist — becoming a dirty word

  • #

    To put it in perspective, in our local nature reserve a group of local environmentalists persuaded the council to chop down an area of 150year old woodland that was sheltering deer because they determined it “did not belong”.

    Likewise, they cut down woodland for bio-fuel and for bird-mincers. So, “environmentalist” is increasing becoming synonymous with people attacking and destroying the environment.

    In contrast, we have now had it confirmed that CO2 is greening the planet … so who are the real Greens?

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  • #
    Richard Barnett

    If “La Nina” shows up, which appears to be inevitable, I project even less Democrats will identify themselves as an Environmentalist.

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    • #
      Peter Miller

      La Niña will show up, but this will just be ‘noise’ for the clearly deluded alarmists and their dwindling environmentalist allies.

      In the real world, environmentalists are increasingly viewed with contempt for their ridiculous policies: for example, in some parts of the UK you cannot build a new house unless you put a ‘reptile refuge’ in the garden. For those in the real world, this is a loose pile of logs in which rats like to make their home.

      Have you ever tried to reason with a typical environmentalist? The expression “herding cats” immediately comes to mind. In other words, it is almost impossible.

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    • #
      RoHa

      Fewer Democrats.

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  • #

    It should be becoming quite clear to even the most casual observer that the True Believer Environmentalist thinks the world was best before any human like creature walked the earth. It is clearly their intent to return the earth to that state by stifling and eliminating any technological advance that really works.

    “Really working” means makes human life better fuller, and more productive. Thereby allowing humans to flourish by their being able to change “the environment” so that it is more conducive to human life.

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  • #
    Casey

    It’s sad, the damage this “man made” climate change scam has done.

    Science is now less trusted and being environmental is now a boogerman in the closet.

    I fully believe we need to clean up our act – stop wasting things, stop rubbishing the countryside, watch what we fertilise and where.
    You don’t have to trot along to the ACC lies to do this though, and their whole attitude to the “climate heretics” has turned many people away from DESERVING conservationist ideals.

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    • #
      Reed Coray

      I agree. It is sad. And if I was in the CAGW camp, I’d be ashamed of the camp’s behavior and the effect it has had on the world’s view of being a conservationist.

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    • #
      Another Ian

      in similar vein to the comment I once saw that (in US) the post prohibition excesses were worse than before its enactment.

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  • #

    There is nothing environmentalist about being green or believing in global warming. The greens slavish devotion to bird and bat killing wind turbines proves the point.

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    • #
      Leonard Lane

      Excellent comment stan. Thanks.
      I think the realization of this demonstrable fact that greens and radical leftists are non-environmental (no concern about wildlife impacts by wind and solar energy). Now if you add in the huge impacts of wind and solar energy (mining, manufacturing, shipping,large and ugly footprints, both wind and solar contain toxic metals and thus waste disposable problems, and their damage to the landscape and harm to humans through the sound of wind farms (if the sound harms humans it must harm other animals and wildlife); they are anti-environment.
      The leftist and greens range from non-environmentalists to anti-environment. Add to this their nuisance lawsuits, nasty attitudes, intolerance, violation of others free speech, freedom to assemble, etc . the leftists are also anti-social.
      The public is tiring of the lies, distortions, bullying tactics, nastiness, their phony elitism, and all the negative things concerning the environment, our economy, the destruction of civil discourse.
      Radical leftists and greens are fouling their own nests and alienating the productive, reasonable, and thinking people in America.

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    • #
      Mike

      The greens slavish devotion to bird and bat killing wind turbines proves the point.”

      They are called ‘Carbon Greens’. This mess of usurped environmentalism comes from the failure to commoonicate using accurate language.

      “The phrase “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate” is a quotation from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke,”

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      • #
        Mike

        * ‘Carbon Greens’

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        • #
          John Robertson

          Gang green.
          Says it all.
          The social progressives,as they style themselves, always steal the name of something valuable and then destroy it.
          Check out Liberal as now used in most of the world, nothing of John Stuart Mill in that lot.
          Environ-mentalist, well they are honest about the last bit.
          Their attempt to cloak their power grab,CAGW in science will turn out to be the overreach that exposed them to sunlight.
          Watermelons practise the nice words and pat cliches yet demonstrate their hatred and contempt for one and all.(Including themselves)

          Gaseous Gangrene is not an unfair comparison to the damage civilization has suffered.

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      • #
        Bulldust

        I looked up the stats somewhere once, and while turbines kill quite a few birds, that stat is dwarfed by tall buildings which kill far, far more. With the rate turbines are going up, that might change a bit, but for now the skyscrapers have it. Let’s see… who inhabits most of those tall buildings? Would it be banks perchance?

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    • #
      Mike

      “There is nothing environmentalist about being green”

      ……….Carbon Green.

      Thanks!!

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    • #
      Mike

      Not just a “bird”, the Yellow Bellied Parrot. 🙂

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    • #
      AndyG55

      Is a Greens voter identifying themselves as an “Environmentalist” something similar to a white anglo-saxon identifying themselves as an Aborigine?

      you know….. 1/32 environmentalist !

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    • #
      Manfred

      And just wait for another decade or so, when the current crop of ‘trendy’ roof top solar arrays with their decaying performance require removal to landfill.

      So, before one purchases a house, ensure one undertakes an audit of any extant rooftop solar array. With the exception of a Green, who would buy an extra-layer of ugly, useless junk on the roof let alone pay to have it removed and disposed of? But wait…the loss of Green cosmetic cachet…darn.

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      • #
        Lawrie

        They would replace the array only if there is a sizable subsidy. Greens are environmentally conscious only when someone else is picking up the tab.

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    • #
      Greebo

      The greens slavish devotion to bird and bat killing wind turbines proves the point.

      Yet these same people will use every resource available to prevent construction of dams. I guess beavers are deniers too.

      90

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Misanthropy
    : A hatred or distrust of humankind.

    Environmentalist

    : See above.

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  • #
    diogenese2

    “A week is a long time in politics”

    Attributed Harold Wilson

    In my ten year observation of the Global Warming Narrative the one aspect that I haven’t really grasped is why politicians, whose absolute timescale is the next election date, profess concern about a possible future global weather state three generations hence? Of course, minor individual needs like power, status and money played a measurable part but how did “environmentalism” gain such a hold unless astute politicos (and there are some) saw it, and CAGW, as a vehicle to dispatch their unspoken fears, such as Global Population Growth and the Depletion of Resources.
    Rupert Darwall’s history “The Age of Global Warming” provides many clues to this conundrum but the graph above shows that the public support has been going downhill since the Global Accord of Rio 1992. Could it be that they have, in reality, heard nothing new since that time?

    “Our most fateful new challenge is the treat of global warming: **** was the warmest year ever recorded. Last year’s heat waves,floods and storms are just a hint of hint of what future generations may endure if we do not act now.”

    Barack Obama 2016 ? No – (well yes probably) but actually Bill Clinton 19 January 1999!
    The narrative has hit the most destructive political force in existence – boredom.
    People are at last becoming aware of the gross deception that is being played and learning the tricks that are being used.

    My favourite is the use of very small units so as to produce huge numbers i.e. energy in ergs – one erg is the energy exerted when a house fly does a press-up (2 ergs in Oz – bigger flies). Radioactivity expressed as Becquerels, 15 of which are emitted per second by the average banana.
    Or else using what seems a large unit but is,in context, quite modest like” the Hiroshima” which is actually 16kt TNT= what the US extractive industry detonates in less than 2 days (quiet a lot in an confined space like a city though.

    Perhaps the populace is just beginning to develop a sense of proportion. There are dangers in that though

    Notes

    “The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
    To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
    The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
    Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
    And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.
    “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
    And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.
    And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
    To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

    Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe

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    • #
      diogenese2

      why is this in moderation?

      In the context of perspective;

      http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-27/colliding-galaxies/7360544

      “The stars like dust encircle me
      In the living mists of light;
      And all of space I seem to see
      In one vast burst of sight”

      Isaac Asimov (Peace be on him)

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    • #
      ROM

      diogenese 2 @ # 6

      My favourite is the use of very small units so as to produce huge numbers i.e. energy in ergs – one erg is the energy exerted when a house fly does a press-up (2 ergs in Oz – bigger flies)

      You just have to get a green thumb for that one! 🙂

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  • #
    Manfred

    In the same way the power hungry utilise social and occupational issues, or economic issues, so they utilise environmental issues. The problem was that the wider public consider environmentalism as phosphate free soap powder, polar bears and recycling. The eco-mentals have used-up their free ride and are now recognised as no more than a particularly toxic version of politics, politics in green. Their decline is simply brand recognition of their brazen eco-marxist policies and humanity crushing desire.

    How many Green NGO’s will wind up revealed in their full glory by the great unraveling…the Panama papers? Indeed, can the Fourth Estate be trusted to do the job thoroughly?

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  • #
    Ruairi

    More people now truly resent,
    How warmists will always present,
    Their misguided view,
    That to fight CO2,
    Protects the environment.

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  • #
    Robk

    The graph is roughly inverse to IPCC’s interference with US sovereignty, roughly proportional to revised guesstimates of the impact of a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, and roughly inversely proportional to the power and influence of the EPA.

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  • #
    Tom Anderson

    For myself, I never miss an opportunity like this to recommend Martin Durkin’s short (~25 pp) three-part essay on Green anti-humanism beginning with:

    http://www.martindurkin.com/blogs/greens-warning-history-volume-one

    A not-so-surprising eye opener.

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    • #
      Russ Wood

      Just had a quick look at Durkin’s essay before getting back to Joanne’s blog. This idealist “back to the land” seems to have infected South Africa’s ANC Government, because they seem to want all of their voters to go back to subsistence farming – preferably on land taken from the ‘Boers’. However, the PEASANTS want to get to the cities, for jobs and money – just like everyone else! When idealists (to use a kinder term that I first thought) think that they MUST change human nature, it can only lead to some kind of disaster. (sigh) When will politicans learn?

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  • #
    Ron C.

    Stanford’s Thomas Sowell said the term should be “green bigots.”

    https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/04/27/stanford-sanity/

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  • #
    braddles

    Very dubious. Are we supposed to believe that in 1991, 78% of Republicans literally considered themselves to be “environmentalists”? The meaning of the word must have changed. Complete absence of data between 2000 and 2016 makes it more dubious.

    50

  • #

    Just for the record I consider myself an environmentalist, a true environmentalist. I recycle, feed birds, use organic methods in my tiny vegetable garden, have spent more then one day helping riverbank clean up, and even pick up trash when walking or hiking. Greens are not only non environmentalists because of their stance vis a vie birdchoppers and solar panels. They seem to have no clue that wealthy countries and societies have the cleanest environments. Their bitter opposition to fossil fuels has prevented developing countries from becoming wealthy enough to take better care of their lands. Without fossil fuel energy many in Africa and South America have to harvest their precious forests for cooking and heating fuel.
    The greens in general have a callous attitude towards human life too. Their stance about DDT is causing easily a million deaths a year world wide. How would you like to be an African mother hugging her shivering child in the troughs of malaria. The greens policy on genetic
    crops is causing hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness from VAD. And yet these “environmentalists” claim the moral high ground. I don’t think so.

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    • #
      Mari

      I am an environmentalist in the same vein, Stan. I am not convinced DDT is entirely “safe”, but in those areas where it is the -only- thing that can wipe out those insect carriers of crippling illnesses, bring it on. As for GMO foods, we have been eating those for centuries; granted, it sometimes took a human generation for cross-breeding and selective plantings to produce a new strain, but we’ve been fiddling with plants for a long, long time. If tweaking a few things here and there will “feed the world” – will grow crops in sub-optimum conditions, will grow crops that have improved nutrition, then bring that on, too.

      The mis- and dis-information campaigns are criminal, IMHO, promoting the death and crippling of millions in the goal to go back to a “pure” state which has never, ever, existed. Yes, there were periods where industry ran amok and compromised the health and well-being of everyone who worked or lived nearby, but it was much cleaner than the fetid cesspits that were the city streets and the fumes produced by tanneries and other industries just prior to the “revolution” – we’ve come a long way and there is tech that brings the levels of soot and other noxious outflows to near 0. When the worst pollution we have to worry about is CO2, H2O, and a few traces of other things, well, it’s time to focus on REAL problems.

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  • #
    handjive

    Some green jobs are more important than others:

    Several major operators refuse to take Greens’ senators to bleached reefs as a backdrop for policy announcements, fearing potential impact on tourism

    Daniel McCarthy, a charter boat provider and president of the Cairns professional game fishing association, told News Limited that he and other operators objected to the Greens’ “publicity stunt”.

    “They told me they wanted to see badly bleached areas, which obviously suggests they want a doom and gloom story,” he said.

    “It’s quite obvious to me they want a very negative story to ramp up their argument about coal mining and are quite willing to sacrifice the reputation and thousands of jobs that rely on the health of the Great Barrier Reef to push another agenda.”
    . . .
    Good on the tour operators.

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    • #

      It is all about stopping the Adani coalmine; anyhow they ended up with a bit of egg on their faces this time with the negative publicity at taxpayer expense.

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    • #
      handjive

      What was he thinking?

      Queensland’s Environment Minister Dr Steven Miles – who is also the State’s Minister for the Great Barrier Reef – has written to his Federal counterpart Greg Hunt, calling for the meeting to be held as soon as possible in Cairns.

      “We have to move quickly on climate change.

      Disturbing research by Australia’s foremost marine scientists released today has shown 93% of the reef has now been affected.

      “Given the scale of bleaching being experienced, the clear link to global warming, and the lack of a coherent effective national policy, I am calling upon the Federal Government to convene an urgent Meeting of Environment Ministers so we can discuss developing real climate change policy.

      “Our Great Barrier Reef continues to be an extraordinary marvel and the 1.9 million people who visit it each year are a testament to that.
      . . .
      Thanks Mr Tourism minister, for telling 1.9 million people not to bother coming back to Qld to look at the GBR, because 93% is now affected.”

      It should be you losing a job.

      (via michaelsmithnews, which has other links, A carbon tax and lying about it are hard wired into the Labor psyche)

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      • #
        Pauly

        Somewhat dated news. The media release came out weeks ago, at the completion of the survey. No percentages were announced then, but an earlier ABC News report advised bleaching was affecting 95% of reefs surveyed.

        However the survey did not proceed south of Cairns as bleaching was not evident in the remainder of the GBRMP. So bleaching only impacted reefs over 1100 mm of its total length of 2700 kms. I haven’t seen a list showing how many of the 3000 individual reefs were affected by bleaching, but I think any high school student could work out that it would be somewhat shy of 90%.

        But don’t let evidence and observations get in the way of an alarmist story.

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        • #
          Pauly

          Should have been 1100 km.

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          • #
            Mike B

            My understanding is that 93% of the reefs surveyed showed some signs of bleaching (mostly trivial amounts) – whereas the reports implied that 93% of the reefs surveyed were completely, totally bleached; of course the public not told that for most reefs bleaching is a temporary phenomenon and they mostly recover from bleaching – I think the figure was more than 95% recovery after the 1998 event – or that cold water can also cause bleaching, as happened at Heron Island in the winter following the 1998 El Nino there.

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  • #
    AndyG55

    For Tony in Oz.. Thought you might be interested..

    https://sunshinehours.net/2016/04/28/phrase-of-the-day-duck-curve/

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    • #
      Analitik

      This problem has been looming for a while as the graph shows and the only solutions to this will be either distributed storage or cutting back the rooftop PV installations. The utilities have been pointing to the impossible increasing ramp rate requirements for years.

      Given the environmental leanings of the Californian government, I expect to see state level subsidies for home batteries, similar to what South Australia are doing to try and stabilize their grid. Elon Musk may well have had the PowerWall developed just for this scenario.

      Meanwhile, some energy consultant has pronounced that battery storage systems are at the cusp of being economically viable if the tariffs are based around maximum demand charges. ie make electricity more expensive and batteries will become viable!!!!!
      http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/battery-storage-close-to-parity-under-certain-tariffs-86702

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  • #
    pat

    dirty indeed!

    28 Jan: UK Metro: Emma Thompson sprayed with manure during anti-fracking Bake Off
    by Richard Hartley-Parkinson
    This footage shows the moment a farmer sprayed manure at Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson as she broke an injunction to protest against fracking at a potential site.
    The owner of the field, who leases the contested patch of land near Preston, Lancashire, to fracking company Cuadrilla, drove his muck spreader in circles around the demonstrating group.
    At the time of the incident, at around 1pm yesterday, Emma was mid-bake in a tent, filming a pastiche episode of the Great British Bake Off called Frack Free Bake Off to voice her opposition to the fracking plans.
    A group stood nearby, who were supporting Greenpeace’s cause, were hit by the stinky mess, though the damage was minimal as they ran out of the way and huddled in the middle to avoid the splurge.
    After a couple of circles around the group, who were shouting for him to stop it, the farmer drove off.
    Luckily Emma and her actress sister and winner of celebrity Masterchef, Sophie Thompson, remained dung free…
    http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/28/emma-thompson-sprayed-with-manure-during-anti-fracking-bake-off-5846257/

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  • #
    pat

    New Zealanders standing up against the faux “environmentalists”:

    29 Apr: Stuff.co.nz: ‘Climate fight of 2016’ – Genesis U-turn on coal angers Greenpeace
    by TOM PULLAR-STRECKER & CAITLIN WALLACE
    After saying it would close Huntly power station’s two coal-fired units in three years, a U-turn by Genesis Energy has outraged Greenpeace but been welcomed by some in the small town.
    Genesis had previously said it would close the Huntly power station’s two coal-fired Rankine units at the end of 2018, but a deal with other generators will now see them stay open until December 2022.
    Greenpeace says Genesis needs to prepare for the “climate fight of 2016” and has threatened to step up action to campaign for Huntly’s early closure in February, saying people power would “win the battle at Huntly coal”.
    However, Huntly West Community Hub co-ordinator Hine Timothy said the decision stopped another nail in the town’s coffin.”
    Timothy saw first hand the effects of Solid Energy’s closure as families arrived on the hub’s door step looking for food.
    She described Huntly as a “coal town” that fuelled not only the power station but also the economy, and believed ending coal-generation would trigger a downward spiral.
    “Why are we looking at extending it just four years? … It does give our families jobs…
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/79386998/deal-will-see-huntly-coal-generators-remain-in-service-until-2022.html

    ***below: ETC commissioners include Al Gore, Nicholas Stern, etc…note plenty of countries analysed that must leapfrog fossil fuels!

    28 Apr: Reuters: Nina Chestney: Radical action needed to decarbonize world energy supply: report
    More radical action is needed to decarbonize the world’s energy supply and improve energy efficiency to keep the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius, the ***Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) said on Wednesday.
    The ETC is made up of global experts from energy companies, the investment sector, public and academic institutions and foundations and aims to identify ways to change the world’s energy systems to low-carbon sources…
    The ETC commissioned consultancy Ecofys to analyze the national climate plans of 17 countries and regions which account for 78 percent of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
    Those countries are China, United States, India, Russia, Japan, Iran, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Vietnam, Nigeria, Ethiopia and the European Union…
    To keep below 2 degrees, the share of low-carbon energy sources in the global energy supply mix needs to rise at least one percentage point a year and energy productivity needs to grow at a minimum of 3 percent a year, the report said…
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-energy-idUSKCN0XO16W

    reminder:

    Sept: 2015: Financial Times: Pilita Clark: Shell, BHP and GE to advise governments on climate change
    The oil group, Royal Dutch Shell, has teamed up with the McKinsey management consultancy and other large companies to advise governments on how to combat global warming without weakening their economies.
    Coal miner BHP Billiton, the US General Electric conglomerate and at least two big environmental groups are also backing a $6m “energy transitions commission” to create a blueprint for a greener global economy in the next 15 years, the Financial Times has learnt…
    The US-based World Resources Institute is another environmental group joining the commission, along with British economist, Nicholas Stern, and senior executives from the US Dow Chemical group, Germany’s RWE utility, and Norway’s Statoil…

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  • #
    TdeF

    There is an odd thing happening driven by environmetalists.

    Bloggers here recognize that CO2 is so obviously a world wide gas and that emission of CO2 anywhere in the world affects everyone else. Global warming is Global.

    However the modern environmentalist is often a science free devotee of the NIMBY (not in my backyard) set. So the people of South Australia or Tasmania believe that if they get rid of local coal and fossil fuels, they will be saved. Even the Australian Green voters think if Australia does not emit CO2, we are saved. That is so silly as to be utterly missed by commentators.

    So this morning you read the Australian government committing in principle to tens of thousands of windmills, to get 30% renewables and save us all. The silly Chinese are apparently just polluting their own backayards while we will survive global warming. Lucky us.

    This thinking applies to everything. All the windmills in the hundreds of thousands are in places which have plenty of power. Like the forests of windmills I have seen in the North Sea, like giant birds. A sea which covers vast reserves of oil, gas and coal. The environmentalist dream is that they and they alone will be saved by windmills. Environmentalism has become very selfish survival cult, for my children and my children’s children. A bit more like the 144,000 of the Seventh Day Adventists or the Rapture, where parents said goodbye to their doomed children.

    So the Australian approach is to pay overseas for our sins and to plan for armageddon by building windmills. At what point did our politicians go completely mad? This is not envinromentalism. This is nuts.

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    • #
      Raven

      Environmentalism has become very selfish survival cult . .

      Good fodder for an episode on that “Doomsday Preppers” show, I reckon

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    • #

      Talking about NIMBY’S, Australian coal exports in 2015 were 366,000,000 tonnes with most coming from Qld. About half was thermal coal for power stations, and the balance metallurgical coal for steel production.

      So that’s 366 million tonnes of coal which at 90% purity is 329 million tonnes of carbon, or approx. 1,200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide exports.

      Isn’t any carbon abatement scheme being contemplated by Messers. Turnbull and Shorten somewhat hypocritical as it will never offset these exports, and without which we wouldn’t have the money to afford them anyhow!

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      • #
        Greebo

        Isn’t any carbon abatement scheme being contemplated by Messers. Turnbull and Shorten somewhat hypocritical as it will never offset these exports, and without which we wouldn’t have the money to afford them anyhow!

        Rather like small children, and dogs. If I can’t see him, he can’t see me, writ large. Send all the evil dirty coal away so we can’t see what is done with it. Oh, and look, just LOOK, at that shiny new thing over there! What’s that? we used to make them here? Surely not.

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    • #
      el gordo

      The time is nigh, apparently.

      ‘Adelaide’s April ‘warmwave’ has seen only one day so far this month fail to hit 20 degrees Celsius, the first time that has happened in close to a century, the Bureau of Meteorology says.’

      Weatherzone

      ‘So the Australian approach is to pay overseas for our sins …’

      Just like back in the day when the civilised world funded the Vatican and ordinary folk paid for indulgences. Some things never change, we forget the folly of the past thinking this is a different world and we are smarter now.

      Buying junk CO2 bonds from the Eastern Block, in the full knowledge that they are worthless, is surely an indictable offense.

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  • #
    ROM

    The whole of this entire emotionally based, so called “environmental” thing is made up of a whole complex of words each of which has its own status and meaning within the hard left, ideologically and socialistically based “Whats yours is mine”, What is mine is mine alone so **** off !” type of mentality.

    The underlying belief of the environmentalists seems to have evolved into a belief in the inevitable establishment of a socialistic left ruled environmental nirvana where all in the farm yard will be equal, except a few will be far more equal than the rest, and the luscious fruits of civilisation will be enjoyed by all without any effort or any input or any using of and exploiting of any natural and bountiful resources of any type or nature of this Earth or allowing anybody else to use those resources so as to keep that socialist paradise rolling on forever.

    Well porcine aviation will no doubt commence quite soon in that case!

    The word “environmentalist” is slowly morphing in the public consciousness from somebody who is “concerned” [ another word that is changing in its meaning when used in a context with word “activist” ] with the “environment” which today covers a hell of a lot of emotionaly based territory which has morphed into a hard line group of extremely selfish, self centred, rather ignorant of the world outside of their self centred, overpaid, personally irresponsible, city centric and man made environment in which the so called “green environmentalists” might be found in their highest concentrations.
    They do not appear to have any semblence of empathy or even a modicum of understanding for anybody outside of their own exclusive and salubrious living quarters of like minded individuals.

    They appear to almost totally blind and completely indifferent to the frequently very severe and lives destroying consequences of what they believe and think of as so called and completely misnamed “environmental” policies.

    We only have to look at the WHO estimated 50 million plus completely unneccesary deaths and the suffering endured by hundreds of millions over the last half a century from Malaria due entirely to the Greenpeace and environmentalist’s inspired and ultimately successful efforts to have DDT banned.
    DDT being the only really safe insecticide back through the 1970’s and 80’s that killed the Malaria bearing mosquito.

    Recently a prominent researcher and worker in the field of Malaria prevention and heatth claimed that had the so called environmentalists not stopped the production and use of DDT in the 1970’s then Malaria today would be close to being eliminated as has already happened with Small Pox.

    And this below is just one set of statistics and an example of what the environmentalists and the so called self centred, empathy and morally lacking Green and environmental organisations are almost totally and solely responsible for today.
    —————–
    Malaria Statistics;

    – Globally malaria is on of the biggest killer

    – An estimated 3.3 billion people are at risk of malaria

    – 78% of people who die from malaria are children under 5, mostly in sub-Sahara Africa

    – 90% of deaths occur in sub-Sahara Afrcia

    – In 2015 97 countries and territories had ongoing malaria transmission

    – In 2015 an estimated 241 million cases of malaria worldwide

    – In 2015 an estimated 438,000 deaths
    ——————–
    Thats just Malaria!

    Then in Asia’s Rice reliant populations there is the Vitamin A deficiency due to de-hulled rice lacking vitamin A which leads to sickness, blindness and ultimately a desperate suffering and death for 1 to 2 million rice eating adults and kids each year.

    Greenpeace and other so called environmental organisations have fought the release of the vitamin A containing Golden Rice for over a decade in the courts and politically using every dubious practice they can call on because it is a GMO developed rice strain that incorporates a gene from sunflower and another from a very common, ubiquitous in fact, soil bacteria in its genetic make up.
    These genes incorporate vitamin A into the actual rice grain.
    It only needs a small hand full each day of the Golden Rice to, prevent Vitamin A deficiency and so save those millions of lives of kids and adults each year in the poorest of the rice eating Asian peoples.

    The estimated cost of Greenpeaces and other environmental organisations abject and total resistance to the release of Golden Rice over the last decade is around 10 million or more completely unnecessary deaths and thats without the suffering, the ultimate blindness and the wasting away of the lives of so many small kids and their families.

    Golden rice supporters 2009 letter to the UK’s Daily Mail

    The Golden Rice Project

    In short I have come to believe that much of the so called “environmental” movement has slowly morphed into a movement that in another context would have been classed as a criminal organisation, particularly the likes of Greenpeace who quite knowingly due to public and published facts which are unavoidable to ignore, has instigated and fought for in the courts to have implemented, policies that have quite openly led to the completely unnecessary and completely avoidable deaths of ordinary innocent people whose deaths over the 60 years of Greenpeace and the environmental organisations existence is now numbering up to somewhere close to 70 to 80 millions.
    A number now approaching that of the number of deaths from the horrors of WW2.

    And they and their executives and financiers are yet to be called to account for the slaughter of the innocents that they have so casually enforced in their desire to enforce their own hard line, extremely selfish, self centred and gratuitous human life destroying so called grossly misnamed “environmental” policies onto our civilisation.

    Now if you want me to really get on a hobby horse just introduce the most despicable of the species, the extremely selfish and entirely self centred “activist” into the thread whose one ambition in life is to force his / her entirely personal beliefs and ideology onto the rest of mankind regardless of any other individuals beliefs or understandings and regardless of any suffering or much worse inflicted on others by any possible implementation of the”activist’s” beliefs onto society in general.

    .

    If you have managed to read this far you now know the my thinking on the so called environmental movement.
    Thinking that has slowly evolved over the last decade as the environmental movement has itself gone from a desire to see a better world to what is now a set of city centric and almost totally ignorant of true Nature and natural realities, extremely selfish, extremely self centred, inward looking, policy rigid and an increasingly inflexible, casual life destroying set of socially putrescent organisations.
    .
    End of rant !

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      Manfred

      putrescent

      Superb word, ROM.

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      Another Ian

      ROM

      In this type of ecological jargon try “fragile”

      The meaning has nothing to do with that you might associate with, say, Wedgewood china.

      It is an environment with frequent changes of species composition and thereby in danger.

      No accounting that in rangelands areas with extremes of climate etc where species to capitalise is a strength

      Clemensian succession vs “state and transition” –

      As described by Dr Dean Graetz of CSIRO Rangelands back when they had such

      “In the Australian rangelands Clementsian succession is botanical astrology”

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    • #

      I think you are much too kind with your opinion of the green blob slime. I say they DO know what they are doing and they exactly INTEND the consequences you claim they are ignorant of. Their only problem is 70 to 80 million deaths in 60 years is not nearly enough. They are after 100% of mankind. The thing is that they don’t especially want to live, they primarily want YOU to die and will be only too happy to watch you suffer in the process.

      “But…but…but that’s insane”. Yes and your point is?

      However, how sane has it been for the rest of us to allow them to takeover and set the agenda by blocking nearly every thing humans try to do to provide for their continued survival and flourishing? We have committed ourselves to two world wars for far less provocation. Yet we have stood by an let them maintain their malignant fiction that they only want to save the planet.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        … we have stood by, an let them maintain their malignant fiction that they only want to save the planet.

        In response, my question would be, “For whom?” Who, or what, will inherit this planet, when they have completed their grand plan? They do not know.

        The green movement is a suicide cult, no more, and no less.

        It needs to be called out, for what it is.

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      tom0mason

      Yes ROM!
      And then there’s the green’s social/economic keystone of Creative destruction (aka progressive economics).
      So useful to them when they are asked to logically explain how the destruction of industries is worthy.

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      PeterPetrum

      That is no rant, Rom, it is the absolute truth. I am going to save it so that I can send it to all my friends. Thanks.

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        Richard111

        I second that!

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        • #
          ROM

          New York Times ; 2004 ;

          What the World Needs Now Is DDT

          The year 2000 was a time of plague for the South African town of Ndumo, on the border of Mozambique.
          That March, while the world was focused on AIDS, more than 7,000 people came to the local health clinic with malaria.
          The South African Defense Force was called in, and soldiers set up tents outside the clinic to treat the sick.

          At the district hospital 30 miles away in Mosvold, the wards filled with patients suffering with the headache, weakness and fever of malaria — 2,303 patients that month. ”I thought we were going to get buried in malaria,” said Hervey Vaughan Williams, the hospital’s medical manager.

          Today, malaria has all but vanished in Ndumo. In March 2003, the clinic treated nine malaria cases; Mosvold Hospital, only three.

          As malaria surges once again in Africa, victories are few.
          But South Africa is beating the disease with a simple remedy: spraying the inside walls of houses in affected regions once a year.
          Several insecticides can be used, but South Africa has chosen the most effective one.
          It lasts twice as long as the alternatives.
          It repels mosquitoes in addition to killing them, which delays the onset of pesticide-resistance.
          It costs a quarter as much as the next cheapest insecticide.
          It is DDT.

          KwaZulu-Natal, the province of South Africa where Ndumo and Mosvold are located, sprayed with DDT until 1996, then stopped, in part under pressure from other nations, and switched to another insecticide. But mosquitoes proved to be resistant to the new insecticide, and malaria cases soared. Since DDT was brought back in 2000, malaria is once again under control. To South Africans, DDT is their best defense against a killer disease.

          Further reading below on the DDT story

          Its a long story but well worth reading as it shows how the environmental organisations and environmentalists cost the lives of over 50 millions of innocent souls including little kids in huge numbers, as well as the untold suffering amongst some of the poorest people on Earth.

          And it was all so unnecessary and in the end so utterly evil in its toll on human life and the suffering that was a direct consequence of the environmentalists policy as promoted to the unknowing and more trusting politicians and their public of those times past.

          I suspect that 40 plus years on and another generation or two passing, that the story of the banning of DDT by governments through the uncaring anti- humanity persuasion of the environmentalists and the horrific consequences which some of the Malaria workers of that time have claimed, that they almost had Malaria beaten globally until the environmentalists moved in with all their legal and political weapons and endless supplies of funds to get DDT banned.
          A true story that no doubt is almost completely unknown to nearly all of the current generation let alone to today’s supporters of the environmental organisations who will probably refuse to listen to the truth of the banning of DDT and the consequent rapid rise again in global malaria and the horrific consequent resulting death toll over the last 5 decades .

          MALARIA VICTIMS: HOW ENVIRONMENTALIST BAN ON DDT CAUSED 50 MILLION DEATHS

          This article listed above is very close to what I have read over the last few decades of the DDT and Malaria story and the criminality of the environmentalists and the environmental organisations who well understood the effectiveness of DTT and the complete inability to replace DDT at that time with any satisfactory alternatives.
          But who still quite knowingly and deliberately using every means available to them, political, legal, false press and media information and straight out lies to the public and every other contemptible type of public and political persuasion managed to get DDT and its manufacture banned almost world wide.

          For some two or three decades past I have had nothing but complete outright contempt for most of those,[ not all as there some very good and quite reasonable true and pragmatic environmentalists,] who strut their own personally awarded environmental status as some sort of badge of responsible citizenship whilst all the time slurping up every single luxury and every bit of lavish energy use that can be attained in this civilisation and then going on to deny far lesser, even the minimal of benefits of any sort that our civilisation can supply to those they consider far beneath them in status.

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      I cannot express my delight in the elegant way you expanded my own remarks above which were unfortunately tied up in moderation. Well, maybe I can:

      JONOVA, JO NOVA, CALLING JONOVA. MODERATORS TAKE NOTE. PLEASE ELEVATE THIS COMMENT TO A POST. THE WEEKEND IS APPROACHING SO WHY NOT THIS INSTEAD OF AN UNTHREADED?

      This may be the best comment I have ever seen on Jo’s wonderful website.

      +infinity

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    TdeF

    Coal has been the savior of the world forests which were destroyed to heat homes and make steel. Clean coal power is amazing. London is now sparkling. I compared mty recent photographs with those in 1972 and Westminster Abbey is like a new penny.

    Our new environmentalists just want to stop everything. In England they stopped unclogging the canals and now the floods are devastating. The plan is to recreate the marshes for wildlife which is more important than human life. Environmentalism is now synonymous with winding back progress in quality of life. Strangely they label themselves Progressives. It is exactly the opposite. The PAE. People Against Everything.

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    • #
      PeterPetrum

      TdeF – I spent my university years in Glasgow in the late 60’s. I well remember arriving at Central Station each morning and walking out into George Square, where all the stonework on the otherwise magnificent buildings was a drab grey, after centuries of smoke pollution.

      On my last visit there a few years ago, Glasgow had gone through a transition in preparation for it being the “European City of Culture” (or if you are from Glasgow – kultcher!). The buildings were sparkling with the colours of the granite and sandstone showing up beautifully, whether the sun was shining or not.

      Lovely to see, and a testament to the lack of pollution due to modern coal fired power. Unfortunately, with the Scottish Nationalist in power they are heading headlong into wind power, which is set to ruin the magnificent scenery for generations.

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    Glen Michel

    Not quite breaking news but the Netherlands and France have banned Roundup( Glyposate)citing health concerns etc. Germany has had a study which gives it the OK. Activists at work maybe.

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  • #
    Glen Michel

    Glyphosate

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  • #

    Why is my comment (#12) still in moderation???????????

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  • #
    Analitik

    OT

    South Australia wants more interconnectors to export grid instability to other states

    We are really a forerunner for what will happen in the rest of the country

    Well, only if we want to join South Australia’s plunge back to hunter-gatherer societies

    Building a “greater interconnector” between the states, Hunter argues, would mean SA could play greater part in delivering its world class renewables resources to all of the NEM

    And crash them all at once instead of just one state.

    So that greater interconnection is really going to be helpful I think, to give the time to the eastern states to go through this transition. It is difficult. It is painful

    Only if our state governments are stupid enough to join in.

    The whole pathetic story at http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/south-australia-says-national-grid-holding-back-renewables-74315

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    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      G’day A,
      Have they discovered the cuase of the failure which stopped the trains yet? Could it have been a power surge from too much, or too little wind power?
      Cheers,
      Dave B

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    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      G’day again,
      It’s really all right, and Canberra is in control. And it will be the first to be 100% renewable.

      Bet they don’t remove their connection to the NSW grid.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

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      • #
        AndyG55

        “And it will be the first to be 100% renewable”

        And very little of it will actually be in Canberra.. you can bet your boots on that !!

        31

      • #
        Analitik

        Yep, just like the Sunshine Coast council with their PV farm – 100% renewable but still dependent on the grid

        20

    • #
      Wayne Job

      lots of areas in SA were they can install miles of resisters to take the excess. Being an engineer from an aircraft background, I am totally amazed that they cannot control these propellers with a feed back mechanism to control output when it is not needed, totally bad design.

      20

      • #
        Analitik

        They can but the way the subsidies work mean that it is not in the interests of the wind farms to curtail. In Germany and the UK, they pay the wind farms the amount that they would have generated when forced to curtail (classic case of money for nuthin’). Here, the legislation is different so the windfarms pump out what the wind allows, regardless of demand.

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  • #
    Analitik

    OT
    Actual penetration of renewables generation in China is less than 5%

    http://www.wri.org/blog/2016/04/chinas-1-2-3-punch-tackle-wasted-renewable-energy

    I don’t know if the government directives in the linked article are true (I hope not for their sake) but the graph at the bottom shows the true extent of how much inroad renewables have made into actual Chinese power generation: 2015 4.67%
    Something to point out to all those gushing about the Chinese leading the way with renewables deployment

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    • #
      ROM

      Analitik @ # 23

      I would suggest a look at the 2014 China Wind Power Review and Outlook particularly in the section “Key Issues for the Wind Power Industry” to get some idea on the problems that the Chinese Wind Power industry are facing, most of which are of their own making.

      eg;
      2.1 Adjustment of the Wind FIT [ subsidies ! ]

      2.2 FIT Premium Reimbursement Delay and Its Impacts on the Supply Chain [ The subsidies aren’t getting paid on time ]

      2.3. Turbine manufacturers unable to get out of warranty period

      [ This would make any western manufacturer’s hair curl in horror as it seems to be a potentially Ponzi like structure using warranty fund withholdings as a financing source ]

      2.4 Wind Power Grid Integration and curtailment ;

      [The translation of the meaning of “curtailment” in this document is important. I gather it means lots of wind and lots of power but nobody nearby to use all that power and no heavy power lines to take the power to where it can be used so the full amount of power generated can’t be used by anybody and therefore has to be “curtailed”.
      So do a Wind industry GISS and adjust the data to fit the required narrative.

      In short don’t trust a lot of those numbers coming out of the Chinese wind industry most particularly if some western wind promoting outfit is quoting any of those Chinese numbers and data.

      Has anything changed from the corrupt and false claiming western wind industry ? Nope!
      The Chinese are after all known to be quick learners ! ]

      Overall Grid integration and transmission situation of Wind Power in 2013 ;

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  • #
    Peter C

    Only if our state governments are stupid enough to join in.

    Just watch them!

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  • #
    John F. Hultquist

    I think most of us (USA) care as much, or more, about the natural world as we did 20 years ago.
    Because of the global warming issue, the U. N., redistribution of wealth, and the sleaze of the Obama administration, I can no longer openly associate with any “environmentalist” cause.
    I would answer the question with “Not just no, but hell no!”

    Like most polls, this one fails to contribute useful information.

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    Amber

    Green activists have infiltrated the Democrat Party because they have no place to go .
    Announcing plans to kill the coal industry jobs and companies and other fossil fuel companies in order
    to kiss up to green hedge fund gamblers will be one of those holy crap why did we shoot ourselves in the foot moments .

    Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of communists .

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    • #
      el gordo

      After the fall of the Berlin Wall the radical left around the world decided to infiltrate mainstream parties, in Australia the soft underbellies were the Greens and Labor. Its been rumored that one even became PM for a short while.

      These free radicals destroyed the environment movement with a twisted narrative on global warming.

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  • #
    Ross

    Slightly O/t but I wonder if the MSM pick this up and report it

    https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/bbc-trust-complete-file-2-130570.pdf

    A very long and detailed complaint has been made against the BBC’s bias commentary on AGW.

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  • #

    Two of the biggest, umm, environmentalists in Australia are the ABC and the ACT.

    This is related but Off Topic.

    The ACT plans to be powered by 100% renewables by 2020. (see ABC article at this link)

    With plans for a new (the fourth) Wind Plant. (see ABC article at this link)

    So then, here’s a list of those 4 new Wind Plants to make the ACT 100% powered from renewables by 2020.

    Ararat Wind Plant – 1000 KM from the ACT.
    Coonooer Bridge Wind Plant Bendigo – 980 KM from the ACT.
    Hornsdale Wind Plant Port Augusta – 1300 KM from the ACT.
    Sapphire Wind Plant Gen Innes – 900 KM from the Act.

    Hmm! Bl00dy long extension leads.

    Keep in mind that the ACT is connected to the main grid, and 85% of all grid power is from CO2 emitting fossil fuelled sources, and ….. ALL power plants are connected only to the grid.

    This is word semantics only, and a very clever use of them at that.

    See what being an environmentalist means. You can tell a flat out mendacity and get away with it.

    Tony is currently suffering from the boiling blood syndrome.

    More to come on the Weekend Unthreaded.

    This is just flat out disgusting.

    Tony.

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    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Thanks again for your numbers Tony. I should have known you’d have something on the ABC report on Canberra, but I hadn’t reached here when I posted that link above.
      And thanks for answering my unasked question, “where would their wind farms be?”.
      I look forward to your planned Unthreaded contribution.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

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    • #
      AndyG55

      As far as I can see, if Canberra says they have 100% renewables, that means that NSW has ZERO PERCENT renewables, because all NSW’s renewables are being used by Canberra.

      How to the NSW Greens “feel” about that ??? 😉

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    • #
      Another Ian

      Tony

      “Boiling blood syndrome”

      There seems to be a lot of it around at the moment.

      Mine is from having to provide input (yet again) to the latest Qld attempt to push us rurals back past the Dark Green Ages

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    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      Your ACT seems to be powered (pun intended) by taxes from regular folks across the Nation. There are the well-paid elected folks (many temporary residents, I suppose) and the well-paid bureaucrats; and also those that serve the beast.

      The news story says “… the move comes at a $300-per-year hike to Canberra residents.” This is likely low by a factor of 2 or 3 but the real number will never be known.

      Insofar as everyone’s salary will go up to compensate, what difference does it make to them? None. The rest of you will pay . . . and pay.

      Point #2: We will know they are serious when all energy to the ACT is brought in on those 1000 KM leads. When those are not doing the job, folks should do without or use wheel-power:
      http://toonclips.com/600/465.jpg

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    Alan

    Another slightly O/T but worth it (Hope this doesn’t appear twice as it just vanished in preview – new computer)
    Look what made it to your ABC News and the wriggling by the Greens.
    Daniel McCarthy is a hero

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    • #
      Alan

      Sorry just seen Handjive already posted the link up at 12:2

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    • #
      Peter C

      Mr McCarthy (tour oppertor) refuses to take Richard DiNatlae and Greens to see bleached areas of the reef.

      Mr McCarthy, who is also a former Senate candidate for the Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party, said the reality was although there was some bleaching on some reefs, most of that was coming back.

      “I’ve been here for 30 years — we’ve lived through plenty of these types of things, where it’s a cyclone that’s denigrated the reef apparently — the media’s picture of it is ‘the world’s ending, the reef’s gone’,” he said.

      Denigrated the Reef? Oh dear. And written by an ABC Journo Elaine Ford.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      I brought this up in the last thread, and two real slimebags wanted to argue the point.

      The full conversation between BoltA and Daniel can be heard starting at about the 5-6 minute mark at this link

      http://www.2gb.com/article/steve-price-full-show-podcast-thursday-april-28

      A brief run-down for those incapable of listening to a real person talking.

      Apparently Di Natali and Waters (Green scum) were trying to get a tour operator to take them to the most bleached part of the reef, with the aim of using it for anti-coal propaganda, and the tour operator (Daniel) told them to piss=off find someone else because he was sick and tired of people trash-talking the reef.

      Daniel, who has spent some 30+ years in the area, and knows it intimately told us…….

      Bleaching was caused by :

      – failed wet season run-off

      – weak currents associated with El Nino, meaning surface water warms up due to Sun

      – also quite windless, so local water is not being circulated.

      Has happened often before. Coral inhabitants take a holiday… ie bleaching.

      How bad is the bleaching?

      – Some bleaching, but only of near surface coral that can be seen by aircraft, and are but a small part of the reef.

      – Water temperatures have already dropped back down, and bleached areas are revitalising rapidly, as they do after most incidents eg cyclones, damage etc.

      – Coming back stronger and with more variety, like after a bushfire.

      As usual with anything to do with CO2, and the anti-coal agenda….

      the MSM and activist scientist’s reports were manifestly over-exaggerated.

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      • #
        John F. Hultquist

        Thanks for the summary – much appreciated.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        It is almost impossible to get a fanatic to realize his error. Nature is tough. Life is tough. Life has survived for uncountable years on this planet and at the rate we’re going I sometimes think it will outlive humans. I doubt that anyone even knows how long that reef has been there or what it’s been through in the past. We have so few years of records compared with the lifetime of a coral reef that it’s laughable to assume disaster without waiting a few hundred years to see what happens.

        Don’t we have more urgent problems to address than who can come up with the scariest disaster scenario?

        I could make a long list of more important things needing our attention.

        20

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    pat

    28 Apr: REDD-Monitor: Chris Lang: Conservation efforts in the Congo Basin are “mostly failing” says new Rainforest Foundation UK report
    The report is titled, “Protected areas in the Congo Basin: Failing both people and biodiversity?” and can be downloaded here (LINK).
    International donors, including the USA, the EU and the UK, have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into conservation in the Congo Basin…
    Eisen writes: “Biodiversity continues to dwindle, whilst communities living in and around national parks almost unanimously see protected areas and heavy-handed policing by eco-guards as a threat to their rights and their livelihoods, and a source of conflict.”…
    Without access to the forest, “How will we eat?”
    The Tumba Lediima Reserve was established in 2006 by the DRC government, in collaboration with WWF. “From the outset,” says the narrator, “the very people who should have been involved in planning and managing the Tumba Lediima Reserve, the communities living there, were ignored.”…
    Alarm bells about REDD
    While the report focusses on the impact of existing protecting areas, it also raises the alarm about the REDD projects that are currently proliferating in the Congo Basin. In the DRC, a a REDD sub-national project area with the creation of a new province, called Mai Ndombe, is planned under the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility…ETC
    http://www.redd-monitor.org/2016/04/28/conservation-efforts-in-the-congo-basin-are-mostly-failing-says-new-rainforest-foundation-uk-report/

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  • #
    RoHa

    So there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats.

    20

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      That’s news to me.

      20

      • #
        Analitik

        The difference is that some Republicans aren’t up to their eyeballs in the CAGW, renewables boondoggle. Not perfect but a start

        20

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          I was thinking more along the line that at present they’re acting as childish and immature as the Democrats have been for so long. And they’ve been gutless wonders when all along they’ve had the power of the purse in the House of Representatives and been totally afraid of what the left branch of the country would say if they used that power. Why do we have these people in office?

          And the maturity level in this election season has got me wondering if I could bring in enough people to get all the diapers changed on time. 😉

          I suppose that’s an exaggeration. But not by very much.

          It’s the worst I’ve ever seen. 🙂

          10

          • #
            clive

            Trump for President, Hillary for Prison – 2016
            This is the”Only”way out for the Republicans.

            00

  • #
    Mindert Eiting

    Perhaps we should copy the environmental language as much as possible because it is so fruitful. Health change means that our health may improve or become worse in the course of time. Without health change there would be nothing left for the medical profession, that should embrace this new term with great enthusiasm. The medical professionals are trained at institutes for knowledge change, formerly our universities. Becoming a doctor means professional change, an example of the broader category of behavioral change. All living beings are subject to age change, the phenomenon that every year we grow one year older. Did you ever hear a piece of music without changing sounds? Therefore, music is sound change. Because our novelists never write books consisting of one letter only, they are practicing letter change, the best description of what they are doing. Of course, my proposals are an example of language change to which environmentalism made such an important contribution.

    10

    • #
      diogenese2

      Health Change already exists only we call it “Long Term Conditions”. Like “Climate Change” we can but pretend we are making a difference, propose remedies worse than the condition and make a living in the process.
      To quote Josie Wales to the Bounty Hunter “dying ain’t much of a living boy”. Medicine throughout the ages has subtly offered immortality and forever failed, but the demand is unabated. Might as well try to control the weather.

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      • #
        Another Ian

        There is that professional direction

        If you want to practice medicine with a good living and little chance of patients die-ing become a dermatologist

        30

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Medicine throughout the ages has subtly offered immortality and forever failed, but the demand is unabated.

        True. Medicine isn’t a cure-all. Better to stay healthy if you can than to be patched up by doctors. If you can… …the key phrase because medicine can make the difference between life and death when death is the likely alternative. So I would rather have it than be without it because without it I probably would have been dead since sometime in 2003 according to my doctor. We don’t give credit enough to those who’re willing to literally take our lives in their hands to save our butts when things go wrong.

        Here’s one for you. A vascular surgeon I know once said that what he does, sewing arteries and veins together to restore circulation, is like sewing together the ends of cooked spaghetti. Try mastering that in order to make a living. They’re worth every penny they used to earn and are now having taken away from them.

        I’ll take medicine and leave changing the weather alone.

        20

  • #
    tom0mason

    “Environmentalist — becoming a dirty word” maybe this mess of green blobbism is heading to the only recognizable ‘tipping point’ that will benefit all of nature — the day Environmentalist finally becoming extinct.

    P.S. Strange how ‘tipping points’ are only disastrously horrific never constructively providential.

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    AndyG55

    Environmentalism means “CARING” about the environment.

    The current crop of Green “environmentalists” don’t give a stuff about the environment.

    Despite the fact that they all rely totally on their iPads and iPhones, they want to kill off all manufacturing in developed countries by increasing electricity prices and stunting anything to do with real progress….. the final aim, to bring down the capitalism that has developed the western world and replace it with the socialist totalitarian agenda.

    This has been stated out loud and in public by several of the CAGW glitterati. eg .. the Ork, Club of Rome etc etc… yet the climate cultists still follow the anti-human , anti progress, totalitarian twerps.

    WHY? Do they really think they will benefit???? not a chance !!!

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    Roy Hogue

    Some of us would never use the word environmentalist — not from the first use I heard of it would I be one or accept it as a suitable view of what I have called conservation for most of my life. It represents an extreme viewpoint that admits no compromise, gives no quarter to opponents and is entirely without merit as a practical approach to any problem we have. And that’s the public face of environmentalism for as long as I’ve known anything about it. You can follow it all the way back to John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and famous for his stunning photography, who said,

    Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.

    Muir went into the mountains and I expect he didn’t think he was a blight on anything.

    I care about the environment. But I also care about other things that sometimes conflict with caring about the environment. What am I to do if I can’t consider compromises among and between conflicting needs?

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    pat

    29 Apr: MRCTV: Craig Bannister: Bill Nye, UN Climate Scientist Warn Moviegoers to Shun Film’s 1-Day Theater Release: ‘Not in Our National Interest’
    Bill Nye (not a real “science guy,” FYI), who entertains the idea of throwing climate skeptics in the slammer, warned the film’s producer, Climate Depot publisher Marc Morano, that “Climate Hustle’s” content endangers not just the nation, but also the world:
    “I think it will expose your point of view as very much in the minority and very much not in our national interest and the world’s interest.”
    U.N. Climate Scientist Michael Oppenheimer has, likewise, condemned the film – without even viewing it – for daring to dispute climate alarmism. “Marc is a propagandist,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientist cautions viewers…READ ON
    http://www.mrctv.org/blog/bill-nye-un-climate-scientist-warn-moviegoers-shun-film-s-1-day-theater-release-not-our-national-interest

    29 Apr: ClimateDepot: Marc Morano: Weather Channel Founder Slams Bill Nye: Calls him ‘a pretend scientist in a bow tie’
    Weather Channel Founder John Coleman, a meteorologist for over six decades, slammed Bill Nye, ‘the science guy’ for saying that the new skeptical global warming film ‘Climate Hustle’ is “very much not in our national interest and the world’s interest.”…
    “I have always been amazed that anyone would pay attention to Bill Nye, a pretend scientist in a bow tie,” Coleman said today.
    “As a man who has studied the science of meteorology for over 60 years and received the AMS (American Meteorological Society’s) ‘Meteorologist of the Year’ award, I am totally offended that Nye gets the press and media attention he does. And I am rooting for the ‘Climate Hustle’ film to become a huge hit — bigger than ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Al Gore,” Coleman explained…
    “In 20 or 30 years, when Nye is an old man, he will realize how wrong he was as the Earth continue to be a just a great place to live,” Coleman added…
    http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/04/29/weather-channel-founder-slams-bill-nye-calls-him-a-pretend-scientist-in-a-bow-tie/

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    peter

    FYI. A recent Newcastle Herald (Fairfax) survey (21/4) of readers asked if an election was held today, who would you vote for; returned Labor 38%, Liberal 33%, Greens 10%. Well it is a rusted-on Labor seat! But when asked what issues would guide your vote:

    Health 17%, Education 15%, NBN rollout 14%, local environment issues 11%, Roads 10%, then five other local issues. Climate Change was within the last choice of “other” that totaled 4%! And that 4% would include several individual issues. If that is the interest that Climate gets in a Labor-Greens electorate, what do you think the national interest in Climate Change would be? Over to you Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull?

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    May be in the next 3 years the ratio of environmentalist decrease @ 10% – 15 %

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