The Paul Rossiter Assessment
Posted October 7, 2019
on:
THIS POST IS A SUMMARY OF A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT PUBLISHED IN SEPTEMBER 2019 BY DR. PAUL ROSSITER ON WUWT. THE SEQUENCE OF THIS PRESENTATION FOLLOWS THE SEQUENCE OF THE SOURCE DOCUMENTS. LINKS TO SOURCE DOCUMENTS APPEAR BELOW.
[ROSSITER1] [ROSSITER2] [ROSSITER3]
- ROSSSITER#1: The catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and climate change (CAGW) narrative pushed by NASA-GISS, NOAA, EPA, CSIRO and the UN ( IPCC, WMO, UNDP, WHO, FAO) contains factual and scientific weaknesses identified by a community of critical commentaries and blogs but it continues to roll forward unscathed with full support of the news media [Related Post] and gains momentum. The support of the media includes the marginalization and even vilification of skeptics. The equal but subtle support by social media emphasize climate activism content and minimize contrary views.
- In its current form, climate activism has engaged eco activists and school children [Related Post] into street protests claiming to be victims of capitalism greed that produces fossil fuels. The climate movement is fully supported by national governments possibly for ulterior motives. Critics have been successfully disenfranchised as agents of the fossil fuel industry and not credible because of their alleged ignorance of the scientific basis of CAGW.
- The oddness of the legitimacy gained by the movement is compared with Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray [LINK] as a kind of social dysfunction with climate activists as the good guys saving the planet and deniers and the capitalist fossil fuel industry cast as social misfits who stand in their way along with a direct assault on capitalism itself that implies a Marxist or socialist political agenda. No meaningful discourse is possible between the two sides in the context of this extreme form of vilification.
- In his two books, Rupert Darwall [LINK] [LINK] says that the climate movement has infiltrated and captured most Western governments ensuring a pro climate position at the government level; and the UN and the EU use the climate movement as a tool in their quest for global influence. Therefore, because the climate movement is really a social and political movement, the climate debate can no longer be understood purely in terms of climate science details.
- ROSSITER#2: Noble Cause Corruption is the use of unethical or illegal means or procedures to achieve an end result that is perceived by the actor to be a good thing in the public interest. When translated into climate science it implies that unscientific methods, confirmation bias, and data tampering are acceptable and even necessary as long as it is for a noble cause [Related Post] [Related Post] . Famous precursors of such science that may serve as a model for climate science are Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring of the 1960s and the ozone depletion scare of the 1970s [Related Post] .
- In the wake of the oil embargo and other global emergencies of the 1970s, primitive computer models, inadequate data, and bad assumptions led to the Club of Rome principle that the world was running out of the resources that produced the economic growth thus far and that therefore there were Limits to Growth. Parallel developments were the idea derived 1960s environmentalism that the planet was small and vulnerable and at our mercy and the formation of the UNEP by Maurice Strong that defined environmentalism on a global scale and positioned the UN as a global environmental protection agency.
- After the UN’s assumed high profile success with the ozone depletion scare and its Montreal Protocol [Related Post] in its new role as the world’s EPA, it was poised to take over as the administrator of the Climate scare [Related Post] . With the WMO a UN agency it played a key role in installing the IPCC to provide “objective scientific assessment of climate change and its impacts”. In its first assessment report the IPCC stated its position in line with climate alarmism that it was “certain that emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface”.
- The 1988 Congressional Testimony by James Hansen arranged by Al Gore [Related Post] was the key climate alarmism event that set the context and the language for the further progress of climate fearology. The subsequent Club of Rome report in 1991 included climate change in its global agenda with the phrase “tackling global warming and to solve the energy problem”. In the context of global environmentalism by the UN against human caused global warming, the activism context set humans as the enemy of the planet and of humanity itself with hope of redemption lying in climate action to control climate change.
- The importance of climate activism was underscored by Stephen Schneider’s now famous quote that climate scientists can’t just stick to scientific details but must contribute to activism [Related Post] with Timothy Wirth providing further support for unsubstantiated climate activism fearology with the famous statement that even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” Thus, with no bounds or constraints, climate activism grew to encompass both economic and political activism sustained by the noble cause fallacy that as long as the goal was to save humanity and the planet itself, methodology was mere detail.
- ROSSITER#3: In his “follow the money” post some pertinent financial data are provided with the implied hypothesis that money makes the climate scare go round. The collusion of government, business, and environmental activism in this big money enterprise is described as a climate industrial complex (Bjorn Lomborg).
- Some financial data for the 2017/2018 period: [the capitalization of the renewable energy industry is over $1 trillion], [funding of the climate alarmism, publicity, and lobbying NGOs exceeds $2 billion], [government research funding committed to the climate science exceeds $1billion]. [Globally, The renewable energy market was valued at $928.0 Billion in 2017, and is expected to reach $1,512.3 Billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 6.1% from 2018 to 2025 with widely anticipated significant growth forecasts]. [An energy setting that guarantees affordable, reliable, sustainable energy for everyone, the use of renewable energy must increase from the present 25 % to 38 % by 2025. This would entail an annual investment of 441 billion dollars in renewable electricity generation (source: acciona.com ]. Roger Pielke Jr is cited: To get to zero carbon by 2050, it would require the construction of one nuclear plant per day every day.
- A breakdown of the renewable energy business is provided as follows: Wind turbine manufacture and installation with strong demand and bullish forecast will go up by 689 GW to 1,160 GW by 2027.
- Solar manufacturers: The global solar energy industry is expected to reach $422 billion by 2022 from $86 billion in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 24.2% from 2016 to 2022. Technologies include solar heating, photovoltaic cells, and others. Source: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/solar-energy-market.
- Energy distributors with major renewable content. [Avangrid, Assets $32billion, 32GW, wind], [Innergex, Assets C$6.5billion, revenue C$57.6billion, hydro, wind, & solar], [Boralex Market capitalisation $2billion, wind, hydro, thermal, solar], [Berkshire Hathaway Energy, 32GW, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal].
- Other technologies: Ocean Power Technologies, Inc (US) (wave), On Power (geothermal), Tocardo BV (tidal river and ocean water turbine manufacturer), SynTech Bioenergy LLC (power from biomass feedstocks). Each major manufacturer typically employs around 5000 staff and 10’s of thousands are employed in the support industries.
- Companies providing goods and materials that go into the manufacture of the products, as well as the legal and financial services that provide support (see for example http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.021
- Bjorn: Climate Industrial Complex: Even companies that are not heavily engaged in green business stand to gain. European energy companies made tens of billions of euros in the first years of the European Trading System when they received free carbon emission allocations.
- Bjorn: Climate Industrial Complex: U.S. companies and interest groups involved with climate change hired 2,430 lobbyists just last year, up 300% from five years ago. Fifty of the biggest U.S. electric utilities — including Duke — spent $51 million on lobbyists in just six months.
- Research agencies feeding CAGW alarmism: NOAA (USA), $5.5 billion, Australian Institute of Marine Science (Australia), $67.9million, CSIRO Climate Science Centre. 100 staff, A$20 million, The ARC Centre for Climate Extremes receives A$4.4m from the ARC and A$6.7m in kind from the partners, The ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies has revenue of A$11.2m.
- NGOs: Climate Action Network International: NGOs with an interest in climate change are coordinated internationally through the Climate Action Network International (CAN), a body registered in Germany and boasting 1300 NGO member organisations in over 120 countries. http://climatenetwork.org/
- The number of NGOs from the main countries participating in CAN are: USA 193, Canada 103, Australia 69, India 46, UK 30, Denmark 25, France 23, New Zealand 16, China 9, Russia 9, Norway 9, Sweden 5, Germany 7, Finland 7, Hungary 4, Austria 3, Italy 3
- Union of Concerned Scientists (USA), $39.8m, 350.org (international), $19m, Greenpeace Australia, $19.7m, Greenpeace USA, $39.7m total $28.2m contributions, 25000 members, The Australia Institute, A$4m total, A$3m donations, Wilderness Society (Australia), A$13m total, A$10m donations, A$2m bequests, World Wildlife Fund USA $335.1m total operating revenue, $69.6m contributions, $46.8m govt. grants contracts, salaries $1.8m in USA, $53.3m international, World Wildlife Fund Australia, A$28m, A$20m donors A$6m corporate, govt., legacies, World Wildlife Fund Canada C$24.2m 70% donations 16% foundations, Friends of the Earth Australia A$1.4m, A850k donations, Friends of the Earth USA US10.9m total, $6.7m grants, bequests, contributions, 45 paid staff, Environmental Defence Fund Inc., $223m from contributions, memberships, foundations,
- Opportunists and Globalists: In September 2018, 29 philanthropists pledged $4 billion over the next five years to combat climate change. There are also foundations that have provided funds for individual projects in the renewable/climate/sustainability areas. These include Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc., ($1.1billion assets, $34m grants, $7.5m on sustainable development). William and Flora Hewlett foundation (assets 9.8billion, $465m grants, $30m on climate projects), (Elon) Musk Foundation (no financial data available) and the David and Lucille Packard foundation.($7.6billion assets, $288m grants, $2m in conservation and science).
- Finally on the money trail, there are individuals who have made large sums of money from renewable/Green schemes, like Al Gore whose personal worth is now estimated to be around $350m:
- CONCLUSION: There is money in the climate business. Lots of money. It’s the Climate Industrial Complex.
October 7, 2019 at 11:57 pm
Thank god you are out there countering the utter BS that abounds everywhere. Thank you Thank you Thank you