Bishop Hill Greens turn violent
Apr 19, 2014 Energy: gas Greens It was really just a matter of time before the violence that has always been latent in the environmentalist movement spilled out into open view. Last night it seems that one of the "usual suspects" at the anti-fracking protests could no longer maintain the pretence of "peaceful protest". The following press release was issued on behalf of Dart Energy a couple of hours ago.
PRESS RELEASE
19 April 2014
Violent protest at Daneshill Road drill site Nottinghamshire
Dart Energy's site manager was this morning assaulted by a protestor as he attempted to gain access to the site. This violent act followed a night of masked protestors circling the drilling site screaming and shouting abuse, throwing objects at Security Personnel and causing criminal damage.
The police were not in attendance at the time but have been advised of the incident. The assailant who is not from the area is well known to the company and a statement will be given to the police with a view to charges been laid. Dart Energy will not tolerate violence or abuse towards any of its employees or contractors.
While there are some local protestors the vast majority are from outwith the area most having been seen at Barton Moss and Dart Energy's previous drilling site in Cheshire.
John McGoldrick, Dart Energy's CEO said:
"Since the aggravated trespass of the site earlier this week, as a result of which a contractor required hospital treatment, we have witnessed an escalation in non peaceful protest. Site personnel have been threatened with violence (death in one case), verbal abuse, racial abuse and now physical abuse. There is no way that the protest movement can claim it is making a peaceful protest. These abuses are despicable and cowardly.
We expect the police to take the appropriate action to protect our site and personnel from such violence and abuse and will insist that the fullest charges are laid against those who do not abide by the law."
Notes to Editors:
In April 2014, Dart Energy commenced drilling a coalbed methane (CBM) exploration well called Lound 1 at a site near Sutton Cum Lound to the west of the A638 in Nottinghamshire.
The Lound 1 well aims to confirm coal continuity and properties for the primary target coal seams. The well will be similar to a CBM well previously drilled at Everton, a site which has been reinstated and returned to the landowner.
Some key facts about our work in Lound 1:
- We are drilling a vertical CBM exploration well to collect samples of coal for analysis
- The site operations will take 8-12 weeks from start to finish
- 24 hour drilling operations are expected to last 3-4 weeks in total
- The site is approximately the size of half a football pitch and the rig is the same height as a set of standard rugby posts
- The well will be cased with steel and cement to a depth of 350 metres to protect aquifers in the Sherwood Sandstone
- The well will be drilled using water based drilling fluid
- The well will be drilled using a mobile drilling rig that will be removed from site once we are finished
- On completion the well will be cemented up in line with relevant regulations and industry best practice
- The site will be fully restored to its former use as soon as practicable following completion of the drilling activities
- We are not hydraulically fracturing (fracking), nor are we removing water. There will be no methane flowing during the drilling operations.
- Dart will carry out a program of post cementation and restoration monitoring
Reader Comments (82)
Michel, you are totally correct. All that's happened is that energy prices have been raised due to wind etc. There has been no attempt to reduce energy usage. China means the environment is in a worse state than it was.
I have lived with these people they arent all bad but there exists an hierarchy that is, well, an hierarchy set in concrete.No use arguing the toss, no use keeping your head down and minding your own business, no use parking your van where you like, no use not getting your kids to beg, no use refusing a spliff, no use not believing in the great capitalist conspiracy, no use not being able to feck off.
ARCO is the Atlantic Richfield Oil Co. - a company with a very chequered history that includes finding oil at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. I guess they have a sense of humour at Gazprom - and a disdain for US brands and intellectual property therein.
nby,
Big green as a whole is a miserable greedy parasitic movement that tolerates misanthropic and Malthusian trash as a main underpinning.
Not as a fringe failure, as you (insincerely?) falsely assert.
Pestering skeptics as you do about pointing things you dislike while your side wishes to silence if not outright criminalize skeptics is annoying.
Sorry Bish - just noticed the spelling! :-)
hunter - get a grip.
Adam Gallon - "have I missed zed's contribution?"
Zed only comments well into the night, halfway through her third bottle of beaujolais.
Apr 19, 2014 at 3:37 PM | not banned yet
I find that particularly offensive ... how about, "the child abuse that is latent in the Protestant peerage / judiciary / BBC / take your Protestant pick." a-h.
Environmentalists clearly are not violent people. Violent people would not just joke about blowing school children into paste with a red button. They would actually do it! Violent people would not simply advocate locking people in their houses and burning them down. They would actually lock people in their houses and burn them down. Environmentalists are not violent because they talk a lot about violence but they are all talk and no action. That is why they are called activists.
Debbie Vincent, Transgender Animal Rights Extremist, Sentenced to Six Years for Europe-Wide Campaign of Terror
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.ca/2014/04/debbie-vincent-transgender-animal.html
I believe the distinction is between conservasionists and environmentalists. The former are driven by a genuine desire to protect and improve the environment in practical ways, e,g, saving threatened species, protecting habitats, etc. The latter are driven primarily by a misanthropy which sees all human development as inherently evil and to be resisted.
Organisations like the Wildlife Trust are primarily conservationist in nature whereas other organisations such as the RSPB and the WWF have, over the years, gradually morphed into environmentalist organisations such that an organisation ostensibly in favour of protecting birdlife, prefers to support the building of bird shredders because it is now more concerned about CAGW than risks to bird species.
Environmentalism is the view that:
*Nature does not include people;
*Nature is an end in itself;
*Nature is morally superior;
*Any changes humans make to nature is immoral;
*Since humans can only live by changing nature, Nature and humans are in fundamental conflict;
*Humans must therefore be defeated.
Environmentalists believe that the worst thing that has happened to the universe since the “Big Bang” is the advent of human life, and the best thing would be its extinction.
It doesn’t matter that some naïve people think environmentalism is about clean air and water, and proudly carry their own sack to the market; the leaders know better. They are “just waiting for the right virus to come along” to wipe us out. That is why violence is implied by environmentalism.
Violence is not incidental to environmentalism; it is ultimately necessary.
Here is a comment from a recent Guardian page which says that by the skilful use of plants, Australia can reduce emissions by 63 million tonnes a year by 2050.
Its a classic - well so is the whole thread. The alleged problem is how to reduce 35 billion tonnes a year of global emissions to something like 5 billion or less. So these guys propose to avert the death of the planet by reduing by 63 million. You see clearly the chasm between ends and means.
Shortly they will propose saving 2 tonnes a year in the UK by modifying standby appliances to switch off when not used for an hour. To save the planet.
A bit later in the thread we find this gem:
and still later at the end we come to this chilling remark:Yes, it was only a matter of time before our thoughts turned from making insignificant reductions to emissions to reducing the global population...Michel great post BTW, very well articulated.
Blimey nyb, you're having a bad day if you make Mike Jackson get off his bike.
nby: While I have some sympathy with your view that one can't say all environmentalists have a latent streak of violence in them I think maybe we should take a broader look at what violence is. Maybe it's the wrong word. I happen to believe they have, not all of course, just like not all Catholics are child abusers, but clearly a large number who weren't kept schtum, or even covered it up, when evidence of the abuse came to light (I was educated a Catholic, my wife is a devout Catholic, although growing less tolerant of the intolerance inherent in the religion), and tacitly condoned it. Just as many people who supported the Nazis (f*"k Godwin I hate the way he's made comparison to the Nazis a no-no) weren't violent, so too with the environmentalists there are people who are sincerely trying to save the environment and have done good work in doing so. But you must always keep the big picture in mind, and we come back to the definition of "violent".
Is opposing remedies that can save life and letting millions of people die violent? Heartless? Maybe but violence is heartlessness taken to personal attack, isn't it?
The Green movement, on the back of Rachel Carson's book The Silent Spring, opposed the manufacture and distribution of DDT in the 3rd world from 1973 to 2003. They are busy trying to airbrush this "holocaust" out of history, but they did it, with the insouciance of the righteous, they lobbied and cajoled western countries not to give aid unless the recipient government banned DDT, millions of their fellow human beings died needlessly, and they didn't, and still don't, give a fig.
The ban was eventually lifted by the WHO in 2006 and there is, for sure, a good deal of revisionism in the green movement as they'd rather not have the blame for the ban put on them. But have they learnt anything.
If you haven't heard of VAD, I suggest you take a look at Pointman's excellent essay on it and on the green movement's involvement in trying to stop Golden Rice from being grown and distributed. Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, has set up an organisation whose sole purpose is to defeat the environmentalist thugs and get the rice distributed to people prone to VAD (vitamin A deficiency). Anyway read Pointman's piece, he's much more eloquent than I am. 2 million people a year die because if it and countless others go blind and the environmental movement is using violence to stop its growth.
So while I don't believe that all Catholics are child abusers, I do believe that those in the Catholic establishment, who weren't themselves child abusers but were aware of it and stood silently by while it went on, were as guilty as the perpetrators. So it is with the environmentalists, the evidence is there, they, through their activism, have coldly killed, and are still killing, millions of their fellow human beings. I'll grant you they're not using machetes and machine guns, but killing them anyway to save the planet. I think that's violence. And it's not latent.
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nby
My apologies for not replying sooner, nby; other commitments intervened. If geronimo's wife is a practising Catholic he will know what I was doing the evening before Easter!
I may have been a bit sensitive but I find that there is a sort of mindset that produces 'Catholic=child abuse' and 'Scotsman=alcoholic' without any need for either idea to pass through the brain. I have not in all my life met a priest who abused anybody. I'm not for one minute suggesting they don't exist but the number as a percentage of the total and compared with the number of abusers within the family situation is minute.
Which is why I find your analogy offensive. It's a sort of variation on the Sheepshagger John joke. A very small number of priests are abusers and therefore the Church is riddled with child abuse. Sorry; I don't buy that one.
Geronimo
My views on violence in environmentalism turned out to be a bit discursive for this thread. If you're interested have a look here
It was the oil industry that invented the 'denier' word and corporate journalists who used it on their behalf.
Opposing Views on Global Warming: The Corporate Climate Coup by Prof. David F. Noble - York University, Toronto, Canada
The second -“positive”- campaign, which emerged a decade later, in the wake of Kyoto and at the height of the anti-globalization movement, sought to get out ahead of the environmental issue by affirming it only to hijack it and turn it to corporate advantage. Modelled on a century of corporate liberal cooptation of popular reform movements and regulatory regimes, it aimed to appropriate the issue in order to moderate its political implications, thereby rendering it compatible with corporate economic, geopolitical, and ideological interests. The corporate climate campaign thus emphasized the primacy of “market-based” solutions while insisting upon uniformity and predictability in mandated rules and regulations.
At the same time it hyped the global climate issue into an obsession, a totalistic preoccupation with which to divert attention from the radical challenges of the global-justice movement. In the wake of this campaign, any and all opponents of the “deniers” have been identified – and, most importantly, have wittingly or unwittingly identified themselves – with the corporate climate crusaders.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/dgr-in-my-article-entitled-global.html
esmiff: That's a 4,133-word article that doesn't provide any sources for its claims and it's not at all clear that the "deniers" you refer to is said by the author to be uttered by the 'oil industry' and 'corporate journalists', let alone that this was the first such use in the climate debate. A more unequivocal source for your important claim would be nice.
There were two attempts to kill my wife, family and me because of my public stance on certain 'environmetalism' issues. One failed because I detected it in time. The other failed because a bomb device did not explode.
When writers here can state famiarity of this type with the assergion that enviromentalism is non-violent, they might be able to make coments that have relevence.
If people are writing self-composed theory from armchaifr comfort, just shut up and meddle elsewhere.
Much of society's present problems around global warming arise because too many people are trying to force their views, uninvited, on others.
I spent 30 years dealing with whingeing dissidents as a sideline to my main employment. At times I was a minor National spokesman. Environmentalists are among the least likeable groups I ever met. Most are unhappy if they are not complaining, special pleading or trying to ram stulid, juvenile concepts down the throats of others. Women are worse than men, overall.
For goodness sake, grow up and face reality, those of you who refuse to see blatant, latent violence.
How do these evil Greens get their vile brainwashing propaganda to the masses. Who sponsors them ? The oil industry.
Climategate: George Monbiot, the Guardian and Big Oil by James Delingpole.
But who is it that sponsors the Guardian?s Environment pages and eco conferences? Why, only that famous non-fossil-fuel company Shell. (Though I notice their logo no longer appears on top of the Guardian?s eco pages: has the Guardian decided the relationship was just too embarrassing to be, er, sustainable?)
And which company has one of the largest carbon trading desks in London, cashing in on industry currently worth around $120 billion ? an industry which could not possibly exist without pan-global governmental CO2 emissions laws ? BP (which stands for British Petroleum)
And how much has Indian steel king Lakshmi Mittal made from carbon credits thanks to Europe?s Emissions Trading Scheme? £1 billion.
And which companies were the CRU scientists revealed cosying up to as early as 2000 in the Climategate emails? There?s a clue in this line here: ?Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday.?
And how much was Phil Jones, director of the discredited CRU, found to have collected in grants since 1990? £13.7 million ($22.7 million)
And why does this Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild?s bank sound so enthusiastic in this (frankly terrifying) letter about the prospects of the ?new world order? (his phrase not mine) which result from globally regulated carbon trading?
Or why not try this blog, in which a German Green party MP is revealed being given hefty donations by a solar power company?
Or how about this tiny $7o million donation to the climate change industry from the Rockefeller Foundation?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019523/climategate-george-monbiot-is-in-the-pay-of-big-oil/
International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)
The biggest lobbying group (486 delegates) at the Copenhagen global climate conference was the International Emissions Trading Association created to promote cap and trade in 1999.
Its members include :-
BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON , EDF, Gazprom , Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley..
http://www.ieta.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=19%3Adefault&id=168%3Aour-members&Itemid=82
E.ON , EDF are major coal players in the coal market. Gazprom is the largest Russian oil and gas corporation
Most "environmental protestors" are crypto (or not so crypto)-communists (plus their "useful idiots").
The "Deep Greens" take their philosophy straight from Maoist thought "Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Basically if you can't win by persuasion- and when has Communism done this? - then physical force is the means to the end.
I cannot pretend ever to have encountered the sort of horrifying experiences that Geoff Sherrington describes but I can certainly relate to some of the comments he makes and would wholeheartedly endorse
As I have recounted on here before my involvement in community politics and local journalism brought me into contact with an assortment of home-grown and, during one road development programme, imported environmental protesters and activists.The main characteristic of the home grown variety was that they were middle-class snobs with an over-developed sense of entitlement — think the Cleese-Barker-Corbett Class sketch (in fact why not go and remind yourself of it here). Everything we tried to do for the local community was wrong. They opposed plans for creating a pedestrian precinct (so did many of us) and 20 years later opposed plans to do away with it. As the town centre started to decay under pressure from retail parks they developed increasingly outlandish plans for local workshops in empty units with ideas that didn't quite include knitting yoghurt but came pretty close.
They would pester those of us with any sort of local influence (I got it wearing both hats) at any hour of the day or night that suited them. They never got to the stage of physical violence but haranguing and slander were par for the course.
Nothing but nothing that the local council or the local community did was right in their eyes and eventually the local authority gave up even meeting them since their (widely circulated) version of what had been said and agreed — always showing how much they had "won" — never accorded with reality.
I don't need to describe the imported variety. TV pictures of Balcombe and other protest camps say all that needs to be said. I do know that the fairly disgusting state they left their sites in was — at least for some of them — a part of the protest. The local community was being made to clear up their mess as a punishment for not siding with them. They were engagingly naive about some things. Building tree houses along the route of the planned road and chaining themselves to them seemed about the height of their ingenuity. Like their successors the global warmists (are they perhaps the same people?) facts and truth were anathema. I was accused, quite vigorously, of lying when I printed a report which showed that about 20% of local people were in favour of the new road and about the same number against and the rest didn't give a stuff either way.
The possibility of violence was, at least to my mind, never far below the surface.
Don Keiller
[Snip - OTT]
Apr 19, 2014 at 7:53 PM | Jack Hughes
quote "I often ponder what the global response to a real problem would be...".
If you recall; The responce to the Aids virus was a slow start, but the responce when it got underway was quite strong.
The bird flue outbreak in China some years ago, which managed to get out of the country via aircraft, is also a good example of what happens when the governments take a matter seriously.
Even an outbreak of the Hendra virus in horses. The response is quick and complete.
I think that in their own subconscious, they don't believe their own words.
Surely environmentalists would actually make a good subject group for someone like Lew and Crew to study?
Secondly, the violence mentioned in this thread is exactly the reason why the donors list for organisations like the GPWF should NEVER be made public!
Mailman
"The bird flue outbreak in China some years ago, which managed to get out of the country via aircraft, is also a good example of what happens when the governments take a matter seriously."
It most certainly wasn't anything of the sort. First of all there was no bird flu outbreak in China, or anywhere else, I lived there at the time. It was a fabrication by the press. Some people did indeed die of bird flu but on each and every occasion it was contagious i.e. they had been in contact with the chickens concerned, usually by touching faeces, but sometimes by eating chickens not cooked to western standards. There was no outbreak of bird flu, and our government spent £0.5Bn, which could have been given back to the taxpayers, or spent on better causes, keeping Tamiflu supplies for a non-existent pandemic.
Never believe what you read in the press.
Michel, you say "Shortly they will propose saving 2 tonnes a year in the UK by modifying standby appliances to switch off when not used for an hour. To save the planet."
It's already happening. The EU wants filter coffee machines to go to standby when they have made a cup of coffee.
http://www.timworstall.com/2014/04/20/remind-me-how-this-stops-germany-invading-france-again/
"A very small number of priests are abusers and therefore the Church is riddled with child abuse." I never met a priest who abused, or knew of one either Mike. I believe the problems for Catholics lay with the fact that those who didn't abuse weren't open enough and the church itself tried to hide the abuse to protect its reputation/standing, amplifying the problem.
I will go into the problem of seeing yesterdays mores in the same light as today's at a later date.
Mike Jackson, I hear you.
We have professional anti-coal protestors here in Australia who are exactly the same. They go from site to site, chaining themselves to equipment or climbing on it, blocking roads, sabotaging equipment, harassing employees and landowners etc. One guy (who fortunately is now before the courts) issued a fake press release from a bank claiming that the coalmining company was going broke, causing the share price to fall before a correction was issued. He was quite open and triumphal about what he did, which potentially could have cost thousands of investors (including superannuation funds) money and employees their jobs. To my mind, this is violence.
The same goes for the Greenpeace nutcases who broke into a research site and destroyed an experimental GM wheat crop and two years of research. Greenpeace paid their fines. They should have gone to jail - the damage cost hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money.
As you say, this is not reasonable protest, which is a right I strongly support. It is fanaticism, and there don't seem to be too many boundaries they won't cross - and you never know where the limits are for many of these deranged individuals.
Not too long ago at the port of Bluff in NZ's South Island, Greenpeace activists boarded an oil ex[ploration ship, with utter disregard for safety rules on board or for the crew and the exploration workers and chained themselves to the very tall drilling platform. As their spokeswoman was a well-known NZ actress, local authorities were relatively lenient after the protesters were apprehended and evicted from the ship. The protesters had no idea of the risks they took or of the danger they placed others in and continued to insist that 'it was their right to protect the Arctic ' (whence the ship was bound).
Similarly, protesters on a NZ beach objecting to offshore oil prospecting departed leaving all sorts of rubbish, placards etc, despoiling the lovely beach.
Idiots all!
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The Enviros don't need to use the threat of violence to intimidate. They are content, and in no danger, if governments do the dirty work of behaviour-cleansing for them by continuing to pass legislation to ''regulate'' (compel to do x or to refrain from doing y) and to back regulation with threat of financial ruin and loss of liberty if fines are not paid or methods are not changed.
Should governments fail to 'do enough' then some private acts of sabotage and assault are to be expected. But obstruction and photogenic mini-martyrdoms will come before that.
If protesters wish to use violence, then I am sure there are plenty of drillers who will be happy to oblige them. What I find pathetic is their cowardices: they are happy to offer violence but if people retaliate, they run to the Police.
Never mind the relatively trivial assault on the Dart guy. The police should have acted earlier due to roadblocking, illegal camps, threats and abuse at workers.
Was. BP bought them years ago (and inherited a lot of problems with ARCO equipment and staff in the GoM which were still in play at the time of Macondo).
Charlie, we drillers are peace-loving people. Back in the day, I even knew more than a few who considered themselves environmentalists. Not possible in these hysterical times.