Wednesday
Jan282015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Tol on radical greens
Jan 28, 2015 Greens Richard Tol's article on radical greens is a must-read:
There are now elements in the environmental movement who are so worried about the state of the planet that they have lost all sense of proportion. This is alarming for those at the receiving end of their mindless wrath. It does not help to protect the environment either. Just like Boko Haram does not endear anyone to Muslims, green radicals taint all environmentalists. But whereas Islamic leaders immediately distance themselves from any new outrage, environmental leaders pretend nothing happened.
This really deserves a wider audience.
Reader Comments (67)
"There are now elements in the environmental movement who are so worried about the state of the planet that they have lost all sense of proportion."
In the past green activists have damaged power stations, contributed to ad hominem attacks, greens and the BBC have blocked discussion, lied about the science, contributed to fuel poverty, banned DDT causing millions of deaths from malaria, massive pressure on anyone contributing to sceptical arguments, etc., etc.
So what is new, they always have been extreme - the end justifies the means leads to extremism
It's not about the envrionment at all.
It's about power.
The long term goal is the collectivization of global energy - and with that, absolute power for whoever comes out on top.
Expect the most ruthless actor to come out on top.
"whereas Islamic leaders immediately distance themselves from any new outrage"
Really?
Yay! He gives me a mention!
(sort of)
Maybe some of the oil companies fund these toxic radicals, in the knowledge that the increased oxygen of publicity, will lead to spontaneous human combustion.
In the course of human evolution, how long was it after man discovered fire, that his wife warned him not to play with it?
I referenced it on George Monbiot's opinion piece at the Guardian: I wrote:
I think you are right in why she sees terrorism as sometimes OK. It isn't support for Al Qaeda but rather support for other violent groups whose aims she agrees with.
Richard Tol puts it well in his latest blog:
It's lasted 4 minutes so far.
I truly fear that somebody is going to be seriously harmed when eventually, the violent rhetoric, reaches some easily lead & misguided soul who actually will carry out a physical act of violence against another person perceived as being the "enemy"! Sadly, I also fear the Greenalists will simply pay lip-service sympathy for the victim, & then proceed to claim that people feel so passionate about saving Gaia for their children, or some such pathetic excuse!
@Bish
Thanks!
@Alan
It is only a matter of time.
Alan/Richard, it's already happened... remember the 'Unabomber'?
The real test for Green radicalism will come when the tide turns against them at ministerial level. The current political class are all either dyed in the wool or tainted by association Green, so little will change in the short term. When Cameron goes - replaced by someone actually willing to cut the green crap - when the Lib Dims are nowhere near office and Labour are stuck in weak opposition, THAT'S when any changes will come, if they are going to.
The Greens would then be without a voice just at the very moment someone new strolls into No.10 and calls it all off. It will be interesting to see how they then react to being side-tracked and ignored while their green dream is trashed.
If something nasty happens, the greens will say "they asked for it"....
A number of books have been written about how the environmental movement has been high-jacked for political purposes, e.g. The Real Global Warming Disaster by Christopher Booker and The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science by Dr Tim Ball. I expand on this green influence and the pernicious UN IPCC man-made global warming theory in the paper which I recently sent to my local planning councillors, to try to dissuade them from consenting wind farm planning applications, see http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/Junk-Science.pdf.
I’ve included a quote from Professor Tol in the Conclusions of my paper. The Postscript of my paper shows how impossible it is for an individual to influence politicians directly. I’ve reproduced the responses I received from them to an earlier version of my paper, annotated with my own comments. You may find it disheartening, but quite amusing.
These people are on the ultra conservative, deep green extreme right. Like the Nazis were before they sold out to big business in return for power. This is a much more serious issue than most people realise. It has adherents in very high places like the Club of Rome, James Hansen, George Monbiot, the Goldsmith family etc.
The plot of the recent UK Channel Four series Utopia involved cutting the global population by 90% using an engineered virus.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia/episode-guide/series-1/
My website. Lessons from anti progress ideology (aka Nazism) http://alturl.com/xxmqe
"We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought."
Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich, München, 1934
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism
@esmiff: As I pointed out to someone a little while ago now, I think the greatest achievement the political left/far left have made over the last 70 years, is convincing everybody that the National Socialist Party was a party of the far right! They believed in National Socialism, the power of the state to control peoples lives, to encourage the people & especially the young to look to the state for solutions to their problems, perceived or real. It's very clever really!
Alan the Brit
The reason the Nazi party are referred to as being on the extreme right is that they were ultra conservative (being the opposite of progressive). That's why I used those kind of words to describe them above. They were socialist in that they indeed originally believed in state controlled socialism. That shifted somewhat .
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany , when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders. Leading figures of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were murdered
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
"...whereas Islamic leaders immediately distance themselves from any new outrage."
Can't say I noticed that happening...
The source of modern Islamism - British intelligence.
Five years after the 7/7 bombings in London, the UK's decades-long collusion with radical Islam is still going strong
Also targeted was Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, who in 1952 overthrew the pro-British King Farouk, providing an Arab nationalist alternative to the pro-western monarchies in the Middle East. Britain had first covertly funded the Muslim Brotherhood, a new radical force with a terrorist wing, in 1942, and further links were made with the organisation after Nasser's revolution. By 1956, when Britain invaded Egypt, contacts were developed as part of plans to overthrow Nasser. Indeed, the invasion was undertaken in the knowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood might form the new regime. After Nasser died in 1970, and the pro-western president Anwar Sadat secretly sponsored militant Islamist cells to counter nationalists and communists, British officials were still describing the Brotherhood as "a potentially handy weapon" for the regime.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/05/bin-laden-radical-islam-collusion
Britain and the Muslim Brotherhood: Collaboration during the 1940s and 1950s
An edited extract from Mark Curtis’ latest book, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (Serpent’s Tail, 2010)
By 1942 Britain had definitely begun to finance the Brotherhood. On 18 May British embassy officials held a meeting with Egyptian Prime Minister Amin Osman Pacha, in which relations with the Muslim Brotherhood were discussed and a number of points were agreed. One was that ‘subsidies from the Wafd [Party] to the Ikhwani el Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood] would be discreetly paid by the [Egyptian] government and they would require some financial assistance in this matter from the [British] Embassy.’ In addition, the Egyptian government ‘would introduce reliable agents into the Ikhwani to keep a close watch on activities and would let us [the British embassy] have the information obtained from such agents. We, for our part, would keep the government in touch with information obtained from British sources.’
http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/britain-and-the-muslim-brotherhood-collaboration-during-the-1940s-and-1950s/
The Saud dynasty was cultivated and put in power by Kim Philby's father, St John Philby .
Like his son, he later became a traitor and engineered an oil deal with the Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John_Philby#Arab_Revolt
Radical green is a fashion no-no. It doesn't go with anything sensible.
Hoi Polloi:
"If something nasty happens, the greens will say "they asked for it"...."
Which is pretty much what extremist muslims said about Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists...
"I truly fear that somebody is going to be seriously harmed when eventually..."
Short memory? I seem to recall scientists undertaking legal experimentation on animals being harassed and attacked by animal "rights" activists.
wrong : not new they've always had lots of fundamentalists, many of who are undercover police trying to outdo them (see novel Rioutous Assembly)..then there's other types of people active, passive .. And a fair number of mature sensible people. The change may be that the the most sensible have left and new members both old and young are probably the more naive type. Basically they had engineer types before, and now they don't.
Recent largescale damage includes : suppression of GM golden rice, biofuels causing deforestation and high food prices, organic food (conventional agriculture uses much less resources and land), plus all the waste and counterproductive climate stuff, which diverts resources from proper environmental concerns.
Jeff Norman, it's still happening - two articles in today's Daily Mail:
An 'environmental activist' used a homemade stinger to disable three police cars in Bristol:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2929788/Pictured-Homemade-stinger-took-THREE-police-cars-answered-emergency-calls-New-Year-s-Eve.html
Animal rights activists beat huntsman unconscious with iron bars:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2929735/Shocking-moment-master-hunt-beaten-unconscious-balaclava-wearing-protesters-armed-iron-bars.html
"This really deserves a wider audience"
I'm sure it will be on the front page of the Guardian tomorrow.
Jeff Norman / Salopian
The enviro-activists are the sons/daughters/nieces/nephews of the 80s militant animal rights campaigners and their objectives are the same.
Forget animal rights; forget climate; forget the environment. These are only the current effective (as they see it) methods of influencing the general public to support campaigns whose long-term objective is a re-organisation of society. In itself this is a worthy enough aim; their problem is that well in excess of 90% of the population (of the world, I would hazard a guess) do not fancy having their society reorganised in the way envisaged by these latter-day Pol Pots — because behind the mask that is what they really are.
Do it their way or die! Though they at least (most of them) have the wit not to phrase it in quite such crude terms!
(I ought to have added that just as they animal rights guerillas over-reached themselves so it looks as if the current crop may be doing the same. Look at some of the postings appearing here and on other blogs and on specialist media and even starting to creep into the MSM. I sense the beginning of a "who the **** do these guys think they are?" movement. Fingers crossed!)
Climate Change the Enviromists Jihad
Football Hooligans,ISIS.Kirk Douglas in the Vikings Radicals of any political persuasion only feel alive when they got a fight on their hands.
No one minds them fighting each other until they start fighting us.
@esmiff
The Nazis were "ultra conservative"? Please provide your definition of conservative.
I believe Mike Jackson is on the right track, and it has also been said - green politics is about 'power' - or lack of it thereof.
I place the greens in a bracket with some very worrying organizations and ideologies. Greenery, it is essentially a nihilistic philosophy which will result in if it is extended to its Nth degree - in a return to the fields very much in the form of what Mao wrought through the barbaric 'Cultural Revolution' and that, Pol Pot facilitated in the Killing fields.
The Green agenda, What a scam it is but cleverly packaged and advertized, ala WWF.
Greenery - camouflages itself neath a veil of poorly argued grossly distended and very irrational justification;
"saving the planet" [from you!]
and cuddly polar bears [all teeth and claws and really not so very nice!],
save the forests [ to chip the wood for pellet burners in Britain!] -
Somehow, the above - rings appealingly to many young minds, souls who cannot, are insufficiently mature, not really able, reluctant to disentangle the gilded diamond encrusted lies from the truth of it - pertaining to green dogma.
Turning young minds, propagandizing and brainwashing - these days, agitprop of the state [HMG] does a decent enough job of that.
When they're finally rejected out of Skool. Then, the kids are ready and all too willing to join the ranks of the green blob NGOs and political advocacy, Westminster researchers, spads, local government, graun readership and if that's too lame then, outright thuggery in animal rights.
Other shadowy organizations also compete for children's time and 'signatures'. The internet is a power for evil far more than it is for altruism and philanthropy. Ideologies, as in eco warriorship, greenery, there are now so many kids wanting to join some more immediate fundamentalism in the Levant - Islam and Green ideology - never the twain shall meet or are they brother and sister organizations?
Either way, the end result will be just as harsh - and to describe it as scorched earth barbarity doesn't do it justice. All of that and the trouble is, they are not getting their way............................it's gonna end in bombs and fighting - one way or another.
"...Recent largescale damage includes : suppression of GM golden rice.."
Wow..
So.. when I wrote to the Golden Rice Foundation last year..and asked them a series of questions and they told me that as of 2014..there was no PUBLISHED PAPER..showing ALL the MAJOR claimed advantages.
That was because of "suppression" by green groups.??
Amazing..why not tell the Golden Rice Foundation to use that excuse.? :)
Brute
For some Nazis, it meant an end of industrial civilisation and going entirely back to the land.
Lebensraum
In the beginning of the reign of the Third Reich, the concept of "Blut und Boden" was euphemized with a'back to the land' , back-to-basics approach of bringing back the historical lifestyle of a Prussian people; a history tied in farming and rural values. The concept however was far greater than the 'back to farming ' and country life mentality which was couched in terms of patriotism and nationalism:
http://www.shoaheducation.com/blut.htm
This is James Hansen endorsed Keith Farnish of the Dark Mountain
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage.
Drapetomania, search for 'golden rice' on Wikipedia. You'll find dozens of papers linked there which should alleviate your lack of informedness - below are some examples. This effort took me less than five minutes.
Many references to the disgraceful vandalism referred to above are also there. Yet more blood of countless innocents on green hands.
Romer, S.; Fraser, P.D., Kiano, J.W., Shipton, C.A., Misawa, N, Schuch, W. and Bramley, P.M. (2000). "Elevation of provitamin A content of transgenic tomato plants.". Nature Biotechnology 18 (6): 666–669. doi:10.1038/76523. PMID 10835607.
Tang, G, Qin, J, Dolnikowski, GG, Russell, RM, Grusak, MA (2009). "Golden Rice is an effective source of vitamin A". Am J Clin Nutr 89 (6): 1776–83. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2008.27119.
Zimmerman, R.; Qaim, M. (2004). "Potential health benefits of Golden Rice: a Philippine case study". Food Policy 29 (2): 147–168. doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2004.03.001.
Golden Rice is an effective source of vitamin A, by Guangwen Tang, Jian Qin, Gregory G Dolnikowski, Robert M Russell, and Michael A Grusak in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2009;89:1776–83.
http://www.goldenrice.org/PDFs/GR_bioavailability_AJCN2012.pdf
Norton, Amy (15 August 2012) Genetically modified rice a good vitamin A source Reuters, Retrieved 20 August 2012
@E. Smiff
"For some Nazis, it meant an end of industrial civilisation and going entirely back to the land."
In case you are also the commenter esmiff, if that is what makes Nazis "ultra conservative" in your mind, then what are the greens to you? An even more extreme right wing ideology than the Nazis?
Brute
Only the most extreme greens would be that extreme. Then again, who would admit that in public ?
@E. Smiff
Indeed. The most extreme greens do resemble the Nazis in many ways. Mainstream greens, nonetheless, do still seem to fall under a loose conceptualization of the term conservative.
I gather that the other esmiff is a troll hiding under a likeness of your signature.
Greens appear to be quite deficient in the reasoning areas of intellectual activity; most Greens I have attempted to debate don't get too far into debate before they start using ridiculous slogans that are empty of any meaning but seem designed to alienate any and all respondents.
I was told many years ago that that debating with idiots makes one appear idiotic too, so is best avoided.
Brute
Yes, but I am my own troll. I thought I deserved one. It means I have arrived.
I didn't notice I had changed my signature
Unfortunately the Greens are in power.
Witness this idiocy from my local MP in response to Josh's cartoon on fracking that I sent him
From the Office of Julian Huppert
Member of Parliament for Cambridge
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA
We know that we have now reached the stage of technology where we can, almost inadvertently, change our planet on a huge scale. As we pump out more and more carbon into the atmosphere, we are damaging our environment in ways that will take centuries to reverse.
It is quite clear that we simply cannot afford to take all the fossil fuels left in the ground and burn them - it simply cannot work. That’s my main reason for opposing fracking - we need to leave carbon in the ground, not burn it. That's why I've been doing all I can to oppose sections of the Infrastructure Bill that would open the door to fracking activity across the UK.
Objections to fracking are made on a number of grounds, but as I see it the most persuasive argument against it is environmental - there is very substantial evidence that pursuing fracking will compromise our ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid climate change. Only recently the journal Nature showed that a boom in shale gas extraction would likely squeeze out the development of the renewable energy sector. I am clear that we should be focussing our efforts on developing green energy sources, not spending billions of pounds and expending vast amounts of energy in the extraction of a new fossil fuel.
This is why I have been involved with a number of amendments to the Infrastructure Bill that seek to put the brakes on fracking. Many of them were debated in the Commons yesterday and I thought you might be interested to know how we got on.
First, the better news. In response to a Lib Dem amendment I co-sponsored, the government has agreed to an outright ban on fracking in some of our most celebrated countryside, including National Parks, areas of Special Scientific Interest and areas of Outstanding National Beauty. I'm also delighted that the government agreed to my amendment requiring that the independent Committee on Climate Change produce reports on the carbon emissions from fracking. In the debate, we also forced them to announce that, if this report says that fracking increases net carbon emissions, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change either has to halt underground drilling rights or write to Parliament explaining why they won't. The Tories didn't look too happy at this, but it's great that the government will be accountable to Parliament should they continue to frack in the face of evidence that it's contributing to climate change.
Now for the less positive stuff. Most disappointingly, the amendment I moved calling for a moratorium on fracking was defeated by 308 votes to 52, with Labour MPs abstaining from the vote. I was really disappointed to see Labour Whips standing in place blocking their MPs from voting freely. Labour had a token amendment that was agreed by the government, but it won't actually achieve much - for example it requires fracking operators to consult with water companies, but doesn't actually require them to do anything with that. I was also very annoyed that because Labour insisted on taking time up voting on small technical details, they prevented us having a chance to vote on the major issues, including the controversial changes to trespass laws. I had co-sponsored an amendment to reverse that proposal, together with Lib Dem Norman Baker and Green Caroline Lucas, and it was supported by over 360,000 members of the public and 99% of people who responded to the consultation. I'm really upset we were deprived of a chance to vote on it at all.
Given the enthusiasm among our Conservative coalition partners for fracking, backed by Labour, I think on balance we can be pleased for the package of concessions secured yesterday, even though it doesn't go far enough. I don't want to see fracking happening at all, anywhere in the country, but if it is to take place, this should be with explicit consideration of its impact on climate change and a view to protecting our finest countryside.
I do hope you find this useful.
@ Don Keller.
Kudos for engaging with that ginger bearded Tw@ Huppert. The HoC groans if he's ever cited by the Speaker at PMQ's. Not hard to see why.
Console yourself: You're on the money, he's embarrassingly wrong. History will be on your side.
Bird brain [Huppert] said:
Haven't these fu**wits and numpties [MPs etc] ever done any pertinent reading around the considerable subject of [science?] say.....the CARBON CYCLE?
Full of sound and fury but these dimwits simply haven't got a ferkin' clue, have they? Coal, all it is the remnants of fossilized trees and plants, oil is [mainly] fossilized fauna - zooplankton and phytoplankton sunk to the bottom of the sea and through the eons and sedimentation layering, heat and pressure......orogenesis...Argghhhh. CARBON, is constantly being re - bloody cycled! Mankind is a part of the carbon cycle too - does Huppert in his infinite wisdom plan to halt the carbon cycle?!
Plus - regarding the green mania and all things related to the fanciful supposition of man made CO² [≠ warming] - does he know anything of value? Or, indeed anything which could be considered relevant to the debate? On studying the above 'verbose' and stultified letter, which is stuffed full of irrelevant and footling detail, leads one to surmise - not.
Wonderful stones Don Keiller!
Sorry that your MP is in the pocket of Bermuda representatives of Russian oil... Better luck on your next MP election.
Don K.
What an embarrassment to reason, knowledge and just plain common sense your MP is.
Just about every sentence in that reply was factually wrong.
The scary bit is, this cloth-head probably believes every word of it.
@Johanna - He should know better since he is a DNA scientist, and pushes for evidence policy, but as ever when it comes to something outside their field, many just latch onto the first authority that feels right instead of having a proper look at the maths themselves. I bet he has supported lots of green gimmick projects which are counterproductive TO HIS VOTERS.
"Marie Antoinette" Huppert says "let eat renewables".
---- Huppert you muppert you can't have renewables without gas !*
Known as pompous and passionate before he checks his facts.
- 2015 He's now NOT in favour of "food crop based bio-fuels".Turns out hyperbolic theory is different to real world practice.
- 2015 - His theory is that we can go to 100% renewables. How does he think that is going to turn out in practice ?
- Huppert's views come from a fantasy world as his article/letter on Fracking shows "Whilst it’s better than coal, it’s far worse than renewables, which is where we need to be."
- Clueless - You can't have renewables without gas !
You can't have an electricity supply which only works when the wind blows or sun shines brightly. You are not going to get enough power from piddly straw bale power stations, you need the large gas/coal plants running on standly to kick in on top of proper basedload like nuclear.
Then he says :
" Only recently the journal Nature showed that a boom in shale gas extraction would likely squeeze out the development of the renewable energy sector"
- OK Huppert so in 10 years time where will we be ?.. All these intermittent renewables built ..you are going to need gas to run alongside them ... and where's that gonna come from ? Expensive foreign gas cos we don't have our own ?
* With renewables all the huge costs in money and CO2 are TODAY in the construction phase. Whereas with gas it has a low low construction costs/CO2 and then CO2 produced during it's life probably totalling less that the renewables system. So you might as well just go all gas anyway.
In 2025 Huppert where are we going to get the gas from that works alongside your beloved renewables ??
Actually my error - It's not just about electricity is it ?
UK homes will still be using gas heating/cooking for the foreseeable future. Where is the gas in your boiler going to come from in 5 years time ?
So when you look at your gas bill in 2020, 2025, 2035 2040 remember Hubbert & Co opposed cheap UK gas.
- In a fantasy universe renewables will be so good that hardly any gas will be used in industry & electricity generation so all domestic gas needs will be supplied from the North Sea.
- But in reality without fracking, we will still be importing gas. So expensive imported gas will be running your boiler.
(More expensive to the country as a whole, its not that the gov will sell gas cheaper than world market prices, but rather that it will be earning fracking taxes offsetting what it needs to demand in income taxes)
SayNoToFearmongers "Drapetomania, search for 'golden rice' on Wikipedia. You'll find dozens of papers linked there which should alleviate your lack of informedness "
Joke.?
So..after doing my own searches for the papers..instead of contacting the organisation who does the scientific research and makes the claims..I should have... just... gone... to... wikipedia..
Leaving your amusing "response" aside..you did not actually manage to even read what I wrote. :)
I said the Golden Rice Foundation told me in 2014 that they did not have any papers that "proved" their major claims.
The only major claim of interest are the Vitamin A questions..everything else is just waving hands..
I had asked them..for papers that showed the vitamin A level whilst the plant was alive.
The level of vitamin A after storage for periods of time..
And the level of vitamin A after storage and boiling for different times..
You know..the specific and only interesting questions..!!!
Perhaps you could now tell them they should use wikipedia entries in answer to specific questions next time :)
This morning I 'ave mostly been having "a very rare and exciting event"
Who exactly are these Islamic "leaders" who distance themselves from muslim terrorism? Certainly not anyone that muslims recognize as leaders. The local westernized ladder climbers might, but no one in their right minds considers them muslim leaders, they are just muslims in front of a microphone.
Drapetomania
You're a clever lad. Can you give me a working link to this "Global Rice Foundation" because for the life of me I can't find any such organisation?
You surely wouldn't be trying to take us for idiots on here, would you?