Tribal Pontification About Climate Change
Richard Gale & Gary Null PhD
Progressive Radio Network, October 25, 2023
It would be a gross understatement that the Divided States of America has never been so fractured in its modern history. Select any subject that touches upon and personally impacts people’s lives, fragile sentiments and cherished beliefs, and one uncovers a variety of quarrelsome tribes, each with belligerent leaders and voices, pushing and shoving to reach the stage’s microphone. It may not be too far-fetched that if our early forebears were to visit 21st century America, they might think we were some strange and new mutated species. For example, civility in the Commons is no longer in our postmodern American vocabulary. For the majority of Earth’s citizens, climate change and global warming are acknowledged as a very real existential threat. Yet somehow that message never reached our shores except in drabs and dribbles. Certainly, lip service ad nauseam has been sounded about climate change for the past five decades; but anyone can look around to see these words are empty and will never solve the irrefutable challenges ahead.
Today there are roughly 3 distinct ideological groups in conflict with each other over the threats of climate change and the desecration of the environment. On the one hand there are those who fully embrace scientific research and analysis. Largely these are the climate experts, those conducting the actual research, undertaking expeditions to the poles and across oceans and analyzing atmospheric samples in order to make very valuable predictions. Besides the many institutions and university departments, this group is perhaps best represented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and their cousins in other nations. Undoubtedly, their findings provide much to worry about for humanity’s long-term future. Ocean temperatures are now the warmest on record. Atmospheric CO2 is the most concentrated in millions of years. We are witnessing wildfires increasing exponentially. Recently, climate scientists observed that the rise in forest fires is destroying the ozone layer, which will only increase warming trends. The US megadrought in 2022 was the worst in 1,200 years. The Antarctic ice shelves continue to collapse and coastal cities and shorelines are already sinking. Warming trends are on a winning streak as monthly records are being broken more frequently.
On the surface, we might expect the scientific faction to be the authoritative voice for accurate climate change analyses. However there is a fundamental problem. Although the scientific climate community has an excellent track record when observing, identifying and measuring phenomena and trends underway, their predictions rarely come to pass. Very often they are flatly wrong. Their leading spokespeople who become the public face of this research, such as Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Gates, King Charles and Greta Thunberg have a terrible track record as soothsayers. King Charles warns us that we have seven years to save the planet; however, that was stated in 2009. That same year Britain’s then Prime Minister Gordon Brown was more dire. Brown gave humanity 50 days to get its act together. For over two decades Al Gore has been annually proselytizing that the Arctic will be ice free; neither has this prediction come to pass. Perhaps one of the chief doomsayers is Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of the popular doom and gloom epistle The Population Bomb published in 1968. At that time, Ehrlich predicted that by 1990, 4 billion of earth’s residents would be wiped out by global famine, social upheaval and wars. Over the decades, Ehrlich oddly has continued to revise his apocalyptic forecasts. Why anybody continues to listen to him is more baffling. Of course, over a half century ago, nobody anticipated the forthcoming Green Revolution. Despite this agricultural revolution’s many shortcomings and often dire failures, including the widespread introduction of chemical agriculture, it did succeed in increasing food yields remarkably. In all fairness, it may have been a major contributor to preventing potential famines.
One of the climate change science faction’s major shortcomings is the incapability of relying upon current complex algorithmic modeling analytics to accurately make reliable predictions of climate and warming trends projected into the future. It is not as much a problem of poor modeling; instead, it is institutionalized blind faith in the false promises these modeling methods represent and a professional failure to acknowledge these methods’ limitations. This is true for medicine as well. For example, every year the World Health Organization and its affiliate virology research centers employ fanciful modeling methodologies to predict the likely annual flu strains in order to begin influenza vaccine production. However, for decades, year after year, these predictors bat below fifty percent accuracy. It is not uncommon for their predictions to be off 70 percent or more. Therefore, if these computational modeling methods are unable to predict the spread of virus, how much more complex is making accurate predictions about future weather and global warming trends and atmospheric conditions? Given approximately one hundred in sundry negative (cooling) and positive (warming) feedback loops that interfere with the climate on a global scale, there are likely numerous unknown, and perhaps even intangible, factors that such computations must exclude out of necessity.
The second climate and environmental contingent is more radical. They tend to emote fear rather than reason out the hard evidence on hand. At the grassroots activist level, many of these voices may be regarded as the archetypal useful idiots who are unable to look at the larger picture outside of the futurist dystopian imagery in their sci-fi novels. This group cherry picks the scientific headlines that best support their agendas, which is more often than not politically and socially driven rather than research-based. This is the group that believes with absolute certainty that all global warming is anthropogenic. By whatever means possible, including government-private partnerships for green programs, whatever humanity has achieved through the industrial age during the past two centuries, needs to be ultimately dismantled. These are the prophets of doom and gloom, and many private interest groups are delighted they exist and perhaps blindly act on their behalf. This pseudo-stakeholder agenda is represented by the World Economic Forum and its international bloc of corporate elites, government leaders beholden to globalization and its faux Western democratic pageantry, and large compromised non-profit environmental do-gooders funded by private corporations. Grassroots activist groups are their naive, idealistic shock troops. This is the agenda that demands the need for more solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, a reinvigorated nuclear power program, rapid deindustrialization and new species of engineered food produce. However, all of their solutions are directly tied to the preservation of perpetual economic growth. Its large investors, such as Blackrock and JP Morgan, would never have it otherwise. If solutions to global warming and environmental degradation cannot be monetized exponentially in order to replace humanity’s reliance upon fossil fuels, then it is rejected outright or tossed to the bottom of their to-do list.
This entire group, perhaps the most dangerous to humanity’s future, is plagued by a cognitive disconnect between advocating for technologies and solutions in of themselves that certainly reduce greenhouse gas emissions but equally have devastating consequences on the environment. It is a Green ideology where technology holds higher value than human life, except for those who commandeer its course. Electric vehicle batteries, as well as batteries necessary for other technologies including wind farms, have a catastrophic impact on the environment, which further contributes to ecological decay and global warming. The minerals and metals necessary for the so-called renewable energy technologies and nuclear power require astronomical large scale mining operations that may never meet humanity’s demands to transition away from fossil fuels. The irony is how much fossil fuels are necessary for mining operations and the high carbon footprint. People are living in a non-lucid dream if they believe otherwise. Researchers estimate that actual emissions necessary for manufacturing an electric vehicle can be 15 to 68 percent higher than a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle. Some batteries pack ten times as much power as an average household consumes in one day, and very often EVs are charged at home. Finally, 40 percent of the total climate impact of a battery comes from the mining of aluminum, cobalt, nickel and lithium, which are highly dirty and polluting industries.
The new Green Deal push for solar and wind energies are likewise fraught with contradictions. Solar power is unreliable, inefficient, weather dependent and similar to EVs requires rare materials, some highly toxic, such as arsenide, cadmium, cobalt gallium and lead. A Columbia University estimate predicts that by 2035 384 new mines for lithium, cobalt and nickel will be required to keep up with growing Green Deal demands. Solar energy is also water intensive; a single large solar farm can require over 600 gallons of water for every megawatt hour of power produced. Finally, the entire solar industry is heavily dependent upon government subsidies, which again makes this industry economically unsustainable.
Wind energy suffers from similar non-friendly environmental drawbacks as solar. It is unreliable, inefficient and requires large open spaces of land. Because the turbines rely on magnets, MIT engineers have warned that over-reliance on wind power, in addition to EVs, will strain the supply of scarce rare minerals such as neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium. A Harvard review estimated that one ton of rare earth minerals produces 30 pounds of dust, up to 12,000 cubic meters of noxious gases such as hydrofluoric acid and sulfur dioxide and 75 cubic meters of waste water, for a total of 2,000 tons of toxic sludge.
Likewise, industrial chemical agriculture, although extraordinarily profitable for large investors and mega-corporations, is no solution to the climate crisis. However, to support and invest in a Marshall Plan to revive small farms and regenerative organic agricultural practices, which are without question far more sustainable, is simply not profitable for the global parasitical class. Certainly other technologies such as geothermal, wave power, and a large investment to harness free energy from cold fusion are truly more renewable energy sources with a far smaller carbon footprint.
Both of these climate change groups are correct, and both are wrong. The radical side downplays the importance of jobs and the health of society at large. The current Green Party coalition ruling Germany now is a good example. Olaf Scholz’s government is arguably the most incompetent in Germany’s modern history. The coalition’s Green ideology has demolished the country’s vibrant industrial base, which once held the world’s admiration, and has shown itself to be empty handed and incapable of replacing this loss with anything viable. Today, Germany is becoming the basket case of Western Europe, and this is a direct consequence of inept radical Green ideologues.
Despite youthful activists such as Greta Thunberg and the many international young environmental voices marched through the halls of the World Economic Forum as the new generations’ exemplars of a Great Reset future, are any truly substantial changes being made that are reversing climate trends. Indeed, their message is authentic, however is it making any difference. Thunberg may be a hero in her generation; however, only for a small faction of teens and young adults who at least have their eyes partially open. But Greta pales in the shadow of media celebrities such as Kylie Jenner with her thousands of footwear and one of the largest private jets in California. And the delusional mainstream media knows it will get more attention and views by spotlighting Jenner’s obsessive-compulsive consumerism over Thunberg’s dirty overalls and cardboard signs. As long as we remain a consumerist culture, and reward hyperactive and emotionally fragile influencers, nothing will change to address climate and environmental threats at any crucial level.
A third group simply denies outright anthropogenic climate change or at best believes human impact on global warming is minimal. The US currently has the largest percent of any nation’s population that is not concerned about climate change. People like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones, Mike Adams, and others leaning towards the radical Right are among its leading voices. In their opinion, economic and social issues should take precedence, including protection and expansion of fossil fuel industries and preserving the neoliberal capitalist doctrine of infinite growth on a finite planet, which Marx warned about in the middle of the nineteenth century. This position is not without its reasons. They have no reason to trust a government that acts on its own behalf at the detriment of human liberty. There is no reason to believe anything coming from the mouths of the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, Bill Gates and politicians serving private interests over the public good. They lied about the Covid-19 pandemic. They lied about America’s entry into Afghanistan and Iraq. They’ve bailed out Wall Street and financial institutions rather than the citizens who suffered from these very same institutions’ irresponsible negligence and greed. Why should these institutions’ threats and fear mongering about global warming, a pending collapse of human civilization and the urgency for a Green New Deal be given any legitimacy? Therefore, this group rejects anthropogenic climate change outright and demands a return to the old normal: agro-industrial farming, fossil fuel extractions, economic growth over environmental responsibility, and widespread consumerism. In addition, there is of course the entire conservative-leaning Judeo-Christian theological base that embraces this view.
So what is to be done amidst the warring tribes either concerned or apathetic towards climate change? Obviously any abrupt simpleminded and gullible systemic change, as in Germany, will have catastrophic economic, social and human consequences. And no one should be so dewy eyed as to believe that Germany’s policies were not aligned with the World Economic Forum. Climate change and global warming are undoubtedly real threats despite all the failures to predict how and when future tipping points are reached. Therefore, it is incumbent to act intelligently and take into account what is factual and remove that from everything that is economically and politically ideological. At the popular level of societies, people must learn to gradually wean themselves away from buying so much stuff, and especially imports if possible. Regardless of how meaningless GDP has become as a metric to evaluate the economic and social health of a country, consumerism is nevertheless tied to GDP. The world’s three largest polluters—China, India and the US—will not curtail their economic growth nor will their corporations. Therefore, even with a steady decline in consumerism, GDP will continue to be tweaked and distorted to maintain the fantasy of productivity and growth. We find ourselves in a Hobbesian choice: we care about the environment and its preservation but are simultaneously accelerating its denigration by exploiting the planet’s resources to sustain a standard of living contrary to environmental sanity. Bookended by corporate greed and profit on the one hand, and an insatiable appetite for detrimental selfish pursuits, we impulsively consume stuff that we don’t really need. Hence rises a collective toxic brew that the majority of people participate in.
Second, it is perfectly within nations’ means to reduce their reliance upon agro-chemical agriculture and adopt large regenerative farming practices that preserve the land and reduce greenhouse emissions. Third, become vegetarian or vegan. This will reduce the unnecessary wastage of land required for livestock of every kind, which has a terrible ratio between energy into the system and energy taken out. Moreover, the medical science now seems unwaveringly confirmed that plant based diets would dramatically reduce disease.
Finally, education about climate change, environmental preservation and human health and well-being needs to be completely overhauled and revised. Sadly, ethics no longer holds any role in modern education; therefore, it is near impossible to instill in younger people any moral responsibility towards the environment. The younger generation increasingly gets it but only in a radicalized and uncritical manner; it is also fundamentally aligned with the globalist agenda that today steers much of our public education. We can no longer rely upon government and private interests to solve humanity’s problems. It now relies upon every individual at the local level to make the responsibility choices despite the odds. At least they will gain a personal satisfaction that they acted ethically out of a sense of compassion for others and the well-being of humanity that the polluters, influencers and their cheerleaders in government and media will never taste in their lives.
