Alarmist Language Works!
It is certainly true that Planet Earth is all we have to live on, and that we humans were and are mandated to look after it. The first mention of that command is in the Bible: Genesis Chapter 2. God’s idea was to put it into the care of gardeners. And yes, we have certainly messed up that instruction and something needs to be done. The point has been made, and world leaders are listening and acting, but not proceeding fast or deeply enough to satisfy the world’s Eco warriors. These activists want it done yesterday and today and tomorrow. Next week, next month, next year, will be seen as a politically motivated delay. Some, probably most of these climate warriors are fanatics, the video below proves that. Making a point is more important than the large amount of detergents it will take to clear up the mess sprayed on and around the Treasury building in London. These protests overall have meant 83.000 police officers pulled way from their normal duties since April of this year. And more protests are planned. These people do not give not a damn about anyone who stands in their way. In fact I think they enjoy being arrested, it ups their profiles and makes the law look like an enemy of those who care about the global environment. They are also pleased with themselves and even worse sanctimonious: a word meaning making a show of being morally superior to other people.
Others have trodden this path in the past. I recall the demonstrations over the Iraq war, and before that the campaigns for nuclear disarmament. This latter cause was also at face value related to saving the planet from immediate threats of annihilation. All those that preceded this lot eventually lost momentum and fizzled out without lasting effect, and so hopefully will this Extinction Rebellion protest. The world will then revert to some form of order and compromises will take the sting out of all but the most maniacal of protesters. But not before these false prophets have finished putting their campaign before anything or anyone failing to appreciate the doom laden scenario waiting to engulf the planet. The earth has according to these people recovered pretty well from five previous mass extinctions.
Pressure constantly applied will eventually make itself felt on whatever system cannot bear it; an individual person, a body politic, such as a democracy, an idea or a religion. Unrelieved pressure will break even the will to survive. The job of pressure groups is first and foremost to make themselves felt and noticed and then apply sustained pressure. The objective, in human society is to break the will and weaken the sense of purpose of those standing in the way. Our society has been under this form of attack for decades and on a number of diverse fronts; a kind of blitzkrieg! Over the last decade the pressure being applied has been to our past. Our history has undergone a revision, and what was once seen as a cause for pride has been turned into a record of shame. Guilt is a heavy load to bear, and pressure groups know how to ladle it on. If you are an adult and not engaged to some degree in the struggle then you are a part of the problem.. These groups are still insignificant numerically, but if you have your lips glued to the great majority of loudspeakers and media outlets and ride on a tide of self proclaimed sanctity and victim-hood, then you stand a good chance of swaying the undecided and uncommitted masses. Just listen to the gurus. Set them up as totems before whom the crowds must cheer and applaud; a good example being the self proclaimed victim of uncaring past generations: Greta Thunberg has been given a platform to spout what I believe are her received views on climate change. She is clearly highly motivated and well read. Does that make her anything other than a different sound and look: she is only sixteen and seems younger. Or is she another Joan of Arc? A nineteen year old who heard voices. Here in Britain we have our own self righteous warriors thinking themselves entitled to take over parts of our capital city and to deface a government building. Here is a statement from the pressure group Extinction Rebellion followed by a video of their direct action, which they managed to cock up.
The Truth
“We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. Life on Earth is in crisis: scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown, and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making.”
Note the word Truth in the message above. A fine word with a restricted meaning. When reduced to a slogan it becomes a device to reinforce a weak argument. The Extinction Rebellion use the word Truth as a banner heading beneath which they make a claim that cannot be substantiated, as the following makes obvious. A woman named Zion Lights, was put up as a spokeswoman for Extinction Rebellion on Andrew Neil’s BBC show. The purpose, to defend her organisation’s actions. Neil pointed out that Roger Hallam, one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion has said that “billions of people are going to die in quite short order” and “our children are going to die in the next 10 to 20 years”.
That comment is alarmist by any definition and has no scientific validation whatsoever. Zion Lights when pushed admitted that “unfortunately alarmist language works.” She is part of an organisation that continually insist that we should “listen to the scientists”.
She then argued against the scientific mainstream: an IPCC report, attacking it as presenting “very conservative numbers… using pre-industrial levels of data.””
She is not a scientist but nevertheless seeks to correct them. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but what Zion Lights cannot do is claim to speak in the name of Climate Change science. In doing so she was, maybe inadvertently, finding fault with the conclusions of 6,000 scientific references, 91 authors, representing a global consensus with review editors from 40 countries. This is the opposite of listening to scientists, it is more like science ignored and circumvented, and any claims by Extinction Rebellion to be upholders of The Truth trashed. Their demand of net zero emissions by 2025 directly contradicts the 2050 target that the experts are recommending. Ms Lights conceded that these claims have been disputed, with some scientists saying they are simply not true. she added: “We don’t have exact numbers, but there will be deaths and mass suffering.”
She added this little stunner of a comment. “Any amount is enough as far as we’re concerned.”
So the billions of deaths could be reduced to a few hundred thousand, or a few tens of thousands, even a few thousands, who knows since the numbers may be well be below what can be directly attributed to climate change. The Andrew Neil interview nails the hypocrisy and the lies. Here is the entire thing, it is worth the eight minute watch.
For Extinction Rebellion apologists the “Truth” means next to nothing. These people are rabble rousers and alarmists who live in a world they could destroy even within their prophesied timescale. How? by wrecking the world economies. These even after every downside has been factored in, have still to their credit reduced poverty the world over. Consequently a success story for Extinction Rebellion, the almost overnight, six years until 2025 to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions to zero, really could contribute to the deaths of millions. The wealthy economies of the world massively contribute to the overflow that is reducing world poverty, starvation and death.
“Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said.
But lets bring this down to a scale we can all understand and does not involve a discussion about science and facts. A very pleasant, gentle young woman, part of the Extinction Rebellion protest in central London was asked about the possibility of an ambulance getting to a nearby hospital through the obstacles in the way of free access to the road. Her reply was that the ambulance should be allowed through, but if not, then sadly the Climate Change issue was of greater concern. That is zealotry with a comforting smile. When this protest movement is examined and its purposes decoded we can see an underlying subtext; stating that my protest is much more significant than guaranteeing your needs, however seemingly urgent. But political activists only see the object that most concerns them. The attitude goes something like this. Since I know best, and if you knew as much as me and believed as I do then all would be well with the world. There is no other side which has any overarching validity. And who decides? The mini deities decide, the rulers of the Extinction Rebellion. Thumb up, patient gets seen, thumb down, take whatever odds are going. Political causes override narrow individual needs. That is an argument which encapsulates all left and right wing ideologies, ideas of social order which has led to the totalitarianism of the twentieth century; the worst expressions of human evil ever seen on the planet.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which involved over a thousand experts, estimated a rate of extinction of up to 8,700 species a year. A United Nations reported a daily loss of up to 150 species.” Around 10 percent a decade. However the wildness of the figures bandied about can be seen from these below. The accuracy of these estimates are not known and are based on computer modelling. Real data, documented losses are tiny: about 800 extinctions over the last four centuries. This is according to data held by the the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. This figure means a tiny quota 1 % out of a recorded planetary record of roughly 1.9 million species. Those figures were given in 2015 on the website YaleEnvironment360.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature is a global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. So there are scientists of international repute who do, or at least did challenge the data, although their website currently is far more alarmist. Is that due to peer pressure or to computer modelling or to real data?
Figures when misused or exaggerated can cause chaos, dividing peoples and families and raising fears and even hatreds. At the moment we are in the early stages of recruiting the very young. The first moves have been to encourage schoolchildren to miss school lessons in order to protest. Weaponising children is the antithesis of good sense and leads to disorder and social breakdown. It puts levers of power in the hands of infants when it come to experience. Politicians and industrialists are bad enough; the whims and convictions of children could be worse. Such a world was graphically illustrated in the film Lord of the Flies. Children are not innocents, just watch Greta Thunberg the person, and note her attitude, her contempt, her accusative posture and loaded rhetoric. Not a hint of doubt. just an underground current of burning rage. She gives the impression of a very bright, self confident but spoilt, indulged and undisciplined child. Her courage is admirable, but zealots can be the cause of great good and appalling evil. She is not the Saviour of the World, and her character as far as I can read it lacks a sense of humour, humility, irony and most vital of all a sense of proportion. Blinkered minds focused on a single objective are liable to become obsessive. Being a global superstar is not going to help. Nor is her Asperger condition. This should rule her out as a voice to be listened to with as much reverence as it is at present; and most certainly if the following, taken from an article on the subject is accurate. In this near crazy world a disorder such as this becomes an advantage, gives her greater status, charisma even. Makes her due to the struggle against illness some kind of heroine, a person more qualified than just a plain expert.
Some suffering with Asperger syndrome say the world feels overwhelming. Such a feeling may cause them considerable anxiety. In particular, understanding and relating to other people, and taking part in everyday family, school, work and social life, can be harder. People with Asperger syndrome may wonder why they are ‘different’ and feel their social differences mean people don’t understand them. All these factors seem to be playing on her mind. Encouraging schoolchildren to miss class in order to protest for example. Pushing a girl like Greta to the forefront of a global mission could be close to child abuse. And she cannot be blamed, she may well be a victim of the need for a unique figure upon which to devote our sense of need for an innocent pure voice. It could be that the masses are sick, and not the child.
Such certainty! Armed with sound bites and statistics which nobody listening can challenge, she makes a big impression. One of the reasons she has a global voice is precisely because of the technologies which result from technological progress. Innovations are made with probably good intents, the planetary effects would not cross the mind of most industrialists and politicians, at least not initially. The world has advanced on the back of technology since the invention of the wheel. Stopping much of it in its tracks will effect billions of people. Money makes the world go around so it is said, and making money is not going to stop because a young Swede has become a celebrity. Nor will billionaire entrepreneurs cease advancing their projects or politicians risk endangering jobs vital to their nation’s economy.
Is there a malign principle behind some of this? Almost certainly yes: greed, yes, power hungry yes, careless of the consequences yes, but Thunberg is thriving on the results. She will live on the cloud of fame and continue lecturing those who lifted her high. Soon however she will be part of it, sucked and suckered in like most of us. These people and the world in which she lives have not wrecked her future prospects, they have made them. She might one day perhaps, as she screeches her contempt for the modern world from the highest podiums and position of power on the planet, learn the virtue of humility. What thought is given to the privileges she has been given due to the world that technology has provided? Where is the slightest appreciation or gratitude owed to the life she has been given by circumstances and the accident of birth into a wealthy continent. She will never stop the human need for new things and greater comforts. She may serve as a global conscience saying our mea culpas for us. We may, if sufficiently hypocritical, applaud her while thinking about the updates we need to fulfil our future requirements. If new Eco friendly technologies make money then all well and good. The world has been seeking new clean technologies long before this child made her appearance. New tech takes time and money, and investment involves risk. You can lose everything on pursuing a novel idea, and yes, new tech will take over from old technologies. This has been ongoing since the industrial revolution poisoned our lands with soot and fumes and caused the early death of millions. Dying of horrible diseases in a polluted world in which workers lived very close to the poverty line. We live as we do in relative comfort on a technological bedrock of suffering and grinding work. Greta has it so good and yet slams those who have made her life that good. And has she considered the context of her mission to save the planet. Has it ever occurred to her that this world, like any physical object, is wearing out and has its sell by date? A shocking thought, but one worth considering.
Here is a real prophet who did have a hotline to God.
A quote from Isaiah: 51 v 6.
“Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth below; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and its people will die like gnats. But My salvation will last forever, and My righteousness will never fail.”
