The men and women of science are supposed to be rational, sober professionals. Yet a few hundred have decided to behave as rabble, having been overtaken by global warming hysteria.
Reuters reported Saturday that “almost 400 scientists have endorsed a civil disobedience campaign aimed at forcing governments to take rapid action to tackle climate change.” The objective is to warn the rest of us “that failure could inflict ‘incalculable human suffering.’”
To say these activist-researchers have broken “with the caution traditionally associated with academia to side with peaceful protesters courting arrest” is almost an understatement. They have chosen to align themselves with the Extinction Rebellion, an organization that’s been described as a “loopy middle-class doomsday cult.”
That description by Sky News reporter Carol Malone is overly generous. The Extinction Rebellion is a criminal enterprise made up of quite clearly disturbed people. Members have been arrested for blocking the entrance of a London airport, and claiming ownership of it for the mob, while dancing in what appears to be a restricted area behind razor wire. One particularly childish and self-indulgent “protester” climbed atop a passenger jet to make his point. Firemen had to remove him with a cherry-picker.
These “rebels” have also used a fire truck to spray fake blood, at one point losing “control of the hose, drenching a bystander and spraying several fellow activists” at the British Treasury building, “as 1,800 liters of an organic liquid containing beetroot spurted out wildly across the street,” the Guardian has reported.
Admittedly these are rather petty crimes, but they’re gateways to the harder stuff.
On this side of the Atlantic, “tourists and workers on Wall Street” were met a week ago “by a jarring spectacle: protesters, some lying in pools of fake blood outside the New York Stock Exchange, some dancing and others chanting, all to call attention to people killed by climate-related disease and disaster,” says the New York Times.
Three days later, at least 62 were arrested around Times Square. These folks who are supposedly wiser than the rest of us because of their divine foresight parked a sailboat on Broadway and West 44th Street, sat around it with arms interlocked, and hectored harried New Yorkers by screeching through a bullhorn.
At best, the members of Extinction Rebellion are acting like petulant children. At worst, they’re near-terrorists. Though not as violent, they’re still possessed by the zealotry common among deranged radicals. Thoughtful people don’t glue themselves to the ground or government buildings, criminally block the free movement of people in public places (or, to paraphrase the clever Jim Treacher, “save the planet by making you late for work”), nor allow themselves to be “driven by sheer irrationalism.”
Nor do clear-thinking people turn themselves into public spectacles, evidently fueled by whatever psychoses haunt them. The videos at the links are compelling evidence that the movement’s disciples are “teched” in the head.
Worse, they’re ignorant, and overly willing dupes. They’ve fallen for what is so obviously an exaggeration if not an outright fraud. And they should be, as British columnist Brendan O’Neill suggests, “criticized and ridiculed out of existence.”
The rebellion “wants to propel us backwards, to the Stone Age,” O’Neill continues. “It wants to reverse the most important moment in human history – the Industrial Revolution,” and roll back its “liberation of mankind from the brutishness and ignorance of life on the land.” The activists would “recreate that old, unforgiving world in which we all ‘ate locally’, never travelled, danced around maypoles for fun, and died of cholera when we were 38.”
Is this the sort of organization that scientists want to be in league with? Any researcher who would call these people comrades should turn in their credentials.
— Written by J. Frank Bullitt
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Maybe a rich sponsor of these activists on steroids can provide them with a piece of land and accommodation where they all can live green for a while with solar and wind power, green agriculture and no gas powered vehicles, tractors or power tools. By the way it should also be that they should raise no animals because of flatulence of GHG’s. No more barbecues, milk, cheese, coffee latte, only greens; and when they feel the pressure building inside they should plug their release valve with a corn cub or something “for the cause”. They should be able to give the rest of us an example of the future they want for the rest of us.
Anyone else can take bets as to how long they will last.
The methane and carbon dioxide from ruminants are from the rumen and come out as burps. My household and two electric cars are powered by the sun.
You must be so proud.
Yes, I am gratified with how well it worked out. We have no power bills to speak of since the PV system powers the household and at least one of our two electric cars. The other gets free supercharging at a Tesla site 2 miles away.
But it shows how renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels with their toxins. The new Vogtle nukes in Georgia already have projected power costs of 15 cents/kWh based on construction costs. We can buy 24-hour power from PV plus battery storage for 1.997 cents daytime and 3.3 cents/kWh at night.
The world has already changed,and you will love it.
Is commendable that you care for the environment and the future of earth’s ecosystems, so do I. I am an outdoors man, hunter and fisherman, and I want to preserve what we have for future generations. However I learned that co2 is not a pollutant, (look Websters definition not IPCC or government) and with co2 at less than 150ppm nothing will grow or live on earth. Furthermore millions of years ago the co2 concentration was as high as 7000ppm and life flourished. At 400ppm today we are at the lower end. If you want to educate yourself a bit try to learn about Maurice Strong and the formation of IPCC in Rio 1992. It will reveal a bit of of the scam that we are drawn into and from there you can go as deep as you feel inclined to.
I am not interested on what political folk think about science.
Where were people at 700ppm?
I will bet you have not even seen the IPCC Report. I can send you to the Summary, which is here:https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
Just look at the historical graphs and make your own decision.
I said 7000ppm not 700ppm. It was to early for humans but there was life on earth back then. Actually if you have a co2 meter you can see that in your house or any other place at times co2 level is over a 1000 ppm and we have no adverse effects. For submarines and also cosmonauts the max limit is around 6000ppm.
Respiration is not the problem. The problem is greenhouse gases.
The problem is most of the carbon dioxide goes into the oceans, lowering the pH (acidification). That makes it difficult for marine life to form shells.
The problem is rising temperatures are changing the behavior of fish.
Those rising temperatures drive oxygen out of the water.
Rising temperatures put much more water into the atmosphere then dump it on us in ever-bigger storms, flooding not just our cities but our farmland.
There are lots of problems. Want more?
By the way the historical data in the IPCC report is distorted. Read about Michael Mann hockey stick and the 2009 climate gate. They had to get rid of the medieval warm period as well as the 1930’s heat period.
Those are recognized as localized anomalies, not world-wide change.
Liberal scientist claim they can prove that global warming is real. Hell, they can’t even tell the difference between a boy and a girl.
Nothing against you and your teslas. Get more pv’s. Good for you. If is right for you doesn’t mean is right for everyone. Do what you want and what fits your beliefs, but stay away from forcing others to follow you because this is not a religion and definitely you are not Messiah.
I don’t see anything on their website that implies they’re anything ‘scientific’. They are, in essence, a bunch of emotionally addled loons dead set on disrupting the status quo, under the auspices of allegedly saving the earth. I’m a scientist. I’m a pragmatist. I’m busy. I have a job. I have responsibilities. These people are an embarrassment to the human population, let alone those that actual dedicate their respective lives to the sciences. Do they truly believe that such antics will garner them anything other than ridicule?
This is clearly not your field. What is your take on Ocean Acidification?
Does it worry you at all?
If this IS your field you must know that the ocean has a base PH so it can not be acidic. The influence of the rivers in the coastal areas has always reduced the PH locally. That happened for hundreds of years and will continue to happen. How is that for your scientific knowledge?
Nick, the term and the problem are real and they are now.
Look up Ocean Acidification and find out.
I am sick and tired of all these Greta tools that get their science from CNN and Bill the science guy. Ohhhh, the problem is now, the world will end, we only have 12 years, scare mongering to force us to accept socialist autocracy. Is so ridiculous to see the same people that are fighting the communist regimes in other parts of the world will gladly welcome it here because they are so naive (read stupid) to believe the politicians and the scientists that the same politicians pay with grants and government jobs. Since we all know politicians are in the pockets of big businesses, I wander who’s pulling the strings. But you are to happy with your teslas and pv’s and solar panels and you feel so good about yourself that you want everybody to feel the same way right?
First, I do not listen to Greta. I earned a Master of Science in this field in 1979-82.
I notice you did not look up Ocean Acidification. Please do it. This is not political.
What I giggle about is the fact we can save ourselves perhaps, with these technologies, and save money too. Get politics away from science!
First I don’t think we need to save ourselves from anything. No matter what climate change models predict you have to be too naive to believe that co2 is like a knob that you dial in and change everything. You say you are a science trained guy and that means you should be able to understand. World is better served by creating conditions to adapt to whatever comes our way. We cannot fix poverty, peace, inequality and many others, so my trust in positively changing climate is nill.
I suggest you read up on stable states of complex systems. Our climate is such a resultant of the integration of several complex systems, operating within certain conditions. When the inputs to any of the complex systems change, they change the conditions for the other complex systems with which they are integrated.
Our climate is the resultant condition of al the inputs, but we have changed one dramatically, and now we have started to destabilize the climate. It will oscillate, going to extremes until it finds a new stable state. But we were designed for this one, and have no idea what the new one will be like.
I suggest you read the book Catastrophe Theory for a graphical, visual presentation.
Are you being forced? Neither was I. I did it because I am an eco-freak and it was the right thing to do. The fact it paid back in three years was unanticipated.
It is good sense which will make you go this way, unless you like paying the power company.
Stable states of complex systems theory (because it is a theory) does not apply here because there are no stable states in climate change. The parameters are multiple and they are all changing simultaneously. There are solar activity cycles, from 11 years cycles to Maunder minimum cycles, to Milenkovici cycles of earth tilt, orbit and precetion, from the influence of water vapor in the atmosphere to the influence of cosmic rays on cloud formation, from the variation of the magnetic field of the earth to magnetic pole reversal, the thermal inertia of the oceans as well as the rate of co2 absorbtion and/or release in the oceans. All these are variables that are not condusive to a stable state and I don’t know if you noticed but apparently the “science” today explains everything with antropogenic co2 which is about 5% of all the co2 produced, which is 400ppm (read 0.04%) of the whole atmosphere and about 3% of all GHG’s. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t try to convince you to anything but you offend me when you throw at me concepts that you assume I don’t understand with the ease of a superior ignorance in order to shut down the discussion and the argument.
Does that mean you are ready to discuss ocean acidification?
Good point. CO2 is not a button you push & all of a sudden a front begins to form. The left is trying to drive the world into the stone age. Our planet has its 3 large carbon reservoirs. Humans can’t really drive the weather but they can monitor pollution & waste. I think it’s incredibly stupid to think that a molecule can design a climate. We are nearing the end of October here & no it has not been a wild hurricane season which I’m sure disappoints the media.
No, Kim, we are educated in the sciences and you are not. There is no question of Anthropogenic Climate Change. Want to discuss it? I do.
We can start with the Acidification of the Oceans, the same topic I use to stop the Deniers. Are you concerned for the copepods?
Grateful for your work in the comments section here, George. I guess I fundamentally don’t understand both I&I and the climate deniers who comment on this article, a fringe that’s unique to America, apparently.
It can’t be that they actually have read or are interested in the science. If they were, they would be echoing conservative parties across the globe in at least recognizing the validity of an overwhelming majority of climate scientists: global warming is here, it is on us, it is anthropogenic. Which is to say nothing of disappearing wildlife populations, including pollinators, which good luck imagining a global economy without intact ecologies.
No, it has to be something akin to the denial of death: it’s too spooky for people to even imagine that we’re raising average global temperatures, turning oceans uninhabitably hot.
Tried posting something on this earlier, but I&I didn’t approve. Hope this lives up to their excellent standards.