Rajendra Pachauri's newly found "tolerance" towards global warming skeptics is only a smoke screen

IPCC boss Rajendra Pachauri is has recently changed his tune with regard to global warming skeptics. During his visit to Finland Pachauri had this to say about criticism of the soon to be published next Assessment Report:

The IPCC will reveal the first part of its Fifth Assessment Report in Stockholm in late September. Its director is bracing for a range of criticism of the report -- or perhaps even looking forward to it.

"We love debate, after all science only drives under debate. We welcome it, as long as it's objective and well-intentioned," says Pachauri.

It is not so long ago, when the same Pachauri was less tolerant of critical views:

Q: What do you think about the small but vocal group of doubters still out there
Pachauri Answer: There is, even today, a Flat Earth Society that meets every year to say the Earth is flat. The science about climate change is very clear. There really is no room for doubt at this point.

Pachauri's newly found tolerance is of course only a PR trick. The former railway engineer will most certainly continue to label all criticism non-objective and not "well-intentioned".

Swedish historian: "climate alarms of the early 21st century resemble pre-modern ideas about divine punishment"

Ph.D. David Larsson Heidenblad
Department of History, Lund University

The Swedish historian David Larsson Heidenblad has published a study in which he shows the striking similarities between late modern notions of anthropogenic climate change and premodern ideas about divine punishment.

Below are a few excerpts from the summary of Heidenblad's interesting thesis "Our own fault":

In the late autumn of 2006 the topic of climate change had its major breakthrough in Western media. The impending threat of global warming was transferred from the cultural sidelines to the newspapers headlines. Throughout the public sphere the same basic message was, almost unanimously, carried out: ”Humanity is in grave danger, and it is our own fault”. Everyday practices, such as driving and meat-eating, were depicted as direct causes to the crisis. Urgent calls were made for individuals to alter their energy-intensive lifestyles.

The future of mankind depended on our everyday choices, on our moral behavior. From a historical standpoint neither the threat of climate change nor the urgent calls for individual change were new. Rather, they had been put forward in the public sphere since the late 1980s. But in the autumn of 2006 the calls were more frequent and the public at large was markedly more responsive. Climate change was no longer considered a green issue in the margins of high politics. It was increasingly becoming an everyday concern. From a cultural historian’s viewpoint the calls for individuals to alter their way of living in order to avoid future catastrophes is a distinctly familiar pattern. The theme was an ever-recurring feature of the pre-modern Judeo-Christian World where wars, famines, and epidemics were repeatedly depicted as God´s punishment for the sins of man. According to this biblical explanatory model man was habitually seen as responsible for his own misfortunes. Calls for individuals to change their sinful ways and do penance was hence repeatedly decreed as a means to avoid future calamities. Divine punishments was, in much the same way as anthropogenic climate change, considered to be our own fault. The striking similarities between the near present and the distant past begs the question if history is repeating itself. Have man throughout the ages continuously envisaged connections between collective moral behavior and looming disasters? Can these ideas be seen as a deeply entrenched cultural pattern in the Judeo-Christian World? Is the threat of climate change a late modern variation on an ancient mythological understanding of man’s relation to his surroundings?  --

 Why do the climate alarms of the early 21st century resemble pre-modern ideas about divine punishment? The line of argument advocated in the study is that there are four points of structural similarities which, when taken together can provide an explanation for the remarkable cultural parallels. All four points exist in both the pre-modern setting and in its late modern ecological counterpart, but not in the historical time periods in between. The first point is that man is seen as having a moral responsibility to his surroundings. Some courses of actions are deemed detrimental while others are deemed beneficial. Everything man does affects his surroundings, which in turn affect man. The abstract greatness which man stands in a direct relation to – Nature and God respectively – is not the same. But structurally there is an overall similarity in that man is not deemed to be self-sufficient. The second point concerns how the individual’s everyday actions are thought of as relating to the well-being of the collective. This is in both cases a fundamental point of departure. No man is an island. Everyone is linked together in the great chain of being. The third point is that both late modern ideas about anthropogenic climate change and pre-modern ideas about divine punishment are based on the strongest knowledge authority of their time – the natural sciences and theology respectively. Both these fields share pretensions of universal validity for their knowledge. Hence neither threatening climate change nor ideas about divine punishment have been portrayed as a matter of individual interpretation, but instead as indisputable realities – truths. The fourth point is that every individual is seen as being a part of the problem. In the pre-modern religious worldview no man was free from sin and in the present times of climate change no man is free from carbon dioxide emissions. The individual ecological footprint can be greater or smaller, but it is nevertheless a footprint. No one, at least not in the West, is seen as free from guilt.

The entire summary in English can be downloaded here.

A German physicist takes on the global warming establishment

German physicist, professor Horst-Joachim Lüdecke is not afraid of taking on the global warming establishment in Germany and elsewhere. Below are a few excerpts of a recent interview (in German):

For decades Germans were misinformed and successfully "brought up" in an eco-ideological way. This was possible, because the green movement has conquered the editorial staffs of the leading German media, like e.g. public service television, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, die ZEIT, and others. In addition, eco-ideologists also have taken over the important academic key positions. Professor Hans-Joachim Schnellhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK) and the Chancellor's climate adviser, is one good example. He is propagating a "great transformation" and the removal of democratic rules in order to achieve this goal. --

Climate protection has nothing to do with genuine nature conservation (as e.g. protection of rain forests and fish populations in the oceans). The prescribed means for reducing CO2 are effectless and meaningless . --

The IPCC, a UN organization positioned against objective and impartial climate science, is an institution consisting of eco-ideologists connected with related NGOs. Most IPCC documents are not written by experts, but by activists. --

Wind turbines and solar cells have no effect on the climate or the CO2 balance of a country. However, the energy transition (Energiewende) is causing a huge unavoidable rise in electricity prices - not at all a price reduction!

Millions of birds and bats will die as a result of Obama's global warming plan (which will have no real effect on global temperatures)

The sad truth about Barack Obama's global warming plan:

A newly published peer-reviewed study reports U.S. wind turbines kill 1.4 million birds and bats every year, even while producing just 3 percent of U.S. electricity. the numbers in the study from Wildlife Society Bulletin reveal President Obama’s global warming plan will kill hundreds of millions of birds and bats while doing little if anything to reduce global temperatures.

Even if no new wind turbines are ever built, turbine blades will slice 14 million birds and bats to death in midflight during the next decade. However, global warming alarmists say we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50 or even 80 percent. President Obama’s recently announced assault on climate change appears likely to seek such numbers. Given that most global warming alarmists also vigorously oppose hydropower, natural gas power, and nuclear power, reducing emissions by 50 to 80 percent would require increasing the number of wind turbines roughly 25-fold. That means killing 350 million birds and bats in the United States every decade.

Read the entire article here

Obama and Putin - two "kids" as world leaders

Yesterday Barack Obama was quick to downplay his decision to cancel a meeting with the corrupt Russian dictator Vladimir Putin:

At a White House news conference on Friday, Obama insisted that he does not have bad personal relations with Putin. The two men had a testy meeting in June in Northern Ireland and from the photos of them at the time, it looked as if they would both rather have been somewhere else.
"I know the press likes to focus on body language, and he's got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom. But the truth is that when we're in conversations together, oftentimes it's very productive," Obama said

And Obama is the clueless kid ordered to sit in the front row by the teacher.

Jürgen Habermas - a naive dilettante, with regard to Europe

German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas is said to be "one of the world's leading intellectuals". However, when it comes to the current euro crisis and the EU in general, he is nothing but a naive dilettante:

It's worth repeating again and again: The suboptimal conditions under which the European Monetary Union operates today are the result of a design flaw, namely that the political union was never completed. That's why pushing the problems onto the shoulders of the crisis-ridden countries with credit financing isn't the answer. The imposition of austerity policies cannot correct the existing economic imbalances in the euro zone. An assimilation of the different levels in productivity in the mid-term could only be expected from a joint, or at least closely coordinated, fiscal, economic and social policy. And if we then, in the course of countervailing policies, don't wish to completely turn into a technocracy, we must ask the public what they think about a democratic core Europe. Wolfgang Schäuble knows this. He says as much in SPIEGEL interviews, which, however, have no consequences for his political behavior.
European policy is in a trap that the political sociologist Claus Offe has sharply illuminated: If we do not want to give up the monetary union, an institutional reform, which takes time, is both necessary and unpopular. This is why politicians who hope to be re-elected are kicking the can down the road. The German government, in particular, is in a double bind, because it has already assumed pan-European responsibility through its actions. It is also the only government that can take a promising initiative for a step forward -- and should pursue France's support for such a process. It isn't a trifling project, after all, but one into which Europe's most prominent politicians have invested their best efforts for more than half a Century.

Read the entire article here

Of course Habermas is right about the design flaw with regard the euro. However, he should know that neither the Germans, nor the peoples of the other EU countries will accept a federal European state. Habermas accuses Angela Merkel of "soporific bumbling", but in reality he is himself the bumbler. Instead of stating clearly that he wants Germans (and others) to give up their national sovereignty, Habermas mumbles about "a democratic core Europé", "institutional reform" and "pan-European responsibility". Not very convincing!

David Cameron: Britain would be "making big mistake" if it did not seriously consider fracking

The European greenies, aided by Russia's Gazprom, are making huge efforts to prevent Europe from joining the shale gas revolution. On this issue, the UK Prime Minister David Cameron is fortunately on the right side:

Britain would be “making a big mistake” if it did not seriously consider fracking and the prospect of cheaper gas prices, the Prime Minister has warned.

David Cameron said the country is “missing out big time at the moment” as he compared the number of shale gas wells dug in the European Union compared with the United States. But he cautioned that safety needs to be assured and that “very clear” environmental procedures would have to be met before companies were given the go-ahead to start fracking.
The economy needs rebalancing but a key part of that is the need to have affordable energy, he added. “I think we would be making a big mistake as a nation if we did not think hard about how to encourage fracking and cheaper prices right here in the UK,” he said at a Q&A session at Crown Paints in Darwen, Lancashire.
“If you look what’s happening in America with the advent of shale gas and fracking, their energy costs in business and their gas prices are half the level of ours. We are seeing businesses that have previously gone off to Mexico and elsewhere come back to the United States.