The Sad Climate Change Denial of Otherwise Insightful Alternative Voices
I experience great sadness when I engage with, or read articles by, individuals who I greatly respect for the reporting of the reality of the world when I realize that they are anthropogenic climate change (ACC) deniers. There is something about the community of those that stand up for the truthful reality of the world that creates utter science-denying lunacy among some of them when it comes to ACC. I can somewhat understand it from those of the right, as ACC directly threatens the sanctity of the market that they believe in by being the greatest market failure. The requirement for extensive state action also threatens their sheer hatred of state action. But what about those from the left?
A case in point is Vanessa Beeley, who I greatly admire for her work, but seems to believe that the utterly debunked notion of sunspots driving climate change will produce a cooler planet in the next few decades. A recent post she made on her Telegram channel talks about “‘climate change’ scare porn” when referring to reports of wildfires across Europe and the Middle East, as the average global temperature hits a new record in July. A commenter on the video below sums up my feelings exactly:
Generally, I appreciate your reporting on Syria and the occupied Palestine but on this topic you are... just wrong and completely out of your expertise, to be polite. Yes there are arsonists (ignoring the fact that the supposed arsonist in the video is not shown setting fire to anything), and possibly other petty, individual interests in starting fires, but to deny the fact that temperatures have risen world-wide, not just in Greece alone, and continue to rise to levels never before seen is ridiculous and damaging to your credibility. On this subject I'm afraid you are just like the incredulous people in the Don't Look Up film; you are denying and deriding the obvious until it will be too late to do anything about it. Was the fire in Mashqita, Syria, in your video 2 days ago, also set by UN-affiliated arsonists trying to 'sell' climate change to the world?
Another is Jimmy Dore, who I also greatly respect, but is very mixed at best with respect to climate change. In the video below he reports the completely scientifically expected short-term greening of the planet due to higher CO2 levels, without noting that this is a short-term impact which is later overwhelmed by increasing heat and reduced water availability. Actual research has shown that the Amazon rainforest has already become a supplier of CO2 to the atmosphere, rather than a sink. He also states the utter disinformation that “most of the climate change forecasts have not come true”, in fact the increases in global average temperatures track the scientific forecasts (as against political hyperbole) very well.
In the next video, he reports on the Dutch agricultural sector revolt against government regulations to reduce the extremely high levels of nitrogen fertilizer used in Holland, the country with the densest concentration of animal husbandry in the world. The use of nitrogen fertilizer results in emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) which is a very potent greenhouse gas, together with extensive ecological damage from nitrogen runoff. From the Science article below:
In 118 of 162 Dutch nature reserves, nitrogen deposits now exceed ecological risk thresholds by an average of 50%. In dunes, bogs, and heathlands, home to species adapted to a lack of nitrogen, plant diversity has decreased as nitrogen-loving grasses, shrubs, and trees move in. Heathlands are turning green-gray as invasive grasses overwhelm the purple heather and yellows and blues of small herbaceous flowering plants, says Eva Remke, an ecologist at B-WARE Research Centre in Nijmegen. "The grasses will win, and the herbs will lose." These losses cascade through the ecosystem, contributing to the decline of insect and bird diversity, she says.
This is not some conspiracy to close down small farms, but rather a complex issue made much more difficult by decades of policy delay. As detailed here:
https://www.politico.eu/article/johan-vollenbroek-netherlands-nitrogen-pollution-climate-change-farming/
https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-packed-livestock-operations-has-paralyzed-dutch-economy
The “victory” for the farmers is actually a victory for an extremely regressive, right-wing party (the BBB) that supports Dutch NATO membership and full support for Ukraine, and sees animal-rights organizations as one of its main enemies. Caroline van der Plas, who established the party, has also campaigned against restrictions on the neonicotinoid insecticides linked to the collapse of honey-bee hives. The BBB is for the right of farmers (as businesses) to do anything they like, no matter the interests of the rest of society. Perhaps Jimmy Dore should have done some more digging into the “farmers” party, as it is for many of the things that he is against; it may be even a classic Trojan Horse, using the farmers protests to insert warmongering, neoliberal deregulatory policies that fully support the establishment. His video below utterly misrepresents the reality of the situation:
In other areas such individuals tend to be truth-tellers, but when it comes to ACC they seem to lose their minds. I feel that the confusion of such people stems from an inability to disassociate basic science carried out by not that well paid scientists who just care about understanding the world better, and profit/power driven groups that want to manipulate, misrepresent and take advantage of these science findings.
We find this in the case of COVID, which is most definitely a real disease which has significant health effects; it is not just “the flu”. As time goes on, we are finding out that these effects are systemic and may be long-lasting, such as immune system dis-regulation, heart and brain damage. This does not preclude the probability that the MRNA gene-therapy was an extremely dangerous and to all intents untested concoction that was thrust upon the public and may have caused significantly more harm than good. It also does not preclude the probability that Western authorities intentionally misrepresented other treatment alternatives in a negative light. All of these can exist together, with none precluding the other. We now also have evidence that the very scientists that claimed that COVID most probably could not have been generated in a lab, were in fact quite convinced that it could come from a lab; in private. Here Jimmy Dore does what he does best, report on the actual emails of these lying scientists:
The above greatly discredits a specific group of scientists and other public health professionals who were under great pressure to feed an elite-serving narrative. We can see the same with discussions on sex (male/female) in the West, where the elite-driven science-denying narrative that sex is a continuum and that sex is “observed at birth” has created great pressure upon scientists to not contradict that narrative. I feel that the great mistake that the left-wing ACC-deniers make is to equate these specific cases of misrepresentation with the scientific work on ACC. That such excellent analysts of power relations within societies cannot see that the elites either outright reject climate change science (i.e. the oil interests, market fundamentalists etc.) or have worked hard to downplay it given the threat of the required actions to their power, is astonishing to me. In this specific area they sound just the same as the right-wing ACC deniers, spouting rubbish about sunspots, CO2 not driving climate change etc.
The reality is that the actual climate science has always been greatly downplayed by the elites, with the UN IPCC acting as an institution tasked with dousing down any calls for significant action that would require significant socio-economic changes. Yes, Greta Thunberg is a tool of an elite that want to use climate change as an excuse for a new power and wealth grab but that does not negate the basic science of ACC! The left-wing climate change deniers seem to have lost all understanding of nuance, dialectics and complexity when it comes to ACC – an understanding they show greatly when looking at other issues! Perhaps it is because climate change is THE greatest issue facing humanity, and it gets in the way of the other issues that such commentators have spent years analyzing. I certainly find this to be the case among mainstream international relations scholars, who would much rather spend time giving priority to what they know than having to accept that ACC is a greater threat than such things as the “balance of power”.
In the current month (July 2023) the climate is doing something extraordinary, it is hitting new highs for the time of year in the summer and when the El Nino has only really just got started. The extreme impacts of an El Nino usually happen later in its development and during the winter months.
The Nino area 3.4. (the area in the Eastern Pacific where the El Nino/La Nina oscillation is at its strongest) is still only 1.20C above average, and the three-month average Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) is only 0.50C, both of which signify a mild El Nino still at the early stages of building into a much stronger El Nino.
That the July temperatures are so high given the early stage of the El Nino is greatly worrying, the extreme nature of the global temperature anomaly can be seen in this Climate Reanalyzer graph:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
We will have to wait another couple of weeks until we get the official NASA GISS measurement of global temperatures for July, the month of June was already 1.3360C above preindustrial temperatures (the NASA GISS 1.08 variance against the 1951-1980 average plus 0.256 to align to preindustrial).
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
I hope that as the year continues with ever escalating temperature anomalies the left-wing truth tellers will be able to cast off their ACC-denialism and utilize their excellent analytical skills in properly understanding the nature of the challenges that face us.
Unfortunately we also have the opposite, where the progressives who believe in climate change turn out to be a bunch of warmongering, China-hating, Russia-hating lunatics who have suddenly fallen in love with the security state and big business. The case of the German “Green” Party (and the Canadian “Green” Party) stands out, but we also have individuals such as Clive Hamilton who wrote a book full of anti-China propaganda.
Finding groups and individuals that are economically social-market, believe in climate change, believe that humanity is a sexually binary dimorphic mammalian species, believe that human psychology is not just a cultural creation, have not gotten lost in the “woke” discourse, do not believe that censorship is needed to “protect” free speech, have not fallen in love with the security state, and that can have a balanced non-propagandistic understanding of geopolitics (e.g. Putin is not the Devil), is a relatively thankless task … hopefully this blog can serve as an island for such people.
"This is not some conspiracy to close down small farms, but rather a complex issue made much more difficult by decades of policy delay."
Actually, it does seem to be just that.
"The above greatly discredits a specific group of scientists and other public health professionals who were under great pressure to feed an elite-serving narrative."
I'm sorry they found the pressure too much. All of these various agendae are being manipulated by the PTBs for their own advantage. Those testifying for them - pressure too much? - end up as repeat perjurers. Someone lies this sort of a situation, I would prefer they be beheaded rather than followed.
The science on climate change is not clear; it depends enormously on what time scale one uses. Is there any agreement on that? Just for starters. That we are figuring out "science" to fit whatever policies the ruling elites want is wrong. And, I suggest, undeniable. I'm 68 and have been active in this stuff since a teenager; I shit in a bucket, save seeds and do biochar and plant trees. What I find fascinating is the point I've reached: the corruption is so great that there is no possible science or policy given the psychopaths and parasites and the power they wield. When someone shoots down Gates' or Kerry's jets, then maybe "we" can start to talk about science.
Excellent piece! But how weird that people who claim to be progressive, find themselves allied to the most reactionary positions! But perhaps we need to be looking at a Western 'left' that's completely lost the plot as the reason for this insane disjuncture. In other words, the death of politics and the subsequent death of the Western left, a left washed up and bankrupt, utterly compromised by its alliance with an imperialist ideology. Seen in this light, its denial of ecological murder by capitalism, makes complete sense.