RUTHFULLY YOURS

Got yer dose of schadenfreud for the day right here…

The co-founder of the granddaddy of green groups, Greenpeace, explains in a Heartland editorial why he is a climate skeptic.  Patrick Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986 because, in his words, it “took a sharp turn to the political left” and “evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas,” pulls no punches when criticizing his former colleagues in the green movement:

I am skeptical humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over” and “the science is settled.”

My skepticism begins with the believers’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis increased atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures.

In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.

The idea it would be catastrophic if carbon dioxide were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous.

Moore is just getting warmed up.  He makes the salient point that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a massive conflict of interest in researching global warming:

By its constitution, the IPCC has a hopeless conflict of interest. Its mandate is to consider only the human causes of global warming, not the many natural causes changing the climate for billions of years. We don’t understand the natural causes of climate change any more than we know if humans are part of the cause at present. If the IPCC did not find humans were the cause of warming, or if it found warming would be more positive than negative, there would be no need for the IPCC under its present mandate. To survive, it must find on the side of the apocalypse.

The IPCC should either have its mandate expanded to include all causes of climate change, or it should be dismantled.

He also points out that powerful interests have adopted global warming as a cause for a variety of reasons:

Cimate change has become a powerful political force for many reasons. First, it is universal; we are told everything on Earth is threatened. Second, it invokes the two most powerful human motivators: fear and guilt. We fear driving our car will kill our grandchildren, and we feel guilty for doing it.

Third, there is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites that support the climate “narrative.” Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; science institutions raise billions in grants, create whole new departments, and stoke a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; business wants to look green, and get huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as wind farms and solar arrays. Fourth, the Left sees climate change as a perfect means to redistribute wealth from industrial countries to the developing world and the UN bureaucracy.

So we are told carbon dioxide is a “toxic” “pollutant” that must be curtailed, when in fact it is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, gas and the most important food for life on earth. Without carbon dioxide above 150 parts per million, all plants would die.

The fact that CO₂ was 10 times higher 150 million years ago, at a time when life was exploding on the planet, is rarely mentioned in arguments for and against action on climate change.

It’s funny that we don’t hear much criticism of Moore from the environmental community.  However, like most climate skeptics, he is charged with shilling for corporate interests.  Radical greens, of course, hate him, but his rational critiques of the science of global warming don’t leave much room for criticism.

Moore has plenty of company in the green movement – you just never hear of them, because they don’t toe the party line.  He’s a refreshing voice coming from an unexpected source.