Posts filed under ‘historical perspective’

Der Spiegel Skewers the World Wildlife Fund

A splendid and disturbing investigative feature in Der Spiegel explains why the WWF doesn’t deserve your charitable donations.

Continue Reading May 30, 2012 at 12:38 pm

The UN’s Environmental ‘Holocausts’

Since the 1970s UN officials have tried to frighten us. Repeatedly, their predictions have failed. Repeatedly, their time frames have been preposterously inaccurate.

Continue Reading April 30, 2012 at 7:54 am

Mother Mexico & the Jackals

How are green groups different from yesterday’s colonial powers? Their global agenda is paramount, their lack of empathy for ordinary people breathtaking.

Continue Reading April 21, 2012 at 9:04 am

Eco Narcissists & Their Last Chances

For half a century green activists have insisted that their historical moment – and a particular generation – are the planet’s last hope.

Continue Reading April 14, 2012 at 8:45 am

Earth Hour: Corporations Preaching Morality

When you dim your lights for Earth Hour, you’re protesting in a manner approved by multinational corporations. You’re allowing banks and insurance companies to tell you how to spend your Saturday night.

Continue Reading March 27, 2012 at 3:28 pm

Pachauri Pushes Emissions Reduction – Again

The IPCC is supposed to be “policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive.” How can it be OK for its chairman to lobby for one policy in particular?

Continue Reading February 2, 2012 at 5:31 pm

Pachauri: It’s Too Late to Fight Climate Change

Back in 2007 IPCC chairman Pachauri made a prediction regarding the year 2012.

Continue Reading January 1, 2012 at 10:51 am

The World’s Slowest Learners

UN bureaucrats say climate change is a planetary emergency and that time is running out. So when US senators unanimously rejected the Kyoto Protocol where was Plan B?

Continue Reading December 31, 2011 at 1:11 pm

Over-the-Top Climate Rhetoric

Emotional, over-the-top language doesn’t come from real leaders in a time of real crisis. Rather, it’s a sign that someone’s trying to stampede public opinion.

Continue Reading December 13, 2011 at 1:40 pm

UN Climate Warnings Are So 1989

22 years ago the UN said we had only 10 years to take global warming action. Otherwise, entire nations would drown due to rising sea levels by the year 2000.

Continue Reading November 1, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Al Gore’s Money-Grubbing

Al Gore says climate change is a planetary emergency. But he’ll only tell a campus audience about it if the cheque is big enough.

Continue Reading September 12, 2011 at 11:19 am

The Y2K Scare, the Media & Climate Change

Media coverage of climate change has a great deal in common with how the press covered the Y2K scare. There’s little evidence that news outlets learned much from that embarrassing episode.

Continue Reading August 9, 2011 at 3:25 pm

Greenpeace’s Fear Machine

17 years ago a Greenpeace report titled The Climate Time Bomb tried to frighten us with lurid images and dire predictions that have since failed.

Continue Reading August 2, 2011 at 1:33 pm

Two Population Predictions

40 years ago scientists said radical change was necessary if humanity was to survive. Along the way they endorsed a population prediction that now seems foolish.

Continue Reading June 19, 2011 at 11:57 am

David Suzuki is a Drama Queen

While the rest of us approach challenges with determination, optimism, and faith in ourselves as problem solvers, drama queens see only worst-case scenarios. They exaggerate. They emotionalize.

Continue Reading June 3, 2011 at 6:59 pm

The Case of Michael Oppenheimer

Perhaps the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change doesn’t regard activist scientists as damaged goods because neither the National Academy of Sciences nor the American Association for the Advancement of Science does, either.

Continue Reading May 1, 2011 at 9:02 pm

Three Cheers for New Tech

When people in affluent counties embrace new technologies we’re helping to make the entire world a better place. Really.

Continue Reading April 30, 2011 at 10:30 am

When the Lights Go Out

Having just spent 17 hours without electricity, I’m feeling especially keen on a stable energy supply.

Continue Reading April 29, 2011 at 9:29 am

The State of the IPCC’s Leadership

Rajendra Pachauri, as chairman of what is supposed to be a respectable science body, has – with deliberation and forethought – publicly linked that body to left-wing political analysis and activism.

Continue Reading April 9, 2011 at 8:22 am

Pachauri’s Pal – the Worldwatch Institute

Before the IPCC was even founded, the Worldwatch Institute had already declared that global warming was caused by fossil fuels. Surely that makes the IPCC chairman’s decision to fraternize with this activist organization a bit awkward.

Continue Reading April 7, 2011 at 4:39 pm

Why is Humanity Always the Fall Guy?

Museums acknowledge that, historically, Mother Nature killed off fish and caused glaciers to retreat. So why do these same institutions imply that similar events in the here-and-now are solely the fault of humans?

Continue Reading March 31, 2011 at 4:24 pm

The Horse Manure Problem

In the late 1800s cities were drowning in smelly, dirty, disease-spreading horse manure. The private automobile was a huge step forward, environmentally-speaking.

Continue Reading March 29, 2011 at 1:23 pm

Earth to Scientists

Half a century ago, a science journalist discovered that anything less than reverential reporting was interpreted by scientists as hostility. It would seem that climate scientists who label critics ‘anti-science’ come from a long tradition.

Continue Reading March 18, 2011 at 3:06 pm

Was the Fix In Before the IPCC Existed?

In 1970s and ’80s some scientists already believed human CO2 emissions would cause global warming. How do we know the IPCC’s 2007 conclusions weren’t preordained?

Continue Reading March 13, 2011 at 3:10 pm

An IPCC History Lesson

A full 13 years before the IPCC was born its first chairman seems to have already decided that fossil fuels affected the climate so adversely their use would need to be curtailed.

Continue Reading February 15, 2011 at 6:38 pm

Is Everything Really Getting Worse?

David Suzuki says the planet is in “far worse shape” today than 50 years ago. But a growing library of exhaustively researched books claim the opposite.

Continue Reading February 8, 2011 at 11:23 am

The Sad State of the Debate

According to some people, only a “climatologist” can be a credible scientific voice in the climate debate. Why do we spend so much time trying to disqualify people – rather than addressing their ideas?

Continue Reading January 17, 2011 at 6:43 pm

Flooding in Australia

Australia’s poets have written about alternating droughts and floods since the early 1900s. Is a preoccupation with alleged global-warming-induced-droughts linked to too little government attention on precautionary flood measures?

Continue Reading January 11, 2011 at 12:28 pm

New Blog Examines Green History

Haunting the Library, a new blog, digs up news clippings that add important historical context to the climate debate.

Continue Reading January 9, 2011 at 2:23 pm

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

It isn’t your imagination. We were advised that global warming would mean milder winters. The record-breaking cold temperatures & unusual snowfalls in recent years are odds with the claim that global warming is happening faster than predicted.

Continue Reading December 19, 2010 at 6:01 pm

The Climate’s Gonna Kill Us (Circa 1974)

Back in 1974 news reports were the mirror opposite of today. Ocean temperatures were dropping, polar ice was growing, and the coldest temperatures in 200 years were being recorded at the Arctic Circle.

The media told us we should be worried, very worried.

Continue Reading December 17, 2010 at 7:34 pm

Forty Years of Drama Queen Scientists

No matter what the concern, drama queen scientists have been pushing the same solution for decades: less consumption, less travel & less freedom. For them, every problem is a crisis that requires radical social change.

Continue Reading December 13, 2010 at 7:22 pm

If the Science is So Persuasive, Why the Theatrics?

If climate change science is so convincing, why did Timothy Wirth schedule James Hansen’s historic 1988 testimony during the hottest time of the year? And why did he sneak into the hearing room the night before & open the windows so there’d be no air conditioning?

Continue Reading December 11, 2010 at 4:29 pm

World War II Rationing – the ‘Hated Sacrifice’

Some people argue that energy rationing of the sort imposed during wartime is necessary to save the planet. But World War II rationing made life miserable for ordinary people. It also nourished the black market & organized crime.

Continue Reading December 1, 2010 at 4:11 pm

The Royal Society’s Big Oil Award

The UK’s Royal Society awarded an Esso Energy medal annually for 25 years. A short time later, when opinions on climate change diverged, the society began painting Esso’s parent company, ExxonMobil, as demon spawn.

Continue Reading November 29, 2010 at 9:31 pm

The Non-Stop Disaster Narrative (2-minute video)

One environmental scare story always seems to follow another. Even though the predicted disasters never materialize, we still believe the latest one.

Continue Reading November 22, 2010 at 3:29 pm

Wind and Solar in Fantasy Land

A + B = C

A: Certain companies produce wind and solar power.
B: The rest of us pay inflated prices for this power.
C: Politicians point to the above as proof that they’re green.

Continue Reading November 2, 2010 at 11:22 am

Are Humans Parasites?

Hostage-taker James Lee’s views about the planet being better off without humans are chillingly similar to those expressed by The Ecologist magazine in its debut editorial.

Continue Reading September 7, 2010 at 10:39 am

1969 Climate Predictions Miss by a Mile

Back in 1969, smart people made some predictions regarding the effect carbon dioxide emissions would have on the climate by the year 2000. A 7-degree F increase in temperature and 10-foot sea level rises were among them. As usual, the predictions were wrong.

Continue Reading July 3, 2010 at 10:50 am

Earth Day & the Media

A historian says that while “other social movements…were frequently ridiculed or dismissed…the mass media accorded considerable respect to the environmental cause” when Earth Day was founded 40 years ago.

Continue Reading April 22, 2010 at 1:18 pm

Independent Bloggers vs Corporate Environmentalists

30 years ago Greenpeace rented creaky fishing boats. These days it purchases $22-million custom-built mega-yachts. The shoestring voices in the environmental debate now belong to skeptical bloggers.

Continue Reading February 22, 2010 at 4:29 pm

The Cult of the Expert

Experts have often been spectacularly wrong. Believing their predictions – rather than thinking for ourselves – isn’t smart.

Continue Reading February 16, 2010 at 11:56 am

A Bogus 21-Year-Old Climate Prediction

21 years ago, environmental guru Bill McKibben said we’d “burn up” in “a few more decades” if we didn’t stop using fossil fuels.

Continue Reading February 15, 2010 at 1:08 pm

We’re Always Out-of-Touch with the Future

Scientists have made all sorts of predictions that never panned out. As this 1962 Popular Mechanics issue shows, the media has been hyping these predictions for decades.

Continue Reading February 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm

Green Time Capsule: 1970 Eco Ideas Not Pretty

The Ecologist magazine declared in its first editorial that humans are parasites, an infection, and a disease on planet Earth. We are “waste products” that long ago “ceased to play a useful ecological role.” Written by the “Godfather of Green,” this editorial is emphatically anti-humanitarian in its outlook. The Ecologist claims to have set “the environmental agenda since 1970.”

Continue Reading January 15, 2010 at 12:51 pm

The Big Picture: the Y2K Lesson

Certain ideas resurface again & again throughout human history. One of these is the notion that our world is on the brink of collapse. Revisiting news reports about the Y2K computer bug prior to the turn of the century provides an excellent reminder of how the media hypes all sorts of scare stories.

Continue Reading January 13, 2010 at 7:03 pm

Climate Psychics: 10-Year-Old Snow Prediction Fails Miserably

A decade ago, a climate scientist told the media that snow would be rare in Britain within a few years. But plenty has fallen in 9 of the last 10.

Continue Reading January 7, 2010 at 9:47 am

Global Disaster Is So 1976

30+ years ago, we were told humanity faced “global disaster” and “worldwide catastrophe” if we didn’t radically change our lifestyles. That message now gets linked to global warming, but the analysis – and the fear mongering – is much older.

Continue Reading December 20, 2009 at 11:13 am

ClimateGate Links

Links to some early reactions and analysis following the release into the public domain of a collection of documents that has come to be called “climategate.”

Continue Reading December 14, 2009 at 7:48 am

Our Hyperactive Planet

Planet Earth experiences frequent volcanoes, earthquakes, electrical storms, tsunamis & tornadoes. It’s unlikely that this immense, complex system can be controlled by humans.

Continue Reading December 8, 2009 at 6:36 pm

We HAVE Heard This Rhetoric Before

A book published in the 1970s argued passionately that society couldn’t afford to ignore the danger posed by global cooling. The evidence was too strong, it said – and scientists who disagreed were being irresponsible. Sound familiar?

Continue Reading December 8, 2009 at 12:59 pm

Scientific Organizations – Should We Trust Them?

Since the 1970s, some scientists have embraced social & political activism. The public needs to be aware, therefore, that not every pronouncement made by a “scientist” is neutral or disinterested.

Continue Reading November 17, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Political Idealogues Are Bad for the Environment

When political ideology is taken to an extreme, when it becomes the primary driving force behind decision-making, really bad things happen to both humans and the environment. Mao’s War Against Nature is a scary book – and a cautionary tale.

Continue Reading October 24, 2009 at 9:48 am

Al Gore Thinks Your Brain Is Too Primitive

It seems not to have crossed Al Gore’s mind that some of us consider his arguments flawed, his data suspect & his rhetoric overwrought. Instead, he prefers to believe that human neo cortexes are too primitive – that we’re biologically incapable of grasping his apocalyptic message.

Continue Reading July 18, 2009 at 12:11 am

James Hansen and the Experts

Activist scientist James Hansen says the “experts agree” that meeting our current energy needs is possible via efficiency measures & carbon-free sources. But lots of experts don’t agree. Does he make a habit of pretending those with contrary opinions don’t exist?

Continue Reading July 6, 2009 at 3:47 pm

The Wrong Trousers (Common Ground on Kyoto Between Climate Change Skeptics & Believers)

Two professors (who believe human-caused global warming is a problem) argue that the Kyoto Protocol was doomed to fail & that pushing for more policies of this sort wastes precious time.

A pragmatic analysis that reveals common ground between moderate climate activists & moderate climate skeptics.

Continue Reading June 12, 2009 at 3:51 pm

Change Happens

Billions of years before humans appeared on this planet, the climate was doing something utterly natural – it was changing.

Continue Reading April 24, 2009 at 4:10 pm


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