I agree with George Monbiot when he says
'Overwhelmingly, the risk of climate change is due to moving billions of tons of carbon from deep underground into the atmosphere.
'Over time, if we keep doing this, the chemical makeup of our atmosphere will change enough to induce meaningful climate change.'
So sorry, that was an error on my behalf. That was a tweet from Elon Musk.
It prompted a Professor Steinberger to say '@elonmusk is a climate denier. Plain and simple. End of.'
The absolutism and fractured grammar of her comment caused me to suspect that she is not an academic, but I was wrong again. She has a PhD from MIT, though that is not a qualification in the hugely complex field of climate.
It is not only her language that is breaking down, but her logic. How is Musk being a 'climate denier' by saying that atmospheric carbon emissions are likely to change our climate?
This is how: he doesn't necessarily agree with every particle of the climate activist's credo. The first part of Musk's tweet says '… what happens on Earth's surface (eg farming) has no meaningful impact on climate change.' Note the adjective: it may have an impact, but is not the main driver: he goes on to say that the climate change risk is 'overwhelmingly' from carbon emissions.
Maybe it's not even poor logic on the eco-acolyte's behalf, but poor reading skills. I suspect Professor Steinberger combusted at the first paragraph and insta-reacted. This is the world of social media: what you say has to be slogan-short, for if you make more than one point you will be pilloried for something secondary to your main argument.
'Julia is right. Musk's tweet is climate science denial. Climate breakdown, driven mainly by fossil fuel burning, farming and other land use change, is happening right now. And there is nothing more urgent or important.'
Climate science denial, tout court. Take him down! (Though even Monbiot says 'mainly.') Oh, by the way: it's no longer 'change' it's 'breakdown' - and have you noticed the phrase 'climate crisis' on the airwaves recently? It is the apocalypse, the moon shall bleed…
I suspect Monbiot was enraged by Musk's passing reference to agriculture, as this is the former's current theme: a recent video on PoliticsJOE interviewed him on 'why we need to destroy farming.' As the annual Mudstock festival ended yesterday, we remember that in 1969 Joni Mitchell sang 'we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.' Do the over-assertive socio-ecologists hanker after a second Eden, where 'the leopard shall lie down with the kid' (both munching crickets presumably)?
Ironically, liberals are illiberal. It is not enough to be inclined to their point of view; you must be an über-zealot, full of self-righteousness, fear and anger - the reason for emotion-provoking words such as 'urgent' and 'important.' Greta the Activist told us 'I want you to panic' when she was only 16.
These educated (or in Greta the Truant's case, half-educated) idiots are not the only ones who can't think straight. 'Tintin' is mocked on Twitter for saying (aged 15) that we would all be wiped out by 21 June 2023; except she didn't say that. Here is her 2018 text:
'Climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.'
Clearly it was about the need to stop using fossil fuels by last week; still completely barmy unless she was willing to contemplate the death of a great swathe of humanity, but not a prediction of human doom within half a decade.
On one side a professor, a Guardian journalist-cum-BBC-pundit and a manipulated autistic Swedish children's crusader; on the other, a brick-bat-throwing public with a poor grasp of English. Extremist, intolerant experts and a bovine-stupid demos; there is no hope. We are drowning in violent irrationality. Only disaster can save us.
Except: cui bono?
According to investigative journalist Cory Morningstar, herself ecologically-minded, there are big profits in greenwashing; read 'The manufacturing of Greta Thunberg - for consent: the political economy of the non-profit industrial complex' online here:
I think Monbiot, Steinberger et al. are sincerely and altruistically idealistic but there is a tide in the affairs of men - a strong tide of centralising power and money - that is drawing so many of us, herded together by groupthink, towards a maelstrom of seriously dangerous policy decisions.
