
On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare - mudil
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/6/29/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare
======
kick
This is a really misleading piece, by the way. This person has been speaking
against environmentalism for over a decade now; he _literally_ wrote a book
about it _sixteen years ago_ that attracted an amount of controversy. He
doesn't deserve to speak for environmentalists; his actions for the past
decade are pro-capital, any pro-environment effect was secondary. He's an
economist, not an environmentalist, and he's trying to sell you a book, not
fix anything.

~~~
gHosts
I tried to find the source for the AOC quote.... I want (as always, whether
Trump or AOC, to see the exact quote in context) and encountered a interesting
new form of obfuscation... Proof by reference to a 4 hours long video!

~~~
bioinformatics
You really should try that Google thing

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/24/ocasio-
co...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/24/ocasio-cortez-says-
world-will-end-years-she-is-absolutely-right/)

~~~
dang
Please don't be a jerk on HN, even when someone didn't Google.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
bioinformatics
Ask the person to Google is being a jerk? Wow, what a time to be alive.

~~~
gHosts
I call that one "Proof by Reference to Pay Walled Article".

That article could say absolutely anything for all I can see....

------
caconym_
So I guess the fact that he went to live in the jungle as a kid is supposed to
prove he isn't a crank now, 20+ years later? That's really, really not how it
works.

I definitely think a lot of the climate alarm is hyperbolic and
misrepresentative, but not so much in the sense that it isn't a problem as
that it's a problem that will only become obvious to laypeople long after the
chance to prevent it from killing a lot of them is past.

If he wants to convince me, he needs to do a lot less talking about how
virtuous he is, less talking about his new book, and more showing me real data
and scientific results.

------
wilburTheDog
It appears the author wants to convince us of his credentials as a progressive
and then use any good will that generates to try and persuade us that
environmentally progressive ideas are wrong. He claims we have been 'badly
misinformed' by people with 'unsavory or unhealthy motivations'. But this
synopsis of his book makes it look like it could have been written by a
coalition of lobbyists from the meat and nuclear industries. Who are we to
trust?

Also I think it's interesting that the only positive review he includes is
from Richard Rhodes. I have never read anything from Richard Rhodes, but the
second amazon review of his book Energy: A Human History has this to say 'the
author is highly skeptical about renewable sources like wind and solar, waxing
instead about the lost promise of nuclear'.

------
wyldfire
It always seemed to me like the greatest hedge we could have is having human
colonies on other planets. Because global disasters of so many kinds could sum
up to extinction. While I realize that could be many decades away, it does
seem like prioritizing it would make it happen much faster.

> The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is
> moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium

This seems to match my intuition.

> Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and
> palm oil did

What was the motivation for that switch? Petroleum/palm oil was cheaper?

> 100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from
> today’s 0.5% to 50%

That seems astonishing, not just that it would require so much but that our
current use is already so much area.

~~~
pintxo
> Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and
> palm oil did

According to [1]: The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led
to the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969, and to a worldwide
cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s.

This does sound more like Greenpeace (founded 1971) being the reason than
switching to petroleum (no reason to expect much use for whale oil past WW2)
to me. But surely Greenpeace is not the only reason.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling)

~~~
gHosts
There are quite a few remnants of the Whaling industry around NZ... it's clear
that one of the major reasons was they were so damn near extinct it wasn't
anywhere close to energy profitable to hunt them anymore.

For some phantasmagorical stubborn up yours world, various nations continue to
hunt them. Sea shepherds have been fighting that sort of crassness.

------
anarbadalov
So many sweeping unsubstantiated claims in this piece — and from a non-
scientist. Enough straw men in this article to populate a city.

------
pmiller2
Is there even a shred of credible evidence for any of the following:

> Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

> The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

> Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

> Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

> The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has
> declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

> The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change,
> explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and
> California

> Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining
> in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s

> Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level

> We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to
> rise as the world gets hotter

> Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to
> species than climate change

> Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels

> Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

Beyond the literal truth or falsity of the claims, how do they fit together
into an argument that shows climate change is _not_ an existential threat to
human civilization? Last I checked, there was broad scientific consensus that
climate change was real, caused (or, at least exacerbated) by humans, and
would have massive impacts on human civilization. And then there's this person
coming along and saying "Nahhh, none of this is a problem."

Who should I believe?

~~~
aquova
I get the impression that this guy is primarily out to sell his book, which he
spends quite a bit of time talking about how great it is. As for the points he
mentions, some are clearly false.

> The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has
> declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

With global population trends, even if average meat consumption is starting to
decrease, the amount of livestock raised will still increase. I actually found
it difficult to find a good measurement, but this site seemed to be credible
[https://ourworldindata.org/land-use](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use)

> Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

This seems to be untrue, at least in the US - [https://www.epa.gov/climate-
indicators/climate-change-indica...](https://www.epa.gov/climate-
indicators/climate-change-indicators-wildfires)

> Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to
> species than climate change

> Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

Which is it? Are we not causing any issues, or are we destroying native
habitats?

In the end, I don't really know who this guy is, but for all the fundraising
he did as a teenager, I don't think he's doing environmentalists any favors
anymore.

~~~
iamstupidsimple
Developed nations are shrinking. Why won't global population do the same, long
term?

~~~
pmiller2
Bold of you to assume we'll reach the long term.

------
rich_sasha
I’d like to think it is true. But who do I ask? Who do I believe? Combatant
environmentalists who look at vegetarians with hate? Climate change deniers?
Institutions who have vested interests? Scientists with conflicting views?

We’re so deep into a world where “truth” is merely an instrument of debate,
bent and shaped into whatever point is trying to make, that I don’t know where
to start...

------
chmaynard
Who exactly is Michael Shellenberger and what is his game? It's pretty clear
that he is not a trained scientist or a journalist. What qualifies him to
speak for those of us who are concerned about climate change and issue an
apology on our behalf? Seems rather grandiose to me. I'm thinking pundit with
political ambitions.

~~~
kick
He ran for governor of California a bit ago. His career has been built around
selling books.

------
anoncareer0212
#1) it's good to see alternative viewpoints on global warming, Michael is
excellent for sharpening yourself on it #2) reading michael is an exercise in
the limits of the slippery slope: he will show the Amazon isn't the "lungs of
the earth", in that he will show why eliminating it doesn't mean we'll run out
of oxygen, but he won't show that it is meaningless #3) after swimming around
his arguments for a few months, your focus may (or may not!) turn to "well,
even if we can say each part is overwrought, the whole effect and trend line
is a major problem - swallowing a 5 degree celsius increase in temperature is,
rather intuitively, a problem, particularly when we still have the _3rd_
derivative increasing"

------
jacknews
"Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level "

LOL, we can all relax and look forward to a prosperous future then.

------
mulmen
> Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels.

Can someone help me with this? I just moved and have both a fireplace and
natural gas furnace. I had intended to supplement the furnace with wood heat
in the winter. In what ways is wood worse than natural gas?

I can imagine a few but I’m not sure they are right:

Wood disadvantages:

Local air quality

Removal of trees

Wood advantages:

Renewable

Neutral greenhouse gas emissions (?)

Abundant (in my area)

Natural gas disadvantages:

Finite resource

Greenhouse gas emissions(?)

Natural gas advantages:

Better local air quality than wood(?)

~~~
mcphage
My understanding is that the particulates caused by wood fires are terrible
for our lungs, especially inside houses: [https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-
delusion/](https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/)

~~~
mulmen
Thanks, this is exactly the kind of starting point I was looking for.

~~~
mcphage
You're welcome :-)

------
haltingproblem
Michael Crichton's famous speech "Alien's cause global warming" is reprised in
[1]. Is there truth in the environmental claims. I am sure there is. The
environmental movement and climate scientists have shifted to activism that it
is hard to differentiate truth and science from activism and propaganda.

They environmentalists and their activism appears like a cross between Big
Tobacco marketing, PETA and the Westboro baptist Church with a dash of
Scientology thrown in for good measure.

Tell me about that other planet colonization thing again ;)

In all seriousness, who here really thinks we will have mass deaths, upwards
of 10% of the population of the earth in the next 10 year timeframe from
global warming? What about 15 years? 20 years?

How about 5%? What odds are you proffering and how much would you like to
wager on it?

[1] [https://mindmatters.ai/2020/06/twenty-years-on-aliens-
still-...](https://mindmatters.ai/2020/06/twenty-years-on-aliens-still-cause-
global-warming/)

~~~
Oletros
> and climate scientists have shifted to activism that it is hard to
> differentiate truth and science from activism and propaganda.

Any example of this?

------
iamstupidsimple
Climate alarm-ism has honestly set back the whole movement in my opinion. For
decades, we've only been 10 years away from extinction and it gave
conservatives all the ammo needed to write climate change off as fake. Heck,
even The Simpsons mocked this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epKaBv6ALcI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epKaBv6ALcI)

~~~
smohare
Except that’s entirely the denialist straw man. It’s not we’re going to face a
cosmic ray style annihilation in 10 years, but rather that we’re cavalierly
approaching tipping points that will likely have repercussions for 10,000
years.

~~~
iamstupidsimple
But it's a fact the situation, while serious, was massively overblown and
became politicised. We may all be killed by climate change one day, and we
need to act now, but we aren't going to die in ten years if nothing changes.

Making the situation out to be the end of the world, short term, is how you
lose the support of the general public.

