Acts of Heroism in the Face of Recent Consensus Demands

 Jeffrey A. Tucker wrote a marvelous article: 

Jay Bhattacharya: A Rare Act of Heroism in the Pandemic Era

It is very much worth reading at Savvy Street, which is a publication website which is often worth reading.  The article is primarily a discussion of the absolute demand for consensus on the response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, despite the massive errors of that demanded response.  Those who stood against the tide lost badly in their careers, but fought the good fight heroically.

There is a parallel to this quote from the article that I will comment on below:

The popular press began to go after him savagely, smearing both the study and his motivations (this later became outright censorship). At this point, he began to realize the intensity of the campaign against dissent and the push for full unity in favor of the policy response. It was not like normal times when scientists could disagree. This was something different, something fully militarized, when a “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” consensus was being demanded by every institution. That meant no heresies against orthodoxy were allowed.

The reaction to critics, such as myself, of catastrophic man-made global warming, now called vaguely and unscientifically climate change, was similar, though a bit longer in developing. There is a difference between being told we will all die in 10 years and being told we will all die in the next few months. Nonetheless, professors lost their jobs or lost their funding. Critics in industry lost contracts, other business, and promotions. All of the critics were accused of being on the take from the oil and gas industries, despite the fact that those industries turned tail quickly. Most of the active critics from academia became active only after they retired, but then many died within a few years, so their opposition was of brief duration.

Just as the consensus response to SARS-CoV-2 was in massive error, so too has been that of attributing to additions of atmospheric CO2 the power to bring on a catastrophe for mankind. The rapid saturation of the warming effects, ignoring cooling effects while exaggerating warming effects due to fundamental physics errors, manipulating the surface temperature record to warm it in the present and cool it in the past, ignoring the advantages of a warmer climate and of more plant nourishment from the atmosphere, claiming much greater increases in atmospheric CO2 than is likely, greatly over-estimating property damage due to rising oceans, falsely claiming severe weather events have and will increase, and even claiming that more people will die from heat while disregarding that fewer will die from cold -- these are some examples of the massive errors of those claiming a looming climate disaster due to the use of carbon-based fuels, concrete, and meats.

Legalized climate grifting by Paul Driessen

 Legalized climate grifting 

Bill Gates and climatist collaborators are taking taxpayers and consumers on trillion-dollar rides 

Paul Driessen

Grifters have long fascinated us. Operating outside accepted moral standards, they excel at persuading their “marks” to hand valuables over willingly. If they ever represented a “distinctly American ethos,” they’ve been supplanted by con artists seeking bank accounts for funds abandoned by Nigerian princes. 

Their artful dodging is epitomized by Frank Abagnale daring the FBI to “catch me if you can,” Anna Delvey inventing Anna Sorokin, Redford and Newman masterminding their famous Sting, and dirty, rotten scoundrels like Steve Martin, Michael Caine and Glenn Headly.  

However, they were all pikers compared to the billion-dollar stratagems being carried off by Climate Armageddon grifters like Bill Gates, Al Gore, Elon Musk and Biden Climate Envoy John Kerry. 

Their long cons are not only unprecedented in size and complexity. They represent the greatest wealth transfer in history, from poor and middle class families to the wealthiest on Earth. Most important, the plundering has been legalized by laws, regulations, treaties and executive orders, often implemented at the behest of the schemers and their lobbyists.

(You have to wonder how Mark Twain would update his suggestion that “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”) 

They and their politician, activist, scientist, corporate and media allies profit mightily, but legally, if not unethically, from foundation grants, government payouts and subsidies, and taxpayer and consumer payments based on claims that Earth faces manmade climate cataclysms. That most of us are willingly giving money to mandated “renewable energy” schemes and other corrupt practices is questionable. 

Microsoft co-founder Gates’ estimated 2022 post-divorce net worth of some $130 billion enables him to donate hundreds of millions to social, health, environmental and corporate media causes. That usually shields him from tough questions. 

But BBC media editor Amol Rajan recently asked Mr. Gates to answer charges that he’s “a hypocrite,” for claiming to be “a climate change campaigner” while traveling the world on his luxurious private jets – often to confabs where global elites discuss how we commoners can enjoy simpler, fossil-fuel-free lives: what size our homes can be, how and how much we can heat them, what foods we can eat and how we can cook them, what cars we can drive, whether we can fly anywhere on vacation, what our kids will learn in school, and more. 

Caught flatfooted, Gates defended his use of fuel-guzzling, carbon-spewing jetliners by claiming he purchases “carbon credits” to offset his profligate energy consumption. He also said he visits Africa and Asia to learn about farming and malaria, and spends billions on “climate innovations.” 

Indeed, Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need” calls for replacing beef with synthetic meat. Cattle emit methane, a greenhouse gas (00.00019% of Earth’s atmosphere) – so people should eat fake meat processed from vegetable oil, veggies and insects. 

You may say, That’s disgusting. But Mr. Gates will profit mightily if his “recommendation” is adopted. He’s a major investor in farmland and the imitation meat company Impossible Foods, as is Mr. Gore. 

How cool! Wealthy elites can save the world and get richer at the same time! 

Beyond Meat’s stock may be down more than 75% from its one-time high, but investors will likely bring  in lots more cash via new “climate-saving” diktats, while consumers are left holding bags of rotting bug and lab-grown burgers. 

Carbon offsets? In the real world they’re part of the problem, not the solution. They don’t help Main Street; they too help rich Climate Armageddon Club members become wealthier. 

Gates Foundation grants could prevent extensive African misery, brain damage and death from malaria, by spotting disease outbreaks and eradicating Anopheles mosquito infestations – today. But it’s spending millions trying to engineer plasmodium-resistant mosquitoes, which may pay off a decade from now. 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. continues pocketing billions selling and trading carbon credits. In fact, between 2015 and 2020, the company received $1.3 billion from selling credits to other companies – more than twice what it earned from automotive sales. Times sure have changed since manufacturing tycoons got rich selling products, instead of hawking climate indulgences. 

Musk also loves flying in private jets. Last summer, he even took a 9-minute, 55-mile flight from San Francisco to San Jose, instead of driving a Tesla. Wags might say that goes well with the way he and others have made a science of lobbying government agencies to subsidize fire-prone electric cars. 

It’s all to protect the environment, of course – which is why Gore, Gates, Musk and Kerry think they’re entitled to travel by private jet and limousine. We’re also supposed to ignore how their cars and lifestyles are based on metals extracted and processed with African child labor and lakes of toxic chemicals. 

Since Al Gore left the vice president’s office, he’s hauled in some $330 million railing about “rain bombs” and “boiling oceans,” and shilling for government and corporate “investments” in “green energy” that’s also reliant on supply chains running through Africa and China. 

Never forget this fundamental rule: Wind and sunshine are clean, renewable and sustainable. However, harnessing these unreliable, weather-dependent energy sources to power modern economies requires millions of tons of metals and minerals extracted from billions of tons of ores, mostly using dirty, polluting processes in countries that are conveniently out of sight and mind. 

In short, nothing about “renewable energy” is clean, renewable, sustainable, fair or equitable. 

Moreover, the “climate crisis” is based on computer models that predict hurricane, tornado, flood, drought, sea level rise and other disasters vastly greater than the world is actually experiencing. The models also ignore five great ice ages and interglacial periods, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, the Anasazi and Mayan droughts, and other inconvenient climate truths. 

Topping it off, China, Russia and India are burning cheap coal to industrialize, lift people out of poverty, and leave climate-obsessed Western nations in the economic and military dust. Even if the West went totally Net Zero, it wouldn’t reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases even one part per million.  

The climate change movement’s deceptions and contradictions seem to have no bounds – and know no apparent limits to how much loot they can rake in by lobbying federal, state and local governments, banks and financial institutions; waging media warfare; and engaging in political science with similarly minded legislators and regulators who control climate and energy laws, mandates, grants and subsidies. 

What about ESG, financial disclosure, SVB, Credit Suisse, fiduciary responsibility, and accountability? 

How can the general public be so oblivious to all of this?

FTX founder and alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried revealed the secret. He avoided media and regulator scrutiny by donating to influential media outlets, the way Bill Gates does. That garners favorable press and social media – which also ignore, cancel and deplatform critics and skeptics. 

Fortunately, gutsy interrogators like Rajan are discovering and publicizing what most of the bought-and-paid-for “journalist classes” still won’t. This helps more people see behind the curtain and find the self-interest, self-dealing and pseudo-science that create the scary climate crisis monsters. 

Climate Armageddon Club games are costing us trillions of dollars, in the name of saving people and planet. Hopefully, more real journalists, troves of Twitter emails (this time kudos to Mr. Musk!) and congressional investigations will save taxpayers and families from additional costly, destructive policies. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.