Wednesday, July 1, 2020

IN the NEWS - Confessions of a Green Priest

...And all the people said, Amen... 1 Chronicles 16:36

"Michael Shellenberger....Besides his TED talks garnering more
than 5 million views, he's a Green Book Award Winner, a frequent contributor to publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American...But Shellenberger said a Forbes article — "On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare" — based on his new book was soon "censored" soon after it went up Sunday.

Here's how Shellenberger opens his article: "On behalf of
environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It's just not the end of the world. It's not even our most serious environmental problem."
He also says he feels "an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public."

Shellenberger then details a list of "facts few people know":
  • 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 have been declining in rich nations including Britain, Germany and France since the mid-seventies
  • Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
  • 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
"I know that the above facts will sound like 'climate denialism' to many people," he adds. "But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.

Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that's because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an "existential" threat to human civilization, and called it a "crisis."
But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public
."

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