A Remunerative Religion
Understanding the Climate Cult.
By JOHN LEAKE
In the year 1986, when I was sixteen years old, I founded the Save the Earth Club, which I believe was the first high school environmental organization in Texas. Dallas in those days was heavily influenced by the oil industry, and a lot of people thought I was unhinged. Maybe I was. At any rate, my adolescent brain was given to apocalyptic images of planet earth and all of its beautiful forests, oceans, and creatures going up in smoke. If only humanity weren’t so terribly selfish, greedy, and wasteful, I thought. Then we would all be saved and live in harmony with nature instead of dominating and exploiting it.
Looking back, I believe I was in the grip of powerful yearnings for absolution, salvation and redemption. And boy, was I a sucker for anyone who claimed to offer a solution. I gave much of my spare money to Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and other environmental non-profit organizations. During my freshman year in college, I worked for Greenpeace in Boston as a telephone fundraiser, and I briefly contemplated dropping out of college to become a full time Eco-Warrior.
Greenpeace got its start protesting atomic bomb testing and the commercial whaling industry. I thought of this last night when I saw a news report about humpback whales washing up on the New Jersey Shore in an area where preparations are underway for a large-scale, offshore wind farm.
A bit of learning that ultimately helped me to overcome my attachment to the Environmental Cult came from my high school physics teacher, who did an excellent job of explaining the Laws of Thermodynamics and the related law of the Conservation of Energy. I remain grateful to him, because his lessons later spared me from the monstrous ignorance that now shapes public perceptions of so-called Renewable Energy.
Consider the energy required to build a single large wind turbine. First there’s the site preparation with excavators and bulldozers (burning diesel). Turbines in the 1 to 2 MW range typically use 130 to 240 m3 of concrete for the foundation. This means: 1). Excavating and hauling cement, sand, and gravel for concrete (burning diesel) 3). Hauling concrete to site (diesel). 4) Laying concrete foundation (diesel).
This is just the foundation. Then you get into the massive, energy intensive business of building and hauling the gigantic turbine blades. Mining and refining and manufacturing all of the steel for the blades and the copper power cable. Miles of the latter must be run underground in order to connect the turbine to the power grid. On and on it goes.
Then there’s the terrible inefficiency of wind turbines—which only deliver significant power to the grid for a relatively small period per year—and their short lifespan of around 20 years, at which point they must be dismantled and the giant blades hauled off and buried. Finally, wind turbines are murderous for migratory birds and (if suspicions prove to be correct) migrating whales. Compared to natural gas—an abundant, high density, clean-burning energy mass that can be efficiently transported through existing pipelines—wind turbines are of abysmal utility.
Examine any major “Climate Initiative” and you’ll see that it doesn’t square with math and the Laws of Thermodynamics. If the mega billionaires of the world really want to reduce the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, they would get serious about economic investment in tropical nations that continue to clear rainforest for palm oil plantations and other low-yielding economic activities. Bill Gates could easily scratch a check for the entire palm oil industry of Borneo, thereby saving its rainforests and orangutans from incineration.
If the State of California were serious about preventing carbon from entering the atmosphere, it would start MANAGING its forests through judicious logging in order to prevent massive forrest fires. According to a recent LA Times report, the 2020 California wildfire season wiped out TWO DECADES of California emission reduction efforts. And yet, instead of managing their forests, California’s imbecilic politicians are now chattering about banning natural gas stoves.
How to explain this nonsense? For starters, the Climate Cult is able to harness very powerful yearnings like those that gripped me when I was a dumb adolescent. Secondly, because profligate politicians with access to unlimited debt financing have gotten in on the act, the “Renewable Energy” industry has become an absolute bonanza.
Dear Readers,
As always, we are extremely grateful for your comments. We are always touched by your kind words of praise and encouragement, and strive to learn from your constructive criticism. I (John Leake) am especially grateful for the extremely informative feedback to this particular post. I'm heartened to see how many now understand the the Climate and Vaccine Cults are closely related, as are the high priests running them.
Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, http://www.theenergyreport.com/pub/na/11079 and whose boat I have personally been on in Vancouver Harbour in the 1980s.
“I am a skeptic on climate change. I know the climate is changing, and it always has been. I've studied this intensively over many years. I started what I call the Carbon Project here in British Columbia back in 1989 in order to bring everybody together to discuss this subject and figure out the facts behind it. Since then, I have watched as hysteria has grown, as if the whole world is going to come to an end and civilization is going to die because of humans causing this climate change. I don't buy that, and I certainly know we don't have any proof of it. I'm not denying that we might be playing some role, but the natural factors that have always caused climate change have not suddenly disappeared. I'm very skeptical of the alarmist nature of climate campaigning.” –
Moore, an ecologist and the co-founder of Greenpeace, also has said “We are dealing with pure political propaganda that has nothing to do with science,” while returning to Dr. Will Happer physicist at Princeton Univ, who has stated “Policies to slow CO2 emissions are really based on nonsense,” at a Texas Public Policy Foundation meeting. Happer, Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT and others at this meeting said claims of the hottest year on record are “nonsense” because there’s so much uncertainty surrounding surface temperature readings — especially since scientists often make lots of adjustments to weather station readings
In 2014, famed astronaut Walt Cunningham went to that year’s global warming UN climate Summit and called the whole AGW gambit "one of the biggest frauds in the field of science."
John Coleman, founder Weather Channel during interview on CNN: "I resent you calling me a denier, that's a word to put me down." Like holocaust denier..."There is no consensus in science. Science is not a vote. Science is about facts. And if you get down to the hard cold facts, there is no question about it: climate change is not happening, there is no significant man-made global warming now and there hasn't be any in the past and there is no reason to expect any in the future. There is a whole lot of baloney and yes it has become a big political point of the democratic party and part of their platform and I regret that this issue has become political instead of scientific. But the science is on my side. The 97% of scientists that claim there is global warming is a political figure. The government puts out 2.5 billion dollars directly for climate research every year. It only gives that money to scientists who will produce scientific results to support the global warming hypothese of the democrat party position. So they don't have any choice, if you gonna get the money, you got to support their position. Therefor 97% of the scientific reports published support global warming. Why? Because those are the ones the government pays for, that's where the money is. It is really simple. That doesn't mean it is right. That doesn't make it true. That only makes it bottom paid for. The money goes in circle….Please stand back from this issue and let the two sides be on the air. There are 31,000 scientists who signed the petition that says it is not valid, that my position is correct and we will keep battling and we will prevail in time…."I hope you go to the websites that present the papers that show that none of this alarmism about ice, and heat waves and drought, "sky falling", none of this is happening…."The weather channel has bought in to it. They drank the cool aid. But so is all the media, that's not big surprise….Many programs they put on on tv... They are not reasonable. They put on their climate geeks, those are not scientists, those are nuts. They never put on a real skeptical scientist. They don't give us any spot on their channels…."I am terribly disappointed. I created a channel to give people their weather, where they live, in their region, and keep them posted on the weather and serve a real purpose. And that channel has been totally distorted and become stranger it can be."