American Elephants

This winter has been mild in many parts of the U.S., but in Europe it has been a killer. Four hundred people have died in one of the worst winters in memory.  In the Ukraine, 122 people died as temperatures have dropped to as low as -22°. This is, of course, the fault of Global Warming.

You see, meteorologists say that ice-free seas in the arctic last summer, caused by global warming, exposed huge areas of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere above, bringing bitterly cold weather to Britain and the rest of Europe. The loss of arctic sea ice could be influencing high-pressure weather systems over northern Russia that bring very cold winds from the arctic and Siberia to Western Europe and the British Isles, scientists said.

On the other hand, global warming activist and environmental gadfly Bill McKibben saw the new picture of Earth from NASA (above) with Baja California and Arizona lacking snow and ice in the southern U.S. and sees it as a complete validation of a gigantic CO2 bubble invisibly hanging over Earth, soon to burst and create devastation on all the world. He sees a new offensive going on by climate change deniers, financed by Big Oil. We cannot survive, he says, if the Earth warms by 2 degrees.

The giant energy companies, McKibben says, are making way too much money and have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons, which must stay in the ground.  If the oil companies are forced to write off $20 trillion worth of assets it would be an economic disaster, so obviously Big Oil is supporting all those terrible people who deny the impending disaster of climate change.

In the activist playbook, if the organization. such as the Manhattan Institute or the George Marshall Institute receive donations from ExxonMobil, then they are “funded” by Big Oil. Climate change skeptics do not “deny” global warming— they agree that the Earth’s climate is always warming and cooling. They suggest that there is no evidence whatsoever of catastrophic warming, that the Earth has not warmed at all since 2000, and that you shouldn’t confuse “weather” and “climate.” McKibben remains a true-believer, and nothing will sway him.

In Europe, in Germany’s leading daily Bild, the headline read “THE CO2 LIES…pure fear-mongering… should we blindly trust the experts?” One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and  green activist co-authored a skeptical climate science book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning.  Vahrenholt was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors, but IPCC officials brushed them aside. More research convinced him that the science was politicized, hence the book. Der Spiegel also has a front page article.  In Germany this is a very big deal for Germany has been very green.

What is happening is that the financial crisis has made many citizens take a harder look at what is being accomplished by their huge investments in “alternative energy.”The answer seems to be — not much. Those who promoted huge investments in wind and solar are on the defensive. Energy costs are high, and energy produced is not much. There are no green jobs. The Netherlands has turned down more wind turbines (the windmill is for many of us the symbol of Holland). Spain has had a real expose of the economic failure of their investments in wind and solar. Everywhere there are doubts and questions and pushback against the environmental bureaucracy.  It’s an interesting time.