Day: September 18, 2023

Canadian Academics: Climate Change Assemblies could Break Political Deadlocks

The Academics admit “many Canadians are polarized along party lines” – but think the solution is to change how “representatives” are selected.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

The Academics admit “many Canadians are polarized along party lines” – but think the solution is to change how “representatives” are selected.

How climate assemblies can help Canada tackle the climate crisis

Published: September 15, 2023 5.28am AEST
Simon Pek Associate Professor of Business and Society, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria
Lorin Busaan PhD Student, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria

…

Unfortunately, Canada has consistently failed to make a significant contribution to this broader effort. And this failure is due, in no small part to political polarization and a corresponding inability of governments to follow through on high-level commitments. We argue that climate assemblies can be a powerful tool in moving past these limitations and driving meaningful action on climate policy, if designed and executed thoughtfully.

…

The challenges of climate policy are exacerbated by Canada’s political context as an oil and gas producing country. Indeed, many Canadians are polarized along party lines when it comes to key tensions concerning economic and climate policy, including when it comes to phasing out oil and gas, and how it relates to Canada’s future economy. 

…

Climate assemblies are part of a broader family of democratic innovations referred to as “deliberative mini-publics.” They gather a representative slice of a given population selected through a lottery to study, deliberate and make recommendations about a specific climate-related topic. 

…

Climate assemblies’ distinctive blend of characteristics gives them many advantages over other political institutions. With lottery selection, participants are less likely to represent political or special interests, enabling them to be more impartial and adopt a longer-term perspective that takes account of future generations.

…Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-climate-assemblies-can-help-canada-tackle-the-climate-crisis-210843

Britain has a climate assembly, though unlike the Canadian proposal it is an advisory body rather than a legislative body. The GWPF claim the British climate assembly process is rigged:

Environmentalists tried to sidestep democratic process

London, 29 January: The UK Climate Assembly, which claimed to have delivered a mandate for a green revolution, could not have delivered a mandate of any kind, according to a new analysis published by the Global Warming Policy Forum.

According to the report’s author, Ben Pile, the Assembly was set up to deliver a preordained result:

It was in no way a democratic process. Almost everyone involved with convening the assembly, and almost everyone who spoke to it, was involved with environmental campaigning to some extent. Most can be linked to a small group of wealthy environmental funders.”

Pile says that the Assembly was actually set up because the public were unpersuaded of the case for radical action.

Politicians agreed the net zero target without debate and at best lukewarm public support. The Assembly was an attempt to provide a justification for strong policy measures, but it is ridiculous to suggest that a project like this could deliver some sort of a mandate. The assembly was an attempt to sidestep the democratic process.”

The UK Climate Assembly: Manufacturing Mandates can be downloaded hereSource: Net Zero Watch

Venezuela loves rigged citizens assemblies, in 2017 Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro used a rigged citizen assembly to dismantle the last vestiges of genuine Venezuelan democracy.

Venezuela’s controversial new Constituent Assembly, explained

Analysis by Jennifer L. McCoy
August 1, 2017 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

…

Why did the government hold this vote?

The government said it was to bring peace to the conflicted country, but it was widely seen as a move to avoid holding other scheduled elections that the government expected to lose — including elections for governors and mayors in 2017 and for president in 2018.

The government’s approval rating has hovered around 20 percent because of the weakening economy, shortages of food and medicine, and the Supreme Court’s controversial decision to curtail the authority of the legislature. The resulting protests have left more than 100 dead, and at least 10 more died during Sunday’s vote.

What is a constituent assembly?

President Hugo Chávez established a similar body in 1999 that was intended to give the people “originary” power. Venezuelan constituent assemblies have the authority not only to change the constitution but also to dismiss existing officials and institutions.

…

The election’s rules were heavily biased in favor of Maduro’s government. Instead of “one-person, one-vote,” every municipality in the country elected one delegate and state capitals elected two, no matter the size of the town or city. In addition, a proportion of delegates was reserved for selection by members of specified organizations such as students, workers and indigenous groups. This helped ensure that a larger number of delegates would come from constituencies favorable to Maduro, even if the opposition participated.

The vote lacked many of the safeguards normally present in Venezuelan elections. The government agency in charge of the election skipped 14 of the 21 audits of the automated system, did not use indelible ink, and allowed people to vote anywhere in their city, not only where they were registered. Ballots didn’t even have names of candidates, just numbers.

…Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/01/venezuelas-dubious-new-constituent-assembly-explained/

The scientists behind this climate assembly proposal claim that Canadians are split along party lines, yet somehow they believe their climate assembly would produce a more climate friendly outcome than representative democracy? How could this possibly be the case, unless the assembly process is flawed, and somehow doesn’t genuinely represent the will of the Canadian people?

The track record of non representative citizens assemblies in other countries is not good. Even in places like Britain, where they have no legislative authority, they are criticised as sham bodies which don’t properly represent the people.

In my opinion this proposal is not a genuine attempt to improve democracy, it is an attack on democracy.

In a real democracy, you don’t sway policy by changing the system, you change the system by persuading people to vote for different candidates. But the academics pushing this climate assembly idea seem to have implicitly given up on the idea of persuading voters to support stronger climate action. Instead, the academics appear to be looking for ways to change the democratic process, to produce the outcome they want.

Whale-Sized Revolt: Fishermen Slam Biden’s Offshore Wind Power Disaster

The wind industry is determined to destroy the marine environment along the Atlantic coast; its fishermen are even more determined to stop them.
As whale carcasses mount up along the coastline, those who depend on the sea for their livelihoods have turned on the offshore wind industry and its government enablers, with a vengeance.

From STOP THESE THINGS

The wind industry is determined to destroy the marine environment along the Atlantic coast; its fishermen are even more determined to stop them.

As whale carcasses mount up along the coastline, those who depend on the sea for their livelihoods have turned on the offshore wind industry and its government enablers, with a vengeance.

As Josh Christenson reports below, the wind industry and its spin doctors have a whale-sized revolt and their hands, one which won’t be placated with the industry’s usual soft soap, gaslighting approach.

RI fishermen’s board resigns en masse over Biden admin-backed offshore wind farm: ‘Wholesale ocean destruction’
New York Post
Josh Christenson
5 September 2023

A plan backed by the Biden administration to OK a string of wind farms off Rhode Island has prompted every member of a fishing regulatory board in the state to resign.

The entire Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit en masse Friday to protest the 84-turbine Sunrise Wind project after the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council approved the third offshore wind farm in two years off the Ocean State’s waters.

The project falls under President Biden’s executive order authorizing his Interior Department to double US offshore wind capacity by 2030. With the project’s approval, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is on track to finish reviews for 16 wind farms by 2025.

But foes including the fishing board say the Sunrise plan ignores environmental regulations and anglers’ concerns

In a letter addressed to CRMC Executive Director Jeff Willis, the nine-member fishermen’s panel said its regulatory role had been reduced to “political theater,” as the state continues to defer to developers such as the Danish wind giant Orsted.

“We will not allow our names to be connected in any way to Council approvals now amounting to wholesale ocean destruction,” wrote board members Lanny Dellinger, Christopher Brown, Michael Marchetti, Greg Mataronas, Chris Lee, Brian Thibeault, Meghan Lapp, Richard Hittinger and Rick Bellavance.

“Rhode Island is supposed to be the Ocean State, not the Windmill State.”

The board said it was drawing specific attention to the project’s violations of state environmental protection requirements, as well as warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about its effects on Atlantic cod.

A letter addressed two days earlier to Willis from another board member, who also chairs the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, raised concerns about the effects on recreational tuna fishing in the region.

“Our members are shocked at the scale of the current development now occurring on their fishing grounds but are being told that permitting is complete and there is no way for them to have input at this late date,” Hittinger said.

He added that the “one-sided push by developers” ensures that environmental considerations will continue to be ignored, calling the decision, “effectively a rubber stamp of the political desires of Washington, DC,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.

CRMC officials responded by saying the board members had “provided valuable information and insight” but that their resignations would not deter the project from meeting its federal mandates under the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972.

“The CRMC remains hopeful that the Rhode Island fishing community will continue to participate in the public process for reviewing offshore wind energy projects, as well as any other projects affecting the fishery resources of the State,” a rep said in a statement.

Rhode Island approved Sunrise Wind just weeks after the Biden administration gave final approval to the 65-turbine Revolution Wind project after a permit from the CRMC. In April, the administration also approved the 12-turbine South Fork Wind project after the CRMC gave a thumbs-up to that project, too.

All three projects are joint enterprises between Orsted, one of the world’s largest offshore wind developer, which is headquartered in Denmark, and the New England utility Eversource.

The approval pace has alarmed fishermen as well as local environmental groups, who say the renewable energy initiatives will eventually build around 1,000 turbines in the waters south of Rhode Island covering roughly 1,400 square miles — larger than the Ocean State itself.

The projects will cause major disruptions to commercial and recreational fishing, says one of those groups, Green Oceans, while pointing to one of the BOEM’s own assessments.

The agency’s draft environmental impact statement for the Revolution Wind project stated that there would be “no measurable influence on climate change” either.

The first offshore wind farms in the US were built off Rhode Island’s Block Island in 2016 and have also been correlated with a surge in whale deaths.

Through increased boat traffic because of construction, as well as high-decibel sonar mapping, whales are apparently being struck and killed by vessels or else disoriented and driven away from feeding grounds.

Other groups such as the Save Right Whales Coalition have noted donations from Orsted to some state environmental groups and other institutions.

In 2020, Orsted and the Revolution Wind project donated $1,250,000 to the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut to fund pro-offshore wind exhibits, the group noted in a report.

Between Dec. 1, 2022, and Aug. 25, 2023, at least 60 whale species have been found dead on the East Coast.
New York Post

Study investigates primary drivers of observed warming: challenges of inadequate data

The study, entitled The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data (August 2023), has 40 authors, some of whom are regular contributors to the ‘climate debate’ both in published papers and elsewhere. It takes a critical look at recent IPCC reports and summaries, especially the quality or otherwise of some of the data used to support its assertions. It suggests ways some of these issues could/should be addressed. Below is the abstract and the closing summary.

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

September 18, 2023 by oldbrew

The study, entitled The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data (August 2023), has 40 authors, some of whom are regular contributors to the ‘climate debate’ both in published papers and elsewhere. It takes a critical look at recent IPCC reports and summaries, especially the quality or otherwise of some of the data used to support its assertions. It suggests ways some of these issues could/should be addressed. Below is the abstract and the closing summary.
– – –
Abstract
A statistical analysis was applied to Northern Hemisphere land surface temperatures (1850–2018) to try to identify the main drivers of the observed warming since the mid-19th century.

Two different temperature estimates were considered—a rural and urban blend (that matches almost exactly with most current estimates) and a rural-only estimate. The rural and urban blend indicates a long-term warming of 0.89 °C/century since 1850, while the rural-only indicates 0.55 °C/century.

This contradicts a common assumption that current thermometer-based global temperature indices are relatively unaffected by urban warming biases.

Three main climatic drivers were considered, following the approaches adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s recent 6th Assessment Report (AR6): two natural forcings (solar and volcanic) and the composite “all anthropogenic forcings combined” time series recommended by IPCC AR6. The volcanic time series was that recommended by IPCC AR6.

Two alternative solar forcing datasets were contrasted. One was the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) time series that was recommended by IPCC AR6. The other TSI time series was apparently overlooked by IPCC AR6.

It was found that altering the temperature estimate and/or the choice of solar forcing dataset resulted in very different conclusions as to the primary drivers of the observed warming.

Our analysis focused on the Northern Hemispheric land component of global surface temperatures since this is the most data-rich component. It reveals that important challenges remain for the broader detection and attribution problem of global warming:
(1) urbanization bias remains a substantial problem for the global land temperature data;
(2) it is still unclear which (if any) of the many TSI time series in the literature are accurate estimates of past TSI;
(3) the scientific community is not yet in a position to confidently establish whether the warming since 1850 is mostly human-caused, mostly natural, or some combination.

Suggestions for how these scientific challenges might be resolved are offered.
. . .
In summary, to resolve the causes of the climate changes since the 19th century more satisfactorily, we encourage more research into the following:
1. Better quantification of the contribution of urbanization bias to current global temperature estimates.
2. Improving temperature homogenization techniques to minimize urban blending and more accurately correct for other non-climatic biases.
3. Establishing which (if any) of the current TSI datasets are most reliable. We see this as involving two distinct periods: the satellite era and the pre-satellite era. We propose that further satellite missions could help improve the former, while more sun-like star projects could help improve the latter.
4. Consideration of the possibility that current estimates of the anthropogenic contribution to recent climate change might be too high.
5. Natural climate change drivers other than TSI and volcanic activity.

Full study here.

climate-11-00179-v2-1Herunterladen

‘ExxonKnew’: More Correction

A sober look at the “ExxonKnew” campaign reveals an anti-fossil-fuel agenda inspiring a myopic view of the company’s old investigations into carbon dioxide (CO2).

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

Ed Note: The erroneous, agenda-laden ExxonKnew narrative was again in evidence in last weekend’s WSJ News Exclusive, “Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change.” For other rebuttals involving the author, (see here).

“Exxon doesn’t ‘know’ anything. It’s a collection of people and just like any other organization with many people, there are many views and understandings on almost every topic imaginable. I worked with Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Libertarians.” – Glen Lyons, former employee (below)

A sober look at the “ExxonKnew” campaign reveals an anti-fossil-fuel agenda inspiring a myopic view of the company’s old investigations into carbon dioxide (CO2).

There are many corrections to this leaky narrative. First, note that the company assigned the CO2 studies to individuals with their own personal motivations and did not partake in studies on the offsets to CO2 (from sulfur dioxide) or the benefits of CO2 (plant growth and resiliency, global greening, warmer winters). Or the advantages of fossil fuels over the dilute, intermittent alternative energies.

The problems of the day were different to Exxon (later ExxonMobil). There was scare about global cooling and a new Ice Age. And there was concern about Peak Oil and Peak Natural Gas.

Second, note that the studies certainly did not represent the existing views of the company but an expedition into embryonic, unsettled science. James Hansen, the father of the climate alarm (in 1988), stated in 1993:

Climate is always changing. Climate would fluctuate without any change of climate forcings. The chaotic aspect of climate is an innate characteristic of the coupled fundamental equations describing climate system dynamics.

And in 1998:

The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.

Gerald North, head of the climatology department at Texas A&M, and a corporate consultant to climate-alarmist Enron (another story), said the same thing in a different way. “There is a good reason for a lack of consensus on the science,” he stated in 1998. “It is simply too early. The problem is difficult, and there are pitifully few ways to test climate models.” The same can be said today.

These points and other are developed in the following posts:

And not surprisingly, continuing takes on Exxon and climate (such as in the Wall Street Journal ‘expose’ focusing on Rex Tillerson) continue to present a narrative way out of context.

Another “ExxonKnew” Take

A far better take than that of the anti-fossil-fuel lobby was provided to the present author by longtime Exxon/Exxon Mobil employee Glen Lyons. He stated (in its entirety).

Here’s my two cents on the general concept of “What Exxon Knew” as a retired employee with more than 36 years of experience there. 

First, Exxon doesn’t “know” anything. It’s a collection of people and just like any other organization with many people, there are many views and understandings on almost every topic imaginable. I worked with Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Libertarians. 

I worked with people who believed 25 years ago that climate change was a concern and I worked with people who still don’t believe that climate change is a concern. One of the great features about working at ExxonMobil is that it gives employees a fair amount of latitude to think “outside the box” by studying and proposing ideas that their management may not agree with. 

I did plenty of that during my career, and sometimes it was well received by my management and sometimes not. Just because I made a presentation on a particular topic of my choosing doesn’t mean that my management was fully aligned on the front end or after the fact.

One thing is very true about ExxonMobil – the company has a long history of hiring brilliant people who are original and creative thinkers. Sometimes the output of these people finds broad support among management and sometimes it doesn’t. No one who knows ExxonMobil is surprised to learn that some employees were studying the link between CO2 emissions and global temperatures. However, that does NOT mean that his/her management agreed with the findings.

ExxonMobil senior management, while brilliant in their own right, are still people and subject to changing their views on issues as they collect more data. The fact that ExxonMobil’s corporate position has evolved over time shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s a testament to the openness and thoughtfulness of the ExxonMobil culture.

As a career employee, I’m very proud that ExxonMobil has had employees studying CO2 emissions and climate change for years and that they made the papers publicly available to help advance the science.  We should not try to tear down ExxonMobil. We should instead praise it.

————————–

Appendix: Legal Peril?

Let a fair judge and jury hear both sides and decide. And let the plaintiffs pay for their own court costs (and note who is paying the bills of the legal strategy in the first place).

The Climate Reality Project, referencing a Guardian article (“Exxon’s predictions about the climate crisis may have increased its legal peril”) stated:

After years of turning a profit off of the world’s suffering, states are taking Exxon-Mobil to court. The discovery of their latest lies is adding even more (fossil) fuel to the fire.

I commented:

” … After years of turning a profit off of the world’s suffering,”

Huh? James Hansen: “Let’s be clear: the frequent comparison of the fossil fuel and tobacco industries is nonsense. Fossil fuels are a valuable energy source that has done yeomen service for humankind.” – James Hansen, June 1, 2021…

A tale of two whale protection groups

There are two groups specializing in trying to protect the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, of which only about 340 critters remain alive, fewer every month, it seems. One is new and small, while the other is old and big.

From CFACT

By David Wojick 

There are two groups specializing in trying to protect the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, of which only about 340 critters remain alive, fewer every month, it seems. One is new and small, while the other is old and big.

The small group says that offshore wind development is killing whales, which I, too, believe, but NOAA denies. The big group, which includes NOAA and some of their funded researchers, is now up to thinking about the possibility that offshore wind might actually affect the whales. This dramatic difference is worth exploring a bit.

The small group is the Save Right Whales Coalition (SRWC) at https://saverightwhales.org/. The really big group, founded in 1986, is the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium (NARWC) at https://www.narwc.org/. The members of NARWC are a wealthy lot indeed.

The small Coalition is focused on wind, saying, “We are an alliance of grassroots environmental and community organizations, scientists, and conservationists working to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and other marine life from the industrialization of our ocean habitat through large-scale offshore wind energy development.”

The big Consortium says its mission is to “Eliminate human-caused mortality to right whales in critical habitats and migration corridors”. But their focus is on the old threats of fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes, never mentioning that both can be caused by the new and ongoing whale harassment noise from wind development.

Mind you, the big Consortium is now at least thinking about offshore wind. Their upcoming annual meeting has a session on it. Here are the presentations:

Session 2: Offshore Wind Interactions and Mitigation

— Upcalling behavior and patterns in North Atlantic right whales, implications for wind energy development

— Recommendations for real-time passive acoustic monitoring near offshore wind energy development activities to help mitigate risks to North Atlantic right whales

— From wind to whales: Potential hydrodynamic impacts of offshore wind on Nantucket Shoals region ecosystems

— Exploring overlap between NARW and ocean features: An autonomous-based oceanographic and ecological baseline

— BOEM-NOAA North Atlantic right whale and offshore wind strategy

Not exactly ‘save the whales from death’ stuff. Note that two of the five talks are by NOAA people, and the rest are their well-funded researchers. Regarding the so-called strategy in the last talk, I wrote about that: https://www.cfact.org/2022/12/21/ten-whale-groups-slam-atlantic-osw/. There is no strategy.

In dramatic contrast, the Save Right Whales Coalition recently sent a letter of deep concern to NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad. The Coalition has been doing its own research on harmful sonar noise, with disturbing results. Here is the beginning of their letter:

“Dear Dr. Spinrad: We are writing to alert your attention to urgent and credible information involving offshore sonar activity occurring within wind lease areas in the Atlantic. Specifically, our data show that the sonar is producing Level B harassment noise levels at distances that exceed those set by NOAA Fisheries (NMFS). Consequently, the protective distances adopted in NMFS issued Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) for offshore wind sonar work are not protective at all. Rather, marine mammals are likely getting much closer to the sonar than should be allowed. We believe this is a major factor behind the recent spate of whale deaths in the Atlantic Ocean since December 1, 2022 and the ongoing Unusual Mortality Events (UMEs) dating back to 2017-18. The only mitigation for noise is distance. The shortened Level B the IHAs have, in effect, rendered any expected mitigations useless.”

A 5-page summary of these disturbing findings follows. See 

SRWC-NOAALetter2023-09-08FINALHerunterladen

This is by no means the first time NOAA has been given technical information regarding the threat of excessive noise from offshore wind development. Such noise can easily cause deadly behavior by whales, including ship strikes, entanglements, and reproductive decline.

We shall see how NOAA responds to this serious letter of concern from the Save Right Whales Coalition. Their ongoing research is also of great interest to us, especially since the rich North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium seems to be doing little or nothing about offshore wind.

Author


David Wojick

David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy.

For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/ Available for confidential research and consulting.

Hypocrite Khan’s Airmiles

Sadiq Khan, his deputies and officials have racked up more than 430,000 air miles since he was first elected London Mayor in 2016, analysis shows.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Sadiq Khan, his deputies and officials have racked up more than 430,000 air miles since he was first elected London Mayor in 2016, analysis shows.

The Labour politician, who has positioned himself as a champion of environmental causes, attracted condemnation yesterday as he flew to the US for a climate summit.

He is expected to use the trip to promote his Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez), which he claims will reduce deaths caused by air pollution, after expanding the scheme last month.

He flew to New York with five aides to attend the UN General Assembly and take part in the Climate Ambition Summit and is also due to appear alongside Prince William at the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit.

Mr Khan is flying despite repeatedly saying he wants to clean up the air, and analysis shows his latest trip has sent the number of air miles clocked up by him and his team to 430,000.

That is enough to fly around the world 17 times and is estimated to have pumped out 200 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

The latest New York trip alone will account for 41,412 of the air miles total, when all six attendees and both legs of the journey are taken into account.

It comes after Mr Khan’s ‘Night Tsar’ Amy Lame – tasked with helping London’s nighttime economy thrive – jetted off to Sydney, adding a further 21,146 miles to the total. She attended the Neon international nighttime economy forum in May.

Mr Khan faced criticism for a five-day trip to the US in May last year in which he was seen schmoozing with James Corden on a rooftop terrace bar in Los Angeles after visiting a cannabis factory.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/hypocrite-sadiq-khan-and-his-team-rack-up-more-than-430-000-air-miles-since-he-was-elected-london-mayor-in-2016/ar-AA1gRg5a

Clean Energy Dirty Tricks? A $500 Gift Card for Signing Over Your Property Rights

The clean energy super highway has hit a roadblock.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Aussie Clean energy companies attempting to action the Left wing Albanese Government’s green grid expansion, appear to have turned to unsavoury practices to try to progress their agenda.

The clean energy super highway has hit a roadblock. Here’s why

Landline / By national regional affairs reporter Jane Norman

When a power giant offered Katherine Myers a $500 gift card, she had no idea she was about to give away unrestricted access to her property for the next four years.

A self-described naturally trusting person, it was only when a relative read the fine print that she realised what privately owned entity AusNet was after.

“My father-in-law went through the agreement and said, ‘No, this is actually providing unfettered access for four years for both surface [and] invasive surveys on the property’,” she says.

…

Myers declined the card but the power imbalance, she says, was clear from the start.

“They told us that we could have that gift card if we signed up to voluntary access but they also told us that if we don’t, that they’ve got Section 93 powers and they’d come on our land anyway,” she says.

…Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-17/clean-energy-super-highway-hits-roadblock-farmers-lock-the-gate/102812602

The gift card was allegedly issued in relation to constructing the Western Renewables Link in the Australian state of Victoria.

In my opinion, power companies or their contractors or whichever party is responsible are out of their minds trying to pull such stunts. They need the cooperation of country folk. Most country folk are law abiding, but if they keep beating on country people through unsavoury practices, threats and legal compulsory property powers, sooner or later some of them will lose faith in the law. We could end up with the same situation as South Africa.

In South Africa, power pylon sabotage and metal theft are a big problem. Power pylons are full of valuable metal.

Eskom finds evidence of sabotage at Lethabo Power Station – pylon supports were cut

Kyle Cowan

  • Eskom has found that supports attached to a pylon that toppled over near Lethabo Power Station on Wednesday, were cut.
  • It is the clearest evidence yet of an orchestrated campaign to sabotage Eskom, however the motive remains unclear.
  • Eskom group chief executive André de Ruyter confirmed on Friday that it pointed to sabotage.

Eskom has, for the first time, found clear evidence that points to sabotage at its Lethabo Power Station, near Vereeniging in the Free State.

The power utility found that supports attached to a small pylon carrying power lines that feed electricity to the power station’s overland coal conveyor, were cut, which caused it to topple over onto a backup power line, rendering both inoperable.

The pylon fell just before 18:00 on Wednesday evening, immediately before evening peak demand hours. Eskom group chief executive André de Ruyter called it a “close shave” on Thursday.

…Read more: https://www.news24.com/news24/investigations/eskomfiles/breaking-eskom-finds-evidence-of-sabotage-at-lethabo-power-station-pylon-supports-were-cut-20211119

The African thieves were clever. They didn’t cut the power lines, which would have been immediately detected, they stole valuable stainless steel pylon supports – but left enough so the pylons didn’t immediately fall. When the thieves left, the power lines were still operating, which allowed the theft to go undetected until mechanical failure caused by the missing structural support members brought down the power line.

I’m not in any way advocating law breaking or sabotage, WUWT does not condone law breaking. My point is power companies need the cooperation of country folk. Thousands of miles of power line infrastructure cannot be affordably patrolled by power companies. Power companies need rural land owners to love them so much that every day the land owners themselves run a quick inspection of electricity infrastructure on their land, and willingly cooperate with catching the thieves and saboteurs.

Legalised land seizures and unsavoury practices like this gift card are not the path to win love and compliance.

UN Set to Agree New Political Declaration on Pandemics Next Week – and it’s a Horror Show

In four days’ time, on Wednesday September 20th, our representatives meeting at the United Nations will sign off on a ‘Declaration’ titled: ‘Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.’

From The Daily Sceptic

BY DR DAVID BELL

In four days’ time, on Wednesday September 20th, our representatives meeting at the United Nations will sign off on a ‘Declaration’ titled: ‘Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.’

Final-text-for-silence-procedure-PPPR-Political-DeclarationHerunterladen

This was announced as a “silent procedure”, meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text. The document expresses a new policy pathway for managing populations when the World Health Organisation (WHO), the health arm of the UN, declares a future viral variant to be a “public health emergency of international concern”. The WHO noted in 2019 that pandemics are rare and insignificant in terms of overall mortality over the last century. Since then, it decided that the 2019 old-normal population was simply oblivious to impending annihilation. The WHO and the entire UN system now consider pandemics an existential and imminent threat. This matters, because:

  1. They are asking for far more money than is spent on any other international health program (your money);
  2. This will deliver great wealth to some people who now work closely with WHO and the UN;
  3. The powers being sought from your Government will reimpose the very responses that have just caused the largest growth in poverty and disease in our lifetimes; and
  4. Logically, pandemics will only become more frequent if someone intends to make them so (so we should wonder what is going on).

Staff who drafted this Declaration did so because it is their job. They were paid to write a text that is clearly contradictory, sometimes fallacious, and often quite meaningless. They are part of a rapidly growing industry, and the Declaration is intended to justify this growth and the centralisation of power that goes with it. The document will almost certainly be agreed by our Governments because, frankly, this is where the momentum and money are.

Whilst the Declaration’s 13 pages are all over the place in terms of reality and farce, they are not atypical of recent UN output. People are trained to use trigger words, slogans and propaganda themes (e.g., “equity”, “empowerment of all women and girls”, “access to education”, “technology transfer hubs”) that no one could oppose without risking being labelled a denier, far-Right or colonialist.

The Declaration should be read in the context of what these institutions and their staff have just done. It is difficult to summarise such a compendium of right-speak intended to veil reality, but it is hoped this short summary will prompt some thought. Wickedness is not a mistake but an intended deception, so we need to distinguish these clearly.  

Fomenting darkness behind a veil of light

Put together, the following two extracts summarise the internal contradiction of the Declaration’s agenda and its staggering shamelessness and lack of empathy:

In this regard, we:

PP3: Recognise also the need to tackle health inequities and inequalities, within and among countries…

PP5: Recognise that the illness, death, socio-economic disruption and devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic…

‘Recognition’ of devastation is important. SARS-CoV-2 was associated with mortality predominantly within wealthy countries, where median age of Covid-associated death was between 75 and 85 years. Nearly all of these people had significant co-morbidities such as obesity and diabetes, meaning their life-expectancy was already restricted. Most people contributing significantly to economic activity were at very low risk, a profile know in early 2020. 

These three years of socio-economic devastation must, therefore, be overwhelmingly due to the response. The virus did not starve people, as the Declaration’s writers would like us to believe. Deteriorating disease control was predicted by WHO and others in early 2020, increasing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. Economic disruption in low-income countries specifically results in more infant and child deaths.

In Western countries, adult mortality has risen as expected when screening for cancer and heart disease are reduced and poverty and stress increase. Knowing this, WHO advised in late 2019 to ”not under any circumstances” impose lockdown-like measures for pandemic influenza. In early 2020, under the influence of its sponsors, it advocated them for COVID-19. The Declaration, however, carries no note of contrition or repentance.

Undeterred by incongruity, the Declaration goes on to describe COVID-19 as “one of the greatest challenges” in UN history (PP6), noting that somehow this outbreak resulted in “exacerbation of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty”. In fact, it acknowledges that this caused:

(a) negative impact on equity, human and economic development across all spheres of society, as well as on global humanitarian needs, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, the enjoyment of human rights, livelihoods, food security and nutrition, education, its disruption to economies, supply chains, trade, societies and the environment, within and among countries, which is reversing hard-won development gains and hampering progress (PP6)

To restate the obvious, this does not happen due to a virus targeting sick elderly people. It occurs when children and productive adults are barred from school, work, healthcare and participation in markets for goods and services. Economic, social and health catastrophe inevitably results, disproportionately harming poorer people and low-income countries, conveniently far indeed from the halls of Geneva and New York.

No, we were not all in this together.

Not all were negatively impacted by this catastrophe. People and corporations who sponsor much of the WHO’s health emergency work, and that of its sister organisations such as CEPI, Gavi and Unitaid, did very well from the policies they advocated so strongly. Software and Pharma companies made unprecedently high profits while this mass impoverishment played out. The international agencies have also gained; construction and recruitment are strong in Geneva. Philanthro-capitalism is good for some.

The main aim of the Declaration is to back the proposed WHO International Health Regulation (IHR) amendments and treaty (PP26), key to ensuring that viral outbreaks that have such small impact can remain highly profitable. An additional $10 billion dollars per year in new financing is requested to support this (PP29). There is a reason why most countries have laws against scams. The UN and its agencies, fortunately for its staff, are outside of any national jurisdiction.

Based on their sponsors’ assessments, the staff of these agencies are doing their job well. For the rest of humanity, their work is an unmitigated disaster. In 2019 they said never lock down, then spent 2020 defending top-down lockdowns and mandates. For three years, they theatrically pretended that decades of knowledge on immunity, disease burden and the association of poverty with mortality did not exist. Now they write this UN Declaration to fund their industry further through taxpayers they so recently impoverished. Once tasked to serve the world’s vast populations, particularly the poor and vulnerable, the UN vision has been consumed by public private partnerships, the allure of Davos and a fascination with high-net-worth individuals.

When words are used to obscure actions

While the Declaration underlines the importance of educating children during pandemics (PP23), these same organisations backed school closures for hundreds of millions of children at minimal risk from COVID-19. Among them, several million more girls are now being farmed off to nightly rape as child brides, others in child labour. Women and girls were disproportionately removed from education and from employment. They weren’t asked if they supported these policies!

The girls are being raped because the people paid to implement these policies did so. They know the contradiction, and the harm. But this is a job like many others. The only unusual aspects, from a business standpoint, are the sheer amorality and lack of empathy that must be engaged to excel in it.

To justify wrecking African children’s lives, the UN claims out that the continent has “over 100 major public health emergencies annually” (OP4). Africa has a rising burden of endemic diseases that dwarf mortality from such outbreaks – over half a million children die every year from malaria (increased through the COVID-19 lockdowns) and similar burdens from tuberculosis and HIV. By contrast, total COVID-19 deaths recorded in Africa over the past three years are just 256,000. The 2015 West African Ebola outbreak, the largest such recent emergency pre-Covid, killed 11,300 people. MERS and SARS1 killed less than 1,000 each globally. However, induced poverty does cause famine, raises child mortality and wrecks health systems – is this the health emergency that the UN is referring to? Or is it simply making things up?

Through the IHR amendments, these agencies will coordinate the locking down, border closures, mandated medical examinations and vaccination of you and your family. Their Pharma sponsors reasonably expect to make several hundred billion more dollars from these actions, so we can be confident that emergencies will be declared. By claiming 100 such events annually in Africa alone, they are signalling how these new powers will be used. We are to believe the world is such that only the abandonment of our rights and sovereignty, for the enrichment of others, can save us.

The UN and WHO do recognise that some will question this illogic. In PP35, they characterise such scepticism as “health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatisation”.

The WHO recently publicly characterised people who discuss adverse effects of Covid vaccines and question WHO policies as “far-Right”, “anti-science aggressors” and “a killing force”.

https://x.com/WHO/status/1602991915808456705?s=20

This is unhinged. It is the denigration and hate speech that fascist regimes use. The reader must decide whether such an organisation should control his or her freedom of expression and decide what constitutes truth.

It is not helpful here to give details of all 13 pages of right-speak, contradiction and fallacy. You will find similar rhetoric in other UN and WHO documents, particularly on pandemic preparedness. Straight-talk is contrary to business requirements. However, the first paragraph in the Declaration’s ‘Call to Action’ sets the tone:

We therefore commit to scale up our efforts to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response and further implement the following actions and express our strong resolve to:  

OP1. Strengthen regional and international cooperation, multilateralism, global solidarity, coordination and governance at the highest political levels and across all relevant sectors, with the determination to overcome inequities and ensure the sustainable, affordable, fair, equitable, effective, efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other health products to ensure high-level attention through a multisectoral approach to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics and other health emergencies, particularly in developing countries;

There are 48 more. You paid taxes so that someone could write that!

Those millions of girls suffering at night, the hundreds of millions of children who had their futures stolen, the mothers of those malaria-killed children, and all suffering under the increasing burden of poverty and inequality unleashed by this farce are watching. The Declaration, like the IHR amendments and pandemic treaty it supports, await the signatures of the Governments that purport to represent us.

Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a member of the Executive Committee of PANDA.

Hurricane Daniel and the Medicanes: A Dive into Science

The media’s recent fascination with Hurricane Daniel and the phenomenon of “Medicanes” has sparked a flurry of discussions, with many attributing these rare supercharged Mediterranean storms to anthropogenic climate change. But before jumping to conclusions, it’s essential to delve into the science and understand the broader context.

From Watts Up With That?

Introduction

The media’s recent fascination with Hurricane Daniel and the phenomenon of “Medicanes” has sparked a flurry of discussions, with many attributing these rare supercharged Mediterranean storms to anthropogenic climate change. But before jumping to conclusions, it’s essential to delve into the science and understand the broader context.

Understanding Medicanes

Medicanes, a portmanteau of “Mediterranean” and “hurricanes,” are rare tropical-like cyclones that form in the Mediterranean Sea. The recent Yahoo News article highlights the intensity and potential devastation of these storms, with Hurricane Daniel serving as a prime example.

They have the characteristics of both tropical and extratropical cyclones and are fueled by the contrast between the warm sea surface and cooler air from the north.”

The Climate Change Connection

The article from the AFP suggests a link between the increasing intensity of these storms and anthropogenic climate change. The argument hinges on the premise that warmer sea surface temperatures, resulting from human-induced global warming, are supercharging these Medicanes.

“The Mediterranean Sea is warming at a rate 20% faster than the global average, making the formation of these storms more likely.”

IPCC’s AR6 Working Group 1 Report: What Does It Say?

To understand the broader context, one must turn to the comprehensive assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the AR6 Working Group 1 report. This document provides an in-depth analysis of the current state of the climate and the potential impacts of anthropogenic activities.

Upon examining the report, a few key points emerge:

Tropical Cyclones: The report states that while there is evidence of an increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones over the last four decades, there is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) positive trends in the global number of very intense tropical cyclones.

Regional Variability: The report emphasizes the significant regional variability in tropical cyclone trends, with some basins showing increases and others showing decreases in various measures of tropical cyclone activity.

Attribution to Human Influence: The report concludes that there is only medium confidence in the attribution of the global-scale observed increase in the proportion of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes since the early 1980s to human influence.

Rebutting the Assertions

Given the findings of the IPCC’s AR6 report, several assertions in the Yahoo News article can be addressed:

Mediterranean Sea Warming: While the Mediterranean Sea may be warming at a rate faster than the global average, it’s essential to differentiate between regional variability and global trends. The IPCC report emphasizes the significant regional differences in tropical cyclone trends.

Linking Medicanes to Global Warming: The article’s suggestion that anthropogenic climate change is directly responsible for the increased intensity of Medicanes is not supported by the IPCC’s findings. The report indicates low confidence in long-term trends of very intense tropical cyclones and only medium confidence in attributing the observed increase in Category 4 or 5 hurricanes to human influence.

Conclusion

To mix metaphors, Hurricane Daniel and the phenomenon of Medicanes are low hanging fruit for alarmist ambulance chasers. The rarity of Medicanes precludes the ability to identify any trend in their intensity and the IPCC’s AR6 Working Group 1 contradicts the overwhelming majority of claims by alarmist activist scientists and politicians.  Previously I wrote an entire post about how attribution of extreme weather is nothing but an exercise in the Texas Sharpshooter logical fallacy.

Don’t Buy “Planetary Boundaries” Hype

We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm.–Johan Rockström, co-author and Centre researcher

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Latest diagram from Stockholm Resilience Centre

The usual suspects are beating on their “planetary boundaries” drum to scare up submission to Zero Carbon restrictions.  Remember these are the same climate justice warriors pushing the notion of a new geological era named “Anthropocene”.  For example, cue the following:

Six of nine planetary boundaries now exceeded–Phys.org

Humans Have Crossed 6 of 9 ‘Planetary Boundaries’–Scientific American

Earth is now outside most of the “planetary boundaries” under which human civilization emerged–TechSpot

Six out of 9 planetary boundaries breached, Earth increasingly becoming uninhabitable for humans–MSN.com

Humanity deep in the danger zone of planetary boundaries: study–YAHOO!News

Etc., Etc. Etc.

Background

In 2009, a group of 29 scholars published an article in Nature, advancing an approach to define a “safe operating space for humanity” (1). The group argued that we can identify a set of nine “planetary boundaries” that humanity must not cross at the cost of its own peril. Since this 2009 publication, the concept of planetary boundaries has been highly influential in generating academic debate and in shaping research projects and policy recommendations worldwide. At the same time, the concept has come under heavy scrutiny as well, and many critics have taken the floor contesting the broader framework as well as its implementation and interpretation. Partially because of this critique, the original proposition of nine planetary boundaries has undergone various reformulations and updates by their proponents and an emerging network of scholars specializing in planetary boundary research.

The original 2009 paper in Nature suggested nine boundary conditions in the earth system that could, if crossed, result in a major disruption in (parts of) the system and a transition to a different state, which is likely to be hostile to human prosperity. The proposed planetary boundaries included:

♦  climate change,
♦  biodiversity loss,
♦  the nitrogen cycle,
♦  the phosphorus cycle,
♦  stratospheric ozone depletion,
♦  ocean acidification,
♦  global freshwater use,
♦  land use change,
♦  atmospheric aerosol loading, and
♦  chemical pollution.

For each of these planetary boundaries, one or more control variables were identified (e.g., atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration), which in turn were assigned with numerical boundary values at a “safe” distance from dangerous levels, or where applicable, “tipping points” in earth system processes (1).

Eventually, the framework should allow for quantification of threshold parameters, as a guide also for political responses. For some planetary boundaries, the group in 2009 suggested that the current state of knowledge was too uncertain to allow for quantification. Yet, for other earth system processes, the group felt confident enough to suggest a specific boundary value. In this endeavor, they erred on the side of caution and a strict interpretation of the precautionary principle: Where they saw remaining uncertainties, the group suggested the lower values for the boundary that they identified.

They concluded that three planetary boundaries had been crossed already.

On climate change, for instance, the boundary value proposed was 350 ppm, which had been passed long ago in the second half of the twentieth century. Regarding biodiversity, the current extinction rate is more than 100 extinct species per million species per year, whereas the suggested boundary was 10 extinctions. As for the nitrogen cycle, humans remove today approximately 121 million tons of nitrogen per year from the atmosphere, whereas a safe rate would be a maximum of 35 million tons. In these three areas, therefore, this analysis suggested that humankind had pushed the earth system past planetary boundaries and possibly dangerous levels, into a new—and unknown—world.  Source: The Boundaries of the Planetary Boundary Framework: A Critical Appraisal of Approaches to Define a “Safe Operating Space” for Humanity.  Annual Review of Environment and Resources October 2020

We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm.–Johan Rockström, co-author and Centre researcher

Critics of the Planetary Boundaries Framework

Leaving aside those who want the boundaries to be tighter and harder than presented, let’s hear from critics challenging the whole enterprise. Shortly after the invention of “planetary boundaries,” Breakthrough Institute published a thorough critique of the notion and the framework.  Planetary Boundaries: A Review of the Evidence.  Linus Blomqvist (2012)

The planetary boundaries hypothesis – embraced by United Nations bodies and leading nongovernmental organizations like Oxfam and WWF – has serious scientific flaws and is a misleading guide to global environmental management, according to a new report by the Breakthrough Institute. The hypothesis, which will be debated this month at the UN Earth Summit in Brazil, posits that there are nine global biophysical limits to human development. But after an extensive literature review and informal peer review by leading experts, the Breakthrough Institute has found the concept of “planetary boundaries” to be a poor basis for policy and for understanding local and global environmental challenges.

KEY FINDINGS

♦   Six of the “planetary boundaries” — land-use change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen levels, freshwater use, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution — do not have planetary biophysical boundaries in themselves.

♦   Aside from their impacts on the global climate, these non-threshold “boundaries” operate on local and regional, not global, levels.

♦   There is little evidence to support the claim that transgressing any of the six non-threshold boundaries would have a net negative effect on human material welfare.  The full report is linked below:

A new report from the Breakthrough Institute highlights scientific flaws
of the “planetary boundaries” hypothesis

Planetary Boundaries as Power Grab–Giving Political Decisions a Scientific Sheen–Roger Pielke Jr. (2013)

When the cover of the Economist famously announced ‘Welcome to the anthropocene’ a couple of years ago, was it welcoming us to a new geological epoch, or a dangerous new world of undisputed scientific authority and anti-democratic politics?

The basis for the power grab by the experts – really old wine in new bottles – is the fashionable idea of “planetary boundaries“ which holds that there are hard and fast ecological limits within which human activity must be constrained. The concept is much contested scientifically — such as in this excellent review by my colleagues at The Breakthrough Institute.

A real-world example of the implications of the planetary boundaries political philosophy is vividly seen through the issue of global energy access. Future global development, at least in the short term, necessarily will involve trade offs between expanded use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels and the expansion of energy access to the world’s poorest. The planetary boundaries advocates, consist with their hierarchical values framework, call for “universal clean energy” and recommend development targets focused not on measuring expanded energy access, but rather carbon dioxide emissions (here in PDF).

In other words, expanded energy access to the world’s poorest is deemed acceptable
only if it first satisfies the demands of planetary boundaries – in other words,
the political demands of the scientists couched in the inviolable authority of science.

An major recent critique was: Planetary Boundaries for Biodiversity:  Implausible Science, Pernicious Policies  by Montoya, Donohue and Pimm. Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2018)

The notion of a ‘safe operating space for biodiversity’ is vague and encourages harmful policies. Attempts to fix it strip it of all meaningful content. Ecology is rapidly gaining insights into the connections between biodiversity and ecosystem stability. We have no option but to understand ecological complexity and act accordingly.

How best should environmental science articulate its concerns, set research agendas, and advise policies?One solution embraces the notion of planetary boundaries [1] arguing that global environmental processes very generally have ‘tipping points’. These are catastrophes involving thresholds beyond which there will be rapid transitions to new states that are very much less favorable to human existence than current states. The associated notion is that humanity’s ‘business as usual’ can only continue so long as it remains within some ‘safe operating space’.

We show that notions of planetary boundaries add no insight into our understanding
of the threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, have no evidence to support them,
are too vague for use by those who manage biodiversity, and promote pernicious policies.

Fatally, the boundaries framework lacks clear definitions, or it has too many conflicting definitions, does not specify units, and fails to define terms operationally, thus prohibiting application by those who set policy or manage natural resources. Moreover, recent reviews indicate that tipping points occur only rarely in
natural systems [6], while policies related to boundaries are unlikely to be evidence based. A need for operational definitions to aid managers is self-evident [7].

At the heart of the problem are terms such as ‘planetary boundaries’, but also ‘sustainability’, ‘health’, ‘harmony’, and others, that are emotionally appealing but rarely, if ever, defined. They all speak to the urgent need to understand how human impacts change ecosystems, when at best we aspire to protect only
half of it. We must set policies and establish management for the vast tracts of land and sea that we do not protect. Fatally, those who do so often use language that does not borrow from the existing knowledge about ecosystem processes, nor readily translates its aspirations to those who study them [7].

See Also:

Planetary Boundaries as Millenarian Prophesies  Malthusian Echoes

The identification of the planetary boundaries is dependent on the normative assumptions made, for example, concerning the value of biodiversity and the desirability of the Holocene. Rather than non-negotiables, humanity faces a system of trade-offs – not only economic, but moral and aesthetic as well. Deciding how to balance these trade-offs is a matter of political contestation (Blomqvist et al, 2012:37). What counts as “unacceptable environmental change” is not a matter of scientific fact, but involves judgments concerning the value of the things to be affected by the potential changes. The framing of planetary boundaries as being scientifically derived non-negotiable limits, obscures the inherent normativity of deciding how to react to environmental change. Presenting human values as facts of nature is an effective political strategy to shut down debate.

Beyond Planetary Boundaries by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and Linus Blomqvist (2012)

There are useful implications for environmental change science that can be drawn from where planetary boundaries went wrong. First, any pragmatic framework on environmental change must look at benefits and costs. Some of the hypothesis’s authors have said that their motivation was to provide a useful framework for helping global leaders manage environmental change. We applaud and support this motivation. But for any environmental change framework to be useful, it must seek to understand not only the costs of change but also its benefits.

One of the implications of this is that simply measuring variance from Holocene baselines is a highly misleading metric of human sustainability. Since so much variance from the Holocene has been good for humans, future environmental change cannot be assumed, as planetary boundaries does, to be negative for our welfare.