Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Global sea levels have not continued to rise at the rates predicted by many scientists — and there is no evidence that climate change has contributed to any such acceleration, a new first-of-its-kind study has claimed.
Blockbuster sea level study is turning climate change orthodoxy on its head.
Global sea levels have not continued to rise at the rates predicted by many scientists — and there is no evidence that climate change has contributed to any such acceleration, a new first-of-its-kind study has claimed.
The research found that the average sea level rise in 2020 was only around 1.5mm per year, or 6 inches per century, according to the paper’s authors, Dutch engineering consultant Hessel Voortman and independent researcher Rob de Vos. The New York Post has the story.
Voortman was shocked that no researcher before had performed an analysis of real-world local data.
“It is crazy that it had not been done. I started doing this research in 2021 by doing the literature review. ‘Who has done the comparison of the projections with the observations?’ And there were none,” he told Shellenberger.
The study was also unlike any of its kind in that it was carried out with no external funding, said Voortman, who has spent the last 30 years as a hydraulic engineer working with flood protection and coastal-infrastructure adaptation projects around the world.
In 2023, Voortman published a bombshell paper claiming that sea level rise across the low-lying Dutch coast hadn’t accelerated.
“From practice, I had already encountered the situation that sea level projections were exceeding sea level observations,” he said.
“Greta Thunberg is an end stage product of the climate religion. As renewables come into crisis everywhere in the world because of local community opposition to the land use impacts, as well as the high associated costs, the bloom is coming off the rose for climate activists.”
Michael Shellenberger is an environmentalist, author, and advocate for pragmatic solutions to climate change. He joins Steven Edginton to talk about the ‘religion’ of climate change for this week’s Off Script podcast. Watch the full interview above, or listen on your podcast app by searching “Off Script”.
We want to live in a beautiful world, and what we’re seeing with these renewables projects is it’s really the trashing of landscapes. It’s a kind of garbage energy.- Michael Shellenberger
Claiming that wind and solar are green is simply nuts. Delivering rubbish power and leaving mountains of toxic rubbish in their wake, solar panels and industrial wind turbines are the antithesis of ‘green’. Assuming that ‘green’ means friendly to environments, people and the communities that they live in?
As Michael Shellenberger explains during this Chris Kenny interview, people are rapidly realising that the whole premise upon which the wind and solar ‘industries’ have been built is nothing short of an industrial-scale lie.
‘Big lie’: People are ‘waking up’ to the failures of green energy” Sky News Chris Kenny and Michael Shellenberger 31 October 2023
Author Michael Shellenberger says humanity has been sold a “big lie” around green and renewable energy.
“Around the world, we see there is opposition from conservationists, Indigenous people, local communities to solar and wind energy projects,” Mr Shellenberger told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“The reason is very simple – they require 300 to 600 times more land than a natural gas plant or a nuclear power plant.
“Anybody who loves nature … really needs to resist these projects – we have much better alternatives.”
Mr Shellenberger says people around the world are “waking up” to the “big lie” pushed by advocates of green energy.
Transcript
Chris Kenny: Now, you don’t need me to tell you that renewable energy, long thought of as cute and cuddly, of course, or in the words of our climate and energy minister, cheap and reliable. Well, we all know it’s anything but, of course, don’t we? We’ve shown you how communities in rural Victoria and New South Wales are railing against massive transmission lines to link in renewable projects. In Queensland, locals are angry that pristine bushland is being cleared for wind farms. And we’ve got coastal communities in South Australia and New South Wales protesting against offshore wind turbines, massive projects.
The expansion of renewable energy projects has created problems right around the world now. And energy expert and environmentalist, Michael Shellenberger, has been calling it out. He joins me from the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference in the UK. Good to talk to you again, Michael. Tell us about the vast amount of land and landscapes that have been taken up by renewable energy projects around the world. It’s really just starting to hit home big time in Australia as communities, whether it’s a solar farm here or offshore wind here, really arc up about what’s going in. But this is happening right around the planet, isn’t it?
Michael Shellenberger: Yeah, that’s right, Chris. It’s going to be with you. In fact, around the world we see there’s opposition from conservationists, indigenous people, local communities, to solar and wind energy projects. The reason is very simple, is they require 300 to 600 times more land than a natural gas plant or a nuclear power plant. It’s very easy for people to discover this for themselves. You can go to Google Maps and draw a circle around a power plant or a wind farm or a solar farm and then divide it by the amount of electricity that it creates, and you get a power density calculation. And you’ll discover this is a huge difference. It’s not 50% more. It’s 3-600 times more land. And so anybody who loves nature, who loves the national environment and wants to protect endangered species, really needs to resist these projects. We have much better alternatives. We’ve been sold a big lie about green energy. That’s the reality of it. And people are now waking up to that around the world.
Chris Kenny: And there are all sorts of aspects to this. Some aspects are aesthetics. People don’t like to look out over wind farms or solar farms, but also productive agricultural land is at a premium in most parts of the world. And if you’re putting solar farms or restricting land use because of wind turbines or transmission lines, it actually reduces the amount of food produce you can get from your land.
Michael Shellenberger: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And I should also say there’s nothing wrong with opposing a solar or wind project for aesthetic reasons. We want to live in a beautiful world, and what we’re seeing with these renewables projects is it’s really the trashing of landscapes. It’s a kind of garbage energy. It’s also worth pointing out that solar panels create 300 times more waste than nuclear waste that comes out of nuclear plants. Nuclear waste is safely contained to the site of production, and we have no end solution to the solar panel waste problem. If we tried to incorporate the costs into solar panels costs, it would be four times more expensive. We’re externalising the cost of green energy pollution onto future generations.
But yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, we have prime farmland around the world going to create what is effectively highly inefficient, irregular, and unpredictable energy that’s just often dumped onto the grid and not used. It’s really the most wasteful form of energy imaginable, because it doesn’t follow when people need it. It only produces energy when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, which as we know is not even half of the time. So I think it really, almost everything is a downside. We’ve been sold a big lie.
Chris Kenny: And just quickly, Michael, because I know you’ve got a whole documentary on this, but we’re looking at a lot of offshore wind here, and you’ve done a lot of work on how that can be damaging to whale populations.
Michael Shellenberger: Yeah, that’s right. The documentary is called Thrown to the Wind. You can see it at public.substack.com. We’ve given it away for free now. It’s a shocking story. We’re seeing that simply using sonar to map the ocean floor on the East Coast is killing whales, as is the increased boat traffic. It’s all working to separate mothers from their calves. The babies are dying. The mothers are dying. We’re experiencing a catastrophic decline in the North Atlantic right whale due to wind energy. These projects have to be stopped. And the good news is, is that because wind energy is also so inefficient, so expensive, they’re now asking for a bailout, yet more money from American taxpayers that we can’t afford.
So we’re going to win this battle, Chris. We’re going to win it in the United States. I believe we’re going to win it in Australia as well, because people are waking up to the realities that green energy is actually brown energy. It’s actually terrible for the natural environment.
Chris Kenny: Yeah, indeed. This is a battle that’s only just begun. Thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Michael Shellenberger there. Sky News
The Sun did come out for the first morning – Monday morning. The inaugural conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship was in Greenwich just a few miles downriver from Westminster in London.
I hadn’t managed to get any sleep Sunday night after arriving late on a series of flights beginning in Rockhampton (to the immediate west of the Great Barrier Reef) via Dubai (on the edge of the desert of the eastern Arabian Peninsula) arriving Heathrow over more than 24 hours with no sleep.
I nevertheless sat up into the early hours of that London morning after finally being allocated an hotel room, penning a first blog post, which has been republished at WattsUpwithThat.
Then it was time to have breakfast and meet up with John Roskam and also Bella d’Abrera – another IPA colleague, in the hotel foyer. It was Bella’s idea we catch the cable car rather than the tube. So, we arrived from Docklands by going over the Thames rather than under it. I thought it a most wonderful way to arrive.
On the other side of the river, and down a few streets, we found a long line of academic types, snaking their way very patiently to a very large black shed known as the Magazine London. Described as a purpose-built destination, the largest of its kind in London, this shed was able to accommodate the 1,500 plus delegates from over 70 countries, and an orchestra – all gathered for this inaugural conference. But everyone first needed to get through security.
This first ARC conference was going to be more than a series of lecture. We got to hear a rabbi play from the horn of a ram/shofar, Joshua Luke Smith recite poetry, and on and on it went, and that was just the first morning.
A Rabbi plays the shofar, on stage, including to acknowledge the importance of music to Western civilisation, that has a Judaeo-Christian beginning and tradition.
At the first morning tea I got to meet some truly brave people who had travelled almost as far as me, including the founder of Rebel News, Ezra Levant from Toronto, who does not flinch but rather provokes on the toughest of issues.
The recurring central theme on the first day, and throughout, was that we in the West are facing a civilisational crisis, driven by external and internal forces. Considering external forces, historian Niall Ferguson said we are in the most difficult strategic environment since World War II. Internally, at the level of culture, we heard about the ‘radical left’s’ capture of our institutions, the divisions in society stoked by the grievance industry, and the collapse in traditional family structures.
Jordan Peterson was a significant presence throughout the three days and promoted continually as the wisest man – with all the answers.
This was a key mistake, because, while Peterson has an important message, which mostly begins and ends with the biblical stories, he seems unable to publicly acknowledge this his Christian faith and that Western civilisation’s greatest success is science following from regard for the rational without demeaning the important roles of religion and faith. To be clear, and in the interests of getting to a core issue that the ARC conference was purportedly about, I am going to suggest that Jordon Peterson doesn’t actually understand, or have any empathy for, science beyond clinical psychology. His obsession is with biblical stories and culture and how we can best live as individuals within families. This is all so very important, but it is not central to the success of Western civilisation – it is but a part of the story. And if the West is to survive it will need to maintain its technological superiority, that I will discuss in Part 3 of this series.
Western civilisation’s success can be attributed to the innovations that followed men who became curious about the natural and physical world beyond their families and communities. Men, it was mostly men who were given the opportunity, to understand nature, natural systems extending even beyond our solar system and describing this universe mathematically and empirically.
Jordon Peterson’s genius is understanding the nature of humanity, but not necessarily what was special about even our first and most important scientists in the western tradition beginning perhaps with Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s First Law states that planets move in elliptical paths around the Sun. He also discovered that planets move proportionally faster in their orbits when they are closer to the Sun; this became Kepler’s Second Law and is critical to understanding climate change over geological time.
Rather than name, and so acknowledge, the most important of these first scientists in the Western tradition, in the conference handbook, Jordon Peterson laments as he did on stage:
Five centuries of ascendant reductionist Enlightenment rationality have revealed that this starkly objective world lacks all intrinsic meaning. A century and a half or more of corrosive cultural criticism has undermined our understanding of and faith in the traditions necessary to unite and guide us …
‘We find ourselves, in consequence, inundated by a continual onslaught of ominous, demoralising messages, most particularly in the form of environmental catastrophism ..
In Peterson’s opening address, and subsequently, the nature of this catastrophism is never discussed or assessed.
This is something that the early scientists puzzled over and described empirically and mathematically. Jordon Peterson could have explained this if he took the time to consult more widely, if he had any interest at all in the history of science that is fundamental to understanding the success of Western civilisation.
Science and its central role in the success, particularly the military success of the West, was hardly acknowledged at this inaugural ARC conference, with Peterson and other delegates preferring the comfort of biblical stories and talk about families and communities. But these can only persist if they can keep the barbarians beyond the gates, at least in part through military superiority. Such is the nature of how individuals, communities and nation-states arrange themselves.
There was no rational discussion and debate about the very issue, human-caused global warming, that is driving so much individual anxiety and causing a growing weakness in our national security across nations that have a Western tradition. In the next post in this series I will explain how concern about global warming is undermining energy security and thus national security.
There was no opportunity for any consideration of the underlying physics nor the empirical data that would enable some assessment of whether the core theory of catastrophic climate change is supported by the evidence, or not.
Jordon Peterson concerned himself in this opening address with the story of Job in the Bible, a man who suffered because of his faith rather than because of any natural catastrophe – manmade or otherwise. Peterson’s final address included the claim we have such power over nature, we can green the deserts.
There is a biblical tradition, that recognises deserts as places to wander, fast, and where one can find God. I’m not sure if that will be as easy if they all become places for easy fishing, or at least relative safety where one can escape the heat and sand and all that can make our existence seemingly unbearable.
On the first morning Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in conversation with former Australian Prime Minister John Anderson and British philosopher Os Guinness said,
Western Civilisation is a cut flower, and cut flowers die… but we have the remnants, the symbols of western heritage, and their seeds. All we have to do, those of us who inherited it, is to go and see them, grow them, nurture them, water them – and when they’re attacked, fight for them.
"Western Civilisation is a cut flower, and cut flowers die… but we have the remnants, the symbols of western heritage, and their seeds. All we have to do, those of us who inherited it, is to go and see them, grow them, nurture them, water them – and when they're attacked, fight… pic.twitter.com/4BE22K5oKc
— The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (@ARC_Conference) October 30, 2023
In fact, it is not nearly this simple.
There is a need for debate, but not between the ignorant, there is a need for those with expertise in both mathematics and science to be able to reconnect with the roots of Western Civilisation that means being allowed to be curious about the earth, and also the Earth, in which the seeds of the flowers might be planted.
There was hardly any mention of science at the conference, and instead of including the most imminent scientist who was at the conference, Richard Lindzen, on a most important panel session on the evening of the second day we had to suffer the ignorance of both Jordon Peterson and Alex Epstein when Dennis Prager asked an important question: Is Antarctica melting or not?
As Magatta Wade and Michael Shellenberger also on this panel ducked the question, Alex Epstein, but only after Dennis Prager pressed the point, claimed, ‘Antarctica is melting, but slowly.’
I felt a need to interject from where I was sitting at a table toward the back of the room at this ‘ARC in the Evening – Sector Dinner’ advertised as ‘Energy and Environment: Fuelling the Future and Powering Progress’.
‘Incorrect,’ I called out.
After hearing for two days about the importance of the truth, I was not going to be silent.
Jordon Peterson, also on the panel, on stage, saw and heard me clearly and took over from Alex Epstein commenting, lifting his microphone after running his hand over his face as he had a habit of doing across the three days, he said into his microphone, ‘The problem is that we don’t know when it [the melting at Antarctica] began or when it will end.’
‘Incorrect,’ I called out again.
This time Peterson, asked me directly from the stage, ‘Why? How do you know [when the melting will start and end]?’
‘The physics of the universe,’ I called back, ‘There are cycles. We can forecast when they will begin and when they will end.’
I went on to mention the ‘Milankovitch cycles’, the 100,000-year cycles, that can be described mathematically relating to the orbit of the Earth about the sun and its changing eccentricity. This can be seen empirically in the ice-core data including from Vostok at the Antarctic. I could have gone on to explain that we are only now beginning to understand the likely effect of falling sea levels and changing orbits on submarine volcanism that likely increases dramatically, precipitating the end to each of the last half dozen or so ice ages.
From a rebuttal to the IPCC consensus science, by the Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change supported by the Heartland Institute.
Peterson turned back to the panel and they wrapped up. If I had been given a microphone, I could have elaborated further about the importance of understanding scale and also phase alignment, but no one was going to give me a microphone.
Across the three days there were no roving microphones – none.
Discussion was limited to each panel, and their preordained experts.
These experts are listed across six pages of the inaugural ARC conference handbook, beginning with Agu Irukwu, a Senior Pastor of Jesus House for All Nations in London and ending with Winston Marshall, a grammy award-winning musician.
There were scientists in the audience, very few, but notably Richard Lindzen. He was at this dinner.
And so, my final act of defiance, was when Denis Prager at the suggestion of Michael Schellenberger called for Bjorn Lomborg to stand-up toward the very end of the panel session. Calling for Lomborg to stand-up because we should acknowledge him as a great advocate for the truth on this issue of ‘energy and the environment’. And so I could but call out again from the back of the room,
‘Then let’s also acknowledge the presence of Richard Lindzen’.
Denis Prager could not see me, and he asked for clarification, as to whose name had been called out. A gentleman from a table closer to the stage called back, ‘Richard Lindzen’.
And so, after political scientist Bjorn Lomborg was cheered as a campion of the truth because he is clearly Michael Shellenberger’s’ favoured wiseman, there was opportunity for atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen to stand and also be applauded by the several hundred of us at that dinner.
Early in the panel discussion Shellenberger had specifically commented that ‘scepticism’ must be closed-down and ‘the science’ of the IPCC accepted as true. This is perhaps the intention of Bjorn Lomborg, and it would seem other intellectual drivers of this inaugural ARC conference. Though I would argue they are not really intellectual, but more political in their aspirations and motivations.
If ARC is to be truly successful in saving Western civilisation, then it is going to need to move beyond politics and reconcile itself with the very nature not only of man, but man’s place within the Universe. This is at the heart of science as it is still practiced in places like Russia and China.
If Western civilisation is to persist, it needs more than anything else to save its science, because otherwise our civilisation will be conquered and replaced. This is the reality of history: boys don’t only need to be able to set the table, a theme of Jordon Peterson’s final closing address, but they also need to be able to fight wars and win them. We thus need energy security for national security, a theme that I will discuss in part 3 of this series.
Bella, John and I about to cross the Thames by cable car. Much thanks to the Institute of Public Affairs for always supporting dissenting voices on such a range of important issues.
“Damn the whales, full speed ahead” seems to be the offshore wind policy of Biden’s NOAA. In the offshore wind stampede Biden’s National Marine Fisheries Service has lost sight of its mission to protect marine mammals.
More on Michael Shellenberger’s campaign against the offshore wind farm projects that are killing whales.
Gradually his efforts are gaining traction – this clip comes from San Diego apparently. And he believes that Congress may soon start to investigate what appears to be blat6ant disregard for the law by the Federal Government:
Thanks to the offshore wind industry, it’s never been easier to get up close and personal with rare and endangered whales. Never before has the general public been able to walk along the shoreline and find their favourite beach routinely littered with a steady stream of cetacean carcasses. Call it ‘eco-tourism’, with a twist.
Some might cringe at the carnage, but the wind industry hasn’t a care in the world – long before they began spearing these things into the ocean, they sought and were granted government-backed licenses to (quite lawfully) kill an unlimited number of whales, porpoises and dolphins – aka the ‘Incidental Harassment Authorization’.
Under the witless Chris Bowen, Australia’s wind and solar obsessed Federal government is hell-bent on plugging thousands of these monstrosities off Australia’s coasts, notwithstanding the wholesale whale slaughter playing out along America’s Atlantic coast.
With that in mind, it’s timely to tap into the work of Michael Shellenberger, who has recently produced a half-hour documentary, Thrown To The Wind – that exposes the corrupt relationship between government and the wind industry – desperately designed to cover up the true cause of one the greatest environmental scandals, of all time.
We’ll start first with Shellenberger’s interview on Sky News, and leave you with the video of Thrown To The Wind.
Government offshore renewable projects at risk of killing marine life Sky News Outsiders 24 September 2023
Environmental policy expert Michael Shellenberger says offshore renewable projects are “very environmentally degrading technology” that is affecting marine life.
“Windmills are very old, these are hundreds of years old technologies; the wind itself has low energy density meaning you have to spread wind turbines over huge areas, that; ‘s why they keep building them so big,” Mr Shellenberger told Sky News host Rowan Dean.
“The preparation, the mapping of the ocean floor with sonar is so loud it’s actually in violation of the regulations by the US government the separations the mothers from their calf’s, it sent the whales into boat traffic.
“These impacts can be seen around the world; the east coast is very sensitive because it’s actually a very shallow waters on the offshore.
“I think you can expect to see very significant impacts in Australia and everywhere in the world, I think people don’t realise that the oceans are full of life and I think we sometimes miss the fact that it’s a really biodiverse important part of our planetary ecosystem.”
Transcript
Rohan Dean: The Albanese government’s green dream is in strife. Things are not going to plan. Residents near the proposed five gigawatt Hunter offshore wind farm zone are furious. Not only is it outrageously expensive, but it will kill our whales. Our next guest has delved deeply into this sad phenomenon in his documentary, Thrown to the Wind. Take a look.
Thrown to the wind: “I saw another whale had washed up and it’s becoming a pattern.” “It sounds like someone pile driving!” “What the United States is looking at is thousands of wind turbines in an area that our whales, our dolphins, our marine life…” “So those red dots are whale deaths?” “Precisely.” “What a scandal.”
Rohan Dean: Joining us now is the producer of that video, a great friend of Outsiders, Michael Shellenberger, author, journalist, and founder of the group, Environmental Progress. Michael, it’s always great to see you. Thanks for coming on Outsiders. The documentary about killing whales, it has landed at the right point in time here in Australia. We are embarking on a massive offshore wind program across some of our most beautiful Australian ocean sides. What do you make of it?
Michael Shellenberger: Well, it’s good to be with you, Rohan. And yeah, I mean, it’s a very environmentally degrading technology because you have to remember, windmills are very old. These are hundreds of years old technologies. The wind itself has low energy density, meaning you have to spread wind turbines over huge areas. That’s why they keep building them so big, as tall as the Eiffel Tower. What we have documented is just simply the preparation, the mapping of the ocean floor with sonar is so loud. It’s actually in violation of the regulations by the US government that separates the mothers from their calves. It sends the whales into boat traffic and also the wind industry is expanding boat traffic into areas where there wasn’t traffic. That’s what’s behind the deaths of these whales off the East Coast of the United States. Also, dolphins, all cetaceans. And these impacts can be seen around the world.
The East Coast is very sensitive because it’s actually very shallow waters on the offshore and there’s only 340 of these magnificent whales left. It’s the North Atlantic right whales. But I think you can expect to see very significant impacts in Australia and everywhere in the world. I think people don’t realise that the oceans are full of life, and I think we sometimes miss the fact that it’s a really biodiverse important part of our planetary ecosystem, and I think there’s also just a lot of mythology. I think people think that because it’s wind, it’s somehow more natural or better for the environment, but what the science shows is something very different. Massive ecological impacts from industrial wind turbines. And as I pointed out last week, we’re now seeing the impacts of wind turbines on pumas in Brazil, critically endangered, but also on eagles, other raptor species, including raptors in Australia, and bat species. These are huge, loud degrading devices, and so I would just say you really have to make sure because we’ve discovered that the government hasn’t done the research that it claimed it was doing in order to monitor and protect the whales.
Rohan Dean: James.
James Morrow: And Michael, you go further than that, and this is a great concern in Australia because we also have right whales that migrate up and down the East Coast every year. You can watch them from the cliffs at Bondi. You can see them go up the coast. You say that the government knew about these effects and has covered this up. Tell us about that and what does that tell us that we should be watching out for when the government here in Australia says, “This is clean, this is green, this has no impact. This is what we need. If we’re going to march on to net zero, whales be damned.”
Michael Shellenberger: Well, I think the first thing you have to remember is that environmental conservation organisations have been pointing out the impacts of sonar on whales for many decades. This is a very well-studied phenomenon. Two years ago, the big conservation organisations wrote an open letter warning of this particular project on this whale species. Last year, a top government scientists wrote a very unusual letter warning of extinction on the species. We have now sent multiple letters to the government pointing out that the applications for the permits to engage in this industrial activity themselves show that they’re in violation of the law. So it’s big money, huge taxpayer subsidies. Somewhere on the order of one third to two thirds of the cost of wind energy is subsidised by rate payers. The industry then funnels that money to the politicians who then put pressure on the regulators to not enforce these environmental laws.
They have this cover, this story that says that this is good for the environment. It’s bad for the environment. This is greenwashing like I’ve never seen before. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. This is the biggest environmental scandal I’ve ever seen or been involved with, and I’ve been involved in environmental causes for over 30 years. This is a critically endangered species that could go extinct because of this project, but I think that people in Australia also need to look closely at the documents. People can be in touch with me, by the way. We’ve now gotten pretty good at the science and also at helping to work with the independent scientists, so many of whom have been sold out and the conservation groups have sold out.
We also documented industry funding for news organisations, aquarium, Woods Hole. I mean, it’s shocking how much money is being spent basically to repress the best available science showing the imminent threat to these magnificent animals, spiritual animals, I should say. There’s a reason we care about whales, the songs, the love of the mothers for their calves, the ways in which they’re a communal species. All of the reasons that we’ve loved and protected whales for decades stand today. It’s more desperate than ever, particularly for the right whales.
Rohan Dean: And Michael, I’ll just point out to viewers, you were of course Time Magazine’s, Young Environmentalist of the Year several years ago, so you know exactly what you’re talking about when you talk about caring for the environment. Liz.
Liz Storer: Well, I was going to ask Michael, how you account for the fact that the government is blindly forging ahead despite all the research done by yourselves and others in this space, and how do you account for that? You’ve kind of already answered that by saying follow the money. Do you ascribe to the idea that that’s really all there is behind the veil of this green dream zero emissions. And what do you make, would you agree with Dr. Jordan Peterson’s assessment that this is an extremely anti-human species agenda that we’re seeing rollout?
Michael Shellenberger: Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing you have to remember is that the reason that wind energy is so expensive is the same reason it’s so bad for the environment, which is that it’s just really inefficient. Wind is very energy dilute. You have to spread the collection of energy over huge amounts of areas. You have to build these machines to be very tall, to have huge environmental impacts. At bottom, it is a kind of mania like a religion, climatism, which says that climate change is the only environmental problem. It is an environmental problem. It’s not the biggest environmental problem and what is more tragic than actually killing an entire species of whale out of, because people are in the grip of this religion. We have shut down more nuclear energy on the East Coast of the United States, closed more nuclear plants that produced more energy than all of the wind turbines will produce if they got them up and running.
So the big hope here is that the finances of these projects are absolutely awful. Even with one to two third subsidy, the wind industry is asking for more money for rate payers. So we’re at just high corruption at this point. I mean, it’s just a money grab by greedy politicians, by frankly greedy journalists, scientists, conservation groups. Many of them have really sold out. It’s been a small group of us that are independent scientists, researchers, advocates, and others that have been fighting this. But I think that Australians also have a really important role to play here. The projects that proposing Australia would be absolutely devastating. We’re here to be in solidarity. If folks in Australia want to reach out, michaelshellenberger@gmail.com, happy to give our assistance because this industry is an absolute nightmare for marine life, marine mammals, and for whales in particular. There’s a reason we care so much about these particular animals.
Rohan Dean: Michael Shellenberger, well said, you will be inundated. I’ll repeat that, michaelshellenberger@gmail.com. We know what a great job Michael has done on so many fronts. We’ll talk to you again soon in a couple of months because the nuclear debate is heating up here. Michael, you were out here in Australia talking to Australians about the need for nuclear to get to net zero. The liberal party is finally… looks like adopting that as their major policy going to the next election. So we’ll be chatting a lot more about that, but that’s yet another example, Michael, of the great work you have done for us here in Australia. Get ready for those emails on the whales. Thanks, Michael. Sky News
Here’s Michael’s documentary on the offshore wind industry’s utterly pointless and unnecessary marine mammal slaughter.
Thrown to the Wind YouTube Public News Video 14 September 2023
Michael Shellenberger’s new documentary“Thrown To The Wind”
The wind industry says it isn’t killing whales, but it is. New boat traffic is colliding with whales. And high-decibel sonar is separating whale mothers from their calves, sending them into harm’s way. Our new documentary, which lays out the evidence, is now free to watch.
Public News Video
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