Bishop Hill Mooney on Climategate
Jan 16, 2011 Climate: other Chris Mooney gave a talk yesterday at the Science Online Conference. Apparently a large group of science communicators who are worried about global warming flew in from other countries to hear the great communicator talk about Climategate ;-). I discovered the talk too late to pick up the live stream, but we can get a feel for what was said by some of the twittering that went on. Chris Rowan's seems the most detailed account.
1. Now in session about climategate, or 'antiscience lies and the lying liars who tell them'
2. Chris Mooney on how 'climate' of scientific ignorance in which the scandal broke provided fertile ground for it to grow in.
3. Mooney admits grudging admiration for Mark Morano (in terms of his effectiveness at communicating his agenda)
4. Interesting: '6 Americas of global warming' chart shows that doubtful/dismissive are a hardly a majority. But they *are* very loud.
5. Mooney wants 'deadly ninjas of science communication' - to abseil down the through the windows of the Fox News building, perhaps?
6. Q being posed by @JoshRosenau: are climate denialists the new creationists? If so, we're screwed.
7. 'It's a knife fight', says Tom Peterson. I'd argue that we're considering picking up a knife while other side researching nukes.
The talk of ninjas and knife fights is interesting in the current atmosphere. (Tom Peterson is a scientist at NCDC. SOme may know him for his work on urban heat island effect).
Reader Comments (110)
I don't get Chris Mooney. He shows up as a moderator on Point of Inquiry and talks "free-thinking" horseh!t and writes books entitled: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future talking about scientific illiteracy among the masses and busts on bloggers. But as soon as the public shows an interest in science via climate science we're all a bunch of lying, ignorant imbeciles. He can't have it both ways. This guys a poser using hot button issues (atheism/religion debate, climate science debate) to make a name for himself and make money.
Where's his rational free-thinking when it comes to the climate science [snip - tone it down please] we saw from CRU and Mann, et al.?
I was reading Bill Bryson's "A short history of nearly everything"...
What is clear is that most major scientific game changers have come about despite the establishment not because of it. And even though the initial discover did not always get the recognition whilst alive, eventually some recognition was afforded.
Science is in an eternal fight. Einstein did not need better communication. He was working as clerk and just sent his papers in - no references or citations or footnotes or mathemetics.
Being good looking, shouting loud, playing dirty tricks, playing to the stalls - they may bring you some short term success. In the end the quality of your weapon is the only thing that really matters.
Bring a good weapon to the fight. Rather than whinge to the referee, improve your weapon.
Given Ryan Maue's chart of Accumulated Cyclone Energy at a 30 year low, I've asked Chris Mooney if the title of his next book will be 'Calm World'.
And I've also asked him if the title will be 'The Democrats' War on Science', given this Administrations' EPA accepting substandard science in pursuance of the policy goals of the likes of John Holdren.
==========================
... Einstein brought a home made light sabre to the fight against a flintlock pistol...
Absolutely pathetic -- And these are our "scientists"?
You’ve got to seriously doubt their intelligence when they continually underestimate their opposition. That they’re always distracted by M Morano is a good example, when the main event is often elsewhere. He’s certainly a great facilitator but even the best communicator can’t succeed if he’s got nothing to work with. It takes highly educated sceptics to untangle the layers of seemingly scientific bunk that has been spewed out to prove global warming. But once the ‘trick’ has been explained, any intelligent person can pass it on and the magic has gone for good.
A confused public only have to realise how much uncertainty has be hidden by the ‘settled science’ to tag climate scientists and journalists as liars. Once the doubt is there they have no way of telling where the truth stops and the lies begin. Willis’s open letter at WUWT covers it very well. Once lost, reputation is very difficult to regain. Whining that your enemies are worse, doesn’t regain your credibility especially when it’s quite easy to prove that you are misrepresenting them.
If they don’t stop making assumptions about why they’re losing the battle they’ll continue to suffer humiliating defeats from an extraordinarily small, but growing enemy.
The more I read yours and other blogs;eg EUReferendum; the more I conclude that socialists suffer from some kind of mental disease.
john in cheshire
the more I conclude that socialists suffer from some kind of mental disease.
Generically, it is called "Schizophrenia". However, you can find people on the far right with it too. While I am not a great fan of Wikipedia, you might find this article informative Schizophrenia
Jiminy Cricket wrote:
Science is in an eternal fight. Einstein did not need better communication. He was working as clerk and just sent his papers in - no references or citations or footnotes or mathemetics.
Actually Einstein was a patent examiner in the Swiss Patent Office. That was a job that required a good knowledge of physics.
Most of Einstein's papers contained plenty of mathematics, as can be seen by glancing through the English translation of his paper on special relativity below at the link below.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/
It is true that that paper does not contain bibliographic references but nevertheless Einstein did mention the work of Newton, Maxwell, Lorentz and Plank.
"I don't get Chris Mooney."
Mooney is somebody who likes to play dress-up in the cloak of scientific authority. He's a typical lefty journalism grad, with little understanding of either the philosophy or content of real science - but is part of a club who see the scientific high ground as a good place to fight the culture wars from, have culled a set of fashionable beliefs from pop-science magazines like New Scientist and Discovery (where he works), and tries to carve out a niche for himself contributing various pop-psychology and dated marketing methods to proselytize for them. So far with no discernible success at actually communicating, but with some remarkable progress on the niche-building, having just been appointed as an AGU director.
I quite like him, actually. He's a lot more tolerant of sceptics and free debate than most of his ideological ilk (like Deltoid), although he doesn't listen. He's like one of those very nice but deeply religious people; whose beliefs are utterly immoveable but whose wide-eyed, puppy-like devotion to them is somehow endearing. And there's no doubt that putting him in charge of the anti-sceptic propaganda effort will not be a recipe for success, so that bit's quite good news, too.
Chris is a lefty propagandist. Shame on the scientists who pay attention to him. Chris is a journalist by education and trade, not a scientist. What is hilarious (in a shameful sort of way) is that he is on the board of directors of the American Geophysical Union (to improve their propaganda). Not much negative feedback from the "scientists" who belong to the AGU re: Chris's appointment. Kind of pathetic, actually.
@Roy... you are not from Yorkshire are ya? :)
Mooney gave the same speech at the AGU San Francisco meet:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Richard2/climate-communications-ti_b_806530_73661896.html
Chris Mooney will join the ranks of Walter Duranty, the infamous pro-communist NYT reporter who misled people in the West about Stalin Duranty sold his soul praising Stalin and covering up his genocidal policies.
Mooney has conned his way into the AGU to push his propaganda and political view point and to lie about the problems of AGW theory and climate science.
If he had shame he would be ashamed, but that is not in psych profile of pathologicals like Mooney or Duranty.
@ Jiminy Cricket, if he's not from Yorkshire he'll be embarrassed! But then, if he was from Yorkshire, he'd already have told you! :o)
Interesting to compare this fellow to Dr. Kevin Trenbeth, a Certified Climate Scientist(TM):
Here's Willis Eschenbach on Trenbeth's current bloviations for AMS:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/15/unequivocal-equivocation/
I partic. liked his cmt,
"However, were I in his shoes, I’d much prefer that people assumed I was Dr. Evil than have them think I was Dr. Stupid Who Tries Really Hard .... "
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
'6 Americas of global warming' chart shows that doubtful/dismissive are a hardly a majority. But they *are* very loud.
The volume is a function of price. The peddlers of solar panels drive the volume up on both sides of the debate. Folks might be willing to pay an extra 2 cents per KW to 'help the environment' but when the price looks like it will be more like and extra 50 cents/KW the volume gets loud and they start questioning the science behind the predictions of catastrophe's worth paying an extra 50 cents/KW.
Steve Mosher pegged this at Climate Audit - http://climateaudit.org/2011/01/14/12736/#comment-252292 - this smells like a coordinated PR campaign to repair the damage of Climategate and the lack of recent observable warming attributable to GHG. The important thing is to keep the focus on the science.
The problem with scientists is that they are (generally) stupid, boring, unimaginative and humourless. Same goes for environmentalists. They are also politically illiterate little fish swimming in a sea of sharks. Chris Mooney is an American (!). He believes the Democratic Party represents the people. [Snip - namecalling not necessary]
James Delingpole and Brendan O’Neill are more effective communcators than all the paid for global warming defenders together because they are funny. If there is a moderation free period on the Guardian, I can guarantee to have every AGW geek running for cover because they are completely humourless.
This sums up the pathetic idiocy that is the corporate, AGW driven green movement in one brilliant and hilarious article.
Monbiot’s metamorphosis
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5479/
YES PRIME MINISTER
Bish. totally off thread. I saw the above play which is just finishing its West End run before touring. For readers not familiar with YPM, it was a BBC series written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn about a rather dumb but sly Minister then Prime Minister and his very wily, classically educated Permanent Secretary. Plenty of clips on You Tube and it runs on one of the many UK satellite channels. See http://www.yes-minister.com/.
Anyway, the PS, Sir Humphrey Appleby is an obvious sceptic. Halfway through the play he challenges AGW by saying that the hottest year on record was 1934, there has been no real warming since 1998 and I think a reference to the ACE. This is a plot device, as the PM's plan to secure his position and European finances with a $trillion loan from an East European "Stan" falls apart and Sir Humphrey cooks up a scheme whereby the Prime Minister can claim to be saving the planet in a scheme as cynical as anything dreamt up by Gordon Brown, A .Blair, Waxkey, Gore , Trenberth, Mann et al ..........
Cheers
Paul
Ralph Cicerone is scheduled to give a talk at the AMS meet this month in Seattle on Climategate. Looks like more effort at recapturing the 'narrative' from the guy who bought you the 'Boehlert switch'.
E Smith observes:
Proving that he doesn't spend much time with scientists. This sort of remark is counter-productive. There are those who would accuse sceptics and even lukewarmers of being anti-science. Let's not hand them the nightstick, eh?
@ Jiminy Cricket
No, I am not from Yorkshire, I'm Welsh, but I would hope that wherever people are from they would agree that it is important to get facts right otherwise when people use sloppy arguments in support of the idea that CO2 is the main driver of climate change they can always try and evade criticism by pointing out flaws in statements made by their critics.
BBD
I have a science degree. I taught (computing) in a college science dept for 13 years. All of the phd scientists fitted that description and most of the rest of them. It's a geek thing. I would rather strangle myself with a live snake than attend a global warming debate. I can read what I choose to online.
"...I conclude that socialists suffer from some kind of mental disease..."john in cheshire
"Generically, it is called "Schizophrenia". However, you can find people on the far right with it too. While I am not a great fan of Wikipedia, you might find this article informative..."--Don Pablo de la Sierra
A bit more on target, but much more for the left than the right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_complex
@Roy... now my post might have been the butterfly deep in the Amazonian rain forest that could have reversed the tide of AGW hysteria sweeping the planet. I suppose now we will never know...
But I doubt any chaos effect in this instance... and I think to some (large) degree you are missing the point of my post. In fact nothing you added actually changes the meaning of what I was trying to get across. I make no apologies though I was actually talking about a specific point in time around 1905.
But if it makes you happy... I am not going to batter facts back and forth, as my poor butterfly has just been eaten by a yellow frog... the content yellow frog was unsuspectingly eaten by an Amazonian Indian... who just happened to be the greatest genius ever lived... unfortunately the frog was poisonous...
Science is as much if not more about imagination than facts...
" I conclude that socialists suffer from some kind of mental disease"
The best analysis of the green revolution I have read has come from the book Green Capitalism: Manufacturing Scarcity in an Age of Abundance, by James Heartfield, a Marxist academic. The lynch pin of the whole operation was Enron
***
In 1997 the Club of Rome collaborated with Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute to launch a new report "Factor Four" that promised to "halve resource use" while doubling wealth. The message was that you could get rich saving the planet. A privileged few did indeed double their wealth; but for the rest it was just a case of halving resources.
Immodestly, Lovins made his own California energy scheme the main example of savings in "Factor Four". His well-paid advice to the State of California was that it was a big mistake to adopt a system that rewarded increased electricity output with increased profits. Such a system would naturally tend to boost output. Instead, rewards for cutting energy use were needed. Rather than getting paid for additional megawatts the utility companies should be rewarded for saving power use: negawatts. The impact of Lovins' model on energy generation in California was decisive. "Around 1980, Pacific Gas and Electricity Company was planning to build some 10-20 power stations", according to Lovins.
But by 1992, PG&E was planning to build no more power stations, and in 1993, it permanently dissolved its engineering and construction division. Instead as its 1992 Annual Report pronounced, it planned to get at least three quarters of its new power needs in the 1990s from more efficient use by its customers.[4]
Of course the PG&E was not getting three quarters of its new power needs from anywhere: it had just reduced its output. But manufacturing energy scarcity did indeed grow somebody's cash wealth: Enron's. With these artificial caps on energy production the generating companies could start to hike up the charges to utility companies, including PG&E, now unable to meet its own customers' demands. Those energy companies were owned by Enron. Chief Executive Kenneth Lay turned Enron from a company that made its money generating power into one that made its money trading finance. Whatever else it was doing, there was no denying that Enron was cutting back its own CO2 emissions and getting rich doing it. One company memo stated that the Kyoto treaty "would do more to promote Enron's business than will almost any other regulatory initiative".[5]
Amory Lovins' negawatt revolution in California was Enron's wet dream. Having shut down its own generation capacity, PG&E was at the mercy of Enron's market manipulation. Buying surplus electricity on the open market PG&E was royally fleeced, losing US$12 billion. Utility bills rose by nine times between May 2000 and May 2001. Enron took advantage of the restricted market and cut electricity to California. They even invented reasons to take power plants offline while California was blacked out. Enron officials joked that they were stealing one million dollars a day from California.[6] The PG&E that Lovins held up as a model went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the State of California.
James Heartfield
http://curezone.com/forums/fmp.asp?i=1691985
e smith
Thanks for the illuminating recap of the circumstances surrounding Amory Lovins' negawatt revolution in California.
Much more productive than scientist-bashing. But. I have to admit that I had less fun at table with the computer lot than other disciplines - maybe the field is the problem?
"I have to admit that I had less fun at table with the computer lot than other disciplines "
Them too. I am a geek who turned into a swan by taking large amounts of drugs and being pursued by beautiful teenage girls (never students). I am still fundamentally a geek myself. Which is sad ! I used to write dance music like Brian Cox, but not nearly as well. He beats me at everything apart from personality and looks.
I went into teaching to avoid having to communicate with scientists or computer people. I fell into the above through family pressure and a government grant (computing). I almost never socialised with them.
The anti science jibes weren't really serious. They do annoy me, though. Like Lovelock, I am appalled with the behaviour of scientists while also recognising (like him), they are only following orders (apart from Hansen who is barking mad). I also met most of the leadership of the Scottish Green Party (all science, computing academics) and wasn't at all impressed by their open contempt for the lower orders and mass consumption.
Things can only get better !!
Here's a new term for
global warming climate change climate disruption climate challengesclimate snake-oil terminology:Climate @$$hole: A fake scientist who promotes the fraudulent theory of global warming while attacking genuine scientists with ad hominem attacks, such as calling them "deniers".
Okay. O/T I know but Australian politicians do seem to be slightly more insane then the UK ones!
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/coal-miners-to-blame-for-queensland-floods-says-australian-greens-leader-bob-brown/story-e6frfku0-1225988806619
OOps! I meant Green leaders!
john in cheshire
“the more I conclude that socialists suffer from some kind of mental disease”.
Don Pablo de la Sierra
"Generically, it is called "Schizophrenia".
...................................................
I tend to agree with your views on socialism but I’m not sure about the your diagnosis of schizophrenia. Maybe “psychosis” - a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality" would be more apposite. Seems also to apply to many AGW proponents and most Guardian readers.
I’ve long felt that anyone who reads the Guardian on a routine basis must be viewing the world as if reflected in a distorting mirror. And although reading the Guardian probably doesn’t warrant being classified as a notifiable illness, I’m not so sure about writing for it.
Perhaps we need a name for this apparently clinical condition of a compulsive urge to communicate an apocalyptic, all-pervading, distorted perception of economic, social and environmental realities. How about Monbiot’s Psychosis?
Do we need a full clinical description? Perhaps, one day, a cure might be found.
I'm not sure it's helpful to attempt amateur psychiatry on those who disagree with us. The left does this all the time and it is little more than an attempt to dignify their hatreds by claiming that science agrees with and endorses them. There is nothing between the leftist arguing that you disagree with him because you're mentally ill and the Nazi arguing that Jewish blood looks different under a microscope. So we shouldn't resort to those tactics.
Lefties are anyway a lot less complex than that. They are just hypocritical, stupid, sentimental narcissists. These aren't mental conditions, nor even personality disorders - they're just signs of an appalling personality. They own villas in Tuscany while lecturing others about CO2 emissions. They employ Latvian cleaners for cash and lecture the WWC about their racist attitudes towards immigrants. They vote for higher taxes but only for other people. They simply feel good striking moral poses and wagging their fingers at everyone else. They are morally incompetent, no better than conquistadors, and they are happy to wreck the economy of the world because it's a noble cause.
Once upon a time, not so very long ago...
Between the wars there was a Liverpool Docker's family. Lived in typical terraced houses. The Dad used to walk to the docks to save the fare to give to his two youngest daughters. Well, when I say work, he never actually knew if there was work. Like many he had to pop into the foreman's watering hole and buy him a pint or two. Walking past the gates of Stanley Dock there where Irish immigrant kids, often just off the boat from Ireland, barely clothed often shoeless. He used to give them his lunch.
Every week he used to save some money for a Christmas party and every kid around was invited and everyone had a small present. He lost a few of his children through simple diseases that now would take a few anti-biotics to cure.
One of his daughters won a scholarship to a grammar school, something unheard of then; the 3A's and Littlewoods was often the height of a girl's ambition then. The girls made her life so miserable that she couldn't stay. She believed in the fight against Hitler, so she volunteered for the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Due to driving barrage balloon lorries, in convoy, around the lanes of Lancashire during the black-out, she had a nervous breakdown. She was committed to a mental asylum. Despite the best efforts of her family there she remained in one of the worst mad-houses of the country far away form home; in those days often a one way trip. It was only through the efforts of a Labour MP called Bessie Braddock that she was released to the care of her family. She recovered.
The Mother used to clean lawyers offices in Dale Street. Six stories high. It had a lift. She was not allowed to use the lift. So the coal scuttles she carried upstairs to every fireplace for the start of the new day.
Stanley Dock was the bonded warehouse, handling tobacco and such like. The Father most probably caught lung cancer from the dust, as he was a non-smoker. He could not really afford to pay for the Doctor, but the Doctor forgave many bills. The Germans even bombed him out of his sick bed. Though luckily the bomb missed. Eventually the Doctor provided a humane way out for him and he died surrounded by his family.
William Peter McCabe. Strange being called William and Irish descent, but Billie McCabe was his name.
He was Socialist, as was his daughter, as the was the only MP who would help them.
I respectfully put it to you, that those who talk about socialists here, have very little idea what struggles and sacrifices that people made so that you could freely go to the school of your choice, receive free health care, not be judged by your accent solely, or even have the disposable income that allows luxuries of a computer and the time to use them.
The past is not so long ago.
A man may be a good father and a hard worker generous to those in need. He may also be an advocate of socialism because he is a good man and a poor economist.
Citizens have to pay a great deal for free education and healthcare and the choice offered is a la Hobson.
Every year people go on holidays that cost them nothing, at point of sunburn and hangover, as they have paid beforehand.
My story, though true, was not about W.P.McCabe. It was a checkpoint in the social history of the UK.
To claim that socialism has played no role in the democracy and in the enriching of our society, is rewriting the social history of this country.
Hobson's choice? How very apt. My little window on a docker's life is all about Hobson's choice. Just think about how teenagers went to die, or went to work ever though they may have had the intellect to get a first at OxBridge? Hobson's choice indeed.
Anyway my posting was not to enter into a debate about socialism in the UK. It was to provide a counterpoint to the way the thread was developing. You can turn this place into another EUReferendum. However, you will lose people like myself. maybe not a great loss, but something I just wanted to place on record.
Jiminy Cricket
Hear hear. I miss the good old days when we were all productivists and politics was an argument about how economic growth could be maintained and how the fruits of that growth should be shared out.
To call Monbiot and Co. Socialists dishonours our parents.
Jiminy Cricket.
Ah, the sainted memory of Liverpool dockers and the nobility of their personalities and their work. Stories about “diesel fitters” must be apocryphal.
I’m in my late sixties and had an equally disadvantaged childhood to that you describe, not unusual when growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s. But, through dint of application and systematic pursuit of employment, mainly in manufacturing industry, and a frugal temperament, I have managed to make reasonable provision for my family and for my old age. I was a Labour Party member in my youth and a shop steward for a time. But, to paraphrase Churchill, “anyone who is not a socialist in their youth has no heart, anyone who retains these beliefs in their maturity has no brain”. So perhaps socialism is just arrested development.
Having said that I still view the 1945 – 1951 Labour government as having been a noble attempt to redress pre-war inequalities. So where did it all go wrong? Clement Atlee, Herbert Morrison and Aneurin Bevan must be turning in their graves at the debasement of their vision for a welfare state; at the fecklessness, welfare dependency, social breakdown and the politics of envy that has ensued. Mind you, Bevan turned into something of a “champagne socialist”, so the rot seems to have set in early.
@Brian E... re your Dockers jibe, not worth the dignity of a response, other than it shows more about this country that it first appears to. And I am glad you feel able to compare yourself, probably a father born in the 1940's bringing up a family in the 1960's with somebody born in around 1880 and bringing up a family through two world wars, one depression, civil unrest, without universal suffrage, no social state at all...
Environmentalism (including climate alarmism) is not socialism, nor is is fascistic.
See here, in no particular order, several essays on the true nature of green politics:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/03/whats-left-about-green.html
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/09/eco-humanism.html
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/11/the-far-right-deep-green-hoo-ha.html
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/09/environmentalism-or-death-thats-the-choice.html
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/08/identity-crisis-politics.html
This is by no means all, but there's already rather a lot of reading involved, so I will leave it to the genuinely interested to mine the archives at CR for more climate politics gold.
I agree wholeheartedly with J4R above: name calling of any kind is counter-productive.
BBD
The CR articles are just opinion pieces based on general knowledge.
The far right angle comes from an ultra conservative philosophy based on nature centred Romanticism which was particularly strong in Germany, but can also be seen in the English Romantic poets from Blake to Keats but exemplified by The Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the philosophy being set out in the equally renowned preface written by Wordsworth. It can also be seen in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Carlyle and the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger.
That is the clue to the far right angle . The Nazi leadership embraced a local, back to nature Pagan Romanticism as a solution to the evils of nature destroying Jewish international capitalism. The enemy was anything that interfered with the cycles of nature.
The philosophy is very well described by George Monbiot.
Monbiot expounds on the dangers of progress itself. That is at the very heart of ultra conservative philosophy. He compares dangerous, environment destroying Jewish progress myths unfavourably with pagan cyclical myths.
God of the Soil
The peculiarities of the Abrahamic religions - their astonishing success in colonising the world and their dangerous notion of progress (now inherited by secular society) - result from a marriage between the universal god of the nomads and the conditions which permitted cities to develop. The dominant beliefs of the past 2000 years are the result of an ancient migration from soils such as xerepts and xeralfs to soils such as fluvents and rendolls.
At Easter, the Christian belief in a permanent resurrection is mixed up with the pagan belief in a perpetual cycle of temporary resurrection and death. In church we worship the Christian notion of progress, which has now filtered into every aspect of our lives. But, amid the cracking of easter eggs and the murmur of prayer, there can still be heard the small, faint voice which reminds us that our ecological hubris must eventually be greeted by nemesis.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/03/22/god-of-the-soil/
When I challenged Monbiot on the remarkable similarity of this article with a section of Mein Kampf, he replied that he had referred to 'Abrahamic religions', not Judaism. He wasn't able to tell me what either Christianity or Islam had to do with the origins of settled farming some 1500-2000 years previously. I am absolutely not saying Monbiot is a Nazi, but I do think his friend Paul Kingsnorth with his connection to the ultra right Goldsmith family and their Nazi pals Lord Lucan and John Aspinall is sailing close to the wind. They were accused by Peter Wright in the Guardian of funding the threatened fascist take over that caused Harold Wilson to resign. The Goldsmiths have Jewish roots. Monbiot's political mentor Sir Crispin Tickell wants to reduce the British population by 2/3rds and wants single people to stay with their parents. Monbiot's father was deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Both his mother and grandfather were extreme right wing Conservatives.
This is a simple but well argued article on the environmental philosophy of the Third Reich
Hitler’s Green Killing Machine By Mark Musser | February 15, 2010
http://www.aim.org/aim-report/hitlers-green-killing-machine/
This is my page on eco fascism.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sealed/gw/nazi.htm
I am NOT trying to link anyone alive today with the horror of Nazism, unlike those who called sceptics 'deniers'. That was a very long time ago in very different circumstances, namely the tragedy of the great depression, particularly in Germany.
I have to say that I find CR's Ben Pile's 'general knowledge' as you put it a little out of the ordinary. It is interesting that you start off by attempting to delegitimise him.
I am aware of the recent history you recount, but have not read the Monbiot article (yet, at any rate).
While historical right wing movements such as blut und boden resonate tellingly with the intolerant and dictatorial stance of many deep greens, as you point out, the mistake is to present the entirety of the environmental movement as directly or indirectly inspired by fascism or the impulse to fascism.
It is, I maintain, equally incorrect to characterise environmentalism as socialism.
At heart, as Ben Pile explains, it is neither.
The "ecofascism" term seems to me to be pretty apposite. Ecofascists always try to argue that it can't possible apply to them because of what fascism entailed in the 1920s and 1930s - race, conquest, etc.
This claim is specious, in my view, because it insists on a completely literal interpretation of 1930s fascism as the only possible manifestation. One might just as well argue that the Cathloic Church isn't a religion because it doesn't have druids.
A mindset can persist in a superficially changed form while remaining the same. The essence iof fascism was the state telling you how to live your life, and the life you could have was less important than serving the state. The same assertion is made today by greens who insist we should beggar ourselves and wreck our personal prosperity to serve the planet. they are of course in charge of deciding what the planet needs.
As Orwell pointed out, there is little to choose between totalitarianism and organised religion aside from the fact that religious dogma is stable and totalitarian doctrine is not. We see the latter with greens too - they're for things then against them; they're opposed to you flying but not to themselves doing so; they want to save all those lives in the future but they're killing people right now.
They are fascists, all right. Ecofascists absolutely fits them to a tee.
E smith
I find it significant that the left has attempted to categorise environmentalism as explicitly right-wing. Aynsley Kellow (who has been active in comments here recently) writes in his book Science and Public Policy:
(p157 – 158)I have to say I am in closer agreement with prof. Kellow and Ben Pile than with your position. Whilst it is tempting to draw a straight line between two points, it is not always the best way of showing how they are related.
BD
I am not saying the individuals involved in the modern environmental movement have Nazi type philosophies, I am saying that a great deal of the leadership come from ruling class backgrounds and do support Nazi ideology like their parents and grandparents did in WWII. Prince Philip (WWF) came from a Nazi family and Prince Bernhart (WWF) was an SS officer. Greens tend to be regressive, they want to dismantle civilisation, therefore they are conservative and right wing. There is no escape from that. It has been forgotten that there is anti capitalist right wing movement because it was destroyed in 1945. That's why Monbiot and the Goldsmiths (Lovelock too) have been able to hide their true beliefs.
Many environmentalists regard themselves as left wing and progressive, but that's because they don't have a clue what they are doing. I have met them, disillusioned socialists who naively believe they can attack capitalism with environmental arguments.
The German Green Party is right wing. My girlfriend represented the Scottish Green Party at a global conference in Germany and responded to my childish jibes by admitting there was a problem, in fact a big problem with German greens. It shocked me because I was only joking (this was round 1989).
I have read some of the CR articles before. The first one about directionless politics is simply something Ben has invented out of thin air. That is why I discounted them. I didn't mean to rude or over bearing. Sorry if it came across like that.
The second one is much better and confirms my post on the nature centred anti humanism at the heart of environmental and extreme right wing philosophy. The third article is playing a game of ignoring the Nazi roots of environmental politics. which he believes will be more productive. I do not agree as you can see from my comments below it. The truth is the truth.
Justice4Rinka
I agree there is a connection between the absolute message of nature first environmentalism and totalitarianism.
Eric
Sorry, didn't spot you in comments at CR.
But, as Ben Pile says in response to your argument:
Now, as someone who readily agrees with some of what you say concerning the regressive, elitism flavour of much environmentalism, I don't want to sound as though we are irreconcilable. The difference remains more one of generality and emphasis.
As you rightly point out on your website, the aristocrats linked to the Green movement do in some cases have bona-fide fascist family backgrounds. But look at the great shrubbery of modern eco-think... it is clearly not a direct derivation of fascist ideology.
Two points and the straight line analogy again.
BBD
Aynsley Kellow may be right. I am simply pointing out that environmentalism is at heart right wing, conservative and regressive. Also that there is a signicant element of extreme right philosophy in the environmental movement amongst those who are most influential and have the most money. The Goldsmiths really did want to overthrow the British government in a fascist coup and they effectively did force Harold Wilson to resign
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jan/09/politics.past
Many politically aware Jewish people are deeply suspicious of anti globalisation and environmental campaigners.
Here is a Monbiot article written when Edward Goldsmith made the mistake of revealing his underlying racism and risked giving the entire game away.
Black Shirts in Green Trousers
By George Monbiot, April 30, 2002
The far right is moving in, and greens and globalisation campaigners must do more to shut it out.
The BNP is not the only force on the far right which now describes itself as “the true green party”. Similar claims have been made by members of Le Pen’s Front National, by the Vlaams Blok in Belgium and, in Britain, by a tiny offshoot of the National Front which calls itself Third Way. This is the group which most clearly articulates the way in which the politics of the hard right are shifting.
The previous editorial team split with its founder Teddy Goldsmith after he addressed a meeting of the hard right Groupement de Recherche et d’Etudes pour la Civilisation Europeene. Goldsmith, whose politics are a curious mixture of radical and reactionary, has advocated the enforced separation of Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda and Protestants and Catholics in Ulster, on the grounds that they constitute “distinct ethnic groups” and are thus culturally incapable of co-habitation.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/04/30/black-shirts-in-green-trousers/
J4R
Yesterday:
Today:
WTF?