It’s a description. Now is the time at SDA when we told you so!
Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore,1997 – “A lot of those in the peace movement were anti-American and, to an extent, pro-Soviet. By virtue of their anti-Americanism, they tended to sometimes favor the communist approach. A lot of those people, a lot of those social activists, moved into the environmental movement once the peace movement was no longer relevant.”
Washington Times, January 2011;
According to [NASA climate activist/scientist James Hansen], compared to China, we are “the barbarians” with a “fossil-money- ‘democracy’ that now rules the roost,” making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections. Here’s what he blogged on Nov. 24:
“I have the impression that Chinese leadership takes a long view, perhaps because of the long history of their culture, in contrast to the West with its short election cycles. At the same time, China has the capacity to implement policy decisions rapidly. The leaders seem to seek the best technical information and do not brand as a hoax that which is inconvenient.”
An obvious suggestion – Maybe he can even fill in for Tom Friedman …
More here on the James Hansen op-ed for The South China Morning Post.
I heard Mark Levin talking about James Hansen’s latest “America sucks, China rocks” comments. Makes me think back to ET’s comments today that we really do live in a 2-tier society: Elites & Peasants.
Note: If you’re reading this then you’re likely a “Peasant”!
These people make me ill. How many millions died for the Chinese “Elites” since 1949. Not that the left cares. As long as myths are propagated, lies made flesh. That fascism in the guise of Socialism is a winner. Multi millions dead & forgotten for the “Cause” of Aristocracy in peasants clothing. Just wait till there one child policy hits them with the sexual imbalance what will these fools say then?
JMO
Now comrades…
Hansen is an extremist in the most vulgar and dangerous sense of the word.
This guy must be smoking some serious weed!
China is the biggest CO2 emitter in the world, yet has an economy much smaller than the US. It has the fastest growing emissions in the world. It has made it abundantly clear that it will not change its ways. And this is the country he favors to lead the world in “saving the planet”.
How could someone as stupid as Hansen ever get into that kind of position?
The MSM has locked itself into a corner; you’d think that Moore’s comments would be part of the zeitgeist/shared public knowledge, but no. No MSM writer seems to be up to the task of actually ASKING POINTED QUESTIONS beyond their little envelope slit of perspective/marching orders.
Yay, typical modern western “journalism”! I hope you get a good time slot on Sun TV, Kate, and start poking holes.
How is this guy not fired? How?!
From the article quoted above —
// China’s annual emissions have rocketed past those of the United States and other developed countries, and, if they continue on their current growth path, China will become the principal cause of climate change within the next few decades.[…] //
Of course, if you believe “CO2 Some call it pollution, I call it life” then cheer them on.
Hansen thinks cutting CO2 is the most important issue of our time, so Goldberg’s rabbitting on about the “Gang of Four” etc is just irrelevant to him. But it’s irrelevant to the west as well, or we wouldn’t buy so much from China.
Hansen has “hope” that China will lead the way — it is highly polluted; it will suffer more than most from climate effects; it wants to lessen fossil fuel dependence; it wants to sell technology using its highly productive system.
Further hope for Hansen comes from two sources — they have a rational sector-by-sector plan AND they have a command society [with no huge oil-lobby]
He thinks only a carbon tax will do the job. And he believes that China can pressure the others to pay the tax [initially, by added it to the cost of imports to China]
// Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax.” //
He can hope.
Since neither you nor the Washington Moony-Times provide a link to the article quoted here it is [one of two]
Green Peace bumper stickers:
“Kill people not amoeba, and save a tree, uh you made need one, one day”!
“Yea, right-on, down with the man – up with the cave-man”
“Save, conserve, connect, we are the only chance to rescue oxygen 2011, truth, sick, word-up”
A play on Kate’s “scratch a leftie” is “scratch and environmentalist, find a fascist.”
Hansen appears to be certifiably insane and he should at the very least be fired and in an ideal world he’d be tried for treason.
So the oceans are going to rise 75 meters; latest sea level increase was -3 mm which likely reflects the cooling trend that we’re in. Not sure why Hansen is idolizing the Chinese so much, he should go for the Russian commies as they supported Lysenko, although the perversion of climate “science” far exceeds in repugnance Lysenko’s “peer reviewed” genetics research.
I’m really beginning to wonder if, before its “fall”, the USSR chose to get all its sleeper agents in the west to join environmental organizations which are likely the worlds richest source of useful idiots. Now that the road to serfdom has been blocked by a republican congress, Hansen’s handlers must be pulling out all the stops to see if they can cause maximum disruption in the US to prevent the return of sanity in climate science there.
Sorry, “scratch *an* environmentalist…”
Sigh.
EARTH FIRST !
We’ll mine the other planets later.
Envy the Chinese culture after five thousand years; long election cycles and they still eat with sticks.
Is Hansen exhibiting the early onset of dementia?
To be fair to him though, he is not alone among AGW believers.
Exactly – the left operates within a two-class socioeconomic and political structure; the elites who rule..and the masses, the peasants who are ruled. We are the peasants.
Both classes are hereditary; there’s no middle class made up of the results of hard work and merit. And boy, you don’t step out of your class.
That’s why the left loathes Sarah Palin; she’s ‘low class’ (note how often she is described this way). And she has dared, presumed, to move out of her class. Why she actually wants to be a Ruler! The nerve!
The classes are unelected- note how Hanson rejects elections. And the Rulers rule..because they do. Note how Hanson wasn’t elected; he was appointed by Obama.
Another thing – Because these classes exist without accountability; that is, you are a member because you are…not by virtue of your behaviour or actions…(which is the domain of the middle class)…these two classes operate within a ‘virtual’ reality. Virtual reality is all in the mind. It ignores actual reality.
So, Hanson can ignore the facts – that China’s new coal mine-a-week makes it the most polluting nation in the world. And its CO2 emissions are topping those of the US. Oh – and it has no intention of doing anything about this.
Note how readily Hanson slips into the fictional in his op-ed; how he glorifies himself..oh sure, it’s a joke..but it’s revealing of the lack of a distinction between fact and fancy in the worldview of the elites.
Note that Hanson in his op-ed admits that China’s CO2 emissions top those of the US but he doesn’t blame China for the problem. No. He blames the US because it is ‘earlier’ emissions not current ones that are the problem. The earlier ones have been absorbed by the organics of the planet.
But note:
He declares his support of China because it ‘takes the long view’. Huh??? If China takes the long view then their current emissions of CO2 ought to be a concern to them. And to Hanson. But they are not concerned. Neither is Hanson.
He just wants to punish the US. For its past emissions. Oh, and because it’s a democracy and he says democracy is slow. And dysfunctional. Indeed. A totalitarian state can crush its citizens without dissent. Hanson, as an elite, does not permit the peasants to critique the Rulers. That’s why the left loathes the Tea Party. They are peasants! They dare to question the Rulers!
Hanson raves about the manufacturing capacity of China and belittles that of the US. He utterly ignores that China has no unions while the existence of unions in the US has devastated its manufacturing capacity – for unions moved the focus of attention from production to the wellbeing and welfare of its employees. The union demands rose above the carrying costs of production – and the companies failed or moved offshore.
He’s an ignorant idiot. But, he’s an Elite. A Ruler. Appointed and anointed. We are peasants.
Further hope for Hansen comes from two sources — they[China] have a rational sector-by-sector plan AND they have a command society [with no huge oil-lobby]
The Chicom government is their oil lobby.
They’re buying up oil and gas properties and investing in fossil energy companies all over the world.
For the record there are no NGO of business lobbies of any kind that influence the Chicom government, that means no environmental lobby and no human rights lobby.
“long election cycles and they still eat with sticks.”
And they discard those sticks after every meal.
If they have 2 meals a day that’s 3.2 billion sets of chopsticks every day they go through.
As a nation they are more responsible than any for targeting species for extinction.
Sea horses, bears, tigers, anything that they erroneously link to their libido is targeted as aphrodisiacs to enhance their sex drives.
(why I have no idea since sheer numbers would suggest that what they really need is salt peter)
Either Hansen is either wilfully ignorant, delusional, incredibly stupid, or a committed political animal.
All scenarios lead to taking the stand that he has in this op-ed. So, what does he have to gain by that position? What has Unca Mo and the Goracle promised him for being the useful idiot?
To completely whitewash China’s “sins”, from an environazi point of view, is unforgivable. Yet it is an ongoing meme from the watermelon movement
The Chinese are fast becoming capitalists nonpareil, and will support CO2 reduction only so long as it’s to their immediate advantage.
Hansen is just too dumb to notice. A useful idiot indeed.
Finning is the practive of cutting off the fins of live sharks and then dumping the bodies back into the water to drown. The median number of sharks subjected to this treatment annualy is 38 milliom. All of this is for the production of shark fin soup. a bland gelatinous dish that is primarily served in China to impress. As China’s economy grows, the practice is growing at an alarming rate. This is a true danger to the ocean ecology if this top predator is “finned” to extinction. Yet another example of callous disregard of the ecological implications of China’s culture on hte ecology of the planet. Hansen and his fellow travelers are idiots.
I’m cross posting this from yesterday’s thread about the dead babies. For the envirowackos, China truly is on a pedestal.
“Well, it is my understanding the China’s “One Child” policy is a harbinger of the ideal Environmental policy intended to fight over population and Global Warming. I kid you not! I work for a large international company that mandated a tutorial that included a section on Environmental Sustainability which heralded China and it’s ‘One Child’ policy as a ground breaking and responsible policy that the rest of the world should imitate. It’s clear to me that Liberals and Progressives here in Canada and around the world are likely very pleased that these babies, who in their view is a blight on the planet, are being aborted (if only a little late, or not).”
Apparently totalitarianism is the new free.
Hansen, Krugman, Sharpton, the list goes on and on. I liked the attention and I can make more stuff up to get it.
loki
[………I’m really beginning to wonder if, before its “fall”, the USSR chose to get all its sleeper agents in the west to join environmental organizations which are likely the worlds richest source of useful idiots………]
That high ranking KGB defector confirmed what we already knew. The “march through the institutions” began in the ’50’s if not sooner.
Harnessing the environmental movement was incidental to the Soviets….their goal was to install a “5th column” in academia, hence gain control of the West’s R&D. This process did not involve elections……and resulted in powerful unimpeachable “moles” (many unwitting dupes) who gradually gained control of everything from academia to intelligence to media and technology.
Their successes besides coopting the bureaucracy included the largely successful anti-Vietnam War movement to increasing their espionage pipeline even into the Los Alimos Labortories.
Most of this 5th column are unwitting dupes/useful idiots but there remains a hard core of genuine foreign agents….still reporting to the Kremlin/Beiging.
Hanson was inplace a long time back only came to prominance when he complained bitterly about Bush administration muzzling while he actually began a campaign of using his position as a bully pulpit…..to launch the Great Global Warming Swindle…..which really is a communist plot.
His bogus complaints of political interference was his licence to abuse his position…..essentially slipping his leash.
A simple revue of his website “Real-climate” indicates he deliberately recruited leftist fellow travellors into the GISS agency.
It’s easy for election cycles to appear “short” when they’re being compared to a country that has none.
Oz:
Most Chinese people do not discard their chopsticks after every meal. They have daily use ones that are made of metal or plastic (in the old days, ivory, but not any more), that they wash and reuse just as we do. Throwaway chopsticks are only used in cheap restaurants – if you visit any upscale place in Toronto, you’ll get reusable ones.
I do agree with Hansen on one point: the Chinese take the long view. As someone else said, years ago, the West plays chess, a game of battle, while the Chinese play Go, a game of market share. I think this is particularly important when we consider Chinese investment in raw resources.
Consider the rare earth (RE) metals, of which China currently produces more than 90% of world production. There are RE deposits elsewhere, but the cost of exploiting them is so high, and the RE price was so low, the mines were not built. Today, RE demand is rising, and so prices are rising (good for China, short term), but Western companies, seeing an opportunity, are beginning to develop mines outside of China. At the same time, China is reducing the amount of RE export licenses, further tightening world supply and raising prices even more.
In a capitalist world, this would be good. Rising prices signal higher demand and the possibility of profit, so resources are directed to the sector, more REs are produced, prices stabilize, and we can have more of the batteries, etc. that need REs.
But China is not capitalist. They defy conventional description, but I’d suggest “neo-mercantilist” would be as apt as any. In their drive to increase export revenue, their strategy for REs would be much like OPEC’s for oil: let the price rise until competition/substitution begins to eat into profit. Then, let the price fall so that investment in competitive/substituting products becomes irrational. After the mines are shuttered, and the non-oil products die, let the prices go up again.
Look at what happened with oil. If oil had reached $200/bbl AND STAYED THERE, would we be having any of the lengthy arguments about the payback of hybrid/electric cars for urban driving? I don’t think so. Paybacks that are questionable at $1/litre are obvious at $3/litre. So, naturally, OPEC pumps out more oil to lower the price, lest Western drivers permanently switch to an economy that uses less oil.
China is going to do the same thing with RE metals. The price is going to rise, and they are going to benefit most from that, until new production comes on stream. At that point – or maybe just before – China will grant more export licenses, and/or lower the prices of RE metals. Suddenly, the new mines are uneconomic. Projects are shelved, people get fired, capital gets wasted. If prices start rising again, people are “once bitten, twice shy” about playing again. As the idiots at OPEC have shown, you can play this game from a position of strength and win, even if you’re stupid.
There are any number of tools the West can use to combat this: governments could declare REs “strategic”, and build domestic stockpiles from domestic sources; governments could put tariffs on Chinese REs to build a price floor for non-Chinese sources; governments could block Chinese investment in RE mines outside of China. To a libertarian capitalist like me, these moves would normally be anathema, but we are not playing in a free market. The Chinese have a dominant position today, and like any good monopolist, are using that position for long term profit maximizing. As I see it, we have only two choices: prevent China from using its current stock of capital to commandeer and control raw resources over the world (Potash, anyone?), or…
Teach your kids Mandarin.
The timing of Hansen’s rant indicate a panic has set in with the would-be enviro-nazis who, but for the Tea Party, Bloggers, et al would continue grinding America into oblivion (with no end in sight) by starving it of economical domestic energy. How else can you explain the Orwellian, 180 degree from reality, New-speak. China adds more fossil fuel-based electrical capacity annually than America has in the last decade.
Hansen is more evidence that most US Federal agencies need to be eliminated as they not only are too expensive but are acting against the founding principles of the nation.
When the soviet union collapsed there were a lot og dogmatic socialists in the soviet continuity network out of work. They found a home in administrating Euro (and now) eco-fascism. The remnant of cold war soviet hostility towards “western decadence” lives on in the mindset of the international eco-fascist movement.
Did you notice how often Patrick Moore cites the media in the decades long decline into ecofascism ?
Previously, I half jokingly claimed that ‘the media is the root of all evil’. Today there is mounting evidence. Am I wrong?
In one corner, we have the totally sane Canadian, Patrick Moore. (The CBC ignores him.)
In the other corner we have nut-case Canadian, David Suzuki. (The CBC spends $Millions making him into an idol.)
WHY?
Chinese disposable chopstick industry:
http://tinyurl.com/68pshhr
Yes, I was wrong at 9:21, but 63 billion disposable chopsticks a year is nothing to sneeze at either.
robertr@primus.ca, what you said is exactly what happened.
In the late 1950s a friend studied I believe what was called “normal school teacher’s training” in McMaster. At least one of the students was a self admitted Communist and said that his mission was to teach his political leanings.
In the early 1980s, a new step-brother, who took his teacher training at the U of Saskatchewan, related a similar occurrence in one of his classes.
I personally believe that the infiltration of Marxism has occurred throughout our society quite successfully and we see evidence in almost every area.
Having lived in East Germany, I always found the far-leftism of greenies hilarious and deeply ignorant. These were the most polluted and pulluting states on earth. The state squelched the very real environmentalism of wanting water that wasn’t brown (East Berlin), air that was choked with sooty lignite-coal smog, and an a permanent acid stench in the air.
What they DID understand and admire from the “Socialist-Marxist-Leninist paradises” was craving the authoritarianism over what they perceive as an inferior and ignorant population that makes them feel threatened. They was a perfect racket that doesn’t require them to prove their case, if nothing else.
As the envrio fascist movement ramps up the extreme rhetoric they continue to become more irrelevant to the thinking majority. I hope they keep it up.
Now that the road to serfdom has been blocked by a republican congress, Hansen’s handlers must be pulling out all the stops to see if they can cause maximum disruption in the US to prevent the return of sanity in climate science there.
Posted by: loki at January 19, 2011 7:19 AM
Surely you jest, loki. Maybe A Y junction on the road to serfdom but we’ll continue to roll on this sorry road I’m sure.
the elites who rule..and the masses, the peasants who are ruled. We are the peasants.
Both classes are hereditary
– Who else
As mentioned the other day, Nock in Our Enemy, the State identifies two classes: producers and predators (the economic means, the political means, the State being the organization of the political means). HOWEVER, ET, I don’t get the hereditary bit. Do you mean that children of State employees tend to pursue similar parasitic careers? If so, this woudln’t be hereitary, as such, would it? I feel a multi-month semantical war coming on.
Either Hansen is either wilfully ignorant, delusional, incredibly stupid, or a committed political animal.
– ?
Well, Eric Hoffer (the “longshoreman philosopher”, one of the great minds of the 20th century I’m told) would probably describe Hansen as a TRUE BELIEVER. (a must read book, BTW).
me no dhimmi – yeah! a semantic war ..oh..’war’..oh, that’s a bad word. Oh.
By ‘hereditary’ I don’t mean genetic of course but socially hereditary. Rather like the caste system in India. The two class system, found in all tribal realms..and Europe of the 18th c was certainly tribal..is socially hereditary.
Just think of the gentry, muttering about the upstart ‘towners’, the merchants, the newly rich, who dared (mutter, mutter) to want to come to the social balls, the up-class events…Who dared to even, deck themselves out in finery, copying the upper classes.
Did you ever see Gosford Park? Where Lady What’s Her Name says to the upstart little American movie director that he can indeed reveal the plot of his latest film, because she says: “None of us will ever see it”. No member of the upper class would go to ‘the movies’.
Well done KB
You explained in a few paragraphs what Brad Wall couldn’t explain to me on numerous occasions. Your synopsis puts my mind a little more at ease wrt to Mr.Wall’s position on the expired BHP bid.
ET, sorry about the war word, er, word war, whatever.
YES, indeed, I remember that fabulous line from Gosford Park.
Related, the new Downton Abbey on Public TV. A third cousin heir (end of the entail) a working lawyer arrives and opines that he would be able to manage the estate on weekends. Lady Whomever (Maggie Smith) asks “What’s a weekend?”. I didn’t see it, but my wife mentioned it to me earlier today. She PVR-ed and I’m gonna watch it tonight.
Sort of related: when my daughter lived in London, during one of my visits we took the train up to Edinburg. I’m in the investment business so was a really shocked at how peeved I was by a group of investment management types (and their women) from The City, who were acting up on that train. They REEKED upper-class twit. Had never personally had the Caste feeling before or after that experience. My daughter fully briefed me on “the type”.
OZ quoted
// Further hope for Hansen comes from two sources — they[China] have a rational sector-by-sector plan AND they have a command society [with no huge oil-lobby] //
& responded
// The Chicom government is their oil lobby.
They’re buying up oil and gas properties and investing in fossil energy companies all over the world.
For the record there are no NGO of business lobbies of any kind that influence the Chicom government, that means no environmental lobby and no human rights lobby. //
Right, right, right & right. [may I point out that the last two would probably be considered virtues around here]
A larger quote comparing the two systems shows Hansen’s “realpolitik” approach. The assumption is that each countrie will act in its own best interest —
// I came away feeling that not only is it nearly impossible to get effective legislation through Congress, but that the special interests can prevent implementation almost interminably. Democracy of the sort intended in 1776 probably could have dealt with climate change, but not the fossil-money-‘democracy’ that now rules the roost in Washington.
There was a flaw in my prior thinking that became clear to me during my visit to China. I had argued previously that global action to stem climate change required agreement between China and the United States for a rising carbon fee. That would work, but it is not realistic – such a treaty requires approval by the dysfunctional U.S. Congress.
However, there is a way around that, which becomes obvious with the realization that an initially modest carbon fee is in China’s own interest. After agreement with other nations, e.g., the European Union, China and these nations could impose rising internal carbon fees. Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax.
The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil fuel addiction with a rising carbon fee and supportive national investment policies or it could accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being. The United States has great potential for innovation, but it will not be unleashed as long as fossil fuel interests have a stranglehold on U.S. energy policies. //
me no dhimmi – yes, I’m watching Downton Abbey as well. And Maggie Smith is on it! It’s perfect.
Yes, I have an Australian colleague who fled the UK, despite being offered a special chair there, because of the ‘caste system’ of the upper class.
And, I maintain, that the left is totally, completely about class. They view themselves as the upper class who alone know how to govern. Notice how Hanson admires the Chinese dictatorship which isn’t bothered by the hoi polloi of the masses. Obama rejects Congress, for it represents the people – while he represents The Way.
It could either address its fossil fuel addiction with a rising carbon fee and supportive national investment policies or it could accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being.
You present a false dilema.
There is no need to address a “fossil fuel addiction”(as you put it) at all.
There is no Global Warming and there is no shortage of fossil fuel.
The U.S. just needs to be permitted to harvest the fossil fuels that they have within their territories.(which the enviro-unhinged Left currently won’t allow)
Another route to addressing the U.S.’s energy needs would be to build more nuclear power plants.(which the enviro-unhinged Left currently won’t allow)
Punitive fees(taxation) don’t create more energy or wealth.
Oz, may I?
also, there is not too many people on earth.
The Republicans should subpoena Hansen and expose America to his radical views. Obama generally throws his ” liabilities ” under the bus if they become too large a liability ( like Van Jones, communist ). Maybe he would do the same with Hansen.
Better yet, House Republicans should defund Hansen’s lab at NASA, and make the Senatorial Democrats defend him and the lab. My guess is they’d rather make Hansen an offer of early retirement, then have another losing fight over global warming.
// There is no Global Warming and there is no shortage of fossil fuel. //
Tell it to the Marines