Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming

Darwall, Rupert. The Age of Global Warming: A History , 2014.  Selected quotes (emphasis is mine):

“In 1966, [Barbara] Ward gave a lecture, Space Ship Earth, in which she argued that mankind’s survival depended on developing a government of the world. The longevity of China’s government, Mao being the latest dynasty, demonstrated that world government was possible. If two thousand years of rule can work for twenty-five per cent of the world’s population, ‘we can hardly argue that the task of government becomes a priori impossible simply because the remaining three-quarters are added’, Ward argued.” (Kindle Locations 1744-1748)

Yes, they used to honestly say world government, rather than evasive global governance.  And they wanted to create it by annexing the rest of the world to Mao’s China.  And that was not China of today.  This proposition was made in 1966, after Mao’s regime murdered tens of millions Chinese peasants in the “Great Leap Forward,” and the country was wrecked.  1966 was also beginning of the “Cultural Revolution,” when Mao incited youth  chased down people who still kept any knowledge or values, including school teachers.  By the way, there is a pattern here: the Left falls in love with the worst dictators when these dictators commit or have just committed their worst crimes!

(The late 60’s student movement in the US might have been inspired by the Cultural Revolution stronger and more directly, than the mainstream opinions hold.)

Barbara Ward was also the first one to frame anthropogenic carbon dioxide release as a rationale for the world government (Only One Earth, report from the UN Conference on the Human Environment, 1972).  She also made up the magic number 2 degrees Celsius, resurrected by the alarmists few years ago. 

“The comparison with Marxism also illuminates an important dimension of environmentalism – its relationship with science. Environmentalism exists in a similar relationship to its scientific base as communism did to the economics of Das Kapital. Science and ideology become so deeply entwined that in practice it is difficult to separate the two, the scientist and the environmentalist becoming one and the same person.” (Kindle Locations 167-171)

Unlike the discovery of the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer, with carbon dioxide and global warming there was a pre-existing structure of ideas about the incompatibility of industrial society and nature to co-exist in harmony. Environmentalists were predisposed to anticipate harmful consequences from industrial societies’ reliance on hydrocarbons. Because global warming is the most powerful argument in the environmentalist armoury and because science provides its source code, global warming occasioned a profound and subtle shift in the nature of science.”  (Kindle Locations 194-198)

“With global warming, environmentalism had found its killer app.” (Kindle Location 3126)

“In the years after 1988, much reputational capital of prestigious scientific bodies and of governments was sunk into global warming, further reducing the incentives for being open to debate and criticism.” (Kindle Locations 3657-3659)

“After Rio [Earth Conference, 1992], debating the science of global warming became superfluous. Politics had settled the science. The speed with which the rhetoric of alarm was ratcheted up is astonishing. A March 1989 article in the Financial Times on the Green Revolution in international relations spoke of heightened concern about the environment, ‘rising panic is scarcely too strong a phrase’. A conference the previous month in New Delhi warned of apocalyptic scenarios. ‘Global warming is the greatest crisis ever faced collectively by humankind,’ its final report claimed. The next month saw an international conference at The Hague organised by the French, Dutch and Norwegian prime ministers. Twenty-four governments signed a declaration suggesting that human life was under imminent threat.” (Kindle Locations 3734-3741)

“During the last three years of his presidency, Clinton was deeply engaged on global warming. His final State of the Union message in January 2000 described global warming as the greatest environmental challenge of the new century.” (Kindle Locations 5902-5904)

“From the Second Assessment Report onwards, the IPCC used the same language to describe computer model results as for empirical evidence derived from experiments on nature – ‘experiments with GCMs’ (general circulation models); ‘model experiments’; ‘recent multi-century model experiments’; ‘this hypothesis [dismissing the suppression of the greenhouse gas signature being masked by sulphate aerosols] is not supported by recent GCM experiments’.  Computer models thus attained an independent reality in the minds of climate scientists.” (Kindle Locations 6253-6257)

“This sort of thinking was something that shocked Professor Michael Kelly, a Cambridge University physicist and panellist in one of the 2010 Climategate investigations into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. ‘I take real exception to having simulation runs described as experiments (without at least the qualification of “computer” experiments)'” (Kindle Locations 6283-6284)

“When published in June 1996, the Second Assessment Report ignited a row about the final text of Chapter Eight of the Working Group I report. Frederick Seitz, one of America’s foremost physicists and a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that in more than sixty years as a member of the American scientific community, he had never witnessed a ‘more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process’. After an IPCC meeting in Madrid the previous November, Seitz claimed that more than fifteen sections of Chapter Eight had been changed or deleted, including the sentence: ‘None of the studies above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.’” (Kindle Locations 6316-6322)

“Santer and his fellow scientists [who altered the text of the report after it had been signed] were correct in suggesting that acceding to political pressure conformed to IPCC principles and procedures.”(Kindle Locations 6334-6335)

“An anonymous scientist spoke of being put under pressure to sign. ‘The [UK] Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming.’(Kindle Locations 7247-7248)

British Met Office used to make weather forecasts.  Now it claims to make weather and climate change forecasts.  Has it become a we call it a Meth Office?

“According to the Washington Post, the ‘testiest moment’ at Exxon Mobil’s 2006 annual shareholder meeting came when chief executive Rex Tillerson was questioned about the company’s sceptical stance in the face of a growing scientific consensus. ‘Scientific consensus’ was an ‘oxymoron’, Tillerson replied.” (Kindle Locations 8958-8960)

Rex Tillerson was right.

“‘The more I studied it, the more I became convinced that Kyoto was very Eurocentric,’ Howard [Australia’s Prime Minister, 1996 – 2007] told the author in 2011, down to the choice of the 1990 base year. The collapse of the command economies meant that the progressive Left had to find other causes to fight, climate change fitting the bill, becoming a substitute religion.” (Kindle Locations 9211-9213)

“In this [pressure on the US at Bali Conference], the G77 plus China was aided and abetted by the EU, together with the usual supporting cast of assorted NGOs and scientists proclaiming the end of the world if the US did not commit to drastic emissions cuts. Then there was Al Gore, who reprised the role he had played in Kyoto in making a dramatic appearance to under-cut US negotiators.” (Kindle Locations 9628-9630)

“In part, the EU’s negotiating obtuseness reflected its immense institutional inertia in having obtained agreement among its twenty-seven member states. In part, it was because lead responsibility lay with member states’ environment ministries and the European environment commissioner who saw their principal constituency as environmental NGOs. Then there was the superficially attractive narrative that framed President Bush, who would be leaving the White House in thirteen months, as the principal obstacle to reaching agreement. In a lightning visit, Bush’s opponent in the 2004 election [John Kerry] endorsed the EU narrative by attacking the Bush administration for undermining attempts to agree stringent emissions caps.” (Kindle Locations 9655-9660)

“Speaking ten years and four days after his appearance at the Kyoto conference where he had publicly instructed American negotiators to make concessions, Gore dropped a second COP bombshell. ‘I am not an official of the United States and I am not bound by the diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth.’ His voice tightened as he wiped sweat from his face. ‘My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.’ The hall went wild with applause and cheering.” (Kindle Locations 9741-9745)

“She [Paula Dobriansky, the US delegation’s head at Bali] was met with boos and catcalls.” (Kindle Locations 9803-9804)

“In April 2010, the presidents of the Royal Society and the National Academy of Science, Martin Rees and Ralph Cicerone, wrote: ‘Our academies will provide the scientific backdrop for the political and business leaders who must create effective policies to steer the world toward a low-carbon economy’”(Kindle Locations 11210-11212)

“Even the most ingenious maker of conspiracy theories would be hard pressed to forge a chain of causality linking the activities of Western fossil fuel companies to the refusal of India and China to accede to the West’s demands for a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions,” (Kindle Locations 11397-11399)

“Yet global warming’s success in colonising the Western mind and in changing government policies has no precedent.” (Kindle Location 11418)