"Saint Greta"
by Bill Bonner
"You can shove your climate crisis up your arse…
30 years of blah, blah, blah..."
– Saint Greta (Thunberg), climate change activist
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "We begin today’s dot-connecting with an admission: We don’t know whether the world’s weather is getting better or worse. The experts say the Earth is warming. But warmer temperatures are not necessarily a bad thing. And what if there is a runaway heat effect that leaves the survivors sweating on hilltops?
Nobody knows what cover stories TIME Magazine readers will find most alarming next year. But at least the world’s climate scientists, green energy hustlers, scolds, and busy-bodies gathered in Glasgow last week had a hypothesis: "The more CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted by human activity, they claim, the higher the temperatures will go."
Is that true? Maybe. Maybe not.
No Correlation: The “greenhouse effect” is appealing because it is simple. CO2 acts like glass, they say. It traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. Since the mid-19th century, which the climate worriers have taken as the baseline, there is at least a relationship… and a plausible explanation… for rising temperatures. The Industrial Revolution increased the use of fossil fuels… and CO2 emissions… leading to the aforementioned “greenhouse effect.” But over the longer term of the geologic record, there’s no proof that rising CO2 causes rising temperatures.
For millions of years, CO2 levels were higher… with higher temperatures, too. Then, there were millions of years when CO2 levels were lower… and temperatures went up and down. If there is any correlation at all, it is much too imprecise to draw any public policy conclusions. All we know for sure is that we don’t know much. Will temperatures continue to rise? Don’t know. Would that be a bad thing? Don’t know that either.
Would it make sense to force everyone to lower his standard of living in order to try to stabilize the world’s climate? Who knows? And even if it were effective, would it be worth it? Again, unknowable.
Empowered by Uncertainty: In the face of so many known unknowns… not to mention a boatload of unknown unknowns… and many other things about which we have no damn clue, sensible people hesitate. They take it for granted that some things are beyond our ken and outside of our control. The wisest course of action is to leave them alone, at least until we have a better handle on them.
Some people, however, are not hampered by uncertainty, but empowered by it. They simply replace convincing evidence with Revealed Truth. Their claims and guesswork are asserted as though they were facts… and taken up by the masses as religious dogma.
Great Cause: Centuries ago, hurricanes and tornadoes were considered the acts of an angry god. Today, they are the result of “global climate change.” And who better to lead us through the cracks of thunder and the wild whirling winds than a child saint, unblemished… untainted… pure as unsweetened muesli?
Like St. Joan of Arc, Greta Thunberg had her moment of Blinding Truth early in life. At age 11, beset by Asperger’s, obsessive-compulsive disorder, mutism, depression… unable to eat… she found a Great Cause to give meaning to her life… and something to live for. In an earlier age, she might have turned to God or the Church. Perhaps she would have joined a religious order and devoted herself to caring for lepers. But this is the 21st century. And today’s most popular faith is Climate Change.
And now, eight years later, Greta Thunberg believes, with her full heart and mind, that she can lead the world to victory over rising temperatures. She is a full-fledged Climate Change Believer… an activist in shining armor… and an obnoxious teenager.
Not the Whole Story: Flashing back to the young Joan of Arc… Her vision told her that she should support Charles VII, the still-uncrowned King of France, in a campaign against the English. Like all great causes, the fight between the English and the French in the 15th century had its nuances and uncertainties. The popular version – then and now – was a great deal less than the Whole Story.
The war was actually better understood as the Lancastrian Phase of the 100 Year War. It was a fight between factions, with English and French on both sides. What side God was on was not recorded. But Joan thought she knew. And then, the poor girl was captured, not by the English… but by the (French) Burgundians. Turned over to the English, she was tried by a French judge and a French prosecutor (charged, among other things, with cross dressing). She was burned at the stake in 1431.
Confusions and Contradictions: Poor Greta is unlikely to feel the hot flames licking her toes. She may, however, eventually come to see the many confusions and contradictions of her faith. Signaling her Exalted Status among the disciples, for example, she eschewed flying to the U.S. to give a talk at the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit. Airplanes give off CO2, she reasoned. Instead, she took a private yacht, named Malizia II (malice), a zero-carbon yacht owned by a Rothschild, taking almost two weeks to cross the Atlantic.
The Team Malizia website shows 22 members. But the U.N. reports that only two of them, plus Greta’s father and a cameraperson, took the boat ride. Assume that each adult’s time was worth at least $200 a day. That’s a cost of more than $10,000 right there. Plus, the crew members flew back to Europe on carbon-emitting airplanes. And the boat needed servicing, maintenance, mooring… not to mention the initial investment to build the 60-foot racing yacht (probably millions).
Expensive Trip: Not to put too fine a point on it, but everything takes energy. And energy is measured in the prices we pay for things. So, if it cost Greta $700 to cross the Atlantic by plane, coach fare, that would be a fair measure of all the energy that went into to it – the energy from fuel, from building the plane, from the airport, from the pilot and stewards, rubber tires, the little bags of nuts, and so forth.
But instead of paying 700 bucks, Greta’s trip must have cost 100 times as much, and required far more fossil fuel than a seat on a commercial airline. And then, once arrived in New York, and celebrated as a saint by the great and the good… as if she had some special insight denied to the rest of us… or some virtue given only to crackpot virgins… she opened up the Summit with: "This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
If people are dying, it’s not because of fossil fuels. Just the contrary.
No Evidence: The press delights whenever people get their feet wet… and has a field day when their houses burn down. But is the weather really more of a threat today than it was in the past? Apparently not. Scientists have tracked hurricanes in the Caribbean, heat waves in the Midwest, and fires in California. They’ve found no evidence of worsening trends. In the case of California wildfires, for example, before the arrival of Europeans, fires routinely burnt off far more acreage than they do today.
Nature still “acts up” from time to time. But, thanks to fossil fuel, humans are much less at risk. In the old days, an early frost or a dry summer could mean starvation. Now, it means you pay a little more for your peaches. Likewise, in a poor country, such as Haiti… a hurricane could mean thousands of deaths – both from drowning and subsequent disease. In Florida, a storm of the same strength might just take tin off roofs and topple porch plants.
Why the difference? Each resident of Haiti uses about 394 kilograms of “oil equivalent” per year, according to the World Bank. In the U.S., the total is 6,804 – 17 times as much.
Saving Lives: The point is this: Wealth – made possible by fossil fuels – helps humans survive nature’s hissy fits. Higher standards of living increased lifespans. Better sanitation… better nutrition… better access to medical care – all were made possible by stored-up solar energy, in the form of oil, gas, and coal. Millions of lives have been saved by the Industrial Revolution. How many lives will Saint Greta save?"
