Twitter Bans Science and Knowledge to Promote Climate Change ‘Consensus’
“SCIENCE: Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
“CONSENSUS: General agreement; the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned.” – Meriam-Webster Dictionary.
Twitter has take off the gloves for Earth Day by banning ads that are scientifically true and instead will only promote “consensus” as approved by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to inform their decisions.
On April 24th, 2022 American Wire’s
reported:In a move to coincide with Earth Day, Twitter has announced it will no longer accept advertisements on its platform that “contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.”
In what the company calls a “climate-forward approach to ads,” Twitter stated in a blog posted Friday, “People around the world use Twitter to connect with others passionate about protecting our planet.”
“Last year, we introduced a dedicated Topic to help people find personalized conversations about climate change. … To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy,” the blog reads.
Climate Change Consensus Myths
Mark J. Perry, a scholar and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan, listed in an article titled “18 Spectacularly Wrong Predictions Made Around the Time of the First Earth Day In 1970” the following “climate change consensus” myths:
Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:
- Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
- “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal environment.
- The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
- “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
- “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
- Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
- “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
- Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
- In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
- Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
- Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
- Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
- Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
- Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
- Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
- Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
- In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
- Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
The above 18 statements represented the best examples of the “consensus” on climate change in the 1970s.
So, has the world ended as Harvard biologist George Wald predicted? Of course not.
The Bottom Line
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) offered 8 common sense proposals to alleviate climate change:
1. End “Emit More Elsewhere” Policies: The ecologists’ slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally” is entirely appropriate to the issue of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). Emissions anywhere impact the climate everywhere. Policies that, instead of reducing emissions, simply move them to other countries accomplish nothing. Domestic regulations, taxes, and tariffs aimed at reducing global warming may have the unintended effect of increasing the cost of domestic production to the point that companies offshore their operations. Similarly, increasing energy costs here will shift energy-intensive industry from the United States to places like Mexico, China, and India. At best, such policies merely move emissions elsewhere, at worst they increase them. Shifting the production of goods and resources away from countries with efficient economies to less efficient nations does more harm than good. Making a widget with 10 BTUs of energy in the United States is better for the planet than making the same widget in China with 40 BTUs. Producing a barrel of oil here is better for the planet than producing it in Russia, Venezuela, or Iran – countries that have proved unwilling or unable to protect the environment.
2. Admit Fossil Fuels Are Needed—for Now: The federal government’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that the nation’s energy needs will continue to grow for at least the next thirty years, and that “[p]etroleum and natural gas [will] remain the most-consumed sources of energy in the United States through 2050.” One reason is that gas turbines are the only practical backups for the wind turbines and solar panels that the government has determined will replace traditional power plants. Because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, backup is necessary. Currently, battery storage can power a city for no more than a few hours. That leaves pumped storage plants and natural gas fired turbines as the only reserve power sources that can come online quickly enough to stabilize the grid when wind and solar fail. However, pumped storage plants, which pump water up into reservoirs during times of low energy demand and then release the water through turbines during times of peak demand, are limited by geography and by environmentalists opposed to constructing new reservoirs. Mandating wind and solar, then, means mandating natural gas. Without reliable backup, homeowners and companies will relocate or install their own generators. Burning gasoline, diesel, and natural gas at hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the nation will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions. Given that natural gas plants are essential—having been made so by government dictates—the infrastructure needed to supply them is also essential. That includes production, refining, and transportation. The EIA’s report also predicts that “the transportation sector will consume the majority of [petroleum and other liquid] fuels, particularly motor gasoline and diesel” through 2050. Electric vehicles (EVs) currently make up less than 5% of the global auto market and about 4% of the American market. While they may someday replace gasoline and diesel-powered cars in significant numbers, that day is not yet here.
3. End “Produce Elsewhere” Policies: The Biden Administration is intent on shutting down natural gas and oil production in the United States while, at the same time, asking other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran to increase their production. But burning Iranian or Venezuelan natural gas instead of American gas does not reduce emissions. The Administration is accusing domestic oil companies of greedily raising the price of gasoline (at a time of general inflation, when all prices are rising) while expressing surprise that those same greedy corporations don’t take advantage of higher prices and produce more petroleum. But why would an oil company invest millions of dollars to expand operations when Biden is promising to shut down production once he’s solved his immediate political problems caused by rising prices? Why, after Democrats have proposed taxing away oil company profits, would anyone invest in firms that are targeted for extinction?
4. End Pipeline Restrictions: When President Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline on his first day in office, City Journal noted: The symbolic victory of the pipeline’s cancellation will not have any measurable effect on the decarbonization of the U.S. economy. Keystone’s untimely demise will not change the rate of our national consumption of fossil fuels; instead, American consumers will simply be forced to buy more oil from countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela. More of our gas will be imported by plane or ship rather than from a net-zero emission pipeline—and we’ll pay more for it at the pump, too. Pipelines are the safest and most efficient way in which to transport natural gas, petroleum, and petroleum liquid products. Forcing oil and gas to be moved by ship, rail, or truck instead makes little sense economically or ecologically. Under Governor Andrew Cuomo, the state of New York banned fracking for natural gas and obstructed the construction of new natural gas pipelines. As a result, the state has had to generate more electricity with fuel oil, which produces more CO2 and pollution than does natural gas, and the state has also had to import natural gas from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago. “In 2016,” according to the Wall Street Journal, “Officials in Massachusetts and New Hampshire blocked financing for the $3 billion Access Northeast Pipeline, which would have reliably provided fuel to three New England states.” Consequently, a tanker sailed into Boston Harbor in 2018 carrying Russian LNG (liquified natural gas).
5. Repeal the Jones Act: The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the “Jones Act”) forbids transporting goods between American ports on ships that aren’t American built, owned, registered, and crewed. The Act’s carbon footprint is enormous because it prevents us from taking advantage of the veritable conveyor belt of foreign-flagged ships that circle the nation and frequent American ports. A Japanese ship, for example, dropping off goods in, say, Seattle, can’t pick up goods from there and deliver them to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Because there are currently fewer than one hundred cargo ships that are compliant with the Jones Act, many American products must be sent by rail, truck, or air even though they could be far more efficiently —and with far fewer CO2 emissions—transported by sea. The Act also increases Americans’ cost of buying domestic goods by raising the cost of transporting them. As a result, Americans are led to import more foreign products than they otherwise would, producing more CO2 in the process. Moreover, there are currently no Jones Act-compliant LNG transport ships. As a result, Puerto Rico buys natural gas from Russia rather than from Texas or Louisiana. Similarly, prohibitions on new pipelines have forced states like Massachusetts and New York to ship in natural gas rather than buying it from Pennsylvania. And, because of the Jones Act, they must purchase their gas, not from the U.S., but from countries like Russia, France, Algeria, and Norway.
6. Allow LNG Transport by Rail: After pipelines and ships, the safest, most efficient, and least polluting way by which to transport petroleum products is rail. Working to kill any option save keeping gas in the ground, however, the Biden Administration suspended authorization for transporting LNG by rail tank cars.
7. Stop Blocking Loans to Oil Industry: In September 2021, President Biden nominated Saule Omarova to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Omarova supported a “National Investment Authority” (NIA) that, in her words, would be responsible for “devising, financing, and executing a long-term national strategy of economic development and reconstruction.” Banks, under control of the NIA, would direct capital investments toward politically approved technologies and investments and away from industries, such as petroleum, that are out of favor. In January 2022, not dissuaded by his earlier failure, Biden nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin, an advocate of climate-related banking regulation, to the Federal Reserve Board. The current strategy for addressing climate change—using wind and solar—requires natural gas-fueled turbines for backup. Yet the current administration is doing everything in its power to short circuit the strategy by blocking domestic production and transport of natural gas and starving the industry of capital. We are quickly leaving ourselves with the only option of importing natural gas from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, and Iran—countries that don’t necessarily wish us well. Putin is threating Europe with gas cutoffs to force them to acquiesce to his takeover of Ukraine. Do we really want to subject ourselves to the same sort of extortion?
8. End Ethanol Mandates: Clear-cutting forests in the United States and rain forests in the Amazon to grow biofuel crops isn’t green. This commonsense notion is backed by research in 2007-2008, 2014, and now in 2022. In February of this year, the National Academy of Sciences published a study that found that corn-based ethanol is “likely at least 24% more carbon intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.”
And thus ends the lesson on government climate change policy, myths, consensus and science.
©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.
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