Time for next eco-scare already?! As Global Warming Movement Collapses, Activists Already ‘Test-Marketing’ the Next Eco-Fear! ‘Laughing Gas’ Crisis? Oxygen Crisis? Plastics?

Marc Morano
Climate Depot
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

As the man-made global warming fear movement collapses and the climate establishment lay in a Climategate ridden tatters, many are asking what next? (For latest on climate movement’s demise go to www.ClimateDepot.com)

As man-made global warming fears enter the ashbin of history, what will environmentalists, UN activists and politicians do to fill the void of a failed eco-scare?

Well, wonder no more….

Some forward thinking green activists and even the UN climate Chief have already taken up the task of test-marketing the next eco-scares to replace man-made global warming.

One of the most prominent eco-scares now being quietly promoted behind man-made climate fears is the allegedly “growing” nitrous oxide (a.k.a. “laughing gas”) threat to the planet. See: Time for next eco-scare already?! ‘Earth’s growing nitrogen threat’: ‘It helps feed a hungry world, but it’s worse than CO2′The Christian Science Monitor – January 12, 2010 – Excerpt: Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide – considered the leading cause of climate change – and the third most threatening greenhouse gas overall.

As man-made climate fears subside and the scientific, economic, cultural and political case evaporates for climate change “action,” expect more and more green activists to take up the mantle for “laughing gas” as a possible replacement eco-scare.

See also: Laughing Gas Knocks Out CO2 – By Doug Hoffman – Oct. 30, 2009 – Excerpt: “In the face of ever mounting evidence that CO2 is incapable of causing the level of global devastation prophesied by climate change catastrophists a new villain is being sought. The leading candidate is nitrous oxide (N2O), better known as laughing gas. A report in Science claims that N2O emissions are currently the single most important cause of ozone depletion and are expected to remain so throughout the 21st century. The IPCC rates N2O as 310 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 on a 100 year time scale. Is this a greenhouse gas bait and switch, or are the global warming alarmists trying to up the ante.”

Still can’t picture former Vice President Al Gore touting the “laughing gas” crisis as the “moral” challenge of our time in a Oscar-winning documentary? Not to worry, there are many more eco-scares currently being test-marketed.

Plastics

Gore’s own producer of “An Inconvenient Truth” — Hollywood eco-activist Laurie David — is already test-marketing another eco-scare with potential promise.

“One Word: Plastics.” Yes, just 43 years after the 1967 film “The Graduate”, “plastics” just may be the future!

See: AGW RIP? Is It Time for Next Eco-Scare Already? Gore’s producer Laure David touts plastic crisis: ‘Plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming’ – July 31, 2009

“The rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.,” Laurie David wrote on July 31, 2009. Selected Excerpts From David’s blog post: “This insidious invasion of the biosphere by our plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming. Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath. Plastic, though present in the biosphere from the nano scale on up, is too stable a molecule for any organism to fully assimilate or biodegrade. So we have a situation in which a vector for a suite of devastating chemicals, chemicals implicated in many modern diseases, is now invading the ocean, our bodies and indeed, the entire biosphere. The prognosis for improvement in this situation is grim.”

Still not convinced of either “laughing gas” or “plastics” as the next dominant eco-scare? Don’t worry, we are just getting started.

Just how widespread is the test marketing of a new eco-scare to replace the flailing global warming movement?

It now has the attention of the beleaguered head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri.

UN Throws Global Warming Under the Bus?!

In a remarkable posting on his personal blog, Pachauri openly admitted that man-made global warming was not even the biggest eco-issue! See: Et tu? Head of UN IPCC Pachauri Now throwing global warming under the bus?! There is a ‘larger problem’ than climate fears?! – November 23, 2009



Pachauri wrote on November 23, 2009: “The question is whether the additional time that the world would now have to arrive at an agreement at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico will give us time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom. Human society cannot continue to ignore the vital dependence that exists between human welfare and the health of our natural resources.”

‘Oxygen Crisis’

The UK Green Party and a UN advisor are already concocting yet another potential new eco-scare that may be an easy transition from failed global warming fears.



See: UK Green Party: ‘There exists a more serious crisis than the ‘CO2 crisis’: the oxygen levels are dropping and the human activity has decreased them by 1/3 or ½ – By Peter Tatchell of the UK Green party – UK Guardian – August 13, 2008

Excerpt: “In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes: Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.”

Wow. Imagine scaring school children with suffocation due to our modern way of life! Documentaries, text books and Hollywood could really instill fear in the kids and adults with scary predictions of Mom and Dad choking to death due to a lack of oxygen created by evil modern society. Mom and Dad turning blue and suffering fatal convulsions sure beats the emotional imagery of a Polar Bear drowning or a building be flooded to due to rising seas. Keep your eye on this one, it just may get some traction.

Ok. Let’s assume now that one of the above or yet another not ready for prime time eco-fear catches on, how would the environmental activists go about selling this eco-scare to the public?

For an answer, let’s review a few of the failed eco-alarms of the past 40 years.

The Global Cooling Scare of 1970’s offers vital clues about how the “search-and-replace” tactics are utilized by eco-fear promoters. See: 1974 CIA report on Global Cooling: ‘Embarrassing reading’: ‘All AGW scares are a search-and-replace job from ‘cooling’ to ‘warming’ – Dec. 3, 2009 & Climate Depot’s Factsheet on 1970s Coming ‘Ice Age’ Claims – Oct. 6, 2009

Ever wonder how Gore and the UN would hype a “tipping point” for various new eco-scares? Newsweek Magazine first used the climate “tipping point” argument in 1975 to urge action to prevent man-made global cooling. Newsweek wrote April 28, 1975 article: “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”

Yes, quite literally “a search-and-replace job from cooling to warming.” Also See: Not again! Another 10-year climate ‘tipping point’ warning issued — Despite fact that UN began 10-Year ‘Climate Tipping Point’ in 1989! Climate Depot Factsheet on Inconvenient History of Global Warming ‘Tipping Points’ — Earth ‘Serially Doomed’ – Nov. 15, 2009

Overpopulation Fears

Overpopulation fears have jumped all over the place in recent years. See: Grist Mag. Going Down: Is too few people the new ‘population problem?’ – December 14, 2005 and Could Overpopulation Save The Earth From Global Warming? June 15, 2009. Overpopulation fears can be played any which way advocates would like. Even the guru of overpopulation fears eventually admitted his silliness.

See: An Admission finally! ‘The Population Bomb’s’ Paul Ehrlich: ‘I wish I’d taken more math in high school and college. That would have been useful’ – ‘If he were writing ‘The Population Bomb’ now, he’d be more careful about predictions’ – Oct. 8, 2009 – Also see: Climate Depot’s Overpopulation factsheet – August 21, 2009

Amazon Rainforest Scare

The allegedly disappearing rainforest scare was the environmental issue du jour in the 1980’s and 1990’s, long before climate fears took center stage. In fact, In 2000, Climate Depot’s Executive Editor Marc Morano was producer and correspondent for a documentary debunking the myths about the rainforests. Morano’s “Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths” was greeted with massive controversy. But, just nine years later, the rainforest scare was kaput.

See: Jan. 30, 2009: New York Times: ‘Galloping jungle’: Farmlands revert back to nature as saving the rainforests becomes ‘less urgent’ – ‘For every acre of rainforest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing’
NYT Excerpt: Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s – and much larger swaths of farmland – are reverting back to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings. These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest – an iconic environmental cause – may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster. “There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.

Also see: ‘Save the trees’ more political myth than environmental truth – Jan. 2009

Old eco-scares don’t die, they just fade away. The failed rainforest scare inspired this 2009 satire of the death of global warming movement. Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano

Other eco-scares that did not pan out include the 1970’s and 1980’s baseless scares about resource scarcity and predictions of famine. (Excerpt: The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Julian Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.) Plus other eco-scares like “ocean acidification” and others too numerous to mention.

It will be a compelling battle to try and replace the mother of all eco-scares — man-made global warming — but Climate Depot is confident that one of these test-marketed new eco-issues will catch on and you may soon see massive denials from environmentalists and UN officials that claims of a man-made global warming crisis never really existed (echoing the claims that there was no widespread concern about global cooling in the 1970’s) See: Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano

Already we have some of the most insulting attempts to shift the focus away from the “warming” aspect of “global warming.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) — in true “Climate Astrology” fashion — dismissed the lack of global warming on March 4, 2009 by declaring: “Climate change is not just about temperatures going up. It’s also about volatility.”

Not to be outdone, Sen. Stabenow followed up her climate analysis with this claim about touchy-feely warming: “Global warming creates volatility and I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile,” Sen. Stabenow explained in August 11, 2009.

No wonder, climate fear promoters are now openly demanding exaggeration and wishing for death and destruction to convince the public of man-made climate fears.

“You have to find ways to exaggerate the threat,” Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Thomas Schelling said in a July 14, 2009 interview with The Atlantic.

Lest there be any doubt that desperation time has set in for the promoters of man-made climate fears, Schelling removed it.

Schelling continued: “I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening — you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth — that would get people very concerned about climate change.”

Let’s get this straight. A prominent promoter of man-made global warming is now openly wishing for death and destruction of Americans in order to convince them that man-made global warming is a threat?

Climate Depot encourages Schelling and Sen. Stabenow to continue their utter climate silliness.

Quite simply, alarmism leads to skepticism. No wonder more ‘More Americans believe in haunted houses than man-made global warming’.

In the end, science rules the day.

Related Links:

Climategate Prompts UN scientists turn on each other – Nov. 27, 2009)

Oct 2009: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears