350.org: Selling a lie

From Kevin Hester

"As our climate change catastrophe unfolds the new climate change denier is programmed to admit that it is happening but to down play the severity of the disaster and to lead people to believe that the powers that be are working on the issue and that MSM is covering it. I call BS. When I quote the 6th great extinction I am quoting Professor Guy McPherson , the World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic who are all using that expression now but the MSM and Bill McKibben of 350.org are here to obfuscate and deceive everyone as to the severity of the catastrophe......

"They know when everyone realise's that the game's up, chaos will ensue but if you had a terminal disease don't you think you have a right to know?.....

"Bill McKibben's optimism is completely baseless and is funded by the corporate donations 350.org happily lives on.

"The new climate change deniers are amongst us, follow the money and read carefully so that you won't be deceived."

350.org's Big Lie

Seemorerocks

I shouldn't really be surprised that the Guardian, which has hitherto been one of the better sources of information on climate change has adopted the stance it has in the editorial by retiring editor Alan Rusbridge.

After all this is the newspaper that, almost above all others has acted as a liberal attack dog for the neocons in its crusade against Russian and Vladimir Putin.

The article started out saying all the things that one might expect from a mainstream source on climate change and then Rusbridge brought in Bill McKibben and 350.org.




In particular this:

565 gigatons: “Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below 2C,” is how McKibben crisply puts it. Few dispute that this idea of a global “carbon budget” is broadly right.

The Guardian has become the vehicle for a Big Lie that in the face of all the science it has produced over the years to say otherwise. We are told by McKibben in one breathe that not only is 2C a workable goal but that we still have 'wiggle room' and can continue to emit CO2 into the atmosphere just so long as we don't put too much - and we start to divest from investment in fossil fuels

Guy McPherson was recently asked if he had read McKibben's work and he quipped that he has no time for fiction.

Quite.

The biggest danger these days comes not from the reptilian climate change deniers of the Republican Party. Indeed, the biggest danger comes from the liberal flank, from McPherson calls abrupt climate change denial.

As we have come to know 350.org is receiving funding from corporate America and even talks about "our friends in Wall Street". The line comes down from the top: from McKibben, and his "friends in Wall Street" tell McKIbben what the acceptable message is.

The aim is to obfuscate and take the discussion away from the realities that show that climate change is NOW and that, with a growing number of positive self-reinforcing feedbacks (including the growing release into the atmosphere of a gas, methane, that is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. the train has long left the station.

We musn't know that 2C (which already threatens our ability to practise agriculture and feed ourselves) is already baked into the cake with CO2 remaining in the atmosphere for a thousand years and a lead time between emissions and the effects of warming being felt.

We musn't know how close the Arctic is to melting; about the melting permafrost and the release of methane and the real-time connections will increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather.

That might get people to really question closely about how all this came about and that would take people back to Wall Street and the Infinite Growth Paradigm that is not at all challenged by the mainstream environmental movement.

Instead the corporates would like the masses to put their energy into signing petitions, appealing to President Barack Obama, changing their light bulbs, driving a Prius and divesting from investment in the fossil fuel industry.

Above all we should donate our money and build the 350.org movement.

Anything but being radical - getting to the root of the matter.


350.org and the liberal, white. middle class, male Americans that stand behind the likes of Global Warming Fact of the Day (from which the author, Guy McPherson, Paul Beckwith and other friends have been ejected) play their role in reinforcing the comforting idea that real climate change is somewhere off in the future and we must believe the conservative science 'consensus' rather than those who have, through actual observations shown that the computer models are sorely lacking in their ability to explain the reality of abrupt climate change.

The article, which I wrote in 2013 and is reproduced below expresses not even the half of the sordid reality of the betrayal by the liberals, and by McKibben and his organisation

I would recommend a careful reading of the articles by Cory Morningstar that express the full, sordid reality behind 350.org.....


For the full story read these two articles by Cory Morningstar

The Corporate Money Behind McKibben’s Divestment Tour 

350.org’s Friends on Wall Street

Here is an article I wrote on 350.org back in May, 2013

350.org and 

near-term extinction

Seemorerocks

With the news that concentrations of carbon have reached 400 ppm, a level we haven't seen since homeo sapiens has been walking this earth, it is time to address some of the people that I have held in high regard.

These include George Monbiot and Bill McKibben of 350.org.

James Hansen recently said that if the Canadian tar sands were to be mined, it would be 'game over' for climate change.

Well guess what? – tar sands are being mined.

One of the latest reports (and each one keeps getting more dire than the one before it) says that temperatures on the planet could increase by 4C by the year 2030. (For details on this go to Guy McPherson's article HERE)

This is simply not consistent with life as we know it – including human life – let alone any sort of human civilisation.

That is why there has been increasing talk of the possibility of near-term human extinction.

Since the news of the rapid changes in the Arctic (including a whole range of positive feedbacks) has come out some of the responses of those who have been in the spotlight over climate change for some time.

George Monbiot is clearly grasping at straws to maintain civilisation as he would like it. After becoming converted to nuclear power, and then renouncing Peak Oil, he is now saying that 400 ppm is only of 'symbolic' importance, and what we have to do is get back to 350 ppm.

Sorry George, the horse has bolted, and the C02 that's in the atmosphere will stay there for a long time (all the more so that the Amazon is becoming a carbon emitter rather than a carbon sink – something that was predicted some years ago.(see also HERE)

What is it about these people that they can't recognise that the dire predictions they warned of, are coming to pass.

Instead, every new disaster becomes yet another 'wake-up call'.

This poster from 350.org is a clear example.

 

'The good news is that we are doing it'

"We're building a worldwide movement to solve the climate crisis'

Excuse me!  

Solving the crisis!!!

Do they not know the difference between a crisis and a predicament?

This is getting into the are of cognitive dissonance when people who were formerly at the forefront of getting the message out about climate change ignore the clear signs and are putting out the 'good news' (whatever that is).

I will be the first to admit that we have to acknowledge uncertainty.

We don't KNOW how events will transpire

But, based on all the best evidence it clearly looks as if it's game's up for the climate.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against actions such as demonstrating against the Keystone XL pipeline.

Resistance is to the prevailing paradigm is all that we have.

The problem comes when these organisations start to use their power to form public opinion to send people to sleep. 

No matter how bad things get it's just another 'wake-up call'

'Go out and demonstrate, change your light bulbs, fill out another petition - help to build a movement to finally persuade the politicians that they need to act'.

Perhaps the secret is the building a worldwide movement bit?

Just a small amount of research has revealed that 350.org gets corporate funding, including from the Rockefeller Brothers.

There might perhaps be an inbuilt incentive to keep the message within 'acceptable bounds'.

Don't people need to be warned about what's coming? - economic, financial, social, and finally political collapse; the end of human, industrial civilisation (whether we want it or not), and finally - the possibility of near-term extinction.

I get the feeling about the Monbiots and the McKibbens that their ideas are still stuck in the 90's when we may have had a chance of turning things round.

What I admire in Guy McPherson is his intellectual independence: his outlook has not remained static but evolved in line with the evidence that is available - and that evidence has got more and more dire.

It is time, not to advocate for more political action, but to unblinkingly look reality in the eye, and to fully acknowledge both our own, and our species' mortality (let alone the wholesale destruction of other species and everything that they need to survive on this planet.

That would be a start.

As Mike Ruppert says - 'evolve or perish and die!'


The following would be fairly typical of a mainstream presentation of climate change by Bill McKibben.

Not before time, Someone challenges Bill,fibbin' McKibben

Bill McKibben, Founder of 350.org on Climate Challenge, Host Karyn Strickler

Host Karyn Strickler challenges Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and his organizing techniques, this week on Climate Challenge.

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