Are you interested in going to jail?
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
This is quite irresponsible and dangerous, especially when they are so ignorant of the real facts.
If John Schellnhuber is your Guru, what hope is there?
Climate campaigners Extinction Rebellion are asking how far people are willing to go to protect our environment.
How do you fancy being plunged into the grim abyss of the latest climate science only to be politely asked if you are interested in going to jail?
Hundreds of people across the UK have recently had this experience while attending talks about the Extinction Rebellion.
Led by the group Rising Up, Extinction Rebellion is breaking the mould of traditional communication about ecological crisis. It argues that it’s time to tell people the truth and ask them to act accordingly.
‘Biological annihilation’
Scientists are increasingly breaking ranks to emphasise the existential threat we are facing.
Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research for twenty years and a senior advisor to the European Union, said: “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action and accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.”
The Extinction Rebellion is urging people to face up to this hellish reality, particularly the “biological annihilation” of this mass species extinction event.
We acknowledge the grief and fear this can cause. But our experience suggests that working through those painful feelings can lead to a new determination to do whatever it takes to make this a lesser catastrophe and to save what we can.
So what does it take? We don’t lack imagination or ideas – there are many policy solutions out there – but what do we lack is political will in a democracy captured by the interests of profit.
Conscientious protestors
We can turn to the social sciences for information on how to generate political will. The evidence is overwhelming: change comes when people are willing to commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience.
They must be disruptive and sacrificial and whilst a critical mass is needed, it is a relatively low number of people. Fifty people in jail for a short time, such as a week on remand, is likely to bring the ecological crisis into the public consciousness.
A few thousand arrests in a short space of time could cause a political crisis. Just a tiny percent of the population in active support of a rebellion would probably see an end to this destructive political system.
Consider the power this would give to individuals. We can choose to be one of a relatively small number of people who are willing to stand up in a principled way and help decisively change the direction of humanity.
Peaceful civil disobedience can be a dignified way to express your dissent. Actions could involve peacefully spray chalking buildings or blockading transport infrastructure, while being willing to face the consequences of being a Conscientious Protector.
Stepping forward
The Extinction Rebellion talk is online. We are presenting evidence and a plan. We are asking you to please watch it and then ask yourself if you are willing and able to offer your service.
Dr Kate Marvel from NASA’s Goddard Institute said: “To be a climate scientist is to be an active participant in a slow-motion horror story.
"As a climate scientist, I am often asked to talk about hope […] Audiences want to be told that everything will be alright in the end […] The problem is, I don’t have any. We need courage, not hope.”
I hope enough of us find our courage.
http://www.theecologist.org/2018/oct/26/are-you-interested-going-jail
Take note of the true objective:
Just a tiny percent of the population in active support of a rebellion would probably see an end to this destructive political system.
This is what the Extinction Website has to say:
We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. Our children and our nation face grave risk.
The planet is in ecological crisis, we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event this planet has experienced. Scientists believe we may have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown.
The earth’s atmosphere is already over 1°C warmer than pre-industrial levels. The chance of staying below the 2°C warming agreed upon in the Paris agreement are tiny.
Recent projections show we are on course for 3 degrees of warming and potentially much higher.
Children alive today in the UK will face unimaginable horrors as a result of floods, wildfires, extreme weather, crop failures and the inevitable breakdown of society when the pressures are so great.
We are unprepared for the danger our future holds.
The time for denial is over – we know the truth about climate change and we know the truth about current biological annihilation.
It’s time to act like that truth is real.
What does living with this truth call us to do? Will you die knowing you did all you were able to?
From the 31 October citizens of this country will commit repeated acts of disruptive, non-violent civil disobedience. There will be mass arrests.
We demand the UK declares a state of emergency, takes action to create a zero carbon economy by 2025, and creates a national assembly of ordinary people to decide what our zero carbon future will look like.
We are willing to make personal sacrifices. We are prepared to be arrested and to go to prison. We will lead by example, to inspire similar actions around the world. This requires a global effort but we believe it must begin in the UK, today, where the industrial revolution began.
We will not be led quietly to annihilation by the elites and politicians. We will fight their genocidal behaviour with honour, resilience, and peace, in the spirit of all those who fought for our freedoms before us. We call on everyone, regardless of your political beliefs to join us in fighting for our nation and life on earth.
Just a bunch of barmy, far left agitators? No doubt, except that the Guardian has seen fit to publish a letter in support of Extinction Rebellion signed by 94 senior academics, including the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
We the undersigned represent diverse academic disciplines, and the views expressed here are those of the signatories and not their organisations. While our academic perspectives and expertise may differ, we are united on one point: we will not tolerate the failure of this or any other government to take robust and emergency action in respect of the worsening ecological crisis. The science is clear, the facts are incontrovertible, and it is unconscionable to us that our children and grandchildren should have to bear the terrifying brunt of an unprecedented disaster of our own making.
We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, with about 200 species becoming extinct each day. Humans cannot continue to violate the fundamental laws of nature or of science with impunity. If we continue on our current path, the future for our species is bleak.
Our government is complicit in ignoring the precautionary principle, and in failing to acknowledge that infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is non-viable. Instead, the government irresponsibly promotes rampant consumerism and free-market fundamentalism, and allows greenhouse gas emissions to rise. Earth Overshoot Day (the date when humans have used up more resources from nature than the planet can renew in the entire year) falls ever earlier each year (1 August in 2018).
When a government wilfully abrogates its responsibility to protect its citizens from harm and to secure the future for generations to come, it has failed in its most essential duty of stewardship. The “social contract” has been broken, and it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty, and to rebel to defend life itself.
We therefore declare our support for Extinction Rebellion, launching on 31 October 2018. We fully stand behind the demands for the government to tell the hard truth to its citizens. We call for a Citizens’ Assembly to work with scientists on the basis of the extant evidence and in accordance with the precautionary principle, to urgently develop a credible plan for rapid total decarbonisation of the economy.
The Guardian list of 94 includes several politicians, no less than 16 psychologists/psychotherapists, a criminologist, a neuro-scientist, a couple of human rights lawyers, but climate scientists? Nary a one.
The rest are a hotch potch from various social disciplines.
One is tempted to ask where this motley collection of wannabe of Trots and Maoists think their smart phones, computers and the rest of the trappings of their modern lifestyles come from.
But maybe the Guardian could set the ball rolling, and immediately shut down its printed media, close its plush HQ in the middle of London and pay all of its staff in beads! That might not do anything to save the planet, but at least we would not have to put up with their hypocrisy any longer.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The flip side of mass species extinctions is mass species explosions.
that’s how evolution works.
climate stress brings forth mass species explosions, as in the PETM
from which mammals emerged
and from which species we emerged.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/28/petm/
Are we actually in the middle of a mass extinction event? Next time someone makes that claim ask them to name which species have gone extinct in the last, say, 50 years. I’m pretty sure the list will be pretty small.
I don’t believe for a New York minute that CO2 is causing mass extinction. However, humanity’s impact on the biosphere clearly is causing a significant amount of harm. (Hunting, introduced species, ‘real’ pollution, overfishing, deforestation).
Rather a low proportion of the world’s species are well known, & probably millions have not even been named. The cuddly mammals & pretty birds are all known well and extinctions are relatively few (and not at the hands of CO2). But beetles? No-one even knows how many kinds there are (maybe few people care, but still…)
And how many of the supporters are scientists? Honestly how dumb can they all be?
You would be surprised.
“Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of ’em are stupider than that.”
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
George Carlin quotes.
I can only quote Albert Einstein “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
“So what does it take? We don’t lack imagination or ideas – there are many policy solutions out there – ”
Not one of which makes sense or can be realistically accomplished. When will these “crazies” wake up to reality? When the bill comes in and no gratuity has been added?
Let the nutters get on with it.
It can one of two ways:
1. It fizzles out like a damp squib.
2. someone will get hurt or property damaged, at which point the public and the MSM turn on them.
Anarchy is fine and well when there’s a discernible cause to rally round. Whilst the British public may pay lip service to climate change they’ll run for cover if anarchy turns into violence in their name.
The MSM won’t turn on them because the MSM has been pushing this line for too long to back off. The MSM just won’t report it and most people will never know it happened. It’ll take a long, cold, dark period in the middle of Winter to get most people’s attention.
… with power cuts.
No electricity and, hence, no GCH will get the MSM screaming (when it can get some power to broadcast or print) for ‘something to be done’.
Ref: Cliff Robertson introducing Robert Redford to a political reality in ‘Three Days of the Condor’.
I don’t know where they get the idea that our politicians aren’t on their side. Almost all of them supported the climate change act and all the main parties are determined to do what is required to drive our economy over a cliff.
Meanwhile the Earth goes on turning and the hysterical predictions of the doomsday squad continue to fail to happen.
There are an unprecedented number of loonies out there. I wonder if we are nearing a tipping point in the number of loonies. Surely such a large number of loonies is unsustainable and will lead to a mass extinction of loonies.
We should be so lucky!
Dr Kate Marvel from NASA’s Goddard Institute said: “To be a climate scientist is to be an active participant in a slow-motion horror story.
“As a climate scientist, I am often asked to talk about hope […] Audiences want to be told that everything will be alright in the end […] The problem is, I don’t have any. We need courage, not hope.”
This is NOT the way a scientist talks. I should know it, I am one. Science is about doing due dilligence with available data talking as much about the data which does not agree with your hypothesis as you do about that which does. Scientists also talk about probabalistic outcomes, show clearly ERROR BARS and critically point out always the resolution of their data. If your work considers outcomes then you look at them probabalistically using whatever statistical method you prefer. There is NOT just the bad extreme in a range of outcomes. This mob of charlatans spout hyperbolae and NEVER tell at which end of the probability scale the extreme outcomes sit..
So Dr Kate I have to agree with you whole heartedly that anyone who calles themselves a climate scientist ( I prefer climate opportunist or climate industrialist because they directly profit from the hysteria they encourage) is an active participant in a horror story. Because I see YOU are an active participant in the demise of Western civilization…truely a horror story!
Jon Scott– well stated. Dr. Kate opines from the NASA Goddard Institute which is housed in Columbia University, New York City.
Had she been around a few thousand years ago it would have been hard to hear her as her office would have been beneath ca. 2000 feet of ice. Does this knowledge give her A. Hope; B. Courage; C. None of the above?
I hope she finds the courage to simply look at the facts from data collection rather than models skewed to give preconceived outcomes. That is what we REAL scientists do on a daily basis.
The binary lie: either you believe in imminent catastrophe, or you’re a den1er. There is room for nuance, and probability distributions.
Let us deal with the consequences, if there are any. Better than this absurd doom and gloom rubbish which is always on the way but never here in any recognisable form.
As they get more and more desperate seeing that their house of cards is falling down around them they resort to more and more unacceptable methods. Sadly within the range of “normal” (and within the range means to include the extremes of the sine curve) on any standard distribution of humanity you will find nut jobs like this. Those killing doctors in the US claiming to uphold the rights of the unborn are a good example of the nutty end of the fruitcake.
Shellhumper, late of the alarmist Potsdam Institute is noted for his extremist views.
Drs. Thresher and Kubatzki have little liking for him too…
http://realclimatologists.org/Articles/2017/12/07/Angie_Clever_Hans_Pope_Frank_And_A_Climate_Controlled_World/index.html
Schellnhuber is the Charles Manson of the modern AGW hoax, but with the electronic communications facility at his disposal, which makes him more dangerous. He should be prosecuted for persuading other shallow thinking people to break the law, and his organisation closed down.
Let them volunteer to self- sacrifice first. This would be most welcome!
I really hope that this doesn’t come to anything because, what with all the closures of police stations and the reduced numbers of police officers able to hunt down and prosecute all those rings of famous people abusing small children plus all those committing more and more hate-crimes the whole country will be in a tizzy!
I’ll give up my jet when Al Gore give up his.
“But maybe the Guardian could set the ball rolling, and immediately shut down its printed media, close its plush HQ in the middle of London and pay all of its staff in beads!”
There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon:
“The Guardian has decided to discontinue its Science and Environment blogging networks”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/27/breaking-guardian-climate-change-retreat-will-discontinue-its-science-and-environment-blogging-networks/
“Hope Dies”?
No, the Hockey Stick Lies!
Surely inciting people to break the law is a crime isn’t it? Has anyone reported this to the police?
“Encouraging or assisting an offence” – Serious Crime Act 2007. Not sure what the limits to the offences are, but the penalties available are the same as if the offence in question took place.
But the punishments for the kind of things they are advocating are probably minor, & not worth the police’s time.
Forget, for a moment, the science. (Which these nutters never knew anyway.)
Just consider the claim that ‘it only takes a few determined protesters to transform Society.’
In a few cases that might be true.
But consider CND. Did they ban the bomb?
Did the striking miners 1984/5 keep the pits open?
Many other examples.
So why do these clowns scent success this time?
The only answer is that they know the numpties in Westminster won’t stand up to them any more than May stands up to the EU.
How many Greenies have gone to prison or paid a fine so far?
I say bring it on!
The pushback, when it comes, will be brutal.
Mobile phones and communications consumes an ENORMOUS amount of electricity.
But I bet not one of these children would even give up their precious texting devices.
At the end of the last glaciation, the world warmed how much? Was there a mass extinction?
Incitement to civil disobedience. Sounds like the rules of Alinsky for creating anarchy.
…………………………..
The non-profit community, long a meeting place for far-left sympathizers and Democrat do-gooders, now is in the vanguard of defining and implementing what Alinsky defined more than four decades ago as “Rules for Radicals.”
Alinsky’s 13 rules, combining psychology with political activism and brutal single-mindedness, is an undeniable masterpiece when it comes to neutralizing one’s opponents.
……………………
https://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2018/05/02/alinskys-rules-for-radicals-updated-n2476596
Anarchy rather than communism may be what is aimed at.
Look at what they do rather than what they say.
Anarchism
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2040304,00.html
Much against my better judgement, I followed the Grauniad link to run through the list of armchair revolutionaries.
I wonder if there is even one who has ever held down a proper job? Archbishop of Canterbury? Maybe, I suppose.
Even the latest child rape gang drove taxis or worked in a takeaway in their spare time.
Reading this long list of self entitled parasites with their fancy and mostly stupid academic titles (All leaching on the long suffering taxpayer) is a commentary on what has happened to Education in the UK.
Like the list of Child Groomers, I doubt there is one who doesn’t viscerally hate this Country, its history, its culture and especially its people.
This is a list to save on your hard drive
Still pushing the lie that “profit” is the root of all evil. They refuse to look at Venezuela and see what happens when you do away with that “profit” and children start needless dying.
Some of these comments are too blase. While they are attached to human frailty they the emotional (possibly ill-informed) utterances of people with serious concerns. We are dealing with a delicate balance. For instance, if you are against fracking the drill site has detected earthquakes. If your are sceptical or disengaged, there have been tremors un-observable at the surface. If flat-Earth-ers are attached to a political sentiment they take on an entirely different sort of persona. Rather than being someone that you can bandy words with they become undeniable.
Although caring is not a facet of governance, never has been and never will be in a bureaucracy that relies on the general condition in its laws, whereby anything that deals with the mass has to be systematised and deployed by people obliged to follow rules, if your platform is saving mankind and the neglect in such matters of such by your opponent, then the conflict of your humanity is tested and even plainly impractical, self-harming, antiquated and dis-enabling legislation could be passed. Science, business, personal fortune are areas of opaque understanding for the majority. Although an opinion can be bought, businesses are attributed as being oppressive regimes, when fortune is not viewed as worked for or not even the panacea for happiness but its loss, as is often portrayed in doctrinal evocations, they are seemingly great levellers.
Today, the Brazilian election result is immediately reported as a disaster for the Amazon’s environment, yet the Favelas report that whatever has been the previous norm has been a disaster for untold numbers of Brazilians. Utopia a real place that enlightenment can build? Utopos, the place that cannot be. Utopian idealism is the insistence that man, returning to some sort of primal state, can overcome differentials and the much vaunted destruction of our unique planet home. In one state, and artistically imagining, contriving another, is the ‘Groundnut Scheme’ of the 21st century, a speculative venture managed by schemers using the hard-earned of others. A clamour for success in a promotion which has at its core finely descriptive evocations but has grim reality as its bookends.
The ‘Conscientious Protectors’ should learn from history: The Conscientious Objectors of 1914 were unable to stop the slaughter and extinction of many millions in WW I. Furthermore, Conscientious Protectors need to learn the lesson that quite a few objectors died for their beliefs: would they?
I wrote a long letter to the bishop of Southampton on the subject of the Synod of the C of E’ s disinvestment in fossil fuels – futile virtue signalling hurtful. to the world’s poor. No reply so sent chaser. May I post this correspondence here idc?
Please do!
The time for denial is over – we know the truth about climate change
No they don’t, because the claim that whatever climate change has occurred is all or mostly man-made is not true. No amount of belief will make it so.
If the time for denial is over then why don’t they recognize that the solution they have proposed is not workable? Are they in denial that humans cannot capture and safely bury billions of tons of oxidized carbon? Are they in denial that it would take many hundreds of years and cost mega-currencies?
It isn’t just the claims about the climate.
How about “we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event this planet has experienced.”
OK, Smallpox virus. That’s one.
Can anyone give me another?
More GIGO computer prognostications.
To put this in context, how about this:-
https://americanmind.org/essays/our-revolutions-logic/
(Hat-tip ‘Robaroo’ commenting on SmallDeadAnimals)
Excellent piece focussing largely on the USA situation. But no great stretch of imagination to apply the argument to the UK with Brexit etc.
And at least they still have some constitutional protection of free speech in the US. Already history here.
“We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, with about 200 species becoming extinct each day”
Habeas Corpus.
Or its modern English interpretation…show me the body(ies)
Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research for twenty years and a senior advisor to the European Union, said: “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action and accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.”
Indeed we are reaching the end-game, temperatures are falling off a cliff and more and more people are realizing that the IPCC and the ideas of ‘cAGW-Climat Change™’ are not real.
For instance —
Like the whopping 0.2 W m-2 of forcing from the +22 ppm increase in CO2 between 2000 and 2010 (Feldman et al., 2015, at https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html )
Well if it goes directly into increasing the air temperature, like this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2010/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2010/trend
That’s about 1/10° per decade, or about 1°C per century.
At that rate it will never set the world on fire! I think we all can adapt to that. 🙂
The calculations for RFF as a function of CO2 partial pressure are based on incorrect 19th century gas theory. The IPCC panel chose to assume that the simple grey-gas approximation can be used for CO2 radiation in the presence of moisture, when it is well know (since about 1940) that the spectral overlap of the two gases means that the emissivity of pure CO2 is significantly higher than when in a mixture. In fact it was this interaction that allowed Chris Keeling to reject earlier measurements of CO2.
As a further point, the increase in RFF means an increase in temperatures (by definition), but this temperature rise increases the Henry’s Law coefficient and releases CO2 from the oceans. It is more likely that the increase in temperature (or RFF) drives the CO2 increase than vice versa (from historical information). The research in Nature does not in any way resolve this, although it follows the party-line claims that CO2 leads.
Was brought here, to whatever this website is, whilst I was researching Extinction Rebellion and its claims about climate change. Everyone has a right to believe what they choose to but there’s some really nasty comments here, all in the same vein. If this is the face of ‘reason’ then I’d rather join Extinction Rebellion’s cause. Thanks for convincing me.
Grow up, Rachel and actually study some facts
It’s a tactic of the people who orchestrate the drama about how We are to Blame for Everything. This is dangerous ground because it’s almost impossible to tell these people that it’s an old trick.
One example is what happened in Russia when Marxist communists from Europe infiltrated the quiet, peaceful, paper publishing cells of anarchists and brought them into the open which resulted in the death of the Tsar and his family. Marx was back in Germany by the time this hapened.
Then what did the communists do when this was accomplished? They murdered all the anarchists in the streets.