Is Global Warming A Scam?
I doubt you will have heard of these arguments before
Before anyone reaches for the ‘Big Oil’ accusation, I’m going to pull the biggest reversi card imaginable.
Maurice F. Strong, former President, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Canada's national oil company, Petro-Canada, and former President of Power Corporation of Canada, a Member of the International Advisory of Toyota Motor Corporation, was responsible for the global warming movement as you know it.
He established the Earth Council Alliance, an organisation that write happy-sounding blurbs (words are cheap), where they claim it…
[…] supports Earth Councils and other people and organizations committed to sustainability initiatives and preserving the world for today’s peoples and future generations. As an international organization, we are a non-government organization (NGO) incorporated in Switzerland. ECA supports autonomous Earth Councils founded during the last decade in with the goal of accelerating progress in achieving sustainability goals as they are framed in the Earth Charter, Agenda 21, and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Recognizing its international character and scope, ECA is being incorporated as a Swiss foundation in Geneva, and has established offices in San Diego, California, and Beijing, Peoples Republic of China.
That’s right, the concept of global warming, climate change… was invented by someone neck deep in Big Oil himself. Ultimate reversi card! This isn’t a good thing, though, because it means it was invented by someone with a huge financial conflict of interest.
So criticising this as a scam is also criticising such companies, as the global warming claims often deflects away from the uncomfortable inconsistencies which will just get more and more awkward as we dive in.
Exxon And Solar Panels
The first basic solar cell was invented by Charles Fritts in 1883, but it produced little, if any, power, and wasn’t a viable design. Russell Ohl's 1941 development of silicon p/n junction cells would improve the efficiency to 5%, but you wouldn’t see the first design of what you’d call a modern solar panel until 1954, where it was invented by Bell labs.
This was a prototype that wasn’t cheap enough to scale commercially. You know what drove the development of commercially viable solar panels? Oil rigs.
A big problem with having a large platform out-at-sea is boats have a tendency to crash into them in the dark if they aren’t visible. The way to make the oil rigs visible is via the use of beacon lights. The rigs aren’t connected to the mainland, so they have to generate their own power on the rig itself.
What oil rigs would have done is inefficiently burn some of the oil they drilled to generate electrical power, but the oil is unrefined crude, so not only does it burn inefficiently, but it produces a lot of toxic pollution which is a problem for workers on the platform. Costly for some small lights.
Exxon, known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey at the time (a result of the breakup of Standard Oil by the Sherman Anti-trust Act), funded research by Dr. Elliot Berman into solar technology, who initially tried to purchase solar panel rejects from space projects, but ultimately failed due to insufficient quantities, and instead opted to design and manufacture their own.
Exxon financed a new company called Solar Power Corp, starting it in 1973, and closing it down in 1984 after realising it wasn’t viable enough at the time to sell to the public (they didn’t have that many oil rigs to install to).
BP And Solar Panels
Exxon weren’t the only oil producers getting in on the solar game. BP, short for ‘British Petroleum’, acquired initially 50% of Lucas Energy Systems in 1981, renaming it to Lucas BP Solar Systems, and becoming wholly owned by BP in the 1990s. They wouldn’t fold the solar business until December 2011, where it lost out to competition from China for solar manufacturing in terms of prices.
Despite this, BP retained their position in wind power manufacturing. Quoting the Reuters article:
The company retains a presence in alternative energy through its U.S. wind power portfolio and its biofuels business and has to date invested $7 billion of a planned $8 billion program in alternative energy.
So, far from the painted image that ‘Big Oil’ is deathly opposed… they actually appear to be the ones in the driving seat, not only with the likes of Maurice Strong oil tycoon and Toyota car member advocating the switch to the new business model, but Exxon and BP having supported the technology long before the demand for it existed.
But Why?
Sunlight is free, and unlimited, as is wind. Oil and gas are not. Exploration costs money. Drilling and mining costs money. Oil and gas have to be processed, costing money. Oil has to be refined. Oil and gas has to be shipped or piped. Sunlight doesn’t. Wind doesn’t.
If you work it out from a profit margins basis, the only cost is the harvester itself. The sunlight is free and unlimited, as is the wind. Any money you make on free sunlight is 100% profit. But the issue for the oil companies was the lack of demand.
See, why install solar panels or wind turbines on your house if your energy grid is always operational 24/7? Why use electricity if your car uses fuel? Essentially, they’re their own worst enemy. So why not invent a bogeyman that is conveniently targeted at the fuel systems people use.
Carbon Is Not A Pollutant
For people who have bought into the propaganda of global warming, they will have been told carbon - an element that has existed for as long as the universe has - is somehow a pollutant. Your bodies are made of carbon. Plants are made of carbon. Animals are made of carbon. Most things, when burnt, reduce down to carbon. And this is where the scam of anti-carbon being pro-environmental unravels.
Out of all the things that are polluting the Earth - radioactive waste, pesticide run-off due to poor irrigation techniques, oil spills in the ocean, floating plastics - it is extremely odd, out of all things, they target carbon.
Why carbon? Uranium isn’t emitting carbon (which the nuclear lobby will misuse to falsely claim it is “green”, because the definition of environmentalism has changed to mean carbon only), oil spills don’t emit carbon (they might be made of hydrocarbons but they aren’t releasing carbon dioxide [CO2]), pesticides don’t emit carbon. Carbon has become a scapegoat that conveniently sidesteps actual environmental issues.
In-fact, the opposition to carbon is so anti-environmentalist it boggles the mind. Carbon is used to fertilise plants. This is even something pro-global warming NASA (with their rocket-fuel using ships) admits is greening the Earth based on a study. Yes, you read that right. That’s more plants! That’s a good thing!
Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.”
Plants need CO2 to grow. Humans and animals expel CO2 naturally. We have a symbiosis with plants. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Humans absorb oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. It isn’t a pollutant because it is naturally occurring. I repeat that again, CO2 expulsion is naturally occurring.
What About The Cars?!
Lets for sake of argument say you’re of the view carbon dioxide emissions from artificial sources is a problem. ‘Cars aren't natural’ you’d probably huff, and you’d be right, but when you observe government actions with the viewpoint of a environmentalist, the giant red flags of ‘scam’ can be seen from a mile away.
Now, I’m not going to reach for any cliches. I think the comment that ‘solar panels involve destructive mining too!’ is an overdone and senseless argument, because all parts manufacturing for any energy industry involves destructive mining, drilling, damming or similarly. Most of Earth’s resources are below the surface. To get there, you need to dig. Ya dig?
Uranium requires mining (and refining, and waste storage for 500,000 years). Oil requires drilling (oil spills optional). Fracking requires fracturing the ground and contaminating groundwater. Natural Gas requires drilling. Neodymium in wind turbines require destructive rare-earth mining. Lithium for energy storage requires mining. Coal requires mining. Solar panels rely on the waste silicon wafers from chip manufacturing (so tack in all the chip manufacturing waste-costs). Hydrogeneration requires damming of large areas. Geothermal requires drilling.
All fuels require some destructive process to occur in one form or another, so people need to stop cherry picking. Minus points to anyone who uses this as a counter-argument.
What I will point to, however, are the government policies.
Rules For Thee, Not For Me
If you’re of the view carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring element, is somehow a pollutant, then you’d expect the penalties to apply to the big ‘polluters’, correct?
People in big, oversized limos, flying unnecessarily in big luxury jets, jetting around in big private boats or on luxury trips, should be hit the hardest, right? A reduction in carbon, right?
Now, look at what the organisations are actually doing:
Exempting private jets and cargo planes from a ‘climate’ fuel tax (private jets are the biggest source of pollution for the UK and France)
Inventing climate credits for big businesses so they don’t have to change anything
Paying farmers not to grow any carbon dioxide absorbing crops
Creating novelty toilets that use poop as energy to mine bitcoin (I wish I was making this up)
Allowing companies to pretend they are “green” when they’re not via ‘greenwashing’
Not penalising cruise ships which produce more pollution than all of Europe’s cars combined (or penalising them for discarding trash in the oceans)
Investing in “biofuels” that actually use more fuel than they produce
Global warming advocate Al Gore buying a beachfront property (weren’t those places supposed to flood if the ice melted?)
The former co-founder Patrick Moore of Greenpeace calling it an environmental scam (Greenpeace USA insist Patrick Moore is not a co-founder, but his name is found on the “Don’t Make A Wave Committee”, the precursor to Greenpeace, on their own website as being one of the first on a boat to join a protest)
There are more examples than I’d care to list, but do these sound like the actions of someone truly concerned with carbon dioxide as a pollutant to you, doing everything they can to save the world?
Isn’t it odd how the rich people telling us poor people we need to save the environment that they claim they’re so deathly afraid is going to have world ending consequences, aren’t freaking out themselves?
These all read as ‘tax the poor and lie to their faces’, and is a deadringer this entire thing is an absolute scam. Spearheaded by Big Oil companies, actual polluters given exemptions, the poor who can’t even afford a private jet, luxury yacht, or even cruise liner vacations given the state of the economy, all being beaten into submission, all whilst NASA declares CO2 is greening the planet and ignoring the fact CO2 is a naturally occurring element.
Global warming, my dear friends, whether pro-environmentist or pro-freedom, is an utter scam. Do not buy into it.
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Very good article. A few comments.
You say:
"Solar panels rely on the waste silicon wafers from chip manufacturing (so tack in all the chip manufacturing waste-costs)."
That was true at one time, and silicon was expensive when it was only used for chips, and had zero impact on the product cost. Today, PV is the largest user of silicon, and prices for silicon have dropped to almost zero.
You say:
"Sunlight is free, and unlimited, as is wind."
True. AND, wind is just a mere second-order by-product of the sun … but on the other-other hand, it is concentrated in certain areas making wind power viable in certain areas. The ultimate solution is of course solar.
I also wrote a solar summary article:
https://timellison.substack.com/p/solar-energy-in-a-nutshell
Best wishes.
One could say that industrial pollution is also a scam, based on how we've dealt with the problem.
The battle is already lost and, frankly, tiresome to discuss. The schematic is simple: we rely on fossil fuels of which we have limited supply but nonetheless drain in ever faster/larger amounts.
Everything else is senseless distraction.
That said, we *are* fucking with the weather. The fact that the weather is fucking with us even more doesn't change that fact. Our fucking with the weather may actually be forestalling the nearly inevitable ice age return, and in the process deceiving us as to the main direction we should take in response to an obviously wacko contemporary climate. Today, it looks like Siberia is poised to become the new grain belt. But in 30 years it could be one giant rapidly growing glacier.
Climate matters. How to deal with climate really matters. The fact that reigning power-brokers use this to breed evil scams is a separate issue: our power-brokers do this with EVERYTHING from the food we eat to the air we breathe to, increasingly, the thoughts that we think. They'd tax nocturnal emissions if they could.
Want to make something nonsensical and impossible to remedy? Treat it as a political issue. The climate, for all that our politicians claim, is not a political issue. It's a physical issue, and a currently very daunting physical problem. Daunting problems want wisdom and true loyalty, yea, even friendship, that mytho-legendary concept. They don't want political perspective. That's like asking one's girlfriend to put on a Your Mother skin suit to make one horny.
P.S. The S.Korean poop energy generator is itself a smart move, never mind the mandatorily nonsensical sociopolitical overlays.
P.P.S. As for Al Gore beachfront: a rich old man has to enjoy the world his wealth is devastating while he can, jah?
P.P.S.S. Meanwhile, we rush like Disney lemmings (*real* lemmings are not suicidal cliff-march zombies) to submit to bogus toxic vaccinations and economic hari-kari. Compassion is a bitch, and I weep for all life on Terra the Fair, but logically, I see absolutely no empirical reason for humanity not to off itself in large numbers per its preferred m.o.: cuz pharaoh said so.
Those who survive will be sadder but wiser, i.e., far more sane than their recently exterminated fellow specie members.