“apocalyptic movements have much in...

“APOCALYPTIC MOVEMENTS HAVE MUCH IN COMMON WITH ONE ANOTHER, NO MATTER THE GULF IN TIME

AND EDUCATIONAL LEVEL OF THE PARTICIPANTS.”

Environmentalism is one of the biggest and most successful social movements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Fear that human activities are disrupting the planet’s climate – global warming – is one of the movement’s best-known tropes, often accompanied by predictions of frightening environmental disasters of apocalyptic proportions. But is it true?

Rael Jean Isaac, a sociologist who has written extensively about social movements in the U.S., has studied the environmental movement and paid special attention to its global warming campaign. She finds the global warming movement, far from being based on scientific facts or consensus, is basically irrational, ideological, and profoundly anti-science.

Dr. Isaac dissects the motivations and tactics of the leading “roosters” of the global warming campaign and finds they have much in common with members of the Xhosa tribe in what is now South Africa. In 1856, the tribe destroyed its cattle and ceased planting crops based on the apocalyptic prophecies of a 15-year-old girl.

Today’s environmentalists are using fear of global warming to destroy the foundations of modern civilization. These “roosters of the apocalypse” dominate governments, universities, and even scientific societies, even as the “owls” – scientists and others who doubt the threat of global warming is real – win the scientific debate and warn of the economic consequences of taking unnecessary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Roosters of the Apocalypse is required reading for anyone interested in environmentalism, climate change, or contemporary social movements.

BY RAEL JEAN ISAAC

HOW THE JUNK SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING

NEARLY BANKRUPTED THE WESTERN WORLD

ROOSTERS OF THEAPOCALYPSE

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ONE sOuth wackEr drivE suitE #2740

chicagO, illiNOis 60606

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IDEAS THAT EMPOWER PEOPLE <Based on 12pt ITC Caslon 224 bold

<Based on 7pt ITC Caslon 224 medium horizontally scalled to 105%

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IDEAS THAT EMPOWER PEOPLE



<Based on 7pt ITC Caslon 224 medium horizontally scalled to 105%IDEAS THAT EMPOWER PEOPLE

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Roosters of theApocalypse

Rael Jean Isaac

Roosters of the Apocalypse

Copyright ©2012Rael Jean Isaac

Published by The Heartland InstituteOne South Wacker Drive #2740

Chicago, Illinois 60606phone 312/377-4000

fax 312/377-5000www.heartland.org

All rights reserved, including the right to reproducethis book or portions thereof in any form.

Opinions expressed are solely those of the author.Nothing in this book should be construed as necessarily

reflecting the view of The Heartland Institute oras an attempt to influence pending legislation.

Additional copies of this bookare available from The Heartland Institute

for the following prices:

1-10 copies $8.95 per copy11-50 copies $7.95 per copy51-100 copies $6.95 per copy101 or more $5.95 per copy

Printed and manufactured in the United States of AmericaISBN-13 978-1-934791-37-0

ISBN-10 1-934791-37-7

iii

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 Roosters vs. Owls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Apocalyptic Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Fighting Global Warming with Tax Dollars . . . 254 “Do We Want to Live or Die?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 A Climate Rooster Becomes President . . . . . . . 476 Pitfalls of Green Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617 Confronting Global Warming Roosters . . . . . . . 73

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

About The Heartland Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

1

IntroductionBeginning in the spring of 1856, the Xhosa tribe intoday’s South Africa destroyed its own economy. TheXhosa killed an estimated half-million of their owncattle (which they ordinarily treated with great careand respect), ceased planting crops, and destroyedtheir grain stores. By the end of 1857 between thirtyand fifty thousand of them had starved to death—athird to a half of the population. The British herdedsurvivors of the once-powerful tribe into labor camps,and white settlers took much of their land.

The Xhosa had acted on the prophecy of a 15-year-old girl who promised that if they destroyed allthey had and purified themselves of “witchcraft”(including evil inclinations and selfishness), the worldbefore the white invaders came would be restored:The British oppressors would flee, and the Xhosaancestors would return, bringing with them an evengreater abundance of cattle and grain.1

Do you feel a mixture of pity and contempt forthese strange people who ruined themselves on thebasis of an outlandish vision? If so, the feeling ismisplaced. Just as the basis for the Xhosa economywas cattle, the lifeblood of our economy is energy.And we are strangling our own energy supply on thebasis of an apocalyptic prophecy that has no more

2 ROOSTERS OF THE APOCALYPSE

validity than the one that sent the Xhosa spinning intocultural self-immolation.

The apocalyptic vision to which we subscribe hasa superficial scientific gloss—“climatechange”—making it palatable to the modern mind,but at bottom both visions prescribe economicsuicide. And both promise self-sacrifice will bringabout a golden age. In the case of the Xhosa, thatgolden age was the time before the British invaded. Inour own, to quote famed environmentalist DavidBrower (director of the Sierra Club and then ofFriends of the Earth), it’s “back there about a centurywhen, at the start of the Industrial Revolution webegan applying energy in vast amounts to tools withwhich we began tearing the environment apart.”2

3

Chapter 1Roosters vs. Owls

Apocalyptic movements have much in common withone another, no matter the gulf in time andeducational level of the participants. In Heaven onEarth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience,Boston University historian Richard Landes describesthe appeal of these movements, their chiefcharacteristics, how they take over societies (andeventually run out of steam), and their impact.

Landes describes those who initiate and buildsupport for these movements as roosters, for theycrow an exciting new message, and their opponents asowls, gloomsters counseling caution and skepticism.Roosters will drown out the warning owls only if theyrally elites to their cause, and elites are a hardsell—especially, says Landes, in the case ofprophecies demanding a society self-mutilate. Thatmeans enthusiasm must first be generated in asufficient segment of the public to put pressure onelites to go along.

Once the authorities pronounce themselves infavor of the prophecy and it “pays” to believe, manymore ordinary people will join in.3 In the case of theXhosa, the initial rooster was a simple orphan girl.The key to the triumph of her vision was her uncle, awell-known preacher and diviner who preached her


message and convinced the chiefs – including thechief of chiefs, named Sarhili – of its truth.4

Later we will describe the origin of the climatechange prophecy. Here let us note the astonishingspeed of its dissemination and the number andpolitical power of its converts. If Landes is right thatelites are normally a hard sell when it comes toself-destructive enthusiasms, in this case they havebeen won over with breathtaking ease. For example,here’s U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “Coalmakes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming.It’s ruining our country. It’s ruining our world.”5 Ata World Economic Forum on climate in Davos inFebruary 2009, Vaclav Klaus, former president ofCzechoslovakia, found himself a solitary owl in a seaof leading politicians and heads of state. “I lookedaround in vain to find at least one person who wouldshare my views—there was no one. All theparticipants at the meeting took man-made globalwarming for granted.”6

The governing boards of many scientificassociations in the United States endorse themovement.7 Elite international scientific associations,including the U.K.’s venerable Royal Society, are alsoon board. Then there’s the media, which eagerlyprovide a platform and echo chamber for the mostterrifying apocalyptic scenarios the roosters canconjure up: seas rising twenty feet to drownManhattan, the Netherlands, and Bangladesh; ashutdown in “thermohaline convection” in the oceans

CHAPTER 1 - ROOSTERS VS. OWLS 5

plunging Europe into a new ice age; multiplyinghurricanes and tornadoes; an end to polar bears; a vastincrease in malaria, dengue fever, Ebola virus, and acornucopia of other diseases. That’s just a partial listof what a single noisy rooster – Al Gore – promisesman-made global warming will bring upon us.8 SirNicholas Stern, the London School of Economicsprofessor then-Prime Minister Tony Blair chose tolead a team of economists to study climate change,has prophesied “extended world war” and the need tomove “hundreds of millions, probably billions ofpeople.”9

As the apocalypse bandwagon gets rolling, itgathers momentum. More and more people develop astake in it. Scientists depend on government grants,and grants go to projects proposed by climateroosters, not owls. Between 1993 and 2010, accordingto the Government Accountability Office, the federalgovernment poured almost $107 billion into suchprojects.10

Giant corporations see dollar signs ingovernment-subsidized solar and wind power and intrading carbon credits under cap-and-trade schemes.They become deep-pocket lobbyists for theapocalypse. The U.S. Climate Action Partnershipincludes such stalwarts of capitalism as GE,Caterpillar, DuPont, General Motors, PepsiCo,ConocoPhillips, and Ford, all egging on Washington“to quickly enact strong national legislation to requiresignificant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”11


(ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar subsequently haveannounced plans to drop out of the partnership.12 )

There are now more than four climate changelobbyists for each member of Congress.13 Then thereare the “consultants” on climate change and thelawyers salivating at the prospect of billions of dollarsin damages from laggard “emitters.” There is even anew breed of “eco-therapists” to help people navigatetheir feelings of fear, grief, confusion, and depressionabout contributing to global warming.14

Active apocalyptic movements are urgent. It’snow or never. If action is not taken quickly, it will betoo late. Xhosa believers set about destroying theircattle and grain immediately. United NationsSecretary General Ban Ki-moon (the global warmingapocalypse owes more to the U.N. than to any othersingle institution) told the Global EnvironmentalForum in 2009, “We have just four months. Fourmonths to secure the future of our planet.”15 Moregenerously, Prince Charles in March 2009 gave us“100 months to alter our behavior before we riskcatastrophic climate change and the unimaginablehorror that this would bring.”16

Fostering the sense of urgency, roosters advancethe notion of “a tipping point” after which the worstis upon us, no matter what we do. James Hansen,director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for SpaceStudies (perhaps the most vociferous of thescientifically credentialed roosters) warns ofirreversible effects if we don’t act quickly: “As


species are exterminated by shifting climate zones,ecosystems can collapse. ... The greatest dangerhanging over our children and grandchildren isinitiation of changes that will be irreversible on anytime scale that humans can imagine.”17 The mostfar-out speculation of all comes from researchers atPennsylvania State University, who suggest risinggreenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we area rapidly growing threat to the universe – and leadthem to take drastic action against Earth before thethreat escalates further.18

Given the sweeping success of the climate changemovement, you might think its roosters woulddisregard the vastly outnumbered owls, leaving themto naysay, ignored, on the margins. But that’s not howapocalyptic movements work. Unanimity is terriblyimportant. As in the story of the emperor’s newclothes, one small voice at the right moment canexpose the nakedness of the project. So dissentersmust be silenced, discredited – or worse.

As the ancestors failed to appear and the Xhosabelievers began to starve, they blamed the stubbornowls who had kept their cattle. Arguing it was theirdisbelief that delayed the return of the ancestors, thebelievers began to kill the cattle of those they calledthe amagogotya, the selfish hard ones, those who “eatalone.”19 In the global warming apocalypse, everyeffort is made to banish climate change owls, nomatter how distinguished their scientific record, to theouter fringe. The owls are flat-earthers, patsies for big


oil, “deniers” (as in Holocaust deniers), analogous toracists (Al Gore’s contribution),20 “people who saythat asbestos is as good as talcum powder” (this fromRajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.’sIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).21 JamesHansen says CEOs of fossil energy companies shouldbe tried for “high crimes against humanity andnature.”22

Manufacturing Consensus

This passion for total agreement accounts for the“Climategate” scandal that enveloped researchers atthe Climatic Research Unit at the University of EastAnglia, who serve as gatekeepers for theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).In November 2009 a hacker downloaded candid e-mails among top climate roosters in England, theUnited States, and elsewhere between 1996 and 2009.The messages bemoan recalcitrant data that fail tosupport the claim of “unprecedented warming,”describe the tricks (their term) used to coax the datato buttress the theory, report efforts to keep the viewsof scientific dissenters out of reputable journals andU.N. reports, and boast of deletion of data to make itunavailable to other researchers.23

The e-mailers sound much more like hardcorezealots than scrupulous seekers of scientific fact. Forexample, Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research


Unit, e-mailed major rooster Michael Mann regardinga couple of skeptical articles: “I can’t see either ofthese papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin[Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, evenif we have to redefine what the peer-review literatureis!”24

While Climategate has received the mostattention, the way the series of IPCC reports – whichprovide the scientific underpinning for the entireclimate change movement – are edited is rife withscandal. In Climate of Corruption, Larry Belldescribes what happened to the crucial Chapter 8 inthe IPCC’s 1995 Second Assessment Report. The finaldraft stated there was insufficient evidence to connectobserved climate changes to man-made greenhousegases. Here are a few of the conclusions, which werebased on reviews of 130 peer-reviewed scientificstudies: “None of the studies cited above has shownclear evidence that we can attribute the observed[climate] changes to the specific cause of increases ingreenhouse gases.” “Any claims of positive detectionand attribution of significant climate change are likelyto remain controversial until uncertainties in the totalnatural variability of the climate system are reduced.”“When will an anthropogenic effect on climate beidentified? It is not surprising that the best answer tothis question is, ‘We do not know.’”25

Bell tells us what happened on the way topublication:


That chapter, which should have governed theentire IPCC report, was then substantiallyrewritten to advance a global warmingcampaign being waged by the UN, the NGOs,and the White House [Gore wasvice-president]. In May 1996, after the reportwas released, the Chapter 8 conclusions werestartlingly different from the scientists’accepted version. The Chapter 8 lead author,Ben Santer, from the U.S. government’sLawrence Livermore National Laboratory,had excised denials of any scientific evidenceof manmade global warming, replacing themwith statements asserting just the opposite:“The body of statistical evidence in Chapter 8,when examined in the context of our physicalunderstanding of the climate system, nowpoints to a discernible human influence on theglobal climate”. ... The “discernible humaninfluence” insertion, which reversed the entireIPCC climate science report, purportedlyended all debate on this matter, providing anofficial foundation for the UN-sponsoredKyoto Protocol to follow in 1997.26

Thus, according to Bell, a misrepresentation providedthe basis for a huge international commitment totransform energy use. Moreover, the roosters did theirdirty work unscathed. Frederick Seitz, formerpresident of the National Academy of Sciences and


former president of Rockefeller University, wrote anop-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he noted,“I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruptionof the peer-review process than the events that led tothis IPCC report.”27 The Wall Street Journal wrote aneditorial critical of the IPCC, and the journal Nature,although favoring adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, hadthe decency to disapprove of the IPCC’s rewriting ofChapter 8.28 But that was all, and the apocalypserolled on.

The writers of the hacked e-mails, Santer amongthem,29 comprise most of the core scientific roosterswho keep the apocalypse going. They serve as leadauthors, contributing authors, and editors shaping thecontents of the series of IPCC reports. Although muchof the respect accorded the reports is due to theirliteral weight (they are each upwards of 800 pages),their impact comes from the brief Summaries forPolicymakers, which are all the reporters – whodisseminate the reports’ findings – read. Thesesummaries are formulated by the hardcore roostersand then gone over line by line, revised and agreed to,by representatives of member governments. Ofcourse, this process has zero resemblance to the wayreal scientific research is reviewed and published.30

But the summaries accomplish their purpose inkeeping up the heat, each report claiming theapocalypse is approaching even sooner than the lastone predicted.


In between reports, the roosters hold a steadystream of conferences and congresses to ramp up thepressure for dramatic action now. For example, inMarch 2009 the University of Copenhagen hosted acongress on climate change attended by 2,000scientists from more than seventy countries. A 36-page summary “for laymen” of its findings waspresented to a meeting of European Union leaders inBrussels assembled to discuss climate change. Thatsummary warned of escalating “tipping points,”proclaimed the Great Barrier Reef was in danger, andcautioned, “To recover ecosystems like that wouldlikely take hundreds of thousands, if not manymillions of years. ... We cannot afford to take abusiness as usual approach. ... Future generations willinherit an unlivable planet.”31

Even all this understates the transgressions of theIPCC. In The Delinquent Teenager Who WasMistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert,journalist Donna Laframboise has exposed the fullrange of deceptive techniques and fakery practiced bythe IPCC. While the title may suggest a flippant orsuperficial take on the issues, Laframboise hasperformed an astonishing feat of investigativejournalism, all the more impressive given that she hadretired from her journalistic career and was workingas a solitary blogger, with none of the resources of theliterally thousands of journalists worldwide who havecovered the IPCC with mindless, slavish devotion.32

“APOCALYPTIC MOVEMENTS HAVE MUCH IN COMMON WITH ONE ANOTHER, NO MATTER THE GULF IN TIME

AND EDUCATIONAL LEVEL OF THE PARTICIPANTS.”

Environmentalism is one of the biggest and most successful social movements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Fear that human activities are disrupting the planet’s climate – global warming – is one of the movement’s best-known tropes, often accompanied by predictions of frightening environmental disasters of apocalyptic proportions. But is it true?

Rael Jean Isaac, a sociologist who has written extensively about social movements in the U.S., has studied the environmental movement and paid special attention to its global warming campaign. She finds the global warming movement, far from being based on scientific facts or consensus, is basically irrational, ideological, and profoundly anti-science.

Dr. Isaac dissects the motivations and tactics of the leading “roosters” of the global warming campaign and finds they have much in common with members of the Xhosa tribe in what is now South Africa. In 1856, the tribe destroyed its cattle and ceased planting crops based on the apocalyptic prophecies of a 15-year-old girl.

Today’s environmentalists are using fear of global warming to destroy the foundations of modern civilization. These “roosters of the apocalypse” dominate governments, universities, and even scientific societies, even as the “owls” – scientists and others who doubt the threat of global warming is real – win the scientific debate and warn of the economic consequences of taking unnecessary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Roosters of the Apocalypse is required reading for anyone interested in environmentalism, climate change, or contemporary social movements.

BY RAEL JEAN ISAAC

HOW THE JUNK SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING

NEARLY BANKRUPTED THE WESTERN WORLD

ROOSTERS OF THEAPOCALYPSE

RO

OSTER

S OF TH

E APO

CA

LYPSE

HE

AR

TL

AN

D IN

ST

ITU

TE

ONE sOuth wackEr drivE suitE #2740

chicagO, illiNOis 60606

hEartlaNd.Org

IDEAS THAT EMPOWER PEOPLE <Based on 12pt ITC Caslon 224 bold

<Based on 7pt ITC Caslon 224 medium horizontally scalled to 105%








<Based on 7pt ITC Caslon 224 medium horizontally scalled to 105%IDEAS THAT EMPOWER PEOPLE

ISAA

C

U.S. $16.95

CMYK

creo

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