Prominent Eco Activist Shellenberger Apologises for Climate Scare
Green Guru Michael Shellenberger, formerly Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ has now abandoned the movement denouncing it as politically-driven and needlessly alarmist. In a public statement he fully retracts his former position as follows:
“On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.”….
Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution…I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network…In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them…
Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science.
Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist…I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding.
But then, last year, things spiraled out of control. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”
That is all I that I had hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.
I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.”
Read more at www.forbes.com
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Herb Rose
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Apology accepted. Please send check reimbursing the taxpayers for all the money wasted due to your idiocy.
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VICB3
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Well, yes, it’s very big of you to admit that you think that you’ve decided that you were wrong. Really!
But how many other true believers are going to hear or read that, inasmuch as the whole movement you started has co-opted the MSM, various governments and virtue signaling corporations?
The answer: They’re not The damage is already done. And unless your new career path is to go around lecturing these various and powerful organs about how anthropogenic climate change is B.S. – I doubt they’d listen; too much invested – all and sundry will continue to suffer the ravages and distortions of carbon offsets and taxes, useless technical fixes various educations, and so on. In other words, the money is too good.
Oh, and don’t forget the polar bear commercials, the ones with the bears on icebergs, that completely ignore the fact that they can easily swim 60 or so. Those are still around misleading people. (And no they don’t drink Coca-Cola at Christmas; yes they look cute, but really they’re top-tier predators who literally would have you for lunch.)
Again, thank you for coming forth and coming clean. But there’s a lot more work for you to do to clean up the damage, and this is only your beginning.
Just a thought.
VicB3
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Finn McCool
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Oh that I was a headline writer for the MSM.
“Zion finally sees the Lights.”
You may remember her as the spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion from the interview with Andrew Neil.
I can’t believe that that is her real name, but apparently so.
Anyway. She has turned on her former ‘colleagues’ in ‘XR’ and is now embracing Nuclear Power.
I suppose it proves that you don’t have to be a plonker all your life.
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T. C. Clark
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Will obese Mikey Moore call him a traitor?
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JaKo
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Hi TCC,
I’m afraid you may have missed Moore’s latest one: “Planet of the Humans;” it seems they (MM & MS) are in tune, more or less…
Cheers,
JaKo
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Thomas Hart
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The article now appears to have been taken down on the Forbes website. Gee, wonder why that happened?
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judy Ryan
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Dear Micael Shellenberger, Please write a public letter to Forbes asking them why they took your article down. Openly copy all the MSM and all politicians. They are public figures and are expected to respond. It is then a bad look for Forbes if they do not respond. This will be the start of your journey of redemption. BCC all of us and anyone else you think may want to make the same journey.
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Chris*
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Thank you Michael, I guess this apology is the start of you making peace with yourself. Personally I have a hard time getting my head around why an environmentalist would support renewables in the first place. Now you will have to make peace with all the people you have damaged.
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richard
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Events are a changing.
I think he smells which way the wind is blowing. Don’t be the last alarmist in town.
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Dr Roger Higgs
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I hope he reads this, ‘Man-made global warming’ demolished in 500 words …
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341622566_IPCC_three_pillars_of_man-made_global_warming_collapsed
His new book was released this month …
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmism-Hurts-ebook/dp/B07Y8FHFQ7
Thank you John.
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Dev
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How many presently silent experts and professionals will make apologetic motions over their part in the faking of a pandemc, when they realise the true cost of being part of the greatest hoax ever played upon humanity in known history!
The complete enslavement of humanity !
No one will be left behind.
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Sonny Thorgren
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It really does not matter for what reason anyone commits to truth, as long as truth wins. I think many alarmists really believe they are doing the right thing. Only those who keep on telling lies when they understand they have been duped are worth scorning, together of course of those who have known all along. But since there are no evidence for Schellenberger having lied on purpose I think he is worth some credit for being brave enough to admit he has been wrong.
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James McGinn
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Notice how the timing of “confession” coincides perfectly with the release of his book? Shellenberger is just your common enviro-con-artist who realizes that the money is better if he feigns intellectual angst.
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Tom O
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If Patrick Moore can change his mind, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to. I do hope that you will be activistic about your new position, but realize that if you read these comments, “our side” doesn’t seem to be very willing to forgive – rather they prefer their own brand of bitter koolaid. I wish you the best in your future, and hope that you have better luck changing people’s minds than has Dr. Moore, after escaping the Greenpeace sanitarium.
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Philip S
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I doubt Roger Harrabin at the BBC is going to reflect on this news that there may not be, after all, an Apocalypse. The BBC will ignore this in the same way that it does not reflect their values or standards (both questionable). But it is significant in that the flow of misinformation is starting to turn. At some point the truth will be obvious that it was always a (left) political stance based on UN agenda 21 (with global ambitions to sink western industry or reset economy. You cannot make a loaf of bread – or make concrete without the creation of CO2 which has nothing what-so-ever to do with ‘Climate Change’ – but that won’t stop the media (BBC et al) from repeating it, as this has become a religious doctrine (that is hardly Science based – is being used to prove a huge political advantage and keep the (media) story running that we are all doomed, is not based on observable fact but fiction. The BBC has a lot to answer for its extremism on such matters, effectively banning debate that will, in due course, found to be exaggerated by so called BBC ‘experts’ who see a political advantage to adopt a Carbon tax that will do nothing for Climate (at all) but make us all poorer and achieve nothing in return but angst.
There is no ‘bright side’ to taxing fresh air. But as a ‘Carbon’ tax to divert funds from rich nations to poorer nations (as the UN predict) may actually be counter productive and cause more harm than good.
This is no way to run world economics, on a falsehood. Concern for the environment must include benefits of Carbon, which all true environmentalist would agree is essential to life, not just way of life.
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Albert
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Sir James Lovelock, the scientist and environmentalist who had proposed the Gaia hypothesis, also recanted from his own predictions of catastrophic man-made climate change. The scientific community turned him into a pariah, and we never heard of him again. But then he is lucky for his old age, while you are young and depend on acceptance by the science cabal, which is more political than scientific, and that’s an understatement.
I’m afraid that your career is over. Now you will have to go through what many of us have experienced, the attacks by the Left, the name-calling. Some of us have been physically attacked, others lost their jobs, becoming afraid to even indicate some form of scepticism about climate change, even when we try to say the truth and the obvious such as that climate change is the the only constant in climate and that climate will always keep changing no matter what. I salute you for your courage and wisdom.
May I humbly ask you to apologise to Danish Scientist Henrik Svensmark and his wonderful team who had solved the mystery of how clouds and galactic cosmic rays modulate Earth’s temperature, but who was demonised and then elbowed out of the climate science discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANMTPF1blpQ
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