Why I Don't Believe In Climate Change Alarmism

Why I Don’t Believe In Climate Change Alarmism

I don’t have a qualification in Climatology, and am therefore not an expert on the subject. I do, however, have a couple of Psychology degrees, and so have a claim to expertise there. When it comes to understanding issues like climate change, I can’t use Climatology knowledge; I have to use Psychology knowledge. This is how I do it.

Like anyone else who understands general science, I can try to understand the basics of climate change. I can go to Google Scholar, type in “climate change predictions” and then limit the search to papers from 2019 onwards, as I did here. This would give me a general overview of the current state of the science. There’s one minor problem – such a search query returns over 20,000 hits.

Realistically, becoming an expert on climate change would require reading at least a hundred of these papers, as well as at least a hundred published before 2019. This would total several years of study – a time investment that I’m neither able nor willing to make. Therefore, like any other layman, I’m reduced to making a judgment based on whether I believe the people taking about climate change are credible.

If the people talking about it seem trustworthy, then I will be inclined to believe what they say. If they seem untrustworthy, then I will be disinclined to believe what they say. This is how it works with every other political issue, from cannabis law reform to immigration to abortion to euthanasia to taxes. Once the subject of discussion moves out of Psychology, I’m operating on trust and not my own expertise.

As it turns out, the people pushing climate change strike me as grossly untrustworthy, for three major reasons: they seem insincere, irrational and dishonest.

If the politicians pushing climate change alarmism were sincere, they would not also be buying beachfront properties. Yet Barack Obama, one of the world’s foremost harbingers of climate doom, recently bought 29 acres of it. Why would Obama, privy to the world’s most advanced scientific research when American President, buy beachfront property, unless he expects the sea level to remain the same?

The market shows that seaside property is still highly valued. Waterfront property in Sydney, extremely vulnerable to rising oceans, still sells for eight-figure sums. How could a property doomed to be wiped out by rising sea levels sell for over ten million dollars? The only answer is that no-one cares about rising sea levels. The claims of those like Obama cannot be sincere.

On top of this, the people pushing climate alarmism seem irrational. On the one hand, they claim that CO2 emissions are making a major contribution to global warming, such that every one of us has the moral imperative to minimise our CO2 emissions insofar as we are able. But then these same people turn around and argue for an increase in the refugee quota, in some cases tripling it or even more.

New Zealanders consume resources at many times the rate of the average Third World resident. Where is the sense in taking 5,000 people every year (as the Greens propose) from low-emissions parts of the world, and flying them at great expense to a high-emissions part of the world, where they and their numerous descendants will consume future resources at many times the rate they would have done otherwise?

The only logical explanation for the Greens’ refugee policy is that the entire concept of CO2 emissions being bad is horseshit. Either the Greens are lying about the imperative to minimise CO2 emissions, or they don’t understand the relevant science (a closer look shows that not a single one of New Zealand’s current Green MPs has a tertiary science qualification – the closest is James Shaw with an M.Sc from a business school).

If the Greens would say that CO2 emissions were bad and, therefore, we will close the borders to immigration from low-emission areas, then the threat of climate change would appear to make rational sense. But they do the exact opposite of that. Therefore, I can conclude that those promoting climate change are irrational, and so the truth value of their pronouncements can be discounted.

The real showstopper for me though, as a psychologist, is that one of the people fronting the climate charge alarmist movement in New Zealand is a convicted fraudster. This is no less a dignitary than the Maori Climate Commissioner herself, Donna Awatere Huata.

In 2005, Huata was found guilty of fraud and of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The money that she defrauded from a foundation set up to help underprivileged kids learn to read was used on a stomach stapling operation. What sort of malignant narcissist would steal money from children to fund cosmetic surgery for herself? A Climate Commissioner, that’s who.

In the same way that I wouldn’t buy a used car off convicted ponzi schemer David Ross, I wouldn’t buy one off Donna Awatere Huata either. So why on Earth would I listen to her pronouncements about climate change? The smart thing to do would be to believe the exact opposite of whatever Huata says.

In summary, I don’t believe in climate change alarmism because the people pushing it are crooked, insane and unqualified to make scientific pronouncements. These people seem every bit the shameless grifters that have pushed every other kind of alarmism to make a quick buck out of the ensuing hysteria.

I’m willing to be corrected, but do note that you will have to have a qualification in a relevant science from a proper university, and you will have to cite peer-reviewed journal articles in relevant disciplines, for me to take you seriously on this matter.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Understanding The “Justice” System

Judicial verdicts frequently provoke confusion among observers. In some cases it’s extremely difficult to understand why judgments are handed down, as punishment seems so random and arbitrary. As this essay will explain, understanding our “Justice” System is literally as simple as ABC.

In this context, ‘ABC’ refers to an algebraic formula that could also be expressed a*b*c = x, where x is the severity of the punishment.

a is the degree of inconvenience caused by the offence. The greater the inconvenience, the greater the punishment.

Murder causes a great deal of inconvenience, not least to the person killed. The family and friends of murder victims are also greatly impacted. It is for this reason that murder is also referred to as “the ultimate crime”. Other crimes like manslaughter, rape and kidnapping also cause great inconvenience, and these also carry heavy punishment.

Lesser crimes are things like theft and assault. Neither of these crimes kill anyone, and neither do they regularly cause long-standing psychological damage. Consequently, such crimes carry light punishments. Note that a equals the amount of inconvenience caused, not the amount of suffering caused, because an offence does not have to cause suffering in order to attract judicial punishment (growing medicinal cannabis is one such example).

All this seems very straightforward, and it would be, if the formula didn’t have b and c. The sad reality is that the amount of suffering caused by an offender is not the only factor that the “Justice” System takes into account. Far from it.

b is the social status of the person impacted by the offence. The higher the social status, the greater the punishment.

The highest social status is that of the Crown (or the Government). Therefore, offences that impact the Crown are punished the most severely. This is why offences that cause a minimum of suffering, but which inconvenience the Government, are punished heavily. Julian Assange is the foremost example of this today, as are the aforementioned cannabis users.

If the person impacted by the offence is of a low social status, the punishment will be low. It might be difficult to secure a conviction, because a complainant with low social status might not be considered a trustworthy witness in court. The case might not even go that far. It’s common for the Police to refuse to hear complaints from working-class people, giving them an excuse such as that they don’t have enough evidence to pursue a complaint.

Despite the bleating of social justice warriors, social status is a far more important factor than race. A case in New Zealand last year saw a man sentenced to a mere eight months’ home detention for killing a white man – a verdict easily understood once it’s realised that the victim was homeless. It can be guaranteed that if a Member of Parliament had been beaten to death in similar circumstances, the punishment would have been life imprisonment.

c is the social status of the person who committed the offence. The higher the social status, the lower the punishment.

If the person committing the offence is of a high enough social status, they simply won’t be charged for it. Jimmy Savile is the best example of this. If you can get to a high enough social status, you can rape hundreds of children and the “Justice” System simply won’t charge you. Likewise, Mike Sabin in New Zealand got off scot-free with what he did.

As David Icke has extensively written, the Western Establishment is full of pedophiles – and their high social status prevents the Police from charging or investigating them. Lesser members of the Establishment might not be able to avoid being charged or convicted, but they will nevertheless get a much lighter punishment than a working-class person would for the same offence.

Further examples are the high-profile sportsmen who are given name suppression and who avoid criminal convictions because of “promising rugby careers” or similar. The New Zealand Herald even managed to compile a playing XV of rugby players who had escaped conviction after committing a criminal offence. One player even did so despite breaking another man’s jaw.

A person of a low social status, by contrast, will get smashed for even the most minor infringement. If you’re working-class, you can expect to get a year in prison for stealing a few dozen trout. Middle-class people, like Phil Goff’s daughter, can get away with being found in possession of ecstasy, while working-class people get nailed to the wall for sharing videos, provided it inconveniences the Government enough.

The basic formula, then, for determining the severity of a judicial punishment is as follows: take the total inconvenience caused by the offence, multiply it by the social status of the person inconvenienced, and multiply this by the inverse of the social status of the person committing the offence.

The maximum theoretical punishment would come, according to this formula, from a common working-class man killing the Queen, President or Prime Minister of their political system. Whether legal or not, such an act is almost bound to result in the death penalty, and will at the least incur life imprisonment.

The minimum theoretical punishment would come from an act taken by the Government to inconvenience a common citizen. It is all but certain that no member of the Establishment will ever have to pay for the crime of conducting a War on Drugs against their own people, even though the people did not consent to it. Likewise, an immigration official allowing a murderer into the country who then murders someone will not be punished.

What best explains all of this is the fact that the ruling class ultimately invented the Justice System to protect their position. Therefore, the point of it is to smash down challengers to the ruling class and to their interests. That’s why the Justice System hardly cares at all when the Government commits crimes against its own people, or when members of the working class harm each other.

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Clown World Chronicles: What is ‘Cancel Culture’?

Unlike most of the other terms in this book, ‘cancel culture’ does not have an easily discerned meaning. It refers to a very specific mentality that is mostly found in a very specific sort of person, both of which are becoming much more common nowadays. Understanding it is necessary if one wishes to understand Clown World and where it’s headed.

It’s not currently feasible, in the current political environment, to physically exterminate one’s enemies. There are laws against that sort of thing. Therefore, the way to destroy them is to silence them.

In the old days, tyrannical kings would cut the tongues out of anyone they did not wish to speak. That’s no longer feasible either, but the sentiment motivating it can still find expression. Today, silencing people is still a matter of denying their ability to speak, but in an age of mass media it’s about denying them access to speaking platforms.

Cancel culture refers to a certain mentality where a person tries to silence anyone who they do not wish to speak. This means to get them banned from any media where they might have the chance to express themselves – a process known as ‘deplatforming’. This isn’t really a new thing, as examples of it have existed ever since the New Left came to prominence in the 60s and 70s.

One of the first victims was psychologist Hans Eysenck, who upset the Left with his research into the average IQ scores of different races. As discussed at length in a recent paper in the Personality and Individual Differences Journal, arguing in favour of human biodiversity is highly likely to aggravate the numerous fanatics who adhere to the Equalitarian Dogma.

These fanatics made a strong effort to cancel Eysenck on account of his statements that most of the differences in IQ between different races can be explained by genetic differences, and that this evolutionary explanation is much more powerful than the environmentalist explanation. Eysenck was punched in the face, had his family threatened with death and had numerous speaking arrangements cancelled by leftist agitators.

50 years later, cancel culture is as strong as ever. Jordan Peterson ran afoul of it when he refused to accept the far-leftist dogma about transgenders. Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux ran afoul of it when they wanted to speak about the science of human biodiversity in Auckland. Even VJM Publishing upset the shrieking loonies when we sold ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ t-shirts on TradeMe.

Cancel culture, then, is how the Left does violence in lieu of being able to use actual violence. The irony is that, despite constantly crying about how words are violence and that causing offence ought to be prison-worthy, it is the Left themselves who are most willing to aggressively interfere with other people’s right to free assembly and free speech.

The logic is that, if people promoting unwanted ideologies were allowed to speak in public or to hold gatherings, they would convert or at least invigorate a nonzero number of people. That someone could argue against them doesn’t matter – today’s Left affords no value at all to human reason. Merely speaking is enough to convince people in their minds.

Therefore, allowing the enemy to speak is tantamount to allowing the enemy to gain strength. If the enemy is gathering their forces, better to smash them now lest they become stronger in the future, as per Machiavelli’s maxim. Cancel culture is a form of ideological warfare, in which wrongthinkers are smashed and persecuted to the fullest legal extent possible.

Support for cancel culture is closely intertwined with an individual’s support for authoritarianism. Authoritarians don’t see anything wrong in taking away other people’s rights to express themselves, because they don’t consider other people to be full human beings. In Clown World, anyone who thinks incorrectly is a subhuman, and subhumans don’t have rights.

The problem is that people who are prevented from speaking rapidly turn to violence. John F Kennedy said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable,” and history is replete with examples. What the cancellers don’t understand is that those cancelled don’t feel admonished or chastised – they feel enraged. This rage is easy to justify, considering that their human rights have been violated.

Cancel culture, with its egregious unreasonableness, empowers the far-right and feeds directly into their narratives about totalitarian censorship. Shutting down a person for speaking, when the right to speak is specifically protected by human rights legislation, is precisely the kind of action that makes conspiracy theories about Communist takeovers seem realistic.

Clown World promises to become ever more vicious, ruthless and insane as phenomena like cancel culture spread. It’s become so bad in some places that it’s every bit the persecution hysteria that lead to witchcraft trials. People all over the West are losing their livelihoods just for uttering opinions that contradict the bloodthirsty mob. Cancel culture may end up cancelling liberty.

This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.

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Clown World Chronicles: What is ‘Neoliberalism’?

In the financial sections of the world’s news websites, the reader often finds reference to “neoliberalism” or even “the prevailing neoliberal paradigm.” This is something so all-pervading that its necessity is taken for granted. It’s very important to understand neoliberalism, because the neoliberal mindset is the one in which things get done. This chapter explains.

In short, neoliberalism is the prevailing economic paradigm of Clown World.

The ‘neo-‘ prefix denotes that this is not the first time we have lived under this economic paradigm, and the ‘liberal’ root means that this economic paradigm is characterised by a lack of regulation of business activities. The liberty in question isn’t your liberty from coercion by capital; it’s the liberty of capital to coerce you.

As anyone who has played a game of Monopoly will be aware, the problem with economic liberalism is that it ends up with massive inequality. Absent a system of wealth redistribution, the ability of landowners to charge rent means that they eventually end up with all the money. Their ever-increasing ownership of capital leads to ever-increasing rents until the masses are as impoverished as any medieval peasant.

In the real world, economic liberalism led to the Great Crash of 1929, and from there to the Great Depression. This always happens under liberalism, because once all the money ends up in a few hands then no-one but them have any spending power. One no-one has any spending power, the economy slows down, workers get laid off, and recession begins.

The original liberalism was ended by American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who brought in the “New Deal“. This was a drastic reorganisation of the economic system, intended to reverse all the advantages accrued by what Theodore Roosevelt had earlier called “the representatives of predatory wealth.” Decried as both Fascism and Communism by FDR’s opponents, the New Deal ended the Great Depression in America.

The Great Depression ended much more violently in Europe. The anger and paranoia brought about by the terrible economic conditions saw many people cast about for a scapegoat. This desire to find someone to blame for the desperate problems made it possible for an opportunist like Adolf Hitler to come to power, and the consequences of that are known to all.

After World War II, Western politicians became extremely cautious about allowing a return of the economic conditions that they believed were the ultimate cause for the bloodshed. Absent extreme and desperate poverty, they reasoned, the people would have no cause to give their power to a supremacist who wanted to conquer their neighbour.

As a result, those politicians allowed the workers to get a fair deal. Instead of all the economic power being held by a few people who ruled the others like kings, it was widely distributed across the population. This egalitarian economic arrangement continued for almost 40 years. This time period encompassed some great decades – the 50s, 60s and 70s allowed for freedom and creative expression to flourish all over the West.

It was too good to last.

Neoliberalism arose in the early 1980s, after the ruling class realised that it had been 40 years since the end of World War II, and the hard-won lessons about solidarity had been forgotten. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, no less opportunistically than Hitler himself, came to power promising a shake-up of the existing economic paradigm. Their recipe for greatness was low taxes, low welfare and free markets.

The influence of America and Britain is such that practically the entire Western World is now neoliberal. Arse-licking dogs like David Lange forced neoliberalism on an unsuspecting New Zealand public after 1984, laying the economic foundations for the Clown World era. The demented Ruth Richardson piled on the pain by slashing the Family Support allowance. Helen Clark opened the immigration floodgates and John Key kept them open.

This obsession with money, at the expense of society itself, led us to here. Neoliberalism is to consume, mindlessly and without end. All higher culture and all spiritual traditions are to be destroyed because they prevent people from consuming. The borders must be thrown open because every new immigrant – regardless of what crimes they commit – is a new consumer.

By 2020, neoliberalism has, much like the original liberalism, led to the concentration of wealth in extremely few hands. Although society has become shittier in a great many ways, this increasing shitness has brought with it vast profit potential, and those profiting greatly are putting enormous energy into perpetuating the system. This combination of increasing diversity and increasing inequality is one of the major causes of Clown World phenomena.

All over the West, economic desperation is now standard for the youth. A study showed that the average wage in New Zealand has less than 40% of the house-buying power that it had 26 years ago. The youth suicide rate is skyrocketing, and the individual despair felt by these unfortunates is starting to become a generational malaise.

Much like the original liberalism, neoliberalism has set the scene for totalitarian extremists to come to power in the West. Although Donald Trump isn’t the one, a new Hitler could easily take advantage of the worsening economic conditions to channel the people’s desperation into another paroxysm of violence. The Weimar Republic was the original Clown World, and our current iteration of it could end in a similar fashion.

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