In Scotland, a catastrophe is playing out, right now, and has been for years, visible and quantifiable, in the form of Scottish forests being sacrificed by the Climate Cult.
David Bol reports for The Herald of Scotland that the Scottish government expects to generate 100 percent of its electricity from so-called “renewable” sources (i.e. mainly wind and solar, which not only aren’t “renewable,” but also are unreliable and require heavy inputs of “carbon-based” fuel to gather and put together the resources needed to make the “renewable” machines) by the end of this year.
But, of course, in its zeal to achieve this utopian vision, the Scottish government has caused an environmental catastrophe by wiping out millions of trees.
“Now statistics, released by Forestry and Land Scotland, show that 13.9 million trees have been axed to make way for 21 wind farm projects since 2000.”
Adds Bol:
“The Scottish Government has moved to reassure that more trees have been planted, but it is unknown what proportion of these are mature plants that play a bigger role in turning carbon into oxygen.”
Likely, that's not a lot, Mr. Bol.
And Mr. Bol goes on to quote Steve Micklewright, CEO of Trees for Life, who appears to buy much of the Climate Cult narrative, but who also sees the trees for their essential role in the carbon-consumption-oxygen-creation exchange cycle.
“Woodlands that are ancient or of high conservation value should not suffer from mass felling because other rare and endangered plants and animals can be lost too. In other locations, such as plantations where the trees would have been harvested anyway, a pragmatic approach would be to ensure the timber is used for buildings or other uses that will not release the carbon stored in the trees back into the atmosphere.”
And even in this, two strains of errant nostrums emerge. Working backwards, there’s the worry about carbon, “carbon storage,” and “carbon release” that’s woven into the Climate Cult fearmongering.
There simply is not sufficient evidence to claim either that there has been an alarming build-up of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere over, say, the last 150 years, or, second, that mankind is at fault for said assumed but unproven buildup. Then, there’s the assumption that any such increase is the cause of a rise in global temperature.
Related: Liz Warren: No more Cars, Homes, Electricity With Carbon Emissions By 2035 | MRCTV
None of that has been proven. In fact, many of those who have promulgated those narratives have been caught engaging in slippery activity, such as discussing how to change data to fit their preferred “alarming” outcomes, or manipulating graphs to make history appear to show alarming increases in temperature after increases in CO2, when, in fact, the graph (such as that used in Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” show temperatures rising prior to CO2 levels rising, and also conveniently do not show older periods of history when temps were higher.
Heck, even the doomsayers who followed Sir David Attenborough’s narrative that Aussie coral was being wiped out by man-warmed oceans have been proven wrong. (Here is the raw data.)
The second virulent nostrum is to be found in the hubris of central planning and control. Notice in the Micklewright quote that he assumes as given that “the forests” are not to be owned and managed privately, but are held in “common” – which, as I often note, breaches morality, destroys rights, and leads to the practical outcome of the Tragedy of the Commons, in which multiple interests fight over how the government-held thing/property will be used.
To find out how something is valued, people must be free to decide what, if anything, they are willing to spend on it relative to other priorities.
And, while “Climate Change” fearmongering might be a big priority for the politicians and their cronies, it’s not for most people, likely because it’s not a real problem, in any concrete, measurable way.
And, on the subject of concrete, let’s close with a reminder of the large environmental problem windfarms pose.
As I noted in September of 2019, not only are windfarms unreliable, and not only do they cause terrible increases in bird and bat deaths, their manufacture, maintenance, and destruction all present massive “carbon emission” problems that simply cannot be overlooked by any honest member of the Climate Cult.
As I wrote at the time:
“The turbines themselves require vast amounts of carbon-using energy to construct, including concrete, steel, and fiberglass blades that, in total, weigh between 800 and 900 tons – per turbine. All of this requires energy, to mine the ore, transport the raw materials, make, and transport and build on site. And the sites require vast access roads that destroy wildlife habitats, not to mention the bizarre health effects people cite when living near the infrasound created by mills, and the energy-intensive process of re-blading and refurbishing needed every 20 years.”
Perhaps the sickest part of this entire – and dire – government policy disaster is that Scotland is famous for its incredible oil riches in the North Sea, a black-gold mine that actually lay at the heart of Brexit controversies and Scottish independence debates, since the British government consistently wants much of said oil resource.
All of this information comes to the fore as one looks at this tragic tale of Scottish forests.
The key question is whether we can spread the word about the falsehoods underlying the Climate Cult’s narratives, whether we can spread the good and moral word about private property and free will allowing people to decide what they value, rather than being told by politicians and bureaucrats, and whether we can stop the expanding web of governmental, corporate, and ideological malefactors who want to control not only forestland, but our energy choices, medical options, travel and transportation choices, education and media options, and even our bank accounts.
Those are battles from which we cannot turn – because they are being brought to us by those who want to control us like they take care of their collectively controlled – now dead – forests.