5 Comments
Jul 8, 2021Liked by Michael Shellenberger

Your commentary is heartening in a soul sucking media. It calls to mind Keats:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Now us folks may not be around forever to witness, but beauty will be.

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It was psychologist Eric Hoffer who once wrote: "Mass movements can arise and spread without the belief in a god, but never without the belief in a devil." Today's devil to be destroyed is climate change nee global warming.

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I appreciate your commentary, and as usual it’s nearly spot on. However, in your passage on forest fires you made a couple generalizations and approximations that are more typical of the journalists you frequently criticize. In particular I think you ought to have noted that Coast Redwoods and Giant Sequoias are quite different, with only the sequoia requiring fire to disperse its seeds, not both as you indicated here. By contrast, the coast redwood frequently disperses seeds after rains. It’s also important to restate that California’s forests aren’t nearly homogeneous. As you’ve mentioned in the past forest structure is crucial for determining fire outcomes. You actually made a great post several months ago examining the different impacts of the fire management practices on US Forest service vs National Park service lands. The fact that old growth might have benefitted from the fires doesn’t imply that the coast redwood forest as a whole (which is dominated by second growth) would see a benefit as you suggest here. Another confounding factor is the classification of the fire as being crown or surface. Redwoods and sequoias may both experience surface fires multiple times a year, but that doesn’t imply that crown fires are either normal nor healthy. All in all you probably landed at the right conclusion but I’d like to see more precision as you get there.

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I read Apocalypse Never some time ago, just finished San Fransicko, and am a paying subscriber of yours as of tonight. One of the most disgusting things you brought to light was that Podesta, Steyer and others damning nuclear energy and pumping green energy were heavily invested in the fossil fuels that have to step in when wind and solar fail. You name some names in this great article, but we need more of that from investigative journalists like you, and harsher, deeper criticism of this kind of rank, divisive hypocrisy. Two last thoughts: 1) it was cool to read that Rolls Royce is said to be building small format nuclear plants in the UK; what's up with that? and 2) a friend of mine who is isolated and emotionally wrung out from all the noise and covid and apocalyptic thinking said he had to figure out a way to quit sitting around "disasturbating" all the time. I love that line. Keep turning on the lights in these dark rooms full of disasturbators Mr. Shellenberger.

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