The following open letter was written by Jason D. Hill a professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Greta Thunberg:
You have declared yourself a leader and said that your generation will start a revolution. You have comported yourself as a credentialed adult and climate change activist who has fearlessly addressed politicians and world leaders. You have dropped out of school and declared that there isn’t any reason to attend, or any reason for you to study since there will be no future for you to inherit. You have, rather than attend your classes, been leading Friday Climate Strikes for all students in your generation across the globe. Your attendance at oil pipelines has been striking. There, you unequivocally declare that all oil needs to remain in the ground where it belongs.
I shall, therefore, against the backdrop of your activism, address you as an adult rather than as a child.
In September of 2019 you crossed the Atlantic in a “zero carbon” racing yacht that had no toilet and electric light on board. You made an impassioned plea at the United Nations in which you claimed that, “we have stolen your dreams and our childhood with our empty words.” You claimed that adults and world leaders come to young people for answers and explained in anger: “How dare you!” You claimed that we are failing you and that young people are beginning to understand our betrayal. You further declared that if we continue to fail your generation: “We will never forgive you.”
You have stated that you want us to panic, and to act as if our homes are on fire. You insist that rich countries must reduce to zero emissions immediately. In your speeches you attack economic growth and have stated that our current climate crisis is caused by “buying and building things.” You call for climate justice and equity, without addressing the worst polluter on the planet China; the country that is economically annexing much of Africa and Latin America. You dare not lecture Iran about its uranium projects — because that’s not part of the UN’s agenda, is it?
You proclaim that we need to live within the planetary boundaries, to focus on equity and “take a few steps back” for the sake of all living species. You resent the hierarchical distinctions between human and animals and entertain no qualitative distinction between a monkey, a malaria-infested mosquito and a snarling hyena. You mouth slogans such as: “We have set in motion an irreversible chain reaction beyond control,” and you advocate for universal veganism on the Ellen DeGeneres show. You do not buy new clothes, and you don’t want the rest of us to either. You want us all to stop flying in jet planes without giving us an alternative as to how we would re-transform our financial and trading systems—to say nothing of our personal enjoyment of the world—without regression to a primeval era. Few can afford to cross the Atlantic in a $6M zero carbon yacht financed by rich people who made their wealth by the very means you condemn as loathsome.
There are a few things that we, the rational adults of the world who are not bowing to you like guilt-ridden obsequious Babbitts need to say to you, Greta.
First, we did not rob you of your childhood or of your dreams. You are the legatee of a magnificent technological civilization which my generation and the one before it and several others preceding it all the way to the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, bequeathed to you. That growth-driven, capitalist technological civilization has created the conditions for you to harangue us over our betrayal. It is a civilization that eradicated diseases such as small pox from the word, and that lifted millions out of abject poverty in a universe you think is dying and decaying. It assured you a life expectancy that exceeded that of your ancestors. Most likely by focusing on economic growth which you demonize, and scientific advancement, that civilization will further enhance a robust quality of life and health for your descendants.
Here is a hard truth to ponder, Greta: if the great producers of this world whom you excoriate were to withdraw their productivity, wealth and talents—in short—their minds from the world today, your generation would simply perish. Why? Because as children you have done nothing as yet, with your lives besides being born. This is what we expect of children until such time as they can be producers by learning from their elders. You are understandably social and ecological ballast. You are not yet cognitively advanced to replicate the structures of survival of which you are the beneficiaries.
Children are important installments on the future. We have invested in you. It is you and your smug generation which think they have nothing to learn from the older ones who are failing themselves. Whom do you expect to employ the majority of you if you have neither the job credentials or life competency skills to navigate the world? The future unemployable-skipping- school-on-Friday obstreperous children?
The truth, as one anonymous blogger aptly put it, is that your generation is unable to work up to forty hours per week without being chronically depressed and anxious. Its members cannot even decide if they want to be a boy or a girl, or both, or neither, or a “they.” They cannot eat meat without crying. I might add that your generation needs “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” as pre-conditions for learning in school. Its members have a pathological need to be coddled and protected from the challenging realities of life. Your generation is the biggest demander and consumer of carbon spewing technological gadgets and devices. An hour without any of them and too many of you succumb to paralyzing lethargy. Your generation is the least curious and most insular set of individuals one has ever encountered. Your hubris extends so far that you think you have nothing to learn from your elders.
Yes, we have betrayed you: by capitulating the world of leadership to bored, attention-deficit children who spout bromides, platitudes and slogans that a rudderless and morally relativistic culture accepts because a significant number of its denizens have become intellectually bankrupt and morally lazy.
The logical endpoint of your ecological vision would see us living in primeval conditions eking out an existence in jungle swamps in which we would regard poisonous snakes and man-eating tigers as our moral equals. We would have to adapt ourselves to nature rather than adapt nature to meet our needs, like all members of civilized civilizations do. Your vision would see us foraging for mushrooms and plants without knowing which were inimical to our digestive systems. Under your system we would swelter from heat, die from rampant plagues and starvation because there will be no air-conditioning units, no sophisticated plumbing and irrigations and sewer systems, no anti-bacterial soap made from animal matter, no pesticides and chemicals to sanitize our food and drinking supplies: just one primordial swamp of human putrefaction.
If civilization is left in the hands of your ecofascist supporters we will be living in grass huts, drinking animal feces infested water, and shrinking in fear from polar bears instead of killing them for food when they attack us.
Greta, living in complete harmony with nature is the death of creativity. Understand this. All great civilizations were forged in the crucibles of proper exploitation of the earth. Those who lived on land with oil and did nothing with it never had a right to it in the first place. Non-usage of God’s resources is the cardinal sin because it results in the un-development of our human capabilities, and makes us indistinguishable from beasts.
Your generation needs to be taught the morality of wealth creation, rather than only parasitically benefiting from it. The only revolution you will lead is one into nihilism and civilization regression. You need to learn about the moral case for fossil fuel. You owe it to yourself to understand how as, Kathleen Hartnett White has detailed, the harnessing of the vast store of concentrated energy in fossil fuels allowed mankind, for the first time in human history, to escape intractable constraints and energy limits that had left all but the very privileged in total poverty and depravity. Before the Industrial Revolution all societies were dependent on a very limited flow of solar energy captured in living plants for subsistence needs such as food, fuel and shelter.
But we, the creative enterprisers, will not go back to the Dark Ages. Your philosophy can be summed up as follows:
What was good for my anthropoid ancestors is good for me. Do not rock the boat, or even build one as that will require cutting down a tree. Do not disrupt nature. Do not dare to see the earth as rightfully belonging to us. We don’t have the right to use our brains in a manner that can transform our needs into a material form. Let’s conveniently forget that production is the application of reason to the problems of survival. Let’s all diminish the grandeur of man and his luminous potential. Crush the Thomas Edisons of this world.
The apocalyptic world vision you hold has been a strip landing for those who have hated progress throughout history. Your apocalyptic predictions have been made for millennia, and, we’re still here. We will still be here long after you’ve grown up and we have forgiven you for skipping classes, thereby lowering the intelligence quotient of an entire generation.
*
Paul Plante says
From CLIMATE, HISTORY AND THE MODERN WORLD, Second Edition by H.H. Lamb:
HOW EUROPE WAS FIRST AFFECTED: STORMS
The first symptoms of the change already affecting Greenland and Iceland which may have been noticed by the inhabitants of Europe, particularly around the North Sea, were the increased incidence and severity of wind storms and sea floods in the thirteenth century.
Some of the latter caused appalling loss of life, comparable with the worst disasters in Bangladesh and China in recent times.
In at least four sea floods of the Dutch and German coasts in the thirteenth century the death roll was estimated at around 100,000 or more; in the worst case the estimate was 306,000.
As a result of the floods of 1240 and 1362 it was reported that sixty parishes accounting for over half the agricultural income of the (at that time) Danish diocese of Slesvig (Schleswig) had been ‘swallowed by the salt sea’.
In some of these storm floods the Zuyder Zee in the Netherlands was formed, and enlarged, and it was not drained until the present century.
Islands, and other inlets, were formed by losses of land on the German and Danish North Sea coasts.
Other islands were destroyed by the stormy seas.
The island of Heligoland (50 km out in the German Bight), which is believed to have measured over 60 km across in the year 800, had been reduced to 25 km by about 1300, perhaps half of it being lost in a storm in that year.
Today it measures only about 1.5 km on its longest axis (fig. 69).
In England the great ports of Ravenspur or Ravensburgh (east of Hull) and Dunwich (on the Suffolk coast in East Anglia) were lost in successive stages in the sea storms of these centuries.
Deaths of 100,000 or more people in floodings of the continental shore of the North Sea were again reported in storms in 1421, 1446 and 1570.
In the 1570 storm great cities were flooded, and the deaths were estimated at 400,000.
And in 1634 there were again great losses of land from the Danish and German coast and the off-lying islands.
In the southern North Sea on the Netherlands coast the occurrence of devastating storm surges was greatest in the early 1400s and late 1600s; the late 1500s were remarkable for a few storms of outstanding range and severity, most of all the storm of 1–2 November 1570 when the flooding affected the coasts from France to northwest Germany.
There is also a suggestion of more severe floods in, and soon after, late Roman times and again in our own century than at other periods.
This distribution suggests that storm floods on the low-lying coasts of the North Sea have been most troublesome: (a) when the sea level may have been somewhat raised after long periods of warm climate and glacier melting; and (b) when a cooling Arctic has produced a strengthened thermal gradient in latitudes between about 50 and 65°N, leading to increased storm frequency and severity over this zone.
In the thirteenth century, and perhaps again in recent decades, both these conditions were present.
One must conclude from the much more restricted range and loss of life in modern storms that the dykes which have been built along the coasts of the North Sea, and continually improved, in later centuries are among man’s greatest successes in defence against natural disasters.
MJM says
Good Lord. One may choose to address a child as an adult, but it is silly to believe they will comprehend the intricacies of the history of all of mankind, with the mixing of all of our policies with regards to the resources of this planet, and how we conduct ourselves, in order to survive and progress as a species.
Why waste our time w/her ?
Her answer was to drop out of school, sail across the ocean, have her parents hire a publicist for her, and get our brilliant media to present all this as a valid idea.
Now there’s a bunch of realists for you. Let’s all do that and see how far we get.
I have absolutely no idea why anyone would believe a stunt like she put on will help a darn thing. Well, except maybe the classroom she vacated so others can carry on w/o her in the way.
Paul Plante says
With respect to your statement, “I have absolutely no idea why anyone would believe a stunt like she put on will help a darn thing,” you are obviously overlooking the PROFIT POTENTIAL that little Greta represents for a savvy group of powerful people in Sweden and elsewhere who hope to capitalize on the “green movement” little Greta is trying to get kicked off for them, which was the subject of an article in the Daily Mail entitled “Who’s REALLY behind 16-year-old Greta Thunberg? Ugly feud between her opera singer-turned-climate-activist mother and the green PR man who she accuses of exploiting her” by Jessica Green for Mailonline published 22 April 2019, where we have an updated history on little Greta, who now has at least four “origin myths” as to how she became the world-acclaimed “climate activist,” an undefined term that can mean anything, and hence, in the case of Greta, everything, since her cult considers her the smartest person on the planet, that she has become, to wit:
She’s the 16-year-old schoolgirl who inspired a series of classroom walkouts when her message for faster action on climate change spread from Sweden across the continent.
But while Greta Thunberg spoke to an animated crowd of Existence Rebellion demonstrators at Marble Arch, London, yesterday, reports emerged claiming the teenager’s rise to fame was more orchestrated than first thought.
end quote
As to Greta, she was very much the subject of a prior Cape Charles Mirror thread that was very well attended entitled “The Great Climate Hoax” on September 8, 2019, where I was quoted @ September 13, 2019 at 10:32 pm, as follows:
And I would like to thank the Cape Charles Mirror for hosting this discussion on “climate change” before we get totally buried in bull**** by Greta Thunberg and the manipulative and exploitative Democrats, because it (the needed discussion) is not happening anywhere else, and that is to our detriment.
It is amazing how scared adults are of this poor little misguided girl with some serious psychological issues from Sweden who is the star of her own movie, which is a real statement about those in this country over 18 who are alleged to be adults.
end quotes
In that same thread @ September 16, 2019 at 6:25 pm, I then posted as follows with respect to little Greta, as follows:
It is, however, far more absurd, and dangerously so, to insist, as these Democrats are doing, that humans can actually stop climate change, when climate change is a function of what the earth wants it to be, not the whims of 16-year old Greta Thunberg, who incidentally in my estimation as a grandfather and American citizen is the biggest fraud to be perpetrated on the public at large in the name of “science,” since the famous Piltdown Man hoax back in 1912, or AOC, for that matter, who is helping to perpetrate this fraud that is Greta Thunberg on us, in her own bid for considerable political power over our lives without our having a voice in the matter, which is tyranny.
end quotes
Contrast that with the Daily Mail article on 22 April 2019, to wit:
Six months ago an unknown 15-year-old Miss Thunberg camped outside Sweden’s parliament next to a hand-written sign that read ‘Skolstrejk för Klimatet’ (School strike for the climate).
Miss Thunberg skipped school every Friday to sit on the steps of the Riksdag and soon became a global success following her first TED talk – which now has more than a million views.
But doubts have been raised as to whether the teenager’s newfound shift into the spotlight is really the creation of a carefully laid out public relations campaign.
PR consultant Ingmar Rentzhog’s We Don’t Have Time climate change PR agency used Miss Thunberg’s image to gain funds for his firm, according to Climate Change Dispatch.
end quotes
And from there, things not surprisingly begin to get murky, which takes us back to the CCM on September 16, 2019, to wit:
As to the Piltdown Man, it was a paleoanthropological hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human.
The inauthenticity of the hoax was described in 1953.
The Piltdown hoax is prominent for two reasons: the attention it generated around the subject of human evolution, and the length of time, 41 years, that elapsed from its alleged initial discovery to its definitive exposure as a composite forgery.
And here we are once again, being confronted with an elaborate fraud, this one named Greta Thunberg, which fraud is being stage-managed by her father and PR dude, the famous Swedish actor Svante Thunberg, who is listed as a co-author of a book she wrote about herself entitled “Scenes from the Heart,” where we are informed that Greta has a “condition” that makes her far more intelligent than any of us churls or serfs out here spewing gobs of carbon dioxide into the air each day with our profligate lifestyle that Greta knows every American has, so that we should submit to her superior intelligence and do whatever it is she tells us to do.
Svante Thunberg, born 10 June 1969, the year I was in Viet Nam, father of Greta and
manipulator of us, is a Swedish author, arts manager and producer, and actor, and he is the son of actors Olof Thunberg and Mona Andersson, so acting runs deep in that family as we can see in this YouTube video of Svante Thunberg smoothly spinning his web of lies to capture the minds of America’s youth, to twist them to his cause, which is promoting Greta as a serious financial asset:
Greta & Svante Thunberg – Straight Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiD04TRwebQ
Personally, I think every parent and grandparent in America should watch that video with their children and grandchildren to see exactly what kind of mind poison they are being fed here in the name of “science,” which this is a mockery of.
end quotes
And yes, I still stand by those words, which takes us back to the Daily Mail, to wit:
It was also revealed earlier this year that Miss Thunberg’s school strike coincided with the launch of a book about climate change written by her mother, well known opera singer Malena Ernman, according to Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche.
The publication said that on the day of the book’s release, Mr Rentzhog published a picture of Miss Thunberg in action to his firm’s Instagram, having taken a photographer along to the school strike.
He also posted an article about her on Facebook, starting the first of the teenager’s publicity.
Yet Miss Thunberg denied that the book launch had anything to do with her personal school strike.
Writing on Facebook, she said: ‘My family has written a book together about our family and how me and my sister Beata have influenced my parents way of thinking and seeing the world, especially when it comes to the climate.’
‘And about our diagnoses.’
end quotes
And please, stay tuned, because this DRAMA starring Greta, the little girl who is going to save the dying world will be right back after a pause for station identification.
Paul Plante says
Staying with your statement, “I have absolutely no idea why anyone would believe a stunt like she put on will help a darn thing,” on September 18, 2019, little Greta, who is not an American citizen, appeared before OUR Congress, despite the fact that she is not an American citizen, and this is what she said to OUR United States Congress, to wit:
“My name is Greta Thunberg.”
“I have not come to offer any prepared remarks at this hearing.”
“I’m instead attaching my testimony.”
“It is the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8th 2018.”
“I am submitting this report as my testimony because I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists, and I want you to unite behind the science.”
“And then I want you to take real action.”
“Thank you.”
end quotes
Now, as a licensed professional engineer, a title I had to earn, and as an associate level public health engineer, another title I had to earn, I have in fact given sworn testimony in judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings, and I have had to submit in advance my testimony, so when I read the above “Greta speech, called by some dude named Alden Meyer, “the shortest and most powerful testimony he has heard anyone give in Congress during his decades in Washington,” the phrase, “I am submitting this report (IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius released on October 8th, 2018) as my testimony” had some special meaning that has perhaps sailed past the heads of the average citizen here in the United States of America.
Now, when I would submit “testimony,” it would be my testimony on some specific subject that I would then be cross-examined on.
It would be ludicrous if I submitted some document I had not written or prepared as “my testimony,” and I would be laughed out of court or the hearing as a fool, and rightfully so.
So what is up with little Greta, who is not an American citizen, coming before our Congress on September 18, 2019 in some type of hearing where evidence of some sort was being gathered for some undefined purpose to hand them an IPCC political report from almost a year earlier on October 8, 2018?
And why is a political report from October 8, 2018 being accepted by our Congress almost a year later on September 18, 2019 as “science,” when it is anything but, as we see from a review of that document, as follows:
Special Report
Global Warming of 1.5 ºC
An IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.
end quotes
There is what Greta handed our Congress on September 18, 2019 in the name of “science” – a political document based on cherry-picked and perverted “science” that is being used to justify a massive wealth transfer from the people of the United States to the people of the world to “eradicate poverty.”
Consider the following for a real glimpse at the political game being played here by OUR Congress and little Greta in the name of “the science,” to wit:
REMARKS BY THE MINISTER OF WATER AND CLIMATE HONOURABLE OPPAH. C.Z. MUCHINGURI-KASHIRI (MP) AT COP 23,
We would like to see the Paris Agreement upholding the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in light of national circumstances.
We believe that climate action in developing countries should be backed by strong financial support from the developed world which is responsible for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions.
As we prepare for the 2018 Facilitative Dialogue, we should ensure that the pre-2020 emissions gap and associated impacts of such a gap on developing countries are properly addressed.
We should call upon developed countries to explore opportunities to close the gap and
address the associated impacts, including through a facility to finance emission reductions in developing countries in the run-up and beyond 2020.
end quotes
So, while you may have absolutely no idea why anyone would believe a stunt like she put on will help a darn thing, quite obviously, the dude from Zimbabwe believes that her stunt will help Zimbabwe tap into the United States Treasury forever.
Is that something we American citizens should ignore?
Or shouldn’t we even have a voice in the matter given that we have already been judged of being guilty here of harming the people of Zimbabwe?
Paul Plante says
And your statement “(O)ne may choose to address a child as an adult, but it is silly to believe they will comprehend the intricacies of the history of all of mankind, with the mixing of all of our policies with regards to the resources of this planet, and how we conduct ourselves, in order to survive and progress as a species,” actually goes to the heart of this matter from the perspective of an American citizen concerned about due process of law here, because on September 18, 2019, the Democrats in OUR United States House of Representatives chose to treat this 16-year old girl from Sweden not only as an adult, but further, as an expert witness and climate expert, as we can see from this blog entry from the Union of Concerned Scientists blog site entitled “I’m a Scientist and Greta Thunberg’s Speech to Congress Inspires Me” by Brenda Ekwurzel, senior climate scientist on September 20, 2019, as follows:
I was honored to meet Greta Thunberg, the 16-year old climate activist who started weekly climate strikes and the hashtag #FridaysForFuture, which have in turn inspired many young people to strike in their hometowns.
Moments before Greta’s powerful speech to members of Congress on September 18, 2019 in the largest room on Capitol Hill, the Ways and Means Committee room, she was preparing in a small room.
end quotes
The “powerful” speech of course was little Greta saying: “I’m instead attaching my testimony – it is the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8th 2018.”
end quotes
And what was “powerful” about that speech was the sheer ease with which little Greta was able to slip that collection of political horse**** known as the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8th 2018, to OUR Congress with no questions whatsoever being raised as to why OUR Congress should be accepting that contrived document as “science” upon which to base OUR future public policy.
Now, the way these things should work in a true democracy is that Greta would submit her written testimony, which she has clearly done in the form of this IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8th 2018, which is not “science,” and then WE, the AMERICAN PEOPLE would have an opportunity to have our experts review that testimony word for word and line by line, and the question the witness, in this case, little Greta, who should be treated as an adult and held to the same standards as any other witness testifying to Congress, especially these days as we hear about all these Republicans being convicted of lying to Congress.
But in this case, by design, we are being denied that opportunity to question this load of horse**** called the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8th 2018, which little Greta dumped on OUR Congress on September 18, 2019, which is not only un-democratic, but un-American, as well.
Thus, we Americans concerned about OUR future as a nation owe a continuing debt of gratitude to the Cape Charles Mirror, which is the only venue I have found where a common citizen without political clout like myself can stand up and say, “wait a minute here, and quit trying to jam this un-scientific horse**** down our throats just because little rich Swedish girl Greta Thunberg told you to!”
As to the un-scientific horse**** little Greta successfully slipped to the Democrats in OUR Congress on September 18, 2019 without a word of question being uttered, let’s start the review with Chapter 1, Executive Summary, as follows:
Human-induced warming reached approximately 1°C (likely between 0.8°C and 1.2°C) above pre-industrial levels in 2017, increasing at 0.2°C (likely between 0.1°C and 0.3°C) per decade (high confidence).
end quotes
Now, given the actual history of climate on this planet going back over the last several thousand years, that sentence, which was written by lawyers, not scientists, that sentence is horse****, because it actually is cooler now than it was during “pre-industrial” levels, when CO2 was lower, and temperatures were higher than they are now, which takes us then to this statement which shows us how these lawyers weasel their way around that reality, to wit:
Unless otherwise specified, warming is expressed relative to the period 1850–1900, used as an approximation of pre-industrial temperatures in AR5.
end quotes
HOG**** science, people – that is what little Greta is peddling here.
The question is why are the Democrats in Congress buying it?
Paul Plante says
LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE, GRETA!
HEAR WHAT THE SCIENCE SAYS, GRETA!
AND IF YOU WANT TO GO BACK IN TIME, BEWARE OF WHAT YOU ASK FOR!
From CLIMATE, HISTORY AND THE MODERN WORLD, Second Edition by H.H. Lamb:
A TIME OF DISEASES
The prevailing wetness during parts of the fourteenth century and, perhaps still more, in the fifteenth century undoubtedly made this an unhealthy time.
There were many troubles with the diseases of mankind, animals and crops.
It seems established that in England the average expectation of life decreased by about ten years from the late thirteenth century (when it was apparently about forty-eight) to the period 1376–1400.
One of the most horrifying of the diseases of the period — and most clearly associated with the weather — was ergotism, or St Anthonys fire, produced by the ergot blight (Claviceps purpurea) which blackened the kernels of the rye in damp harvests.
Even a minute proportion of the poisoned grains, baked in bread, would cause the disease.
The course of the epidemics was such that the whole population of a village would suffer convulsions, hallucinations, gangrene rotting the extremities of the body, and death.
In the chronic stage of the disease, the extremities developed first an icy feeling, then a burning sensation; the limbs then went dark as if burnt, shrivelled, and finally dropped off.
Even domestic animals caught it and died.
And pregnant women miscarried.
CENTRAL, SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE
The changing climate with its enhanced short-term fluctuations, including some runs of three to five years, or even more, of wet, flood-ridden seasons, of droughts and either severe or very mild winters, made itself felt also farther south in Europe after 1300.
The wheatlands and the vineyards of northern France shared in the harvest failures and the resulting famine and deaths by the million in the decade beginning in 1310.
In the widespread famines of the 1420s and 1430s there were reports of cannibalism in eastern Europe, as there had been also in the west in the 1310s.
The repeated famines gave rise to an emigration from Russia westwards into Germany.
And in the severe winters in the 1430s the wolves were active in many parts of Europe, from Smolensk in the east to England in the west.
It was not only in the Highlands of Scotland that there was turmoil in the fifteenth century period of climatic stress.
In Denmark and in what is now the southern province of Sweden (Skåne) the deepening crisis in agriculture led to a drift to the towns and by the end of the century apparently to a more general emigration affecting the towns as well.
Paul Plante says
Staying with what is becoming known as the “GREAT GRETA CLIMATE CRISIS SCAM,” first, let us face the SCIENTIFIC REALITY that there is not a “climate crisis” affecting the world, as we can clearly see from this statement from Chapter 3 of the load of horse**** called the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8, 2018 and then dumped on OUR Congress on September 18, 2019 by little rich Swedish girl Greta Thunberg, to wit:
There is no single ‘1.5°C warmer world’ (high confidence).
end quotes
And yes, people, there is high confidence that there is “no single ‘1.5°C warmer world’” precisely because there is no such thing as the “earth’s climate,” as we can clearly see from this excerpt from “CLIMATE, HISTORY AND THE MODERN WORLD,” Second Edition by H.H. Lamb, which is “the science,” to wit:
Thus, it is not altogether surprising to learn that there is evidence, from travellers’ observations of the landscape and lakes in Siberia, that northwest Siberia experienced great warmth (presumably due to southerly winds) in and around the 1690s when northern, western and central Europe had their coldest time, with frequent northerly and northwesterly winds from the Norwegian Sea.
end quotes
Yes, people, this “GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE” BULL**** we are being fed by Greta and the IPCC crowd and the Democrats in OUR Congress, is exactly that – un-scientific horse**** as we can see from Chapter 3 of Greta’s IPCC Report she submitted as her testimony to OUR Congress on September 18, 2019, as follows:
Urban heat islands often amplify the impacts of heatwaves in cities (high confidence).
end quotes
And as we can clearly see from this science from the North Carolina Department of Health bulletin on Albedo:
Albedo (al-bee-doh) is a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed.
Something that appears white reflects most of the light that hits it and has a high albedo, while something that looks dark absorbs most of the light that hits it, indicating a low albedo.
Why do I care?
Albedo is another name for reflectivity.
The albedo of a surface determines how much sunlight will be absorbed and warm the surface compared to another surface that reflects most of the light and does not change temperature.
How does this relate to public health?
Because of the effects of albedo, highly developed areas such as urban cities can experience higher average temperatures than surrounding suburban or rural areas, a phenomenon known as the “urban heat island effect.”
The higher average temperatures can be attributed to less vegetation, higher population densities, and more infrastructure with darker surfaces (asphalt roads, brick buildings, etc.) that generate, reflect, and trap heat during hot summer months.
Research has found that in some urban cities, the average air temperature can be as much as 22°F hotter in the evenings than surrounding areas.
People who live in urban cities may be at greater risk for heat-related illnesses.
end quotes
So, these lawyer clowns at this IPCC are taking those numbers and they are averaging them with other places that are not urban heat islands, which serves their purpose by bringing the lower temperatures up, so they can put the blame on CO for causing that temperature rise, when it is anything but, and that is how the Democrats in OUR Congress is creating this “CLIMATE CRISIS” out of pure bull****.
Is the climate changing?
Of course it is, because it always has.
Does it create “crises” for people as it changes?
Judge for yourself:
From “CLIMATE, HISTORY AND THE MODERN WORLD,” Second Edition by H.H. Lamb:
In southern Europe we find records which indicate an enhanced variability from year to year and decade to decade, particularly as regards rainfall, and the difficulties it caused.
In Spain there were some runs of drought years and others characterized by flooding of the rivers.
Neither Spain nor the south of France escaped altogether the incidence of severe winters, which froze the rivers.
And in southern France Ladurie discovered that individual cold or wet years, when the harvests were disappointing, lay behind many short-term crises.
Farther east, in Turkey, travellers and European consular representatives described large areas of the plateau of Anatolia in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as becoming desiccated, with empty villages and deserted agricultural land.
Farther south, in Ethiopia a European, Manoel de Almeida, in 1628 reported snows, believed to be permanent, on the peaks at a level where it no longer occurs; and in Mauretania, in West Africa, reports of oak woods in the seventeenth century suggest a cooler and wetter regime than now, although the fall of the empire of Mali in 1591 suggests that the region was becoming drier than it had been.
The situation in this part of Africa is made clearer by the chronology of floods and famines in the region of the great bend in the course of the River Niger, which can be constructed from reports still extant.
Timbuktu (16° 37α N 2° 36α W) lies at the northern limit of the zone affected by floods of the river.
The records make it clear that the floods in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries habitually penetrated farther into the city than those of modern times, even reaching the citadel, the ancient palace of the kings of Mali and Songhay, and causing the population to flee.
The first of these great floods was on 16–17 December 1592, going beyond all previously known bounds.
Others occurred in the winter of 1602–3, in all three winters between 1616 and 1619, and four or five more times in that century, between 1640 and 1672.
There were three more cases between 1703 and 1738, although not quite so extensive; and none have been so extensive since.
The floods result from unusually heavy rains in the previous summer over the upper basin of the River Niger far away in westernmost Africa, in Guinea, in latitudes 10–12°N.
Farther north around Timbuktu, near the bend where the river turns back towards the southeast, there was an abnormal incidence of famines due to droughts in about the same period, between 1617 and 1743, often in the very same years as the great floods of the river but also including 1695 and 1697.
The chronology indicates that the severest phases of the Little Ice Age coincided with a time when the summer rains over west Africa were being held closer to the equator, rather than migrating seasonally to 15–20° N or beyond as in this century before 1960; in those circumstances there were in the seventeenth century frequent severe droughts in the Sahel zone at Timbuktu.
In the central longitudes of Africa, Lake Chad (13–14°N 14–17°E) was at a level possibly 4 m higher than today, though falling ultimately to today’s level; and there seems to have been a migration of peoples towards the moister south going on during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
But in east Africa at those times, unlike today, the situation evidently differed from that in west Africa at the same latitudes.
The very high levels of the yearly floods of the River Nile at Cairo, especially in the late seventeenth century, indicate that the summer rains over Ethiopia were heavy, while the low levels of the Nile then prevailing at other times of the year point to less rain at the equator over east Africa than in this century.
It looks as if the Little Ice Age regime pressed especially far south in longitudes near the Greenwich meridian.
In India examination of the seventeenth century records indicates more frequent interruptions and failures of the monsoon than in our times, and according to Bryson the abandonment of the great city of Fatepur Sikri in 1588 only sixteen years after its construction can be attributed to failure of the water supply.
A deficiency of the summer monsoon in the Indian subcontinent is consistent with the evidence of expansion of the polar cap and of the circumpolar vortex, although it is likely that great meridional (north-south) distortions of the upper atmospheric flow in that sector as elsewhere caused marked variations from year to year and sometimes within each year.
end quotes
And they wonder, still they wonder, when will Greta, the Democrats and the IPCC crowd stop the rain?
And so do I.
MJM says
Phewwwww ! Well, I got through all that, and it was a lot. I stand by what I said. I said it a lot simpler, and voiced my opinion. I did not wish to waste my time expertly tearing apart the play that is being put on by a child. Maybe she will grow up and move to California and take her child stardom to become a State Senator like Shirley Temple. Good for her. In the meantime, I still can’t believe anyone would listen to that young lady as though she were an educated and visionary adult voice of experience . I certainly never said no one was going to profit from her side show. I thought it was obvious someone already was, and kin to Al Gore continue to float it around the world. I just think she never should have been listened to.
I think her parents went to the University of P.T. Barnum , and majored in the sales technique of “We’re looking for the fools that were born every minute”. Those fools were found in the press and in D.C, and I can’t fix it.
Don’t mind me. I’m just the kind of guy that doesn’t listen to a gecko either when I buy insurance. I have difficulty believing that voice of experience either.
Paul Plante says
MJM, first of all, as a fellow American citizen, let me extend my appreciation of the fact that you took time to try and wade through all of what I have written above about this BULL**** IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8, 2018 and then dumped on OUR Congress on September 18, 2019 by little rich Swedish girl Greta Thunberg – I know that it is tedious reading, having read through the document several times, word for word for word for word for word, ad infinitum, by design of course, to bury us in BULL****, so we won’t have the endurance to stomach reading another word, and hence, will never make it to the end where it states thusly, to wit:
Chapter 5 – Executive Summary
This chapter takes sustainable development as the starting point and focus for analysis.
It considers the broad and multifaceted bi-directional interplay between sustainable development, including its focus on eradicating poverty and reducing inequality in their multidimensional aspects, and climate actions in a 1.5°C warmer world.
end quotes
So, MJM, we American people have a BAMBOOZLE going on here, plain and simple, and that is really what this discussion should be about – not Greta, who is the equivalent of a child being used as a drug mule here.
Her purpose was fulfilled when she dumped that BULL**** IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8, 2018, on OUR Congress on September 18, 2019.
Exit little rich Swedish girl Greta Thunberg stage right.
Had Greta never appeared before OUR Congress, by invitation, she indeed would be a non-entity, other than a lost, emotionally-disturbed little girl urging our American children to stay home from school so they can be stupid.
But she did, and history was changed as a result, which brings us to today and this BAMBOOZLE being foisted off on us by the Democrats, which BAMBOOZLE is happening in OUR national capital of Washington, D.C., where we are being this following horse****, to wit:
“Months ago, the House passed the Climate Action Now Act to take this crisis seriously,” NDC Climate Change Task Force Co-Chair Susan Wild (PA-07) said.
end quotes
Except, MJM, THERE IS NO “CLIMATE CRISIS” mentioned anywhere in the BULL**** IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8, 2018 and then dumped on OUR Congress on September 18, 2019 by little rich Swedish girl Greta Thunberg.
Not a single word, in fact.
So besides from out of her ***, where is NDC Climate Change Task Force Co-Chair Susan Wild (PA-07) getting this “crisis” language from?
Besides nothing that I have found, what scientific basis does she have to justify her HYSTERIA MONGERING here with this wild and crazy talk about a “climate crisis?”
Are you for being lied to, MJM, by members of our House of Representatives?
How about this:
“As our country continues to experience dangerous wildfires, flooding, and extreme weather events, we need bold leadership on climate.”
“Instead, President Trump has abdicated our role as a world leader in combating the climate crisis to side with polluters,” NDC Climate Change Task Force Co-Chair Sean Casten (IL-06) said.
end quotes
Combatting the climate crisis, MJM?
Here is exactly how NDC Climate Change Task Force Co-Chair Sean Casten (IL-06) plans to do it:
Chapter 5 – Executive Summary
Without societal transformation and rapid implementation of ambitious greenhouse gas reduction measures, pathways to limiting warming to 1.5°C and achieving sustainable development will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to achieve (high confidence).
end quotes
Societal transformation, MJM – that is what this is all about, and a CONTRIVED CLIMATE CRISIS is the excuse needed to make it happen, as we are all made to feel panic so we cannot think straight.
That is what this BULL**** game is about – a POWER GRAB, as we can see by returning to the BULL**** IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8, 2018 and then dumped on OUR Congress on September 18, 2019 by little rich Swedish girl Greta Thunberg, in Chapter 5 – Executive Summary, as follows:
Compared to current conditions, 1.5°C of global warming would nonetheless pose heightened risks to eradicating poverty, reducing inequalities and ensuring human and ecosystem well-being (medium evidence, high agreement).
end quotes
How about no evidence at all, because there is none – that is an otherwise empty statement intended to make it clear to the Democrats in OUR House of Representatives, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, that yes, this really is about “eradicating world poverty,” which is an endeavor loaded to the gills with opportunities for the kinds of graft the Democrats just love to get their hands on.
So this is LBJ’s “WAR ON POVERTY” on steroids, as well as nation-building on a global scale, all in the name of fighting an imaginary “climate crisis” cooked up by this IPCC crowd to shake loose gobs of money from WE, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, to make everybody else in the world as rich as the Democrats in this country are, which takes us back to Chapter 5, as follows:
Many strategies for sustainable development enable transformational adaptation for a 1.5°C warmer world, provided attention is paid to reducing poverty in all its forms and to promoting equity and participation in decision-making (medium evidence, high agreement).
end quotes
Ah, yes, MJM, what a laudable goal for the Democrats to pursue – reducing poverty in all its forms!
And wouldn’t a great place for the Democrats to start that process be right here, givcn that back in the 1960s, the Democrats declared a WAR ON POVERTY that they still haven’t won yet?
And going back to the BULL**** IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8, 2018 and then dumped on OUR Congress on September 18, 2019 by little rich Swedish girl Greta Thunberg one last time, we have this to consider, to wit:
Social justice and equity are core aspects of climate-resilient development pathways for transformational social change.
end quotes
Which is more HORSE****, MJM – an excuse to create a “social democratic” world government to provide “social justice,” as follows:
Addressing challenges and widening opportunities between and within countries and communities would be necessary to achieve sustainable development and limit warming to 1.5°C, without making the poor and disadvantaged worse off (high confidence).
Identifying and navigating inclusive and socially acceptable pathways towards low-carbon, climate-resilient futures is a challenging yet important endeavour, fraught with moral, practical and political difficulties and inevitable trade-offs (very high confidence). {5.5.2, 5.5.3.3, Box 5.3}
It entails deliberation and problem-solving processes to negotiate societal values, well-being, risks and resilience and to determine what is desirable and fair, and to whom (medium evidence, high agreement).
The fundamental societal and systemic changes to achieve sustainable development, eradicate poverty and reduce inequalities while limiting warming to 1.5°C would require meeting a set of institutional, social, cultural, economic and technological conditions (high confidence).
Re-examining individual and collective values could help spur urgent, ambitious and cooperative change (medium evidence, high agreement). {5.5.3, 5.6.5}
end quotes
Are you for Greta Thunberg re-examining your individual values, MJM, to see if they are societally acceptable to her?
And should OUR Congress be lying to us about a climate crisis that does not have a scientific basis in fact?
MJM says
Well Mr. Plante, I think it is quite obvious that you seriously disagree with me, and that is your right. I again repeat that Greta is not worth listening to, and that she should not be taken seriously. You apparently choose to listen to her, so ye reap what ye sow. Sure, there are some geckos and reindeer following her around and sweeping up her scraps to push along some agenda about climate change. I don’t listen to her or them. Why should I ? It’s the same thread. Why should you ? They are selling you costume jewelry for window treatments along Broadway of the new green movement. Some people buy that methane in a pickle jar. I don’t. It was obvious her sails were full of swamp gas the moment our press pushed her agenda. Some special interests wrote some misleading science that they turned into proposed legislation coming from D.C. that state all kinds of hysteria and accomplish nothing. That’s how it’s done now in The Swamp. The papers have no bite, or strength, and I listen to them just as much as Mr. Trump listened to the climate agreement in Europe he thankfully pulled us out of. They may have questions about what temperature it is, and going to be. They can say that. What they can’t say is that they have a solution to their perceived problem, because they don’t, unless you listen.
Do I like being lied to ? I don’t get lied to if I don’t listen, AND many of our Representatives have been lying to us since forever. Is Greta bringing about a societal change for THAT problem ? I got a memo from our President. He said D.C. is a dismal swamp. I know he’s right. He’s not listening. He’s pushing back.
I do think we both need to get with the times more though Paul. Our Representatives no longer lie to us. They get on t.v. and look right at us with their beady eyes and start bull schiffing us all day long; and waste our time, and our money more blatantly than ever before. The P.T. Barnum and Bailey Circus didn’t really go out of business. It simply took on a different shape and resettled in and around The Beltway.
Paul Plante says
MJM, I hardly “seriously disagree” with you in here; to the contrary, as a licensed professional engineer, an associate level public health engineer, both titles I had to earn, and as a grandfather and American citizen, as well, I simply have a different perspective here than you do.
I’m over 70 years old, and I don’t take direction from little confused girls like Greta Thunberg, and if all little Greta was doing with her little friends is standing out there screeching at the sky and the clouds to stand still and stop changing, I really would not have much to say about her, to be truthful.
What I do have a lot to say about, and this is thanks to the Cape Charles Mirror, which is the only publication here in the United States of America that is refusing to knuckle under and accept this “climate crisis” horse**** the House Democrats are tossing in our faces, and instead has chosen to stand up to it, is what I have called the “Great Greta Climate Crisis Scam.”
While commenting on some of your statements, I was in no way “seriously disagreeing” with you, so you can put that thought to rest, and instead focus on these words from Chapter 4 of the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius October 8th 2018, to wit:
Enabling Rapid and Far-Reaching Change
The speed of transitions and of technological change required to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels has been observed in the past within specific sectors and technologies {4.2.2.1}.
But the geographical and economic scales at which the required rates of change in the energy, land, urban, infrastructure and industrial systems would need to take place are larger and have no documented historic precedent (limited evidence, medium agreement).
To reduce inequality and alleviate poverty, such transformations would require more planning and stronger institutions (including inclusive markets) than observed in the past, as well as stronger coordination and disruptive innovation across actors and scales of governance. {4.3, 4.4}
Governance consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C and the political economy of adaptation and mitigation can enable and accelerate systems transitions, behavioural change, innovation and technology deployment (medium evidence, medium agreement).
For 1.5°C-consistent actions, an effective governance framework would include: accountable multilevel governance that includes non-state actors, such as industry, civil society and scientific institutions; coordinated sectoral and cross-sectoral policies that enable collaborative multi-stakeholder partnerships; strengthened global-to-local financial architecture that enables greater access to finance and technology; addressing climate-related trade barriers; improved climate education and greater public awareness; arrangements to enable accelerated behaviour change; strengthened climate monitoring and evaluation systems; and reciprocal international agreements that are sensitive to equity and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
end quotes
That, MJM, is what I am looking at, and more specifically, those words about “behavior change” that are imbedded in there, along with the phrase “stronger disruptive innovation across actors and scales of governance.”
As an American citizen who had instilled in me when young the idea that American citizens have a duty to remain informed (“the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”), it is my belief that we need to hear from these Democrats in Congress, who are the ones really drinking the GRETA KOOL-AID, a lot more about what those words really mean to WE, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE who lives are to be impacted by them.
But hey, that is just me.
As to yourself, MJM, have a wonderful day and a fantastic Thanksgiving!
Paul Plante says
My career as an engineer, MJM, was spent debunking and deconstructing BULL**** and HOG**** and HORSE**** being passed off to the otherwise-unwitting public as “science,” and when the public knew it was HORSE****, which is most of the time, because people aren’t all stupid, they generally were unable to challenge it, because they had no “credentials” like the scientists who were lying to them and feeding them BULL**** did, which is where “BULL**** DEBUNKERS” like myself came into the picture, because in a court of law, I do have the credentials to stand up to these frauds on behalf of the people, and prevail, precisely because BULL**** is BULL****, and when the light of day is shined on it, as is happening in here thanks to the Cape Charles Mirror, it cannot stand, which is what makes this thread so important today when this “climate crisis” BULL**** is still being thrown in our faces as the 2020 presidential election rapidly approaches.
Now with respect to Greta, you say that I apparently choose to listen to her, but that is incorrect – what I chose to read through, word for word for word, was the HORSE**** she presented to the Democrats in our Congress on September 18, 2019, and to then come in here to pull the pins out from under her FRAUD, so it is she and the Democrats who bought her BULL**** about a “climate crisis” hook, line and sinker who did the sowing and now have to do the reaping, not me, which takes us to your correct statement that “(S)ome special interests wrote some misleading science that they turned into proposed legislation coming from D.C. that state all kinds of hysteria and accomplish nothing.”
While you are correctly saying that, I am coming in here behand you with the analysis I am willing to stand up for in Congress to show how that is so, because as a grandfather, I do not like to see these Democrats shamelessly sowing hysteria in children for partisan political gain on their part by claiming there is a “climate crisis” and the “world is dying” when they are not in possession of a scientific basis for making those claims, which is HOW they are lying to us.
And that takes us back to Chapter 3 of little Greta’s HORSE**** IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius October 8th 2018, as follows:
This chapter builds on findings of AR5 and assesses new scientific evidence of changes in the climate system and the associated impacts on natural and human systems, with a specific focus on the magnitude and pattern of risks linked for global warming of 1.5°C above temperatures in the pre-industrial period.
end quotes
Now, these lawyers who make up this IPCC can slide a BULL**** statement by the unwitting and unwary like that with the greatest of ease, because the unwitting and unwary take that statement at face value – it says there is “new scientific evidence,” so there must be, right?
I mean, isn’t that what that statement wants us to believe – that this IPCC crowd is really concerned with our well-being as people, and so, it is collecting all this “new” scientific evidence to protect us with?
Except that is BULL****, because there is no new scientific evidence – rather, the IPCC is using cherry-picked BULL**** that they are calling “scientific evidence,” when it is speculation, instead, in a naked bid for political power over us and ready access to the United States treasury.
Recall that barmy Bernie Sanders has promised $16.3 TRILLION U.S. DOLLARS to the cause if elected in 2020, which is a source of a whole lot of graft, MJM, and that is what this game is all about, which is why we are being lied to, to make us scared like Greta, so that like her, we would be incapable of thinking straight, which brings us to this statement from Chapter 4, to wit:
The global climate has changed relative to the pre-industrial period, and there are multiple lines of evidence that these changes have had impacts on organisms and ecosystems, as well as on human systems and well-being (high confidence).
end quotes
And from there, back to Chapter 1, as follows:
Unless otherwise specified, warming is expressed relative to the period 1850–1900, used as an approximation of pre-industrial temperatures in AR5.
end quotes
And when we read the real scientific evidence, which is found in “CLIMATE, HISTORY AND THE MODERN WORLD,” Second Edition by H.H. Lamb, we see that in 1850, it was actually warmer than it is now, despite there being less CO2 than today, nor is there any mention of CO2 causing these known climatic conditions, to wit:
EUROPE AND THE ARCTIC FRINGE
In 1840 a shift in the ocean current pattern seems to have taken place, which gave Iceland fifteen years of near immunity from the ice of the Arctic seas and for a few years (1845–51) made a large cod fishery possible off west Greenland.
At the same time, Europe experienced on balance a somewhat colder climate.
The wind circulation features involved seem to have been frequent ‘blocking’ anticyclones over northern Europe, with easterly winds over much of the continent but giving southerly winds in the Iceland region: these warm winds occasionally extended east to Europe, however.
In 1855 a further shift seems to have renewed the strength of the ice-bearing current off east Greenland and brought the ice back to Iceland.
And soon the westerly and southwesterly winds over the North Atlantic Ocean were regenerated, bringing warmer seasons to Europe and starting a recession of the glaciers.
This lasted through the 1860s.
The summer of 1868, in particular, produced a remarkable number of hot days with temperatures over 30°C in England, including the record value of 38.1°C (100.6 °F) at Tonbridge, Kent on 22 July.
The winter of 1868–9 in England was the warmest of the entire record with a mean temperature of 6.8°C, which is more normal for the west coast of Ireland and warmer than some springs of the past in England.
Also in the 1870s Europe enjoyed mostly warm seasons and mild winters, apart from some severe weather in the Februarys of 1870 and 1875 and a longer frost in December 1870 and January 1871.
end quotes
To close, MJM, it is one thing to call the Democrats out as liars, which certainly needs to be done in the interests of our Republic, but it is better to demonstrate how it is they are lying, if afforded the opportunity as is the case in here with this thread.