We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day The deforestation statistics are startling to anybody who listens only to green activists. In 2018 a team from the University of Maryland concluded: ‘We show that – contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally – tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km². That’s 7 percent more forest globally than in 1982. New forests have been planted and old ones have regenerated naturally, as the footprint of farming shrinks, thanks to better yields.
– Matt Ridley in the print version of The Spectator, article titled Viral misinformation.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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A few years ago, I read somewhere that forest cover in the british isles today is greater than it was in the 18th century. The Thames is cleaner than it has been for generations.
The human race is not a plague on planet earth, but the best way of making it so is to take away the high technology industries that allow so many to live in comfort. And which are the only real means for the rest to catch up.
Those who blithely talk (seldom openly of course) about depopulation really ought to educate themselves as to what this will look like if the assumed means is “green”.
It doesn’t take an idiot to do it, but I looked at a map. All this climate change will release a net growth of land from plant killing cold. It will mean more land for food and timber production than before, but somehow we never hear about that.
For those who are Speccie subscribers here’s an archive link to the online version.
It’s well worth reading the whole thing (and IMHO well worth subscribing to the magazine)
When President Trump proposed planting millions of trees – the response was either to ignore what he said, or to respond with ANGER.
Yes actual ANGER – “he is missing the point”.
What point? The point that this is NOT about trees? Indeed NOT about C02 emissions either? When President Trump talked about nuclear power the response was also either to either ignore what he said – or to respond with ANGER. After all Joseph Biden, as Vice President, helped CLOSE DOWN the United States nuclear waste depository.
Remember the policies that are now being pushed by the international establishment started to be pushed BEFORE the Global Warming theory. How can these policies be a “response” to the human C02 emissions theory? For example, Klaus Schwab’s Corporate State “Stakeholder Capitalism” book (one of the central texts of what is now the international Agenda 21 – Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development”) was published in 1971.
1971 – how can the book have been a “response” to a theory that did not even exist in 1971? Back then the establishment were talking about global cooling not global warming.
As with the lockdowns – the policy has very little (if anything) to do with what is presented as the “justification” for the policy. Covid 19 is not cured with lockdowns (indeed the international establishment was-and-is HOSTILE to the effective Early Treatment of Covid 19) – but lockdowns do have the effect of destroying small business enterprises. Just as the policies of New York, California and other places of de facto allowing small business enterprises to be robbed (de facto, not official, legalisation of theft – by refusing to engage in speedy and severe PUNISHMENT of theft) has the effect of destroying small business enterprises.
The basic policy, everyone (from the cradle to the grave) under the control of a massive government and allied vast corporations, comes first – the justifications for the policy (Global Warming, Covid 19) are presented afterwards.
This does NOT mean that there are not real problems – but what is presented as the “solution” to the problems is actually nothing to do with the problems, and was already policy before the problems.
The Biden/Harris Administration is paying farmers to destroy their crops – destroy-their-crops.
Later, when there is a food shortage, will the education system and the media declare it is proof of “Climate Change”?
K. Harris is also telling people to “buy your Christmas presents now” because there are going to be supply chain difficulties.
There are going to be such difficulties because the international establishment (including the American branch of it) are deliberately creating them. Indeed this goes back many years – to policies deliberately designed to undermine American manufacturing industry. And NO to say that (to tell the truth) does NOT make me “anti free trade”.
Being “pro free trade” does NOT mean supporting government policies designed to undermine domestic industry – or domestic farming.
Create chaos and collapse – then present the total Collectivist (international Collectivist) control of society as the “solution” to the crises that you, yourselves, created.
Tons of plastic in the sea is another problem that was created by green idiocy. The greens love it because they can show pictures of beaches covered in plastic bottles and turtles with straws up their noses and tell us how evil we are. Incineration and landfill would have been ways of disposing of plastic waste that would avoid polluting the sea, but green policies, that nobody voted for, prevent those. Still, if the idiots do succeed in banning plastic, we can go back to hunting turtles and making our phones out of their shells.
I’m not a subscriber to the Spectator so I wonder if anyone is can share the primary sources for this data?
@Fraser, most of the primary sources are, IIRC, Bjorn Lomborg
We have more trees now because we no longer have to cut them down as the primary source of heat energy and construction material. Trees were saved by coal, then oil & gas, iron & steel and cement – and more efficient land use from modern farming technique – the Organoveganist religious zealots want to reverse this latter trend.
But trees are not the only plant we have, although we do now venerate them as Indian religious sects do cows, and satellite images show the increased greening of the Planet particularly at the margins of deserts.
Thank you Global Warming. Thank you increased atmospheric CO2.
No, comes from University of Maryland, the State University of New York, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center 2018 study. Article here also contains link to paper
“…satellite images show the increased greening of the Planet particularly at the margins of deserts.”
Once again the precise opposite of what the climate alarmists predicted. “desertification” was supposed to happen to vast swathes of the planet.
Nonsense. Oceania has always predicted the greening of the edges of Eastasia …
All those films you saw in school about glaciers covering Chicago by 2010 were … not, Comrade.
Just so you know, years ago, I used the tag ‘Duke Nukem’. The current user is someone else.