UK Electricity “Set to Become Unaffordable” Within 3 Years Independent Report Finds.

The consequences of decades of environmentalist scaremongering over sources of generating electricity are starting to come home to roost now, and the results are not going to be pretty. A report from the independent price comparison group, Uswitch finds that electricity in the UK will become unaffordable for most within 3 years, and so expensive as to be effectively rationed within a mere six years.

The report paints an alarming picture of exactly what under-investment and stalling on building electricity generation capacity now means in the near future for ordinary families living in one of the most advanced economies in the world: unheated and unlit homes as people are reduced to rationing their own electricity use as electricity prices skyrocket:

An annual energy bill of £1,500 is the tipping point at which energy bills will become unaffordable in the UK, says the research. When this point is reached, 77% will be forced to ration their energy use, 59% will go without adequate heating and 36% will be forced to turn their heating off entirely.

If bills then hit £2,000 a year – which the uSwitch.com forecast suggests could happen in 2016 – almost nine in 10 households (88%) will be rationing their energy use, 75% will be going without adequate heating and over half (55%) will turn their heating off entirely

Energy News: Household Energy Bills Will be ‘Unaffordable’ by 2015.

What’s even worse is that this is the result of what’s already happened: of allowing environmental naysayers, cowardly governments, and profiteering utility companies to put off building new generating capacity. As the report stresses, these figures do not even factor in the large increases in costs that government mandated carbon-reduction in electricity generation would mean:

Worryingly, the forecast does not take into account the impact of the government’s ambitious plans to cut carbon and switch to renewable generation, the cost of which will be added to household bills. uSwitch.com says consumers have a right to know by how much the government’s energy policy will increase their bills.

In the ultimate irony, then, the increasingly bitterly cold winters we are experiencing will see more and more families with children, the poor, and the elderly switching off their heating and lighting, as electricity prices skyrocket because of concerns over global warming. And all of this, remember, all of this is entirely unnecessary. If sufficient power stations using reliable fuels had been built, plentiful cheap energy for all would not even be an issue.

IPCC Author on “Human Security” Belongs to Organization That Promotes “Panarchy”

IPCC Lead Author member of group that preaches “Revolt and Remember”.

Resilience Alliance talks of “destabilization” and “destruction” leading to “reorganization”.

Group inspired by “hoofed, horned, hairy and horny” pagan god, Pan: symbol of the “all pervasive spiritual power of nature” in his “destabilizing role” of spreading “panic”.

Donna LaFramboise has an interesting post at Nofrakkingconsensus which looks at Neil Adger, the author of the new IPCC chapter on “human security”. Adger lectured on “environmental economics” at the University of East Anglia and now teaches “environmental geography“ at the University of Exeter. Nofrakkingconsensus notes Adger’s record of calling for decarbonisation of the global economy and his belief in catastrophic climate change. Hardly an unbiased account for the consideration of world leaders.

Adger is also a proud member of something called The Resilience Alliance.
Whilst the organisation might sound like a convention gathering from Star Trek, their aims are far, far, more serious and wide-ranging than that. Indeed, their ultimate goal, as stated on their website, is nothing less than what they term “Panarchy” in accordance with “nature’s rules” of “unpredictable change”. An important part of the philosophy of panarchy is that national governments are increasingly sidelined in favour of multi-jurisdictional institutions.

So what does this actually entail? What does Adger’s group mean when it talks about its expressed aim of global panarchy? This isn’t entirely clear (surprise, surprise) but they sum up the most important part of the process of instigating global panarchy in the phrase “Revolt and Remember”. Perhaps this diagram would help explain:

I hope this makes our aims perfectly clear? The cycle of destruction and “reorganization” that Resilience Alliance would like to see instigated.

Just in case the esoteric swirls and formula of this diagram didn’t make it entirely clear, the authors explain that “revolt and remember” is a process of destabilization and reorganization that radically undermines structures, organisms, and institutions, allowing “new entrants”:

As a consequence of the periodic, but transient phases of destruction (omega stage) and reorganization (alpha stage), a system’s structure and processes can be reorganized. This reshuffling allows for the establishment of new system configurations and opportunities for the incorporation of exotic and entirely novel entrants into the system. The adaptive cycle explicitly introduces mutations and rearrangements as a periodic process within each hierarchical level in a way that partially isolates the resulting experiments, reducing the risk to the integrity of the whole structure.

From “Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems”. Hosted at the Resilience Alliance Website.

Destruction of the current system will therefore form the final or “omega” phase. Following the arrival of the new entrants an entirely new phase, the “alpha” phase can begin of reorganization.

This is still quite abstract, of course. What it means in terms of social rather than biological change is that in times of crisis, institutions become vulnerable, and can be taken over and reorganized by “new entrants” as part of the cycle of destruction and reorganization:

The Revolt and Remember connections become important at times of change. When a level in the panarchy enters its omega phase and experiences a collapse, that collapse can cascade to the next larger and slower level by triggering a crisis, particularly if that level is at the K phase where resilience is low.

Resilience Alliance: Revolt and Remember.

As the Resilience Alliance explain: “an example . . . would be when local activist groups succeed in efforts to transform regional institutions and politics”. If institutions have become (or can be encouraged to become) overly large and unwieldy, they will be “rigid” and vulnerable to attack. “Fast and small” events could, the authors argue, overwhelm even large institutions and lead to the collapse and destruction that must necessarily precede “reorganization”.

“Revolt” may take place when a level in the panarchy enters its omega phase of collapse. The collapse can cascade up to the next larger and slower level by triggering a crisis, particularly if the higher level is at the K phase where resilience is low. This effect could cascade to still higher and slower levels if those levels had accumulated vulnerabilities and rigidities. In “revolt” fast and small events overwhelm slow and large ones.

However, it is crucial to observe that when the Resilience Alliance talks of “Panarchy” they do not mean to imply a natural equivalence to anarchy as self-rule. In their vision of a Panarchic world, there would still be hierarchies, but these hierarchies would be concerned with ecological matters. Control of the four elements of nature -air, water, earth, and fire – would fall to those who understood that “panic” and “destruction” also imply creation and reorganization:

Since the word hierarchy is so burdened by the rigid, top-down nature of its common meaning, we prefer to invent another term that captures the adaptive, and evolutionary nature of adaptive cycles that are nested one within the other across space and time scales. We call them panarchies, drawing on the image of the Greek god Pan – the universal god of nature. This hoofed, horned, hairy and horny deity . . . represents the all pervasive spiritual power of nature and has a personality and role that is described in sections of the Orphic Hymns as Goat-legged, enthusiastic, lover of ecstasy, dancing among stars, weaving the harmony of the cosmos into playful song . . .

In addition to this creative role, Pan has a destabilizing role that is captured in the word panic, directly derived from one facet of his paradoxical personality. His attributes are described in ways that resonate with the attributes of the four phase adaptive cycle; as the creative and motive power of universal nature, the controller and arranger of the four elements- earth, water, air and fire (or perhaps, of K, alpha, r and omega!). He therefore represents the inherent features of the synthesis that has emerged in this comparison of ecological and social systems.

Thus, Panarchy in this context still involves hierarchy, but it implies that with panic and destruction comes the opportunity to seize control of the elements of nature and govern with a pagan, natural spirituality that honours “sacred” Mother Earth. This isn’t the first time that links between supposedly free nature and global hierarchies of administration have been noted, but this is one of the most radical and explicit calls for it so far. Notably, James Hansen of NASA GISS endorsed a book which called for ridding the world of industrial civilisation, but even that book didn’t talk so openly about how “destabilization” could lead to the “collapse” of institutions at times of crisis and vulnerability.

Pan, horned, hairy, and horny. Deity of panic, destruction and creative reorganization according to the Resilience Alliance.

Quite why Adger wants to associate himself with a group like The Resilience Alliance that preaches “Revolt and Remember” as part of the cycle of destruction and reorganization on the path to global panarchy I will leave to others to decide for themselves. But it does make you wonder if such a person should be writing chapters on “Human Security” for the IPCC.

Neil Adger, the man the IPCC has entrusted to write their chapter on “Human Security” and proud member of the Resilience Alliance.

Global Warming Author Says “Bar-Code Everyone at Birth”.

In a fascinating insight into the mentality of those who espouse the mantra of catastrophic global warming, writer Elizabeth Moon has a short piece for the BBC in which she argues that everyone should be involuntarily implanted with a microchip at birth so that “anonymity would be impossible”.

Elizabeth Moon, who writes about global warming, wants everyone implanted with microchips for ease of identification and enforcement.

Moon, who has published essays warning of the dire effects of global warming and even made catastrophic global warming part of the background to her novels, made the stunning revelation in a BBC Radio programme on possible futures. Asked for her vision for the future of humanity, Moon stunned and “terrified” the other guests with this vision:

If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached – a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals.

It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is.

Anonymity would be impossible as would mistaken identity making it easier to place responsibility accurately, not only in war but also in non-combat situations far from the war

BBC Future: Barcode Everyone at Birth.

Moon’s astonishing vision for the future reveals the warmist obsession with the supposed need for tracking and enforcement of personal behaviour. It reveals the fantasies of control and administration of everyday life that seem to motivate many of those whose professed concern is the future of the planet, but whose interests seem to actually lie in the ever-closer administration of individual’s daily lives. Only last year, the Infowars website detailed some of the proposals that were being floated for controlling people’s movements and activities, including carbon rationing and calorie cards whose avowed aim is the curtailment of people’s lives in the name of saving the environment.

Given the horrific history of totalitarian state’s attempts to dehumanise people by reducing them to mere ciphers, numbers in a database, you would think that an author such as Ms Moon who show a little cultural awareness and be wary of making proposals that apparently disregard the history of such attempts. But it seems that this is not the case. In revealing her fantasies of being “empress of the  universe” and bar-coding humanity at birth, Ms Moon has done us all a service in giving us a glimpse into the future for us all which her and many others like her would like to see.

EU: “Science Demands” Co2 Emissions Reduction of 95%!

If you thought the current talk of enforced compliance with energy reduction mandates and soaring electricity prices was oppressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Especially if you live within the European Union. According to the bureaucrats in charge of EU Climate Change Policy “science tells us” that we have to reduce emissions of Co2 not by 20, 40, or even 60% but by a ludicrous 80-95%. Or else:

Science tells us that all developed countries would need to reduce emissions by 80-95% in order to have a fair chance of keeping global warming below 2°C. If we do not step up climate action, temperatures might increase by as much as 4°C by 2100.

Delegation of the European Union to Mexico. Press Release.

They might do. Then again, they might not. But either way, “science demands” that we do lots of things, apparently. As usual, the onus and the burden will fall on good old John Q. Public. “Energy efficiency” is one area where the bureaucrats are less than pleased and are looking to enforce greater reductions in emissions. So look out for more directives telling you to shower less, turn your lights off at night, etc. Even more swingeing taxes on energy are likely to (supposedly) help this drive to efficiency, which is actually necessary as the EU is sending around three and a half billion euros a year to developing countries where it will be spent on limos and beach houses fighting climate change (stop laughing at the back there).

Anyone else getting sick of the “science tells us” line yet? If they said “selective computer modelling conveniently tells us” at least it would be closer to the truth.

Your Tax Dollars at Work: EPA in Communist China, Training Judges.

You can’t make this stuff up, you know. You really can’t . . .

According to a press release from the Asian Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Network (an institution whose name is itself Orwellian enough), the EPA are in in China as part of a “multi-year effort” in collaboration with the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, based in Beijing, along with other institutions. Details are scarce, but it appears that the EPA are training judges in how to adjudicate on environmental cases where people sue over issues such as pollution and Co2 emissions, etc. The release comments that:

The Kunming pilot training was the latest step in a multi-year effort by EPA and VLS to improve court capacity in China to adjudicate environmental cases. In June, 2011, EPA and VLS held a two-day planning meeting in Beijing to solicit comments and contribution from a team of Chinese scholars and senior environmental court judges on a draft judicial training curriculum that EPA previously piloted in Wuhan, China in 2009

The question of whether it is proper for the EPA, a body funded by the US taxpayer, to be in a totalitarian communist state training officials of that state appears not to have been raised yet. Given the criticisms of China’s human rights record, one wonders what questions the EPA are asking and what assurances they have received.

Indian NGOs Accuse UK of Colonialism, Racism, for Funding Forced Global Warming Sterilisations.

Leading members of prominent Indian NGOs have slammed the UK government’s “racism” in directing “tens of millions of pounds” to sterilise India’s poor in what they say is a misguided attempt to combat global warming. The UK government has been funding agencies that promise to carry out a certain number of sterilisations, a quota they have apparently been fulfilling with total ruthlessness and an appalling callousness, according to a report on the international RT Today news channel:

Watch RT Report in full:

https://www.youtube.com/v/Egy4drxs8l8?version=3&feature=player_detailpage

A news report on RT Today visited India and spoke to local police who told them that they had raided the offices of local aid agencies and confiscated videos showing the horrific mistreatment of women. In some cases, this involved more than 80 sterilisations being carried out in a mere 3 hours in the unhygenic surroundings of a local school. The Guardian also detailed reports that women were operated on lying on straw in outbuildings and left screaming in pain according to NGOs and human rights campaigners:

Human rights campaigner Devika Biswas told the court that “inhuman sterilisations, particularly in rural areas, continue with reckless disregard for the lives of poor women”. Biswas said 53 poor and low-caste women were rounded up and sterilised in operations carried out by torchlight that left three bleeding profusely and led to one woman who was three months pregnant miscarrying. “After the surgeries, all 53 women were crying out in pain. Though they were in desperate need of medical care, no one came to assist them,” she said.

In an interview  News Channel Dr Abhisit Das, Director of the Centre for Health and Social Justice, said the whole program stank of  the old imperialist mindset of “colonialism” and “racism” where the poor were blamed for the excesses of the wealthy. RT Today reported that

A newly released document shows that the British government is interested in reducing India’s population to cut down greenhouse gases and combat global warming.

Agencies are being paid 1,500 per sterilisation by the UK Government who, according to a working paper it published on combatting global warming “argued that reducing population numbers would cut greenhouse gases“. 1,500 rupees is a little over 17 pounds sterling and the British government has allocated 166 million pounds to the effort, which translates approximately to nine and a half million sterilisations.

Both the RT Today and The Guardian reports agree that the sterilisations were often carried out by force or deception, and frequently in horrific, medieval conditions that spoke to a concern only with fulfilling quotas and a contempt for the welfare of the women operated on. However, as the British Government only funded the agencies in their “battle against global warming” they have denied any knowledge of this, and – of course – issued a condemnation. A little too late, though, for the tens of thousands of victims of this latest battle against the poor global warming.

Green Police: 1st Global ‘Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Summit’ Held in France.

Whilst attention focuses on the hoopla and razzmatazz of the preparations for the Climate Change summit, Environment News Service reports on a global summit to agree world-wide enforcement of compliance with environmental regulations, a summit which went unannounced by the world’s media:

LYON, France, March 30, 2012 (ENS) – For the first time, heads of environmental, biodiversity and natural resources agencies from across the world have met with heads of law enforcement agencies to craft a global compliance and enforcement strategy for environmental security.

Convened this week by Interpol and the United Nations Environment Programme, the International Chiefs of Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Summit drew some 230 delegates from 70 countries to Interpol headquarters in Lyon.

Whilst discussion was made of such problems as poaching, and trans-national smuggling of rare species and even animal parts for meat, the main focus was on longer-term matters of “environmental security”.  Delegates were told that this included enforcing compliance to safeguard “the air and the water and the biodiversity [and] the ecosystem”. Clearly such an over-arching arena of jurisdiction would need sweeping powers to be policeable, an issue raised by Masa Nagai, acting deputy director with UNEP’s Division of Environmental Law and Conventions.

Nagai recognised that the object of this 1st Global Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Summit was not to sign any treaties there and then but to craft a strategy for recommendation and signing at Rio+20 and – more importantly – the World Congress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Sustainability being held in Brazil in June. Having been crafted and agreed upon, at these less high profile international summits, Nagai hoped the international environmental compliance and enforcement treaty would  ”provide a platform to identify a way forward to strengthen the entire chain of environmental enforcement”.

————————————————————————————————

Additional:

Thanks to Alexjc38, we now have further background information on the thinking behind this global enforcement and compliance effort and the probable intended outcome. Alex has kindly provided transcript of a saved interview with Dr Noel Brown, former director of UNEP, Regional Office for North America. In  the interview, Brown is asked about his stated vision of an “Environmental Security Council”. He explains that this council would have plenary powers to enforce compliance with regulations concerning the environment:

Muriel Glasgow: That is so interesting. And then I see – on the website, I was doing some research on you. And you seem to have been prescient. You’ve mentioned something called an Environment Security – an Environmental Security Council of the UN could become a reality. Could you expound a bit on that, Dr Brown?

Noel Brown: Well, you know, we think of security in military terms. We think of security in war/peace issues. And those will continue, and we should not neglect them. But, in the end, those pale in the face of what is happening to our planet now. That there may be something that we can’t fix with a gun. And there’s something that needs to be enforced. So I feel that just as United Nations created a Security Council with enforcement action, under Chapter 7 of the Charter, we need to create an Earth Security Council. Because, unlike national security, and even international security, Earth security involves not us but future generations, and we have a responsibility for that. And we have very few enforcement measures now, to ensure compliance with what we know are detrimental actions to the future of the planet.

Interview with Dr Noel Brown 13/05/2008 hosted on Yaktivate.com. Thanks to Alexjc38 for the transcript.

Of course, “detrimental actions to the future of our planet”  is a term so broad and sweeping that it can mean essentially anything. Is gas exploration detrimental to the future of our planet? If so, what about someone using more gas than perhaps they should? You can see the extremely problematic implications of this down the road. The guarantee, hitherto, was that personal freedoms and civil rights were guaranteed by the government which could be voted out, or at least protested. But when the laws are set and enforced by the Environmental Security Council of the UN and the local police have no choice but to carry out there orders  - what then?

More information on the upcoming World Congress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Sustainability can be found here.

Why Don’t the Masses “get it”?: A Review of Peter Jacques’ ‘A General Theory of Climate Denial’.

In his paper ‘A General Theory of Climate Denial’ published in the May 2012 edition of Global Environmental Politics Peter Jacques seeks to argue that “denier” is an appropriate label for those who question the theory of catastrophic global warming, and further, that comparisons with holocaust denial are indeed valid. In the course of making his argument, Jacques makes a number of rather tenuous and dubious assumptions and statements, which should not go unremarked.

Jacques begins by asking why there is no generally agreed upon label for those who question the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). He notes that “skeptic” is widely used, but rejects that label because:

the skepticism in environmental skepticism is asymmetrical. As skeptics cast doubt on ecological science, they have an abiding faith in industrial
science and technology, free enterprise, and those great institutions of Western Enlightenment (9).

This really is a quite extraordinary argument to try and make. What Jacques is saying here is that faith in one field of inquiry or endeavour precludes legitimate skepticism in another! It’s like saying that because someone has faith in biological science, their skepticism regarding genetically modified crops is not  valid. Of course, people are generally skeptical of that which seems unlikely, and which there is insufficient evidence for. The very fact that so many people are skeptical of the theory of CAGW speaks to the yawning gap between claim and evidence.

This is disappointing enough. But Jacques’ central premise is itself fatally flawed. Like his argument over the “skeptic” label, it is quite simply invalid. Jacques makes a structural argument regarding skepticism. Although he admits that holocaust denial and skepticism over CAGW are not equivalent, he asserts that the denier label is appropriate because “climate denial is not an atrocity in the strict sense, but the framework fits” (10). In other words, the schemata of climate skepticism is comparable to holocaust denial.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of thought to see that this is simply not a sustainable position to take. The holocaust is an historical fact. When Earth Day Co-founder Pete McCloskey gave a speech about “the so-called holocaust” it aroused such anger because he was seen as having questioned a verifiable historical fact. You can still go to Auschwitz and other camps and see the machinery of death there. You can watch film of the camps and the wretched inmates. It did happen. But CAGW is very, very different than that because it has not yet happened (otherwise, what is the point of Jacques’ paper? To what end if catastrophe is already upon us?). Thus the argument that “climate denial is not an atrocity in the strict sense [like holocaust denial], but the framework fits” is palpably absurd. Being skeptical of claims that there will be a Third World War in the next few years is not comparable to denying that the Second World War took place.  This is self-evident, and one wonders why Jacques and others appear almost unwilling to acknowledge the distinction.

Sadly, this lack of rigor is characteristic of Jacques’ paper throughout. For example, he talks of “the email hacking of climate science computers at the University of East Anglia” (12). There is simply no evidence for the claim that computers at the University of East Anglia were hacked. The more likely explanation by far is that the files were leaked by a disgruntled employee or ex-employee at the university. Given that not only has no one been arrested for the supposed hack (police have not even named any suspects in relation to this case despite hundreds of hours of investigation), the copious circumstantial evidence, and the fact that over 80% of computer security breaches are internal,     there is simply no justification for making this statement.

In short, Jacques’ paper seems to lack rigor and makes a series of arguments which do not stand up to closer examination. This can perhaps be explained at least in part by an obviously ideologically-driven belief that “climate science” shows that the “world political economic structure” is “irreparably unsustainable” (15). Once again, we seem to end a paper on “climate  science” with the finding that capitalism and the political system of the world today have to go. Well well.

Flashback 1972 – David Suzuki: Humans are just “maggots” that “defecate all over the environment”

David Suzuki and the foundation he founded like to project a caring, sharing image of themselves as guardians of the planet, and of the next generation, protecting the environment for the benefit of the children. But how does David Suzuki really view humanity? What does he say when he’s with friends, and not in an interview for publication?

A fascinating clip from 1972 has surfaced, giving us a searing insight into how Suzuki really views humanity, and it’s not a pleasant picture. In the clip, Suzuki can be heard detailing his world view that people are “maggots” that “defecate all over the environment”.  Far from viewing children and the next children as a repository of hope and change, as he’s argued in published interviews, he Suzuki explains he sees babies as just like maggots that hatch from the egg, crawl out of the womb and then crawl around like maggots simply eating and defecating all over the environment.

A young woman can be heard murmuring in agreement ” . . . the world is overrun with maggots”, to which Suzuki nods in agreement and carries on.

Nice huh?

Climate of Fear: Terror Campaign Against Scientists Very Real.

It’s a commonplace of the mainstream media that climate scientists and environmentalists are operating in a “climate of fear” under a barrage of death threats from hardline skeptics, determined to get their way using violence and intimidation. The fact that the threats mentioned turn out to be largely non-existent almost seems neither here nor there for the media. The story is never followed up. But the fact remains that there is a climate of fear. There is a campaign of terror being waged against scientists and technicians. The difference is that this campaign is being waged by environmental extremists and unlike the sceptic “campaign” it is very, very real.

Earlier this week, Roberto Adinolfi, the head  of Ansaldo Nucleare an Italian nuclear engineering company, was shot in the leg by gunmen on a motorbike in a commando style “hit”.  He was, in other words, literally kneecapped in the street. The Guardian reported:

A source told Reuters two people on a motorbike wearing helmets fired three shots, hitting Adinolfi in the leg. The bullet fractured his right knee.

The Guardian: Italian Nuclear Power Firm Boss Wounded in Genoa Shooting.

The article notes that this style of attack is reminiscent of the tactics used by the Red Brigade, a left-wing guerilla movement active in the 1970s, but beyond that doesn’t have much to say about who might be responsible for this act of terrorism. However, other less visible news outlets were less coy:

GENOA, May 8 — Police believe the gunmen who wounded the head of a nuclear engineering company in Italy yesterday could be members of a radical Marxist-Leninist group or anarchists involved in eco-extremism, investigative sources said.

Local media said the attack could also be linked to Ansaldo Nucleare’s dealings in eastern Europe, where the company is selling its know-how on managing toxic waste after a national referendum rejected the use of nuclear power in Italy for the second time last year.

The Malayasian Insider: Italian Police Probe Red-Brigades Style Shooting

Nor is this at all unlikely. There is a substantial history in Italy of eco-extremist terrorism. As The Independent reported in 2010, when Italian police just managed to foil a terrorist bomb attack by environmental activists on a science facility:

On the night of 15 April [2010] local officers pulled over a car on one of the town’s quiet streets. Inside the vehicle they found a large cache of explosives, primed and ready to detonate. The three people in the car are alleged to have been members of the murky Italian anarchist group Il Silvestre, who were reportedly on a mission to blow up the nearby unfinished £55m IBM nanotechnology facility.

The apparent attack is believed to be part of a new co-ordinated wave of eco-terror on the continent. The IBM site is due to be opened next year and will be the most advanced centre for nano- and biological scientific research in Europe. According to reports, the eco anarchists Il Silvestre are opposed to all forms of nanotechnology. The group was formed in Tuscany and is considered by some to be one of the rising “eco-terror” groups in Europe, with a rigid cell structure, access to explosives, and a membership that supposedly has no qualms about killing to achieve its goals.

The Independent – Eco-Anarchists: A New Breed of Terrorists?

Notice that the target is a scientific institution and is targeted for that very reason. The threat here was not imaginary. It wasn’t alluded to in emails, or the result of overheated discussion in internet chat rooms. It was real and it was vicious. This was a planned, deliberate attempt to blow up a scientific institution for which environmental activists with links to international environmental groups like the Earth Liberation Front have been found guilty in a court of law.

In the Americas, similar terrorist attacks by environmental extremists have been carried out, largely unreported in the English-speaking media. Letterbombs have been sent to the science departments of Mexican universities engaged in research into nanotechnology, a technology which has the potential to revolutionise the treatment of cancer and other illnesses. The report on the Earth First! website quotes the perpetrator’s communique arguing an environmental justification for the attacks on scientists:

But what’s wrong with creating solar energy through modified nanoparticles? some will say. ITS answer: When these modified viruses affect the way we develop as the result of a nanobacteriological war, by some laboratory error, or by the explosion of nanocontamination that compromises the air, food, transportation, water, in short, the entire world . . . It is logical we will continue with these acts, and other scientists and the rest of technoswillology [sic] must pay the consequences of their actions.

Earth First! Newswire – More Bomb Attacks Against Nanotechnology in Mexico.

If there was any doubt remaining that the real danger to scientists and the public at large comes not from irked sceptics, but from eco-extremists, the FBI themselves have declared that eco-terrorism and animal rights activism are the “number one threat”. Nothing else, according to the FBI’s top man on domestic terrorism, compares to the threat posed by eco-extremism:

“The No. 1 domestic terrorism threat is the eco-terrorism, animal-rights movement,” said John Lewis, an FBI deputy assistant director and top official in charge of domestic terrorism

There is nothing else going on in this country, over the last several years, that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions, arsons, etc, that this particular area of domestic terrorism has caused,” Lewis testified to a Senate committee earlier this year.

Lewis said that from January 1990 to June 2004, “animal and environmental rights extremists have claimed credit for more than 1,200 [attacks], resulting in millions of dollars of damages and monetary loss.

CNN – Domestic Terror: Who’s Most Dangerous?

So the question “Is there a climate of fear? Is there a campaign of intimidation against scientists?” has one clear, unequivocal, unarguable answer: Yes, but it’s not coming from sceptics but from the fringes of the environmental movement. A handful of annoyed emails from global warming sceptics is not even comparable in scale or concern with the literally thousands of documented terrorist attacks by extreme environmental activists. Not that you’d know from reading the mainstream media.