Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Sep 11, 2020 24 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Stop politicizing a tragedy

California's top *forest* scientists say main causes of fires are

- 5x more wood fuel in forests due to 100+ years of fire suppression

- Drought (2012-16) that would have occurred w/o climate change
“Climate dries the [wood] fuels out & extends the fire season BUT IT'S NOT THE CAUSE OF THE INTENSITY of the fires. The cause of that is fire suppression and the existing debt of wood fuel.”

— Malcolm North, US Forest Service

forbes.com/sites/michaels…
The 2013-2014 Rim fire, which burned 250,000 acres, exposed FIVE TIMES MORE PEOPLE to unhealthy air conditions from smoke than it would have if the same area had been burned regularly with smaller “prescribed” fires.
You @GavinNewsom were Lt. Gov from 2011-19 during which time you:

- did nothing to improve forest management

- helped raise Calif. electric prices 6x more than rest of U.S.

- fought to replace our last nuclear plant with fossil fuels

- ran for governor
@GavinNewsom Now, you are:

- shamelessly politicizing a tragedy

- pretending to care about climate change while shutting down our last nuclear plant

- pretending to care about forests you neglected for the last decade

- running for president
Now you & @JerryBrownGov are scrambling to deflect attention from your catastrophic, decades-long failure to manage our forests

And you & Jerry are hustling to deflect attention from your efforts to kill off our largest source of zero-carbon energy, nuclear power
Is climate change "playing a role"?Sure. Scientists estimate that climate change made the 2012 - 16 drought *15-20%* worse & extended the fire season

BUT CLIMATE CHANGE DID NOT CREATE THE DROUGHT NOR RESULT IN 5X MORE WOOD FUEL IN OUR FORESTS!
Should we address climate change? Yes! And most of the US is doing just that by:

- switching from coal to natural gas

- keeping their nuclear plants operating

You @GavinNewsom & @JerryBrownGov talk non-stop about climate change AS P.R. COVER FOR KILLING OFF NUCLEAR POWER
@GavinNewsom @JerryBrownGov Climate change or no climate change, scientists say somewhere between 500,000 and 4M acres of forest land need to burn *annually* in California.

Doing that requires moving beyond the pyrophobia, alarmism, and politicization that got us into this mess in the first place.
@GavinNewsom @JerryBrownGov Even left-wing magazines in California were starting to cover forest fires in a sane and scientific way until @GavinNewsom @KamalaHarris started politicizing them
This is a terrific article by @SavorTooth from @MotherJones a left-wing magazine in SF from just last year:

"Drought, disease, and insects have left 100 million dead trees browning across California, and in some places, 90 percent of the trees have died"

motherjones.com/environment/20…
Good @ShogrenE @MotherJones in 2017 “We have 100 years of fire suppression that led to huge accumulation of fuel loads... As a result, our forests and woodlands are not healthy, and we’re getting more catastrophic fire behavior than we would otherwise.”

motherjones.com/environment/20…
"Between 4.4M & 12M acres burned each year in prehistoric California but btwn 1982-1998 managers burned, on average, 30,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres."

motherjones.com/environment/20…
Even @nytimes did a pretty good job here:

"With rare exceptions [prescribed burning] remains infrequent in the West. Calif intentionally burned just 50,000 acres in 2017... One study found that the state would need to burn or treat 20M acres

nytimes.com/2020/09/10/cli…
But all of that nuance went out the window this morning with this irresponsibly alarmist, one-sided & misleading travesty that @nytimes put on the front page

nytimes.com/2020/09/10/us/…
And then there's this nonsense propagated by a scientist & journalist who know better

The amount of carbon emitted and absorbed by forests goes up and down depending on how bad the fires were that year.

@Weather_West & @dwallacewells are trying to be clever in noting that the carbon emitted in a big fire year is larger than the emissions from energy production...
... but it doesn’t actually show anything important to either climate change or conservation since the carbon will be reabsorbed by the forest in the form of new vegetative growth in future years of less burning, when the forest is growing back.
If there is net emissions over a long period of time then what’s happening is deforestation, and if that’s our concern, and I think it is a bigger and more important one than climate change, then we measure that directly in terms of changes to land in California.
Again, climate change is real and we should address it.

But the over-the-top alarmism we are witnessing is polarizing, destructive, and anathema to both adaptation (e.g. forest management) and decarbonization.

/FIN
NEW:

- A large, well-managed California forest has survived the high-intensity Creek Fire raging around it

- Other forests, including in Yosemite, survived 2013, 2014, & 2018 megafires

- Cases prove that good forest management trumps climate change

forbes.com/sites/michaels…
People are missing what's important about fires & climate change so I made this short vid

- Well-managed forests surviving despite cl. ch.

- 5x more wood fuel in forests means mega-fires were likely w/o cc

We are not doomed to, nor need accept, megafires & mega-smoke!
"We live in one of the most fire-prone landscapes on Earth… Experts have been saying we need to restore fire at landscape scales for 30 years and we’re seeing the results of not taking that seriously"

"Land use drove Calif. fires more than warming — experts"

h/t @BjornLomborg

"Climate change played a minor role in the wildfires that devastated California in the past three years, a panel of experts said yesterday, blaming most of the damage on land management and development" Image
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More from @shellenberger

Sep 5
The European Parliament has blocked access to Public.News, apparently in response to TWITTER FILES-FRANCE. @vonderleyen @DelphineColard are ignoring Members of Parliament. This is the censorship that @EmmanuelMacron & @vonderleyen seek to impose on the world. x.com/v_joron/status…
.@DelphineColard and @vonderleyen are obligated by the European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure to provide prompt and reasoned replies to requests for information from Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Here is the right-of-reply email I sent. Image
@DelphineColard @vonderleyen Please read and share TWITTER FILES - FRANCE and see for yourself the censorship scheme pursued by @EmmanuelMacron:

Read 5 tweets
Sep 3
🚨TWITTER FILES – FRANCE

L'administration Trump et l'UE conduisent d’âpres négociations commerciales. Leur principal point d’achoppement?  La censure européenne des plateformes numériques. L'année dernière, Thierry Breton,  alors commissaire européen au marché intérieur, avait menacé Elon Musk de sanctions après l'annonce d'une interview avec Donald Trump sur X. Nombreux sont ceux qui tablent sur “l’effet Bruxelles”, la taille importante du marché de l'UE qui lui permet d’imposer sa réglementation au monde entier, y compris aux entreprises américaines, afin de procéder à la censure du contenu publié sur les plateformes, y compris par des citoyens américains résidant aux USA et protégés par le premier amendement de leur Constitution.

Des nouvelles informations extraites des TWITTER FILES laissent penser à une alliance objective du pouvoir politique français, de gouvernements successifs, de parlementaires, d’ONG affiliées à l'État, de médias mainstream subventionnés par l’Etat et d'institutions universitaires, travaillant à inciter le plus influent des réseaux sociaux à censurer des discours pourtant licites et à influencer sa « modération de contenu » bien au delà des frontières françaises et européennes.

Les TWITTER FILES et le rapport “La France a inventé le complexe industriel de censure” révèlent les origines de cette stratégie de censure holistique, pour ne pas dire totale, dont les pièces maîtresses sont les ONG  :

— Le président Macron a tenté avec insistance de contacter le PDG de Twitter de l’époque, Jack Dorsey ;
— Le timing de l’action de Macron suggère fortement une coordination avec des ONG afin d’obtenir davantage de censure et exiger la communication de données personnelles et sensibles des utilisateurs de Twitter ;
— L’enchaînement des événements indique des tentatives de contournement de la loi de la part de divers acteurs non étatiques.

L' enquête TWITTER FILES - FRANCE a été réalisée par @McmahonPascal et @battleforeurope, et éditée par @galexybrane et @shellenberger.
2. « Le président Macron veut envoyer un SMS à Jack »

Le 14 octobre 2020, la directrice des affaires publiques de Twitter pour la France et la Russie a écrit : « L'équipe du président Macron m'a demandé (encore !) le numéro de Jack parce que le président veut lui envoyer par SMS quelques mots de soutien concernant nos nouvelles politiques et fonctionnalités sur l'intégrité des élections. »

Problème : Dorsey ne communique pas ses coordonnées, même aux chefs d'État. « Je lui ai déjà indiqué qu'il pouvait lui envoyer un message privé. Je vais encore le réitérer, mais je voulais d'abord vérifier auprès de vous que Jack ne communique jamais son numéro », a poursuivi la cadre de Twitter.

Public News a demandé une réaction au président Macron. Cette demande est restée lettre morte.Image
3. « Macron n’envoie de SMS qu’à ses proches et à ses collègues… »

La première réponse au courriel de la directrice des affaires publiques France et Russie  est venue de vice-présidente monde des affaires publiques, qui a mis en copie Vijaya Gadde,à l’époque directrice juridique de Twitter et l’un des principaux censeurs de la plateforme.

Cette cadre écrit : « Je sais que Macron n'envoie des SMS qu'à ses proches et qu'il collabore fréquemment avec ses collègues et ses homologues (comme Angela Merkel) par SMS. Pourriez-vous demander à Jack s'il accepterait un SMS de Macron ? Nous demanderons à son équipe de ne communiquer le numéro de Jack qu'à Macron. Merci. »

Le bureau de Dorsey a répondu : « Je vais contacter Jack. Y a-t-il une alternative ? Pour info : Jack n'a pas de numéro de téléphone (je le jure) et seule son équipe rapprochée sait où le joindre. »

« J'ai insisté pour un message privé, mais apparemment, Macron n'utilise pas Twitter lui-même et souhaite écrire un message personnel. Peut-être sur Telegram ou Signal? »

Suit un examen de divers canaux de communication possibles: courrier électronique, Signal, Telegram et iMessage.

Pourquoi donc Macron était-il si empressé d’entrer en contact avec Dorsey ?Image
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Read 19 tweets
Sep 3
🚨TWITTER FILES – FRANCE

At this moment, the Trump administration is negotiating with the EU over final obstacles to a trade deal, one of which is European censorship of US social media platforms.

Many analysts believe the massive size of the EU will lead US social media firms to impose European censorship, including on Americans. Last year, the EU’s then-top digital censor, Thierry Breton, threatened action against Elon Musk after he announced a conversation on X with Donald Trump.

Now, new TWITTER FILES show a coordinated effort by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, legislators, and state-affiliated NGOs working together to force the world’s most influential social media platform to censor users for legal speech and influence Twitter’s worldwide “content moderation” for narrative control.

What’s more, TWITTER FILES - FRANCE reveals the birth of the censorship-by-NGO proxy strategy at the heart of the Censorship Industrial Complex:

— President Macron personally reached out to then-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey;
— The timing of Macron’s action strongly suggests coordination with NGOs on a pressure campaign to win more censorship and demand sensitive user data from Twitter;
— The pattern of events indicates potentially illegal activity by various actors.

The TWITTER FILES FRANCE investigation was led by @McmahonPascal and @battleforeurope, and edited by @galexybrane and @shellenberger.

We are releasing the Files here on X and simultaneously publishing a comprehensive report by Clerótte and Fazi on France’s invention of the Censorship Industrial Complex.
2. “President Macron wants to text Jack”

On October 14, 2020, Twitter’s Public Policy Director for France and Russia wrote, “President Macron's team has been asking me (again!) Jack's number because the President wants to text him some supporting words re our new policies and functionalities on Election integrity.”

There was one issue, though – Dorsey did not give out his contact information, even to heads of state. “I have already advised that he could send him a DM. I'll push back again, but wanted to double check with you first that indeed Jack never shares his number,” the policy director wrote.

Public requested a response from President Macron and did not hear back.Image
3. “Macron only sends texts to people he is close to and works frequently with…”

The first reply came from Twitter's Global Vice President of Public Affairs, who copied Vijaya Gadde, one of the platform's chief censors.

This Global Vice President of Public Affairs noted, “I know that Macron only sends texts to people he is close to and works frequently with colleagues and senior govt. leaders (like Angela Merkel) over text. [redacted] - could you pls. ask Jack if he would be willing to accept a text from Macron, and we will ask Macron's team only to share Jack's number with Macron? Thanks.”

Dorsey’s office replied, “Will circle w Jack. Is there an alternative? FYI: Jack doesn’t have a phone number (I swear) and only immediate team has his contact info to get a hold of him.”

“I am really pushing for DM but apparently Macron doesn’t use Twitter by himself and wants to do a personal note. Maybe a telegram or signal.”

This was followed by a review of various potential communication channels, including email, Signal, Telegram, and iMessage.

But why was Macron so desperate to get in contact with Dorsey?Image
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Read 19 tweets
Aug 31
Conservative populists lead the polls in Europe and so governments are censoring, banning, and prosecuting them. Chancellor @_FriedrichMerz & President @EmmanuelMacron are violating NATO’s charter. Americans should ask why we’re spending billions to defend such totalitarianism. Image
France is on the verge of preventing its presidential frontrunner @MLP_officiel from running for office
@MLP_officiel "In order to save democracy, we must censor, ban, and prosecute the opposition" Image
Read 5 tweets
Aug 26
Industrial wind energy doesn't kill whales, insisted the media. But a new report by a top government scientist reveals that the Biden admin. broke the law in approving Empire Wind, while Revolution Wind is in a crucial "magical space for marine animals" at risk of extinction. Image
For years, the Biden Administration insisted that offshore wind energy projects complied with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the 1970 law that requires government agencies to use the best available science to evaluate the ecological impacts of major projects before the government can approve them.

But now, a scientific report, which reflects the official position of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), reveals that the approval of the Empire Wind project off New York and New Jersey violated this law.Image
The scientist who authored the report works for the U.S. government’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which is also known as NOAA Fisheries. It is part of the Department of Commerce, and which serves in an advisory capacity to the Department of the Interior on marine issues, including offshore wind development. The person spoke exclusively to Public.Image
Read 12 tweets
Aug 20
In response to "fact checkers," Facebook last year banned @EpochTimes for saying arctic sea ice wasn't declining. But @EpochTimes was right. Even @guardian now admits it. Mark Zuckerberg @finkd — you owe an apology to everyone you censored. Image
Most self-appointed fact-checkers are liars. They spread disinformation and then demanded censorship on the basis of it. They did this with everything from the Hunter Biden Laptop to transgenderism to the Great Barrier Reef. They should be shut down.Image
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They lied about the growing coral on the Great Barrier Reef and got Facebook to censor Australia's top scientist on the issue.Image
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Read 6 tweets

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