UK MEP'S CALL FOR TRUMP TO DUMP THE PARIS CLIMATE DEAL

This piece sets out a letter signed by 20 MEP's calling for President Trump to take the USA out of the Paris Climate Agreement. We should be thankful that at last some MEP's are prepared to stand up and be counted, even though they are a very small minority and will not be able to affect EU policy.

THE SO-CALLED MARCH FOR SCIENCE BY THE LEFT-WING RABBLE

A report from CFact.

There they were in steady rain, tens of thousands of largely left-wing protestors, activists, and yes, probably a few actual scientists mixed in here or there, all gathered for a so-called “March for Science” in the USA capital.

Not surprisingly, the march surely wasn’t about that. If anything, it was a “March for Silence” on real climate facts, and a rain-soaked but well-publicized call to keep the federal dollars rolling, as long as they keep going in the wrong direction.

The event, held not coincidentally on Earth Day 2017, started with a mega-rally at the foot of the Washington Monument. Then, after about four hours of mostly political speeches (and some music), the marchers slogged their way up soggy Constitution Avenue to Capitol Hill where everyone quickly dispersed to find someplace to dry off.

There were signs that actually had something to do with science. Some talked about vaccines and cancer research, a few talked about marine conservation, and others just extolled the general virtues of progress. Hey, who can be against the end of Polio and Small Pox?

But it didn’t take much searching to find the overwhelming message of the marchers: (1) Anti-Trump (2) Anti-budget cutting and (3) Anti-Climate Deniers.

One marcher was holding a sign denouncing fascism but declined to be interviewed on camera because she said she was a government employee.

Another said that even if NASA satellites show no significant warming over the last 20 years, she wouldn’t give up her belief in catastrophic global warming … well, just because.
Indeed, as we anticipated in a pre-march column published in Investor’s Business Daily, this “March for Science” was much more about venting against any potential rollback of Obama-era climate regulations and hysteria, than it was about advocating for genuine scientific inquiry.
To see more of CFACT’s coverage of the march, check out my colleague Marc Morano’s humorous wrap-up over at Climate Depot. He had wall-to-wall coverage of the march.
And to think, hundreds of thousands more are expected this coming Saturday in D.C. for the even more radical People’s Climate March. At least the forecast is drier.

SEA ICE OFF NEWFOUNDLAND THICKEST IN LIVING MEMORY

This article gives the background to the headline. What is self-evident is that the climate is variable and extreme conditions are quite a common occurrence. Climate alarmists try to create a drama out of every extreme that comes along.

CONSERVATIVES CUT FOREIGN OFFICE "CLIMATE STAFF" NUMBERS BY 50%

Here is the detail of this good news story. Let's hope that if they win the current election they will go even further and end this madness. We simply cannot afford to employ all these people when the country is in so much debt. I bet the majority of voters have no idea that we employ all these "climate staff" in the first place.

EU POLICY - IF THE SCIENCE GOES AGAINST POLICY, IGNORE THE SCIENCE

That would seem to be the stance according to this article recently published in the Times. Now they have been exposed ignoring scientific research in one area why should we trust them in other areas such as climate change. A good job we are leaving and a pity we can't leave more quickly.

CANADIAN COURT SAYS CLIMATE SCIENTIST WAS NOT DEFAMED

This article explains the background to the case. It looks like a good day for press freedom and freedom of speech. Sometimes, as in this case, judges can get it wrong. Mark Steyn must be pleased to see this.

WISHFUL THINKING BY LEADING UN CLIMATE ALARMIST

Here is a laughable piece of nonsense about an initiative by Christiana Figueres, a leading figure in the UN. I draw it to your attention to demonstrate the feeble arguments being made to bolster the flagging climate alarmists argument. Here is a short extract:

"During the conference, Figueres reiterated the “clear parallel” between progress on gender equality and on climate change over the last six years. She noted evidence suggests that a greater presence of women in the boardroom and in senior leadership roles can help increase the corporate focus on climate change, and emphasized that the UNFCCC has recognized the important role of women in addressing climate change through its ‘Momentum for Change: Women for Results’ initiative. The ‘Two Degrees of Change’ initiative aims to encourage women to raise climate issues with their company boards and to call on companies and investors to act on climate change".

So what is Figueres saying - that women are more likely to buy into the climate alarmist argument?  She has put forward no evidence for this. She simply trots it out as a fact and then assumes the rest of her ideas as following on from this unproven fact. The women she meets are probably all on her wavelength, or, more likely too polite to argue with her, or too in awe of her status to challenge her. But, out in the real world she would find there are plenty of women who are just as sceptical as a good deal of men.

AS THE CO2 CUTS START TO BITE WE WILL SOON REGRET THE CLIMATE CHANGE ACT

This piece discusses the proposition that cutting CO2 emissions is a "win-win" for both the climate and the economy. This is often put forward by alarmists who want to win over those who are put off by the argument that  cutting CO2 is costly and will make us less competitive.  Unfortunately for alarmists that argument is right, though of course it is possible to both cut emissions and become more competitive by replacing coal with cheap gas, but that was just a lucky coincidence. Here is one quote from the article:

"The UK (in common with other industrialised countries) has continued to lose manufacturing jobs. Those jobs, as is well known, are now being done in China and other emerging economies, but Brits still consume the products. In other words, no matter how good the country’s performance may look on paper, global carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise."

So we shouldn't kid ourselves that if we continue to make cuts we will continue to grow the economy. Anyone should see that cutting will get ever harder and more costly as more and more industries close due to adverse energy costs. More and more imports will be needed. It is not "win-win", but more like "lose-lose"!

HERE'S A PEAK AT THE ESTABLISHMENT SUPPORTING CLIMATE ALARMISM

This article looks at the enormous climate alarmist establishment. But we should not be too dismayed by it as it is propping up a house of cards. We are lucky if we live in democracies where there is the freedom to put over alternative views. Despite the way that climate alarmism has become so dominant there is still a great deal of scepticism out there and for good reason. Here in the UK we have Lord Lawson and his Global Warming Policy Foundation which has become increasingly influential. Also Paul Homewood's blog Not a Lot Of People Know That which continually exposes the lies and exaggeration that are being put out. Without the internet things would be a lot worse.

NEW RESEARCH SAYS MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD WAS AS WARM AS THE PRESENT

This article highlights the new research. What it means is that we still underestimate natural variability and until we understand that we are unable to say whether man's contribution is important or trivial. To say anything different is no more than guesswork.

YET ANOTHER PREDICTION OF THE "END OF OIL"

This piece looks at the latest attempt to predict the "end of oil". Like all the previous ones it is likely to be premature. It is similar to all those religious fundamentalists who predict the "end of the world".

WHITE HOUSE FLOATS EXCUSES TO BREAK TRUMP PROMISE TO CANCEL PARIS CLIMATE TREATY

This article looks at the good reasons why President Trump should keep his election promise to quit the Paris Treaty and explains why some in the White House want him to stay in it. Shame on them!

EUROPE TO HAVE A LATE COLD SNAP

This piece tells us that central Europe is going to have a late cold spell due to winds coming down from the Arctic. This was the opposite of what was being forecast a few weeks ago.

MATT RIDLEY EXPOSES THE GREEN ACTIVISTS PLANS AND FAILURES

Matt Ridley's article explains how the ban on neonicotinoids has been a failure like so many other attempts by green activists. He looks at the activists play plan to see how they promote their dubious causes, and very clever it is too.

SCOTT PRUITT CALLS FOR USA TO EXIT PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

Date: 14/04/17

• The Washington Post

President Trump’s top environment official called for an “exit” from the historic Paris agreement Thursday, the first time such a high-ranking administration official has so explicitly disavowed the agreement endorsed by nearly 200 countries to fight climate change.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, left, shakes hands with coal miners during a visit to Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company’s Harvey Mine in Sycamore, Pa., on April 13. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

It seems that the doubts expressed a few days ago were wrong. The USA may yet lead the world back to sanity on the great CO2 scam that has enveloped it.

Speaking with “Fox Friends,” Pruitt commented, “Paris is something that we need to really look at closely. It’s something we need to exit in my opinion.”

“It’s a bad deal for America,” Pruitt continued. “It was an America second, third, or fourth kind of approach. China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030. We front-loaded all of our costs.”

Pruitt had called the Paris accord a “bad deal” in the past but does not appear to have previously gone so far as to call for the United States to withdraw.

The Trump administration has previously said it is currently reviewing its position on climate change and energy policy and remains noncommittal, for now, on whether it will follow through on the president’s campaign pledge to “cancel” the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“You might’ve read in the media that there was much discussion about U.S. energy policy and the fact that we’re undergoing a review of many of those policies,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in Texas on Thursday, according to prepared remarks. “It’s true, we are and it’s the right thing to do.”

Amid this uncertainty, the statement aligns Pruitt with a more hard-line approach held by some in the Trump administration, rather than the more moderate take of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had said in his confirmation hearing that the U.S. should have a “seat at the table” in the Paris negotiations.

Tillerson’s former company, the oil giant ExxonMobil, has also supported the Paris accord, and in late March wrote a letter to the White House reiterating its view that “the United States is well positioned to compete within the framework of the Paris agreement, with abundant low-carbon resources such as natural gas, and innovative private industries, including the oil, gas, and petrochemical sectors.”

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE DOES CLIMATE CHANGE SCARE SERIES

The National Geographic Magazine are no doubt hoping that their  series of articles highlighting the supposedly "scary" aspects of climate change will attract extra readers. In fact these scares are false and can easily be debunked as shown in these excellent blogs by Paul Homewood.

PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD TURNS INTO A HOUSE OF CARDS

Paris Climate Accord Is A Dead Deal Walking As $100 Billion Climate Fund DisappearsThe American Interest, 11 April 2017
 Shocking news—the magic $100 billion climate fund appears not to be taking shape! Even optimistic estimates sat the fund is $40 billion short, and developing countries say that understates the problem.

The Financial Times:
 Climate ministers from Europe, India, Brazil and South Africa have gone to Beijing in recent weeks, hoping to sustain momentum from the Paris talks despite the Trump administration’s dismantling of US regulations meant to limit American emissions.
 But discussions have quickly run up against the issue of financing.  “Developed countries have not met their commitments. In their reports a lot of their commitment is in the form of development aid. That doesn’t meet the commitment to contribute to new funds,” China’s top climate change negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, told a briefing on Tuesday. “A lot of countries don’t want to chip in. I said to the European minister: that’s your problem as developed countries. It’s your responsibility to work together and sort it out.”

First world donors have been busily relabeling other foreign aid as contributions to the climate kitty. For developing countries, this is a cheat — they expect $100 billion in new money.

Or, to put it more accurately, they are not nearly stupid and naive enough to believe the lies Western diplomats tell when trying to bamboozle naive green voters at home that they are “Doing Something” about climate change. So they don’t really expect all that money, but hope to use these commitments to pry something out of the West. Also, since the West will certainly default on these bogus commitments, developing countries have all the justification they need to blow off their own commitments when the time comes.

This, one notes, is the house of cards that the last Administration claimed was a big piece of its legacy.

AIR POLLUTION NOT TO BLAME FOR THOUSANDS OF DEATHS

This article exposes the fraudulent claims that air pollution is a major cause of death in modern cities.

Ross McKitrick, a University of Guelph economist, has taken a close look at the usefulness of the computer methods producing these smog death figures. First he took Toronto’s computer model and gave it data from the 1960s, when air pollution was noticeably worse than today. Back-testing is a common way to judge a computer model’s reliability. If it cannot explain what has already happened, then it’s usefulness in explaining the future is highly suspect.

The output was nonsense. In February 1965, for instance, the computer model claimed more people died from air pollution than died in the real world from all causes.

“The results I got suggest the models are implausible,” McKitrick told me. “They’re attributing over 100 percent of all deaths to air pollution. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Given the obvious flaws in existing computer models, McKitrick created his own simulation. With two Scottish academics he gathered 20 years of data from five Canadian cities – a far larger data set than used by the Ontario Medical Association – and performed a more sophisticated computer test. These results show air pollution to be almost entirely irrelevant to hospital admissions or death.

According to McKitrick, even if all forms of air pollution miraculously disappeared from Ontario over night, there would be no noticeable decline in the death rate. Claims of a massive death toll do not stand up to scrutiny.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA DEMOLISHES ITS LAST COAL FIRED POWER STATION

Obsessed by ideas of cutting CO2 emissions, South Australia's government is the test bed for what happens when you rely too much on renewable energy. This is the answer. 

US COURT TO DECIDE ON CLIMATE REGULATION ROLL BACK

This piece explains. It seems the president is having to fight in the courts to get most of his policies through. This is the strength of democratic nations which have so many checks and balances. It is also a frustration when voters vote for change and it gets blocked.

DOUBTS OVER SCOTT PRUITT'S WILLINGNESS TO DRAIN THE SWAMP APPEARING

Scott Pruitt is the man the president has put in charge of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and This article looks at the actions of Scott Pruitt and suggests that he has become rather faint-hearted since his appointment and he is not wanting to rock the climate boat and be labelled an "extremist". This is all rather worrying, if true.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER LARGE MAIL PIECE ON GREEN DISASTERS

This piece by Booker is a tour-de-force on the government's "green" policies, including the latest about turn on diesel cars. It's a really big piece in the print copy, though not so easy to find on line.

IS THE UK READY TO RENEGE ON EU CLIMATE TARGETS?

This article suggests that they are. Just one more benefit of brexit, giving the UK the flexibility to gain a competitive edge over our former EU partners. Competition is what drives the world and by competing, the nations become leaner and fitter. The EU has lead to complacent uncompetitive nations. If the UK makes a big success over brexit this will make it hard for the remaining nations to keep the EU going, as others will try to emulate the UK. 

ARCTIC OF THE 1930s AND 1940s JUST AS WARM AS TODAY

This article looks at the natural influences on the Arctic which seem to be able to account for most of the changes that have taken place.

SMART METERS - ADVERTISING WATCH DOG RULING ANNOUNCED

Regular readers may remember my article on smart meters a few weeks ago. In it I referred to a series of adverts on TV which proclaimed how accurate they were. Other articles such as this one and this one add to the picture. As a result I decided to complain to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) which is supposed to regulate adverts to ensure they are honest.

The essence of my complaint was that the smart meter ads focused on the accuracy of smart meters; however recent studies and complaints from the public have shown that the meters are unreliable and can give wildly inaccurate readings.

I have just received their response, which reads:

"We have carefully considered the points you raised but have decided that the advertising rules have not been broken on this occasion and we won't be taking further action on your complaint. This is because we consider that the ad is likely to be interpreted as simply highlighting the perceived benefits of the smart meter (in giving up-to-date usage figures via a device that is more accessible and avoid being charged estimated bills and consequently avoid the need to submit estimated readings or wait for remuneration). We acknowledge that smart meters may not be seen as beneficial to all, and that some customers may have not had a good experience with their smart meters so far. However we consider that this is a matter of individual customer experience, and the ad itself is unlikely to exaggerate the benefits of smart meters. We therefore consider that the ad is unlikely to materially mislead customers"

You will note that they have not specifically addressed my complaint that they highlighted the accuracy of the smart meters knowing that there were serious doubts over their accuracy which even their own spokesmen acknowledged.

I have appealed the ruling as follows:

Dear Ms Marchant,
Thank you for your email detailing the outcome of my complaint. I have read it carefully and do not believe it has addressed the actual point of my complaint which was that the advertisers highlighted one particular attribute of their product - that they were very accurate. They did so knowing that their product was in fact unreliable.
Here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-4291166/Not-smart-New-energy-meters-won-t-work-1-3-homes.html is an article which gives evidence to support my complaint. Below are relevant excerpts from the article.
"An industry insider admitted to Money Mail that suppliers are struggling to meet the deadline because smart meter technology isn't advanced enough.
The industry is frantically working to improve the technology, but we don't yet have solutions for all the problems. We need more time. By rushing, mistakes will happen."
In your ruling you say how you "consider that the ad is likely to be interpreted", but my complaint is specifically about the claim of accuracy. It is on that point that I believe the ad fails the objective test of not misleading the public.
Please will you address this point specifically in the light of the evidence.
Yours sincerely,
Derek Tipp

LISTEN TO THE LATEST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

This post includes a link to the conference itself for those who wish to listen to the various contributions. In particular the excellent speech by Roger Helmer MEP is set out in full. Well worth a look, it is good to see this conference becoming mainstream. 

ROY SPENCER GIVES A BALANCED VIEW ON THE GW DEBATE

Roy Spencer seems to me to be a very sensible and level-headed person who weighs things up in a balanced way. His latest blog piece is very much in that mould. Roy and his colleague John Christy are very much in the front line of climate research and their data from Satellite measurements of temperature have formed their view that man is not likely to be causing serious climate change by emitting CO2. If it were not for people like Roy, the catastrophic view of climate change would be much harder to refute. I salute their courage.

STANDING UP FOR FREE SPEECH IN SCIENCE AND JOURNALISM

Here is a great article that encapsulates the bed-rock of what a democracy should be. If we depart from these principles then we are on the slippery slope to a different form of government; not one that most of us would want to live in. Below is a short extract to give a flavour of the article.

" Science has a particular disdain for authority, as does journalism. It’s a real thing not to be paid lip-service to by a committee as they hand down judgement. We are not talking about journalists questioning if carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but about views on climate trends, frequency of extreme events, climate sensitivity. Views on these are varied, each justifiable, yet are often subject to complaints to press regulators. The fact that so many complaints fail shows how many do not understand journalism."

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE "YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERT" RETORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Those who have swallowed the idea that we are about to experience dangerous climate change often use the retort "you're not an expert" and therefore should not make comments on it.

This article discusses this proposition and concludes that the ramifications of climate change policies are subjects that affect all of us and so we have as much right to make comment on it as we have to question any other aspects of policy. Quite right! 

CALL IN THE RED TEAMS TO SAVE CLIMATE SCIENCE

This piece explains the issue of how climate science has been hijacked by politicians through grant funding to get the answers that suit their agenda. The Red Teams are groups of sceptical scientists who critically review the work and publish independent reports on it. The only question is - can we be sure no one has bribed the Red Team?