NOW GERMANY WANTS TO GIVE UP COAL

Here are the details. How ridiculous that the German government keeps changing its mind on energy policy, and how expensive it will be for the German people. Whatever one believes about the global warming hypothesis it is complete nonsense to behave like this.

NEW GAS DISCOVERY IN THE NORTH SEA

"Terrible news" say Friends of the Earth. Brilliant news say the vast majority of British people! It is a bit awkward for the government who, on the one hand say they agree with Friends of the Earth, while on the other hand want to get re-elected.

IS CHINA ON THE VERGE OF THE NEXT SHALE REVOLUTION?

This article looks at the new shale gas extraction technique developed by the Chinese to extract gas from rocks that are over 2 miles below the surface, and unreachable by the usual fracking process. Why aren't the green activists over there? 

WILL THE USA TURN TO SOCIALISM AFTER TRUMP?

This post looks at the political change taking place in the USA since the mid-term elections when the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives. As you will read, climate change is high on their agenda, mixed with a large dose of socialism. If such policies were put into action it would cause serious damage to the USA economy.

COULD FICTION FORECAST THE TRUTH IN THE MAD POLITICS OF CLIMATE?

Every so often the Pentagon comes up with a half-baked theory about how climate change is going to alter the geopolitical landscape. The intriguing Norwegian TV show “Okkupert” (“Occupied”) might be a better guide to understanding how such instability could already be brewing on the USA;s northern border.

Americans might be forgiven for not knowing that Norway, with a population of five million, is the world’s 11th largest oil exporter and the third largest exporter of natural gas. They might also need a second or two to realize that this sounds a lot like the Canadian province of Alberta, with four million people and fossil energy reserves second only to Saudi Arabia’s and Venezuela’s.

In the show, which is available on Netflix , Norway’s Greens come to power and announce plans to end fossil energy production. Norway’s European Union neighbours, while keen to seem green, are not keen to do without Norway’s energy. They quietly support a Russian campaign of intimidation that amounts to a creeping takeover, while Norway’s politicians, eager to avoid outright fighting, straddle and prevaricate. Anyone who remembers the name Vidkun Quisling will appreciate why this theme might resonate with a Norwegian audience.

Now back to Alberta: In the provincial capital of Edmonton, house prices have been falling for three years. Car sales are drying up. One-third of Calgary’s office buildings are empty. Though production is booming, Alberta’s oil was recently selling for barely $10 a barrel—an 80% discount to the world price. Why? Because opposition from neighbouring provinces has blocked construction of needed pipelines.

In a drastic effort to prop up prices, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley in December imposed mandatory production cuts on her province’s largest oil producers. She also announced plans, using taxpayer money, to buy 7,000 railcars to get oil to market, never mind that shipping by rail is expensive and risky.

In the middle is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, dithering between his green supporters and his desire to placate Alberta and keep its money flowing. (Life is tough for green politicians)

He impulsively committed to spend $4.5 billion to rescue a U.S.-backed pipeline whose expansion has been blocked by a Canadian court. At the same time, he has mused that Alberta’s oil-sands production should be phased out in a “generation.” His party is pushing a bill to empower greens to block future pipelines. It supports a U.N. treaty that would increase the veto power of native tribes. It backs a continuing ban on supertankers in Canadian ports.

Unlike the U.S., where secession was shown to be illegal in the 1860s, a 2000 Canadian law spells out the steps for provinces to declare independence. Ms. Notley has tried to play down secession talk, but the politics are complicated. Fellow Canadians may not be ready to give up their energy-rich lifestyles, or the foreign oil imports that make them possible. But they disapprove of Alberta’s participation in an acrid industry and their voters are willing to pay a price for it.

To the east, Quebec’s premier says Alberta’s “dirty energy” has no “social acceptability.” To the west, British Columbia’s premier was elected on a platform of killing a new pipeline project favoured by Alberta.

Meanwhile, protest rallies have become a near-daily occurrence in the oil-rich province. Two truck convoys to Ottawa are planned for February, including one explicitly modelled on the French “yellow vests” movement. Ms. Notley herself faces an uphill re-election fight in May. She was already wrong-footed once into backing a carbon tax scheme that was supposed to ease the way for more pipelines. Now her opponent is challenging Canada’s highly symbolic “equalization” scheme, which has shifted hundreds of billions from Alberta to Quebec over two decades.

Only a quarter of Albertans say they favour independence, but that may be beside the point. The province’s future promises to be one of barely contained civil war with its fellow Canadians. If $13 billion a year in payola can’t appease Quebec, the cause is probably beyond salvaging. A Donald Trump re-election could invite talk of becoming the 51st U.S. state. If Obama-like pipeline opponents are returned to power in Washington in 2020, the squeeze will be even worse.

Then what? A weak state with enormous fossil energy resources caught in the West’s culture wars over climate and energy? The cash cow of Canada up for grabs? We could spin lots of scenarios.

Full post

CLIMATE ALARMIST LOSES PRESS COMPLAINT AND MAKES BIG FUSS

This article explains what happened. Instead of accepting the ruling, Bob Ward, a notorious climate alarmist, has complained about the judgment, in the hope of putting pressure on the press complaints body. Let's hope they stand up to his bullying and harassment.

SAHARA GREENS BY 8% OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS SAYS NEW STUDY

New study shows that, contrary to what the mainstream media tell us,  the Sahara desert is getting greener. This is a fact that the doomsday-obsessed media, activists and ruling politicians fear will become publicly known.

DON'T BAN PLASTIC BAGS

This article gives many reasons for not banning plastic bags. There is little doubt that they have been demonised as part of the campaign against fossil fuels, even though they are actually more environmentally friendly than the paper alternatives. It is not using plastic which causes environmental problems, it is the disposal issues.

TOP CLIMATE HYPOCRITES USING MORE PRIVATE JETS THAN EVER

This report explains how the world's 'elite' are arriving in Davos for the World Economic Forum in thousands of private jets spewing all that CO2 into the atmosphere and ten announcing that we must all cut down on our emissions of said CO2 in order to 'save the planet'. Sheer hypocrisy! Don't they realise that we are all seeing their behaviour and most of us take from it that they are not really serious - it is all an act. Not even a good one! 

HAS THE PENTAGON BECOME A WACKO LIBERAL GROUP?

‘Secret’ Pentagon Report: Climate Catastrophe Due Next Year
Paul Matthews, Climate Scepticism, 18 January 2019

Is it not rather worrying that the defence of the USA is in the hands of people who produce such garbage?
 

A classic from the Guardian/Observer archives, from February 2004:

"Now the Pentagon tells Bush "Climate change will destroy us""

The article is so absurd that it hardly needs any commentary. After explaining that Britain will be Siberian by next year according to a suppressed report, it goes on to claim that the ‘findings’ of the report will embarrass the climate-denying president:
 
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change ‘should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern’, say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is ‘plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately’, they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.
 
Later on we are told more details of the catastrophes that will occur by 2020:
 
Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 ‘catastrophic’ shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. ‘This is depressing stuff,’ he said. ‘It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.’

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. ‘We don’t know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,’ he said.
 
Of course the authors of the report, Randall and Schwartz, aren’t climate scientists. But their report gets the glowing endorsement of two leading UK climate scientists — Sir John Houghton, former boss of the Met Office and IPCC co-chair, and former IPCC chair Bob Watson:
 
Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office – and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism – said: ‘If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.’

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon’s dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

‘Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It’s going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush’s single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,’ added Watson.
 
Hugely embarrassing indeed, but for Watson, not Bush. Why would a senior scientist like Bob Watson say that a report claiming global catastrophe by 2020 is non-wacko and should be taken seriously? Well there’s a hint that politics may be a factor, later on in the article:
 
So dramatic are the report’s scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush’s stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry’s cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed ‘Yoda’ by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence’s push on ballistic-missile defence.
 
Is it not rather worrying that the defence of the USA is in the hands of people who produce such garbage?
 
This Pentagon report was cited in a recent article Climate Change and National Security, Part II: How Big a Threat is the Climate?
 
The consequences of abrupt, severe warming for national security are obvious in general, if unclear in the specifics. In 2003, the Defense Department asked a contractor to explore such a scenario. The resulting report outlined the offensive and defensive national security strategies countries may adopt if faced with abrupt climate change, and highlighted the increased risk of inter- and intra-state conflict over natural resources and immigration. Although the report may be off in its imagined timeframe (positing abrupt climate change by 2020), the world it conjures is improbable but not outlandish.
 
This is a bit like the doomsday cults that say that the world is going to end this year, and then when that doesn’t happen, say it’s going to happen next year.
 
Even more comically, a few paragraphs before acknowledging that the 2003 report got it wrong, the article claims that “Scientists can predict the consequences of climate change to 2050 with some measure of certainty”.
 
Full post & comments

FAKE SCIENCE UNDERMINES THE ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA AGAIN

This article highlights yet another example of weak science being allowed to get through the peer review process and taint the whole area. How can it be allowed to happen? 

TIME TO RE-EVALUATE CLIMATE SCIENCE

This article looks at the reasons for doing so. Of course it can only be done in a major way if someone with a desire to do it is in an important enough position to order it to happen. That person, of course, is President Donald Trump, but he needs to act quickly. 

UK NUCLEAR POWER PLANS ARE IN BIG TROUBLE

This article explains how the nuclear power plans in the UK are failing. The consequences of this are serious for the UK's energy and climate change policies, both of which are in big trouble.

THE BATTLE FOR A NEW WORLD BANK PRESIDENT

Terence Corcoran
Financial Post, 12 January 2019

The surprise early resignation of World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on Monday has produced a flurry of reactions from the bank’s supporters and critics, although none have come close to outlining the best option for a post-Second World War institution that long ago outlived its original purposes.

Does a 21st-century world economy awash in massive flows of investment cash really need a meddling, bureaucratic, multi-tentacled, government-backed fake financial institution that has, under Kim, been transformed into (among other things) a raging green lending machine that aims to deny developing countries poverty-relieving investment in fossil fuels and other resources in favour of windmills and solar panels?

The most radical idea circulating through the media portals in the wake of Kim’s announcement is that it is time to end the United States’ “stranglehold” on the presidency of the institution. All of the bank’s 12 presidents to date have been U.S. nationals, the result of a complicated history of global power alignments and the fact that America is the bank’s largest funder.

Kim, however, was hardly one to accuse of putting the bank in an America First stranglehold. His 2012 nomination by former president Barack Obama was heralded particularly by the moderate left, from Bill Clinton to development economist Jeffrey Sachs, who congratulated Obama for “nominating a world-class development leader.” 

While some developing nation’s objected that it was time to let a non-American lead the bank, Kim sailed through to unanimous approval by the board of directors. He breezed on to a second-term extension in 2016, despite some objections about continued U.S. domination.

But that was then. With Donald Trump in the Oval Office, a more aggressive movement to overturn five decades of U.S. domination is underway. “The U.S shouldn’t get to pick the head of the World Bank. And not just because Trump is president,” said a Slate commentary by Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Media reports warn that Kim’s departure, three years before the end of his term, “tees up a battle between the Trump administration… and critics seeking to break the U.S. stranglehold” on the bank’s presidency.

Maybe the critics of U.S. domination should be granted their wish. 

Under Kim, the World Bank accelerated its transformation from a do-gooding financial institution nominally dedicated to fighting poverty by aiding development in Third World countries, into an environmental crusader. No more loans for coal projects, Kim decreed — even as China, India and others were expanding coal production. In 2016, the World Bank introduced a “fundamental shift” in policy from fighting poverty to fighting fossil fuels. In 2017, the bank announced it would end financial support for oil and gas extraction by 2019.

Kim was not the first bank president to overturn the World Bank’s objectives. He was merely an extension of a policy drift introduced years earlier under previous leaders selected by Washington.

Back in 2003, the bank produced a review of “extractive industries” and concluded that it should get out of all funding of investments in petroleum and coal. The bank’s then president was James Wolfensohn, a Bill Clinton nominee and a global operator who — as FP Comment columnist Peter Foster has previously pointed out — was an associate of the late Canadian Maurice Strong, mastermind of modern United Nations green globalism.

When he took over, Wolfensohn began squeezing the bank into his and Strong’s extreme-green stranglehold. One journalist would later describe how “Wolfensohn was critical of Bank projects he considered environmentally harmful … Strong watched approvingly as Wolfensohn instituted environmentalist-friendly policies, including the appointment of environmental NGOs to World Bank advisory committees.”

Ah, those ugly Americans. They gotta be stopped. Get them out of there.

The global political scramble to replace Kim promises to be an ideological free-for-all. Politicians in developing countries want more control over the bank, radicals on the left and right want to shut it down, while Western globalists and an army of crawling bureaucrats and UN operatives are keen to keep the operation going. Meanwhile, some of the bank’s former supporters — including former World Bank research administrator Deepak Lal — believe the bank has become an obstacle to growth in developing countries.

As for Trump, he may or may not want to shake the place up. Some members of his team have in the past suggested closing the World Bank down. John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, has suggested it should be scaled back, if not shuttered completely.
 


 

THE IMAGINARY CLIMATE CONSENSUS

Here is another excellent video from Tony Heller in which he debunks the so-called "climate consensus".  Tony seems to have perfected the you tube video with his distinctive laid-back style and packed full of information, including the old clips from newspapers etc. All in a length of around ten minutes. A devastating demolition of climate alarmist dogma. 

BP JUST DISCOVERED A BILLION BARRELS OF OIL IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

So much for the decline in the use of fossil fuels. This is the reality on the ground (or should I say under it) 
CNBC, 8 January 2019

BP discovers 1 billion barrels of oil at its Thunder Horse field in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil giant also says it will spend $1.3 billion to develop a third phase of its Atlantis offshore field south of New Orleans.

BP credits its investment in advanced seismic technology for speeding up its ability to confirm the discoveries.

BP’s investment in next-generation technology just paid off to the tune of a billion barrels of oil.

The British energy company has discovered 1 billion barrels of crude at an existing oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. BP also announced two new offshore oil discoveries and a major new investment in a nearby field.

BP is the Gulf of Mexico’s biggest producer, and it’s making strides to hold that title.

BP now expects its fossil fuel output from the region to reach 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the middle of the next decade. Today, it produces about 300,000 boepd, up from less than 200,000 boepd about five years ago.

Executives are crediting their investment in advanced seismic technology and data processing for speeding up the company’s ability to confirm the discoveries at Atlantis and Thunder Horse. BP says it once would have taken a year to analyze the Thunder Horse data, but it now takes just weeks.

UK CONSUMERS GROSSLY OVERPAYING FOR ELECTRICITY SAYS NEW REPORT

This report finds that consumers are grossly overpaying for a very unreliable system As a result of the effect of intermittent renewables on the grid the gas fleet is much less efficient than it should be and the situation is only going to get worse.

WHY NO ONE SHOULD TRUST THE GOVERNMENT ON GREEN DEALS

This piece explains how the UK public has been conned by their government on Green Deals which have ended up costing them dearly.  While the majority of the pubic have avoided the useless scheme a few unlucky ones have paid the price for trusting them. Hopefully they have learnt the lesson.

SO WHAT IF AIR POLLUTION MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO SOMEONE'S DEATH?

Of course, in an ideal world, our air should be as pure and clean as we can make it, but in practice we know that transport and industry will put out exhaust gases and particles that can irritate our lungs. Nature too can make our air very uncomfortable for those who are susceptible, for example pollen.

Now, according to this report we may be about to see a legal judgment as to whether air pollution was a significant factor in someone's death. Presumably, if the case succeeds, the Government will be found guilty of manslaughter by allowing the levels of pollutants to go above the maximum permitted level and then we will have some level of fine imposed on them, possibly some compensation to the victim's family.

But what next? How many other cases will emerge? For a start how is it possible, with any certainty, to decide to what extent, if any, the presence of low levels of pollutants could contribute to death?

In this case the victim was a child and if their parents were so concerned that traffic pollution was seriously affecting their child's life then why did they not move to a less polluting area? (They lived beside a very busy traffic area.)  

In reality the Government has to reach a compromise between  on the one hand keeping the air as clean as possible, and on the other hand allowing us all to use transport in order to go about our daily lives freely. The idea of attaching blame is purely a political exercise.

UPDATE This article looks at the figures for alleged deaths from traffic pollution.

CLIMATE PROFESSOR RETIRES AND BECOMES A CLIMATE SCEPTIC

This piece explains that Anastasios Tsonis, emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who is the author of more than 130 peer reviewed papers and nine books, has just retired, and is finally able to speak his mind. He is now able to announce he is a climate sceptic.

THE DEEP OCEAN IS COOLER NOW THAN 200 YEARS AGO

This piece  discusses a new paper which indicates that the deep ocean in the Pacific has continued cooling in recent decades, extending the long-term cooling trend that commenced after the warmer-than-today Medieval Warm Period ended.

WORLD BANK PUTS CLIMATE POLICY BEFORE HELPING WORLD'S POOR

This article highlights the behaviour of the World Bank. Their mission is supposed to end poverty using aid and loans. Critics, including Donald Trump, say it is now following such a narrow agenda - with billions tied up in green projects - there's a danger of losing the plot.

ANOTHER WESTERN LEADER HOLDS BACK ON CLIMATE TAX INCREASE

This article explains what the Irish PM has decided in the light of protests such as those in France.  So the message seems to be getting through. Here in the UK they have succeeded in hiding the taxes by adding them to energy bills, but I wonder how long they will be able to get away with this. So far the media has been fairly compliant, but if a few protests were to happen all that would change. I expect all Western leaders are looking closely at public opinion, and that is what will ultimately limit their ability to control their CO2 emissions.