IS THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC FINALLY TIRING OF THE CLIMATE SCARE?

That is what Joanne Nova is reporting. She may be on to something, but only the next elections can decide. While no doubt many are tiring of high energy costs, many also fear weak immigration policies too.  One thing that should be expected is a slow down in the costly green policies, which is good news for us all. Once a few nations get off this "runaway train" others must surely follow, unless the majority see sense and start applying the brake

CFACT SUMS UP THE STATE OF THE CLIMATE DEBATE

Here's a good piece which sums up the state of the climate debate nicely.

CLIMATE WARRIORS TO TURN ON BIG FOOD PRODUCERS

This prediction seems rather unlikely, as the article says. This area would be one of the hardest to deal with, as the main mechanism is by taxation resulting in increasing food prices - not a popular move in a democracy.  

THE AUSTRALIAN DILEMMA IN THE CARBON-CUTTING WORLD

This article  explains how whole nations are ruining their economies to "save" an insignificant amount of CO2, and yet opposition parties are missing an open goal

IS RUSSIA BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE PROTESTS IN THE EU?

 ‘Definitely Yes’, Says Ukraine
EurActiv, 18 February 2019

Ukraine is sure that Russia actively supports the recent protests in EU countries against global warming, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told a group of Brussels journalists on Monday (18 February).

Klimkin, in Brussels as EU foreign ministers meet to discuss several hotbeds of tension, including Ukraine, was asked if he agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who mentioned the protests after talking about hybrid warfare from Russia.

In Paris, it is French students rather than secondary school pupils who are mobilising for the youth climate march, a movement which is slowly gaining momentum in France. EURACTIV France reports.

In recent weeks, secondary school pupils from Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK have recently been mobilising, demanding governments to take more serious decisions to stop global warming.

At the Munich Security conference, Merkel expressed doubts that German children, after years, had suddenly hit on the idea without outside influence.

In Belgium, Joke Schauvliege, a climate minister in Flanders, was forced to resign after saying she had information from the intelligence services that the schoolchildren protests were directed by an unnamed foreign power. Her statements caused public outrage. The Belgian state security services denied having reported anything about this to Schauvliege, and she had no other choice than to resign.

Asked about the climate change protests in Europe and the allegations of foreign interference, Klimkin was adamant that Russia was involved, and that Moscow’s attempts at meddling were “mind-boggling”.

“It’s a point of exchange with all our partners. Russia has been supporting stirring up trouble around Europe because Russia’s goal is to weaken up the democratic institutions and to weaken the EU as such. Climate change protests: definitely yes. Different pseudo-environmental organisations: look at Italy, where they are trying to disrupt the future gas pipelines”, he said.

He was referring to the protests of local authorities in Puglia against the Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP), designed to bring gas from Azerbaijan to the peninsula.

In the last five years since the Maidan revolution in the former Soviet republic, Ukraine itself has become the playground of all sorts of hybrid warfare and its leaders have become specialists in the matter, eager to share their experience with EU counterparts.

Italy gave the green light for the construction of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), one of the core projects of the Southern Gas Corridor. But activists in the Puglia region protested and asked that the pipe be moved further north.

Klimkin explained Russia’s motivation to instigate protests against climate change in the following terms:

“The Russians are simply crazy about selling more gas to Europe. […] To shift, to reshuffle climate change movements is one of the key Russian priorities, to explain that ‘more gas is fine, coal is bad, but Russian gas is good, Russian gas is reliable. Let’s engage in the same political pattern like we had in the 1970’s, a kind of new Ostpolitik.’ And it’s not only in Germany, it’s also in Italy, it’s everywhere,” Klimkin said,

He described Russia’s efforts to interfere on several levels: “It’s about fake NGOs, it’s about trying to buy journalists, it’s about trying to buy media, it’s about meddling in the political class. Not the same scope as in Ukraine, but it’s so visible”.

WHITE HOUSE PANEL TO ASSESS IF CLIMATE CHANGE IS A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT

Here is some interesting news.
The Washington Post, 20 February 2019

The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director.

 
The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The White House is working to assemble a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post, a conclusion that federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office.

The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which would be established by executive order, is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, has said that carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.

The initiative represents the Trump administration’s most recent attempt to question the findings of federal scientists and experts on climate change and comes less than three weeks after Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats delivered a worldwide threat assessment that identified it as a significant security risk.

In late November, Trump dismissed a government report finding that global warming is intensifying and poses a major threat the U.S. economy, saying, “I don’t see it.” Last month, his nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, acting administrator Andrew Wheeler, testified that he did not see climate change as one of the world’s pressing challenges.

According to the NSC discussion paper, the order would create a federal advisory committee “to advise the President on scientific understanding of today’s climate, how the climate might change in the future under natural and human influences, and how a changing climate could affect the security of the United States.”

UK GOVERNMENTSQUANDERS £5.5 BILLION OF OVEREAS AID ON CLIMATE POLICIES

This piece explains the details. I am sure hard-pressed UK taxpayers will not be very pleased to see all this money spent on climate policies abroad while the health service and education budgets are so tight here.

HOME COOKING CAUSES MORE AIR POLLUTION THAN TRAFFIC

This Mail piece gives the details. So much for all the fuss about air pollution caused by motor exhausts. Of course we must be aware that we are being exposed to potentially harmful substances and try to avoid breathing too much, but we have to keep a sense of proportion. For most of us, we can cope with a little pollution, our bodies are adapted to deal with it. For those with pre-existing conditions, they need to take extra care. 
The interesting thing will be what, if anything will the government do to protect us from these household substances. I suspect nothing is the answer, because there is no saving of CO2 in it.

USA CLIMATE DATA TAMPERING EXPOSED - TIME FOR AN INQUIRY

As this video shows now is the time to have a proper inquiry into data tampering in climate science. The evidence exposed so clearly in the video makes a compelling case, so surely the President should order an inquiry before the last opportunity is lost.

As this piece shows, the same kind of thing is also happening in Australia.

MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD HEAT STILL IN THE DEEP OCEAN

This piece explains how the computer climate models attribute warming since 1750 to anthropogenic components, but they neglect the fact that residual heat from the MWP was still present in the deep waters of the Pacific. The growth in the total heat content of the oceans to date is therefore smaller than the models assume. In other words, the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 is much smaller than previously assumed.

The IPCC report will therefore have to be fundamentally revised. What this means is that if CO2 levels in the atmosphere were doubled, the temperature increase will not be 1.85°C (IPCC) but 1.3°C at most.

In Germany electricity is among the most expensive in Europe and the level of renewable electricity already in the grid is causing major problems for large industries such as aluminium production which has endured no less than 78 shutdowns in 2018. 

But Germany wants to be a role model. For whom? By 2030, China with 280,000 MW and India with 174,000 MW will increase coal capacity tenfold. These are the official notifications by China and India of the Paris Climate Protection Agreement. Germany is saving 150 million tons, and China will emit an additional 10 billion tons by 2030. Over the next few years, 1,600 coal-fired power plants will be built in 62 countries around the world. Many of them with Chinese help.

JUNK SCIENCE FROM NASA EXPOSED

Why do prestigious science organisations like NASA make outrageous claims that can easily be refuted in order to provide propaganda to hoodwink the public on climate? This video from Tony Heller exposes a prime example.

CLIMATE SCEPTICS ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

In his letter to the EU Commission President, Sir Jim Ratcliffe wrote this piece (my bold) 

" I have an intense interest in preserving the environment.   I see wildlife being slaughtered in Africa, forests burning all over the world, fish stocks being decimated and I fully believe that we must arrest global warming."

He had no need to put this in, but he must have felt that it helped to burnish his environmental credibility. It seems to be simply a throwaway remark. No mention of how we might achieve this. Note that his letter, quite rightly, dismisses  green taxes as completely counter-productive. 

Unfortunately Sir Jim is not alone in paying lip-service to the idea of preventing global warming without telling us any idea he has of doing it. In fact I cannot name a single senior executive in a major company who has opposed the idea that combatting global warming is vital.

I am sure that, privately, many of them do share doubts, but dare not express them. There is definitely a culture of fear of expressing any doubts, let alone opposition, to the current hypothesis. Are there any actors, singers, celebrities who have expressed such thoughts? If any readers know of any please let me know their names.

Of course it has been said many times that science does not work by consensus, but what is being played out here is not simply science, but politics. Interestingly there are a few politicians that have been prepared to speak their minds. Some are still serving, such as David TC Davis. However they are rare and of those in high office as far as I know there is only Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, the new president of Brazil.

In fact there is nothing to fear from articulating the case for climate scepticism. President Trump did so before winning the presidency. David TC Davis has been re-elected after making his views very clear. The silent majority of the public may also share those sceptic views, or at least they are not bothered by them.

JIM RATCLIFFE SLAMS EU'S UNCOMPETITIVE HIGH TAXES AND EXPENSIVE ENERGY

This letter Is from Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the chairman of INEOS. In it he writes "Europe is no longer competitive.   It has the worlds most expensive energy and labour laws that are uninviting for employers.   Worst of all, it has green taxes that, at best, can be described as foolish as they are having the opposite effect to how they were intended."  

INSECTS ARE DOING OK SO DON'T PANIC - PAPER WAS TRIPE

This piece should reassure any who read in the press that insects could disappear by the end of the century. Where do these people get this stuff from? I can accept that  few very rare insect species might become extinct, but the idea that termite or ants or locusts are going to disappear is simply laughable.

JUST LOOK WHO'S BEHIND THE LANCET OBESITY REPORT

This article looks at the EAT-Lancet Report published last week, which stated that to save both planetary and human health, the world’s population needed to cut back dramatically on red meat and other animal products. The prescription is very close to a vegan diet. 

Tim Rees of Nutritional Therapy Online created a table of all the EAT-Lancet corporate funders. These include;

—Seven Big Pharma companies, with drugs for many nutrition-related diseases
—About 20 Big Food companies, including Kellogg’s, Nestle, and PepsiCo.

Clearly these companies do not give their support for nothing. They must have an agenda.

GREEN MILITANTS INCITING CHILDREN TO BUNK OFF SCHOOL TO "SAVE THE PLANET"

Have the nutters taken over? You could easily think so when you read This article covers the story in yesterday's Daily Mail. If children are allowed to get away with taking themselves out of school to protest on this issue then how long before it becomes alright to protest about other issues? If teachers, including headteachers are encouraging this, or simply facilitating it then there is something radically wrong with our culture.

WI SUPPORTING UNSUPPORTED CLIMATE PROPAGANDA REPORT

How do they get away with such dishonest reports? I refer to this nonsense by an organisation calling itself the Climate Coalition. Luckily, as you will see when you read the link, this stuff has been comprehensively debunked by the great Paul Homewood. But how did the dear old Women Institute (WI) get caught up in this nonsense? I suspect the members know little or nothing about it, but the leadership have been sucked in with a mixture of flattery and deception. This is how so many of our once independent institutions have become inveigled into putting their names to this unproven hypothesis.

LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE MODELS GO WRONG

This piece looks at the recent floods in Townsville, Australia and finds that the flood mapping that was carried out was based on flawed modelling data, when local people knew that the area was liable to have monsoon conditions. However they were ignored in favour of simplistic computer models. 

RAPID GLOBAL WARMING FORECAST DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE WORLD IS COOLING

World Cooling – But Rapid Warming Forecast
GWPF Observatory, 7 February 2019

Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor

Average global temperature has been falling for the last 3 years, despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels.

 
21st century average global surface temperature change and CO2 rise; graph GWPF

A big story at the beginning of each year is the release of the global surface temperature of the previous year. A big story certainly but not often a surprising one.

Since the beginning of the century it didn’t change much from year to year until the 2015/16 super El Nino came along. Then the temperature went up, as usual, and now it’s coming down again.

2018 was the fourth warmest year of the instrumental period (started 1850) having a temperature anomaly of 0.91 +/- 0.1 °C – cooler than 2017 and closer to the fifth warmest year than the third. But of course there are those that don’t like to say the global surface temperature has declined.

The UK Met Office released the 2018 global temperature data as part of a press release about its forecast for global temperatures for the next five years, basically saying that the high temperatures will continue, despite their elevation over previous years by the El Nino and their coming down afterwards! Their press release was entitled, “Forecast suggests Earth’s warmest period on record.”

It says: The forecast for the global average surface temperature for the five-year period to 2023 is predicted to be near or above 1.0 °C above pre-industrial levels, says the Met Office. If the observations for the next five years track the forecast that would make the decade from 2014 to 2023 the warmest run of years since records began.

No mention then of the events that elevated the global 2015 and subsequent years, the EL Nino and the Pacific marine heatwave.

As we all know, especially the Met Office, forecasting the future is fraught with difficulties, the main one is that you are forecasting the future! The Met Office does not have a very good track record in this regard.

More recent forecasts have not fared well either showing little skill. The Met Office has a tendency to forecast a world that is warmer than it actually is. Sometimes their climate forecast looks better than they were because an El Nino occurred that temporarily elevated global temperatures.

Fig 1 shows how off their forecast was. You can see that since 1997 they have always predicted way too high except when an El Nino helped them out in 1998 and 2015 -17. (click on image to enlarge)

 

Looking at the same graph published in 2017 for previous forecasts (Fig 2, click on image to enlarge) shows they failed in their 2016 – 2021 forecast.

 

The new forecast, according to the Met Office’s Professor Adam Scaife, may bring about “rapid warming globally” with a 0.55 °C warming by 2023. At least it’s a testable prediction, like the rapid warming forecast in 2007 that didn’t happen.

Perhaps a better headline would be Global CO2 increases, Global temperature declines.

In a recent press release the Met Office said that in 2019 they expect to see one of the largest rises in atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration in 62 years of measurements.

It will be fascinating to see if this forecast in a large rise in CO2 will finally push global temperature up. Each year as CO2 increases, it is increasing its ability to force the global temperature upwards. El Ninos notwithstanding, it’s about time the global surface temperature started following the CO2. Expect interesting things in the next one to five years.

UK CAR INDUSTRY SUFFERS FROM CLIMATE CHANGE POLICIES

This piece looks behind the decision of Nissan not to build its new diesel model here in the UK. Why would Nissan want to invest in diesel cars when the government policy is to phase them out in the not too distant future. As the article says, it is little surprise that potential buyers of diesels are thinking twice, nervous of punitive taxation, congestion charging or even outright bans from city areas. Even if these threats may not be imminent, there is still the worry about residual values.

It is strange how the government has become schizophrenic about industry. On the one hand they want to encourage jobs, while on the other they are bringing in costly job-destroying climate policies. The stresses are starting to get stronger. 

ARE WE DOOMED BY IMMINENT DECLINE IN WORLD POPULATION?

Empty Planet: The Shock Of Global Population Decline
David Goodhart, The Sunday Times, 3 February 2019

Market economics failed to topple Chinese communism, but perhaps the halving of its population by the end of the century will do the trick instead. Meanwhile the oceans are set to heal, the temperature will cool and Canada will become a global superpower.



All because of the next big thing, spelt out in this book: a sharply declining global population. This is a popular guide to modern demography, by two Canadian journalists, with a very strong point of view about the direction of travel. It is full of fascinating speculation and written with an energy that degenerates only occasionally into jauntiness.

 
Desolation row: the district of Kangbashi, in the Chinese city of Ordos, made headlines in 2010 as the poster city for the country’s waning population growth BLOOMBERG

It is also a case study in what one might call the “Canadian ideology”, the world view of the globe’s first “post-national” country, which is set to come into its own in the individualistic world of the low population, immigration-favouring future that the authors view as largely benign but many others might find less to their taste.

The basic claim that global population, now 7.5bn, will decline rapidly later this century after peaking at below 9bn — rather than the 11bn that is the UN’s central forecast — is hardly as new or controversial as the authors imply. More than 20 years ago I commissioned a cover story for Prospect magazine by Nicholas Eberstadt titled “Too few people?” that predicted global population peaking in 2040 and then starting a headlong dive. Fred Pearce made a similar argument nearly a decade ago in a book called Peoplequake.

But wielding a mix of data, argument and reportage, the authors do a decent job of explaining why this is probably going to happen. It can be summed up in one sentence. As societies urbanise, women become better educated (including about contraception) and more financially autonomous thanks to working outside the home, and this causes fertility rates to plummet, which is reinforced in most places by the weakening ties of family, clan and organised religion. […]

China is becoming Japan thanks to the one-child policy introduced in 1979 when the fertility rate was already down to 2.5. The rate is now just 1.2 and China’s population could halve to 600m by the end of the century, which would mean it was not far above the United States, which is likely to continue growing because of immigration.

Africa is the key continent for the decline thesis. The authors paint an optimistic picture from Kenya (where fertility has halved to 4 since 1975) of rising female education and empowerment. They also talk about growth prospects opened up by the Trans-West African Coastal Highway linking Lagos to Accra and Abidjan in Ivory Coast. This could be over-optimistic and Nigeria still has a fertility rate of 6 despite rapid urbanisation.

They might also underestimate the extent of the “goldilocks” option, of coming to rest at replacement levels, as Sri Lanka has been for the past 25 years and maybe India could be in the future. An Ipsos poll of almost 20,000 people in 26 countries found the ideal family size to be just over two.

In the short term, the authors imply, a faster than expected decline in population is mainly a benefit. Pressure on the environment is relieved, older populations are more pacific (although the 30m Chinese men without women might turn rough).

And one thing they don’t mention is how economic power is likely to swing back from capital to labour as the latter becomes scarce. This in turn is likely to reduce inequality; after all, one reason for inequality rising was the flooding of the labour market with all those cheap workers in India and China.

Full post

THE MYTHS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

This video is an excellent piece of work. Ideal for those who prefer seeing a lecture to reading a report. It came out in 2017 so is quite up to date.

CLIMATE CHANGE EVIDENCE BUILT ON CLIMATE MODELING ILLUSIONS

This article explains that today’s climate models account for only a handful of the hundreds of variables that are known to affect Earth’s climate, and many of the values inserted for the variables they do use are little more than guesses.

LITTLE ICE AGE CAUSED BY WHITE SETTLERS BRINGING DEADLY VIRUSES TO USA

 
What an extraordinary claim. The implications are truly mind-blowing. Here is the link:
This piece explains that the BBC is reporting that academics from University College London have discovered that the Little Ice Age was not caused by the record low solar activity of the Maunder Minima, instead it was due to the colonization of the Americas. Thanks mostly to measles and small pox the death toll was so enormous that about 9% of the global population died, supposedly leaving empty farmlands. These were swiftly covered in forests causing a deadly fall in CO2 which cooled the world. 

MASSIVE MAIL STORY EXPOSES UK'S LORD DEBEN FOR HIDING POTENTIAL BRIBES

This piece in today's Mail on Sunday is on the front page and four inside pages, though, surprisingly, it was quite hard to find it on line. It is very damaging for Lord Deben (formerly John Gummer MP) but it also highlights the massive subsidies given to suppliers of green energy, paid for by us taxpayers. It is a coup for the fearless David Rose who is one of the few reporters who is exposing the scandals behind the global warming scam.

MICHAEL CRICHTON ESSAY NAILS WHAT'S GONE WRONG WITH SCIENCE

This essay by Michael Crichton is packed with examples of where science has fallen short, leading to global warming. It opens our eyes to the politicisation of science as a propaganda tool. Well worth reading. 

CO2 CLIMATE SENSITIVITY LOWER THAN BELIEVED SAYS NEW PAPER

This article explains how the role of ocean current circulation has been underestimated as an effect on global temperatures and not included in the computer models. Today's climate is still being impacted by the medieval warm period. The growth in the total heat content of the oceans to this day is therefore smaller than models assume and this leads to a lower sensitivity to anthropogenic effects.