EXACTLY HOW MUCH PLASTIC IS FLOATING ON OUR OCEANS?

Of course we would like their to be as little as possible, but realistically we know there is bound to be some. This article looks at two scientific attempts to answer the question and comes up with answers that are so far apart that it makes you wonder if there is any true understanding of the problem.

If the error bars are too great why even bother to give an answer if you are a serious scientist?

MERKEL DECIDES GERMANY TO BE NET ZERO CO2 EMISSIONS BY 2050 AT HUGE COST

This piece spells out the cost of Angela Merkel's decision to make Germany have net zero CO2 emissions by 2050.

"People remember 2011 and Merkel’s rash decision to prematurely abandon nuclear power. When the German chancellor believes that Germans want to save the world, she decides very quickly, whatever the cost. Only votes and public mood counts.  Economic or other rational considerations no longer play any role – just like her decision to open the border for all and sundry. And now the jump onto the climate bandwagon because of demonstrating pupils and singing Protestants".

"The Chancellor’s new promise to achieve the last ten percentage points of CO2 reduction (from 90% to 100%) increases the additional energy costs from 4,600 to around 7,600 billion euros by 2050. This is an astronomical figure: it is more than double the amount of all goods and services produced in Germany in 2018". This is interesting because, of course, the UK government has just promised to do the very same and we were told that it would cost us no more than the 90% target.

THE REALITY OF CHINESE ENERGY POLICY - IT'S COAL FOR THE FUTURE

This article explains what the Chinese government is doing, as opposed to what environmental groups claim they are doing. It's very revealing! I have often wondered why green groups try so hard to defend China, when the Chinese should actually be the country they should be concentrating their campaign against. 

UPDATE: More on this here.

HOW GRAZING HERDS CAN STOP DESERTIFICATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE

This article looks at an interesting hypothesis put forward to explain why grassland turns to desert and how it can be prevented. It is certainly food for thought.

SEA LEVEL RISE SCARE GETS RAMPED UP

This piece gives the details. Haven't these scaremongers understood that ramping up the rhetoric is counter-productive, as little by little people see that not only does the dire prediction not come to pass, but  some of the chief scaremongers have purchased sea-front property and fly everywhere by private jet.  

CLIMATE EMERGENCY AND THE CHINESE

Below is a letter I have sent to my local paper. I sent a similar one to the Daily Mail. I don't know if either will be published. Please feel free to use if you wish. Belief in a "climate emergency" is not the problem (just as believing the Earth is flat is no problem) it is the proposed solution to it that needs to be exposed as a sham.  

Dear Sir, 

Isn't it odd that so many Western governments seem to agree that there is now a global "climate emergency" and yet you hear of no pressure being applied to the Chinese and Indian governments to stop building new coal-fired power stations? No urgent motions at the UN, no speeches decrying their flagrant disregard for the planet or their people. No mention of any sanctions being threatened.

It appears to also be the case that the environmental groups are silent on this. I see no demonstrations outside the Chinese embassy on the news or in the press. No big marches. All their efforts seem to be on urging the UK, who emit just 1% of the world CO2 emissions, to move further and faster to net zero emissions.

Clearly the Chinese and Indian leaderships cannot believe there is a "climate emergency", though they are very happy to see the West give up fossil fuel use as they know it will give them a massive economic advantage and we appear quite willing to do it. For the UK it is particularly bad timing as we leave the EU and the need to be competitive is even more vital as we try to penetrate new markets.

SEPTEMBER 1st - CRUNCH DATE FOR CLIMATE POLICY IN GERMAN ELECTIONS

This article explains how elections in former East German states will be treated as a poll on the German government's climate policies, particularly the imminent phase out of coal, an industry employing many of the voters. Will they accept the government's assurances of new green jobs or not? 

DITCH CARS TO MEET CLIMATE TARGETS SAY MPS

This article gives the details. If the UK persists with its goal of net zero emissions by 2050 we will see a lot more of this type of draconian intervention by government. The only question is - how far is any elected government actually prepared to go? The answer, I believe, is not very far. 

LOOK WHO'S GOING TO PROFIT FROM THE DRIVE TO CUT MEAT CONSUMPTION

Here is the answer. Did you guess right? There are all sorts of reasons to support climate change and making money is certainly one of them. It's not a world conspiracy, but there are a lot of opportunists hoping to profit from some of the controls that we will all face if the alarmists get their way.

ITALIAN SCIENTISTS PETITION TO STOP CLIMATE POLICIES

This article looks at the latest petition by Italian scientists asking governments to stop policies to end fossil fuel use at great cost to citizens. Strangely this has not been mentioned on our TV news bulletins. 

UK SHOULD LIMIT RENEWABLE ENERGY TO AVOID BLACKOUTS

Former National Grid Director Says Britain Should Impose Limits On Renewable Energy To Avoid Blackouts
The Sunday Telegraph, 18 August 2019
 
Ministers should impose limits on the construction of new wind and solar farms to help avoid a nationwide blackout, according to a former director of National Grid.
 
Colin Gibson, who was power network director of Britain’s electricity system, claimed that some existing turbines and solar panels may have to be disconnected, and new developments restricted, to “secure” the system after major power cuts earlier this month.
 
In an analysis co-written by Dr Capell Aris, a former grid engineer, Mr Gibson states that the system failure revealed several “serious problems” with the operation of the national electricity network, which require an “immediate, independent, expert review”.
 
Their intervention comes amid a government inquiry into the outage, which occurred after the Little Barford gas-fired power station in Cambridgeshire and a major wind farm off the Yorkshire coast both temporarily stopped producing electricity. According to the Financial Times, a provisional report by National Grid suggested that the wind farm may have tripped offline seconds before the Little Barford power station.
 
The blackout affected a million people in London and the South East, the Midlands, the South West, Yorkshire, the North East, Cornwall and Wales.  
 
National Grid, the firm that operates the country’s power network, has insisted that unpredictable wind power generation was not to blame (sic!).
 
But, in an analysis of public data on the electricity running through the grid on the day of the outage, Mr Gibson and Dr Aris claim that the failures of the two plants resulted in a loss of frequency – a measure of energy intensity – five times greater than historic slumps.  Mr Gibson was power network director at National Grid from 1993 to 1997.  

Full story (£)

USEFUL INFORMATION FOR THOSE SCEPTICAL OF MMGW

Here is a lot of useful information to back up the climate sceptic position on man-made global warming (MMGW)/climate change.

SCIENTISTS IN CONFUSION OVER INCREASE IN VEGETATION AND CO2/H2O

This report explains the confusion between two recent reports which seem to be saying opposite things. It just goes to show how much we still don't understand. 

BLACKLIST OF CLIMATE SCEPTICS MUST BE SILENCED, SAYS NEW STUDY

The following article was sent to me by CFact

People with the temerity to correct the record on climate change must be silenced.

That's the outrageous point of a new study published in the journal Nature Communication. 

"The time has arrived for professional journalists and editors to ameliorate the disproportionate attention given to (climate change contrarians) by focusing instead on career experts and relevant calls to action,” the authors said.

While the study’s goal is severely off base, it nonetheless produced two mathematical rankings CFACT is more than a little tickled by.

According to a ranking of how often "contrarians," as the study labels us, are cited in the media, CFACT's Marc Morano is far and away the world's most effective climate communicator. 

Marc is number one, with 4,171 media references, nearly double Senator James Inhofe's 2,628 and Secretary Rick Perry's 1,903.  Marc appeared in many multiples of media references compared to anyone else as you proceed down the rankings. 

Steven Hayward of the Powerline Blog wrote, "Morano is truly the Pete Rose and Hank Aaron of climate contrarians."

The study also ranks our website, CFACT.org, on its list of the  top 100 "most prolific media sources" for articles skeptical of the global warming narrative and ranks Climate Depot number 1!   See, figure 2b.

The list of 386 people on the climate blacklist reads like an honor roll.  Here's a sample:

• Apollo Astronaut Harrison Schmitt – the only scientist to walk on the moon;
• Apollo Astronaut Walt Cunningham –  from the first crew to ride the Saturn V rocket;
• Freeman Dyson – The eminent Princeton physicist who postulated the Dyson sphere;
• Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre – the Canadian researchers whose meticulous mathematical audit debunked Michael Mann's infamous hockey stick graph;
• Anthony Watts – The prominent meteorologist and creator of Watts Up With That;
• Rick Perry – The U.S. Secretary of Energy;
• Judith Curry – A climate scientist with over 130 peer-reviewed papers;
• Roy Spencer and John Christy – Scientists who manage temperature satellites and developed the first successful satellite temperature record;
• Fred Singer – The genius scientist who established the weather satellite network;
• Roger Pielke, Jr. – The professor who showed that extreme weather hasn't worsened and disaster costs declined;
• Richard Lindzen – The MIT scientist known for his brilliant work on atmospheric physics and author of over 200 papers;
• Will Happer – The Princeton atomic physicist and pioneer in optics;
• Rudy Giuliani – America's Mayor;
• Mike Pence – Merely the Vice President of the United States (V.P. Gore's OK?)

While the rankings appear to be genuine in terms of the amount of media individuals garnered, the study's black and white, unnuanced choice of whom to include on its contrarian list is bush league.  It actually used DeSmog Blog as a major source!  It's mathematical comparison showing that people who debate climate policy in the public policy arena have greater media exposure than researchers who are cited in academic journals is an apples and oranges comparison, lacking scientific validity, that yields a no-brainer.  It's decision to not rank the amount of media garnered by warming campaigners,  which would have yielded a useful comparison, reveals this for a bogus and offensive propaganda hit piece. 

We are each exposed to a mountain of media every day.  Peruse the headlines and media coverage of climate for yourself.  Do you need a mathematical analysis to determine which way the coverage is skewed?  Wouldn't you love to see those hard numbers?

Shame on study authors, Alexander Michael Petersen, Emmanuel M. Vincent, and Anthony LeRoy Westerling.

MODERN TRANSPORT WILL NEVER BE STOPPED

This article looks at the development of modern transport and its huge dependence on fossil fuels. The figures quoted in the article show that battery power is not in the same league.

WILL GREEN MORALITY TRIUMPH OVER REASON?

Food-guilt is becoming the eco-zealots’ weapon of choice 

By Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph 10 August.
 

The headlines said things like “Eat less meat to save the earth, urges UN”. So naturally the public will believe this is what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is saying in its latest report.

But is it, really? The report’s wording is guarded, preferring to speak about how “diversification in the food system”, including things like “coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds”, might help, rather than telling people to drop meat. Indeed, the title of the report is Climate Change and Land, with no mention of meat. If you google it under its correct name, up it comes, and no headlines about the eco-wickedness of meat appear.

Why is this? I think it is because of the power of those who set themselves up of what they call "the science". The most powerful of these in Britain is Roger Harrabin. e is called the BBC's Environmental Analyst, but really he is their in-house evangelical preacher. Each day the Reverend Roger announces the environmental news, turning it into a covert sermon.

On Thursday morning at six o'clock on Radio 4, the BBC news led with the IPCC story. Having quickly mentioned that the report was about land use, Harrabin then explained that because the panel is made up of scientists and government representatives and has a need for UN consensus, it delivers messages in a lower common denominator. The Reverend Roger, as keeper of the sacred mysteries, then explained what the boffins really meant: "Privately, some of the scientists say over-consumption of meat and dairy products in the West can't go on." Thus can some careful colourless words be turned into something we can all argue about. Farmers are disgusting saith the preacher, stop eating beef and sheep!

In the Guardian, the green George Monbiot, who is not constrained by the thin veil of objectivity which Harrabin is forced to wear, was furious with the IPCC. It had been "nobbled", he shouted. Its report was "pathetic". He wanted us to know that "one kilo of beef protein has a carbon opportunity cost of 1,250 kg: that incredibly is roughly equal to driving a new car for a year."

I do not know the inner workings of the IPCC. I cannot say whether the Revd Mr Harrabin is giving an authentic account of its true thoughts, or whether he is preaching a more personal message, trying to shove the IPCC (and BBC viewers) in the direction which he favours. Are he and Monbiot a soft cop/hard cop act in which Harrabin floats Monbiotic ideas in sanitised form and Monbiot is freer to rave? I am not sure. But what is visible here is how climate-change stories are constructed.

It goes roughly like this. On rolls the vast bureaucracy of the IPCC, predicting ever since its first report in 1990, that the end of the world is nigh, or nigh-ish. With that comes the super-bureaucracy of the Kyoto/Copenhagen/Paris accords that purport - but fail - to control the amount of CO2 the world produces. Running beside them always is a stream of stories - or rather exhortations - about what we must be stopped from doing to avert the catastrophe which we are promised in a century, or twelve months time or - if you want to be the greenest in 18 months.

  The essential theme of these stories is that it is axiomatically right for government to intervene to prevent people doing whatever is considered bad  - driving, flying, burning coal, lighting fires, using plastic bags and now eating meat and dairy.

Perhaps because there is some consumer resistance, these interventions are not yet, except on the margins, outright bans. They take the form of punitive taxes, subsidies to make otherwise uneconomic forms of energy look viable, recycling obligations, codes of practice in industry, in schools and in the public services. Sometimes they cause environmental problems of their own, such as the pollution produced by the switch to diesel cars or the strain on scarce land from the growing of biofuels (an issue discussed in the IPCC report). The green evangelicals slide past these contradictions.

It is almost useless to raise objections to the narrative of doom, such as the fact that, according to a study in Nature last year, global tree cover has increased by 7% since 1982. Useless too to point out that the efforts of green activists to turn countries like Britain vegan will, even if successful, will make almost no difference to the planet because world meat production will, the UN food and Agriculture Organisation believes, have doubled by 2050. Once-poor countries where people could only dream of eating meat are catching up with us fast and naturally want the pleasures and health benefits which we long ago secured for ourselves. Such wider considerations are irrelevant to the mission in which one must e seen to want to love the planet and hate the West.

The Harrabin classes have brilliantly grasped the climate change is the best means since the decline of religion to make people feel that they are bad or good. People who ask questions about the accuracy of climate change predictions, or who raise doubts about whether government control, rather than technological development, is the best answer, are not people to be engaged with. They are bad people, often associated with bad organisations like "big oil", "big pharma" and "big agro". They must be stigmatised by good people, who recycle everything and never eat steak.

Food will soon become the biggest development in the crusade to purify the West from its prosperity and its pleasures. It is a good subject to choose because, as religious fanatics have always understood, people can easily be made to feel guilty about food. Greens will be increasingly able to dictate their equivalents of the Muslim distinction between what is halal (permissible) and haram (forbidden).

They will do this through a culture war. Steakhouses will be picketed. Planning permission for shops selling meat will be objected to. Schoolchildren from carnivore homes will be re-educated. The Church Commissioners, the National Trust and Oxbridge Colleges will gradually agree to stop dairy, beef and sheep farming on all their land holdings. No  one will be allowed to sit on rural public bodies such as Natural England, unless he or she is untainted by a connection with red meat. Jesus will no longer be the Good Shepherd, since the phrase will be seen as a contradiction in terms.

The planet will derive no benefit of course, but the Revd Roger Harrabin and his flock (- no - sorry wrong word ) will feel righteous and most of the rest of us will feel dirty.       

BATTERY POWER CARS NOT SO CHEAP?

Battery Power Costly? Energy expert Donn Dears did a simple calculation of the cost of operating a battery-electric vehicle (BEV) as compared with a comparable vehicle with an internal combustion engine (ICE). He used an expected life of 11 years with the BEV requiring a replacement of the battery pack after 8 years or 80,000 miles. He made three sets of estimates for electricity costs and three sets for gasoline costs.

Dears concluded that the cost of ownership for a BEV is never competitive with an ICE vehicle when the cost for electricity is high, even if the cost of gasoline is high, such as in California.

WIND FARMS HAVE A BIG ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT TOO

Green Power – Concrete and Steel and Mining Too: Mark Mills has been skeptical of claims by green advocates about yet to be demonstrated improvements, such as greatly increased efficiency of wind turbines. In the Wall Street Journal, he discusses the need of concrete and steel and for mining to meet the envisioned “needs” for “green energy”, so-called “renewables.” Some of the specifics include:

“Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic. [Size not specified.] Solar power requires steel and glass—not to mention other metals. Global silver and indium mining will jump 250% and 1,200% respectively over the next couple of decades to provide the materials necessary to build the number of solar panels, the International Energy Agency forecasts. World demand for rare-earth elements—which aren’t rare but are rarely mined in America—will rise 300% to 1,000% by 2050 to meet the Paris green goals. If electric vehicles replace conventional cars, demand for cobalt and lithium, will rise more than 20-fold. That doesn’t count batteries to back up wind and solar grids.

The demand for minerals likely won’t be met by mines in Europe or the U.S. Instead, much of the mining will take place in nations with oppressive labor practices. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces 70% of the world’s raw cobalt, and China controls 90% of cobalt refining. The Sydney-based Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global ‘gold’ rush for minerals could take miners into ‘some remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven’t yet been disturbed.’

The enormous environmental damage done in China and the Congo from mining for lithium and cobalt needed for batteries is largely ignored by the western press and the green industry.

EXTINCTION - HERE ARE THE FACTS

This piece tells us what is actually happening in terms of extinction. It is nowhere near as bad as the alarmists make out. 

WATCH OUT - THE FOOD POLICE COULD COME AFTER YOU

It looks likely that meat eating is going to become more expensive if governments adopt the new advice from the UN. Watch this short interview to find out more.  I doubt if enough people will give up meat voluntarily so I expect the same tactics that were applied to smokers will start to target meat eaters. 

MAJOR UK POWER CUT - WAS IT DUE TO SUDDEN HALT TO WIND FARM IN HIGH WINDS?

This article looks at the recent major power disruption in the UK. There has been no definitive explanation for it, but some are speculating that it was due to a sudden shut-down of a major off-shore wind farm which was running at full capacity and then had to be stopped to prevent over-heating due to the very strong winds at the time. If so, it is a timely warning of what could be in store for us as we increase the amount of wind power in the grid. 

More on this in the Mail here.

SPLITS SHOWING IN THE CHURCH OF CLIMATOLOGY

Greta Walks Out: Apocalyptic Climate Cult Shows First Signs Of Division
BuzzFeed News, 7 August 2019
 
Greta Thunberg was among a group of young activists who protested over a disagreement about the Fridays for Future movement’s demands.


 
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Greta Thunberg was among 30 young activists who walked out of a major European meeting of more than 400 students who have spent the last nine months boycotting school on Fridays to demand action on climate change.
 
Thunberg, 16, has become the most visible spokesperson of the Fridays for Future movement after launching a solitary school strike in Stockholm in Stockholm. But during an emotional meeting Wednesday morning, the group left the main hall and sat down outside the front door, which BuzzFeed News witnessed, just before the conference was due to take up a draft platform of the movement’s demands.
 
“We’re on strike,” said Janine O’Keeffe, an adult activist who lives in Sweden and has been active with the strike movement since its early days, and who had been participating in a committee drafting the movement’s demands. Multiple other participants also described the walkout as a “strike” to BuzzFeed News.
 
Thunberg did not respond to requests to comment before this story was first published. But she said in a text message to BuzzFeed News after publication that she did not personally view the gathering as a protest.
“I did not ‘join a walk out’ or ‘join a sit in.’ We are going in and out of meetings all the time,” she wrote.
 
“In this case I sat down outside the auditorium to comfort a friend of mine who was sad and upset at the time.” […]
 
The split began to emerge in meetings that BuzzFeed News sat in on Tuesday, but came to a head Wednesday as the conference was preparing to take up a list of demands. A committee had met the day before to revise a draft that outlined more than 20 specific policy recommendations, covering everything from reforming agriculture to curbing carbon emissions from boats.

Thunberg and group of others recommended scrapping these proposals in favor of much broader principles like “follow the science” and “climate justice for everyone.”
 
“Not one of us agreed to all these demands, because they’re too specific,” Thunberg said in making the recommendation. Saoi O’Connor, a 16-year-old from Ireland, was even more emphatic in arguing against specific demands as the meeting broke up. “Our movement is strong because we haven’t had to do this,” BuzzFeed News heard them say to another participant.
 
Full story

EXTINCTION REBELLION ARE PART OF THE ESTABLISHMENT

Fraser Myers: An Establishment Rebellion
Spiked, 8 August 2019
 
Why the elite loves the eco-warriors.



London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has acquired a number of artefacts associated with Extinction Rebellion (XR), the protest group campaigning to reduce Britain’s carbon emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2025. Apparently, just nine months since Extinction Rebellion’s first public stunt, its paraphernalia deserves to be housed alongside some of the world’s best art and design works of the past 5,000 years. 
 
It is hard to think of any supposedly radical protest movement in history that has been so readily embraced by the establishment as Extinction Rebellion. And the love-bombing isn’t just coming from the usual luvvies like Dame Emma Thompson and activist celebs like Lily Cole and Charlotte Church. Recently, XR attracted the attention of wealthy philanthropists. Last month, three wealthy Americans (one of whose family wealth comes from the oil industry) donated nearly £500,000 to XR and vowed to raise millions more. Other wealthy backers include a hedge-fund manager, who remains anonymous. 
 
Then, there is the literary establishment – from heavyweight authors like Margaret Atwood and Phillip Pullman to big-name publishers like Penguin, it has thrown its weight behind Extinction Rebellion, too. This Is Not A Drill, XR’s protest handbook, was recently rushed out for release by Penguin. Penguin’s editor breathlessly declared that climate change was so pressing that XR’s book needed to be published several months before its initial release date: ‘This is an emergency, and we have to react like it’s an emergency.’ The book even features a contribution from Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury – the former head of the established church. 
 
The reason for this establishment love-in is that Extinction Rebellion represents no rebellion at all. It has the appearance of a rebellion, certainly – protesters glue their hands to buildings, block roads and get themselves arrested. But the message is one that affirms and flatters establishment opinion rather than challenging it. 
 
Parliament, for instance, was quick to heed XR’s demand to declare a ‘climate emergency’. More significantly, the group’s main aim of reducing UK emissions to ‘net zero’ is one that is shared not only by the Conservative government, but also by MPs of all stripes. The ‘net zero’ target for 2050 was nodded through parliament with just an hour and a half of debate and without a single vote needing to be cast. XR is only more impatient in its demand, calling for a 2025 deadline.
 
Many have tried to compare Extinction Rebellion’s climate crusade with past movements for progressive change. Justifying the V&A’s decision to acquire Extinction Rebellion artefacts, senior curator Corinna Gardner compared their punchy colour palette to that of the Suffragettes. Similarly, XR leader Roger Hallam claims his protesting is in the ‘tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King’.
 
These comparisons are delusional, pretentious and insulting. But they unwittingly highlight something important. Whether it was the Chartists, the Suffragettes, the civil-rights movement, or the gay-rights movement, these genuinely progressive campaigns were all despised by the elite at the time. These were campaigns that sought to expand human freedom, to wrest rights and resources from the establishment.
 
By contrast, environmentalist campaigns like Extinction Rebellion are, by their very nature, against freedom. They seek to place new limits on human activity: on industry, on economic growth, on our travel, on our diets, and on childbirth.
 
Full Post