EU PARLIAMENT FACING DILEMMA OVER CO2 EMISSIONS OF BRUSSELS - STRASBURG TRIPS

For fifty years the EU parliament has made monthly trips from Brussels to Strasburg for political reasons at a huge cost both in terms of money and fuel. Now the EU parliament is to consider (and more or less certainly will) call a "climate emergency. How hypocritical would they be, if they did this without ending this wasteful farce. This article explains the details. 

PARIS 1.5 DEGREE C TEMPERATURE LIMIT COMPLETE GUESSWORK

This article explains why. If anyone still believes that the UN IPCC is a purely scientific body then this quote from its 2018 report should convince you otherwise: “Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society, the IPCC said in a new assessment. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said on Monday.” 

CLIMATE SCEPTICS HAVE NO CHOICE AT THIS ELECTION

Here's a good article that bemoans the lack of choice for voters at this UK election who are sceptical about the so-called climate emergency. I agree with this premise, but I do understand why the Conservatives decided to go along with the climate alarm stuff - simply because they believe that many have been brain-washed by the constant outpourings of the TV companies, including Saint David Attenborough.

Political parties are ruthless organisations that will quite readily distort the truth to get votes by making promises that are never quite what they seem. Upsetting any section of voters is unwise as Mrs May discovered back in 2017. I am prepared to give Boris the benefit of the doubt and hope that post election he starts back-pedalling on this climate stuff.  

UN EXPERT REPORT ALTERED TO TURN IT INTO PROPAGANDA FOR POLITICAL REASONS

Many people completely trust the United Nations, but when you read this article you may well change your mind. The article refers to a scientific report into the alleged chemical attack by Assad's forces during the Syrian conflict. The report led to reprisals by the USA, France and the UK. This could have led to a massive escalation of the conflict.

The point here is that if the UN is capable of using scientific reports here in this way how can we trust other scientific reports from them, such as those on global warming?

GERMAN GOVERNMENT REFUSES TO COMMIT TO A CARBON BUDGET

This article explains the details. The main news reports on TV and in the press have not reported this and we can only surmise that the reason is that it underlines the fact that the UK is not part of some big alliance of nations that is aiming for net zero emissions. On the contrary the UK is going alone in forcing its people to become poorer and to undergo the hardship which will inevitably follow from giving up almost all fossil fuel use, despite the fact that, alone, we will have no measurable effect on atmospheric CO2 levels, hence no effect on the climate. 

ALARMIST POLITICIAN GIVES STOCK ANSWER TO SCEPTIC CASE FOR NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY

This piece contains a short video clip of the reaction of an MEP to being presented with a case that there is no climate emergency. It is, in my experience,  a typical response that makes no attempt to refute the facts, but simply denies the points that don't fit the narrative that they have accepted unquestioningly to be true. There is no debate but simply a lofty denial based on some higher irrefutable authority. Most politicians have little knowledge of science themselves and so rely completely on these higher authorities such as the IPCC and even then they are unaware of what the IPCC has actually said as opposed to what Extinction Rebellion or some other activist group has said.

COUNCILS COME UP AGAINST THE REALITY OF ZERO CO2 EMISSIONS

It's all very well for councils to pass motions declaring a climate emergency but when it comes to making decisions to spend large sums of taxpayers' money they suddenly find it is not nearly so easy. This article is a good example from Brighton Council, which has one of the highest numbers of Green Party members in the country.

Meanwhile at the other end of the country in Cumbria we find the same thing. Despite both councils declaring climate emergencies. 

As a councillor myself I am delighted to say that my own council has rejected the proposal to declare a climate emergency. The councillor who proposed that motion found himself in a dilemma when he, quite rightly, voted in favour of a new plant at the local Fawley Refinery, despite the fact that it implied that fossil fuels would continue for many years to come.

MICHAEL MANN GOES TO THE SUPREME COURT TO SUE MAGAZINE

This article looks at the case. Mann has recently lost another case against Tim Ball. This latest case was for defamation against the National Review which published an article by Mark Steyn in which he did not pull his punches. Just where is the balance between freedom of speech and defaming someone?

YET MORE TEMPERATURE DATA TAMPERING BY A NATIONAL CLIMATE ORGANISATION

More temperature date fiddling is reported going on in Australia. It is so blatant and yet there is no mention of it in the news media. It seems that the public are being kept in the dark about this, but why you ask. It can only be because they fear some sort of retribution if they do report it.

THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS AND HERE'S THE PROOF

This article is quite lengthy, but it gives a lot of evidence to back up the title of this post. Here is a short precis without all the evidence to give a flavour of the article:

There is no climate crisis. There is no ocean acidification crisis. There is no extinction crisis.

The greatest expansion of life on Earth occurred 540 million years ago, when CO2 was at its peak. Atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 15 times higher than they are now. Corals and shellfish evolved during that time.  If ocean acidification was a real problem, there would have been no sea life, rather than a massive expansion of life in the oceans..

Earth is getting greener as CO2 increases.  The reason we have coal beds, is because there used to be a lot more atmospheric CO2, which made earth very green.  This greenery turned into thick peat beds, which turned into coal.

CO2 makes plants grow faster and makes them use less water. It does not make them go extinct. As CO2 emissions have increased, crop yields have increased with them. As CO2 has risen, agricultural productivity has increased with it.  Hunger has declined sharply.  Poverty has declined sharply.  Life expectancy has increased sharply.  And as CO2 has risen, deaths from natural disasters have plummeted. 

“Scientists say” that sea level is rising faster than at any time in the last 2,800 years.  

This is in direct contradiction to the 1990 IPCC report, which said there was no convincing evidence of an acceleration of sea level rise during the 20th century.

If sea level rise rates were accelerating, tide gauge graphs around the world would be non-linear with an upwards curvature.  Water seeks a level surface, so any nonlinear “response” would be seen globally.  There is no evidence of an upwards curvature in any long-term tide gauge.

The lack of acceleration in sea level rise also tells us that Arctic melt is not accelerating. The only thing which has changed is the data, which has been massively tampered with by government agencies.

GLOBAL WARMING CAUSING THE GREAT DIVIDE

Here is an interesting look at the way belief in global warming alarm is dividing people. There are some good points made. In addition I would add that there are a large number of people who publicly claim to believe, but privately do not. This is particularly important in those who are opinion-formers, such as politicians. They don't speak out as they fear that this would lead to them being marginalised, or even be voted out. Interestingly that does not seem to have happened to the odd few who have had the courage to do so, such as David Davies who had an increased majority despite expressing clear sceptic views on climate change. If only more were prepared to do so we might have a real debate on the evidence instead of a phoney silence from our MPs.

AFTER 10 YEARS, THOSE CLIMATEGATE EMAILS STILL LEAVE A STAIN ON SCIENCE

Climate Science Proves Scams Don’t Die of Exposure
Tony Thomas, Quadrant, 14 November 2019
 
It’s the tenth anniversary next week of the 2009 Climategate email dump that exposed top climate scientists’ chicanery and subversion of science – and did so in their own words and out of their own mouths, or keyboards.


 
I’ll list a few emails-of-infamy shortly, but first some background.
 
For the three years before Climategate, the climate crowd was ascendant with its pseudo-narrative of “settled science”. Al Gore’s error-riddled propaganda movie Inconvenient Truth of 2006 had swept the Western world and its readily-traduced schoolkids. In 2007 Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace Prize. In late 2008 Barack Obama won the White House, proclaiming in his modest way, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
 
The Climategate emails hit the blogosphere just a month before the Copenhagen summit was scheduled to lock Western countries into Kyoto Mark 2, a legally-binding commitment to renewables from 2012.
 
Climategate destroyed warmists’ moral high ground and reinforced the natural reluctance of most governments to up-end their economies with emission controls. The  Copenhagen circus fell apart, resolving merely to “take note” of the exhortations to action by Obama and like-minded leaders.
 
The mainstream media strove to ignore and bury the Climategate  revelations. The climate establishment ran half a dozen inquiries with limited briefs and ludicrous lack of rigour, all of which purported to clear the climate scientists of wrong-doing.[1] 
 
But even today, ten years after, scientists faithful to their calling and disciplines can only shudder at what Climategate revealed. Those who subverted the scientific method were not fringe players but at the pinnacle. They were doing the archetypal studies “proving” catastrophic human-caused catastrophic warming (CAGW) and shaping the content and messaging in the six-yearly reports of the IPCC.
 
The hacked (or otherwise revealed) email archive spanning the prior decade was stored by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit[2]. The CRU co-compiled the HadCRUT global temperature series, along with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre. This data set charting alleged global warming in fractions of a degree was a key input to the climate computer models forecasting doomladen heat for this century. (The model forecasts continue to exceed actual measured warming). Based on these dud modelled forecasts, the West is now spending $US1.5 trillion a year in quest of zero CO2 emissions.
 
Today, anyone questioning this colossal enterprise is told to “respect the science”. Based on the Climategate emails released in 2009, 2013 and 2015, I’d rather respect the Mafia, who at least don’t claim to be saving the planet. For example, today we’re told that warming of 2 deg C above pre-industrial level is some sort of a tipping point of doom. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, emailed on September 6, 2007, that the supposed 2-degree limit was “plucked out of thin air”, a throwaway line in an early 1990s paper from the catastrophists at the Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute.
 
Now for the emails. We journos love a local angle, and here’s one – the CRU’s Ian “Harry” Harris worked for four years to de-bug and properly document a CRU data base “TS 2.1” of global stations recording monthly temperatures.
 
One input  was from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, with its frequent adjustments that result in a greater warming trend (think Rutherglen and Darwin). Harry’s comments in a 200-page logging of notes:
 
What a bloody mess. Now looking at the dates… something bad has happened, hasn’t it. COBAR AIRPORT AWS [data from an Australian weather station] cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993! … getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. So many new stations have been introduced, so many false references … so many changes that aren’t documented … I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was…Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight…! […]
 
Subverting peer review
 
Climategate showed how warmist scientists gamed the peer review process to ensure a monopoly for their views. When two papers contrary to their ‘consensus’ were published, CRU director Phil Jones and his circle pulled out all stops to get the editor sacked and prevent such papers being considered by the IPCC.
 
Jones, 8 July 2004:

…I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth, leading climate scientist] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
 
US colleague Dr Michael Mann (author of the influential-but-wrong Hockey Stick graph of the past 1000 years’ temperature), July 3, 2003:
 
It seems clear we have to go above [the sceptic author Chris de Freitas] … I think that the community should, as Mike H [warmist scientist] has previously suggested in this eventuality, terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels –reviewing, editing, and submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute. […]
 
The IPCC exposed
 
UK Met Bureau’s Peter Thorne, concerning work on the IPCC’s 2007 fourth report:
 
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
 
Jones admits the political bias in the IPCC’s all-important Summary for Policy Makers (SPM):
 
He says he’ll read the IPCC Chapters! He hadn’t as he said he thought they were politically biased. I assured him they were not. The SPM [Summary for Policy Makers] may be, but not the chapters.
 
IPCC coordinating lead author Jonathan Overpeck:
 
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out [of IPCC reports].
 
Need it be said that leaving out inconvenient stuff is anathema to real, genuine, principled science?
Warmist Mike Hulme agrees that
 
the debate around climate change is fundamentally about power and politics rather than the environment … There are not that many ‘facts’ about (the meaning of) climate change which science can unequivocally reveal
 
From climate scientist Giorgi Filippo, who contributed to all five IPCC Assessment Reports:
 
I feel rather uncomfortable about using not only unpublished but also un- reviewed material as the backbone of our conclusions (or any conclusions)…I feel that at this point there are very little rules and almost anything goes
 
Email 5286 from scientist Hans von Storch:
 
We should explain why we don’t think the information robust yet. Climate research has become a postnormal science, with the intrusion of political demands and significant influence by activists driven by ideological (well meant) concerns.”
 
Also from von Storch:
 
The concealment of dissent and uncertainty in favor of a politically good cause takes its toll on credibility, for the public is more intelligent than is usually assumed
 
Scientist Richard Somerville, 2004:
We don’t understand cloud feedbacks. We don’t understand air-sea interactions. We don’t understand aerosol indirect effects. The list is long.
 
Warmist Kevin Trenberth:
We are nowhere close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter
 
Michael Mann, 2006:
We certainly don’t know the GLOBAL mean temperature anomaly very well, and nobody has ever claimed we do.
 
Full post

CHINA'S NEW AGENDA - COAL POWER TO BE TOP PRIORITY

China has signalled that coal power will be a top priority within national energy policy as the government prepares its next Five Year Plan (2021-25).

On 11 October, Premier Li Keqiang chaired a meeting of the National Energy Commission in Beijing that emphasised China’s energy security and coal utilisation and downplayed the importance of a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

Each meeting of the commission, which was established in 2010 and has met only four times, has had a significant impact on policymaking. Chaired by Premier Li and attended by more than 20 chiefs of China’s ministries and bureaus, the commission is the top body for coordinating energy policy.

Why is energy security back at the top of the agenda?

Li told the conference: “The government should diversify energy supply to improve energy security… enhance domestic oil and gas exploration and development efforts, and promote oil and gas reserves and production, in order to improve oil and gas self-sufficiency”.

The renewed focus on energy security comes amid an increase in domestic consumption of oil and gas, which is largely being met through imports. China’s dependence on energy imports rose from 9% in 2014 to more than 20% in 2018.

China’s domestic crude oil production has declined and efforts to tap unconventional sources of natural gas, such as shale gas and coalbed methane, have faltered.

Other causes for concern lie outside China. The ongoing trade dispute with the US is a threat to the energy trade between the two superpowers, and supplies from the Middle East are at risk from mounting instability in the region.
 
The green transition loses ‘acceleration’

The government’s concern over energy security is positive for coal given that China has lots of it. At the meeting, Li Keqiang spoke of speeding up the construction of large-scale coal transportation and electricity transmission infrastructure. He wants to promote “safe and green coal mining”, the “clean and efficient development of coal-fired power”, and to “develop and utilise coalbed methane”.  

Li also downplayed China’s low-carbon energy transition. At the same meeting in 2016, Li called on China to: “increase the proportion of renewables in the energy mix” and “accelerate” such a transition. This year, there was no mention of renewable energy’s share of the energy mix and “acceleration” was replaced by the blander term “development”. The change of tone was hard to miss….
 
Although China is under international pressure to increase its climate ambition in 2020 and accelerate its energy transition, Chinese policymakers still see coal as the bedrock of the country’s energy security, playing a major role in the 14^th Five Year Plan.
 
Full story
 
Told you so:  The Road From Paris: China's Climate U-Turn

PROPAGANDA POLLING ON CLIMATE MAKES ASTONISHING CLAIMS

Yet more climate propaganda reported in the Guardian.

"A majority of the UK public and almost half of Conservative voters support a radical plan to transform the economy and tackle the climate crisis, a poll suggests."

YouGov found that 56% of people back the total decarbonisation of the UK economy by 2030 and just under half support public spending to make large swathes of public transport free to use. Without knowing the cost, or who pays.

But, below is the crucial question asked. It might as well say "do you want to carry on living as you do now but with more trees?" "The UK Government has committed to a target of bringing all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. This means making efforts to lower carbon emissions and off-setting any emissions with schemes such as tree-planting or using technology like carbon capture and storage. When do you think the Government should aim to be net zero by?"

2025 or earlier                                               32

2030                                                              24

2045                                                                8

2050 or later                                                    8

This should not be a Government target        8

Don't know                                                    19

As Julia Hartley-Brewer suggests, let’s try asking this question again: "Would you agree to give up your car, your central heating, foreign holidays and pay thousands more in tax to deliver an energy policy that will have ZERO effect on climate change?" I wonder what the answer would be then...

Read the full report here.at Breitbart.

TIME FOR GOVERNMENTS TO BRING IN CONTROLS ON DEMONSTRATIONS

This piece highlights the words of the Australian PM who is suggesting that protestors, in this case on climate change, should be reined in so that they cannot disrupt the lives of ordinary people. It sounds like common sense to me. omeone should ask our party leaders about this during the general election.

Protesting has always been a part of life in a democracy and it must be allowed but with the rise of huge movements as a result of the internet its nature has changed. It's time these mass demos were confined to one area of a city. We had the same problems with strikes back in the 1980's until new laws were brought in to limit them. Now it is generally felt that things are much better. Unions are subject to large fines if they breach the rules. The same should apply to well-funded organisations who cause mass demonstrations.

SCEPTICS v ALARMISTS - THE CLIMATE WAR

There seems to be a game of seeing who has the biggest and best group of scientists. Is it this group or maybe it's this one. The alarmist list is bigger but the sceptic one seems more realistic. As one  well known scientist once said "if just one scientist can disprove my theory it is wrong"

HERE'S WHY TRUMP HAS DITCHED PARIS AGREEMENT

Reality Check: Paris Agreement -- A Blank Cheque For CO2 Emissions By China And India
Global Warming Policy Foundation,
 
The Paris Climate Agreement, far from securing a reduction in global CO2 emissions, is fundamentally a blank cheque that allows China and India to increase their emissions as they see fit in pursuit of economic growth.


 
This is the conclusion of a paper by Law Professor David Campbell (Lancaster University Law School) and published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
 
For the last 25 years, international climate change law has failed to agree a programme of global emissions reductions. Indeed this law grants a permission to major emitters such as China and India to emit as much as they see fit. Global emissions reductions therefore have always been impossible and since 1992 global emissions have enormously increased.
 
Indeed, the Paris Agreement contains a categorical statement that countries such as China and India will not be obliged to undertake any reductions.
 
The UK Government proposes to continue with decarbonisation even though Britain’s unilateral decarbonisation is utterly pointless and thus wholly irrational.
 
Full paper (PDF)
 
 

 Meeting Paris Climate Goals 'Looks Unrealistic' As Energy Consumption Grows
Edie News, 4 November 2019
 
Global energy demand rose by 2.3% year-on-year in 2018 - a trajectory which, if sustained, will leave the world unable to meet international and national climate goals including the Paris Agreement.
 
That is the key finding of Capgemini’s new World Energy Markets Observatory report (WEMO), published today (4 November).
 
Developed in partnership with research and advisory firm VaasaETT and French law firm De Pardieu Brocas Maffei, the report tracks key climate and energy-related trends on an annual basis, taking into account national and international data surrounding policy frameworks, emissions and energy investment.
 
The report states that globally, progress towards key climate goals is “under threat” due to growing energy consumption – partly due to population growth and industry expansion, particularly in nations such as China and India.
 
Full story
 
 
 
Lawsuit Says Obama Entered Paris Climate Agreement Illegally, Cites Mysterious Legal Memo
Daily Caller, 4 November 2019
 
Former President Barack Obama illegally entered into the Paris climate agreement, a lawsuit filed Monday says, citing a legal memo the Obama administration allegedly used to justify the deal.
 
The lawsuit asserts that the Obama administration argued the agreement could be signed without Senate approval because it does not set “legally binding targets and timetables.” Such justifications are a misrepresentation of the law, according to the lawsuit.
 
“This memo demonstrates the Obama administration’s unlawful entry into the Paris treaty,” Chris Horner, a former senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted in a press statement attached to the lawsuit. The memo “represents a major political and legal scandal,” he added. Horner left CEI in April.
 
The lawsuit seeks documents related to the memo from the U.S. State Department through a Freedom of Information Act request.
 
Horner is an attorney at the Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) in April. The nonprofit group filed the lawsuit on behalf of Energy Policy Advocates. He cited a legal memo that allegedly justifies Obama’s decision to enter the climate deal, which compels the U.S. and 200 other countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26% to 28% by 2025.
 
Senate approval is required for any international deal that seeks “to adopt 1 targets and timetables,” not merely those that are “legally binding,” Horner noted in the lawsuit, referring to a referendum produced by the Senate in 1992 after the Kyoto Protocol, an international climate agreement designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. never ratified Kyoto.
 
Full story
 
 
  

PHASE TWO OF THE PROPAGANDA CLIMATE WAR BEGINS

GWPF TV – Death of a Climate Icon
 
The suggested shift what “journalists” should focus on when covering the so-called “climate emergency” comes from The Guardian’s picture editor Fiona Shields, who argues “we need new imagery for new narratives.”
 
There’s one other convenient benefit: Polar bears are thriving in the changing climate, an inconvenient truth that contradicts the doom-and-gloom narrative promoted by climate alarmists.
 
“We know, from years of experience, that people love polar bears and pandas, so it is easy to see how these appealing creatures have become the emblems for the topics of endangered species and what we previously termed as global warming,” Shields wrote.
 
“Often, when signaling environmental stories to our readers, selecting an image of a polar bear on melting ice has been the obvious – though not necessarily appropriate – choice,” she continued. “These images tell a certain story about the climate crisis but can seem remote and abstract – a problem that is not a human one, nor one that is particularly urgent.”
 
The idea to focus instead on pictures of Chinese with smog masks and piles of plastic trash in developing countries comes from a group called Climate Visuals, an arm of the UK Climate Outreach lobbying group.
 
Climate Outreach bills itself as “a team of social scientists & communications specialists passionate about helping organisations communicate climate change beyond the green bubble.”
 
Shields is all in.
 
She’s convinced photos of folks basking in the sun at the beach or enjoying a snowy day sledding with their children are an injustice to climate change, and journalists should focus on “getting the emotional tone of imagery in line with the issue.” She wants other climate “journalists” to “join the conversation,” as well.
 
Full story

FROM A COOLING SCARE TO WARMING IN JUST TWO YEARS

This short video really makes the point about how strongly the issue of global cooling was pushed in the 1970's. The video is by the brilliant Tony Heller and features numerous news clips and cuttings to back up the point. He also demonstrates how quickly the issue switched from a cooling scare to a warming scare. It was only a matter of two years between cooling and warming. This video makes the case far more powerfully than words alone.

COOLER OCEAN CAUSES DROUGHTS, NOT WARMING

Why do many people still not believe in global warming despite the forest fires in the Amazon, Siberia, Yucatan and the Canary Islands?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49443389

Paul Noel, former Research Scientist 6 Level 2 UAH Huntsville Al. (2009-2014)

Answered Aug 24

My fair question is why on earth do you believe that they are even related to global warming? Really why? Because someone told you there would be more fires? The same people told us in 2004 that there would be lots more hurricanes. They don’t know what they are talking about.

Let's get real here. The fires you are talking about are all the result of droughts. In every case these droughts are the product of the ocean being cooler than usual. In the case of the Canary Islands, Brazil and Yucatan this is about 15 F cooler than usual. This isn’t evidence for global warming it is evidence for global cooling.

The reason you are seeing this drought is the same reason you are not seeing hurricanes in the Atlantic either. You are completely mistaken as to causes here. This is very evident on satellite or global weather plots.

The BBC is lying to you. They know this fact they are just Hoaxing you!

The Caribbean and Canary Islands are between 5F and 10F colder than usual. Much of Africa is in chill too. This has the winds of the Atlantic going to Africa instead of to South America.

When I say hoaxing they have what are called “Style Sheets” that tell them the words to use to describe things. All weather events are demanded to be some sort of “Climate Crisis” or “Climate Emergency” or “Climate Apocalypse” This is a political manipulation going on.