CLIMATE INQUISITION IS COMING - BEWARE!

 Adam Houser: Google, YouTube, and the Climate Inquisition

The Washington Times, 30 October 2021

A slippery slope toward censorship and intellectual tyranny

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” says the famous Monty Python comedy sketch.

But unfortunately, everyone can expect the coming Climate Inquisition.

Google has announced it will now prevent ads and monetization supporting content that questions climate change alarmism. This includes YouTube.

Google’s support document on the policy says: “… we’re announcing a new monetization policy…that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

What makes this new policy so concerning is that Alphabet Inc., which is the parent company for Google and YouTube, has a near-monopoly on internet search and video. According to Statista.com, Google has a worldwide market share for internet search engines of almost 88 percent. Global Media Insight says over 2.3 billion people use YouTube at least once a month and that it is the second most popular social media platform.

What are the limits of what a private company can prohibit on its platforms? This is the debate politicians and citizens have been having, at least regarding social media, for years now.

The libertarian argument goes something like this: “As a private company, Google can do what it wants to limit content on its platforms. Don’t like it? Go somewhere else!”

But when that company owns 88 percent of global online search traffic, as well as the largest video hosting platform in the world, there is little else to go to.

Yet Google assures users that the best experts are being consulted, so there is no need to worry!

“In creating this policy and its parameters, we’ve consulted authoritative sources on the topic of climate science, including experts who have contributed to United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports.”

What about experts that say the United Nations, and their assessment reports, may have a few things wrong when it comes to climate policy? Google doesn’t pay them any mind.

For example, Dr. Steven E. Koonin, who served as science advisor for President Barack Obama’s Department of Energy, said the UN’s climate models don’t hold up under scrutiny in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: “The latest models also don’t reproduce the global climate of the past. The models fail to explain why rapid global warming occurred from 1910 to 1940 when human influences on the climate were less significant.”

Dr. Koonin also has a fair amount of criticism concerning AR6, the UN’s latest climate assessment report, saying in that same piece: “The Summary for Policy Makers section says the rate of global sea-level rise has been increasing over the past 50 years. It doesn’t mention that it was increasing almost as rapidly 90 years ago before decreasing strongly for 40 years.”

Physicist Dr. Ralph Alexander also criticized the UN’s climate report. He said, “there’s no scientific evidence that global warming triggers extreme weather, or even that weather extremes are becoming more frequent. Anomalous weather events, such as heatwaves, hurricanes, floods, droughts and tornadoes, show no long-term trend over more than a century of reliable data.”

Unfortunately, scientific experts are beginning to be censored across not just digital media but all media. The Los Angeles Times has banned letters to the editor from those skeptical of a climate emergency. In 2018, Chuck Todd, host of “Meet The Press,” said he would not give any air time to “climate deniers.”

But it goes further than mere censorship. Prominent figures are even advocating for the jailing and prosecution of those who are skeptical of a man-made climate crisis.

When asked what should happen to climate “deniers,” environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said: “I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the Hague, with all the other war criminals who are there.”

When actor Bill Nye was asked the same question, he said, “We’ll see what happens. Uh, was it appropriate to jail the guys from Enron?”

In 2015, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) suggested that climate skeptics could be prosecuted under RICO laws used for racketeering enterprises.

Do these all seem like things that should be done in a free, democratic society? It seems more like the beginnings of the Inquisition by the Catholic church hundreds of years ago.

In 1633, Galileo was charged with heresy as part of the Roman Inquisition for his continued assertion that the earth orbited the sun. Galileo was not sentenced to death. Instead, he was sentenced to lifelong house arrest. He was forced to recant his beliefs.

Like Galileo, will scientists and experts be forced to recant their belief that we don’t face an imminent, dire climate emergency?

Will they even be subjected one day – as ridiculous as it may sound now – to house arrest or prosecution, as Senator Whitehouse wants?

Google’s ad ban may be one more step in a long slippery slope toward censorship and intellectual tyranny – a Climate Inquisition, if you will.

UK COST OF NET ZERO ESTIMATE IS MUCH TOO LOW

 London, 28 October - New data confirms that offshore windfarm costs remain at very high levels, having only fallen slightly in recent years. 

 
Net Zero Watch has compiled the audited accounts of every commercial UK offshore windfarms, together with the associated generation data from Ofgem. This work updates a series of earlier studies of offshore wind in the UK, which reached similar conclusions.

The Prime Minister told MPs recently that the cost of offshore wind power has dropped by 70 per cent in the last decade. He used this to justify his claim that Net Zero can be achieved at modest cost.
 
The new findings show that he is wrong about the cost of wind energy and that Net Zero will cost hundreds of billions of pounds extra.
 
Ministers' claims have been made on the basis of the low bids made to Contracts for Difference auctions by several offshore windfarms. However, the first of these - Moray East - has now published its 2020 accounts, which suggest that its construction cost will be similar to other recent windfarms. 
 
Net Zero Watch's Andrew Montford said:
 
"Except for the wind lobby, there is now widespread agreement that Contracts for Difference results do not reflect underlying costs. The hard data from audited accounts is now giving unequivocal backing to this reality. It is clear that offshore wind is extremely expensive, and will remain so for the foreseeable future".
 
The chairman of the parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group, Craig Mackinlay MP, said:
 
"Boris Johnson assured me that the cost of offshore wind has fallen by 70%. Sober analysis shows beyond all reasonable doubt that this is not the case. Not only does this show that the PM is being given flawed information by his advisers, the public is being led into a cost and energy security disaster." 
 
Details of the findings can be found at the Net Zero Watch website.


Contact

Andrew Montford
e: awmontford@gmail.com

UK MUST GET A LOT WINDIER TO REACH NET ZERO

 Net Zero target relies on rise in windy days

The Sunday Telegraph, 24 October 2021
 
The disclosure prompts questions over the accuracy of the CCC's claims about the feasibility of meeting net zero by 2050

Modelling used to justify the "feasibility" of the net zero target assumed a dramatic fall in the number of days of calm weather, when many turbines stand still, according to new analysis.
 
Data obtained from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the official advisory body, following a legal battle, shows that a series of assumptions underpinning its advice to ministers included a projection that in 2050 there would be just seven days on which wind turbines would produce less than 10 per cent of their potential electricity output. So far this year, there have already been 65 such days, and in 2016 there were as many as 78.

On Saturday night the disclosure prompted questions over the accuracy of the CCC's claims in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Ministers rely heavily on the CCC's advice and modelling, and last week its chief executive, Chris Stark heralded Boris Johnson's new Net Zero Strategy as "largely mirroring the CCC advice".

It comes as an analysis by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) think tank warns that the "quality of the CCC's advice is questionable", particularly in relation to the 2050 target adopted by Theresa May in 2019.

"[The CCC] advised that this target was feasible but refused to disclose the calculations on which its costs figures were based, and it became clear that the scale of the challenge of net zero was not well understood when the target was passed into law," states the report, which is published today. The IEA report also accuses the body of having expanded an initial remit as an independent advisory body delivering balanced advice, to becoming a "pressure group".

Mr Stark used a newspaper interview on Friday to say that the Government should be urging people to "understand what they can do" about climate change, including "flying less, eating less meat".

Craig Mackinlay, the leader of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Conservative MPs and a member of the public accounts committee, warned that if the committee had significantly overestimated the amount of power that turbines would generate, significantly more back-up power could be required from more reliable sources.
 
He said: "These predictions appear somewhat fanciful. The Climate Change Committee seem to be looking at the whole project through rose-tinted spectacles to try and minimalise the unpalatable costs of this whole enterprise."

Analysis of CCC data obtained following a legal battle by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF), a climate sceptic think tank, found that the body's assumptions as part of modelling included that the UK would experience just one day in 2050 on which wind turbines would operate at less than five per cent of the industry's overall capacity. That compares with 20 days so far in 2021 - which has seen particularly low wind speeds - ten days in 2020, nine in 2019 and 21 in 2018.

The CCC's modelling, which drew on a study by Imperial College London, also included an assumption that, in 2050, there would be just seven days on which wind turbines produced less than 10 per cent of their overall capacity. That compares to 65 such days so far this year, 30 in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018, according to analysis by Net Zero Watch, a campaign of the GWPF.

A spokesman for the CCC declined to explain the disparity, saying: "Detailed assumptions on power generation were made in 2019 as part of an extensive body of modelling and analysis to inform our advice to government on net zero. We stand by these insights.

"This information, including the study undertaken by Imperial College London, is published in full on our website. We have no further comment to make."

The CCC has previously said that the UK's future energy supply should come from a "portfolio of technologies" including nuclear and hydrogen power, but insisted that the costs associated with the intermittent nature of wind "represent a small proportion of overall system costs."
 
Experts have also suggested that placing turbines in a wider variety of locations around the UK would increase the overall yield when the wind fails to blow in particular areas.

Victoria Hewson, a solicitor and the IEA's head of regulatory affairs, said: "The scale and impact of the areas covered by the advice of the Climate Change Committee is vast... Far from being treated as an irreproachable source of truth, the CCC should be challenged and scrutinised more than any other regulator or advisory body.”

POOR NATIONS DEMAND £ TRILLIONS TO REACH A CLIMATE DEAL

Read the article below and it becomes ever clearer why the whole climate change issue will never be resolved. No government will be able to afford to decarbonise their own economy and also provide the sort of sums in the below article to give to the third world.

At a July global climate gathering in London, South African environment minister Barbara Creecy presented the world’s wealthiest countries with a bill: more than $750 billion annually to pay for poorer nations to shift away from fossil fuels and protect themselves from global warming.

The number was met with silence from U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry, according to Zaheer Fakir, an adviser to Ms. Creecy. Other Western officials said they weren’t ready to discuss such a huge sum.

For decades, Western countries responsible for the bulk of greenhouse-gas emissions have pledged to pay to bring poorer nations along with them in what is expected to be a very expensive global energy transition. But they have yet to fully deliver on that promise. Now the price of the developing world’s cooperation is going up.

At the end of the month, negotiators from nearly every country will meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for a two-week climate summit, the first major gathering since governments signed the Paris accord in 2015. The goal is to strike a deal to keep the climate targets of the Paris agreement within reach.

Without poorer countries on board, the world stands little chance of preventing catastrophic climate change, say many climate scientists. Emissions in the U.S. and Europe are falling as both regions push to adopt renewable energy and phase out coal-fired electricity. But emissions in the developing world are expected to rise sharply in the coming decades as billions rise out of poverty—unless those economies can shift onto a lower-carbon path.

Before signing on, poorer countries are demanding a big increase in funding from the developed world to adopt cleaner technologies and adapt to the effects of climate change such as rising sea levels and more powerful storms.

Bangladesh says it needs cyclone-resistant housing. Kenya wants its countryside dotted with solar farms instead of coal or natural gas-fired plants. India says its climate-change plan alone will cost more than $2.5 trillion through 2030.

“We cannot be talking about ambition on the one hand, and yet you show no ambition on finance,” said Mr. Fakir who is coordinating climate finance policies for the Group of 77, a coalition of developing nations.

Developed nations say it is unrealistic to put them on the hook for such a large sum without also getting middle-income countries—China in particular—to provide funds. In Paris in 2015, the U.S., Europe and a few other wealthy nations committed to funding poorer countries to the tune of $100 billion a year from 2020 through 2025. They have so far fallen short.

Rich countries have increasingly channeled ​funds to the developing world for climate-​change projects, but the Paris agreement calls​ for even more money.

Developing-world negotiators say the money isn’t financial aid. Rather, they say wealthy countries have a responsibility to pay under the U.N. climate treaties because most of the Earth’s warming since the industrial era is the result of emissions from the rich world.
 
Moreover, poor nations now face the task of raising living standards without burning fossil fuels unchecked as the U.S. and other rich nations did for almost two centuries.
“If you’re going to ask a much poorer country to forgo that option, then there is a moral claim that they need support to go on a lower emissions development pathway,” said Joe Thwaites, a climate-finance expert at the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank.

Even developed countries are struggling with the transition to renewables. A surge in demand for power from nations recovering from the pandemic has forced governments to lean on fossil fuels; though investment in renewables has increased, it only accounts for about a quarter of the world’s power.

Western officials say the Glasgow negotiations need to focus first on how to raise enough money to meet the Paris goal. Then they are planning to begin talks on a finance goal for after 2025. That sum is expected to be too large to pay from the government budgets of rich nations alone, officials say. Instead they are counting on private investors to pick up most of the bill.

“There isn’t enough official development funds in the system to close the gap of climate finance,” said Gustavo Alberto Fonseca, director of programs at the U.N.’s Global Environment Facility, which funds climate infrastructure in the developing world. “There has to be a market-based solution.”

Developing nations want a big portion of the money to come as government grants, not loans from private investors that would saddle them with debt. They’re demanding control over how the money is spent, wary of dictates from wealthy governments and financiers in the U.S. and Europe.

THE CLIMATE DEBATE

 I am reproducing the post below, as I think it is interesting in that it involves a discussion between myself and a reader of the blog. I would welcome any other readers comments. 

"MY OWN POSITION ON CLIMATE CHANGE"

 My position is that there is a modest amount of global warming, which, as the IPCC report says, is about 1.1 degrees C since around 1850, which was at the end of the Little Ice Age. (I don’t think anyone would think that this was an ideal climate!) Some of this warming is natural – most of that before 1950 and about half of that post 1950 is what scientists have estimated. So approximately half a degree C can be attributed to man. That is very modest and cannot by any means be called an emergency.     The problem is that politics has taken over from the science and this issue has now been captured by extremists, such as Extinction Rebellion and, unfortunately, the government has listened to these extremists and they are now fully embarking on a very costly policy of trying to eliminate fossil fuels, regardless of the fact that other major industrial nations, such as China and India, are increasing their fossil fuel usage which means our costly efforts will be wiped out.  Unilateral action is pointless, just as with nuclear disarmament.   The language now being used is very extreme with terms like “climate emergency” being used as an everyday phrase.  It is the use of this extreme language, along with almost daily clips of extreme weather events on our main news channels which is designed to convince a sceptical public that the vast expense of decarbonisation (government estimate is £1.4 trillion up to 2050) is justified. Extreme weather has always occurred and the data show it has not increased in either severity or quantity when measured over the long term.   I am very concerned for the residents of the UK who will have to pay heavily for this and so I believe it is very important to speak up as a voice of reason. 

1 – 4 of 4

 I.Walker said...

Hi,
I'm struggling to follow your logic.

The IPCC report says "Human-induced global warming has already caused multiple observed changes in the climate system (high confidence). Changes include increases in both land and ocean temperatures, as well as more frequent heatwaves in most land regions (high confidence). There is also (high confidence) global warming has resulted in an increase in the frequency and duration of marine heatwaves. Further, there is substantial evidence that human-induced global warming has led to an increase in the frequency, intensity and/or amount of heavy precipitation events at the global scale (medium confidence), as well as an increased risk of drought in the Mediterranean region (medium confidence)."

This appears to contradict your opinion that there is no emergency. Are you contesting the credibility of the IPCC's report?

17 September 2021 at 17:38

 

 Derek Tipp said...

As I wrote, the global rise in temperature caused by humans is only about 0.5 degrees C. The rest is natural, so is it credible that this tiny change could cause the changes in climate being claimed? Also note that 1850 was the end of the Little Ice Age. If we go back to the Medieval Warm Period, there is good evidence that temperatures were warmer than today. For example Greenland was able to have a human settlement which farmed the land. It was then vacated as temperatures dropped. At several locations evidence of forests have been found beneath the retreating glaciers which have been dated as only a thousand years old. Again indicating higher temperatures within that time span. What you need to note is that the IPCC is a political organisation, not an independent scientific body. What we have is a man-made emergency driven by political expediency

17 September 2021 at 21:30

 

 I.Walker said...

The IPCC’s role is to analyse the science, they use levels of ‘confidence’ not shape it to a political ideology. In any case, NASA also agrees with the conclusions (that the rise in temperature is driven by man, not nature), as do most scientists. To suggest that the temperature rise is normal puts your opinion in opposing to mainstream scientific understanding. What qualification or credible source do you use to justify this position, other than your personal, subjective opinion?

1 October 2021 at 16:57

 

 Derek Tipp said...

The IPCC's role is to identify and quantify the human role in changing the climate, which, unsurprisingly it does. - If it did not then it would not be justifying its existence. There can be no doubt that this subject has now become a highly political one and it is quite impossible to separate the science from the politics. The actual science proving that the temperature rise is mainly down to CO2 is very weak, as there are many other factors that are simply not understood. For example the role of clouds. Research into this is simply ignored because it throws doubt over the whole CO2 driven hypothesis. My views are shared by a number of highly qualified experts on the subject. You need to read more widely on the subject and get informed on the very credible alternative hypotheses. Have a look at the Global Warming Policy Foundation website.

14 October 2021 at 11:38

 

FREEDOM OF SPEECH DEALT ANOTHER BLOW IN PETER RIDD CASE VERDICT

 Morgan Begg: Ruling against Ridd shines light on cancel culture

The Australian, 13 October 2021
 
The High Court of Australia’s verdict in favour of James Cook University’s right to sack one of its employees, a professor of physics, for questioning the science of climate change is an endorsement of the culture of censorship suffocating Australian life and further confirms that the nation’s universities are in crisis.
 
The unanimous judgment handed down by the High Court on Wednesday was the culmination of a nearly six-year fight by Peter Ridd against JCU, which terminated his employment in May 2018.
 
Before his dismissal Ridd was subject to a series of disciplinary proceedings in relation to his public criticism of the scientific evidence on which rested claims that climate change was killing the Great Barrier Reef.
 
In a publication of the Institute of Public Affairs, Climate Change: The Facts 2017, Ridd wrote, for instance, that “the serious problems with quality assurance in many areas of science” mean “we can be sceptical of claims the Great Barrier Reef is in peril”.
 
Ridd was first investigated and charged with serious misconduct in 2016 for emailing a journalist to express his criticisms of prominent reef science.
 
The High Court found that in this instance Ridd’s comments were protected by the provisions in his enterprise agreement in force at the time that protected intellectual freedom. To prove that nothing a person says before the word “but” really counts, the court’s lip service to academic freedom ultimately was undone by its finding that breaches of confidentiality directions were not protected and hence the termination of his employment in May 2018 was lawful.

The implication seems to be that the university could launch an unlawful investigation against an employee, but it would be entirely lawful to force the employee to keep secret the investigation.
 
This would mean that an investigated party who wanted to challenge an unlawful investigation would not be able to raise funds to do so or seek outside help. It also would mean that the direction to Ridd to maintain secrecy even from his own wife was also lawful.
 
The endorsement of the university’s star chamber disciplinary system is a staggering rejection of natural justice.

The court agreed that the university could make secrecy orders. This reveals, as Justice Darryl Rangiah noted in his dissenting judgment when this case was heard in the Federal Court, “a Kafkaesque scenario of a person secretly accused and secretly found guilty of a disciplinary offence but unable to reveal, under threat of further secret charges being brought, that he or she had ever been charged and found guilty”.
 
That the High Court bench as a group could fail to identify the clear problems of this manifestly absurd interpretation obviously reveals a problem in our judicial and legal culture.
 
The High Court’s failure to act also reveals that the cancellation of Ridd is not just a problem of a few rogue administrators, or even a crisis in our universities, but the symptom of a much wider problem in Australian society.
It is increasingly evident the ideology that has captured government, universities and corporate Australia is one that is designed to control what Australians are allowed to say and what information they are allowed to hear and read.
 
No matter what you believe about climate change or what is happening to the Great Barrier Reef, these cannot be settled subjects. The scientific method means more than just declaring a hypothesis as an incontrovertible fact. It means challenging a hypothesis to observe whether it stands up to scrutiny. The scientific method is a process of rigorous scepticism across time to find reliable results.
 
It does not mean, as JCU believes, that you can just ignore criticism. To this day, JCU has not responded to Ridd’s criticism of quality assurance in science.
 
In deciding to vindicate JCU’s authoritarian tactics to shut down what it considered heretical beliefs, the High Court shines a spotlight on the insidious cancel culture permeating Australia’s institutions. It is an important reminder that real science still exists but it is something that needs to be fought for if we are to have an honest debate about the future of the country.
 
Morgan Begg is director of the legal rights program at the Institute of Public Affairs.

NET ZERO POLICY - A GIFT TO CHINA

 London, 13 October – The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is today publishing a major intervention in the international debate around the Net Zero agenda in the run-up to COP26.

The author, Professor Jun Arima of the University of Tokyo, is one of Japan’s most experienced climate policy diplomats, having represented the Government of Japan at fifteen previous Conferences, including several as a senior negotiator.

Professor Arima argues that the Net Zero agenda now being urged upon the world fatally damages the pragmatic and fragile consensus achieved at Paris, setting the West against the developing world, with the only beneficiary being the Chinese Communist Party.

Professor Arima said:

“The Net Zero climate policies are creating a divided and acrimonious international environment that will permit China to greatly enhance its global economic presence and political influence while the developed, democratic world becomes weaker in every way. Is that the world we want?”

Dr Benny Peiser, GWPF’s director, said:

“The astronomical cost of Net Zero are crippling Western economies at a crucial and alarming time in our relations with China. If we want to protect our freedom we need to put our economies and our national security first. That is the only way to deliver a stable and long-term climate policy, otherwise greenhouse gas emissions may be the least of our worries.”

Notes for journalists

Jun Arima is an economist, a former civil servant in Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and is now a Professor in the University of Tokyo. He has represented the Government of Japan in the Conferences of the Parties to the UN FCC on numerous occasions, and as one of the chief negotiators at COP16 in Cancun, he announced that Japan would not join Kyoto 2 under any condition or circumstances. He is also a Lead Author of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.

His study, Eco-Fundamentalism as grist for China’s mill (pdf) is published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London.

Contact

Global Warming Policy Foundation
e: info@thegwpf.org
tel: 44 2073406038