Archive for the ‘Alarmism’ Category
November 28, 2010
Cancun Hotels & Resorts : image cancun-travelnet.com
While winter comes early to Europe and China with heavy November snow and temperatures down to minus 37 Celcius in N. Sweden, 15,000 of the faithful travel to the balmy, holiday resort of Cancún (min 21 deg C, max 29 deg C) for the UN / IPCC conference on climate change and to try and blow some life back into the carbon trading scheme.
That Cancún is just about money has become apparent especially since Copenhagen and Nagoya. But it is the unrestrained greed represented by the carbon-trading, money trail that is most telling.
A Global Investor Statement on Climate Change has been issued by:
259 investors – both asset owners and asset managers – that collectively represent assets of over US$15 trillion.
Reducing Risks, Seizing Opportunities & Closing the Climate Investment Gap
Investors are interested in the large potential economic opportunities that the transition to a low-carbon economy presents. In particular, investors are calling for:
- Domestic policy frameworks to catalyze renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other low-carbon infrastructure, so as to provide investors with the certainty needed to invest with confidence in receiving long-term risk-adjusted returns.
- International agreement on climate financial architecture, delivery of climate funding, reducing deforestation, robust measurement, reporting, and verification, and other areas necessary to set theglobal rules of the road, bolster investor confidence, and allow financing to flow.
- International finance tools that help mitigate the high levels of risk private investors face inmaking climate-related investments in developing countries, enabling dramatic increases inprivate investment.
But Christopher Booker in The Telegraph gets it right:
These are the bodies (major banks, insurance companies and pension funds) calling most stridently for “government action on climate change”, because they are the ones who hope to make vast sums of money out of it. They are desperate for a treaty of the type they failed to get at Copenhagen – even more so since the collapse of the US cap and trade bill – because they see their chance of turning global warming into the most lucrative fruit machine in history dwindling by the month.
Top of their wish list is “a rapid time-frame” for implementing the UN’s REDD scheme, which would enable them to make hundreds of billions of dollars by selling the CO2 locked up in the world’s tropical rainforests as “carbon offsets”, thus allowing firms from the developed world to continue emitting CO2. Under this scheme, for instance, environmental bodies including the WWF hope to share in the $60 billion which they estimate as the “carbon value” of the Brazilian rainforest.
But nothing better betrays their gloom about any result from Cancún than that they at least want it to give “a clear mandate” for the adoption of “a legally binding agreement” at the UN’s next conference, due in South Africa next year.
Tags:Cancún, Carbon Trading, climate change, climate fraud, IPCC, UN
Posted in Alarmism, Business, Climate, Fraud | Comments Off on Cancún – Follow the money
November 24, 2010
"Be Afraid" :Image by anyjazz65 via Flickr
After the cold shower at Copenhagen, the UN Climate groupies are gathering in 5 days at Cancun in Mexico for their next jamboree. Unlike Baden-Powell’s scouts whose motto was to “Be Prepared” the motto in Cancun is “Be Afraid” and their symbol is the Hockey Stick. But the number of attendees at 15,000 is expected to be just a third of the 45,000 at Copenhagen.
In the run-up to Cancun, the public relations exercises have started. The scare stories are proliferating. The objective is to strike fear into the hearts of the non-believers. They are couched in scientific terms but they all have one simple message:
“Be Afraid”
It is perhaps worth noting that in the history of mankind not one of the soothsayers’ prophecies of doom have yet come to pass. In the scientific age and since Malthus, prophecies of impending catastrophe have always been coated with the semblance of rationality and scientific rigour. Whether prognosticating catastrophe due to population growth or due to depletion of resources ( food, oil, coal, metals, animals, plants,……..), they have all been wrong. But in almost every case a few people have gained economic advantage by spreading fear. That climate change happens and will continue to happen is both inevitable and obvious. The idea that man can have more than a very minor part to play in climate – whether intentionally or unintentionally – is a more recent phenomenon of the last 100 years. Before that catastrophes were caused by angry or avenging Gods. Change was then effected by assuaging the angry Gods or by mobilising some other more beneficial God. Of course there were certain individuals – priests, shamans, witch-doctors and their favoured Kings, chieftains and merchants – who always claimed special understanding of the problems and exclusive access to the required God and took benefit from that. These days the angry Gods have been replaced by Divine Computer Models and the scientists and politicians who see a benefit in the forecasts (sometimes pre-determined) of the models.
But Cancun is not really about science. It is about money – for those expecting to make a windfall from carbon trading or for nations looking for funding or for “idealists” looking to redistribute wealth or politicians looking to win their next election.
As I write this I have a foot of snow outside my window which came last night. This is going to be a long and cold winter just as we had last year. But it is just weather not climate. I have no doubt the weather in Cancun will be much warmer and much more salubrious next week. But it is just weather not climate.
“Be Afraid”
Tags:Cancún, climate change, Copenhagen, United Nations, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, UN | 1 Comment »
November 22, 2010
With one week left before the Cancun circus begins (UN/ IPCC Climate Conference from 29th November to 10th December), the mainstream media hype has begun.
Global CO2 expected to rise to record levels screams the Daily Telegraph. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are expected to reach record levels this year, according to a new study, despite the recession and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases – but what that has to do with climate is uncertain. No doubt it has a great deal to do with pricing of the Carbon Trading market. As The Telegraph points out (inadvertently perhaps) this is just hype timed to come just before the UN jamboree.
The results of the study by the Global Carbon Project will be used to put pressure on environment ministers meeting in Cancun, Mexico this month for the latest UN meeting to come to a global agreement on cutting emissions.
The Cancun meeting itself is all about money and Carbon Trading. The collapse of the Chicago exchange and the growing realisation in Europe that Carbon Trading is just a scam is leading all those with a vested interest in carbon pricing to raise the spectres of carbon dioxide again. Hopefully these efforts will be as useless as at Copenhagen but some “trading” being introduced through the back door is always a possibility.
The two main “money flows” that Cancun is concerned with is the carbon trading fraud and the diversion of funds to “developing” countries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. Just as with the Nagoya biodiversity conference a key objective is the redistribution of wealth. In fact biodiversity and climate are merely convenient scare stories which can act as vehicles for arranging for the flow of funds. A UN IPCC official admitted as much when talking about climate policy:
OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL: “That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all”.
Tags:Cancún, Emissions trading, IPCC Cancun, UN Climate conference, United Nations
Posted in Air pollution, Alarmism, Climate, Development, Economics, Fraud, UN | 1 Comment »
November 11, 2010
The global warming brigade and their funding is dependant upon carbon dioxide being considered a villain and being banned. Global warming dogma does not like geoengineering solutions which may make doomsday scenarios irrelevant.
When geo-engineering – that is human intervention directed to adapting to climate – suggests ways in which we could successfully keep climatic conditions suitable for human development, the global warmists are appalled. To suggest alternatives to banning carbon dioxide suddenly creates “ethical issues” whereas alarmism and doomsday scenarios do not!!
But if it is unintended human intervention which creates a problem then surely it is the only “right and proper” course to use intended human intervention to rectify the situation (even though man-made carbon dioxide is of little significance and totally irrelevant as far as climate change is concerned).
In fact – I would suggest – it is unethical to stifle human ingenuity and the march of technology.
Human development cannot be based on “not doing something”. Strategy must be based on the positive choice of “what to do” which may – as a consequence – lead to certain other things not being done. But when environmentalism or conservation or climate change lead only to lists of “what not to do” they degenerate into cowardice where actions are subordinated to “fear” and lose credibility.
The Guardian tells us:
The problem is that proposals to geo-engineer the climate come loaded with social and ethical concerns. Is it acceptable to intentionally intervene in the volatile climate system? How would it be governed? What would prevent the abuse of climate-controlling technologies, and whose hand would be on the global thermostat?
A geoengineering solution:Spraying seawater droplets into marine clouds from ships could make them reflect more sunlight. Photograph: Nasa
The growing number of scientists working on different aspects of geo-engineering research – from climate modelling, to lab experiments with reflective particles that could be injected into the stratosphere – are anxious to emphasise that they are not geo-engineering cheerleaders. They simply want to understand the pros and cons of different technologies, in case the day came when they might be needed, a day they hope will never come.
The Royal Society itself has taken great care to indicate that it does not advocate geo-engineering – and certainly not in the place of deep global cuts in greenhouse gases. But it does advocate research on geo-engineering, and that’s where the dilemma for many scientists kicks in.
On the one hand, it is clearly prudent to understand more about geo-engineering – the worst of all scenarios would involve a government deploying a technology without knowing what its effects would be. Initial evidence suggests that spraying the skies with reflective particles of sulphate would have a major impact on patterns of rainfall. Surely it is better to know this sooner rather than later?
On the other hand, conducting research on geo-engineering is one of the main factors that will make the deployment of the technologies more likely. Most scientists are deeply sceptical about the use of such “remedial” action on global warming. But scientists won’t be the ones to decide whether the technology is used. So are they unwittingly clearing the path for future deployment?
Tags:climate, ethics, Geoengineering, global warming, Technology
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Ethics, Geoengineering | Comments Off on Geoengineering possibilities threaten the CO2 reduction advocates
November 11, 2010
Further confirmation that subsidies in general are counter productive and in the case of solar panels in Australia were misguided:
From ABC News:
A new report has found the Federal Government’s billion-dollar subsidies for solar energy favoured the wealthy and barely reduced Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past decade, successive federal governments have provided generous subsidies to households installing solar roof-top panels.
But the cost effectiveness and fairness of the solar voltaic rebate program is being questioned. Andrew Macintosh, the associate director of the Australian National University’s Centre for Climate Law and Policy, has reviewed the program. He says it has barely reduced Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, and it has favoured the rich. “What we found was that the cost of the program was very high,” he said. “It cost the government about $1.1 billion. For that we got about a six-fold increase in solar generation, but still solar constituted only 0.1 per cent of total generation, so a relatively small technology in the overall grid,” he said.
“We’ve been handing out a lot of subsidies for solar systems, but the most people who pick up these subsidies tend to be from wealthier households … and as a result we’re basically providing middle and upper class welfare.”
In June last year the Federal Government cancelled the program at short notice.
Tags:Australia, counter-productive subsidies, Solar power, subsidies
Posted in Alarmism, Economics, Energy, Renewable Energy, Subsidies | Comments Off on Misguided solar subsidies favoured the wealthy
November 9, 2010
Wattsupwiththat has the story.
The American Geophysical Union has issued a press release backing away from “a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gases” which was widely reported yesterday: See “Warriors of the Faith”: Global warming zealots declare jehad”
The Press Release is available at http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-37.shtml.
AGU Logo
Inaccurate news reports misrepresent a climate-science initiative of the American Geophysical Union
WASHINGTON—An article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, and then picked up by media outlets far and wide, misrepresents the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and a climate science project the AGU is about to relaunch. The project, called Climate Q&A Service, aims simply to provide accurate scientific answers to questions from journalists about climate science.
“In contrast to what has been reported in the LA Times and elsewhere, there is no campaign by AGU against climate skeptics or congressional conservatives,” says Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union. “AGU will continue to provide accurate scientific information on Earth and space topics to inform the general public and to support sound public policy development.”..
“AGU is a scientific society, not an advocacy organization,” says climate scientist and AGU President Michael J. McPhaden. “The organization is committed to promoting scientific discovery and to disseminating to the scientific community, policy makers, the media, and the public, peer-reviewed scientific findings across a broad range of Earth and space sciences.”…….
The Army of the Warriors of the Faith has gone from 700 to 39 to zero in one day.
Tags:Alarmism, American Geophysical Union, ethics, Los Angeles Times, science fraud
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, Science, Scientific Fraud | Comments Off on American Geophysical Union backs away from the “Warriors of the faith”
November 8, 2010
The Chicago Tribune runs with the latest example of faith-based zealots declaring war!
Warriors of the Faith: image Jesus Christ Superstar
Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday’s election.
On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country’s largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.
John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate change skeptics, is also pulling together a “climate rapid response team,” which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows.
“This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists,” said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.
This new Rapid Response Team has so far recruited 39 Warriors of the Faith!!!
A rapid-response team, however, is willing to delve into politics. In the week that Abraham and others have been marshaling the team, 39 scientists agreed to participate, including Richard Feely, senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.
“People who’ve already dug their heels in, we’re not going to change their opinions,” Mandia said. “We’re trying to reach people who may not have an opinion or opinion based on limited information.”
neela.banerjee@latimes.com
It is difficult to take any Global Warming “Science” or “Scientists” seriously as long they continue the shenanigans revealed in Climategate and behave like a bunch of religious fanatics. It remains to be seen how many real scientists will join these religious fanatics in committing scientific and political suicide.
Tags:American Geophysical Union, climate change, Climate rapid responce force, Climategate, science fraud
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, Environment, Scientific Fraud | 2 Comments »
November 4, 2010
Flag of Nagoya: Image via Wikipedia
My first impressions after the COP10 UN conference on biodiversity held in Nagoya was of a jamboree involving 5,000 people mouthing diffuse platitudes and woolly goals which had little to do with the further development of the human species. The Japanese hosts came up with 2 billion $ in the last few days of the conference to assuage some of the demands being made by developing countries and to be able to mount a PR exercise about the great success it had all been.
I don’t often agree with George Monbiot of The Guardian but this time I think he gets it right. It was a con. There was no substance in the declarations made at the end of the conference. The only point of difference is that I am profoundly thankful that there was no substance to something which has no real objectives whereas Monbiot believes that this was a minor tragedy. He writes:
We’ve been conned. The deal to save the natural world never happened
The so-called summit in Japan won’t stop anyone trashing the planet. Only economic risks seem to make governments act.
‘Countries join forces to save life on Earth”, the front page of the Independent told us. “Historic”, “a landmark”, a “much-needed morale booster”, the other papers chorused. The declaration agreed last week at the summit in Japan to protect the world’s wild species and places was proclaimed by almost everyone a great success. There is one problem: none of the journalists who made these claims has seen it.
I checked with as many of them as I could reach by phone: all they had read was a press release which, though three pages long, is almost content-free. The reporters can’t be blamed for this – it was approved on Friday but the declaration has still not been published. I’ve pursued people on three continents to try to obtain it, without success. Having secured the headlines it wanted, the entire senior staff of the convention on biological diversity has gone to ground, and my calls and emails remain unanswered. The British government, which lavishly praised the declaration, tells me it has no printed copies. I’ve never seen this situation before. Every other international agreement I’ve followed was published as soon as it was approved.
The evidence suggests that we’ve been conned. The draft agreement, published a month ago, contained no binding obligations. Nothing I’ve heard from Japan suggests that this has changed. The draft saw the targets for 2020 that governments were asked to adopt as nothing more than “aspirations for achievement at the global level” and a “flexible framework”, within which countries can do as they wish. No government, if the draft has been approved, is obliged to change its policies.
Read the whole article
Tags:Convention on Biological Diversity, COP 10, Nagoya, The Guardian
Posted in Alarmism, Biodiversity, Environment | 1 Comment »
October 31, 2010
green = nuclear
Channel 4 in the UK is running a documentary this week called “What the Green Movement got wrong”.
A group of environmentalists are challenging the movement they helped to create. These life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, including GM crops and nuclear energy.
In this film, these life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, which include GM crops and nuclear energy. They argue that by clinging to an ideology formed more than 40 years ago, the traditional green lobby has failed in its aims and is ultimately harming its own environmental cause.
As author and environmentalist Mark Lynas says, ‘Being an environmentalist was part of my identity and most of my friends were environmentalists. We were involved in the whole movement together. It took me years to actually begin to question those core, cherished beliefs. It was so challenging it was almost like going over to the dark side. It was a like a horrible dark secret you couldn’t share with anyone.’
The Telegraph reports on the change of heart:
Mark Lynas, a campaigner who has been a member of action groups on GM foods and climate change, said the environmental lobby was losing the battle for public opinion on climate change because it had made too many apocalyptic prophecies and exaggerated claims.
He said: “We have got to find a more pragmatic and realistic way of engaging with people.”
Stewart Brand, an American activist and former editor of Whole Earth Catalog, said: “I would like to see an environmental movement that says it turns out our fears about genetically engineered food crops were exaggerated and we are glad about that. It is a humble and modest stance to take to the real world. Environmentalists did harm by being ignorant and ideological and unwilling to change their mind based on actual evidence. As a result we have done harm and I regret it.”
* What the Green Movement Got Wrong will be broadcast on Thursday 4 November at 9pm and will be followed by a live studio debate hosted by Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
Tags:Channel 4, climate change, Environmental movement, GM crops, Green Movement, Nuclear Energy
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Environment, UK | 1 Comment »
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