“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)
***
WESTERN climate change-theory-obsessed politicians continue their ruinous and costly obsession with wind and solar ‘energy’. UNreliable ‘power’ that repeatedly fails the environment, communities and economies wherever installed.
ENERGY poverty, blackouts, skyrocketing power bills, business and heavy industry closures, grid instability and the destruction of pristine landscapes, among the many deleterious effects of the mad rush into low energy-density, weather and fossil-fuel dependent windmills and solar panels.
IN the latest round of insane proposals offered to hard-working taxpayers, in order to cover ‘renewable’ energy shortfalls, the Victorian State Government of Australia is offering cash payments to consumers to “switch off their AC’s to help prevent blackouts this summer”.
AND, you thought that you were living in the 21st Century? Wrong again…
THE twisted merry-go-round of ‘renewable’ energy payments to keep the lights on gives true meaning to the old adage, “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
ENERGY poverty, rising insurance premiums, business closures, job losses and the highest electricity prices in the world is the grim reality of what life looks like under the totalitarian rule of the feel-good ‘Greens’. The zero-emissions zealots who want to force us backwards down the energy ladder to the days of human, animal and solar power.
JUST as socialist central planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central planning will have to be discarded before Australia and other Western nations, crippled by pseudoscientific climatology and the mad rush into costly and intermittent ‘green’ energy, will see a return to energy security, competitive pricing, business prosperity, job opportunities and a ‘liveable’ existence for our most vulnerable.
•••
“BLACKOUT” UPDATE AUGUST, 22
MORE than a million Victorian households are at risk of being without power this summer during extreme heat if coal and gas plants are not returned to service in time for peak periods, the energy market operator has warned…
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire
***
ANOTHER great example of how climate ‘scientists’, supported by the compliant mainstream media, use scary things to frighten you into submission and belief that the world is in peril, care or ‘evil’ mankind and his/her ‘evil’ trace gasses.
BUT, have you ever noticed how global warming climate change threatens imminent decline in cute, cuddly animals like Polar Bears? Yet, on the other hand, climate change threatens an *increase* in our most feared critters, like “aggressive” spiders?
Global warming may result in more aggressive spiders around the world, a new study suggests.
Researchers at McMaster University in Canada found that aggressive spiders have a greater chance of surviving and reproducing following hurricanes than more docile breeds.
The study suggests the evolutionary impact of spider populations will be affected by extreme weather events, which scientists predict will increase because of rising sea levels caused by global warming.
Extreme weather events such as hurricanes may cause aggressive spiders to flourish, scientists have found.. (AAP)
Experts studied the communal spider or tangle web spider which lives in North and South America, reports the Independent.
They found aggressive colonies had a higher rate of reproduction after a tropical storm, while in storm-free regions more docile spiders thrived.
Researchers studied 240 colonies throughout North and South America and compared them with control sites.
Features of aggressive behaviour included the speed and number of attackers that respond to prey, the tendency to eat other spiders and how easily foreign spiders get into a nest.
Experts studied the communal spider or tangle web spider which lives in North and South America, to determine how they behaved after hurricanes impacted their environments. (Supplied)
Results suggest aggressive spiders are better at gaining resources but are more prone to infighting if they are short of food or the colony gets too hot.
The study – published in Nature, Ecology and Evolution – found that after hurricanes, more aggressive colonies produced more eggs and had more spiderlings survive into early winters.
Lead author Jonathan Pruitt said more extreme weather will impact wildlife development.
“As sea levels rise, the incidence of tropical storms will only increase. Now more than ever we need to contend with what the ecological and evolutionary impacts of these storms will be for non-human animals,” he said.
IN order to validate the ‘science’ that spiders ‘could’ become more aggressive due to global warming, we should check the data.
ACCORDING to the latest government data and the last two U.N. IPCC reports on “Extreme Weather”, there has been “NO” increase in extreme weather events, even as CO2 has risen to 400PPM – a rise of one CO2 molecule in every 10,000 parts of atmosphere since 1950.
“Numerous studies towards and beyond AR5 have reported a decreasing trend in the global number of tropical cyclones and/or the globally accumulated cyclonic energy”– UN IPCC SR15 (2018)
“There is only low confidence regarding changes in global tropical cyclone numbers under global warming over the last four decades.” – UN IPCC SR15 (2018)
“Sea level has been rising for the last ten thousand years, since the last Ice Age…the question is whether sea level rise is accelerating owing to human caused emissions. It doesn’t look like there is any great acceleration, so far, of sea level rise associated with human warming. These predictions of alarming sea level rise depend on massive melting of the big continental glaciers — Greenland and Antarctica. The Antarctic ice sheet is actually growing. Greenland shows large multi-decadal variability. …. There is no evidence so far that humans are increasing sea level rise in any kind of a worrying way.” — Dr. Judith Curry, video interview published 9 August 2017
“Observed sea level rise over the last century has averaged about 8 inches, although local values may be substantially more or less based on local vertical land motion, land use, regional ocean circulations and tidal variations.“
UNTIL the official ‘scientific’ data suggests that extreme weather events, like hurricanes and tropical cyclones are, in fact, increasing in frequency and intensity and not the other way around, as is occurring now, we should take such scary ‘spider’ studies with a pinch of salt and a whole lot of suspicion as to the real motives of the global warming climate change, misanthropic movement.
SNOWFALL will become “A very rare and exciting event…
Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)
“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” – Spiegel (2000)
“Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” – IPCC (2001)
“End of Snow?” – NYTimes (2014)
***
WEATHER is, of course, not climate.
WE are keenly reminded of this fact by our global warming climate change hysterical friends ‘if’ a significant snow event or cold blast is reported on the media.
THOUGH, do keep in mind the “End-Of-World” prophecies declared by our same friends every time a two-day heat wave (in summer) is reported, on repeat, throughout the mainstream media.
THE rules are simple – cold equals weather, hot equals climate!
*
SKIING in Australia takes place in the high country of the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, as well as in the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra), during the southern hemisphere winter. The season varies between ski fields and years, starting from mid June and ending mid October. The past three years have seen extended seasons across most higher altitude resorts.
WHILE most of the regular season since then has been ‘regular’, the latter half has been anything but, with the past two weeks seeing record snow dumps.
OFFICIAL MEASUREMENTS
SNOWY Hydro have been measuring weekly natural snow depths at three locations the Snowy Mountains of NSW since the 1950’s. Their highest measuring site is at Spencers Creek (1,830m elevation) near Charlotte Pass.
THE latest readings have been impressive. Record-breaking, in fact …
The natural snow depth at Spencers Creek was 202.7cm this week. This is the earliest date for a depth of two metres to be measured at Spencers Creek in 15 years.
It’s also an increase of 77.5cm from last week and, impressively, the third weekly increase of more than 70cm so far this season. This is a new record for Spencers Creek. Prior to 2019, there had only ever been two weekly depth increases 70cm or more in any one season, with data available back to 1954.
While there have been some long periods without any significant snow this season, when it has snowed, it’s been exceptional in a historical context.
WITH ‘unexpected’ snow over the past four years boosting historical averages across Australia’s ski fields, the big question still remains: Is Australia’s premier science body, the CSIRO, and the Ski industry willing to retract their ‘end of snow’ predictions?
A 2003 CSIRO report, part-funded by the ski industry, found that resorts could lose a quarter of their snow by 2020 …
By 2020, the average annual duration of snow-cover decreases by between five and 48 days; maximum snow depths are reduced and tend to occur earlier in the year; and the total area covered in snow shrinks by 10-40%
IN 2000, climate expert Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) assured us that :
Snowfall will become “A very rare and exciting event… Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)
IN 2001, the UN IPCC predicted diminished snowfalls as human CO2 increased, claiming that “milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” due to the activities of mankindpersonkind…
“Snow has become so rare that when it does fall – often just for a few hours – everything grinds to a halt. In early 2003 a ‘mighty’ five-centimetre snowfall in southeast England caused such severe traffic jams that many motorists had to stay in their cars overnight. Today’s kids are missing out . . . Many of these changes are already underway, but have been accelerating over the last two decades. Termites have already moved into southern England. Garden centres are beginning to stock exotic sub-tropical species, which only a few years ago would have been killed off by winter…” – Mark Lynas
Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are – unless the Gulf Stream stops – unlikely to recur. Our summers will be long and warm. Across most of the upper northern hemisphere, climate change, so far, has been kind to us…
2006 : Daniela Jacob of Max Planck Institute for Meterology, Hamburg …
“Yesterday’s snow… Because temperatures in the Alps are rising quickly, there will be more precipitation in many places. But because it will rain more often than it snows, this will be bad news for tourists. For many ski lifts this means the end of business.”
2006 : The Independent‘s somber editorial admonished us that the lack of snow was evidence of a “dangerous seasonal disorder”…
The countryside is looking rather peculiar this winter. It seems we have a number of unexpected guests for Christmas. Dragonflies, bumblebees and red admiral butterflies, which would normally be killed off by the frost, can still be seen in some parts of the country . . . Some might be tempted to welcome this late blossoming of the natural world as a delightful diversion from the bleakness of this time of year. But these fluctuations should be cause for concern because it is overwhelmingly likely that they are a consequence of global warming . . . all this is also evidence that global warming is occurring at a faster rate than many imagined…
“Ice, snow, and frost will disappear, i.e. milder winters” … “Unusually warm winters without snow and ice are now being viewed by many as signs of climate change.”
2007 : Western Mail (Wales Online) … article, entititled “Snowless Winters Forecast for Wales as World Warms Up” quotes one of the global warming movement’s key figures, Sir John Houghton, former head of the IPCC and former head of the UK Met Office…
Former head of the Met Office Sir John Houghton, who is one of the UK’s leading authorities on climate change, said all the indicators suggest snowy winters will become increasingly rare He said, “Snowlines are going up in altitude all over the world. The idea that we will get less snow is absolutely in line with what we expect from global warming.”
A study of snowfall spanning 60 years has indicated that the Alps’s entire winter sports industry could grind to a halt through lack of snow…. In some years the amount that fell was 60 per cent lower than was typical in the early 1980s, said Christoph Marty, from the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos, who analysed the records. ”I don’t believe we will see the kind of snow conditions we have experienced in past decades,” he said.
2014: the global warming theory-obsessed New York Times touted “The End of Snow?”…
“The truth is, it is too late for all of that. Greening the ski industry is commendable, but it isn’t nearly enough. Nothing besides a national policy shift on how we create and consume energy will keep our mountains white in the winter — and slow global warming to a safe level.
This is no longer a scientific debate. It is scientific fact. The greatest fear of most climate scientists is continued complacency that leads to a series of natural climatic feedbacks…”
Australia’s ski resorts face the prospect of a long downhill run as a warming climate reduces snow depth, cover and duration. The industry’s ability to create artificial snow will also be challenged, scientists say.
NOW, of course, climate ‘scientists’ are trying to dig themselves out of snow that’s kept falling …
Looking back at 65 years’ worth of statistics, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips noted that since 1948, winter temperatures in the prairie regions have increased by an average of four degrees Celsius… Ironically, warmer weather can mean greater snowfall. “As we warm up, we may see more moisture, we may see more moist air masses, and therefore we could very well see more snow rather than less snow, because the air masses are going to be more moist and so therefore you’re going to be able to wring out more snow than you would be if it was dry air,” Phillips said.
*
UNFORTUNATELY for CO2-centric climatologists like David Phillips, attempting to ‘dig’ themselves out of their “end of snow” dud-predictions, you need cold air to make snow!
VETERAN Boston meteorologist Barry Burbank explains …
“Interestingly, some scientists have stated that increasing snow is consistent with climate change because warmer air holds more moisture, more water vapor and this can result in more storms with heavy precipitation. The trick, of course, is having sufficient cold air to produce that snow. But note that 93% of the years with more than 60″ of snow in Boston were colder than average years. The reality is cooling, not warming, increases snowfall.”
LISTEN to what the ‘experts’ promised you back then. Because, if they got it wrong then, how can you trust what they are foretelling today or tomorrow? The answer is you cannot, because they have no idea what long-range conditions Mother Nature is going to serve up in such a “chaotic” and complex system as our climate.
AND, most importantly, does the CSIRO and “97% of all climate experts” still stand by their ‘end of snow’ predictions? Or is their alarmist sophistry simply more global warming climate change fear-mongering based on CO2-centric ideology, eco-religious dogma and overheated UN IPCC and CSIRO climate computer models that do not accord with observed reality?
IN parting, keep in mind how the Climate Change theory-obsessed mainstream media sells you snow in the era of Global Warming theory-madness …
APOLOGIES for the lack of content over the last few months. Been undergoing a major transition from life in the jungle (Indonesia), to life back in Melbourne, Australia.
ANYWAY, on a wintery night here back in Melbourne, it’s perhaps time to give the mic back over to the greatest of all levellers, Mother Nature.
The International Grains Council July report lowered total grain production to 2.148 billion tonnes this season, with wheat production downgraded across the European Union, Russia and Canada.
The IGC report put total global wheat production at 763 million tonnes for the 2019-20 season, down on last month’s forecast of 769 million tonnes, but still higher than the 2018-19 production figure of 733 million tonnes.
“ … the global wheat out turn is seen at a record, while maize is placed at the second largest ever and barley at the highest in a decade,” the report said.
The Rabobank July agricommodity market research report, released last week, reported global wheat production to have been reduced by 9 million tonnes between last month and this month.
“With major exporter production reduced by 10 million tonnes amid a modest increase in production in the US, hot and dry weather across…
• “Arctic summers ice-free by 2013” (BBC 2007) • “Could all Arctic ice be gone by 2012?” (AP 2007) • “Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?” (National Geographic 2007) • “Imagine yourself in a world five years from now, where there is no more ice over the Arctic” – Tim Flannery (2008) • “North Pole could be ice-free in 2008” – Mark Serreze (New Scientist 2008) • “Gore: Polar ice cap may disappear by summer 2014” (USA Today 2009) • “Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within 4 years” (Guardian 2012) • “Say Goodbye to Arctic Summer Ice” (Live Science 2013) • “Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist” (The Guardian 2013) • “Why Arctic sea ice will vanish in 2013” (Sierra Club 2013) • “Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’” – Peter Wadhams (The Guardian 2016)
DIRE predictions of an “ice-free” Arctic have remained popular on the climate change, fear-mongering circuit for many years now.
BUT, how ‘bad’ really are Arctic sea-ice conditions, in mid-summer, circa 2019?
ACCORDING to this latest piece of anecdotal (real-world) evidence, Arctic “Death Spiral” enthusiasts would be understandably disappointed!
“…what we saw was indeed really impressive sea ice. In fact, the sea ice we encountered was thick enough that reaching our destination—the geographic North Pole—took roughly 1.5 days longer than we’d expected.”
In late June, one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world encountered such extraordinarily thick ice on-route to the North Pole (with a polar bear specialist and deep-pocketed, Attenborough-class tourists onboard) that it took a day and a half longer than expected to get there. A few weeks later, in mid-July, a Norwegian icebreaker also bound for the North Pole (with scientific researchers on board) was forced to turn back north of Svalbard when it unexpectedly encountered impenetrable pack ice.
A polar bear on hummocked sea ice in Franz Josef Land. Photo by Michael Hambrey, date not specified but estimated based on tour dates to be 22 or 23 June 2019.
Apparently, the ice charts the Norwegian captain consulted showed ‘first year ice‘ – ice that formed the previous fall, defined as less than 2 m thick (6.6 ft) – which is often much broken…
ACCORDING to man-made global warming climate change protagonists, our climate and weather is stagnate, and that before ‘evil’ mankind bludgeoned the atmosphere with its “dirty” carbon dioxide gas, climate was stable and pure.
FOR nearly a decade, California has experienced serious drought, causing the usual (progressive) suspects to jump on the harrowing conditions like bees to honey, using their coordinated talking points; “Permanent Drought” and “The New Normal” in an attempt to convince the masses of their own CO2-centric, medieval superstitions …
LA RESERVOIRS FULL – ANOTHER CLIMATE CHANGE DUD-PREDICTION TO ADD TO THE LONG LIST
THE CA government website shows that California reservoirs are currently all sitting above historical averages.
WHAT now do alarmist/activist scientists like Katharine Hayhoe and Michael Mann, who have been scaring CA residents witless for years with their “Permanent Drought” and “New Normal” propaganda, have to say about all this water? Crickets, as per usual.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“
– TimothyWirth,
President of the UN Foundation
***
THOSE sceptical of the “Save The Planet” inspired, mad rush into supposedly ‘green’ energy sources by the climate change theory-obsessed West, leading to skyrocketing power prices, rampant energy poverty and an exodus of jobs and industry to China, will be keenly aware of the poignant and concerning realities expressed in this must read op-ed by Todd Royal :
“Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.”
China and India will allow the west – led by the United States (US) and European Union (EU) – to destroythemselves through dysfunctional, domestic, and continent-wide politics. This isn’t a Donald Trump or EU issue, but electorates having a vague understanding of how societies function, particularly, when it comes to energy.
The “Green New Deal” is evident of that fact, which has no chance of ever working under current technology, taxpayer monies available, and the first “New Deal” was a failure. China and India will allow the US, EU, NATO and their Asian allies to:
“Muddle through endemic crises menacing to its very existence (e.g., economic stagnation, demographic decline, rising unassimilated Islamic populations in many EU democracies, high taxes, mounting debt and the fiscal unsustainability of Western European social democracy)”
Without energy you have nothing. China and India understand this better than the west since their citizenry and leaders view energy through the lens of what will help over two-billion-combined-citizens; join the prosperous, western, consumer-driven world. Most western, environmentally sensitive nations believe fossil fuels are evil. Instead, western countries strive for a renewable energy, carbon-free world. Even if the US were to cut its CO2 emissions, “100 percent it would not make a difference in abating global warming.”
China and India have never bought into that notion of energy, or economies based on supposedly carbon-free renewables that inspire their nations toward a cleaner world. I wish they would, but that isn’t reality. Both countries will continue importing, exporting, and excavating tankers full of coal, oil, and natural gas from countries that are authoritarian, human right abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Nigeria, Angola and Algeria.
Furthermore, Chinese and Indian politics, and increasingly Africa, will never allow lack of pipelines, domestic politics, or sensitivity to western environmentalists keep them from first world status enjoyed by the US, EU, and Asian nations like South Korea and Japan.
Naïve-thinking, bordering on western suicide, believes China and India will stop using fossil fuels, led by coal. Each country understands coal is plentiful (“estimated 1.1 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide that at current rates of production will last 150 years”), and it is scalable, reliable, cost-effective to the end user, and has the best energy density of all fossil fuels or renewables available.
China is currently building hundreds of new, coal-fired power plants. To counter China, “India has 589 coal-fired power plants, they are building 446 more, bringing their total to 1,036.” These figures are after both governments signed the Paris Climate Agreement, and touted their green credentials.
Since the US, Russia, China and India have the largest global coal reserves, and each country is vying for geopolitical dominance, they will continue using coal in record amounts. Energy is then a geopolitical weapon. Europe does not understand this fact.
Only Trump seems to have gained clarity on this issue, with the US using their newfound shale oil and natural gas power, to their geopolitical and global advantage. Daily global, media onslaughts, US Democrats, and Never-Trump Republicans constrain Trump at every turn, and facilitate the US’ waning power. China and India sit back and do nothing, knowing the west is too weak to come to the US or Trump’s rescue.
Renewable energy advocates can speak, write and publicly lobby that solar and wind-produced electricity is the same cost, or dropping compared to oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. This claim is false. Renewables cost more to ratepayers and nations compared to fossil fuels or nuclear.
Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.
A great power struggle has broken out between the world’s largest democracy – India – and the world’s largest authoritarian state – China – and whichever country uses the most energy will win Asia for the rest of this century. National security and the competition between them over Asia are at the crutch of why they will watch the west destroy their economies over bad energy policies.
Sure, India and China will use natural gas, nuclear and oil, but coal is where each economy finds its basic energy resource. Horrible for world emissions, air pollution and global health, but how do westerners, the United Nations, and environmental organizations tell both, growing countries they cannot have access to the same energy opportunities and growth the west has now had for over seventy years?
It simply won’t happen; world health organizations, research universities, think tanks, and multinational corporations interested in global longevity and clean air should begin working towards clean coal technology.
All great nations, including China and India, view energy as a domain of power. The west already has their power, but no longer knows how to use it the way it did during the Cold War. Global warming, abortion, gay marriage, and renewables versus fossil fuels have overtaken realism in all facets of government, military strategy, economics and countering the global threats from China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.
Raw, amoral geopolitics that will grow economies, engage realist strategies, house militaries and feed energy-hungry populations is the new Cold War. Social issues are important, but unless you are talking about the unintended consequences of abortion in the US and China, these issues have no valid correlation within energy geopolitics. Energy and electricity are at the forefront, of which ideological viewpoint, will win the 21st century.
Accessible energy becomes more important than ever, as the competition between China and India heats up. Unless something drastically changes the west will diminish significantly – ushering in the “Asian century” – with China and India biding their time to take over the US-led, liberal order that was created after World War II ended.
“ELDERLY people are dying in their cold homes or being rushed to hospital because they can’t afford to put the heater on.
MORE than 130 people were admitted to NSW emergency departments last winter with cold-related problems including hypothermia, a 34 per cent increase from 10 years ago.
Over the same period power prices have increased by 117 per cent.”
ENOUGH said.
WAKE-UP politicians, addicted to UNreliables to feather their ‘green’ credentials. Enough is enough. @sussanley
Australia’s wind and solar obsession has driven power prices through the roof and the poor and elderly to early graves. Staying warm in the depth of winter is no longer just a matter of turning up the dial on the AC, for the poorest and most vulnerable it’s a daily battle for survival.
In the space of a decade, power prices have doubled and so too the number of households disconnected from the grid; because they can no longer afford to pay their bills.
A generation ago, Australians enjoyed the world’s cheapest power prices; thanks to its suicidal renewable energy policies, they now suffer among the highest.
That all of this was perfectly predictable, and perfectly avoidable, makes it all the more outrageous. Here’s Peta Credlin expressing just that.
‘What a joke’ that Australians are ‘too frightened to turn on appliances’
Sky news
Peta Credlin, Luke Grant and Jeremy Cordeaux
“REMEMBER when we paved the world with electronic waste
that chopped eagles and condors and made bats extinct because we thought wind was natural and uranium evil? – man that was a dark age!” – Michael Shellenberger
“THE wind is free, but everything else costs money [and lives].” – (old sailor saying)
“IT will be interesting to see whether more research will be carried out into just how many birds are being killed by the Irish Sea wind farms. My hunch is that many people would rather keep that information under their hats. So much money invested in offshore wind means that bad publicity would be very unwelcome and it is common for critics of the industry to be ridiculed.” – Jason Endfield
AS a cohesive and sensible society, what price are we willing to put on supposed ‘green’ energy sources that are supposedly meant to “save the planet”?
WHAT cost to our economies and to our environment are we willing to endure whilst we to-and-fro between energy reality and energy fantasy?
ENERGY and ‘keeping the lights on’ are perhaps the most fundamental requirements to, not only advancing human existence and our very survival, but also ironically (to some) promote the very health and wealth of our environment.
WHY? Because, the greatest threat to the environment is not affluence, rather, poverty.
THE border between Haiti and The Dominican Republic is a great example of this.
GUESS which country contains eco-criminals that can afford to use “dirty” fossil fuels, and which country contains nature-lovers who are dependent on natural renewable organic biomass for energy?
HAITI is almost 99% deforested, as they rely almost entirely on natural ‘biomass’ (wood) for domestic and industrial fuels and building materials.
ON the other side, the forests of the fossil fuel burning, eco-terrorists – The Dominican Republic – remain lush and green.
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INDUSTRIAL wind ‘farms’ and solar panels are sold to us as “clean, green, and renewable”, under the spurious, suspicious and fashionably-globalist brand name of “sustainability“.
IF there ever was a case of “buyer beware”, then this is it.
GERMANY, the makers of BMW, Porsche and Mercedes have experimented with wind and solar ‘power’ under the banner of “Energiewende” for now a decade. Energiewende, (German for energy transition) being “the planned transition by Germany to a low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable, and affordable energy supply” (wiki).
AFTER hundreds of €BILLIONS of taxpayer’s hard-earned money spent on sunshine and breezes, Germany’s Energiewende program has been exposed as a catastrophic failure, with carbon dioxide emissions higher now than in 2009, the year before massively subsidised ‘green’ energy was signed into German law.
GERMAN emissions last year were actually higher than in 2009, and have been on the rise again since 2014.
NUCLEAR power is still supplying 12% of Germany’s power. When this is finally phased out in a few years time, the country will be more reliant on fossil fuels than ever.
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GERMANY’S RECORD COAL BOOM
THE ‘green’ dream is on ice as a ‘coal frenzy’ grips Europe and unreliables lose their attraction:
With Greenpeace successfully forcing the shutdown of nuclear power, and keeping out fracking for gas, what’s left? A boom in coal. In fact, over the next two years Germany will build 10 new power plants for hard coal. Europe is in a coal frenzy, building power plants and opening up new mines, practically every month. It might sound odd that a boom in German coal is the result of Greenpeace’s political success. –Ezra Levant, Toronto Sun, 7 January 2014
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WITH all that in mind. What is the point of an industry that can only survive on massive taxpayer funded subsidies and not on ‘sunshine and breezes’?
IN the current era of ‘man-made’ climate change theory-obsessed hysteria, it is difficult to convince our politicians and law makers that industrial wind and solar ‘power’ can NEVER supply anything more than morality and virtue to an increasingly, energy-dependant global community.
PERHAPS, quantifiable and visible evidence of the cataclysmic destruction of some of our most beloved and rare avian species can ruffle a few feathers – excuse the pun.
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STATE-SANCTIONED RARE BIRD SLAUGHTER
WIND lobbyists say that bird deaths are small compared with millions that collide with windows etc. This is a fallacy. The argument ignores affected species. If, fifty pigeons fly into windows, it has no effect on the population. But, when a breeding raptor is chopped, it represents a significant loss for the species.
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INDUSTRIAL WIND TURBINES : The New “Apex Predator”
TWO articles that grabbed my attention this week that should, not just interest the likes of “Extinction Rebellionist (sic)” Greta Thunberg, the RSPCA, PETA et al, and every genuine ‘environmentalist’, but, rather, should shock them into real “action” on the real environment …
Eagles, hawks, bats – these are among the most prominently cited avian wildlife regularly slaughtered by industrial-sized wind-power facilities that – thanks to taxpayer subsidies and state renewable-energy mandates — continue to spread like wildfire across rural America.
The affliction is by no means restricted to the United States, however. A new study sheds light on the carnage giant wind turbines are inflicting on wildlife in India. Researchers at the Indian Institute for Science at Bengaluru studied bird and lizard populations at three wind turbine sites in Western Ghats. They found that the mass killing of avian predators by wind turbines is having a “ripple effect” across the food chain, with lizards and small mammals adjusting to substantially reduced numbers of predators in the sky.
Wind Turbines: The New “Apex Predator”
As reported by the Daily Mail last November (and otherwise largely ignored by the media), researchers in India found almost four times fewer buzzards, hawks, and kites in areas with wind farms – a loss of about 75%. Startled by the data, scientists are now referring to wind turbines as “the new apex predator.”
In areas without wind turbines about 19 birds were spotted every three hours, while in areas with the spinning blades the number dropped to five. Fewer winged predators have been good news for the fan-throated lizard, a species found only in certain areas of the Indian Sub-Continent. The lizard is usually easy pickings for hawks, buzzards, and other birds, but with their numbers reduced by the wind turbines, the lizard’s numbers are multiplying.
“We have known from many studies that wind turbines kill birds and bats. They kill them and disrupt their movement. But we took that one step further and discovered that it affects lizards, too,” study coauthor Maria Thaker told the Daily Mail.
“Every time a top predator is removed or added, unexpected effect trickle through the ecosystem,” she added. “What is actually happening here is that wind turbines are akin to adding a top predator to the ecosystem.”
The study, which was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, compared populations of raptors and lizards on a plateau that has had a wind farm on it for about 20 years to an adjacent valley that has no turbines.
“Humankind’s Most Pervasive Influence on the Natural World”
A recent study by an international team of scientists found the decline of apex predators is” arguably humankind’s most pervasive influence on the natural world.”
None of this is of any real concern to green groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund, who parrot the party line that the real threat to wildlife is “climate change,” not industrial-scale wind facilities and giant solar arrays they have been supporting for decades.
While India has made great strides in electrification in recent years, much still needs to be done. According to official data, “only 1,417 of India’s 18,452 villages or 7.3% of the total, have 100% household connectivity, and about 31% are still in the dark,” Forbes reported last year.
India’s future should not be dependent on interment, unreliable, unaffordable, and, as we now know, environmentally destructive wind power.
Herring Gulls are down 82%, European Shag down 51%, Razorbills down 55%. The list goes on….
* The world’s biggest offshore wind farm is just a few miles away.
* Isn’t there a conspicuous connection?
The Isle Of Man wildlife charity Manx Birdlife has reported a shocking 40% decline in the populations of many species of sea birds around the island’s coast.
The worrying figures emerged following a comprehensive census that took place over two years. Whatever the reason for the sharp decline of the birds, it illustrates that something has gone very wrong.
I’ve noted with interest that this unprecedented drop in populations, of several of the island’s maritime species, coincides with the proliferation of wind farms in the Irish Sea – something which has worried me during the past few years, as I have witnessed the frenzied development of the wind industry in the waters off the western coasts of England and Wales.
World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Farm just a few miles away….
We know that offshore turbines kill birds and bats, though it is almost impossible to estimate the number of casualties because there are no retrievable carcasses to count at sea….
It is also highly likely that wind farms adversely affect many marine mammals.
The world’s largest offshore wind farm is now in operation off the Cumbrian coast at Walney, just 40 miles or so from the Isle of Man, and, with the news that nearby bird populations are in free-fall, we must seriously ask whether the huge turbines might be killing more birds than we ever anticipated. The Isle of Man study was, ironically, partly supported by the Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm Project. How paradoxical would it be to find that the project itself, with its giant 640 feet turbines, was responsible for the plummeting numbers of sea birds.
The report is full of depressing statistics. Herring Gulls are down 82%, European Shag down 51%, Razorbills down 55%. The list goes on.
Marine Protected Areas “may not necessarily be major barrier to new projects…” I’ve been increasingly concerned at the feverish pace of industrial offshore wind farm development in this country and especially in the Irish Sea. Such a high density of turbines in a confined area – an area renowned for its wildlife – has been watched with dismay by many environmentalists, especially since large parts of the sea have been designated Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s), supposedly limiting the scale of industrial development in precious areas that provide important habitat for so many species.
Alas, development has been allowed in vast parts of the sea that fall just outside the protected zones – and there have even been hints that the MPA’s themselves may not be off limit for future wind farm expansion. Last year, a report carried out for the Welsh government suggested that “this protection may not necessarily be a major barrier to new projects” – which sounds shockingly irresponsible to me. Isle of Man plans might seriously threaten birds’ survival Though the Isle Of Man currently has none of its own offshore wind farms, their government is reportedly close to approving industrial wind development off the island’s coast as early as next year. Such plans might seriously threaten the survival of species already struggling to cope with the industrialisation of their habitat.
Wind energy companies might flaunt their green ideologies for all to see – but their industry nevertheless hides a grim reality. Their ‘green’ energy kills wildlife.
Money Vs Wildlife…
Speaking about the alarming drop in bird populations, managing director of Manx Birdlife, Neil Morris, suggested that “there are a number of causes for these declines and the solutions, such as protecting nesting sites, restoring food chains and mitigating climate change, will be challenging.”
It will be interesting to see whether more research will be carried out into just how many birds are being killed by the Irish Sea wind farms. My hunch is that many people would rather keep that information under their hats. So much money invested in offshore wind means that bad publicity would be very unwelcome and it is common for critics of the industry to be ridiculed.
It seems likely that vast swathes of our coastal seas are likely to be further industrialised by the wind giants – even if it is at the expense of wildlife.
Photo by Nicholas Doherty on Unsplash
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CONCLUSION
ONE of the great falsehoods and dangerous myths pushed by reckless global warming climate change zealots and the mainstream media is that ‘renewable energy’ – wind and solar – is “clean, green and renewable”.
‘RENEWABLES’ are neither “clean, green, or renewable”. In fact, they are pure embodiments of fossil fuel technology, with oil and “dirty” coal derivatives required for :
THE belief that Climate Change (aka Global Warming) is an “existential threat” requiring urgent action, is the product of McDonnell-esq propaganda and a dumbed-down education system
THE belief that the world can painlessly transition away from fossil fuels is the product of an affluent and spoilt society.
The far left journalist, Paul Mason, reveals the real agenda behind the climate wars:
When John McDonnell announced plans to de-list the companies wilfully destroying the planet through unchecked carbon emissions, the response from the City was predictably hyperbolic. “Financial totalitarianism,” said one banker. “Kamikaze communism,” said the right-wing propaganda website Guido Fawkes.
Labour’s thinking on industrial, fiscal and central bank policy has taken a sharp green turn under the impact of the Extinction Rebellion protests, and last October’s IPCC report, which dramatically shortened the deadline for halving global carbon emissions. But it is not yet radical enough.
Climate change is a problem where — given the scale and the deadlines — nothing short of dramatic structural change in the way capitalism works can deliver the 2030 target of a 45 per cent cut in carbon emissions. To deliver the net-zero carbon emissions demanded by 2050 will…
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” – Bertrand Russel
“IF this had have been a transmission line connecting a coal power station, these far left brainwashed climate change believing nutters, would have been there in their thousands.”
– John Clarkson
IN the latest example of ‘Green’ eco-hypocrisy, 200 year-old rainforest trees have been cleared to make way for wind ‘farm’ transmission lines in Tasmania’s Tarkine.
THE obvious question is a simple one: Where are the @Greens or @Greenpeace or @GretaThunberg when pristine landscapes and old-growth rainforests are being destroyed to satisfy the whims and superstitions of Global Warming Climate Change catastrophists and EU elites?
MATTHEW DENHOLM exposes the latest eco-hypocrisy that seems to haunt consistently the globalist climate change do-gooders…
*
Old-growth trees cut down for windfarm transmission corridor
Rainforest trees 200 years old have been cleared to make way for a wind farm transmission line in Tasmania’s Tarkine, prompting claims of green “hypocrisy”.
Myrtle and sassafras trees were among those felled along a 10.5km corridor widened for transmission lines associated with the $280 million, 112 megawatt wind farm at Granville Harbour, in Tasmania’s remote northwest.
Special species timber advocate Andrew Denman, who discovered the felled trees, said it raised concerns about environmental impacts, wastage of high-value timber and wind power’s “green” credentials.
He estimated that some of the felled trees, highly valued in specialty timber production, were 200 years old, given they typically grow at 0.3cm a year and were 60cm in diameter.
With more wind farms planned for Tasmania, including another in the northwest requiring a 170km transmission line, he believed any further clearing, if it must occur, should be co-ordinated to ensure timber was not wasted. “With much of the special timbers in short supply … there could have been a more co-ordinated effort in utilising it to make sure that timber was going to a sawmiller in a timely manner so it could be processed and not wasted,” said Mr Denman, a boatbuilder.
While not critical of the wind farm proponent, whom he did not doubt had complied with regulatory requirements, he understood clearing for electricity infrastructure was exempt from the Forest Practices Code, which seeks to mitigate impacts on keys species.
He believed it was hypocritical of the Greens to oppose “sustainable” harvesting of rainforest timbers while backing the Granville Harbour wind farm and, by implication, associated logging of such trees. “An old-growth tree is an old-growth tree,” Mr Denman said. “Why is it acceptable to cut it down for a transmission line but not acceptable to cut it down sustainably and regenerate that area and put it to good use?”
A Greens spokeswoman said while the party was a “strong supporter of renewable energy”, it “consistently opposed logging or clearing within reserves”.
The wind farm’s website says the transmission line, providing power to the grid at the Reece Dam, was being handled by state-owned TasNetworks.
A spokeswoman for project developer Granville Harbour Operations said it required all works to comply with approvals. “These impose clear procedures and requirements on us and our contractors to mitigate and manage environmental impacts, including impacts to native vegetation,” she said.
TasNetworks said its widening of an existing transmission corridor was “considered optimal”. “It reduced the extent of clearing required to connect the wind farm to the electricity distribution network,” a spokesman said.
Matthew Denholm is a multi-award winning journalist with 25 years’ experience. For the past decade, he has been Tasmania correspondent for The Australian, and has previously worked for a variety of newspaper an… Read more
WHEN will the CSIRO, Australia’s premier ‘scientific’ body retract their 2001 “no snow by 2020” prediction?
SNOWFALL will become “A very rare and exciting event… Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)
“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel (2000)
“Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” IPCC (2001)
“End of Snow?” NYTimes (2014)
“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel (2000)
“We must face up to the fact that if our societies are not prepared to make changes to their greenhouse gas emissions and the pumping of massive quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, then in a worst case scenario, we won’t even get to 2020 with a viable snow sports industry in this country.“ – Andrew Fairley, head of the Alpine Resorts Co-ordinating Council.
***
REAL science has provided humanity with an unequivocal advantage over the ravages of nature’s most potent enemies – weather, climate and the A-Z of viral and bacterial intrusions.
IT has achieved this through a simple yet rigorous process known as the scientific method. The goal, to prove a hypothesis wrong, not right.
IF all tests and computations of empirical evidence cannot be falsified, then the hypothesis stands until such other evidence disproves the finding.
“97% CONSENSUS” U.N. climate ‘science’ fails the ‘scientific method’ time and time again.
A classic example of this failure of scientific rigour and the unwillingness to disprove a hypothesis is in the arena of snow.
GLOBALLY, winter and spring snow levels have risen significantly since records began in the late 70’s, according to, accredited, Rutgers University data. With a significant rise in snowpack recorded over the past decade – the years we are constantly told are “the hottest ever”.
THE big question still remains: Is Australia’s premier science body, the CSIRO, and the Ski industry willing to retract their 2002 “no snow by 2020” prediction?
HERE’s some recent ‘global’ evidence that these “experts” should consider…
Deep winter conditions on Rogla, Pohorje mountains, north Slovenia today, May 15th. 1500 m elevation. Report: Aleš Rozman / @NeurjeSipic.twitter.com/klzjpju4qR
— severe-weather.EU (@severeweatherEU) May 15, 2019
Mt Stirling has turned into a stunning Winter wonderland! There is so much snow that the Resort will be opening early this season commencing this Saturday! Make plans! 😍❄
— SNOWSEARCH australia (@SNOWSEARCH_aus) May 29, 2019
Still some pretty impressive amounts of snow on Campo Imperatore, Abruzzo, central Italy today, May 18th! Video: Meteo Aquilano pic.twitter.com/K6h8987Nbq
— severe-weather.EU (@severeweatherEU) May 18, 2019
Thick snow depth in Engelberg, Switzerland (1013m ASL) yesterday, May 5th. Report: Jure Tomas pic.twitter.com/j8dtRBDtIj
— severe-weather.EU (@severeweatherEU) May 6, 2019
Memorial Day weekend coming to New Mexico in three days. Time to bust out the skis and enjoy the summer heat. pic.twitter.com/Ome6paVfdg
Germany's Zuspitze Mountain peak reaches 6 METERS OF SNOW on May 23, 2019: HIGHEST MAY LEVEL IN 20 YEARS! Rekord-Schneehöhe im Mai: Zugspitze knackt Sechs-Meter-Marke | https://t.co/pLUEUCh9ZV via @BR24
❄️ “Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel (2000) ❄️ SNOW will become “A very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” – Dr. Viner (2000) ❄️ “…decrease heavy snowstorms” IPCC (2001) ❄️ “End of Snow?” NYTimes (2014) https://t.co/4JMb54iv6xhttps://t.co/qIIb6pQTEm
WHAT THE ‘EXPERTS’ : CSIRO, CRU, IPCC et al. ASSURED YOU ABOUT SNOW
IN 2000, climate expert Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) assured us that :
Snowfall will become “A very rare and exciting event… Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)
IN 2001, the UN IPCC predicted diminished snowfalls as human CO2 increased, claiming that “milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” due to the activities of mankindpersonkind…
“Snow has become so rare that when it does fall – often just for a few hours – everything grinds to a halt. In early 2003 a ‘mighty’ five-centimetre snowfall in southeast England caused such severe traffic jams that many motorists had to stay in their cars overnight. Today’s kids are missing out . . . Many of these changes are already underway, but have been accelerating over the last two decades. Termites have already moved into southern England. Garden centres are beginning to stock exotic sub-tropical species, which only a few years ago would have been killed off by winter…” – Mark Lynas
Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are – unless the Gulf Stream stops – unlikely to recur. Our summers will be long and warm. Across most of the upper northern hemisphere, climate change, so far, has been kind to us…
2006 : Daniela Jacob of Max Planck Institute for Meterology, Hamburg …
“Yesterday’s snow… Because temperatures in the Alps are rising quickly, there will be more precipitation in many places. But because it will rain more often than it snows, this will be bad news for tourists. For many ski lifts this means the end of business.”
2006 : The Independent‘s somber editorial admonished us that the lack of snow was evidence of a “dangerous seasonal disorder”…
The countryside is looking rather peculiar this winter. It seems we have a number of unexpected guests for Christmas. Dragonflies, bumblebees and red admiral butterflies, which would normally be killed off by the frost, can still be seen in some parts of the country . . . Some might be tempted to welcome this late blossoming of the natural world as a delightful diversion from the bleakness of this time of year. But these fluctuations should be cause for concern because it is overwhelmingly likely that they are a consequence of global warming . . . all this is also evidence that global warming is occurring at a faster rate than many imagined…
“Ice, snow, and frost will disappear, i.e. milder winters” … “Unusually warm winters without snow and ice are now being viewed by many as signs of climate change.”
2007 : Western Mail (Wales Online) … article, entititled “Snowless Winters Forecast for Wales as World Warms Up” quotes one of the global warming movement’s key figures, Sir John Houghton, former head of the IPCC and former head of the UK Met Office…
Former head of the Met Office Sir John Houghton, who is one of the UK’s leading authorities on climate change, said all the indicators suggest snowy winters will become increasingly rare He said, “Snowlines are going up in altitude all over the world. The idea that we will get less snow is absolutely in line with what we expect from global warming.”
A study of snowfall spanning 60 years has indicated that the Alps’s entire winter sports industry could grind to a halt through lack of snow…. In some years the amount that fell was 60 per cent lower than was typical in the early 1980s, said Christoph Marty, from the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos, who analysed the records. ”I don’t believe we will see the kind of snow conditions we have experienced in past decades,” he said.
2014: the global warming theory-obsessed New York Times touted “The End of Snow?”…
“The truth is, it is too late for all of that. Greening the ski industry is commendable, but it isn’t nearly enough. Nothing besides a national policy shift on how we create and consume energy will keep our mountains white in the winter — and slow global warming to a safe level.
This is no longer a scientific debate. It is scientific fact. The greatest fear of most climate scientists is continued complacency that leads to a series of natural climatic feedbacks…”
Australia’s ski resorts face the prospect of a long downhill run as a warming climate reduces snow depth, cover and duration. The industry’s ability to create artificial snow will also be challenged, scientists say.
“For the first time, they realised that their attention should be directed to a common enemy,” says Andrew Fairley, head of the Alpine Resorts Co-ordinating Council, which advises the State Government and oversees the management of Victoria’s six snow resorts. “And that enemy is climate change.”
Like those who rely on the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian ski industry sees itself as a frontline victim of global warming. A 2003 CSIRO report, part-funded by the ski industry, found that the resorts could lose a quarter of their snow in 15 years, and half by 2050. The worst case was a 96 per cent loss of snow by mid-century.
CSIRO – Simulations of future snow conditions in the Australian alpine regions
Conclusion:
The low impact scenario for 2020 has a minor impact on snow conditions. Average season lengths are reduced by around five days. Reductions in peak depths are usually less than 10%, but can be larger at lower sites (e.g. Mt Baw Baw and Wellington High Plains).
The high impact scenario for 2020 leads to reductions of 30-40 days in average season lengths. At higher sites such as Mt Hotham, this can represent reductions in season duration of about 25%, but at lower sites such as Mt Baw Baw the reduction can be more significant (up to 60%)…
We have very high confidence (at least 95%) that the low impact scenarios will be exceeded and the high impact scenarios will not be exceeded.
NOW, of course, climate ‘scientists’ are trying to dig themselves out of snow that’s kept falling…
Looking back at 65 years’ worth of statistics, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips noted that since 1948, winter temperatures in the prairie regions have increased by an average of four degrees Celsius… Ironically, warmer weather can mean greater snowfall. “As we warm up, we may see more moisture, we may see more moist air masses, and therefore we could very well see more snow rather than less snow, because the air masses are going to be more moist and so therefore you’re going to be able to wring out more snow than you would be if it was dry air,” Phillips said.
*
CONCLUSION
LISTEN to what the ‘experts’ promised you back then. Because, if they got it wrong then, how can you trust what they are foretelling today or tomorrow? The answer is you cannot, because they have no idea what long-range conditions Mother Nature is going to serve up in such a “chaotic” and complex system as our climate.
AND, most importantly, does the CSIRO and “97% of all climate experts” still stand by their “end of snow” predictions? Or is their alarmist sophistry simply more global warming climate change fear-mongering based on CO2-centric ideology, eco-religious dogma and overheated UN IPCC and CSIRO climate computer models that do not accord with observed reality?
Australian voters just shredded the notion that the proletariat is wedded to heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar.
Labor’s Bill Shorten sought to ram a 50% Renewable Energy Target down voter’s throats; a concept which the vast majority of them duly rejected.
Sure, there were plenty of other issues that sank the Green/Labor Alliance. However, it should be remembered that 2019 was billed as the ‘Climate Change Election’, with wind and solar pitched up as the only panacea to what has now become a ‘climate emergency’.
Pundits professed, with great certitude, the notion that the Australian public just can’t get enough intermittent, unreliable and unaffordable electricity. Well, that didn’t quite pan out. Bill Shorten slunk off the political stage, a wounded and embittered hero of renewable energy zealots and rent seekers, alike.
Another part of the meme was that the markets had already turned their back on fossil…
‘Man-made’ Climate Change = Global Socialism / Communism
“The Earth has cancer
and the cancer is Man.” – Club of Rome,
(environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations)
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“
– TimothyWirth,
(President of the UN Foundation)
***
“They don’t have to worry about CO2 because it is not a pollutant and is not causing climate change. No significant environmental problems are threatening the world. All the stories about impending environmental doom are fictions deliberately created to make people surrender control to the government. It is time to break the emotional stranglehold of those who used the environment to create global socialism.”
Dr. Tim Ball, in a must read piece, unveils the cloak behind the ‘man-made’ Global Warming Climate Change hoax that has absolutely nothing to do with the “environment” or “Saving The Planet”, rather, everything to do with power, control and “World government”…
We now know 50 years later that every single prediction concerning the environmental demise of the Earth and the people made in the original Earth Day Report was wrong. We also know that every additional claim, such as overpopulation, global warming, sea level rise, desertification, deforestation, and sea ice collapse, among many others, were wrong. I challenge anyone to produce empirical evidence that proves anything happening today is outside any long-term record of natural activity.
Like the majority of people, Elaine Dewar assumed environmentalists were commendable even heroic people. She began research for a book singing their praises. It didn’t take long to learn the basic premise was wrong. Following the traditional and proper methodology, rarely seen these days, Dewar identified the duplicitous characters involved in the Canadian environmental movement and laid them out in her book Cloak of Green. She spent five days at the UN with Canadian Maurice Strong arguably the world architect of official environmentalism. He was praised excessively, as in this article, “The World Mourns One of its Greats: Maurice Strong Dies, His Legacy Lives On.” Another article recognized the evil he personified, “Who is Global Warming Propagandist Maurice Strong?” After the five days, Dewar concluded,
“Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”
The environmental movement as the basis for a socialist world government was in the minds of people like Strong and fellow members of the Club of Rome in the late 1960s. However, it was launched on the world on April 22, 1970, by a small group centered at Stanford University. The date is critical because it was the first Earth Day. It is also very important to know the choice was deliberate because it is the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. The environmental movement was a deliberate program to impose communism on the world.
The underlying theme of the environmental movement makes the following false assumptions.
That almost all change is a result of human activity. The UN claim, using computer models, that 95%+ of temperature increase since 1950 is due to human-produced CO2. This works because they don’t consider most natural causes.
That humans are unnatural. The 1990 “Greenpeace Report on Global Warming” says CO2 is added to the atmosphere “naturally and unnaturally.”Yes, that unnatural production is from humans.
That we are not part of nature. Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) comment explains.
“Mankind is a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
That we should be eliminated or dramatically reduced in number. In May 2015, the Pope produced Laudate Si an Encyclical about his view of the state of the Earth. It is a socialist diatribe, but that is not surprising since the main contributor was Hans Schellnhuber, a pantheist. This group believes the world population should be below 1 billion people.
That if the western world reduces levels of CO2 production, the rest of the world will follow. China has 2,363 coal plants and is constructing 1,171 more. The US has 15 and is not constructing any.
The US can build as many clean-burning coal plants as they want and burn coal pollution free. They don’t have to worry about CO2 because it is not a pollutant and is not causing climate change. No significant environmental problems are threatening the world. All the stories about impending environmental doom are fictions deliberately created to make people surrender control to the government. It is time to break the emotional stranglehold of those who used the environment to create global socialism.
THE disgraceful use of children as “climate leaders” and tools of climate change propaganda, summed up by the excellent Brendon O’Neill, on his coverage of 16 year-old Greta Thunberg…
“Young people, Ms Thunberg isn’t your leader. She’s a patsy for scared and elitist adults. Don’t do as she says. Instead, refuse to panic, mock the blather about hellfire, and appreciate that mankind’s transformation of the planet has been a glorious thing that has expanded life expectancy, allowed billions to live in cities, and made it possible for even the less well-off to travel the globe.” The cult of Greta Thunberg – spiked
NOW, extend those same sentiments to “3-year old” babies … !
WE really are living in the age of climate change aka global warming insanity and wilful child abuse…
It was bad enough listening to a 16-year old lecturing us on climate change, but now they are even indulging babies!
Around 20 home-educated youngsters from across the county, aged between three and eight years old, presented handwritten letters to City Hall councillors to express their concerns on climate change,
Mum Toyah Dye, 38, from East Runton, said the children were inspired by the recent demonstrations of the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion and also of David Attenborough’s Our Planet, which highlighted the effects of climate change in the natural world.
Ms Dye said the children were particularly struck by a scene in the series which showed walruses in Russia climbing and falling from a cliff due to the retreating sea ice.
“I was watching Our Planet with my children and the walruses made us really sad,” Ms Dye said. “So I asked my…
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
– H.L. Mencken
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” – Bertrand Russel
***
DAY by day, all around the globe, Global Warming Climate Change is being exposed as simply a moral issue for the wealthy urban elite.
BLUE collar workers and the silent majority are not buying into the relentless fear-mongering and warming hysteria driven by climate theory-obsessed politicians, propped up by a compliant mainstream media.
THE incessant propaganda and orchestrated alarmism has lead to the mad rush into costly UNreliables – wind and solar ‘energy’ – that are sending energy prices through the roof and jobs and industry to China or other countries who have not been driven to ‘green’ energy poverty by climate theory-obsessed politicians pushing draconian “Save The Planet” policies.
CAMPAIGNING on climate guarantees political death. Its latest victim, Bill Shorten, The Australian Labor Party and the Greens, who, last night, lost the “unlosable” election to incumbent conservative PM Scott Morrison.
CLIMATE CHANGE, CENTRAL TO THE ELECTION
THE mainstream media flagged “Climate change to be decisive issue in Australian election.” :
GLOBAL REJECTION OF DRACONIAN CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY & ‘GREEN’ ENERGY POVERTY
ALL around the globe, voters are increasingly showing their displeasure with costly unreliable-energy policies imposed by politicians in an inane effort to fight the purported “climate catastrophe”.
IN France in late 2018, protesters donning yellow vests took to the streets—and have stayed there ever since—in large part to protest scheduled increases in fuel taxes, electricity prices, and stricter vehicle emissions controls, which French President Emmanuel Macron claimed were necessary to meet the country’s greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Paris climate agreement. After the first four weeks of protest, Macron’s government cancelled his climate action plan.
Ford Nation – Scrap The Carbon Tax Scam – Election Victory
IN 2018, in part as a backlash against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate policies, global warming skeptic Doug Ford was elected as premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. Ford announced he would end energy taxes imposed by Ontario’s previous premier and would join Saskatchewan’s premier in a legal fight against Trudeau’s federal carbon dioxide tax.
IN Alberta, Canada, where the economy declined after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate policies took hold, voters on April 16 replaced Premier Rachel Notley and her New Democratic Party (NDP), which supports the federal climate policies, with the United Conservative Party, headed by newly elected Premier Jason Kenney, who vowed to scrap the province’s carbon tax and every other policy in NDP’s climate action plan. Among the other climate policies Kenny said he will reverse in an effort to revive the economy are NDP’s plans to accelerate the closure of the province’s coal power plants, and its plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions from the region’s oil sands. In addition, Kenny says he will challenge the federal government’s climate impositions in court and streamline regulations hampering Alberta’s critical oil and gas industry, including restrictions preventing pipeline construction imposed by NDP.
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NETHERLANDS – Forum for Democracy (FvD)
The naked populist: Thierry Baudet stuns the Netherlands | eNCA – said the government should stop funding programs to meet the country’s commitments to international climate change agreements, saying such efforts are driven by “climate-change hysteria.”
In mid-March, the Forum for Democracy (FvD), a fledgling political party just three years old, tied for the largest number of seats, 12, in the divided Dutch Senate in the 2019 elections. FvD takes a decidedly skeptical stance on climate change. On the campaign trail, Thierry Baudet, FvD’s leader, said the government should stop funding programs to meet the country’s commitments to international climate change agreements, saying such efforts are driven by “climate-change hysteria.”
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FINLAND – Finns Party
FINLAND : Finns Party
On April 14 in Finland, where climate change policies became the dominant issue in the election, support for climate skepticism surged. Whereas all the other parties proposed plans to raise energy prices and limit people’s energy use, the Finns Party, which made the fight against expensive climate policies the central part of its platform, gained the second-highest number of seats in the Parliament, just one seat behind the Social Democratic Party’s 40. The second-place finish was a big win for the Finns Party and its skeptical stance: just two months before the election, polls showed its support was below 10 percent.After the Finns Party made battling alarmist climate policies its main goal, its popularity soared. The New York Times credited the Finns Party’s electoral surge, in large part, to its expressed climate skepticism.
EVEN as daily headlines in the fake news / lamestream media become ever shriller, hyping climate fears based on projections made by unverified climate models, the public, especially the voting public, is becoming increasingly weary of the Chicken Little claims of impending climate doom. Voters in developed countries are saying “enough is enough” to high energy prices which punish the most vulnerable people in society and do nothing to regulate climate change.
TAKE NOTE, politicians and business groups – climate change alarmism, political correctness, class warfare and identity politics are the politics of division and are electoral and commercial poison.
Greens dream of a zero-emissions world without coal, oil and natural gas. They need to think what they wish for.
First there would be no mass production of steel without coke from coking coal to remove oxygen from iron ore. People could cut trees in forests for charcoal to produce pig iron and crude steels, but forests would soon be exhausted. Coal saved the forests from this fate.
We could produce gold and silver without using mineral hydro-carbons and with ingenuity we could probably produce unrefined copper, lead and tin and alloys like brass and bronze. But making large quantities of nuclear fuels, cement, aluminium, refined metals, plastics, nylons, synthetics, petro-chemicals and poly pipes would be impossible.
Making wind turbines and solar panels would also be impossible without fossil fuels.A wind turbine needs lots of steel plus concrete, carbon fibre and glass polymers as well as many other refined metals – copper, aluminium, rare earths, zinc and molybdenum. Solar panels and batteries need high-purity ingredients – silicon, lead, lithium, nickel, cadmium, zinc, silver, manganese and graphite – all hard to make in backyard charcoal-fired furnaces. Transporting, erecting and maintaining wind and solar farms plus their roads and transmission lines needs many pieces of diesel-powered machinery.
Every machine on earth needs hydro-carbons for engine oil, gear oil, transmission oil, brake fluid, hydraulic oil and grease. We could of course use oils from, seals, beeswax and whales for lubrication – the discovery of petroleum saved the whales from this fate.
Roads would be a challenge without oil-based bitumen. The Romans made pretty good roads out of cobble-stones (this would ease unemployment). But hard labour would not sit well with aging baby-boomers or electronic-era Millenniums.
Cars, railways, motor launches, aeroplanes, I-Phones, TV and cat-scans would be out. Horses, oxen, sulkies, wooden rowing boats, sailing ships, herbal medicine and semaphore would have a huge revival. Some wood-burning steam tractors may still work and wood-gas generators may replace petrol in some old cars.
This is the return to the “zero-emissions” world that Green extremists have planned for us.
But modern life cannot not be supported by a pre-coal/oil economy. Without reliable electricity and diesel-powered farm machinery and transport trucks, cities are un-sustainable. In Green-topia 90% of us people will need to go.
“REMEMBER when we paved the world with electronic waste
that chopped eagles and condors and made bats extinct because we thought wind was natural and uranium evil? – man that was a dark age!” – Michael Shellenberger
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ONE of the great falsehoods and dangerous myths pushed by reckless global warming climate change zealots and the mainstream media is that ‘renewable energy’ – wind and solar – is “clean, green and renewable”.
‘RENEWABLES’ are neither “clean, green, or renewable”. In fact, they are pure embodiments of fossil fuel technology, with oil and “dirty” coal derivatives required for :
Wind turbines in Penonome, Panama. (Credit: Associated Press)
Solar panels and wind turbines are making electricity significantly more expensive, a major new study by a team of economists from the University of Chicago finds.
Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) “significantly increase average retail electricity prices, with prices increasing by 11% (1.3 cents per kWh) seven years after the policy’s passage into law and 17% (2 cents per kWh) twelve years afterward,” the economists write.
The study, which has yet to go through peer-review, was done by Michael Greenstone, Richard McDowell, and Ishan Nath. It compared states with and without an RPS. It did so using what the economists say is “the most comprehensive state-level dataset ever compiled” which covered 1990 to 2015.
The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: “All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy,” they write.
Solar and wind require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out electricity when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, I noted.
And unreliability requires solar- and/or wind-heavy places like Germany, California, and Denmark to pay neighboring nations or states to take their solar and wind energy when they are producing too much of it.
My reporting was criticized — sort of — by those who claimed I hadn’t separated correlation from causation, but the new study by a top-notch team of economists, including an advisor to Barack Obama, proves I was right.
Previous studies were misleading, the economists note, because they didn’t “incorporate three key costs,” which are the unreliability of renewables, the large amounts of land they require, and the displacement of cheaper “baseload” energy sources like nuclear plants.
The higher cost of electricity reflects “the costs that renewables impose on the generation system,” the economists note, “including those associated with their intermittency, higher transmission costs, and any stranded asset costs assigned to ratepayers.”
But are renewables cost-effective climate policy? They are not. The economists write that “the cost per metric ton of CO2 abated exceeds $130 in all specifications and ranges up to $460, making it at least several times larger than conventional estimates of the social cost of carbon.”
The economists note that the Obama Administration’s core estimate of the social cost of carbon was $50 per ton in 2019 dollars, while the price of carbon is just $5 in the US northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and $15 in California’s cap-and-trade system.
I am a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. My writings have ap…
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” – Bertrand Russel
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DON’T expect to see this ‘good’ environmental news on the mainstream media anytime soon.
WHEN you’re in the business of demonising carbon dioxide and frightening the Thunberg’s kiddies for political and ideological ends, such good news comes as a rather unwelcome message!
The world is literally a greener place than it was twenty years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage. A new study shows that China and India—the world’s most populous countries—are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.
Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues first detected the greening phenomenon in satellite data from the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was a chief cause. They then set out to track the total amount of Earth’s land area covered by vegetation and how it changed over time.
The research team found that global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25 percent of that gain came in China. Overall, one-third of Earth’s vegetated lands are greening, while 5 percent are growing browner. The study was published on February 11, 2019, in the journal Nature Sustainability.
The maps on this page show the increase or decrease in green vegetation—measured in average leaf area per year—in different regions of the world between 2000 and 2017. Note that the maps are not measuring the overall greenness, which explains why the Amazon and eastern North America do not stand out, among other forested areas.
“China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9 percent of the planet’s land area covered in vegetation,” said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. “That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation.”
globalgreening_tamo_2017
This study was made possible thanks to a two-decade-long data record from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. An advantage of MODIS is the intensive coverage they provide in space and time: the sensors have captured up to four shots of nearly every place on Earth, every day, for the past 20 years.
“This long-term data lets us dig deeper,” said Rama Nemani, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and a co-author of the study. “When the greening of the Earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now with the MODIS data, we see that humans are also contributing.”
China’s outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part from its programs to conserve and expand forests (about 42 percent of the greening contribution). These programs were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution, and climate change.
Another 32 percent of the greening change in China, and 82 percent in India, comes from intensive cultivation of food crops. The land area used to grow crops in China and India has not changed much since the early 2000s. Yet both countries have greatly increased both their annual total green leaf area and their food production in order to feed their large populations. The agricultural greening was achieved through multiple cropping practices, whereby a field is replanted to produce another harvest several times a year. Production of grains, vegetables, fruits and more have increased by 35 to 40 percent since 2000.
countrieschart_tamo_2017
How the greening trend may change in the future depends on numerous factors. For example, increased food production in India is facilitated by groundwater irrigation. If the groundwater is depleted, this trend may change. The researchers also pointed out that the gain in greenness around the world does not necessarily offset the loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions such as Brazil and Indonesia. There are consequences for sustainability and biodiversity in those ecosystems beyond the simple greenness of the landscape.
Nemani sees a positive message in the new findings. “Once people realize there is a problem, they tend to fix it,” he said. “In the 1970s and 80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss was not good. In the 1990s, people realized it, and today things have improved. Humans are incredibly resilient. That’s what we see in the satellite data.”
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data courtesy of Chen et al.,(2019). Story by Abby Tabor, NASA Ames Research Center, with Mike Carlowicz, Earth Observatory.
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GLOBAL GREENING…
“A quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.” – NASA
NASA previously reported on the ‘greening of the earth’ thanks to the CO2 ‘fertilisation’ effect.
HOWEVER, such good news was again carefully omitted by the mainstream media and environmental activists keen to preserve their ‘catastrophic’ global warming climate change narrative and continue their demonisation of life-giving gas carbon dioxide, deceptively referring to it as “carbon pollution” :
“A quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.” – NASA
IN 2013, the CSIRO commissioned a study that found “Deserts ‘greening’ from rising carbon dioxide: Green foliage boosted across the world’s arid regions.”
THE ‘greening’ of deserts, thanks to rising CO2, happens to be a very unwelcome message for the environmental movement and apparently for the CSIRO, too! So, they simply removed the study from their website!
THE Global Warming Policy Foundation has since released an excellent short video showing why the polar bear no longer serves as the icon of the climate change movement :
“Time after time, forestry experts tell us that wildfires are not getting worse because of climate change, that from a historical perspective current wildfire activity is not unusual, and that we are now seeing the results of decades of fire suppression and poor forest management.”
ANOTHER ‘inconvenient’ study directly contradicting the apocalyptic narrative of the 2 TRILLION dollar per year, Climate Crisis Industry…
Another thorough assessment of wildfire trends wrecks alarmist claims:
ABSTRACT
Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth’s surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Regarding fire severity, limited data are available. For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement. Direct fatalities from fire and economic losses…
DIRE predictions of an “ice-free” Arctic have remained popular on the climate change fear-mongering circuit, owing to the psychological and political currency of all things melting and not least the emotional relevance applicable to the fate of the Arctic’s most famous resident and ‘global warming’ mascot – the polar bear.
SOME of the failed Arctic sea-ice predictions by alarmists ‘scientists’ and the fake news media over the years :
“Arctic summers ice-free by 2013” (BBC 2007)
“Could all Arctic ice be gone by 2012?” (AP 2007)
“Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?”(National Geographic 2007)
“Imagine yourself in a world five years from now, where there is no more ice over the Arctic” – Tim Flannery (2008)
“North Pole could be ice-free in 2008” – Mark Serreze (New Scientist 2008)
“Gore: Polar ice cap may disappear by summer 2014” (USA Today 2009)
“Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within 4 years” (Guardian 2012)
“Say Goodbye to Arctic Summer Ice” (Live Science 2013)
“Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist” (The Guardian 2013)
“Why Arctic sea ice will vanish in 2013” (Sierra Club 2013)
“Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’” – Peter Wadhams (The Guardian 2016)
MINIMUM sea-ice extent has been trending up over the past twelve years. The EXACT opposite of what the mainstream media and ‘97% experts’ have been telling you :
ARCTIC temperatures and melt cycles correlate almost perfectly with ocean circulation cycles (AMO), and show no correlation with atmospheric CO2 levels :
Reykjavik, Iceland Temperatures Vs. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
NO other icon of ‘Global Warming’ epitomises its very own false narrative like the polar bear does for ‘Climate Change’.
WITH deadly irony, polar bear numbers have grown dramatically as carbon dioxide emissions have risen in lock-step. A CO2 correlation, at last!
INDIGENOUS Inuit’s of Northern Canada are now facing the very real task of having to cull the population as “the polar bear may have exceeded the co-existence threshold.”
“Inuit believe there are now so many bears that public safety has become a major concern,”
“Public safety concerns, combined with the effects of polar bears on other species, suggest that in many Nunavut communities, the polar bear may have exceeded the co-existence threshold.”
Susan Crockford is zoologist with more than 35 years experience, including published work on the Holocene history of Arctic animals. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.
It’s long past time for polar bear specialists to stop holding out for a scientifically accurate global estimate that will never be achieved and determine a reasonable and credible ‘best guess’. Since they have so far refused to do this, I have done it for them. My extrapolated estimate of 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible.
In 2014, the chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) emailed me to say that their global population size number ‘has never been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.’
In my new book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened, I contend that this situation will probably never change, so it’s time to stop holding out for a scientifically accurate global estimate and generate a reasonable and credible ‘best guess’. Recent surveys from several critical polar bear subpopulations have given us the information necessary to do this.
These new numbers make it possible to extrapolate from ‘known’ to ‘unknown’ subpopulations within so-called ‘sea ice ecoregions’ (defined in 2007 by polar bear scientists at the US Geological Survey, see Amstrup et al. 2007), as shown below, to update old estimates and generate new ones for never-studied areas.
USGS – Polar Bear Ecoregions
Since the PBSG has so far refused to take this step, I took on the challenge. I contend that an estimate of about 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible. See the graph below from my new book:
Global polar bear population size estimates to 2018. From Chapter 10 of The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened (Crockford 2019).
This new estimate for 2018 is a modest 4-6 fold increase over the 10,000 or so bears that existed in the 1960s and after 25 years, a credible increase over the estimate of 25,000 that the PBSG offered in 1993 (Wiig et al. 1995).
However, my new estimate is much larger than the improbable figure of about 26,000 (range 22,000-31,000) offered by PGSG biologists in 2015 (Regehr et al. 2016; Wiig et al. 2015). The scary question is this: what do Arctic residents do if there are actually as many as 58,000?
See my new book (Crockford 2019) for the full rationale and references used to arrive at this figure.
The bottom line: it is scientifically unacceptable for the PBSG to continue to refuse to provide an extrapolated ‘best guess’ global estimate for polar bears, given that the scientifically accurate estimate they crave is essentially unattainable. An estimate of about 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible. Read the rest of this entry »
Never there when you need it, often there when you don’t, wind power is, at best, an infantile joke. Promised output figures are rarely realised.
What’s referred to as the “capacity factor” of any given wind farm is said to represent a proportional, and meaningful, contribution to electricity demand.
Except, instead of powering the putative hundreds of thousands of homes, the vast majority of the time, wind farms are powering absolutely nothing.
Instead, they’re consuming electricity from the grid to maintain their on-board systems, such as heating, cooling and braking – in order to prevent ‘component liberation’ – eg:
Not that you’ll read any of this in the mainstream press, nor are the wind industry’s spin doctors likely to eagerly reveal just how pathetic the actual (and completely chaotic) output from their beloved wind turbines, really is.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
– H.L. Mencken
“IT would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” ― Joseph Goebbels
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THE Left and the Deep State’s favourite conspiracy theory is dead!
THE 30 MILLION dollar, 675 day “Russia Collusion” probe has finally ended with the Mueller Report on “Trump Russia Collusion” handed in to the US Department Of Justice with, importantly, no further indictments recommended by the Special Counsel.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is not recommending any further indictments as part of his sweeping Russia investigation which effectively ended Friday, according to a senior Justice Department official.
NOT a single American citizen or anyone associated with the Trump campaign has been charged with anything related to Russian collusion or obstruction of justice.
SO many lives trashed, the Republic and the Presidency weakened.
CONGRESSMAN Mark Meadows sums it up :
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HEADS MUST ROLL
THERE must be consequences for both the Leftist mainstream media and government bureaucracy so that the most powerful organs of State – the FBI and CIA – can never again be used as weapons against a political opponent or citizens.
LAURA Ingraham on holding the media accountable for frenzy over Mueller :
A MUST WATCH 7 mins …
TUCKER Carlson sums up the latest in this must watch hour of Tucker Carlson Tonight…
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THE CLIMATE CONNECTION
AS Climatism is a climate-related blog, we don’t usually stray outside of issues relating to weather and climate. However, there are many parallels between the Trump Russia hoax and Climate Change alarmism in how the mainstream media, by completely giving up journalistic endeavour, has the power and ability to spread propaganda and misinformation in order to push their favourite pet theories.
IF the mainstream media can make you believe that @realDonaldTrump was a “Russian Agent”, imagine what they can do to make you ‘believe’ that mankind’s one extra CO2 molecule in 10,000, added since 1950, is destroying the planet?!
A February 2018 headline from the fake newspaper that has lead the charge against Trump, provides a glimpse of the constant visceral hatred directed at the person who beat Hillary…
NOTE The banner and new slogan of the Washington Post – “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”. You be the judge as to the veracity of their pompous claim after today’s release!
“WHEN the heart rules the head,
passion takes over reason.”
– Ortega y Gasset
“IT would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” ― Joseph Goebbels
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THE widely held belief that ‘Extreme Weather’ has become worse, as a result of man-made carbon dioxide emissions, is a tribute to the success of climate change propaganda pushed relentlessly by CO2-centric politicians and compliant mainstream media.
PROMOTING Extreme Weather is specifically designed to shift public opinion about the purported seriousness of human-induced global warming climate change, through the use of emotional imagery and dire prognostications in order for draconian and costly climate policy to be accepted and implemented with as little resistance as possible from the taxpaying public.
COGNITIVE BIAS fuelled by an era of mass hysteria, delusion, groupthink and panic has helped foster dark and far-fetched clichés of a current “climate crisis”, that is an “existential threat” which will “end civilisation by 2030”.
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THANKS to the dramatic rise in personal weather recording devices – smart phones and CCTV – the sampling rate (what you see or hear directly) of Extreme Weather events, broadcast via social and mainstream media, has risen dramatically in recent years.
BUT, have actual Extreme Weather events increased in frequency or intensity? In particular, over long-term ‘climate’ scales?
THE short answer is a big fat NO! Extreme Weather events have not increased in frequency or intensity as carbon dioxide emissions have increased. In many cases the exact opposite is occurring.
THIS ‘inconvenient’ fact has been proven by empirical data and confirmed by the last two (warmist) U.N. IPCC reports on Extreme Weather: SREX (AR5) 2013 report and the latest SR15 report released August, 2018:
UN IPCC : “Low confidence in the sign of drought trends since 1950 at global scale…likely to be trends in some regions of the world, including increases in drought in the Mediterranean and W Africa & decreases in droughts in central N America & NW Australia” – UN IPCC SR15 (2018)
IN 1934, when CO₂ was at ‘safe’ levels, severe to extreme drought covered around 80% of the entire U.S. Such conditions endured for most of the decade known as the “Dust Bowl” era :
“There is low confidence due to limited evidence, however, that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and the magnitude of floods.” – UN IPCC SR15 (2018)
4⃣Floods: "There is low confidence due to limited evidence, however, that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and the magnitude of floods. "
“Numerous studies towards and beyond AR5 have reported a decreasing trend in the global number of tropical cyclones and/or the globally accumulated cyclonic energy”– UN IPCC SR15 (2018)
“There is only low confidence regarding changes in global tropical cyclone numbers under global warming over the last four decades.” – UN IPCC SR15 (2018)
2018 was one of the least active US tornado years on record, despite record and rising CO₂ emissions.
AS of October, a new record low tornado count was set. The cumulative total for 2018 is 759; the previous lowest number of tornadoes for this date was 761. The SPC has records extending back 65 years.
This lack of tornadic storms in recent years should also correlate with lesser severe thunderstorm activity in general in the U.S., since the conditions which produce large hail and damaging winds are generally the same as are required for tornadoes (strong instability, plentiful moisture, and wind shear). – Roy Spencer PhD
NB// LOSS data does not include the two big CAT4’s that struck the US in 2018 – Florence (Sep) and Michael (Oct).
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CONCLUSION
BIAS BY OMISSION
IN my opinion, the worst form of propaganda is ‘bias by omission’ – information and facts that you are ‘not’ told about, in order to keep the truth from you.
THE mainstream media has not and will not report the facts on “Extreme Weather”, as clearly laid out in the science and data above, because such facts are obviously extremely ‘inconvenient’ to their “catastrophic” man-made global warming narrative.
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VITAL information central to the potential seriousness of climate change – Extreme Weather – has been purposely omitted by the mainstream media and replaced by emotions, alarmism and exaggerations in order to fit the climate-calamity narrative designed to scare you into belief and obedience.
THIS is why the global warming climate change debate has become so dangerously deceptive and dishonest. Climate truths hidden from you and replaced with a narrative far more acceptable – Hollywood-style climate hysteria based on alarmism, increased sampling rates and overheated, CO2-centric climate models that do not accord with observed reality.
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UPDATE
DID not see either of these instructive graphs painted on a placards at any of the kiddie climate rallies last Friday. Guess they don’t fit their ‘catastrophic’ climate narrative…
Global Deaths from Climate and non-Climate Catastrophes, 1920-2018
Carbon Emissions and World Prosperity
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PERHAPS the climate kids would have been wise to read and learn the words of H.L. Mencken, before being forced out by their parents and teachers to act as standard bearers of new radical eco-socialism, protected by ‘innocence’ and lack of age :
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.” – H.L. Mencken
“FAR from this year being the record, the hottest summer was actually back in 1900. This summer only ranks 5th, behind 2017, 1902 and 2006.
THE summers of 1884 and 1901 are also close behind.
IN fact, the spate of hot summers recently look little different to those of the early 1900s.”
Walgett 1880 to 2019
EXCELLENT investigative work, again, by Mr. Paul Homewood.
THE precise job that the mainstream media should and must be doing in order to keep a check on government and its institutions.
BUT, just as our top ‘scientific’ organisations have been captured by environmental elites, so too have the majority-Leftist mainstream media.
AND, for the mainstream media – keeping “truth to power” in the area of the ‘environment’ would mean sanitising their man-made global warming narrative that they’ve invested so much political capital, ideology and personal ego into for decades. Not gonna happen!
ERGO, tough times indeed for “truth to power” to exist in the fashionable age of climate change virtue-signalling, driven by politics, propaganda, bureaucratic pseudoscience and trillions of dollars of taxpayers hard-earned.
“Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?”(National Geographic 2007)
“Imagine yourself in a world five years from now, where there is no more ice over the Arctic” – Tim Flannery (2008)
“North Pole could be ice-free in 2008” – Mark Serreze (New Scientist 2008)
“Gore: Polar ice cap may disappear by summer 2014” (USA Today 2009)
“Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within 4 years” (Guardian 2012)
“Say Goodbye to Arctic Summer Ice” (Live Science 2013)
“Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist” (The Guardian 2013)
“Why Arctic sea ice will vanish in 2013” (Sierra Club 2013)
“Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’” – Peter Wadhams (The Guardian 2016)
DIRE predictions of an “ice-free” Arctic have remained popular on the climate change fear-mongering circuit, owing to the psychological and political currency of all things melting and not least the emotional relevance applicable to the fate of the Arctic’s most famous resident and ‘global warming’ mascot – the polar bear.
Abundant ice in Svalbard, East Greenland and the Labrador Sea is excellent news for the spring feeding season ahead because this is when bears truly need the presence of ice for hunting and mating. As far as I can tell, sea ice has not reached Bear Island, Norway at this time of year since 2010 but this year ice moved down to the island on 3 March and has been there ever since. This may mean we’ll be getting reports of polar bear sightings from the meteorological station there, so stay tuned.
Sea ice extent as of 11 March 2019, from NSIDC Masie:
Much of the ice that was blown out of the Bering Sea early in the month has returned and ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the East Coast of Canada is the highest its been in years, threatening to impede ferry traffic between Nova…
“IN a brilliant strategic move, it was decided that the environmentalist movement was a new and promising vehicle for obtaining political influence and power.”
– Jennifer Marohasy PhD
Environment Minister Melissa Price has linked this week’s devastating bushfires in Victoria to climate change, saying there is “no doubt” of its impact on Australia
As Victorians in the state’s east survey the damage done to their properties by bushfires, the Environment Minister said Australians across the nation had suffered from the nation’s hottest summer on record.
“There’s no doubt that there’s many people who have suffered over this summer. We talk about the Victorian bushfires; (in) my home state of Western Australia we’ve also got fires there,” she told Sky News this morning.
“There’s no doubt that climate change is having an impact on us. There’s no denying that.”
Coalition figures, including former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, have been reluctant in the past to link climate change to recent natural disasters such as bushfires.
MEANWHILE, residents of Tonimbuk, a small rural community heaviest hit by Victoria’s weekend bushfires, believe dangerously high fuel loads on vacant crown land contributed to the ferocity of a blaze that left Country Fire Authority firefighters unable to defend some properties…
Residents of a small rural community heaviest hit by Victoria’s weekend bushfires believe dangerously high fuel loads on vacant crown land contributed to the ferocity of a blaze that left Country Fire Authority firefighters unable to defend some properties.
The quiet hamlet of Tonimbuk, about 90km east of Melbourne, felt the brunt of the fire crisis, with seven properties destroyed and 11,000ha burnt by a lightning-strike blaze that raced out of the Bunyip State Forest.
Andrew Clarke, the owner of the Jinks Creek Winery destroyed by the Bunyip fire, believes a bureaucratic blunder cost him his life’s work.
He said a planned burn-off in 60ha between his vineyard and the state park was not done because of concerns for local birdlife.
“If they’d been doing the burning off they should have been doing, our place might still be there,’’ he told The Australian.
“They told me birds were nesting. I told them: ‘If we don’t do a burn-off now, there’ll be no birds. There’ll be no goannas, no snakes, no wallabies. They’ll all be barbecued.’’
Another Tonimbuk resident, cartoonist Mark Knight, said some residents were left to defend their homes without assistance from the CFA. “We fought this fire for three days on our own,’’ he said. “Black Saturday they were all over us. They were fantastic. We didn’t see them this year.’’
Mark Knight with his sons Jack & Elliott, in Tonimbuk, managed to save their property after a bushfire engulfed the Bunyip state forest in Victoria. Picture: Stuart McEvoy.
THE Daily Telegraph’s climate ‘rationalist’ Miranda Devine with the brutal truth as to what is really fuelling 21st Century bushfires, overrun with ‘Green’ fodder…
On Tuesday, she linked the fires to climate change, claiming there is “no doubt” of its impact on Australia.
“There’s no doubt that there’s many people who have suffered over this summer. We talk about the Victorian bushfires … There’s no doubt that climate change is having an impact on us. There’s no denying that.”
Sorry, minister, it wasn’t climate change that caused the latest bushfires which have so far destroyed nine homes in Victoria, and it wasn’t climate change that killed almost 200 people in the Black Saturday fires ten years ago.
The real culprit is green ideology which opposes the necessary hazard reduction of fuel loads in national parks and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation around their homes.
The ongoing poor management of national parks and state forests in Victoria and green obstruction of fire mitigation strategies has led to dangerously high fuel loads over the past decade.
That means that when fires do inevitably break out they are so intense that they are devilishly difficult for firefighters to contain. As a federal parliamentary inquiry heard in 2003, if you quadruple the ground fuel, you get a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.
Locals know the truth. Andrew Clarke, owner of Jinks Creek Winery, which has been destroyed by a fire which raged out of the Bunyip State Forest, “begged” for fuel reduction burns to protect his property.
“I’ve been begging them [Forest Fire Management Victoria] for 20 years to burn off the state forest at the back of our place and still to this day it hasn’t happened,” he told the ABC’s Country Hour.
Clarke said a planned burn-off was called off because of concerns about nesting birds.
So how did that work out for the birds?
Just three weeks ago, Victoria’s former chief fire officer Ewan Waller warned that state forest fuel loads were reaching deadly, Black Saturday levels. No one paid any attention.
But you can bet Premier Daniel Andrews will hide behind the climate change furphy.
Parroting green lies suits politicians because then they can avoid blame for their own culpability.
The Black Saturday Bushfire Royal Commission criticised the Victorian government for its failure to reduce fuel loads in state forests. It recommended more than doubling the amount of hazard reduction burns.
Instead, in the last three years, alone, the Andrews government has slashed the amount of public land being hazard reduced by almost two thirds.
It’s a crime.
The wonder is that the Morrison government is helping him with his alibi.
MELBOURNE, Jan 13. – Nearly 40 bushfires were reported throughout Victoria today when the temperature in Melbourne rose to 105deg [41°C].
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So hot was the sand at West St. Kilda yesterday that life-savers, in a march past, broke formation for the first time in the history of Victorian life-saving clubs and had to resume the march along the water’s edge.
The secretary of the Royal Life Saving Society of Victoria (Mr. Pier dell) described yesterday as one of the worst he had known on Victorian beaches.
AUSTRALIAN politicians push a never-ending barrage of fact-free global warming climate change alarmism, fear and propaganda on the taxpayer in order to stoke fear and justify the spending of billions upon billions of their hard-earned money on fake fixes to a fake scam.
HOW many more billions of taxpayers hard-earned money will be spent on the greatest pseudoscientific scam ever perpetrated against mankind before our politicians learn how to google “TROVE“? Basic climate history, documenting events no different to today that completely trashes their costly, fake, political, man-made climate change scam costing the country and the planet an estimated $2,000,000,000,000 US (2 Trillion) per year, every year!
ENOUGH is enough. People’s livelihoods, their communities and economies are being ‘burned’ alive by gutless and superstitious politicians on a costly and dangerous crusade of “Save The Planet” hubris driven by politics, ideology and groupthink, pseudoscientific climate change dogma.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
– H.L. Mencken
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HOBART’S VARIABLE WEATHER
HeatWaveAndSnow
HOBART. Saturday. — A fall of snow on Mt. Wellington closed a week of weather conditions in Hobart unprecedented in the memory of those who can go back 40 years.
Early in the week the weather was hot and sultry, and the humidity was us unusual for Hobart as it was uncomfortable.
On Thursday the humidity was more than 10 per cent, in excess of the average for this time of the year.
Rain storms threatened on Friday morning, and between 3 p.m. and 9 a.m. today, 218 points of rain was registered and another 11 points by 3 p.m.
Snow began to fall on the mountain last night, and continued during the early hours this morning. There was a white mantle about 2 inches thick on the mountain to-day.
The minimum temperature was 34 degrees F [1.1°C]
Visitors have found the conditions most trying.
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THIS report was from Monday the 7th of February, 1930 during summer in Australia.
“VARIABLE WEATHER” aka “Extreme Weather” (in today’s language!) is not ‘unprecedented’ for Australia. Even with carbon pollutionCO₂ levels at 400 PPM :
“Snow is falling in Tasmania today, just four days after the state experienced it[s] hottest March weather on record.”
From record-heat to snow in Tasmania
Ben Domensino, Wednesday March 6, 2019 – 10:52 EDT
Snow is falling in Tasmania today, just four days after the state experienced it hottest March weather on record.
Autumn is a time of contrasting weather in southern Australia, as hot air lingering over the mainland after summer clashes with cold air surging out of the Southern Ocean.
Image: Cold air passing over Tasmania on Wednesday.
“REMEMBER when we paved the world with electronic waste
that chopped eagles and condors and made bats extinct because we thought wind was natural and uranium evil? – man that was a dark age!” – Michael Shellenberger
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ONE of the great falsehoods and dangerous myths pushed by reckless global warming climate change zealots and the mainstream media is that ‘renewable energy’ – wind and solar – is “clean, green and renewable”.
‘RENEWABLES’ are neither “clean, green, or renewable”. In fact, they are pure embodiments of foss
By Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. ~
The affliction is by no means restricted to the United States, however. A new study sheds light on the carnage giant wind turbines are inflicting on wildlife in India. Researchers at the Indian Institute for Science at Bengaluru studied bird and lizard populations at three wind turbine sites in Western Ghats. They found that the mass killing of avian predators by wind turbines is having a “ripple effect” across the food chain, with lizards and small mammals adjusting to substantially reduced numbers of predators in the sky.
A polar bear on hummocked sea ice in Franz Josef Land. Photo by Michael Hambrey, date not specified but estimated based on tour dates to be 22 or 23 June 2019. 
Wellington’s whirling wonders: lazy as bro! 
Posted on Sun 06/23/2019 by PA Pundits – International