PETER GLOVER: WHEN IT COMES TO GLOBAL WARMING, IT’S THE MEDIA NOT THE ARCTIC THAT IS IN MELTDOWN ****
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2867/green_agenda_in_meltdown
THE alarmist agenda has been relentlessly unhelpful. Not that you’d know it if your trust is in the mainstream journalistic integrity of the BBC or New York Times.
We could start with the data-driven fact that there’s been no global warming whatsoever for over 16 years. But this would be churlish as even the head of the UN IPCC and Moonbat Guardianistas have been forced to admit that particular game is up. But the devil is in the detail, right? Okay, so let’s check out the detail on key green fronts when it comes to news that may have drifted under your personal news radar.
First up, solar activity. In 2009 a key consensus of the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel was that a “solar minimum” occurred in December 2008 with a “solar maximum intensity” predicted for May 2013. In layman’s terms, the Sun’s activity would promote global warming this year. Wrong.
Now NASA is reporting that in 2013, the year of the predicted solar maximum, the Sun isn’t playing ball. It turns out that solar activity this year is well below the expected level. And less Sun activity equates with a cooler, not a warmer, planet. Once again, a key science consensus melts away.
As Doug L. Hoffman points out, “The botched solar forecast not only has implication for our understanding of the physical processes inside the Sun, it has possible links to future climate change here on earth”. And a cooler planet is way more of a threat to us all than a slightly warmer one.
Next up, global sea ice. Ah yes, remember the 2007 BBC news report that warned of an “ice-free Arctic by 2013” – a case the BBC has regularly pushed ever since? In the event, however, 2013 is setting new records for Arctic sea ice – being only the third winter in history where more than 10 million square kilometres of new ice formed as a result of temperatures sinking to minus 35 degrees.
Now, you might think BBC journos would be overjoyed that the polar bears will, unexpectedly, have way more ice to float around on. That is if they’d bothered covering the story at all. They didn’t.
But then that’s only half the story. As obsessed as the BBC et al remain with the ‘disappearing’ Arctic, the gigantic, ‘Arctic-dwarfing’ mass of sea ice in the South Atlantic, Antarctica, is rarely on the BBC/NYT radar. Which is surprising as such is the rate of advance of Antarctica’s sea ice – increasing as it currently is at the rate of half a million square meters a year – that it would entirely cover the globe within 1,000 years.
As Real Science, reporting the growth in sea ice data, points out, however, that’s not how the real world works. Nature works in cycles. No one expects relentless sea ice growth. Yet green alarmists alone persist in predicting a, inexorable climb resulting in any number of climate apocalypse scenarios – which the BBC and NYT are only too happy to confirm.
Then there’s the whole green energy fantasy, urged on us by warmists. Take California: Already bankrupt, the state’s rush to green energy has prioritized wind and solar projects. But reports now make it clear that green energy’s unreliability is likely to see the lights go out in California by as early as later this year.
Worse still, new research suggests scientists generally have over-estimated the generation of power by wind farms. And yet another “devastating blow for the wind industry” is presaged in an upcoming report.
According to a finding made by Scottish-government-funded researchers – Scotland is another key front-runner in the wind development stakes – thousands of existing UK wind turbines create more greenhouse gas emissions than they save. Then there’s the increasing unacceptability – to environmentalists – of the impact of giant wind farm footprints.
And just for good measure, Germany, yet another global front-runner in the green energy stakes, has been warned the country’s transition to more wind and solar renewable energy will cost the nation, already reeling from the high cost of green energy subsidies, a ‘cool’ 1 trillion euros ($1.34 trillion). With a record 600,000 Germans now threatened by fuel poverty it is not surprising that German politicians are taking the political problems created by greater green energy-dependency more seriously.
The green energy agenda is fast rising to the top of the political agenda – but, as we have seen, hardly for the reasons eco-warriors and BBC and NYT editors might like. It can only continue its inexorable rise because of two influential factors: First, facts and real science data are simply swamping the alarmist core messages; second, as the most comprehensive study conducted recently reveals, futuristic climate issues rank nowhere in the average voter’s list of concerns.
In February, green policies were singularly responsible for bringing down the Bulgarian Government. It was a watershed political moment. Even the BBC and the NYT reported it. Not that either managed to identify the link between the government’s green subsidies policy and rocketing electricity prices that brought violent protests to the streets for the first time. Too much like real journalism.
Whether the BBC/NYT mainstream media persists in refusing to run reports undermining a green agenda to which it patently subscribes, electorates are fast-becoming all too aware of the nexus between green policies and surging energy bills and the very real threat of power cuts.
For the green agenda it seems a political tipping point has been reached – and it’s the mass media’s credibility, not the Arctic, that’s in meltdown.
Peter C Glover is co-author of the bestselling Energy and Climate Wars and is a contributing editor at The Commentator. For more: www.petercglover.com
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