RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/12/the-settled-science-of-refusing-to-debate/

The silly season came early this year, at least to Ultimo and the ABC Science Show. According to the latter’s homepage, it offers “unique insights into the latest scientific research and debate, from the physics of cricket to prime ministerial biorhythms”. Yet the site also provides a safe space for climate wafflers and promulgaters of pejorative bile, while emphatically denying a voice to scientists who continue to question the alarmist orthodoxy.

Planet saviours, gender warriors and merchants of “climate change denialism” (CCD), however, seem especially welcome. They can share their eco-anxiety with the public free from harassment here, hit guys where it hurts , blame the lack of “climate action” on “fragile masculinity”, and pontificate sagely about all manner of alleged “links” until the methane-belching cows come home; the latest being between (naturally) white male “climate deniers and the anti-feminist far-right”:

The idea that white men would lead the attacks on Greta Thunberg is consistent with a growing body of research linking gender reactionaries to climate-denialism—some of the research coming from Thunberg’s own country. Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, which recently launched the world’s first academic research center to study climate denialism, have for years been examining a link between climate deniers and the anti-feminist far-right. (The Misogny of Climate Deniers, New Republic, August 28, 2019)

Consider the following segments from the Science Show episode of December 7, 2019:  “Students continue protests as bushfires destroy houses, farms, infrastructure and forests” (10mins 58secs); controlled burns destroy ecosystems and may not reduce fire risk (4mins 41secs); and the origins of climate denial tracked (5mins 45secs).

Why spend millions of dollars – probably billions globally – on climate modelling and so-called attribution studies? For according to presenter, Robyn Williams, AM: “The Science Show first broadcast warnings about climate 44 years ago.” Transcript here

Mr Williams then quoted the late Peter Ritchie Calder (1906-1982), described in his Wikipedia entry as a “Scottish socialist author, journalist and academic”.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/shouldnt_the_media_report_how_bad_previous_climate_change_predictions_have_been_instead_of_participating_in_the_indoctrination.html

For the last 100 years, we have seen climate prediction labels go from global warming, global cooling, global warming, climate change, climate catastrophe, climate emergency and climate collapse. The goal has been to scare the public and especially the children to give up their freedom and money to the powerful government.

Instead of journalists investigating and saying how wrong previous predictions have been, they go along with the indoctrination to try to force the radical leftist agenda and policies on the public. These people all pretend they care about the poor and middle class, but the proposed policies would destroy tens of millions of jobs, would make income and wealth inequality much worse, and would make many millions more people dependent on government.

Everyone should stop pretending that Biden, Mayor Pete, Bloomberg or any other Democrat is moderate. They are all willing to destroy the economy and give much greater power to the government on the climate and fossil fuels.

Here is a small sample of predictions on the climate that almost all of the media regurgitate with no questions asked:

2019-The UN says we only have a few years left because of warming.
2008-On ABC, Good Morning America. By 2015, New York City would be under water, milk would be $13 per gallon and gasoline would be $9 per gallon, very little of Miami would be left. (they were so close)
2005-After Katrina we were told hurricanes would be more frequent and severe than ever. Instead we had a ten-year lull in serious hurricanes hitting the U.S.
1989- The UN says we only have a few years left because of warming.
1970-First Earth Day. Billions would die soon because of global cooling and an ice age.
1922-AP and Washington Post-Coastal cities would soon be underwater because the ice caps have melted due to global warming.

Here is a small sample of questions for politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, educators, Time person’s of the year, and people who pretend to be journalists peddling the indoctrination and pushing the agenda.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/12/16/madrid_climate_conference_ends_in_failure_110499.html

Al Gore Talks—Donald Trump Vindicated

#TimeForAction was the slogan at this year’s Madrid climate conference that ended Sunday. #TimeForTalk would be more accurate. The talking was endless: more than 70,000 hours were spent failing to define a “market instrument,” something that was meant to have been decided at last year’s conference in Katowice, Poland. Even though the Madrid conference ran over into the weekend, making it the longest ever, the issue will be kicked into next year’s talks, in Glasgow, Scotland.

“I am disappointed,” United Nations secretary general António Guterres tweeted. He should be. Next year, countries are to submit their second set of five-year, nationally determined climate plans under the Paris Agreement. The Madrid conference was to have engendered a spirit of enhanced climate ambition, a kind of competition of climate virtuousness. All it could manage was a statement expressing “serious concern” about the widening gap between the participating parties’ collective efforts and the ambitious emissions trajectory required to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.

Talk doesn’t cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The UN Environment Programme describes the last ten years as a lost decade, in terms of curbing global emissions.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/16/climate-zealots-firing-squads-and-a-load-of-manure/

The United Nations’ 25th Conference Of The Parties climate summit ended Sunday with participants unable to agree on what are the media are calling “key” emissions targets. Some participants are blaming America’s absence for the failure. The more sober-minded, though, are grateful President Donald Trump has no time for the global warming nonsense.

Even with the canonized Greta Thunberg threatening to put the world’s national leaders “against the wall” if they don’t “do their job and to protect our futures,” the principals could work out nothing more than, according to the all-in-on-the-global-warming-hysterics Guardian, “a partial agreement to ask countries to come up with more ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to meet the terms of the 2015 Paris accord.”

(For the record, the Swedish teen scold apologized for her comment. Maybe someone told her that her rant sounded as if she wanted to round up those who have failed her, and line them up for a firing squad, revealing a little too much of the fantasies many of the hate-filled alarmists play out in their heads.)

The response from activists was predictable. They made a “really futile and stupid gesture” by dumping horse manure outside the meeting and staging a mock hanging in which one of the “condemned” held a baby while she had a rope around her neck. Reuters said these woke folk were “frustrated” by the talks. Frustrated, we’d say, in the same way a child becomes upset and throws a tantrum because he couldn’t get his way.

The U.S. had no official representatives at the summit, though a delegation of congressional Democrats did travel to Madrid, where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi assured the delegates, feckless poseurs whose greatest achievement has been to convince the world that they’re important people doing important work, that “we are still in.”

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/12/12/the_business_of_climate_change.html

MADRID

Saving the planet takes money, and lots of it. Money is both the theme and the subtext of the latest round of UN climate talks being held here—a vast river of cash flows through the UN climate process. Formally, the meeting is about nailing down one of the more obscure provisions of the Paris Agreement: Article 6, which provides for market-based instruments so that countries can trade their way out of their decarbonization commitments. Billions of cross-border dollars and transaction fees hang on the outcome.

With the negotiations concerning mind-paralyzing definitions of interest only to the most intrepid climate geeks, business and finance leaders could wind up taking center stage. When they first started coming to climate conferences, it was to observe and advise. Now it’s to show-and-tell their green virtue. “Momentum is there,” declared Paul Polman, the former Uniliver CEO. “Climate change is the biggest business opportunity of all time.” We’re close to several policy tipping points, he suggested.

The EU is about to approve a massive Green New Deal. Michael Bloomberg’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TFCD) encourages companies to make voluntary climate-related risk disclosures. Draft EU regulations, meantime, could pave the way for mandatory climate disclosures that would force investment managers to justify their investments against climate and environmental benchmarks. Businesses are transitioning to “net zero,” Polman claims—meaning zero carbon emissions. They’re so far advanced that at this point, it’s only governments holding them back.

Peeling away the hype reveals a very different picture. Companies promising to cut their carbon emissions rely on offsetting—that is, paying for their consumption of hydrocarbon energy by supporting projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, such as renewable energy. If companies were genuine in their commitment to tackle climate change, though, they would develop zero-carbon baselines for their own activities.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-nuclear-milestone-for-climate-11576196316?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

You probably haven’t heard about a recent regulatory decision that will reduce carbon emissions because it doesn’t follow the green template of controlling private industry and suppressing economic growth.

Last week the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the first time extended a nuclear plant’s license so it can operate for 80 years. The decision for the Turkey Point reactors in south Florida could encourage other plant owners to apply for renewals and extend the viability of the leading carbon-free energy source.

A majority of the 58 nuclear plants now supplying power to U.S. homes and businesses were built in the 1970s and 1980s, when they were licensed for 40 years. Most plants have applied for and received 20-year extensions to bring their life spans to 60 years. Yet antinuclear activists use the license renewal periods to pressure plants to close, and until the Turkey Point decision it was an open question whether the NRC would approve second 20-year extensions.

The federal go-ahead for Turkey Point comes at an important time for America’s maturing nuclear fleet. The 2010s saw a wave of plant closures, and according to the Nuclear Energy Institute half of U.S. plants would shut down by 2040 without a second extension. Nine are seeking one so far.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/greta-thunberg-is-the-perfect-hero-for-an-unserious-time/

Histrionic, beset by apocalyptic fantasies, and easily exploitable

Who better than a finger-wagging teen bereft of accomplishment, or any comprehension of basic economics or history, to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019? Greta Thunberg’s canonization is a perfect expression of media activism in a deeply unserious time.

Has there ever been a less consequential person picked to be Person of the Year? I doubt it. I mean, Wallis Simpson, 1936’s Person of the Year, got King Edward VIII to abdicate the throne. Thunberg can’t even get you to abdicate your air-conditioning.

These days we celebrate vacuous fire and brimstone. “Greta Thunberg” — the idea, not the girl — is concoction of activists who have increasingly taken to using children as a shield from critical analysis or debate. She’s the vessel of the environmentalist’s fraudulent apocalypticism-as-argument. Her style is emotion and indignation, histrionics and fantasy. She is a teenager, after all.

How dare you attack a poor defenseless child who suffers from Asperger syndrome!

You’ll notice that, on one hand, Thunberg’s champions demand that the world take her Malthusian crusade seriously, and on the other, they feign indignation when you actually do. The argument that young people, because they will inherit the future, are also best equipped to comprehend it is as puerile as any of Greta’s positions.

Perhaps a better question is, What kind of parents, editors, producers, or U.N. officials would thrust a vulnerable child with Asperger, no less, into a complex and contentious debate? I have great sympathy for her. It’s her ideological handlers who have stolen her childhood.