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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE

GOING GREEN BLUE FUNK- AUSTRALIA BY ROGER FRANKLIN

https://quadrant.org

Like other towns and cities across Australia, poor Melbourne is seeing its daily life disrupted by green pests who think it their moral duty to sit down in intersections and block traffic. They are headquartered at the Carlton Gardens (above), on the northern edge of the CBD, where it is against the law to camp. But this is Victoria where what is illegal and what the police do about it are two very different things.

Not so long ago, for example, an agglomeration of layabouts, drug addicts, drunks, beggars, the deranged and, to the peril of pedestrians and their footwear, prodigious public defecators, was allowed to coalesce on Flinders Street near the entrance to the famous train station. In fits and starts the occupation went on for a year. In typical Melbourne fashion, when a citizen upbraided the rough-sleeping legion, Victoria Police moved him on and left the ferals in peace.  Thus, while one might think the Extinction Rebellion mob’s current encampment would be an immediate target for eviction — are there no fire hoses in Melbourne? — nothing has been done. Instead, the climate hysterics are indulged to violate the law, left untroubled as they make their daily plans and then allowed to sally forth intent on disrupting the lives of others.

To be fair to the police on the ground, their impotence is a sadder reflection on braid-encrusted senior commanders who, an observer can only conclude, must have ordered them to go easy on that enforcing-the-law business. Taking steps to restore traffic flow and allow commuters to get home has the potential to generate criticism from sources such as the ABC, which today has given over a page of its website to  former Radio National journalist Chloe Adams, to parade her righteousness. It is quite a piece of work, Ms Adams’ justification for making of herself a look-at-me public nuisance, replete with errors of fact and, underscoring it all, an arrogant ignorance that is jaw-dropping to behold.

British Police Arrest Over 800 Climate Change Protesters Trying to Shut Down Airport By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/british-police-arrest-over-800

London’s Metropolitan Police arrested over 800 climate change activists this week throughout the city, some of whom attempted to shut down London City Airport on Thursday.

Demonstrators with Extinction Rebellion, a climate activism movement that says it encourages civil disobedience to compel government action, have cropped up around London over the past four days. Activists said they planned a “Hong Kong-style occupation of the terminal building,” a reference to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong who shut down the city’s international airport in August.

The group targeted the London airport over the travel hub’s £2 billion expansion plan, which activists say does not comply with Britain’s goal to have net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

At least 29 people have been charged with crimes. The protests have so far not forced the airport to close but have caused some delayed flights.

One protester, former Paralympic cyclist James Brown, even climbed on top of a British Airways plane. Another activist refused to resume his seat on a plane as the flight was preparing to depart and began lecturing the other passengers on climate change before police removed him from the plane for “disruptive behavior on board,” the airline said.

The London protests come as climate change emerges at the forefront of the political debate in the U.S.

‘There Is No Climate Emergency’: Scientists Call for Reasoned Debate Richard Trzupek

https://www.theepochtimes.com/there-is-no-climate-emergency-scientists-call-for-reasoned-debate-2_3100870.html

The message was clear: “There is no climate emergency.”

With those five simple words, a global network of scientistsand professionals attempted to inject reasonableness and decorum into what should be a robust discussion about a complex scientific and public policy issue, but has instead degenerated into an ever more intense mud-slinging contest over the years.

People on one side of the argument dismiss their opponents as wild-eyed socialists attempting to leverage public fear and ignorance to further their political agenda. On the opposite side, people dismiss those who disagree with their supposedly settled scientific conclusions as nothing more than knowing shills or ignorant dupes of evil energy interests.

In between those extremes that are so popular with armies of public relations professionals, who shape the messages of public interest groups and professional politicians to maximum effect, are a not-so-quiet silent majority of scientists and professionals who take a more measured, reasoned view of the science when considering the supposed climate emergency some say we’re facing.

A group of 500-some scientists and professionals signed on to the “European Climate Declaration” that was released last week. This simple, short, and understandable statement proposed how analysis of any public policy issue involving complex science should be approached from a reasoned, fact-based perspective.

Statements such as “97 percent of climatologists agree that anthropogenic climate change is occurring” isn’t a statement of fact, it’s an opinion twice removed. It’s an opinion that involves evaluation of the legitimacy of how the results of the poll in question were sorted to dismiss some answers and allow others, and it’s an opinion in terms of how representative the sample size is with respect to all climate professionals.

Greta Thunberg To Win The Nobel? The Madness Continues

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/07/greta

The Nobel committee has cheapened its Peace Prize by handing it to some questionable, even asinine, recipients in the last few decades. It will reach a new low if, as some are predicting, and even hoping, it chooses Greta Thunberg this week.

The British Daily Mail reported last week that, according to oddsmakers, she “is the one to beat” for the prize, which carries a $930,000 payout. It is not, however, a sure thing. Greta’s “youth, outspokenness and confrontational approach,” says Reuters, “present challenging questions for the Norwegian Nobel Committee.”

Given the committee’s record, though, it would be naive to think it won’t do the most foolish thing it possibly could. Let’s reacquaint ourselves with a few of the recent undeserving winners of the Nobel Peace Prize:

Yasser Arafat (1994), a known terrorist who shared the award with Israelis Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, and continued to order terrorist attacks after receiving the prize.
Barack Obama (2009), “honored” just months after he took office, whose top accomplishments then, and remain to this day, nothing more than getting himself elected to public offices.
Al Gore (2007), a charlatan and hypocrite who has ridden climate hysterics to the peaks of wealth and acclaim.
And Rigoberta Menchu Tum (1992), the Guatemalan who claimed to be an advocate for the poor but whose “’achievements’ cited by the Nobel committee” were “later revealed to have” been largely made up, says the British Telegraph.

Her prospects were apparently boosted by her recent United Nations “speech.” Evidently being granted a bully pulpit in front of that body’s general assembly, then using it to hector, nag, scowl, and in general behave with the entitlement mindset of a “spoiled brat” screeching “how dare you” multiple times is an impressive feat.

The IPCC’s Seldom Mentioned ‘Uncertainties’ Michael Kyle

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/10/the-ipccs-seldom-mentioned-uncertainties/

The IPCC’s latest serve of climate catastrophism, released just before the UN General Assembly met in New York last month, ironically contained some good news. But not even “inadequate” models, “limited” observations, poor understanding, dodgy “projections” and revelations about “deep uncertainty” could rein in the hyperbole.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the UN agency that “assesses” the status of climate-change science and produces reports on it. It also prepares a Summary for Policymakers (SPM). This document is crafted to be digestible by climate bureaucrats, national leaders and the media, most of whom have been drip-fed alarmist rhetoric for years, if not decades.

The IPCC is an odd outfit. Created in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), it is no surprise to learn its Secretariat is located in the latter’s Geneva building. Except for the Secretary Abdalah Mokssit, a Moroccan applied mathematician and meteorologist, most of its 18 staff seem to be “communications and media specialists” or administrators. The current chair is Hoesung Lee, a South Korean economist. He was elected in late 2015, after Rajendra Pachauri. resigned under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations.

Poor, Ignorant, Exploited Scoldilocks Michael Galak

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/09/poor-ignorant-exploited-scoldilocks/

It might come as a surprise to some, but Greta Thunberg isn’t the first teenager whose innocence has been tapped to wrap the Left’s agenda in persuasive emotionalism. Few these days recall Samantha Smith, the Maine 10-year-old who wrote in 1983 to USSR supremo Yuri Andropov to plead for world peace and nuke-free happiness. This happened when the Left was telling all and sundry that Ronald Reagan was intent on pushing the button and plunging the world into nuclear winter. Invited to visit Moscow, she was feted with fawning TV interviews, radio broadcasts, newspaper coverage and a trip to the Young Pioneers in Crimea, the best children’s resort in what was then the USSR.

The photogenic youngster was further hailed by international audiences, the meme being that the Soviets should resist responding in kind to the warmonger in the White House. She certainly proved useful to the Kremlin’s masters, this eager innocent advancing the notion, contrary to reality, of the USSR’s pacific nature. All this took place while Soviet troops were despoiling Afghanistan with their customary brutality.

The parallels between Samantha  and Greta are many. Both spoke about the fear and anxiety experienced by young people in the face of looming doom. Both were bathed in the sort of extraordinary, unqualified publicity that amounted to something close to beatification. Both found their fame granted unprecedented access to the rich and powerful. Both insisted that politicians were knowingly sowing the seeds of catastrophe. Both were cute and photogenic, endearing in their vulnerability and eagerness. Both sought to provoke deep-seated feelings of guilt in adults. And both were cynically manipulated by people hostile to the West’s liberal-democratic societies and their fellow travellers.

However, there are differences as well. Samantha was all sweetness and light. Speaking about the possibility of a nuclear war, she stressed a shared humanity rather than differences between potential combatants.

500 Scientists Write U.N.: ‘There Is No Climate Emergency’ Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/24/500-scientists-write-u-n-there-is-no-climate-emergency/

More than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for a long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change.

Just as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York accusing world leaders of robbing her of her future, scientists were begging the United Nations to keep hysteria from obscuring facts.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration states. “Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”

The scientists underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts.

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared. “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”

A Climate Modeller Spills the Beans Tony Thomas

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/09/a-climate-modeller-spills-the-beans/

There’s a top-level oceanographer and meteorologist who is  prepared to cry “Nonsense!”on the “global warming crisis” evident to climate modellers but not in the real world. He’s as well or better qualified than the modellers he criticises — the ones whose Year 2100 forebodings of 4degC warming have set the world to spending $US1.5 trillion a year to combat CO2 emissions.

The iconoclast is Dr. Mototaka Nakamura. In June he put out a small book in Japanese on “the sorry state of climate science”. It’s titled Confessions of a climate scientist: the global warming hypothesis is an unproven hypothesis, and he is very much qualified to take a stand. From 1990 to 2014 he worked on cloud dynamics and forces mixing atmospheric and ocean flows on medium to planetary scales. His bases were MIT (for a Doctor of Science in meteorology), Georgia Institute of Technology, Goddard Space Flight Centre, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Duke and Hawaii Universities and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. He’s published about 20 climate papers on fluid dynamics.[i]

Today’s vast panoply of “global warming science” is like an upside down pyramid built on the work of a few score of serious climate modellers. They claim to have demonstrated human-derived CO2 emissions as the cause of recent global warming and project that warming forward. Every orthodox climate researcher takes such output from the modellers’ black boxes as a given. 

A fine example is from the Australian Academy of Science’s explanatory booklet of 2015. It claims, absurdly, that the models’ outputs are “compelling evidence” for human-caused warming.[ii] Specifically, it refers to model runs with and without human emissions and finds the “with” variety better matches the 150-year temperature record (which itself is a highly dubious construct). Thus satisfied, the Academy then propagates to the public and politicians the models’ forecasts for disastrous warming this century.

Now for Dr Nakamura’s expert demolition of the modelling. There was no English edition of his book in June and only a few bits were translated and circulated. But Dr Nakamura last week offered via a free Kindle version his own version in English. It’s not a translation but a fresh essay leading back to his original conclusions.

The Global Warming Children’s Crusade Exploiting callow youth as props in a trendy and sinister farce. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/global-warming-childrens-crusade-bruce-thornton/

In 1212, thousands of children and teens in France and England set off for the Holy Land to convert Muslims to Christianity. Led by shepherds, these mostly poor and dispossessed young people headed for the Mediterranean, believing it would miraculously part and allow them to cross on dry land. Instead, the children, promised free passage by a couple of unscrupulous merchants, were sold into slavery or died in a shipwreck.

Last week’s Climate Strike by schoolchildren to “save the planet” is a grotesque parody of this legend of faith and courage, yet no more likely to accomplish anything useful. The strike was the first act of this week’s UN’s “Global Climate Week,” along with blocking traffic in DC (with the help of Antifa and Black Lives Matter), a “Youth Climate Summit,” and an orgy of hypocrisy at the UN General Assembly. No doubt we’ll see “world leaders” dramatically call for “global action,” then pass symbolic resolutions that, like every “climate summit” since 1979, will do absolutely nothing to lower temperatures enough to stop the warmists’ alleged apocalypse.

But instead of young pilgrims risking and losing their lives on behalf of their faith, the Climate “pilgrims” are mostly the global comfortable and affluent enjoying a day off from school as they preen and pontificate about a subject they know little about, and bask in the attention and flattery of important “grown-ups” like Hollywood stars and venal politicians equally ignorant about how global climate works.

Creepy Enviro Brat Throws Tantrum at UN For Some Reason Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/09/creepy-enviro-brat-throws-tantrums-un-some-reason-daniel-greenfield/

Creepy environmentalist brat Greta Thunberg, who belongs in school instead of living out her stage parents’ aspirations of fame, threw a tantrum at the UN.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg began her rant at the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit.

Thunberg is a privileged 16-year-old from one of the more prosperous countries in Europe. Her family is quite well-off. She’s now a famous brat and everyone has to pay attention to her tantrums. How exactly did anyone steal this near-adult’s childhood?

Like an evil Pippi Longstocking, Thunberg has been prepped to act like the leader of a children’s crusade. But she’s less Joan of Arc than one of the Children of the Corn, throwing hysterical tantrums and demanding that everyone listen to her, while castigating them as liars and hypocrites once they do.

Some might be tempted to say that this is not atypical behavior from a 16-year-old.

There’s some truth to that.