Green/Climate

2022-12-21

This must qualify as one of the most infamous (or famous, according to your point of view) assertions of all time. It shouldn't matter in all truth because at one time in history I'm sure we could have identified the received consensus that 97% of all scientists agreed that the sun orbits the earth, or that the earth is flat, or that man landed on the moon (and came back again) in the 1960s, or that the twin towers (plus building 7, 3 buildings in all) were brought down by suicidal Arab terrorist trainee pilots flying only 2 aircraft, and we still haven't nailed those issues completely either.

Meanwhile, life goes on regardless.

Or would do if the politicians were not involved.

Copernicus in 1543 published his revolutionary idea that the earth orbits the sun, but as they didn't have the internet in those days it was Gallileo who caught the full wrath of

2022-12-20

Simple messages that can be understood in a few moments are it seems to me the way forward.

Life isn't always complicated, and those who wish to obscure the simple truth are prone to embellishing it with unwanted complexity in the hope that the simple truth will get lost in the verbiage.

Here is some very simple truth (3 minutes) about our national energy policy, brought to us by GB News.

Here is another very simple truth about the Covid pandemic.

Imagine that you have been tasked to discover the reliability of a test for a disease - how would you go about it?

One way to calibrate the test would be to assemble a group of healthy people known to be free of the disease

2022-12-16

It seems to have been some time since the panic about drowning polar bears has been mentioned, and maybe this is the reason - the summer arctic ice decline has levelled off (according to investigative climate reporter Tony Heller).

Now as anybody who has followed the fortunes of their favourite stocks can tell you, today's rise can also be tomorrow's fall so maybe it's a little early to draw too fast a conclusion here, but certainly we "could" now be in for a period of higher highs and higher lows which would confirm a new rising temporary trend - nobody knows.

What we do know is that the climate changes - always has, always will - but mother earth has an inordinately long history (left to her own devices) of maintaining herself within reasonable bounds.

"It might not be a surprise to learn that sea ice extent was lower in the 1970s and it peaked in 1979. By starting the graph in 1979 a ‘fake’ linear downward trend is produced". "Fake" is a

2022-12-14

Vanguard is one of the top three asset managers that between them own just about the whole world.

And they have now forsworn the ESG investment philosophy in favour of (wait for it... ) investing in profitable businesses!

Now I would never suggest that investments should be made on the basis of profitability alone or we would all be running drug cartels, but the fact that such a mammoth investment house has thrown in the towel on "green" investments represents as big crack in the "green" narrative as we could imagine.

"In other words, saving the planet has suddenly taken a back seat to client returns at two of the foremost climate change virtue signallers on Wall Street…"

...

2022-12-10

Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have been in the news for various reasons, but I fear that their efforts are misdirected. If they really want to make a difference then they should protest in New Delhi Beijing and Shanghai - or Berlin - where the governments that really are burning ever increasing quantities of polluting fuels such as coal are resident.

Is CO₂ a pollutant?

With no CO₂ in our atmosphere we could grow no crops - and those many net zero campaigners who want us to stop eating meat thus obviously also want us to stop eating - full stop.

In fact, more CO₂ means more crops and offers the potential for more farmland of all kinds to feed the hungry.

CO₂ is no more a

2022-12-04

Love him or hate him, David has been at the forefront of the exposure of the global project to convert the world into a global-corporate-fascist-government slave colony, seemingly from time immemorial.

He is also very articulate and clearly expresses his views. We may not always agree with everything he says, but does he have the right to say it?

Free speech has become a bit like Brexit - of course we are all free to express ourselves - or to live free of control by the EU - but of course (!) there are limits (which may be invented/interpreted differently to suit the elite at any time).

It used to be that the law clearly recognised that the freedom to only speak without offending anybody is not worth having. In recent years the invention of "hate speech" and other more or less elastic definitions of speech that some people won't like has reached an incomprehensible level of ever mutating convolution, designed to keep us constantly confused and scared to

2022-12-03

This site has never made a secret of our distrust of the Green narratives. None of the apocalyptic predictions of rising sea levels, overheating climate, polar bear extinctions etc have come about, and the "great and the good" still buy waterfront mansions with complete insouciance - don't they know that rising sea levels will wash them away?!

Now the self-inflicted energy crisis is concentrating the minds of industrialists, if not yet (or ever) of politicians, and it is dawning on them that the proposed switch to EVs is unsustainable without the gas to power them (and of course there is the comparatively minor matter of getting enough lithium... ).

Sensibly China India et al are not at all inconvenienced as they (rightly) have no qualms about building coal-fired power

2022-12-02

Opponents of fracking say it's 'too dangerous'.

The cold and miserable say 'do it - we're cold and winter is upon us'.

The government says 'we'll regulate it'...

The people say 'you think we're going to trust you?!'.

Stymied!

And yet...  nothing is without risk.

And I'd bet that there must be plenty of fracking projects that don't pollute.

So if mistrust in the government is the stumbling block, can we take them out of the equation?

Why should it be the government that regulates everything? Could not the local populace reach an agreement with the oil explorers concerning who would

2022-12-01

We haven't historically heard much about the global warming effect of nitrogen but the Dutch are hearing about it in a big way.

Now nitrogen can indeed be involved in warming (nitroglycerine being a cause of extremely rapid warming being a case in point) but nitrogen in gaseous form in fact constitutes the major part of the atmosphere and doesn't normally burn in oxygen at all (just as well!). That hasn't changed any time recently to my knowledge.

Nitrogen is also the central constituent of ammonia, which is asserted to be a greenhouse gas, but the principal greenhouse gas is (drum-roll please!) water - and I await with interest the WEF-UN's plans to remove this primary threat to the planet from the planet.

Perhaps in time we will be informed that the useless windmills which have been erected all around our shores in the vain hope of providing abundant reliable green power to our nations will soon be repurposed to drain the oceans...   (and,

2022-11-21

Another riotously successful climate conference concluded, with much material for awaiting journalists to report to their eager readerships.

Not to be outdone, NetZero Watch add in their two-pen'orth for good measure - and some might say bring some much-needed realism and humour (not specifically in that order) to the topic.

The dreadful truth of course is that the War on Climate was the front-runner for the War on Terror, and lately the War on Pandemics - none of which can ever be determined to be won, since how would you define "winning"?

To measure the changing climate with any accuracy is a fools errand, given the chaotic nature of the contributing weather patterns; we might need accurate statistics spanning a century before a real trend could be determined and even that might not be enough.

...

2022-11-18

Arthur Firstenberg, author of "The Invisible Rainbow", probably knows as much about the effects of electromagnetism on the planet as any man alive. In his book, he documents the effects of introducing electrical technologies over the last couple of centuries, and illuminating reading it is. From the very first experiments with electricity to the rolling out of military radars and civilian cellular telephone systems, little escapes his scrutiny, and a compelling case he makes without a doubt - even if there is (as with all human endeavour) the possibility of error in regard to specific instances.

Nevertheless there is abundant scientific literature to confirm that EMFs as we know them today can be

2022-11-17

"What is COP27? A serious intellectual conference, a visit to the fleshpots, or a giant tribal show of solidarity and fierceness? To try to find out, we contacted Canada’s Ministry of Climate Alarmism to ask four simple questions"

OK, this is not a report from a committed climate-zealot, but it does illuminate the underlying self-important incoherence and obfuscation of our climate elites (or should that be "their elites"?) rather nicely.

"... spew money, spew carbon and then spew excuses... "

Would you buy a used car from these people?

On the face of it, It might be a better deal.

2022-11-17

Given all the subsidies that governments around the world have been lavishing on the "Green" agenda for decades, we are now within sight of the much vaunted Net Zero, right?

Climate Discussion Nexus brings us up to date on the state of play in the US:

(11 minutes)

Like / Dislike this video here.

2022-11-14

"The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sounds a warning over a problem it caused in the first place, namely food disruption. How? By talking nations into restricting nitrogen fertilizer to grow bountiful crops"

Whilst we in the affluent West (well, most of us anyway) have never know what it is to go hungry, many in less affluent countries (and some in the more affluent) could well be about to find out.

This is what happens when global politicians declare "climate emergency", blame CO₂, and then switch gears to abruptly take out supplies of... nitrogen fertiliser? No, me neither.

It appears also to have escaped their notice that if they would only increase the amount of CO₂ in our air, the green crops would thank them by growing enough food to feed the world (there's a reason that commercial greenhouses feed their plants extra CO₂), but that's by the by.

Macron - Climate Change - Clif High

2022-11-10

Apparently, it can happen, and indeed has happened, and to a very senior politician at that.

Who would have thought it?

“For too long the costs of Net Zero policies have not been given adequate attention by policy makers or the media. There is far too much wishful thinking about pressing ahead with decarbonisation as quickly as possible, and too much demonisation of those who are asking legitimate questions”

Amen to that.

The Global Warming Policy Forum reports.

2022-10-22

Jeff Taylor blows his stack over the recent gluing of "Eco-loons" to London roads, to the evident satisfaction of the police in attendance.

But he also draws attention to a real problem (plus more) with electrics cars...

"These costs are xx times the benefits, even when using the government's own valuations of the environmental benefits"

... not to mention a few problems with our politicians.

The overall "carbon reduction"? Hmmmm.

And the final comments on our political systems? That's for all of us to judge.

(12 minutes)

Like / Dislike this video

2022-10-20

Round-Up (for those unaware) is a herbicide that (a) farmers spread over their crops and (b) contains glyphosate (commercial product only) which courts have found to be a carcinogen and have awarded damages accordingly.

Big Agri has also developed GMO crops that are glyphosate-resistant, so they score twice - sell the farmers a herbicide and sell them herbicide-resistant seeds!

(Not so different from Big Pharma, whose doctors end up prescribing drugs to mitigate the side-effects of other drugs... )

The IRT (Institute for Responsible Technology) suggests that this isn't such a good idea, and put forward pertinent points in support of their case.

I suggest that heaping technology solution upon technology solution is an inherently idiotic approach (unless you are

2022-10-16

I guess that this title was one of the most memorable quotes from the BBC's Gardener's Question Time, and probably the most insightful. Not being a gardener, I never deliberately listened to that programme, but nonetheless the quote has embedded itself firmly in my psyche. Why? Well, isn't it a simply outstandingly obvious truth?

You want better plants? Firstly, cultivate better soil.

So why do farmers persist with using artificial fertilisers on exhausted farmland to compensate for poor soil conditions?

Charles Eisenstein writing for The Defender (Children's Health Defense) reports from the heartland of US farming, Kansas.

The collapse of the land's fertility led to the collapse of the communities that lived there.

"I got the impression that the heartland is like a supersaturated solution ready for a phase transition. A mote of dust, a small vibration touches

2022-10-16

Fortune provides a downbeat analysis of Europe's options for energy supply in winter 2023/24...

"Any hope that flows along the Nord Stream could resume before next winter were effectively dashed at the end of September when the pipeline was damaged and began leaking hundreds of thousands of tons of methane into the North Sea"

(but note that apparently one of the four pipes may still be operational)

But while Nordstream may remain largely inoperable for a time even if Ukraine makes peace with Russia, there is more downside to come if they don't:

“The main fear is