The Times UK (see also Matt Ridley’s Blog)
A survey of more than two million Africans finds that climate change comes dead last of 16 concerns they were asked about.
OK, It’s an internet survey. But who would take cold meals and cholera now so their great grandchildren live in a world a tenth of a degree cooler?
Just to get sub-Saharan electricity consumption up to the levels of South Africa or Bulgaria would mean adding about 1,000 gigawatts of capacity, the installation of which would cost at least £1 trillion. Yet the greens want Africans to hold back on the cheapest form of power: fossil fuels. In 2013 Ed Davey, the energy secretary, announced that British taxpayers will no longer fund coal-fired power stations in developing countries, and that he would put pressure on development banks to ensure that their funding policies rule out coal. (I declare a commercial interest in coal in Northumberland.)
In the same year the US passed a bill prohibiting the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — a federal agency responsible for underwriting American companies that invest in developing countries — from investing in energy projects that involve fossil fuels.
There is a growing backlash against this policy. The Republicans want to reverse it. Yvo de Boer, head of the Global Green Growth Institute, says: “You really have to be able to offer these countries an economically viable alternative, before you begin to rule out coal.” And Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, says it is hypocritical for western governments, made rich by fossil fuels, “to say to African countries, ‘You cannot develop dams, you cannot develop coal, just rely on these very expensive renewables’. African countries will not listen.”
The Center for Global Development calculates that $10 billion invested in renewable energy technology in sub-Saharan Africa could give 20-27 million people access to basic electricity, whereas the same sum spent on gas-fired generation would supply 90 million.
Meanwhile, China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, is stepping in as the Americans and Europeans step back. Its willingness to fund coal projects is one of the reasons other Asian countries are rushing to join the project, to the irritation of Washington. The Australian government is joining forces with Japan to push for the construction of “clean coal” plants in the developing world — power stations that burn coal more efficiently.
h/t GWPF
Africans finds that
It is, unfortunately, always about money and power.
The greens believe in reducing populations. To them, the less people in Africa the better! They do not care about anything besides gaining power and control over the planet and everyone and everything on it. Their concern for the environment in general and global warming in particular are nothing more than the means to an end.
Whether it is fossil fuels, DDT or anything else that will benefit humans, the greens believe that humans are expendable because to the them we are not the winners of the Darwinian super-lotto but are a disease that must be erradicated…. with the exception of themselves.
Utter insanity!
593
Spot on, ‘Emission’s reduction’ has always been code for people reduction, after all totalitarian regimes operate smoother with a down beaten population of the correct number, how many battery charging soccer balls do you think they’re made of? sheesh……/sarc off.
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The best way to reduce the population growth is make the humanity rich. No green depopulation madness required. Capitalism will do that free of charge to the tax payer. Look at Japan and Western Europe population growth. These regions will die out in the next 300 years.
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I suspect Africa is probably on the cusp of moving into some form of economic improvement – enter the “greening” of Africa…and down they go again.
The NWO crowd are at their heart White Arayan Suprmacists, who recoil at the idea of a coloured person having any form of quality of life. As such, the “greening” of africa will stop improvement in quality of life, and keeps a lid on things. Its an open secret that Africa is a large open air experimental medical lab, where life is cheap and often sold to the highest bidder. Or put another ay – if the Africans could actuially fight back by refusing the money to hand over thier citizens to be basically experimented on, then what would the multinational oligarchies do? Tsk tsk. I draw your attention tot he movie “The Constant Gardener” which is eerily close to the bone.
“greening” is generally used to clamp down on econiomic activity – the more ferocious the “greening” the tighter the control. Agenda 21 at its heart a globalist control grid, rolled out to lock down people and ocntrol them.
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Eddy,
I agree that many, especially in the top echelons, are using “green” as the means to gain control. However, I believe the principal motivation of the “green” rank-and-file is less grandiose and more self-oriented. Specifically, by spouting how much one “cares” about the Earth, he/she elevates his/her self image. Talk is cheap and self-delusion comes easy.
10
“ to the irritation of Washington.”
Washington, in this case means the Pres and his …X…
170
If China can carry on ramping up coal, with Obama’s blessing, if India can carry on installing Coal capacity after a disastrous flirtation sigh divestment, if Germany & Japan can spend their Climate funds on new Coal power plants, how on Earth do they imagine they are going to talk Africa out of their future ?
440
I have long believed that charities are there for their own employment and fixed income. Any good they do is incidental to their main goal. Call me cynical.
392
Cynical and prescient
140
With due consideration for the numerous charity advertisements on television they must all be very well funded organisations with cash to spare.
During the 1990s I donated some hundreds of dollars to Red Cross for a bandaged Bear for children, when I received the credit card account I could not recognise the entry and phoned the business. The receptionist explained that it was not part of Red Cross and was a fund raising business working with permission from charities. I told a person close to Red Cross, but not an employee, who did some checking and replied that the executives had been told not to enter into agreements with fund raising firms because Red Cross received only a small part of the donations made. For example, after the cost of bandaged Bears, advertising and other business expenses, and profit, the charity receives a small percentage.
I was not happy.
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For many years, while my children were growing up, we sponsored children in Africa through World Vision. I was always cynical about the small percentage of the money that actually got to the kids, but we donated nonetheless. Now that we have stopped donating we get occasional emails asking for help and one of the questions asked is what sort of project would we donate $1000 or more to. My reply is that I will donate $1000 towards a coal fired power station. No reply sadly.
60
And some in the West are worried about China becoming an economic behemoth. Just watch them as they take over development in Africa and wherever else the “Green’ West refuses to provide support.
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On the plus side, Ed Davey, Britain’s atrocious Secretary for (vanishing) Energy and (perpetual) Climate Change, is under siege in his Parliamentary seat of Kingston. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s a gonner by a week on Friday.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives and (especially) the Labour party harbour quite a few characters as swivel-eyed as Davey. Miliband sponsored the British “Climate Change Act”. It would be stretching a point, rather a long way, to claim that he actually wrote it; he left that business to a Bryony Worthington, of Fiends of the Earth, who was elevated to the House of Lords, as a reward. If Miliband enters Number 10, he will be just as clueless as before, but more dangerous.
I’m not much more optimistic about Cameron. He has more sceptics around him, but is plainly still in thrall to the mainstream nonsense.
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Maybe a Tory, UKIP coalition might tip it. Even with the implosion of UKIP, it could still pan out if UK voters size up the individual candidates and vote for sanity.
80
UKIP? What’s happened to UKIP?
R-COO- K+
30
Ron Cook ex pom in OZ
Currently UKIP is observing Napoleon Bonaparte’s missive to never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
100
1. Monckton said the wrong thing at the wrong time and got himself disowned the result has been the decimation of the Scottish wing, then there has been David Evans that got himself arrested for mistreating his sheep. Janice Atkinson and the expenses scandal. Also there have been quite a few candidates including ex Scottish leader Monckton who have committed the crime of saying unpopular things about LGBTs – It seems Political Correctness is alive and well in the UK …
Having said that, such statements are possibly going to be a plus rather than a negative for UKIP, after all my guess is that they wont be relying on the LGBT 0.8% of the community anytime soon.
00
Well, if they vote for sanity then Ed Davey is a goner.
Mind you, there seems something about in the UK; Ed Davey, Ed Millibrand, Ed Balls….. something not right with the ED?
80
A last picture of that particular Ed lording it over the grid balancing centre in Reading.
Afore ye go
00
Special Ed.
00
Or is he (Cameron) simply a twit who just likes being Prime Minister and has enough rat cunning to engineer that ?
40
Cameron certainly arrived in Downing Street thinking that he was destined for the place. He shared that attitude with Gordon Brown. In each case, I suspect that occupying the seat of power was what mattered.
In the present context, Cameron makes “green” noises, when that suits him, and they may, indeed, represent his authentic opinions, in which case, he is indeed a “twit”. How much cunning he has remains to be seen, since, as of now, he isn’t likely to be PM for much longer.
Electorates are not interested in climate alarmist twaddle, but I think they’d respect any politician who described the twaddle as what it is and stopped genuflecting to it.
10
‘Meanwhile, China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, is stepping in as the Americans and Europeans step back.’
Yep, the Chinese will remedy the problem in very quick time.
http://rt.com/business/253765-china-railway-africa-deals/
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This is first I’ve heard of the Australian Govt. ( together with the Japanese) looking at building power stations in Africa. This is a great move but more importantly they would seem to going about it quietly and keeping “under the radar”. This is playing the other crowd at their own game –Obama has been persuaded (or “lead by the nose”)to get climate change initiatives in via the EPA’s regulations instead of through Congress. Done by stealth !
So the Australian and Japanese Governments are learning quickly — or at least I hope I’ve read it right and they are.
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Meanwhile, as TonyFromOz has pointed out, new coal fired stations in Australia would cut our emissions substantially. Far more than renewables could.
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I can’t get behind the Oz paywall, but from reading elsewhere it appears the Japanese company J-Power has created a coal efficient plant (as good as gas) which takes out the nitrous nasties before emitting.
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Try: http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/reports/JOGMEC_media_tour_press_coverage_Feb_2015.pdf
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Video: UN official Christiana Figueres,- We should make every effort to de-populate the planet
youtube @4.20 minutes:
“But isn’t it true that stopping the rise of the population would be one of the biggest levers and driving the rise of green house gases?” Dalton asked.
“Obviously less people would exert less pressure on the natural resources,” Figueres answered, also noting that estimates suggest the Earth’s population will rise to nine billion by 2050.
. . .
The programme is well under way: UK aid helps to fund forced sterilisation of India’s poor (guardian.com)
“Yet a working paper published by the UK’s Department for International Development in 2010 cited the need to fight climate change as one of the key reasons for pressing ahead with such programmes. The document argued that reducing population numbers would cut greenhouse gases …”
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What are you doing handjive? Shouldn’t you be doing homework, or study or something?
Continue with this attitude and you WILL NEVER become a Warming Alarmist – you mark my words.
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28 April: Breitbart: James Delingpole: Vatican Heavies Silence Climate Heretics at UN Papal Summit
VATICAN CITY – Papal heavies shut down an awkward question at a Vatican press conference today when a journalist asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon his views on climate sceptics.
Marc Morano, covering the Vatican climate conference for Climate Depot, asked Ban Ki-Moon whether he had a message for the Heartland Institute delegation of scientists who have flown to Rome to urge the Pope to reconsider his ill-advised position climate change.
But before he could finish the conference hosts interrupted to ask which organisation he worked for, then directed the microphone to a more tame questioner, while a security guard came over to mutter in Morano’s ear “You have to control yourself or you will be escorted out of here.”…
In the end, Secretary-General Ban did answer a similar question, albeit one expressed more delicately by a journalist from the Catholic media, when he was asked what his views were on those members of the Catholic community who had reservations about the Pope’s position on climate change…
“I don’t think faith leaders should be scientists,” said Ban, in reply to the question. “I’m not a scientist. What I want is their moral authority. Business leaders and all civil society is on board [with the mission to combat climate change]. Now we want faith leaders. Then we can make it happen.”…
***As he (Ban) smoothly demonstrated – as later when he deftly swerved a question about “overpopulation” and whether his previously expressed views that Africa should keep its population down clashed with the Catholic doctrine on contraception – he’s more than capable of squishing inconvenient truths himself.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/28/vatican-heavies-silence-climate-heretics-at-un-papal-summit/
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If Jesus was alive today …
Matthew 21:12
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
12. And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. 13And He said to them, “It is written, ‘MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER’; but you are making it a ROBBERS’ DEN.”…
. . .
FWIW. I am not a religious person.
The inspiration for this comment came from a television show, Everybody Loves Raymond, when Ray catches his Dad & mates counting the collection plate takings and says …
Quote it often to the greenies. Mathew 21:12.
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Hey Handjive,
Good quote. I’m not a religious person either but I am a Christian. I’ll remember that quote next time I get into an
arguementdiscussion.(BTW love your nickname. Used to do handjiving to rock and roll records back in the 1950’s. woo! hoo!)
Ron
R-COO- K+
10
So Ban needs the pope’s “Moral Authority”? To do what, to push DOWN on food production bynreducing atmospheric CO2?, to keep 2 billion people in abject poverty?, to kill half of them by curable, or preventable disease. To ensure that when pensioners die from the cold, unable to afford winter heating they know with moral certainty that gods representative has sanctioned their premature death.
Message to the pope, DON’T take the apple, there is a snake holding it.
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I irony is John Christie gets hammered because of his religious believes and now the alarmists are courting the Pope and the Vatican for support.
Hypocrisy !!
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Yes Ross, I concur. However Hypocrisy is a trademark of the left establishment. “There shall be no carbon tax” Gillard showed us that.
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Trade ya!
“If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.”
“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
“97% of scientists agree about the dangers of global warming.”
My leader is a bigger liar than your leader.
30
Matt, if you read this… Great article, this is exactly what I have argued now for the past few years. This environmental nonsense has eclipsed everything. An accident of fate that global warming gained enough traction to propel the greens into politics.
But, Matt please go further. The moral debate goes much further.
As Africa can’t deal with weather emergencies or build safe and secure housing without power, our own pensioners are no longer secure in their houses because we have priced them out of energy security. They are becoming as vulnerable as the Africans.
With a less reliable power supply the UK is almost one major failure away from a winter disaster. The UK by shutting down huge swathes of coal capacity is willingly becoming like Africa, to what end? A hundredth of a degree mitigation in temperature 100 years from now?
The trillion pounds that it would take to ameliorate the energy deficit in Africa has already been spent on offerings to the climate boogey man, How much was the Euro ETS worth at its peak? Australia alone, a small nation of just 25 million people has spent over $40 billion and counting.
Governments are funding climate change over things like advanced cancer treatment centres.
I liked it better when the message was just “Save the whales” instead of “Save the whales from climate change”
On the issue of CO2 fertilisation Matt, turn it around, what do you think would happen if the warmists get their way and we do actually manage to get CO2 down to say the 350 PPM that 350.org wants, particularly in the current cooling climate phase. A colder world and a loss of 50PPM would cut farm productivity by about 15%, a return to 270 PPM preindustrial and the Little Ice Age cuts farm productivity by 70%-80%, is that sustainable for 7 Billion inhabitants? Ironic isn’t it, “Sustainability” isn’t sustainable, it’s a crime against humanity.
So Matt, go for it lay this out before we all suffer.
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The rise in the population of sub-Saharan Africa will only be achieved when women have control of their bodies and are not forced to start “breeding ” at the age of 14.
For this they need a window on the rest of the World.
Television will provide that window, but can only come with electricity.
Cheap electricity will only come when they are allowed to build coal-fired power stations.
Unlikely ?
No !
This has already been achieved in Morocco where the fertility rate has fallen from 7.2 per woman to 2.7 !
Woman now “go on dates” and delay starting their families until mid or late twenties.
Pig-ignorant “economists” like Jeffrey Sachs, are at the forefront of the drive to keep Africans uninformed – he is the man leading Ban-Ki-Moon by the nose in Rome right now !
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Toad,
So true but as long as the old and entrenched corrupt ways are retained then nothing will change. How to influence an ignorant and despotic leader and his cronies to move aside is the problem of this age. As long as the citizens don’t do anything, either through fear or ignorance, nothing will change.
In many of these underdeveloped countries improvements in access to clean water, healthcare, and education are a crying necessity that can only come about with investments in their infrastructure (self financed or external) including reliable electricity and communications systems.
However a corrupt government would never allow this as it exposes them to inspection, direct criticism, and worse. So for them maintaining a growing population no matter how sick, ignorant, and needy will always be profitable. It is the easiest way for them.
After-all if too many get sick the western nations and/or the UN agencies will bale them out with more aid and supplies.
30
***of course, the encyclical has already been written:
28 April: BBC: Roger Harrabin: Vatican presses politicians on climate change
The Vatican Science Academy has challenged politicians to end their “infatuation” with a form of economic growth that is ruining the Earth…
Cardinal Peter Turkson, ***who helped write the coming Encyclical – an official statement – said: “For humans to degrade the integrity of the Earth by constant changes in its climate; by stripping its natural forests; to contaminate Earth’s water, land and air with poisonous substances – all of these are sins.
“There is an all-embracing imperative to protect our garden, our hope. We must move away from our unthinking infatuation with GDP.”…
Meanwhile, a small group funded by a US climate contrarian body in Chicago has been in Rome rallying against the Vatican’s climate drive. One of the participants, Christopher Monckton, said the Pope “should listen to both sides of the scientific argument… not only people of one, narrow, poisonous political and scientific viewpoint”.
(BALANCE???)Inside the conference itself, the astronomer Lord Rees, former President of the UK’s Royal Society, was putting just such a balanced view…
He said some people were willing to bet on a low level of warming, mitigated later in the century by new technologies more affordable in a richer economy. But, he said, the risks of triggering an irreversible catastrophe lasting thousands of years was too great.
“It would be shameful if our inheritance was a depleted and hazardous world,” he said…
???But the aid agency Cafod said its poll with YouGov showed the vast majority (70%) of Catholics say their community will heed the message of the Pope on climate change.
Whether it will prove persuasive for American Republican lawmakers – around a third of whom are Catholic – is yet to be seen
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32487874
Jeffrey Sachs & co, with what looks like a call for Population Control aka Depopulation by CAGW policies?
pdf. 12 pages: April 2015: Climate Change and The Common Good: A Statement Of The Problem
And The Demand For Transformative Solutions
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
Prepared By P. Dasgupta, V. Ramanathan, P. Raven, Mgr M. Sorondo, M. Archer, P. J. Crutzen, P. Lena, Y.T. Lee, M. J. Molina, M. Rees, J. Sachs, J. Schellnhuber, Mgr M. Sorondo
(OPENING LINE) Unsustainable consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate technologies are causally linked with the destruction of the world’s sustainability and resilience…
(page 7) Historical Context
About 10,000 years ago, when we humans were first beginning to cultivate crops for food, world population was approximately one million,
with about 100,000 in Europe. As agriculture spread and our numbers grew, the world enjoyed a relatively stable climate…
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2068632/climate-change-and-the-common-good.pdf
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Sorry, that should read “the rise will only be halted”.
Those who are following the “adventures” of Monckton, Morano, and Delingpole inside the Vatican may be unaware of a series of novels Delingpole was writing before he switched to writing “Watermelons”.
His hero was Dick Coward – so No 1 was “Coward on the Beach” (D-Day)
No2 was “Coward at the Bridge” (Arnhem)
No 3 was to have been “Coward in the Woods” (Battle of the Bulge) but Climategate arrived and “Watermelons” had to be written.
Here’s hoping that “Coward in the Vatican” will tell the unexpurgated story of Dick Coward, Lord “Chrissie Babes” Monckton and Mark Morano and will outsell the “Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons”.
Cardinal Pell may have a walk on part.
90
The high priests of warming decree,
That Africa’s poor are not free,
To develop their coal,
As it might thwart their goal,
To cool down,one tenth a degree.
260
Continually in awe.
80
Does coal dust give monks a dirty habit?
100
from Heartland: Heartland’s experts will send this message to Pope Francis: Please do not put the enormous weight of your moral authority behind the discredited and scandal-prone United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Instead, speak out for the poor and disadvantaged of the world who need affordable and reliable energy to escape grinding poverty…
so does the MSM report the above?
“message was labelled as “extraordinarily dangerous” by campaigners” turns out to be the opinion of one Brendan Montague of Desmog UK, whose arrogance is “astonishing” when he states- “The audacity of these people, coming to Rome to tell the Pope how to conduct his business, is astonishing”, given the likes of Sachs/Oreskes/Revkin et al have been in the Pope’s ear for a year plus!
28 April: UK Telegraph: Nick Squires: Pope attacked by climate change sceptics
Climate change sceptics claim Pope Francis is being fed false information by the UN as he prepares to release an encyclical on the dangers of global warming
But a group of British and American sceptics said the Pope was being fed “mistaken” advice from the UN and that he should stick to speaking out on matters of morality and theology rather than getting involved in the climate change debate.
That message was labelled as “extraordinarily dangerous” by campaigners on the other side of the debate, who believe there is ample scientific evidence that climate change is happening and that it threatens the planet with rising sea levels and higher temperatures…
The Pope has great moral authority but he’s not an authority on climate science. He’s a learned man but the IPCC has got it wrong,” Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute, a conservative American pressure group partly funded by billionaire industrialists who question climate change, told The Telegraph.
“The Pope would make a grave mistake if he put his moral authority behind scientists saying that climate change is a threat to the world. Many scientists have concluded that human activity is a minor player. The Earth has been warming since the end of the last Ice Age.”
***It was the first time the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago and has been described by the New York Times as “the primary American organisation pushing climate change scepticism,” had travelled to Rome to try to influence a pope…
Christopher Monckton, a British peer, leading climate change sceptic and former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said: “My message to the Pope would be, don’t take sides on the science. Don’t make the same mistake as seven out of 10 judges in the trial of Galileo, when they invited him to retract his views (that the Earth orbits around the Sun rather than the other way around)…
But the denial of climate change was attacked by Brendan Montague, the founder of Desmog UK, a campaign group calling for action on the issue.
***“The audacity of these people, coming to Rome to tell the Pope how to conduct his business, is astonishing,” he said.
He accused the Heartland Institute of engaging in “extremely sophisticated messaging aimed at people who don’t really understand what is very complex science. They are very good at what they do but it is extraordinarily dangerous.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/11569839/Pope-attacked-by-climate-change-sceptics.html
as for arch propandists at NYT, Davenport/Goodstein, not a meme left unwritten:
28 April: NYT: Pope Francis Steps Up Campaign on Climate Change, to Conservatives’ Alarm
By CORAL DAVENPORT and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
The Vatican summit meeting will focus on the links between poverty, economic development and climate change, with speeches and panel discussions by climate scientists and religious leaders, and economists like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia…
Vatican officials, who have spent more than a year helping Francis prepare his message, have convened several meetings already on the topic. Last month, they met with the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.
***In the United States, the encyclical will be accompanied by a 12-week campaign, now being prepared with the participation of some Catholic bishops, to raise the issue of climate change and environmental stewardship in sermons, homilies, news media interviews and letters to newspaper editors, said Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant in Washington.
But the effort is already angering a number of American conservatives, among them members of the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group partly funded by the Charles G. Koch Foundation, run by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, who oppose climate policy…
Timothy E. Wirth, vice chairman of the United Nations Foundation, said: “We’ve never seen a pope do anything like this. No single individual has as much global sway as he does. What he is doing will resonate in the government of any country that has a leading Catholic constituency.”
Francis, however, is not the first pope to push an environmental message. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, called the “green pope” by some, wrote about the environment and the impact of climate change in documents that have been collected in a book, “The Environment.” But Catholic and climate policy experts acknowledge that those works had little substantive impact on global warming policy…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-steps-up-campaign-on-climate-change-to-conservatives-alarm.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
poor old Green Pope Benedict who had to resign, so this warm and cuddly, people-friendly Green Pope Francis could be installed and hopefully, have more success pushing the CAGW agenda on the masses, who are so poorly informed by the monolithic MSM.
50
meant to say more about the objectionable mouthings of Brendan Montague (a Christine Milne wannabe, or is Christine a Montague wannabe?):
2013: BishopHill: Brendan Montague
I had an email from Don Keiller the other day. He had been contacted by a “freelance journalist”, Brendan Montague, who wanted to know about his connections with GWPF and what he knew about their funding sources. Don seems to have sent him on his way fairly quickly, advising him that his time would be better spent looking at WWF and Greenpeace.
Strangely, Montague’s name has come up in conversation a few times in recent weeks, although in fact I’ve known of him since 2010. Near the first anniversary of Climategate, I got an email from him, again claiming to be a freelance journalist, and saying he wanted to interview me about a story about the anniversary for the Sunday Times.
I picked him up a the station and took him back to my home, gave him lunch, and we chewed the fat over Climategate. It was all very amicable. Afterwards, there were a series of emails asking for new angles, but no story ever appeared. I remember feeling sorry for the poor chap, having funded a trip up to Edinburgh out of his own pocket for no benefit…
Although he seems to write something once a year, his main role is actually the “CEO” of Request Initiative, which is kind of an FOI bureau for green organisations. Montague seems to have been doing quite well at convincing people that he is useful – someone has been paying him to spend the last couple of years sniffing around anybody and everybody in the sceptic movement. There have been a series of unsuccessful FOI requests to universities for the emails of people associated with GWPF and even a dirt-digging trip to Benny Peiser’s sister in Germany. Many readers will remember his attempts to get details of GWPF donors from the Charities Commission, an occasion on which he claimed, hilariously, to be paying for his legal team out of his own pocket. The fact that his brief also worked for Greenpeace led some to draw conclusions about exactly who was bankrolling all these speculative, conspiracy-fuelled wild-goose chases. Whoever they are they appear to have deep pockets and to be relatively unconcerned about whether Montague achieved anything.
Anyway, I think the message is that there are some pretty unscrupulous people out there, so be careful who you talk to.
FIRST COMMENT: by Hoi Polloi: Hmmm… the Green Stasi?
from Skiplhil’s comment: …From info earlier on the same page, it is evident that Lewandowsky is one of a fairly small clique of activists somehow solicited by Request Initiative for supportive comments in their legal brief.
The familiar names which appear are: James Hansen, Naomi Oreskes, Clive Hamilton, John Abraham, and Stephan Lewandowsky!…
from deepthroat’s comment: Request Initiative is being backed by UnLtd, a self-styled “leading provider of support to social entrepreneurs in the UK”. According to UnLtd’s latest financial accounts (link: http://unltd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Final-signed-UnLtd.pdf), they receive funding from Deustche Bank, which is controlled by the Warburg family (who funded the nazis at one time and also, Paul Warburg established the US Federal Reserve System established in 1913).
As we all know, Deutsche Bank has most recently been caught up in carbon credit trading scandals…
from tomo’s comment: Ah… yet another “Not for Profit” company filing no accounts…
from comment by theduke: In fairness to Montague, he was an active working journalist up until sometime in 2009 and had over 70 articles published, between 2007 and 2009, mostly in the Sunday Times. I missed that the first time around looking at this link provided by the Bish.
Just below the list of his five most recent articles is a link that says “all previous articles.” He published quite a few back in 07 and 08…READ ALL
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/2/18/brendan-montague.html
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If you’ve ever watched a live amoeba under a microscope sprawling its’ way through a drop of water, you will likely recognise the similarity to the existence of the GREEN BLOB
20
ianl8888
No I haven’t seen amoeba but after traveling abroad I had a severe case of amoebic dysentery. The symptoms of which I understand are very similar to a case of GREEN BLOB infection that some countries acquire from allowing too many unhealthy minds to proliferate.
20
as i thought, Montague is in Vatican City. rather an un-Christian fellow! Pope Francis should be careful who he associates himself with:
27 April: DesmogUK: Pope Francis Should Answer to ExxonMobil Rather Than God, Imply Climate Deniers
By Brendan Montague and Kyla Mandel in Vatican City, Italy
The clowns of the climate denial travelling circus pitched their tent in Vatican City today to demand Pope Francis ignore the dangers of global warming.
The increasingly eccentric Lord Monckton played ringmaster to Dr Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance and Marc Morano from CFACT in a curious performance hosted by the Heartland Institute.
These groups have all been funded by “dark money” from the secretive Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund , which have in turn been funded by the oil billionaire Koch Brothers…
(EIGHT MEANINGLESS AD HOM COMMENTS)
http://www.desmog.uk/2015/04/27/pope-francis-should-answer-exxonmobil-rather-god-imply-climate-deniers
ugly:
July 2014: Vice: Brendan Montague: I Crashed a Climate Change Denial Conference in Las Vegas
The front desk had double booked my room, so when I finally got there I was confronted by a stout, hairy American wearing tight black underpants…
Bearded Joseph Bast opened the conference that evening…
Then the shadow-side of this comic dishonesty and hypocrisy became almost too much to bear. Dr S Fred Singer, a folk hero around here, was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award. He in turn presented the Frederick Seitz Award. If one man can take credit for inventing climate denial it is Singer. The old man once claimed, rather brilliantly, that, “My connection to oil during the past decade is as a Wesson Fellow at the Hoover Institution; the Wesson money derives from salad oil.” Exxon had given Singer $10,000 in funding just a few years earlier…
The Heartland conference was now in full swing and my brain began to melt…
In the intervals I managed to speak to some of the key deniers. Dr Patrick Michaels has been vilified by Greenpeace and was one of the early generation of scientists to take money from coal companies to argue against mainstream climate science. He once admitted on national television that 40 percent of his funding comes from the oil industry…
Later I spoke to Dr Willie Soon, one of the few professional scientists in the room. He was once funded by Exxon, the American Petroleum Institute and one way or another by Charles Koch. Greenpeace used Freedom of Information laws to expose his financial support from oil barons through his university. Soon told me Exxon broke off his funding, without so much as a kiss goodbye. Soon was another sad sack who seemed convinced of his own brilliance and dumbfounded at the lack of recognition…
was then witness to a suited Greenpeace activist dressing down Anthony Watts, the one-time weatherman who blogs at Watts Up With That?, in a hallway. Watts broke the story of Climategate, when thousands of private emails between climate scientists were hacked and published online. The emails were presented as evidence of a lurid and global conspiracy to fool the public into fearing global warming. They weren’t.
Then I ran into James Delingpole, the one-time Telegraph Online journalist who spewed vitriol at climate scientists and their defenders. I was about to undergo the kind of nasty, bitter confrontation I wanted to avoid…
They are full of shit. But they are having a real influence on American politics. They are just one of the hundreds of Koch and Exxon funded think tanks and fake grassroots campaigns that have frustrated and blocked Obama’s administration at every turn. As I leave the conference I find it hard to reconcile what I have learned. These people are just cranks but they are perverting American politics. I did learn in Vegas that attacks from these people are not going to hurt me…
(Brendan Montague is a London based investigative journalist who has published in The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday and The Guardian. He is founder of the Request Initiative, which boasts Greenpeace UK among its NGO clients.)
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/las-vegas-climate-change-denial-brendan-montague-101
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28 April: WUWT: Anthony Watts: BOMBSHELL: Scripps says Arctic Sea Ice may return, forecasts of loss based on ‘oversimplified arguments’
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/28/bombshell-scripps-says-arctic-sea-ice-may-return-forecasts-based-on-simplified-arguments/
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28 April: CarbonBrief: Roz Pidcock: Prof Richard Muller: Not adjusting global temperature records would be “poor science”
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Lord Lawson’s UK-based climate skeptic lobby group, has announced it is launching an inquiry into the integrity of global surface temperature records…
Carbon Brief has spoken to Prof Richard Muller, physicist and self-professed skeptical scientist, who carried out a very similar inquiry a few years ago as part of the Berkeley Earth surface temperature ( BEST) project, based in California. Muller tells Carbon Brief:
“From a scientific point of view, it would be irresponsible not to adjust … it would be considered poor science to avoid such corrections … [and] ***they do not affect the substantial results.”…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/04/prof-richard-muller-not-adjusting-global-temperature-records-would-be-poor-science/
***”they do not affect the substantial results.”… or should it be “they do not SUBSTANTIALLY affect the results.”?
paywalled, but add this to the few MSM covering the story:
27 April: Australian: Panel to probe homogenisation
The GWPF is a controversial voice in the climate change debate but Professor Kealey said his review team “approaches the subject as open-minded scientists — we intend to let the science do the talking”. “Our goal is to help the public understand the challenges in assembling climate data sets, the influence of adjustments and modifications to the the data, and whether … In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology has faced similar …
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/panel-to-probe-homogenisations-role-in-warming-trend/story-e6frg8y6-1227323733213
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Here’s the little thing I don’t get. New power grids mean more emissions? But billions of people constantly burning dung, twigs, branches, grass, peat, spirit, kero, lump coal in or around their dwellings aren’t emitting? Huh?
But I’m guessing it was never really about emissions.
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“Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, says it is hypocritical for western governments, made rich by fossil fuels, “to say to African countries, ‘You cannot develop…”
And since when were ‘western governments’ averse to bit of hypocrisy?
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Montague & his offsider Kyla on McIntyre!
Nov 2014: Desmog: McIntyre’s Mission: An Obsessive Quest to Disprove Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick
by Kyla Mandel, With reporting by Brendan Montague
It is fair to say then, that if Mann’s hockey stick was wrong, the world
would know by now. Twelve years later, McIntyre still has not disproved it.
Yet, climate sceptics continue to focus their crosshairs on Mann.
“From an intellectual point of view, these contrarians are pathetic, because
there’s no scientific validity to their arguments whatsoever,” Mann told the
Scientific American. “But they’re very skilled at deducing what sorts of
disingenuous arguments and untruths are likely to be believable to the
public that doesn’t know better.”
***And it was exactly this scrupulous and targeted criticism of temperature
data and statistical analysis by McIntyre that inspired one Climate Audit reader to hack the emails of climate scientists at the UEA in 2009.
http://desmogblog.com/2014/11/30/mcintyre-mission-obsessive-quest-disprove-michael-mann-hockey-stick
***can someone please explain the “hack” allegation.
Kyla’s expertise & experience:
LinkedIn: Kyla Mandel
https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/kyla-mandel/45/367/124
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11 April 2010: Guardian: Andrew Chambers: The fight against eco-imperialism
It is not acceptable to use climate change as an excuse to limit growth in poor countries as the west’s carbon emissions rise
Last Thursday the World Bank approved a £2.4bn loan to build a huge new coal-fired power station in South Africa. The issue has exposed the rift between two central international goals – alleviating poverty and preventing global warming. South African ministers claimed that the project was essential for their country’s development, while a concerted environmental campaign lobbied international governments to block the scheme. Amid concerns about global warming, this question of development versus environment may become one of the most contentious international issues over the next few years.
Since the 1970s the green movement has acquired ever-greater prominence in international development. In the last decade, global warming concerns have refocused the emphasis of poverty reduction strategies away from development and towards the environment. This is portrayed as a win-win situation – where the interests of the local people are perfectly aligned with the interests of environmental campaigners. Sustainable technologies like wind turbines and solar panels improve the lot of the recipients while keeping their carbon emissions to a minimum. However, this approach has been criticised as a form of eco-imperialism – because western carbon considerations remain a limiting factor on developing world progress…
The Working Group on Climate Change and Development is a network of more than 20 NGOs including WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. Founded in 2004, its “central message is that solving poverty and tackling climate change are intimately linked and equally vital, not either/ors”…
These environmental groups, while spanning quite a large spectrum, tend to demonstrate an affinity with the pro-rural socialist left. The report describes climate change as not just a threat but also an “opportunity” to re-think the entire global system…
Indeed, members of these groups often seem to embrace rural village life as representing a pre-industrial idyll which should be preserved.
Such romantic ideology therefore seeks to largely maintain the status quo – where the African poor are kept “traditional” and “indigenous”. It’s hard to disagree with Lord May, former president of the Royal Society in his observation that “much of the green movement isn’t a green movement at all, it’s political”…
Despite a concerted lobbying campaign from environmental groups, the (World Bank) loan was approved on Thursday – albeit with abstentions from Britain, America and the Netherlands…
We should embrace whatever methods provide the best outcome in alleviating poverty – whether that be new roads or airports, power stations or renewables. To do otherwise is to be guilty of the worst kind of eco-imperialism – where the poor are held back for the benefit of the rich.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/apr/11/eco-imperialism-climate-change-carbon
THIRD COMMENT by WeAreTheWorld: “The fight against eco-imperialism: It is not acceptable to use climate change as an excuse to limit growth in poor countries as the west’s carbon emissions rise”.
Well then, we should then make it clear that it is no longer acceptable for populations who can not afford to feed and cloth their own people, to continue having more children. There needs to be a cap and trade on human births where overpopulation is simply unsustainable…
hard to believe the Guardian published the above article. it is the only CAGW piece Chambers ever wrote for them, it seems. nothing since 2012, but i believe he is still teaching in Thailand from what i’ve seen online.
Guardian: Andrew Chambers
Andrew Chambers is currently teaching in Thailand. He has previously worked in Japan and in the charitable sector, both in the UK and abroad. He was short-listed for the 2010 Guardian International Development Journalist of the Year Award
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/andrew-chambers
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***Bloomberg still pushes the CAGW rhetoric in the face of reality, and (see Disclosure at bottom) in the face of its own hypocrisy:
28 April: Bloomberg: Jesse Riseborough: Biggest Coal Exporter Says Climate Change Won’t Strand Assets
Glencore Plc, the top exporter of coal used in power stations, expects efforts to curb climate change by keeping its fossil-fuel reserves in the ground to fail in the face of world energy demand.
Shareholders won’t be “prevented from realizing the full value of Glencore’s fossil fuel assets,” Ivan Glasenberg, 58, Glencore’s billionaire chief executive officer, said Tuesday.
***His comments are a snub to a growing campaign that wants investors to shun fossil fuels that cause climate change…
Coal supplies the world with about 30 percent of its main energy needs and more than 40 percent of its electricity, according to the World Coal Association. Global coal output reached a record 7.8 billion metric tons in 2013.
“Some of our stakeholders are concerned about the future of our fossil fuel reserves; in particular that they may become stranded assets,” Glasenberg said in Glencore’s sustainability report on Tuesday. “We do not believe that the global energy reality will economically support carbon measures that would prevent us from fully utilizing our fossil fuel reserves.”…
Glencore owns 4.3 billion tons of reserves of coal used for energy and to make steel in Australia, South Africa and Colombia. It produced 146 million tons last year…
***Two-thirds of the world’s fossil-fuel reserves must remain unburnt to hold temperature increases below dangerous levels, according to researchers at University College London….
Disclosure: Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, is a senior independent non-executive director of Glencore.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-28/biggest-coal-exporter-says-climate-change-won-t-strand-assets
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Bad Boy Phil:
28 April: Slate: Phil Plait: Making Sense of Nonsense: A MOOC About Climate Change Denial
(Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death From the Skies! )
The Earth is warming up. The climate is changing. Human activity is responsible.
Ninety-seven percent of actual climatologists agree on this.
But the media still give “equal time” to climate change deniers, who flood the public with misinformation…
A dozen scientists and science communicators think they have an answer: Inoculate the public…
To do this, they have created a massive open online course through the University of Queensland in Australia, called “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial.”
I love this idea…
And yes, I did enroll in the course! It starts today, so sign up and learn how to face reality…
*Correction, April 28, 2015: This post originally misspelled the first name of Katharine Hayhoe.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/04/28/climate_change_an_online_course_to_teach_reality.html
2013: WUWT: Matt Ridley: The reply to the ‘bad astronomer – Phil Plait’ that Slate.com refused to publish
Phil Plait, who goes by the name of the “bad astronomer”, has now written three articles in Slate attacking two of my columns in the Wall Street Journal on the topic of climate change. My columns, and responses to critics are here and here. I have no problem with Mr Plait disagreeing with me, but I am a little taken aback by his name calling and sheer nastiness.
I asked for a right to reply in Slate, encouraged by the editor. But when the editor read my polite reply, he refused, on the grounds that “we publish such responses when critics have new or compelling arguments or evidence that call into question what we have published. You have differences with Phil, but we don’t believe your response offers such evidence.” I disagree. You be the judge…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/24/the-reply-to-the-bad-astronomer-phil-plait-that-slate-com-refused-to-publish/
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28 April: PR Newswire: Project Insight – Power Generation Construction Projects in the Middle East and Africa
Summary
Construction activity in the Middle East and Africa is growing at a rapid pace, underpinned by public and private investment in infrastructure developments, particularly in power generation. This report details the investment in large-scale power generation projects in the region. The analysis centers on the projects tracked by Timetric’s Construction Intelligence Center (CIC). The projects are at various stages of development, from announced to execution, and are in the 10 categories: biomass, coal, gas, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, ocean, oil, solar and wind. The total value of the region’s power generation projects tracked by the CIC stood at US$717 billion in 21 countries as of January 2015, with these projects adding a planned power generation capacity of over 378 GW. The average power yield across all the 508 projects analyzed is 0.53 MW per US$ million…
***Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/2788812/
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/project-insight—power-generation-construction-projects-in-the-middle-east-and-africa-300073516.html
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any nod to “renewables” is mere CAGW rhetoric, obviously:
28 April: Investopoedia: Vanessa Page: Fundamentals Of How China Makes Its Money
Industry
Like most countries looking to develop their economies, China’s first step was to build up its heavy industry. Today, China is the world leader in manufacturing and produces almost half of the world’s steel.
China’s mining industry extracts coal (3.7 billion tons in 2014), iron ore (345 million tons in 2014), salt (70 million tons in 2012), oil (210 million tons in 2014), gas (1.3 billion cubic meters in 2014), and more gold than South Africa. Because of China’s dependence on coal, the country is moving towards more renewable resources and plans to increase its natural gas use in the coming years. China also has multiple oil reserves, as well as natural gas deposits that have yet to be fully explored.
The country is also a good candidate for hydroelectricity production, and in 2012, the Three Gorges Dam was completed and is now a major producer of electricity for the southern cities of China (including Shanghai)…
With China already considered a large polluter and emitter of greenhouse gases, the ***expected increase in coal usage is troubling to some…
With a service industry of less than 50% and over 20% of its workforce still employed in the farming industry, the country has huge room to grow.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042815/fundamentals-how-china-makes-its-money.asp
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In simple terms, Africa needs to be free of the influence of the UN and its lackeys, which unfortunately includes the United States under Obama. I think Africa can easily decide what it needs to do. I think plenty of help would be available to do it if help is needed. But the obstructionists — read progressives — with their green agenda stand squarely in the way of real progress.
Progressivism is not progress.
Rich? Yes! And the road to that affluence is to let them build what they need to build.
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withdraw comment 29 —
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Assuming you mean my comment, I can only say, thank you, Richard Ilfeld, for demonstrating my point.
Roy
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sorry,no– It was somthing stupid that I had said that ended up in moderation
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I wondered but it looked like it was aimed at what I said. So I owe you an apology too.
Roy
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Why do the Greens hate Africans? Not just on electricity but also on food production and trade.
They campaign against imports of African grown produce to Europe and elsewhere because it has to be transported over a long distance.
They campaign against the introduction of modern farming practices that could feed all Africans with plenty to spare. They insist that African farmers should instead be encouraged to continue “traditional” farming.
Traditional farming in Africa means small family owned plots without access to modern machinery, pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers. Might be ok in good seasons but 1 bad season and your family and local village face starvation. I suppose they can always rely on the local UN food depot to get them through with food imported from Europe.
No electricity and uncertain food supplies. I wonder why 100s of thousands of Africans are desperately trying to get to Europe?
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