Ian Dunlop in the Canberra Times, The Age, and The Sydney Morning Herald namecalls away, discusses a mythical creature called a “climate denialist” and shows how little research it takes to get an opinion page in the Fairfax mastheads. (Comments are “open” at these sites).
He thinks that PM Tony Abbott ought follow Margaret Thatcher on climate policy, without realizing that skeptics would say “Bravo — Yes Please” to that. Thatcher was a chemist, and no fool. In 2003 she made it clear, when few people did, that she was absolutely a skeptic.
Ian Dunlop 2015:
It is too much to expect the male-dominated, eminence-grise of the incumbency to rise to the occasion, but women might. There is a precedent. Margaret Thatcher, addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 1989: “We should always remember that free markets are a means to an end. They would defeat their objective if, by their output, they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the wellbeing they achieved by the production of goods and services”. Just so. You may not agree with Margaret Thatcher on many things, but on climate change she was spot on, three decades ahead of her male compatriots in Australia. Time for our stateswomen to step forward.
In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.
She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.
In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology. Alas, what she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of “climate sceptics” has been almost entirely buried from view.
Ian Dunlop was the Chair of the Australian Coal Association?
Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a Member of the Club of Rome.
I was in high school when Mrs Thatcher came to power, and had a few years of work experience when she left. Having read many reports, far from being the Iron Lady who was impervious to reason she was the opposite. If a strong case was put that withstood her cross-examination, (as well as being a chemist, she was also a qualified barrister) then she would accept it. If new evidence came along that falsified an accepted view, she would accept that. This view was both a strength (she did not back down simply because it was expedient to do so, such as controlling inflation) and a weakness. Something else Mrs T got wrong was the Poll Tax – literally a local tax where nearly every adult paid the same. This was to replace the archaic ratings system, which has huge anomalies. The case was convincing (I still have the original Adam Smith Institute Paper that laid out the case), but it did not take into account a problem of major tax changes – there will be losers. The widow on a low pension still living in the family home was a gainer, but the family with grown-up children next door was the loser. Further, the left hated Mrs Thatcher as she had challenged their beliefs and destroyed their power bases – so made it a cause célèbre and rioted on the streets.
It is worth remembering that there will be losers when climate change is overthrown and the undermining of peoples’ dogmatic belief systems about the world. Tony Abbott may not have the will or the ability to take on those people. He might need a failing dictator to invade Australian territory to establish his political clout first.
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Mrs Thatcher was a member of the Heath Government brought down by the coal miners strike of 1972. The rerun in 1983 cemented her conviction that Nuclear power was the only secure future for power generation. To wean the UK off coal generation she encouraged gas , thus being the only PM who actually reduced co2 emissions. This enmity towrds coal and her malthusian instincts lead her to support the global warming narrative. She took a close interest in the progress of the IPCC AR1. and, being a scientist was aware of how woefully weak the case was. She founded the Hadley Centre in 1990 with the specific mandate to find evidence of Global WArming that was at least half convincing, but was almost immediately ejected from office and had no control of the outcome.
I well remember the candle lit working in the winter of 1972 when unannounced power cuts were daily events. With our current energy policy it looks as if It will be deja vue all over again. Ah the nostalgia! ” the only thing to look forward to – is the past”. (The Likely Lads)
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I don’t think she had ‘enmity’ towards coal
With the moves towards nuclear and gas she simply saw that coal’s time had passed as a relatively dirty fuel (particulates being the main issue before modern scrubbing techniques) and the severely adverse effects on miners’ health and life expectancy.
Competition from abroad was also destroying the economics of UK coal mining.
The union activities that caused so much civil disruption and unrest were a disservice to the miners. You wouldn’t get many takers if the mines were reopened today with the same methods in use as were ‘normal’ in those days.
What were her ‘Malthusian instincts’ ?
Overpopulation is a legitimate concern but nowadays we can see that wealthy nations reduce breeding rates below replacement voluntarily so Malthus was wrong but that was not so clear back then.
We need more capitalism rather than less so as to get every nation to a level of wealth that leads to voluntary population reduction. If one tries to constrain capitalism that target will not be achieved with consequences exactly opposite to that which the anti-capitalists proclaim.
Climate alarmism is a branch of anti-capitalism and should be confronted on that basis as the political movement that it really is.
If CO2 from fossil fuels does not significantly affect climate then there is no reason why we should not use them freely as long as the technology is applied carefully.
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Margaret Thatcher had concerns over the UK’s reliance on coal, which was used as a primary fuel source in its own right, and also as the source of gas and coke, two secondary fuels.
All of these were controlled by the Miners Union, which was significantly bankrolled through various financial conduits, all of which could be traced back to sources in Eastern Europe.
This was seen, at the time, as a threat to the security of the UK economy, not to mention the political stability of society, especially when considered alongside the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was also very active.
She realised that breaking the miners strike would not only break the Miners Union, it would also destroy the solidarity, and weaken the power of the whole Union movement.
That was the reason why so many union officials saw the writing on the wall, upped sticks, and migrated to Australia, around that time. Apparently, on arrival they then set about infiltrating the Australian Labour Party, and the Australian Green Party, where they found friendly kindred spirits.
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The American social commentator and economist Henry George took Thomas Malthus’s essay apart in his book Progress and Poverty (1875), Second Part: Population and Subsistence .
The book is still in print if you wish to read it other than on-line.
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Stephen is pretty close to the mark.
Britain was subsidising the domestic coal industry to a stupid degree. So to were Germany and Japan.
The levels of government subsidy to the coal industries within those countries was just as stupid as the subsidies to “green” energy today.
If the economics are not within a bull’s roar then forget it – and stop regurgitating the excuse that carbon dioxide is bad for the planet.
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“We need more capitalism rather than less so as to get every nation to a level of wealth that leads to voluntary population reduction. ”
True , as long as that capitalism results in improved education for women.
The finding that improving the education of women leads to lower birth rates is pretty good.
Spot the elephant?
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What a silly, sexist thing to say.
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I think you should read what farmerbraun actually wrote, and ignore what you expected him to write.
Over half of the world’s population of women have never actually been taught how to read. How can they make their own choices about their own bodies, if they cannot get access to impartial information, via reading?
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Actually, I agree with farmerbraun in that prosperity leads to more freedom for women who then allocate a higher priority to education. The link between female education and a reduced birth rate is much the same as that between general prosperity and a reduced birth rate.
To avoid sexism I should point out that prosperous societies place more importance on both male and female education because it is observed that the level of individual prosperity is linked to the level of education.
There are exceptions of course. Many non academic personalities can be highly successful in business despite a low level of formal education.
There is more than one type of education and the non academic variant can be equally valuable.
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Diogenes2
You must be a tad older than me. My memories of the power cuts were of having to get ready for school extra early in the winter before the power went off, then sitting in the dark with coat on staring at a candle before going to school in the gloom of the dawn.
One reason that Mrs T was later (to her critics) so intransigent was the experience of the Heath Government. Edward Heath was elected on a mandate to cut inflation. After the miners strike, he U-Turned. A Keynesian fiscal stimulus was enacted, which culminated in inflation peaking at 26.2% in 1975. Milton Friedman had postulated in his 1968 presidential address to the American Economic Association that such fiscal stimulus’s would lead to both rising unemployment and inflation. The Heath Government provided the empirical confirmation of this simple prediction. A year after the inflation peak the then Chancellor of the Exchequer had to go to the IMF for a bail-out loan, and six months after that Milton Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Although I do not entirely agree with Friedmanite monetarism (neither did Friedman – he later converted to Hayekian competing monies a few years after I did), one aspect of his thinking that I do agree with is that when dealing with the highly complex world of economic data theory should be judged by its predictive power. That means bold and clear predictions than are vulnerable to refutation. In climate science many thought that the hypothesis that increasing CO2 emissions would lead to increasing warming was a bold and clear prediction. But when emissions accelerated and warming stopped the excuses started and have not ceased.
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When I read about Thatchers even handedness and being open to reason and logic, NOW I can understand why the Left hate her so much – she is totally against the tribal empty-headedness of many on the Left….
On Ian Dunlop – he is a member of the club of rome….oh dear….people should read up on what it does.
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Ian Dunlop seems to believe that he has failed to con the male population, but still fancies his chances with the ladies.
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Dunlop put himself up to be a director of BHP.
BHP in the last 25 years has made some abhorrent decisions.
Not selecting Dunlop was one of their remarkably good decisions.
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Your last sentence is intriguing. Why would Obama, the only failing dictator I am aware of, invade Australia?
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Margaret Thatcher was a fine, pragmatic and popular (to the majority) politician who made understandable errors of strategy but not of policy substance.
There are good, logical reasons why multiple adults in one household should pay more local taxes than a single person in one household but the left saw a chance to mobilise the multiple households, many of whom were already at least partially dependent on state support and therefore Labour Party supplicants, at the expense of the put-upon smaller households who continue to be exploited to this day.
If she had not been ousted by her own party she might well have won again, the Major years would have been avoided and the Blair/Brown years might never have happened. The UK would still be in a trelatively strong financial position rather than being the near basket case that it became by 2008 and which the prudent, hard working, higher rate taxpayers and prudent savers (sadly, a minority) are doing their best to repair.
She would not have stood for the current climate scare nonsense that grew from an apparently innocuous earlier decision like a cancer in the darkness.
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There are none.
Local government income should be drawn from a charge on the value of the land occupied by the family paid by the land owner to the goevernment (as in Taiwan). If the land owner is the government (as in Hong Kong and Singapore), then an annual lease should be paid.
Anything else is inequitable. All benefits from government services attach to the land as an increase in its value. This is the pool government income must come from.
I realise this is OT so I’ll leave it there.
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Government benefits such as local services are proportionate to the number of people making use of them and not to the size or value of the land. Local services in the uk do not add to the value of the land itself so there is no ‘pool’ from which income canm be taken.
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Maggie was spot on as usual. today in the uk though pension pots have been deregulated and anyone over 55 can withdraw all their funds to invest elswhere. There will be green investment companies trying to deprive the ignorant of their retirement funds. Its criminal really.
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So were the appallingly low rates of annuity income people were forced to buy.
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Saint Margaret became Thatcherite on Climate Change AFTER she left Office. I don’t think Mr Abbott, or Australia, have that much leeway.
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By attempting to play the gender-card Dunlop is utterly transparent. We’ve already seen alarmists willing to pull on pretty much any lever they can find in an attempt to gain political traction.
The only trick I think they’ve missed is getting Iran to say something about tackling global warming as part of the recent ‘agreement’ about their nuclear (weapons) program.
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People should read up on what the Club of Rome actually does and what it stands for…..
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Do you have a reference to a text with some established and acknowledged probity?
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I’d encourage you to read widely….
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http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=630
I. Values
Values lie at the heart of our common future. The Club plans to encourage a normative discourse on values. Can universal values translate into real actions to protect and preserve our planet? Do we care about the future? Is inter-generational equity a basis for long-term action?
The Club intends to host meetings with thought-leaders and members to discuss these issues and identify where and in what way values can help drive us towards long term sustainability. Specific issues likely to be covered include:
The Search for Universal Values
The Drivers of Values and how these change Perceptions and Outcomes
The role of Education in Values
The Future of Values and the Value of the Future
Ethics and the Marketplace: the Ethics of Business
Consumerism and Values
http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=693
UNDERLYING CAUSES AND REMEDIES: A KEY FOCUS
The work programme presented below identifies the key issues, milestones, actions and institutions that will be required to move us on to a sustainable and stable trajectory over the next forty years. A pathway that must deal simultaneously with the redistribution of wealth, address absolute poverty, create jobs and make significant progress on the restoration and management of our global environment. A major publication from one of the original authors of “Limits to Growth” which looks at the world forty years hence will help frame the debate. Other members are working on actions needed to manage the world’s natural capital, especially forests, water and land; and on governance.
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So, your intent of your original point, was what … ?
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MotherJones –
Mar. 31, 2015: The World’s Worst Climate Villain Just Showed Us Exactly How to Stop Global Warming
“There was a somewhat surprising announcement this week from a country with one of the world’s worst climate reputations:
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s office declared that his government is committed to signing on to the next major international climate accord, set to be hammered out in Paris later this year.
Almost a year ago, Australia made a very different kind of climate announcement: It became the world’s first country to repeal a price on carbon.”
11 December, 2014:
This week, deputy leader of the Liberal Party Julie Bishop*—who is also the country’s minister for foreign affairs—finally caved to international pressure and announced a $200 million (AUD) commitment to the Green Climate Fund. That’s about $166 million (US).
~ ~ ~
Climate Change Is Crap. The Links:
The Australian, 12 December, 2009: Town of Beaufort changed Tony Abbott’s view on climate change
“When Abbott arrived at a gathering of the Liberal faithful in Beaufort, it was clear he was exhausted.
By the time he left, flush with the energy of farmers such as David “Rocky” George — whom he calls “practical environmentalists” — he had dismissed the science underpinning climate change as “crap”.
7 June, 2011, Skeptical Science: Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates a carbon(sic) tax in same breath
. . .
Vacillate. verb: Waver between different opinions or actions; be indecisive
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I don’t think Thatcher had the problems governments face today with an increasing amount of independent parties, most of which are of the left. So, she had it relatively easier. Today she probably would not last as long due to the independents watering down her policies, much like what’s happening with Abbott. She would be struggling in government with little chance of winning the next election. Today we have a greater proportion of the voters who prefer handouts than sound policies. That’s why conservatives parties are struggling in the polls. As usual people have to learn their lessons the hard way. We must first have to go through a lot more pain, perhaps all the way to near economic and social catastrophic destruction. These are the real issues we are facing today, not some AGW hoax.
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Freeman Dyson might agree, in this interview.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Conversations+that+matter+Earth+actually+growing+greener/10944052/story.html
“models do a good job of helping us understand climate but they do a very poor job of predicting it.”
“measured from space, the whole earth is growing greener as a result of carbon dioxide, so it’s increasing agricultural yields, it’s increasing the forests and it’s increasing growth in the biological world and that’s more important and more certain than the effects on climate.”
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Tony should use this endorsement by Dyson of CO2 greening the planet to breathe new life into his beleaguered Direct Action policy & get planting.
It seems much more credible to plan to use the CO2 in the atmosphere rather than to pretend to limits it’s growth, as most of it is coming out of the warming oceans and cannot be stopped by mans efforts..
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Twitter bad boy Tom Nelson highlights main points from the Dyson interview at his blog.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/freeman-dyson-it-would-be-crazy-to-try.html?m=1
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Saint Margaret was hated by trade union leaders, luvvies, lefties and those of working age voluntarily on welfare benefits.
She recognised the global warming cult for what it was, long before most of us realised that it even existed.
If she was in power today, you can be sure of one thing: she would not be allowing any of her ministers or bureaucrats to attend the buffoonery in Paris at the end of this year.
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Baroness Thatcher came to power a the end of the Winter of Discontent. She was seen as a political saviour. The contrast between her view and the preceding leftist political debacle of the seventies couldn’t have been more obvious. It was a moment when common sense trumped the industrial chaos created by left wing political ideology.
Growing up in the UK during the seventies in a prolonged and miserable environment encompassed by the Arab oil crisis, strikes and power cuts, cold showers and singing (as much to keep warm) by the piano in candle light, may indeed sound appealing to those of a Green disposition but it isn’t, not one bit. A taste of a power impoverished life with the economy in tatters leaves lasting impressions.
Dare I say that Abbott needs a tangible crisis to springboard real change. At the present moment the Green ideological imposition of eco-Marxism resembles less an attention focusing catastrophe, more the slow boiling to death of a frog unaware of its fate.
We need a BIG moment ‘by the people, for the people’.
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It seems a lot of the developed world ran out of that already , which came to be realised in the GFC around 2008, but Keynesianism was used to let us forget and carry on living on the never-never for a while longer, by just printing money with no underlying value.
Here Jo gets around to referring to the US Dollars in circulation, which more than doubled more or less overnight.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0veQQgGxKus
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When I mentioned we need a ‘BIG’ moment, I meant that there appears a need for an equivalent back drop that a decade of failed leftist policy provided in the UK. The counterpoint was obvious and Thatcher the exactly the right person for the moment.
One of the first and most astute things she undertook was the decapitation of the civil service and subsequent replacement with her own appointees. The scope for such an exercise in Australia at the present time appears, shall we say, generous.
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Baroness Thatcher changed the rusted UK economy by taking on the union’s strangling control at the time and gave the people more control of their lives. As a qualified chemist she had an open mind and understanding of science accepting the evidence, rather than the dogma of the global warming hypothesis, which was falling away at the time. She was respected by most leaders including those in the Kremlin.
She was a strong lady who stood by her principles and a good example for PM Abbott to follow.
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When you see the Left get behind something, such as ‘global warming’, opposition to coal-seam gas and so many other things, you know with absolute certainty that it will involve lies, exaggeration and, most importantly, an alternative agenda.
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‘Climate change is occurring fast and extensively, largely caused by human carbon emissions, with increasing evidence that extremely dangerous “tipping points” in the Arctic, Antarctic, the oceans and elsewhere are being activated, probably irreversibly.’
Ian Dunlop, member of the discredited Club of Rome.
In fact, thanks to the plateau in temperatures, global warming stopped 18 years ago. So what we observe is widespread non compliance.
The warming climate of last century was caused by Sol and human induced CO2 (a harmless trace gas) had nothing to do with it.
There is increasing evidence of a complete lack of ‘tipping points’, much to the disappointment of warmists and coolists alike. Also, the Arctic and Antarctic are behaving naturally.
Fairfax is a disgrace, I demand a second opinion.
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Ian shouldn’t worry. The klimatariat is full of “concerned” males, and GetUp would be lost without its hordes of ancient male retirees from the Canberra PS.
On the other hand, there’s this chick called Gina…
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Yep. Gina.
http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/gina-rinehart-urges-australians-to-fight-against-c
Another clear thinking West Australian. It must be something in the water, Jo?
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Nearly all skeptics appear to be warmists who rejected the creed. The reverse is rarely true.
Pointman
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Yes, interesting isn’t it, I put it down to the idiom, “You can’t unknow a fact”. That is, once you take the time to check, it is obvious cAGW can’t be correct. No amount of propaganda can make a sceptic unknow that. Scepticism is a one way trip.
Let me recount an old post I made. 10 reasons to be reject climate change actions. We need to remember this list because its the key to unpicking the propaganda. Identifying with any of these points is enough to signal rejection of climate change socialism.
1. You don’t believe climate change happens and arhennius is wrong (almost noone fits this)
2. You believe climate change is natural or mostly natural
3. You believe climate change is manmade but warming is minor
4. You believe climate change is manmade but will be overall benecicial or at least harmless
5. You are a full on warmist but don’t believe mankind can impact warming significantly
6. You believe all the propaganda but don’t think action is affordable
7. You are a full on warmist but think that adaption is a better option than mitigation
8. You think there are much better ways to spend our future than windmills and solar panels, perhaps on saving whales or immunising babies.
9. You think action on climate is harmful “kills people to save the planet”
10. You agree with AGW but you think it’s daft to send the world back to the little ice age and 270PPM at a population of 7 Billion people.
It only takes a belief in any one of these points for someone to reject the current mitigation nonsense.
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I think another reason is the hail of abuse you get when you start to mention any reservation about the creed. It practically pushes you into scepticism.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/climategate-2-yes-theyve-been-lying-to-you/
Pointman
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Are we Apostates then? Religion just won’t go away!
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Pointman – you’ve forgotten the sceptics who’ve considered the whole CO2 story rubbish from the start – such as myself. In my case, the warning bells rang as soon as I began to read Al Gore’s book.
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Me too Carbon500. Just a consideration of who was pushing CAGW was enough to make me sceptical.
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Right there with you Carbon500.
I was still in high school when I recall gullible warming becoming fashionable in the press, even then we knew it was crap. Unfortunately for the cause we’d already learned about equilibrium reactions (change the conditions and the equilibrium shifts to restore the favoured conditions) so they’d have to wait a generation for more impressionable minds; even our teachers knew that trivial warming (changed conditions) would be offset by more evaporation (shifted equilibrium) and thus more reflective cloud (but then teachers weren’t so overtly PC in 1985).
By Uni I was even more comfortable with the understanding that the theory was crap, since not one of my earth sciences professors would abide it (none of them were mediocre enough or willing enough to sell their souls to become dependent on grants from the likes of IPeCaC or CSIRO). When my meteorology professor was invited onto local radio in 1992 to have a discussion along with a guest ‘ex-spurt’* (a Dip Ed from some ecotard swindle group); the good professor’s failure to sing from the hymn sheet was apparently unexpected and inconvenient, and so about halfway through his comparison between the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration and the far more terrifying rise in CO2 concentration one would experience by opening a can of Coca-Cola in the lounge room, there developed a sudden technical fault which silenced him. Leaving the ecotard to preach fire and brimstone uninterrupted from the book of carbon-revelations for the rest of the interview. And then point out that donations from concerned citizens would help them save the children, blah, blah, blah…
I wasn’t a bright kid, but I grew up in the bush so I recognised the smell of bovine faeces as young as 13 when climastrology started selling papers. I’m no convert from the cause and most of the sceptical minds I know are from the same boat (we also get that voting Labor or Green is about as sensible as slamming one’s gentleman’s bits in a car door).
Having to listen to indoctrinated half-wits wittering on daily about the settled science of gullible warming, being called a denier every time I don’t back down from giving the believer’s cheer squad the good news and witnessing the outrageous squander that’s been made in the name of ‘fighting gullible warming’ all my adult life, has all been boiling my piss right from the start.
…By now that’s sufficient vapourised urea to spin the turbines at Torrens Island power station rapidly enough to generate ‘lecky for about 200,000 homes; which is more than the wind driven monuments to gullible warming down the coast manage on a good day.
Pointy; I’m not coming the raw prawn here cobber, just having a therapeutic rant. The kidney secretions are already simmering after I read about the six self-propelled petrie dishes that climbed onto another oil rig today to gloat about how bold and heroic they all are. And to reach out to Twit-derr bound slacktivists everywhere to ask for more donations, you know, to save the children.
*Sir Sydney Camm’s rejoinder when asked if he was nervous that the Hawker-Siddeley P1127 VTOL demonstrator would never fly since all the ‘experts’ said it wouldn’t, was to observe that an ‘ex’ is a has-been and a ‘spurt’ is a drip under pressure.
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Erny72: As an oldie (age 66) I point out to the youngsters that in all my tears in the UK the climate has always been the same and remains the same – cold winters, wet winters, warmer winters, hot summers, wet summers, cool summers and, yes, floods are nothing new either, not to mention the odd tronado or two.
It’s my duty before I shuffle off from this life!
Since the IPCC was formed in the late 1980s, a whole generation has been exposed to this nonsense, presented as truth by inadequate unquestioning teachers – and it bothers me.
I’ve got plenty of graphs and figures to back up my comments, including records going back many years.
In reply to the letters I’ve written to newspapers when locking horns with the warmists, I notice that they never produce figures. Never once has a warmist produced figures in reply to my comments. It’s always ‘trust the science’.
OK, that’s my rant over – I’d better stop here!
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Typo: not ‘tronado’ but ‘tornado’ – sorry!
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As most here will already know Thatchers founding role in the Global Warming saga is well documented in Richard S. Courtney’s insightful account of those times inHow It All Began
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Ian Dunlop is a member of the Club of Rome, the same group that said we would run out of minerals within a few decades, on an earth which is made of minerals. We will run out of minerals when we run out of rocks, which isn’t anytime soon. You may as well say we will run out of air, which in his article he also refers to.
“in scarcity terms, the lack of an atmosphere…”
Fail.
The Club of Rome is ideological to the core. They are completely obsessed with the idea of limited resources and scarcity, a kind of fundamentalist Malthusianism, which basically believes that the world and common sense cannot adapt to resource needs or resource alternatives, and need the guidance of likes of the Club of Rome to take charge. They call anyone who disagrees ideological. Pot kettle black.
It’s also very convenient, whatever resources there are, would then be managed by guess who? Resource nationalism?, here we have Resource Internationalism. It is simply an attempt to take the resources away from the people. Wherever this has been tried it has failed spectacularly.
The Pigs in Animal Farm would have been most impressed, they had to have all the milk for themselves, because there was, apparently, a scarcity of milk, which incidentally they created themselves through their policies.
The Club of Rome have resorted to making up scarcity for decades, when there isn’t any. If you believe them, we should have already run out of tin, iron, oil, gas, economic growth, food, coal, corn,wheat,copper, food, metals, fossil fuels, water, you name it, even air.
What they really should be saying is that they have run out of common sense, and seem to be trying to apply this magnificent strategy to everyone else.
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I wonder if Ian Dunlop is a follower of Christiana Figueres.
I’m not sure what word you would use to describe her political persuasion
http://www.infowars.com/video-un-climate-change-official-says-we-should-make-every-effort-to-depopulate-the-planet/
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Eco-communist?
Figueres also wants to overturn the Western economic model and also advocates greater centralized control and global regulation.
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Ross, I wouldn’t credit Christiana Figurehead with being sufficiently capable of independent thought as to have a persuasion. She’s like all the other heads-on-sticks in the United Numpties (and western governments); when her lips are moving you know that 1. it’s a lie and 2. the puppeteer’s hand that’s shoved firmly up her jacksie is in motion.
Pity we can’t take DNA from Maggie and Winston, throw in a load from Robert Menzies, and clone a leader with the minerals to sort the place out. Ditching lip-services to gullible warming from all government policy, informing political lobby organisations like Greenpr!cks, WWtF, GetUp et all that they can start paying tax like everyone else and telling the UN to shove their membership fees and slush fund donation requests where the sun don’t shine would be a good start.
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The following needs to be said,
About those not using their head,
Being brilliant and smart,
At some science or art,
Yet by warmists so easily led.
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Club of Rome. So he’s a misanthrope. A misanthropic wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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The real enemy is the man (or men) who create the shortages of food through policy and fear (and sometimes profit), who create fear of pollution and implement policy to limit resources and add cost to production for no worthy benefit, who create the fear of global warming and implement restrictions on every aspect of life. That is the enemy.
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Well said. Thank you.
50
Remember the Flannery Centre set up near Bathurst and named after Gillard’s climate PR man Tim Flannery? Well I took a virtual visit there recently trying to find out if it was still functioning. (I think it is but no idea how many trainees they have enrolled but that is another matter). Ian Dunne’s writings on climate and indeed his prognostications for the politics and economics of the world are presented as the underlying justification and evidence for the Centre. I would thoroughly recommend that all who can should read his document for a better understanding of his “social doctrine”. He mixes facts and fear mongering in a diatribe that sadly reminds me of the socialist diatribes of Hitler and Marx. Scarey stuff.I have put a link below but scroll down after you get there as the page looks initially blank here
30
In the comment above I made an error and the name should read Ian Dunlop (not Ian Dunne)The reference and link is correct as posted.
20
For those not around in 1972, the Club of Rome were responsible for the publication of the book Limits to Growth and promotion of the idea that we can use computer models to see into the future.
The models were hopeless and blew up though there are people who still try to claim they worked.
IMO, Earth systems and global economics are far more complex than we have any hope of modelling usefully in the forseeable future.
The Freeman Dyson interview referenced above is great viewing. He grew up in the depression and knows what suffering shortages bring.
70
Go Thatcher on us? Why break a losing streak and do what Coalition voters want and expect? Next you will be suggesting he clean up or even better, sell, Their ALPBC and Subversive Broadcasting in-the-Service-of-foreigners.
30
Some excerpts from her speech from November, 1989 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817):
“More than anything, our environment is threatened by the sheer numbers of people and the plants and animals which go with them. […] Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more people, and their activities […] But the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level […] Whole areas of our planet could be subject to drought and starvation if the pattern of rains and monsoons were to change as a result of the destruction of forests and the accumulation of greenhouse gases […] the United Kingdom will be establishing a new centre for the prediction of climate change, which will lead the effort to improve our prophetic capacity […] We can then agree to targets to reduce the greenhouse gases, and how much individual countries should contribute to their achievement.”
This one suggests nations should be forced to cooperate: “These protocols must be binding and there must be effective regimes to supervise and monitor their application. Otherwise those nations which accept and abide by environmental agreements, thus adding to their industrial costs, will lose out competitively to those who do not.”
10
Many, perhaps most, AGW sceptics started out accepting the scare. I wrote stuff as recently as 2010 that I now see as naive.
Margaret Thatcher saw it as a way to undermine the miner’s unions so there was a strong element of opportunism there. To her credit she recanted eventually as did John Howard here.
To Tony Abbott’s credit he was an early significant voice that called out the Authoritarian Left as being the architects of the scare. He caused me to vote Liberal for the first time in my life after promising myself after the horrors of Vietnam that I never would. He owes it to people like me (and the rest of the human race) to keep his nerve in Paris – as least as far as following Monckton’s advice and make sure there is an escape clause.
90
Same here dai. As someone who grew up in the working class suburbs of western Sydney I would never have thought I would vote for the Liberal party. That was until the ALP gave up all reason, sold out its working class base, and prostituted itself to the Greens in a disgusting act of political opportunism aimed simply at staying in power.
The least the Abbott government can do is avoid signing us up to a legally binding agreement that will lead to a dismantling of our industrial infrastructure and handing over national legislative power, and money, to the UN.
Power to compel independent nations to follow its orders and a pipeline of money is what the UN is after. AGW or ACC is just a convenient guise by which it can lead the scientifically ignorant and politically gullible to support its grab.
70
Yep. Overrun by the Yuppie Left like rats in a grain store. All narrative and no principles – all mouth and no trousers. Easily led as long as the money is flowing and easily awed by UN posers and autocrats. I gave up on them sometime ago.
40
From my reading, after the fall of the Berlin Wall the far left activists around the world decided to go mainstream. No doubt Julia Gillard will have something to say on this in her biography.
In Australia they penetrated the Labor Party and Greens, with extraordinary success. The volatility of the electorate indicates a state of flux, which can only be remedied by a dose of strong government with principle and vision.
I think Tony has the bottle to see this through.
40
http://www.iandunlop.net/
Ian Dunlop
2014 Candidate for the BHPB Board
“I am a former international oil, gas and coal executive now standing for election to the BHP Billiton Board. My platform is the necessity for BHPB to take greater leadership in addressing the risks and opportunities which climate change presents for the company’s shareholders.”
Doesn’t look like they bought it
http://www.bhpbilliton.com/home/aboutus/leadership/Pages/default.aspx
30
the CAGW architecture now in place is so huge, it would take more than an Australian PM to dismantle it, i’m afraid.
our best opportunity came shortly after Climategate, & it was squandered.
Neil Cavuto of Fox News interviewed former PM, John Howard who – like Bush Jr & many Republicans & our current PM, Tony Abbott – was constantly mocked as anti-science & a denier of CAGW.
Cavuto was nonplussed when Howard failed to take the opportunity to expose CAGW for what it was, as revealed in the Climategate emails. instead, Howard repeatedly used the opportunity to push his long-time personal preference, nuclear energy.
what a wasted opportunity it was. it’s worth reading the entire transcript:
18 Dec 2009: Fox News: Your World w/ Neil Cavuto: Fmr. Australian PM on Global Warming
HOWARD: I think the best way of tackling the issue of global warming is for the world to invest as much as possible, as soon as possible, in finding a technological solution to the challenge.
HOWARD: I think we have to — I think countries that now don’t have nuclear power, including my own, should focus very heavily on nuclear power…
I mean, whatever your view is about global warming, we ought to try and play on the safe side. And the safe side is, at every point, to try and reduce pollution, to try and reduce CO2 emissions going into the atmosphere…
CAVUTO: Well, it might be a focus on the — sir, I’m sorry. It might be a focus on the politics, but, whatever the case, it’s also the focus on a lot of money to address the political concerns.
And it would be a kick in the pants, wouldn’t it, Prime Minister, if, all of a sudden, we discover, if even half of these CLIMATEGATE memos and e-mails that were released, are typical of information that has been hidden from us or lied about, then we could be chasing a goose here that is not real, right?
HOWARD: Well, that is possible.
One of the hexing(sic) things about this issue is that we will all be long dead when we actually know the answer to that question, because, if, in fact, the doomsayers are right, it will be a long time before the ill effects of what they’re predicting are felt by everybody.
If the doomsayers are wrong, and the people who are unfairly described as skeptics are right, it will also be many years before we know the answer to that. So, common sense tells me that what we should focus on is doing things that neither side of the debate can possibly object to, and something that utilizes a clean source of energy such as nuclear power — and it is the cleanest source of energy of all — anything that reduces the polluting impact of the use of coal and gas, things like that, where nobody can really argue…
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/2009/12/18/fmr-australian-pm-global-warming
i watched this interview and i could hardly believe what i was hearing.
30
pat,
You are right about the scale and momentum which is why the get-out clause is so important. Australia and Canada have been seen as the two possible dissenters – flea-weights to be sure but a flea bite can focus the mind.
The Aus govt has called for comments on their lead up to Paris: Setting Australia’s post-2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions – Issues Paper’ at https://www.dpmc.gov.au/taskforces/unfccc
Submissions may not go much further than being sorted by a junior public servant but numbers might count.
70
G’day,
I’m planning to put my oar in there, but find their starting point rather depressing.
Cheers,
Dave B
30
Thanks dai,
My blood started to boil before I’d finished reading paras 3 and 4:
They’re still basing their thinking on appallingly bad science that been provided to them by CSIRO and BoM. The Government has been misled.
The first thing that needs to be straightened out is this nonsense of the BoM adjustments to the official “observed” temperature record. And, that there is strong evidence of no net increase in global average temperature for more than 18 years, notwithstanding a continued increase in CO2-e.
The next thing needed is to give CSIRO a lesson in Chemistry because its reference to “Ocean Acidification” demonstrates that it hasn’t passed the first year of an undergraduates degree in Chemistry.
I accept that the evidence is better for the finding that there’s been a shift in rainfall patterns. However, I am yet to be convinced that the evidence points to this being a result of the increase in CO2-e.
Finally, a 20cm rise in sea-level is likely wrong. There is good evidence available that suggests any rise has been nowhere near the level quoted.
What the Government’s Issues paper needed to do is to be honest with the public and point out that there is a very high level of uncertainty about those metrics.
Then the Issues Paper would have some credibility and place the discussion on a proper, science-based, footing.
50
I’d like to see every submission made public,to avoid mass submissions being made by certain groups that have no substance to them,as we had under the Gillard government. I don’t know if you read the submissions to the Senate committee,if they weren’t labeled as “correspondence” and thus being in-eligible to be considered but some of them were trash,pure and simple.
10
Sam
Yes, the preamble is a bit hard to take to say the least. When a govt sets out frames of reference that clearly go against election commitments it should give a clear statement as to why. Just folding to public service bias and accepting whatever they draft is not good enough.
Michael
I agree. All public enquiries should be transparent, including submissions.
10
Carbon leakage? Really????
I’ve seen carbon leakage in photocopiers and printers… but not in the natural environment, unless you include coal seams, or the Uley graphite mine.
10
Carbon emmissions can be off-set by carbon capture. Russia is already doing that by incorporating their vast forrests as part of their CO2 budget.
There’s a desal plant in Adelaide just sitting around doing nothing and costing taxpayers.
This website Australia.com clearly shows that Adelaide has extensive farming so the soil must be good there.
So why not propose the activation of the desal plant for the expressed purpose of extending the already existing green areas thereby increasing the carbon capture of the region.
The money being wasted on that plant to do nothing might just as well be ‘wasted’ on balancing the carbon budget by increasing carbon capture.
Where there’s a will there’s a way. A little creativity can make it work.
Abe
20
Hi Just-A-Guy,
You wouldn’t need to waste the ‘lecky running that misguide de-salination plant to green the arable land around Adelaide, it would be cheaper and more environmentally beneficial to re-direct the effluent from the Bolivar sewage treatment plant for irrigation.
For the cost of the reticulation system (pipes) one could water the plants with ‘free’ water, provide a nutrient benefit to the plants, reduce the blooming of algae and invasive marine flora in St. Vincent’s Gulf, all without having to waste energy filling Happy Valley reservoir with clinically purified water and the littoral waters around Port Stanvac with hyper saline brine.
…but it probably isn’t a sexy enough monument/folly to score you a gig in the United Numpties.
And the ecotards would moan about all the CO2 liberating concrete you’d use in reticulation pipework.
10
the CAGW architecture.
Fairfax disclosed:
“Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a Member of the Club of Rome”
but Dunlop has many strings to his CAGW bow:
LinkedIn: Ian Dunlop
Director at ContextF Pty Ltd
Location Sydney Area, Australia
Industry, Renewables & Environment
Chairman, Safe Climate Australia
July 2009 – Present
Director, Australia 21 (non-profit organisation started in Canberra in 2001)
2008 – Present
Deputy Convenor, ASPO (Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas)
2007 – Present …ETC
ContextF keeps a low profile, but from Dunlop’s other alliances:
Oct 2010: CO2 Australia: Climate Alliance Conference
Last week our CEO Andrew Grant & I attended a conference hosted by Climate Alliance, a not for profit organisation that educates business leaders on the risks and opportunities of climate change. Around 80 people attended from a mix of industries like finance, local council and sustainability…
H.E. David Daly kicked off the afternoon. He’s the Ambassador and Head of the Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Australia and to New Zealand. Discussing the EU response to climate change, the strongest message to be taken from his presentation was the fact that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is working…
***The Chair of Safe Climate Australia Ian Dunlop discussed the lessons to be learned from the ‘Limits to Growth’ – a controversial 1972 book modelling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and a finite supply of resources. The book challenged one of the time’s core assumptions that the Earth was infinite and would always provide the resources needed for human prosperity. Most of the scenarios pointed to a major economic crisis happening in the early 1990s. So how do we compare the limits with 38 years of reality? Ian points out we haven’t changed much, and blames a large part of our inaction on uncertainty. Quoting US General Gordon R Sullivan: “If you wait for 100% certainty on the battlefield, something bad is going to happen.”…
Ian says the Chinese and Indians are surpassing us in the race to a greener economy and if we’re not careful, Australia could be left with stranded assets once climate change bites and demand for high carbon products drops.
The Director of the Consilience Energy Advisory Group Liz Bossley ended the presentations with a practical review of international carbon trading…
http://www.co2australia.com.au/climate-alliance-conference/
(CO2 Australia Managing Director is Dr. Chris Mitchell.
Prior to joining the CO2 Group full time, Chris was the Foundation Director of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research – a partnership between the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology.Previously CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting, Chris chaired the Victorian Climate Change Minister’s Reference Council on Climate Change Adaptation, and is on the CSIRO’s Environment and Natural Resources Sector Advisory Committee.)
Safe Climate Australia is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee…
Ian Dunlop is on the Board of Directors of Safe Climate Australia, as is Dr Joe Herbertson AM, Executive Chair of Crucible Carbon Pty Ltd, which conducts consulting, research and business development activities in support of sustainable, carbon neutral futures, with a current innovation focus on low-capital cost and scalable biomass processing technologies. He was formerly the head of BHP’s corporate research laboratories, and an Executive Director of The Natural Step in Australia. He is Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University and Visiting Fellow at Macquarie University.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is on the Advisory Committee of Safe Climate Australia, as is Professor John Wiseman, Director of the McCaughey Centre, Melbourne School of Population Health, University of Melbourne.
http://www.safeclimateaustralia.org/about-safe-climate-australia/board-of-directors/
Dunlop features in a few Climate Alliance links online. link to their homepage from the earlier link above:
ClimateAlliance.org.au
Top Story: UK Leaders agree on climate change action
Coal-fired power plants will be shut down and Britain will bind itself to tough new targets for cutting emissions (links to Times article by Ben Webster of 14 Feb 2015, beginning: “Coal-fired power plants will be shut down and Britain will bind itself to tough new targets for cutting emissions, according to a joint statement signed by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband. Leaders call for a “fair, strong, legally binding, global climate deal” to be signed at a UN climate change summit in Paris in December.”
Second Story: Vattenfall – German Lignite company decides to get out of lignite.
Centre Featured Story:
State of the Union Address – Climate Change
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address. Climate Change remarks; link to Youtube speech starting at 42:50 or read the excerpt (transcript) here.
Bottom of page:
Carbon Credits Program
Climate Alliance is now licensed to resell carbon credits to its members, partners and associates. CAL is a member of Carbon Trade Exchange.
a 2011 SMH article – On climate change, it’s all-out war – by Kenneth Davidson, reported on Dunlop speaking at Climate Alliance’s National Conference in Melbourne that year, where he announced Australians only had five years to spend their carbon budget, according to figures from a peer-reviewed climate science report published in 2009 in Nature.
30
Pat
Ian Dunlop looks like a “band wagon jumper” following the latest fad. But we all know saying about bandwagons –“if you think you see one , you are too late”
20
I should have added to the last post that if cyclic models of temperatures are right and we are facing an imminent down-turn it won’t just be a few minor dissenters who want to opt out.
There are portents in recent weather. Canberra has just had the coolest summer I can remember and we now have a spell of winter weather – hopefully brief but the rain is welcome. The NH has had bitter winters. Sea ice is on the rise.
30
Freeman Dyson, arguably the world’s foremost ‘living’ scientist who taught at Princeton at the same time as Albert Einstein, has some sobering words for climate alarmists. This is a must for all to view and an wake-up to the positives of increasing CO2….
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Conversations+that+matter+Earth+actually+growing+greener/10944052/story.html
…. Maybe Tony could “do a Dyson”
20
Freeman Dyson in his interview above is saying how the amount of carbon taken up by plants depends on them having enough Nitrogen to let them grow faster and, I’d imagine, enough water as well.
In responding to the Government’s consultation:-
” The Australian Government values your views. You are invited to make a submission on Australia’s post-2020 emissions reduction target, …s:
• What should Australia’s post-2020 target be and how should it be expressed? In responding to this question you could consider the base year (e.g. 1990/2000/2005), the end year (e.g. 2025/2030), the type of target and why the suggested target is preferred.
• What would the impact of that target be on Australia? In responding to this question you could, for example, consider the impact on our economy, jobs, business and on the environment.
• Which further policies complementary to the Australian Government’s direct action approach should be considered to achieve Australia’s post-2020 target and why? ”
You should consider replying, even if it’s just to add weight to the numbers saying like don’t waste your time pi$$ing in the wind because nothing we can do can make any significant difference. You might say that.
Or you might suggests basing the entire program on projected re greening of Australia, because we know CO2 in the atmosphere is set to keep on rising naturally and out of our control, so we are as well to be making the best of it. So get planting, get fertilising and get irrigating. Spend anything that must be spend on the GCF on paying Australia’s farmers to grow, to manage their own crops & plantations and have cattle cr@pping all over the place.
Hasn’t Oz got one whole lot of Red Centre to start greening, with all that free CO2 around.
I wonder if that’s where they might have been coming from all the time, with their ‘direct action’ approach, doing as Howard is reported to have suggested further above, something ‘both sides can agree on’ ?
Drought relief might also be considered as qualifying for GCF funding, as it is needed to get the crops & livestock growing again.
The bleeting Lefties will carry on whingeing & bleeting while Oz takes full advantage of this “Carbon Crisis” to restore agriculture.
Whatever your response it seems important to say something to get those numbers up who are saying something other than cut our emissions.
60
Iza, I already submitted mine. I said something like that, for example that Australia’s greenery is currently sinking several times our emissions more than it did in 1990 due to CO2 fertilisation. I suggested that the Australian government only accept a Nett CO2 deal, where sequestration increases from CO2 fertilisation are taken into account. I agued against all the things that hurt people and suggested strongly that only things that have other community benefits are done, for example upgrading coal stations to USC coal generation, or aiding the invention of thorium nuclear power which creates a market for our 30% of known world reserves of thorium, or even extending electric rail into the bush a bit.
One point to make to the government. Australia’s carbon tax acheived an efficiency of $5310 per tonne. If you calculate the cost to acheive zero CO2 based on this demonstrated efficiency it comes out to $110 Trillion per annum and that’s assuming that future CO2 reduction (when the low hanging fruit is done) costs the same as mitigation now. That’s about 2.2 x world GDP. The point needs to be made that these “price signals” are ridiculously unaffordable and that only affordable schemes with real verified economic benefits should be attempted. Reforestration is one of those since plantation timbers and orchards have economic value.
30
OT – Philip Adams expalins why he puts his faith in science 🙂
00
Yes, but…
As a famous sceptic, and former leader of the Australian Sceptics, he has adopted a warmist position. Without, apparently, even applying a first level of scepticism to the IPCC claims.
IMHO he has become a warmist believer, to the exclusion of science.
Cheers,
Dave B
10
Also the Bible encourages us to explore why we believe,not accept blindly,as he has done. If he claims to “discover truth” he hasn’t done much discovering,if any at all.
10
Perhaps it’s something they add to the water at the ABC?
10
dai davies –
it may sound like a cop-out, but i do not have the expertise to make a submission, but i am hoping those CAGW sceptics who do will get involved.
btw i’ve long realised nuclear was always part of the IPCC plan, and it was supported by the IAEA & other nuclear bodies, so John Howard was not talking outside the box, so to speak, when he went on Fox:
1990: IPCC: Climate Change The IPCC Scientific Assessment
Sponsored by WMO/UNEP
Foreword by Dr John Houghton, Chairman, IPCC Working Group I, July 1990
Annex: EMISSIONS SCENARIOS FROM WORKING GROUP III OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
In Scenario C a shift towards renewables and nuclear energy takes place in the second half of next century…
For Scenario D a shift to renewables and nuclear in the first halt of the next century reduces the emissions of carbon dioxide, initially more or less stabilizing emissions in the industrialized countries…
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
May 2007: IAEA: Climate Change Report Looks at Nuclear Power, Other Options
The IAEA supports the IPCC´s work in various areas, including technology options for the mitigation of climate change…
The IAEA, through its laboratories, Department of Nuclear Science and Applications and Department of Nuclear Energy, supports and contributes to climate change studies. The Planning & Economic Studies Section in the Nuclear Energy Department specifically addresses international negotiations on climate change and sustainable development, and contributes to the work of the IPCC…
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/climate-change-report-looks-nuclear-power-other-options
however, whether or not you are in favour of nuclear per se, the contents of the Climategate emails should have been the perfect moment for John Howard to call out the “science” & he didn’t. not at all.
30
worth a reminder, because it is not only the developing world that is being thrown under the bus in this insane attempt to kill the competition, coal:
28 March: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: No one is talking about our utterly mad energy policy
Last week, scarcely noticed south of the border, came the news of the premature closure of Britain’s second largest power station. The giant Longannet plant in Fife, with its 2,400-megawatt capacity, can still supply two thirds of all Scotland’s average electricity needs.
The reasons given for Longannet’s closure early next year were partly the crippling cost of the Government’s “carbon” taxes and the additional £40 million it is being charged for connection to the grid…
***But Longannet’s real crime is that the 4.5 million tons of coal it burns each year make it the biggest CO2 emitter in Scotland.
Which is also, of course, why we will hear nothing about Britain’s energy future in this election: because all the major parties are signed up to the policy set in train by Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act committing us to
reduce our “carbon” emissions by 80 per cent within 35 years…
The policy on which they are all agreed, set out in the Coalition’s “2050 Pathways for tackling climate change”, centres on three main steps, each more bizarre than the last. Step one is that we should “decarbonise” our
economy, not just by closing down the coal and gas-fired power stations that supply more than 70 per cent of our electricity, but by chucking out all those gas appliances 90 per cent of us use for cooking and heating…
When the wind doesn’t blow, the only power to keep our lights on, our homes heated and our electric cars running would be that from those supposed new nuclear power stations.
***At the present rate, with only one new nuclear power plant dubiously in view by 2024, producing electricity four times as expensive as that from coal, not even tens of thousands of diesel generators could produce enough
back-up power to keep our computer-dependent economy functioning at all.
(Last Tuesday evening, wind was producing less than 1 per cent of the power we were using)…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11501235/No-one-is-talking-about-our-utterly-mad-energy-policy.html
30
it’s always about killing coal:
7 April: ABC: The World Today: Great Barrier Reef can be saved if climate change addressed: report
The James Cook University scientists have released a six-point plan to save the reef, including Australia shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy and a recasting of the role of the reef’s Marine Park Authority.
PROF TERRY HUGHES, JAMES COOK UNI: So we would actually encourage the Government to strengthen the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
The Government cut the funding to the Marine Park Authority in the last couple of years, we’d like to see it properly resourced and given more responsibilities not less for managing the Barrier Reef for the future…
So the emphasis in the 2050 Barrier Reef plan is that managing the reef while at the same time opening vast new ***coal mines in the Galilee Basin and I just don’t see that as being realistic.
We’ve got to make a choice whether to properly protect the reef or not…
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4211666.htm
10
a tale about Lake Baikal:
Ice of Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is its late freezing that takes place only in the middle of winter (usually, 1 January), long after the beginning of severe Siberian frosts…
The lake is freed of its ice imprisonment around May – June when its shores turn rosy due to blossoming of rhododendrons…
http://www.bww.irk.ru/baikalclimate/baikalice.html
periodically, for years, a CAGW alarm over Baikal appears in the MSM:
May 2009: CNN: Climate change threatens Lake Baikal’s unique ecosystem
The report’s authors say Lake Baikal’s climate has become measurably milder over recent decades, and that annual precipitation is expected to increase.
The average ice depth in the lake is believed to have decreased in recent decades, and the ice-free season to have increased…
Shorter periods of ice cover is expected to slow the growth of the lake’s algae, the authors say…
Shortened periods of ice cover and changes in the ice’s transparency may also harm the Baikal seal, the lake’s top predator and the world’s only exclusively freshwater seal…
however, i just saw the finals of the “Ice Run”, & the ice was thick enough for bike “enthusiasts” to train and then compete on the Lake – which looked almost like an attempt to melt the ice to fulfil the CAGW prophesies!
6 April: The Adventurists: Baikal Ice Run Victory Parade & Party
The bout between Dennis, representing the Australian Army, and Matt, representing the Royal Air Force, and both representing team On the Rocks, was so stirring that several among the group, male and female, declared
themselves to be pregnant as a result. Matt won…
Sign up for the 2016 Ice Run begins soon.
http://www.theadventurists.com/the-jibber/2015/4/6/pioneers-partying-capabilities-tested
from MotorBikeTimes: There are nine international teams that have willingly put themselves in this situation. They were each asked to raise £1,000 for charity, with £500 of the proceeds going to the Adventurists nominated charity Cool Earth. They already managed to exceed the goal raising over £45,000.
—
Vivienne Westwood has been Cool Earth’s most committed supporter for more than four years
10
Lake Baikal continued:
from Cool Earth: Vivienne has donated more than £1 million to Cool Earth. She’s galvanised her friends to join the cause, including Kate Moss, Lily Cole, Sadie Frost and Stella Tennant, and has dedicated two of her fashion shows to Cool Earth…
Vivienne has designed a range of T-Shirts exclusively for Cool Earth…
the founders of CoolEarth are Johan Eliasch & Frank Field:
Wikipedia: Johan Eliasch
Johan Eliasch, born in Sweden in 1962, is the Chairman and CEO of Head N.V., the global sporting goods group, and is the former Special Representative of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
He is chairman of Equity Partners, Aman Resorts and London Films. He is a non-executive director of CV Starr Underwriting Agents. He is a non-executive chairman of Investcorp Europe. He is an advisory board member
of Brasilinvest, Societe du Louvre, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Capstar, Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment, Centre for Social Justice and the British Olympic Association…
Johan Eliasch served in the British Government, as the Special Representative of the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Deforestation and Clean Energy from 2007 to 2010. He served in different roles for the Conservative Party between 1999 and 2007, as Party Deputy Treasurer (2003-07), Special Advisor to the Leaders of the opposition (William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith) and shadow Foreign Secretaries (Lord Michael Howard, Francis Maude and Michael Ancram) (1999-2006)…
***In 2006, he co-founded Cool Earth, a charity he co-chairs, which sponsors local NGO’s to conserve endangered rainforest and has over 120,000 registered members.
In 2007 he was commissioned by HM Government to undertake an independent review on the role of international finance mechanisms to preserve the global forests in tacking climate change, ‘The Eliasch Review’ ,which was
launched by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street in October 2008. The Eliasch Review has served as a guideline for REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) as part of the international
climate change convention…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Eliasch
Wikipedia: Frank Field
Frank Ernest Field is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead since 1979. From 1997 to 1998, he served as the Minister of Welfare Reform, before leaving the Government, following
differences with Prime Minister Tony Blair. He went on to become one of the Labour Government’s most vocal critics from within the party on the backbenches. After Labour’s defeat in the 2010 election, he was given the role of “poverty czar” in David Cameron’s coalition government…
Two nights before the Conservative Party leadership election in November 1990, he visited then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street.
He advised her that her time as Prime Minister was drawing to a close and that she should back John Major to take over the role. His reason for doing so was that he felt that her Conservative colleagues would not tell her straight that she could not win a leadership contest. Following this
meeting, he was smuggled out of Downing Street’s back door. Two days later Margaret Thatcher supported John Major for the post, and he went on to be Prime Minister…
Field’s political stance has been somewhat at odds with the rest of the Parliamentary Labour Party in recent years, and he has embraced more social conservative ideas…
He is a member of the advisory board of the free-market think tank Reform, and of the generally conservative but also pro-freedom of speech magazine Standpoint. In May 2008, he said that Margaret Thatcher “is certainly a
hero” and that “I still see Mrs T from time to time – I always call her ‘Mrs T’, when I talk to her.”…
Field believes strongly in fighting climate change.
***He co-founded the charity Cool Earth with Johan Eliasch…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Field_(politician)
hardly likely they need the donations of the bikies of Baikal!
again…this is the CAGW architecture that we expect Tony Abbott to dismantle!
and it’s why i’m not into partisan politics. it’s a fool’s game.
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Breaking News.
David Cameron finds backbone and espouses Conservative policy.
“In a surprise move, The Conservatives have placed the reform of energy policy at the heart of their manifesto launched today pledging to repeal the loathed 2008 Climate Change Act in the first session of the new parliament should they be elected.”
– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/tories-place-energy-policy-at-heart-of-manifesto/#sthash.4HIEiNji.dpuf
“http://www.thegwpf.com/tories-place-energy-policy-at-heart-of-manifesto
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Sadly,I see that is dated first April.
The giveaway is the reference to 50p off a pint of beer.
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Oh bum,
1. Credulous
2. Hopes raised then dashed
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From the JC blog:
Dr. Curry:(“While there are substantial uncertainties in our understanding of climate change, it is clear that humans are influencing climate in the direction of warming.”)
Salvitore del Prete:”That statement is not right ,because in the time before human so called intervention the climate has changed much more abruptly then it has over the past some 150 years.”
I agree but only in the false “direction of warming”. We observe that very clever earthling toolmakers, can damn near screw up anything! Normally the temperature control system of Earth can compensate for earthling AW [snip]. It takes the eminent wealth of not so clever governments, to stress this Earth temperature control system.
Governments not Earthlings are the threat! 🙂
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