More adventures in science from The Guardian. “No more beer, chocolate or coffee: how climate change could ruin your weekend”.
Obviously, since coffee, hops, and cocoa are all plants which like arctic weather and frosts, and grow mainly in Greenland glaciers, a warmer world will devastate these essential foods. I’m in tears just thinking about it.
Likewise, being alien silicon lifeforms, these plants will struggle as the pollution called carbon dioxide rises from 0.04% of the atmosphere to 0.05%. Oh the pain. If only these plants used CO2 as a basic building block like every other plant on Earth.
It must be tough being so much smarter than the rest of the world.
….
Somehow, somewhere, The Guardian become The Guard-Onion. I just can’t take these people seriously anymore. Dear Karl Matheisen, what were you thinking?
No more beer, chocolate or coffee: how climate change could ruin your weekend
Climate change is the biggest threat to all of civilisation our species has faced since the 80s. Scientists say rising seas will envelope major cities around the world while heatwaves will bring wildfires and torrential rains bring floods. And the global economy is stuffed.
But as if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that climate change might even mess up that most holy of traditions – your weekend.
Breweries for climate propaganda?
Thankfully, 42 breweries have weighed in to illuminate us about the true scale of the threat – we might actually run out of beer. From California to the Czech Republic, hop production is being hit by rising temperatures and a lack of water. Beer could also start to taste worse, according to the Czechs, but their beer is rubbish anyway.
The full list of Breweries signing the “Climate Declaration“
If you like one of these breweries, why don’t you write to them to let them know that a weak pandering beer that appeals to the thought police leaves a bad taste in your mouth. You’d rather drink a strong beer that stood up to nonsense. Or you could just send them the image or link to this page?
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There is just too much to parody in this one article. “Chocolate in any form, will no longer be available.”
Give me a break.
Readers, send in your suggestions for funny images with text. I’ll see what I can do. Just start with what The Guardian says and take it literally. Follow that to its logical end, you can’t go wrong.
Adapted Beer Glass image: wikimedia Marcin Zeilinkski
Articles related to Crops and Peak Food Production: All the agricultural food scares ignore that plants are carbon life forms that depend on CO2 to grow. Corn crops pull CO2 out of the sky as soon as the sun comes up, but slow down by lunch time as the CO2 levels fall. They pull out 100lbs an acre in the first three hours of light, but slow down because CO2 levels fall too low. More CO2 means more plant biomass and production. There is no sign that peak grain production is behind us, but plenty of models have forecast that. Nor is there any sign that slight changes in protein content of grain or crops will make much difference in the real world either. (Protein lost from 100g of “future” rice can be made up for by eating one extra chick pea.)
h/t Colin
the biggest threat to all of civilisation our species has faced since the 80s
Since the 80s?
So, in the 80s there was a BIGGER threat to our civilisation?
Good thing we defeated it then, whatever that was. My guess was shoulder pads, big hair and saxaphone solos midway through your music video.
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I suppose that since the 80s means that we had bigger threats in the 60 and to’s. I presume that the threat in those dark days was the MAD theory. If you fire nukes at me I’ll fire back at you….
I suppose 2YK has been forgotten, it was suposed to me a civilazation ending bug, inserted in all computers by power hungry IT programmers. Another fizzer, some people made a lot of money out of it, I was watching my old electric clock on new years eve, expecting it to melt down in front of my eyes! Nothing happened…bummer.
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Actually the 80’s was very eclectic in many areas, but I will not forget the horror that was and still is the Minogue sisters.
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They’re the reason your TV has a mute button.
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I thought this was the way the world was supposed to end in the 80s:
http://www.endofworld.net/
Something about that presentation always tickled my funny bone – some quotable lines too.
30
That threat was Disco. It very nearly destroyed Western Civilization as it was. I was a very near thing, after all.
Think back to ABBA, if not for Men At Work, we all would have been DOOMED!
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No, MudCrab. Didn’t you know the Big Bang happened in the 80s?
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Ah, the 1980s…Big hair and unforgettable music! LOL!
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq4j1LtCdww
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbm6GXllBiw
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If it gets warmer, the hops grow better, the afternoon is warmer and the cold beer more enjoyable….whats not to like?
They must be getting desperate..it reminds me of those fringe dwellers you get in alternative communities….
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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse here,remember us,Conquest War Famine Death we haven’t disappeared.
Yes we know that climate change can be a real bummer especially an ice-age,that’s when we are at out best,but when the world is warm all that extra plant growth puts a real downer on Famine and well fed people don’t tend to die so readily nor will they want to conquer or start wars,please people get with the program and always remember
Cold is Your Friend
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Saxophone: an ill wind that nobody blows good.
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Perhaps this heralds a return to the old doctrine of [serve the] “Women and children first” ???
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Chocolate RUINED !!
Oh dear! You really do have a serious problem coming up, Jo!
My suggested solution;
Stop reading the Guardian and all will be well with chocolate, beer and the world again.
I think I’ll go and have another coffee before that goes off as well.
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Stop reading The Guardian? Are you kidding? This stuff is better than The Onion.
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Perfect!
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I wish I could claim it for myself, but some smarty on another blog beat me to it.
In reference to the book that Joanne co-authored, “Climate Change: The Facts” (My copy is signed by Mark Steyn), the commenter observed that if Michael Mann had written it, its title would be “Climate: Change the Facts.”
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Jo, please stop.
It is bad for you.
If it can ruin beer, chocolate AND coffee it is very, very bad for you.
It is enough just to know that it is there and that certain insects are attracted to it.
Please stop reading the Guardian – unless of course the scadenfreud is just too compelling in which case you are excused.
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ROM, I should have taken your advice. Not only did I read this rubbish I read several comments. Please someone tell me we have reached Peak Stupid. Between The Guardian and Bob Ellis followers I really don’t think the world can take any more stupid.
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me@home June 12, 2015 at 11:12 am ·
“ROM, I should have taken your advice. Not only did I read this rubbish I read several comments. Please someone tell me we have reached Peak Stupid. Between The Guardian and Bob Ellis followers I really don’t think the world can take any more stupid.”
97% OF ALL earthlings are all pedaling as fast as they can in the direction of “more stupid”! You cannot resist, You shall be assimilated! Earthlings merely,and mistakenly, thought that only entropy must increase! 🙂
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We are now faced with one of our greatest challenges:
Who is Australia’s dumbest politician? The field is so strong.
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toorightmate.
We got you whipped even before you start. We have Obama and nobody can go lower than that.
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YOU ESS AY YOU ESS AY… hey wait, oh damn.
00
Never fear…..I have a lovely open fire I run on the weekends in winter….love it…..however I am always in need of old newspaper to get it going, so any spare Guradians, send ’em my way….althoughthe neighbours might complain of the scent of rising BS in the air as it burns…he he
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Yes, unfortunately with so much going to online it getting difficult to light the fire.
News Ltd has stopped delivering in my area (the Australian, & local papers). I now have to pickup the free local papers when I go shopping. Australia post is coming less frequently and even the junk mail has declined. I might have to revert to that old tricks of lighting a fire for a picnic – a little diesel or kero.
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cementafriend @ # 2.2.2.1
If you need a bit of light try the WW1 soldiers trick;
GLOWING IN THE TRENCHES
[more – ]
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No Guardian? Not to worry. My father used those empty cardboard milk cartons to get the fireplace going. A match would light them off easily and the wax they were covered with burned real hot. All you needed were a few smaller pieces of wood for the milk carton to light off and you had your evening fire.
Today it’s not wax but some plastic formula or other but they still burn real hot.
Other items found in your trash might be suitable also. All sorts of possibilities are around if you look for them.
10
That’s done it for me. No coffee????
I am voting against climate change!
20
mired in bog in Bonn. more good news, tho Oxfam looks for some ***intervention!
11 June: Phys.org: On final day, climate talks seek exit from text mire
A long round of UN climate talks closes in Bonn Thursday with negotiators grappling for a way out of a textual bog…
But after 10 days, negotiations in Bonn barely advanced in clearing a draft text of a thicket of problems.
The text is now just “five to 10 percent shorter” than at the start of the round when it numbered nearly 90 pages, said observer Romain Benicchio of campaign group Oxfam.
None of the many issues bedevilling the complex process have been agreed, he said…
Even the agreement’s legal status remains undecided…
Benicchio said it was likely that, on the final day, the talks would seek a faster way to streamline the text.
***”They may mandate the (negotiations’) co-chairmen to come up with a draft text that will really work on issues of substance,” he said…
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-day-climate-exit-text-mire.html
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Why don’t they just post it here ?
I’m sure it could be made short work of in notice at all.
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The public should be very aware of this nefarious organization “Oxfam” and never ever donate money to this so called charity !
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I kept a full page spread, paid for by Oxfam and quite a few other ‘charities’ that appeared in the Daily Telegraph (UK) a few years back. I blacklisted the lot and have added a few others since, including World Vision and Cafod. Unfortunately, the cutting is buried in my ‘archives’ until we settle and unpack fully. I’ m fairly sure that WWF was on it.
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I’m curious to find out why this went into moderation.?!
[Annie, there is a list of things that put you into moderation. Many times the usage is fine and a moderator approves the comment. This appears to be what happened to your comment above. Only you can tell if anything was changed in the approval process.] AZ
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No, nothing changed…the mystery remaineth.
I did mean to add, originally, that the full page ad was pro-warming and I was very upset at the waste of money that was given for needy people being spent on it.
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Ye gods! Thank goodness peanut butter milkshakes are not threatened. (Just in case you’ve all forgotten: there were Guardian reporters on the Ship of Fools expedition to Mawson’s base in Antarctica that was meant to document the disappearance of sea ice. Naturally, sea ice expanded in extent and iced in the expedition ship. One of the Guardian reporters blogged about his acute state of misery and how he was missing his “peanut butter milkshakes”. Ultimate deprivation!).
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Stop this inhumanity!
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There is a Porter available from a brewery in the U.S. called “Sweet Baby Jesus” that has a chocolate and peanut butter taste, sort of like a Reeses peanut butter cup in a beer.
I guess this manages to cover both scenarios.
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Beer, Coffee and chocolate are so passee, in the near future we’ll all be hooked on some form of methamphetamine according to the MSM.
Breaking news: Melissa McCarthy busted for drugs, 20 kg’s of crack found in her underpants!
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Tacky. Very, very tacky…but funny.
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If there is a skerrick of truth that beer could be effected, I will jump the barbed wire fence immediately to join the warmists.
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Oh lord, they tried this a few years back for chocolate on valentine’s day.
I dont suspect the brighter portion of the poppulation treat it as anything else but a tragic parody.
Pity about Sierra Nevada. I won’t be buying that delicious beer anymore.
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Very nice beer;good Porter and a superb American PA with Amerillo and Cascade aroma.Californian also.Say no more!
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Yeah it’s a pity. Bells Two Hearted Pale Ale will still be top of the list for me thank goodness.
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Jo’s list of breweries shows most located in the USA. Back some years when all Australian breweries were Australian owned one could say the further one traveled away from Australia the worse the beer (except for the Foster’s Lager that was made under license in Scotland and later stupidly sold off). US was the furthest east or west and had the worst beer. It still has lousy beer, matched by the rubbish beer originating in Mexico.
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American beer is like making love in a canoe , in other words it’s f#@&ing close to water .
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I don’t drink alcohol, so I wouldn’t know one beer from the next, but running through the list of signatory companies they look to me to be mostly boutique breweries – that is, the sort of brands that appeal to young urban professionals who are compelled to adopt fashionable symbols for no other reason than to satisfy their need to socially advertise what they see as their virtue and high-minded superiority to ‘beastly ordinary people’. You know the type: the naive, self-obsessed narcissists who read the Guardian and believe in global warming.
So, it appears this is just another example of cunning capitalists indulging their simple-minded market niche to make some easy money.
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“In the next 40 years, the temperature in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, where 70% of cocoa is grown, is set to rise by 2C. That’s going to make it too hot and dry for cocoa trees.”
On the other hand “Predicting the future climatic suitability for cocoa farming of the world’s leading producer countries, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire” 2013 P. Läderach, et al concludes:
Our refined statistical crop suitability model predicts that, as a consequence of the drier climate, the overall climatic suitability of the current cocoa growing zone in the two countries will decrease, though not as drastically as predicted by an earlier model. Also, the suitable area will shrink, with especially areas bordering the savannas in the north and south of the current forest belt becoming marginal. Climatic suitability for cocoa will increase in some higher elevation areas, such as the Kwahu Plateau of Ghana, as a consequence of the temperature increase, but these areas are of very limited extent. More significantly, the climatic suitability is also predicted to increase in the southwest of Côte d’Ivoire, already a major producing area, where the predicted increase in evaporation would make a very wet climate more suitable for the crop and especially its post-harvest processing and conservation.
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Both coffee beans and cocoa is grown in Australia and New Guinea,a warmer world means more rainfall in the tropics and sub-tropics.
We will always have good old cold Tassie to grow hops.
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I recently planted 8 coffee bean bushes in my yard (Vancouver Island, Canada) and they are doing great. They are next to my 4 banana trees (planted over 20 years ago), 2 figs (10 years ago), and 9 tea bushes (2 years ago), 1 eucalyptus (14 years ago) and 6 palms of various types (planted at various times in the last 25 years). All doing well. I should fill in the empty spaces with cocao beans as they will likely do well too. (Citrus does not do well on Vancouver Island and never has but the oldest fig tree in Canada is located at HMC Dockyard Esquimalt, planted in the late 1800s when it was an RN base, and looks great.) I vote in favour of global warming, but nature doesn’t care a fig (pun intended) for our wishes.
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Watched Catalyst yesterday. Selfish humans worry about coffee, beer, chocolate etc when koalas are going to die out because excess CO2 will ruin the nutritional value of the gum leaves they prefer? Who could possibly argue against global warming when they hear about the plight of these poor koalas? As most plant life improves with extra CO2, I’ll have to head over to CO2 science and check out these recalcitrant eucalypts. I’m more than a little sceptical about Catalyst these days!
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Cattle piss…..
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Did they perhaps mention that it would no longer be necessary to cull excess koalas on Kangaroo Island?
And what is to stop them switching to other gum leaves? They have been known to gorge on pine needles, which as any Catalyst believer knows are instantly toxic to animal life. Unfortunately the koalas just survive for years looking like sunned mullets.
NOW if Catalyst had warned that stunned mullets would be in danger from rising CO2 levels, it might have been slightly more believable.
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Actually Koala’s can exist on diet without gum leaves if they are not weaned on their mother’s milk, because the gum leaves are very much an addictive substance to koalas. When they don’t eat gum leaves they can eat fruit and nuts and other leaves quite happily.
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Ian Nairn
Darn it! You just ruined a perfectly good excuse to do some genetic engineering on the cute stinking gum-tree critters.
What are you against progress?
😡
40
A genetic modified omnivorous Koala,the Drop Bear of myth becomes reality.
10
You know it’s end times when …
Zombie koalas protest at ANZ bank over funding of Whitehaven coalmine (the guardian.com)
. . .
> Years ago the loonies stood on street corners with signs saying “the End of the World Is Nigh” …
00
This is great news. Every time there’s one of these shock predications of “soon we’ll run out of X”, the world becomes awash in the stuff.
So we can actually expect: more beer; more chocolate; more coffee.
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Actually, since chocolate burns maybe we could run our power stations on the stuff, instead of that nasty CO2 we would have the aroma of melting chocolate, people would be lobbying for emissions to increase….
90
Chocolate could be used in power stations and will probably be as efficient as wind/solar, but they’d fudge the figures again anyway, locally the Mars confectionary company was approached to trial this idea but they wouldn’t have a bar of it.
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Is this comedy? Do people actually believe there is a threat to beer production or growing hops? Isn’t this an average anyway? The plants do not grow all year, but grow when the conditions are right, so a change in an average hardly matters.
No this is comedy. It shows you though that the serious thinkers and the Guardian readership care most about beer, chocolate and coffee.
I have noticed that many news services have become quite loony, click bait. Last week an amazing story on how ‘they’ make the holes in Swiss cheese. Then amazing things people have said. Zingers. How to get a cheap breakfast in Botswana or how to not drink too much in Mallorca or how to travel business class for free. Then women who wear amazing dresses and just stun. Or what some mass murderer ordered for breakfast. Nonsense news. Childish, meaningless, idiotic news. Not a word about anything that matters. Climate Change fits right in. Those poor Polar bears.
[don’t know why it was caught either. Perhaps “murderer” was the word.] ED
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Cannot work out why this is in moderation. Perhaps the mention of Swiss Cheese? Or Botswana? Or Climate Change?
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Nope. Must have been childish nonsense. Or even Polar bears. The real puzzle is how these were strung into a coherent story.
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Perhaps the Swiss Cheese story was holy writ?
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You should be ashamed of yourself!
40
… and Kim Kardashian’s book of selfies hits the best seller list. Nothing surprises me any more.
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Thank you Jo, for the opportunity to enjoy a hearty laugh, or even a sly snigger.
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Meanwhile back in the real world we have find that hop production has been INCREASING in the USA as demand continues to rise. When you bring new areas under cultivation net yields per acre WILL decrease for a short period while the vines grow to maturity which usually takes around 3 years.
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Are the current cocoa, coffee bean and hop growing areas the ONLY places in the world that these items can be grown.
Tassie needs more industry after clearing out their non-green approved manufacturing so maybe their extra 2C will allow them to grow these products.
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‘The traditional wine regions of France, Chile, Australia and California are all going to become too hot to supply your favourite plonk.’
Global cooling will have a negative effect on French wines, that’s all we can say with any certainty.
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It just means the season starts earlier. The drinking as well. Really what stops crops is the winter, not the summer. Grapes cannot get enough sunshine and warmth.
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That is correct, but wine making pretty much disappeared from Britain during the LIA.
Frosty weather can destroy vineyards, so we are forced to fight back.
http://winefolly.com/tutorial/winemakers-use-cannons-fire-fans-fight-weather/
40
What is going to happen to those cold area wines that are grown in the likes of Mildura and Griffith,these places are well know for the low temperatures especially the cool summers!
00
As an exgrower from the area, the yield was usually 3-4 times greater than in the good regions but the quality kept the price to less than a quarter of good regions. The vines can’t grow without irrigation and excessive heat can ruin a crop but only if they are underwatered.
The hotter weather makes the grapes grow better but the bigger berries mean less flavour. Spring frost was always a bigger concern.
I assume that its the same with hops and coffee. Isn’t coffee native to Ethiopia?
00
Yippie! Canadian ice wines will become even more popular, driving prices higher.
00
What is going to happen to those cold area wines that are grown in the likes of Mildura and Griffith,these places are well know for the low temperatures especially the cool summers!
00
It’s the ‘Guardian’. Sigh. More global warming idiocy in print. It’s been going on for a long time.
Here’s a letter from a clearly irritated reader which it published on 25th May 2011:
“Why do you say climate change could deal a fatal blow to the beleaguered ski industry in Scotland? (1707 V 2011, G2, 20 May)? It is articles like this that could deal the fatal blow. The ski industry is not beleaguered. My business is highly profitable, employing up to 15 technicians, instructors and sales staff. We are currently expanding to create more jobs and more ski-hire facilities. We have a newly developed cross-country ski facility which provided 67 skiable days in the forest last season and 120 the previous season. We have experienced a continual growth in skier numbers over the last five years, bucking the economic woes of the UK, which may one day be the Former UK.”
William M. Wilson, Glenmore Outdoor, Aviemore
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What Bill Wilson doesn’t realise is that the Grauniad is trying to ruin his business, so they can say “See, I told you so.”, even as the Scottish ski fields are waste deep in powder snow for 6 months of the year they will still be talking it down. He should sue them. In fact the greatest mystery in the whole global warming fiasco is why the GBR tourist operators don’t sue Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the now defunded Climate Commission, the CSIRO and the BOM, and why Mr Wilson and his brethren don’t sue the Met office, The Guardian and the CRU. I don’t get it. People sue at the drop of a hat these days, and class actions have a way of gaining traction among the Legal beagle brigade, given their voracious appetite for an unearned dollar.
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Winston: I’ve often thought that were I a compensation lawyer, I’d be reading up on all aspects of the global warming tale – and waiting for the (dare I say it) storm to break. There’ll be money in them thar legal actions, for sure!
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It won’t take something new to wipe out the African chocolate industry. It’ll just take another mega-drought like the six which have afflicted the region in the last 2700 years. Just the conditions of the early 1980s were enough to have the Ghana industry reeling.
Really, if one of these climate soothsayers could point me to the century, decade or even year free of disastrous flood, cyclone, heat, cold, fire etc, I’d be confounded. Name the time when climate was at all clement or ‘stable’. Go on and confound me.
190
Fairfax’s Peter Hannam has been ***BOUGHT to France to shill for the Paris meeting; then gets his propaganda in The Guardian, as well as in Fairfax, under the “Climate Publishers Network” deal! no shame in the MSM – and they wonder why they’re dying:
11 June: Guardian: Australia should cut carbon emissions faster, says François Hollande adviser
Nicolas Hulot says Tony Abbott’s government should double the long-term rate at which it’s cutting carbon emissions, reports the Sydney Morning Herald
Peter Hannam for the Sydney Morning Herald, part of the Climate Publishers Network
***(bottom of article: Peter Hannam is in France as a guest of the French government)
Hulot, a well-known French environmentalist who ran against Hollande as The Greens candidate in the 2011 elections, said the recommended targets should be finalised by September at the United Nations.
“We want a global agreement that is legally binding and that will allow us to not go beyond the 2C limit,” he said…
The official, whose full title is a special envoy to the French president for the protection of the planet, said he was “saddened” by the stance on climate change taken by Prime Minister Tony Abbott…
“If Australia were not to respond postively during the meeting … it would be a tragic signal that Australia doesn’t care very much,” he said…
Still, “it would be mistaken if you think prosperity and wealth will continue if we allow climate change to take hold,” he said…
“Tomorrow’s market will not be a carbon market but a non-carbon one,” he said, adding, “You can be the subject of history or you can write it.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/11/australia-should-cut-carbon-emissions-faster-says-francois-hollande-adviser
having a French temper tantrum, Monsieur Hulot?
71
So Australia should cut emissions faster Mr Hollande? No advice for China which is building coal fired power stations so fast they are increasing by 100% of Australia’s output every year and promise to continue until 2030 when they can stop? No words for India?
Why does the French President think it is acceptable to criticize Australians for heating or cooling their homes by burning their own coal? Haven’t Australians and Americans done enough for France? We have bought $100Bn of useless French desalination plants for which we will be paying for 25 more years and which are largely unused? Or is that Gallic humour?
170
The EU and China are the main producers of CO2. Our 2% is pitiful. What possesses people to attack Australia as the villain. Of all the CO2 in Australia, 98% comes from overseas. The EU should pay us a carbon tax.
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We had enough of their atom bomb polluting atmospheric tests in the 1970s in contravention of every international agreement. Remember the Rainbow Warrior Mr Hollande? Your agents who set the bomb went home, but not the photographer in the boat.
110
Nobody really cares about a group of eco nuts who got done in.
00
We just need a couple of our pollies to face down the french Tdef. Historically they have a penchant for capitulation.
80
Rollo,
What was it? 500 unwashed Englishmen and a profligate, newbie king whose previous claim to fame was for propping up a barstool and flop-house gymnastics, defeating 30,000 Frenchmen who folded like a cheap suit when their supply of foie gras and champagne was cut off. Something like that, one St Crispin’s Day, from memory. Ever since, the phrase “boiling the frog” took on a whole new meaning and significance. Hopefully, our Tony took notes.
70
Winston
Around that event. There seems to be a French sympathiser in the mods at WUWT.
Describing a dodgy item as “drawing more long bows than there were at Agincourt” gets censored.
40
I hasten to point out that there are Parisians and there are Frenchmen.Parisians are generally held with contempt.Something to do with bien pensant and all that.
40
Glen Michel,
Yep! And let them eat Aux Trois Petits Fours, les éclairs sont chocolatés à la main.
30
zoot alors
00
I think the contempt that Parisians hold for the rest of the world (and the rest of France) far exceeds safe limits. Having said that, in 3 years of life in Paris, I have only had 1genuinely rude waiter, and have slowly become immune to the habitual muttering and complaining done by people queueing in shops waiting to be served. Whilst it could be said that only dead French people don’t complain, underneath that, they are polite, funny, and very tolerant of my always-slightly-inadequate French (once they realise I am not English or American)
80
James, my wife and I find that the French are OK once they know we aren’t Poms. My wife wears a kangaroo on a a chain to point at in case of any confusion. This usually results in imitation Skippy jumps or rugby passes. It’s too much to try to explain that I’m an AFL tragic – Go The Roos – rather than a Rugger Bugger.
10
We are English and drove around France with our car labelled GB. Amost without exception we found the French utterly likeable and charming. We loved our two holidays there. I’d really love to go there again. Vive La France!
10
The Australian troops in North Africa during WW2 were convinced that the Italian tanks had 5 gears, four of them “reverse” and one “forward”.
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Clean up your own backyard …
When France’s air is as clean as Australian cities, then they can lecture:
March 19, 2015, yahoo.news; Pollution-choked Paris introduces emergency traffic measures
70
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Vacances_de_M._Hulot
Oui?
10
Hang on, where’s the 97% statistic so beloved of the Warmistas. Looking at the list of breweries from a UK point of view I only recognise one, Guiness, so on that basis having never heard of 41 of the 42 breweries 97.6% of them are complete unknowns – so famous statistic found. I am disappointed that Guiness should have asociated themselves with this dubious bit of research, but I shall console myself with Beamish or Murphys in future if it all gets too much.
82
Looks like global warming is fighting obesity now. The fattest nations in the world unite, Australia, uk and USA. No more gyms or exercise. Will loose weight proportionally to the temp increase.
60
TdeF –
the Hannam lecturer from Paris was Monsieur Hulot, an adviser to President Hollande. ABC had already similarly shilled for the French Govt in April, via Monsieur Lecourtier!
13 April 2015: ABC: France urges Australia to keep climate commitment ahead of UN summit
By the National Reporting Team’s Jake Sturmer and Lisa Main
French ambassador to Australia Christophe Lecourtier told the ABC that France, which will host the pivotal UN Summit on Climate later this year, wanted Australia to put an “ambitious” commitment on the table sooner rather than later…
***When asked by the ABC, neither the Foreign Minister nor the Environment Minister would directly respond to the question of “whether Australia remains committed to the goal of keeping long-term temperature rises below two degrees”…
On Wednesday the Government’s flagship climate policy Direct Action gets underway with the first auction of the $2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
However, some analysts believe the scheme is likely to fall short of meeting Australia’s 2020 targets.
Hugh Grossman from RepuTex said, at best, the scheme will get Australia halfway there…
Former Liberal leader John Hewson does not believe that directly purchasing carbon though the ERF is the most effective and economically sound way for Australia to meet its 2020 targets…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-13/france-urges-australia-to-keep-climate-commitment/6384796
***love how the Govt refused to respond as to whether it’s committed to keeping the world’s temp rise to under 2c! ABC journos are quite mad.
note the Repu Tex comment in the above as well. (Repu Tex has practically lived at the ABC for more than a decade, much like Christine Milne did). then ABC has a John Hewson quote as if he has no connection to Repu Tex.
2003: ABC: Top companies ‘fail’ green test
Most of Australia’s leading 100 companies have little concern for the environment according to a new index measuring corporate social responsibility…
Eighty-six companies performed poorly on the inaugural RepuTex index, which showed many companies still believed they had no role to play in protecting the environment.
Nineteen independent groups such as the Wilderness Society, the Australian Council of Social Service and the Institute of Chartered Accountants rated the companies on corporate governance, environmental and social impact and workplace practices…
***The RepuTex Rating System was created by former Liberal leader John Hewson and former Standard and Poor’s credit agency director Graeme Lee.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-10-13/top-companies-fail-green-test/1492416
61
Thanks. Really if we stopped burning coal and sat in the streets with no coal, no cars, no food, no industry, no hope, China’s output would keep rising regardless, a hundred times more than this saving every year compounded. A new Australia every year. Even their human output CO2 (1/3 ton pa for 1.3Billion people) far exceeds our entire output of CO2 from coal! Sarah Hansen Young should go there and tell them to calm down or else.
Then how do we commit to stopping a 2C temperature rise assuming this even makes sense? A 1% slowdown in China exceeds our 100%, but no one is urging China to stop. In fact the IPCC and Barack government are praising China for taking the lead. In what? Windmill production? Solar panel manufacture? Manufacturing generally?
Has no one in the ABC heard that the world is not actually heating? Or is Climate Change a quite separate issue, also caused solely by evil (Western) capitalism?
81
[And the stranger winks uneasily at the shivering man]
[Then in a harsh whisper … ]
[As he steps nearer the overpowering stench of Big banking assaults the man’s credit rating!]
[His putrid breath rasped when he abruptly stopped speaking]
.
.
[He turns sharply on spying a Government representative, mumbling under his sourly fetid breath]
50
The bad breath thing is a problem. Dental probably.
30
A different Monsieur Hulot, or as I like to think of him, the original, and the best.
30
The difference is that the original Mr Hulot was totally silent, a real triumph in humour continued by Rowan Atkinson. This Mr Hulot should emulate his namesake.
60
smile!
2005: ABC Inside Business: Sorting the good from the bad
Reporter: Luisa Saccotelli
LUISA SACCOTELLI: (Laurel Grossman is) a reluctant corporate whistleblower, the woman behind the RepuTex ratings service, which attempts to sift the good companies from the bad. It’s a mission which has seen her ***pilloried mercilessly by parts of the business lobby, though her revamped model is starting to earn its place…
LUISA SACCOTELLI: Laurel Grossman is herself the very model of a modern-day social activist. A former education advisor, she pioneered one of the first models to rate a company’s social responsibility. It was ***flawed, she now concedes. But in its refinement, she’s positioned herself as an arbiter of business reputation at the forefront of an evolving corporate consciousness…
LUISA SACCOTELLI: RepuTex rates all the top 100 Australian companies and New Zealand’s top 20, solicited or not, and then undertakes other ratings work on request for reportedly around $25,000 a package…
http://www.abc.net.au/insidebusiness/content/2005/s1410758.htm
a while back, ABC reported this brilliant piece of analysis by Repu Tex:
2013: Scrapping the carbon tax will lead to electricity price rises: report – RN Breakfast – ABC Radio National
Bret Harper, the Director of Research at advisory firm RepuTex which was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund to write the report, says that without proper investment in renewable energy—made possible by a carbon price—wholesale electricity prices could rise by between five and ten per cent by 2020…
‘Renewable energy, when it’s put onto the system, tends to cut household electricity bills, not push them up,’ he told RN Breakfast.
‘It represents a very low-cost form of energy that displaces other fossil fuel generators which have very high fuel costs.’…
and now today in AFR:
11 June: Australian Financial Review: Mark Ludlow: Australia over-estimated carbon emissions by 200 million tonnes, says expert
Australia is going to produce a lot less carbon than the federal Department of Environment predicts over the next five years because electricity prices are going up and demand is slowing, according to a consulting firm.
RepuTex executive director Hugh Grossman said the federal government had over-estimated its carbon emissions projections by more than 200 million tonnes, a mistake that could help the government by making it easier to reach its 2020 targets..
A weak economy has led the expected emissions figure to be revised down…
A RepuTex report found the Coalition’s $2.5 billion emissions reduction fund – the centrepiece of its climate change policy – will allow the government to achieve about 120 million tonnes of abatement.
***But the fund needed to be topped up with new funds – or the government needed to introduce a tougher safeguard mechanism to force companies to cut back emissions – or the carbon market could collapse as early as next year…
http://www.afr.com/news/politics/australia-overestimated-carbon-emissions-by-200-million-tonnes-says-expert-20150610-ghkcye
what chance CAGW sceptics being given a voice by ABC or Fairfax?
in ABC’s case, they are TAXPAYER-FUNDED and should be representing all Australians surely. when will they be made to abide by their Charter?
61
Your credibility is shot Joanne.
Czech beer is wonderful.
60
What?!
I’ll cut her some slack only because I imagine she prefers wine.
Czech Pils is the worlds finest beer.
90
Mark,
I suppose it depends on whether you prefer pilsner, lager, ale, mild ale, small beer, porter, stout, IPA, brown ale, malt liquor, or mead.
Also see here
40
tom0mason:
Yes I prefer them.
generally lagers over ales, Belgian ales however are very worthy and I make a pretty decent bitter. However, the first beer, if available would be a Pilsner Urquell.
I also prefer Scotch, gin, bourbon, tequila, rum, cognac, etc.
I really prefer anything that you buy 🙂
20
“Pilsner” is more correct; the German name of the (West) Bohemian city of Plzeň. A lovely city still recovering from socialist “management”. Unlike East Germany, Czechoslovakia (as it was at the time) didn’t have that many rich cousins to make up for 4 decades of structural “management” and certainly not the pension funds of 60 million West Germans to invest.
Not that it worked out much better for those in the former East Germany anyway. Their wages are higher but there’s deep dissatisfaction; in part because, as I see it, the West Germans insisted on helping instead of allowing those in the East to rebuild by their own industry and getting a grip on entrepreneurial capitalism at their own pace. The Czechs are much better off in that regard; having to do much of the hard slog themselves and placing value on what has been achieved.
Pilsner is a very nice beer. It is for drinking cool (“cellar temperature”); unlike English ales which seem to be served slightly warmed. Don’t serve warm beer.
P.S. I didn’t get a chance to open a bank account when I visited Pilsen back in 2011. If I had, I’d have a real Czech account.
10
Czech, and mate!
80
PLEEEEEESEE stop “pun”-ishing us!
80
Chris, Jo was quoting the article that “Czech beer is rubbish”.
20
Ah! So glad you cleared that up.
00
Say it ain’t so, breweries signing up to saving the planet with a bunch of feckin’ latte-sipping greenies whose face would crack in two if they ever had a decent laugh about anything.
What has become of the valour of the drinking man, O Hercules?
Pointman
60
Forgot the apt music – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxYTILdWRaU
P
40
So cry into your empty glass here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1l40SUGabg
30
What are the breweries going to use to put the bubbles into their products if not carbon dioxide ????
The public should ban purchasing all their bloody beverages !
What morons!
20
“Climate change is the biggest threat to all of civilisation our species has faced since the 80s.”
I am not even sure if his first sentece is grammatically correct. Idiot.
80
If you have a look at the comments 80%+ are scathing ot the articles content.
The fact that publications like the Guardian keep pumping out the climate junk despite how unpoppular it is with most people on earth proves that they have an agenda.
Same with the rest of the media.. They don’t care what the people think, because they are not for the people.
131
Will ‘envelope’ major cities? How do you trust a publication that has such a poor journalistic standards?
80
This is a great video showing a real rising star in the UK parliament. Just shows what someone who knows the facts on climate can do against puffed up “copy and paste” politicians.
https://youtu.be/ytzTMqs8XKA
100
A very enjoyable post, Mike – thanks. It was nice to see the opposition MP put in his place by using the IPCC’s own words.
Let’s hope a few MPs start to take a hard, critical look at the dangerous man-made global warming stories. I liked the way he laid the energy costs on the line as well. A good speech.
70
Thanx Mike, its heart warming to see a politician standing up for the truth in a hostile environment.
60
We have a politician who hates windfarms, not many of them in Scotland.
“There’s Tony Abbott at it again, now he’s anti-windmills.”
Bill Shorten
30
Wind Farm owners ==== Bird Murderers…….
10
Thanks for that Mike.
Since my position is that CO2 has zero effect on global temperature I winced a bit at his opening, but overall I thought he was great.
I’ve forwarded it to my local member, and to SMH, with hope but no confidence.
Cheers,
Dave B
21
good stuff old bean
00
This about sums up your post.
http://www.zumiez.com/womens/tops-t-shirts-tank-tops/obey-womens-worldwide-propaganda-burgundy-baseball-tee.html
21
Well climate science has been dancing with their beer goggles on for decades now.
61
We “could” run out of things. That is hardly a scientific statement if we could ever find one. Quite simply climate change is impossible to deny because everything is climate change not matter what. Isn’t the current term meant to be “climate wierding”? or something silly. First it was global warming, then climate change, so they keep changing the definition and moving the goal posts when thing don’t go their way.
50
I love the Weasel Words they use !
Could,Might, Possibly etc…..
What a joke !!
20
Having worked in science for quite a while, I assure you that such “weasel words” are necessary and normal. The problem is how quickly in AGW science possibly becomes could, then probably and definitely, as you go from the paper, to the press release, to the MSM report, and then to policy. Conversely, all contraindications and error bars are carefully omitted. This isn’t science, it’s propaganda.
51
When climate-change claims are outrageous,
Which for warmists its spread is contagious,
That the climate they fear,
Harms their favourite beer,
Is for newspaper sales advantageous.
111
A man is not drunk as long as he can lie on a floor without holding on.
120
Darn. I guess they forgot that beer is made under closely temperature controlled circumstances. Any household refrigerator can take care of the rest of the problem.
Of course that only works while we have reliable electricity…
I think I’ll worry more about the electricity problem than climate change.
On the other hand, Solar Beer has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I can see the label now… 😉
80
You could get a kero fridge 😉
20
In light of these beer producers’ deep concern, I suggest avoiding all the beer varieties listed–they are LOADED with pressurized CO2! If you really care about our planet–for heaven’s sake, don’t open their bottles and release all that CO2! Oh, the horror!
50
So, no more XXXX ????
Would that be a promise or a threat?
40
xxxx- queenslander for beer.Their education system has improved somewhat so there is no need for xxxx anymore! Schooners were also introduced to QLD some years ago at my behest.
20
Beer might be on the next hit list, considering that it emits co2. It could be classified as a pollutant.
60
Yes, beer might be on the endangered list.
It can’t be long before these loons want to outlaw all carbonated drinks.
70
My comment on Bishop Hill from yesterday was:
I live in Washington State. Hops (& wine grapes) are big items just to the south of where we live. Awhile back the hops folks had an issue with disease – now history. Production is up.
The proliferation of “craft beers” has increased the demand for hops. How that is a problem is a mystery.
Water supply in the region is low this year. Late season water is from snow melt and this past winter did not have much – but the reservoirs started out full. So not much to worry about for hops this year.
Some think the El Niño pattern could last through next winter and that next year might also be a low water year. Maybe so. Maybe not so.
Anyway, here is the link to the most recent report:
http://www.usahops.org/userfiles/image/1421356603_2014%20Stat%20Pack.pdf
Cheers.
60
An Australian criticizing Czech beer?
60
Author of the article is a former Tasmanian, Karl Mathiesen, now living in London having received a Quaker-value secondary education before entering UTas to receive a non-science education. (Info publically available via LinkedIn)
Besides offering his authoritative opinion of stuff he doesn’t understand to the The Graun, he also recycles for Grist; most recently trying to dismiss the “pause”.
00
Favorite old joke:
Why do the Brits drink warm beer? Because their refrigerators are made by Lucas.
New twist on old joke:
Why do Australians drink warm beer? Because their refrigerators are powered by renewable energy.
150
…refrigerators made by Lucas – also known as the Prince of Darkness?
20
Noting British vehicles with Lucas electrics installed, that is where the Prince of Darkness came from, headlight failure. But I am also aware of a Range Rover parked at a campsite a long way from civilisation being burnt out, the fire commencing with smoke coming from inside the dashboard.
30
As the previous owner of an MGA* and two other British cars, I can assure all US readers that Lucas Electrical was every bit as bad as “Prince of Darkness” characterizes them.
* The MGA came with a crank, which I employed on more than a few occasions, much to the amusement of other drivers. Anything less than a full 360º turn would accomplish nothing.
10
Does The Gruniad actually have empirical evidence its readers are beer swillers or is this merely modeled?
Their inner London frappé coffee readers are most unlikely to drink beer or even boutique beer. No.
They predictably drink lager, with a reduced hop flavour, so they probably wouldn’t notice the theoretical decline in hops until it was too late.
Poor luvvies.
30
Breaking news: Climate Change ready to steal Christmas!
50
That’s all we need,a hot snowless Christmas here in Australia,what will the children do?
00
What will the children do?
Let the eat Blue Ribbon or Bullards!
00
That’s all we need,a hot snowless Christmas here in Australia,what will the children do?
30
The older way to report settled science —
http://www.saveportland.com/Climate/
40
Does anyone know how much CO2 Guinness releases into the environment? Perhaps its time to demand the beer and soft drink industry be decarbonated.
60
‘We’re already on the way to peak chocolate. By 2020, world cocoa demand is set to outstrip supply by 1m tonnes.’
In the author’s mind the free market doesn’t exist, doesn’t seem to understand that where there is demand there will be supply from somewhere else.
110
It’s ok…really. The new chocolate extraction methods, choco-frac, are opening up the tar chocolate fields even as we squeek 🙂
Jim from Maine
100
O/T but I thought you’d like to know a company is taking on the ABC in court over misreprentation of the A2 milk product. So it will be argument in court on science and observational evidence etc.( Similar to what an AGW case could follow)
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/a2-sues-australias-abc-over-bogus-claims-b-174055
80
Introducing …
Drought Draught: it’s the taste of climate change (executivestyle.com)
“Australia is facing a crisis, headed towards a future where beer will be decidedly average and climate change will literally leave us with a bad taste in our mouths. A time when artificial supplements are the norm and water restrictions a way of life.”
30 April, 2015, radionz:
A Timaru cropping farmer has received long-awaited confirmation that he’s the new world record holder for the largest barley crop yield.
50
“Australia is facing a crisis, headed towards a future where beer will be decidedly average…”
Wow!! Australian beer is going to actually improve!!!!
50
Do any of the listed breweries have Tim Flannery on their board of directors?
50
Relax folks!
Nothing much has changed in the newspaper publishing game for at least 1853.
About the only real change has been the near universal access to the sources of the WWW, the Internet and the ability of the ordinary citizen to check for themselves the veracity of a news paper item.
A development that is rapidly destroying the media’s ability to severely distort the real facts in favour of that section of the media’s particular agenda.
The media articles are written, produced and published by a whole range of individuals each of whom despite protestations to the contrary have either unrealised or hidden and covert, even overt and usually well promoted agendas as has the Guardian as an example.
The distortion of the truth and real facts through the written and printed and published word has been a feature of our times when it really got under way with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg [ 1395 -1468 ].[ But not the first with printing; here and here ]
A lot of tracts and news sheets , many being no more than propaganda in format were published in the following decades and centuries and had a significant effect on the numbers of conflicts and destruction of the old ways raging across Europe during those following times.
In modern times the use of news sheets for the promotion of propaganda, distortion of the real facts , selective enhancement of the supposed evils of the opposing parties and so much more that is so evident and so despicable in today’s media got under way in 1853 with the American Yellow Press where the two major newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer went head to head in a news paper war where the real truth in any reporting was an incidental accident.
They are believed by some historians in being instrumental in creating the war psychology in America that led to the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Hearst and Pulitzer vs Spain; Let the War begin!!!
—————
Not much has changed today nor with human nature will much change much tomorrow or for all the days after that in the future generations to come.
50
“Not much has changed.”
I remember that even as a 13 year old kid translating Julius Caesar and Cicero I could see that politicians and lawyers hadn’t changed in 2000 years. Even so I spent the next 30 years of my life in the confident expectation that modern communications, be that telephone, radio, TV or Jumbo Jets, would ensure that we had no more wars. I thought that wars were the product of ignorance.
Then I began to realise that people still would not change, there will be more wars.
Some people, God bless them, are still trying to save us. See #50.
40
I didn’t know Julius Caesar, but Cicero was a really nice bloke. I went to school with his auntie.
00
Well done! Thank you!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/contribute_to_the_overheating_of_the_warmist_campaigner_buy_a_copy_too/
21
‘Pretty cool. A book I helped to write is now the top-selling book on environmental science on the Amazon Kindle list. Good reviews, too. Just the news to drive warmists nuts.’
Andrew Bolt
31
“…start with what The Guardian says and take it literally.”
That way, madness lies.
40
more smoke & mirrors:
11 June: Reuters: RPT-In twist, Obama emissions plan satisfies industry, worries greens
By Valerie Volcovici
For two years, President Barack Obama has used his executive power to impose new rules to cut carbon emissions, targeting cars and power plants, buoying environmentalists and infuriating industry.
His latest foray – regulating commercial aviation – had the opposite effect…
But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not immediately propose new regulations. Instead, it signaled it would implement a global emissions standard being developed by the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that is due to be released next year.
Those rules are expected to apply only to ***new aircraft designs beginning in 2020, leaving most of the world’s existing fleets unaffected for years to come…
That was precisely what worried environmentalists, who warned that relying on a global agreement forged under UN auspices seeking consensus would be doomed to produce weak rules…
Commercial aviation accounted for three per cent of overall U.S. emissions and 11 percent from the U.S. transportation sector in 2013, the EPA said. The U.S. industry was responsible for nearly 30 percent of global aircraft emissions in 2010, the latest year with complete global emissions data…
“The ICAO standard won’t deliver substantial reductions because they are setting a standard that 90-95 percent of aircraft already meet,” she said, adding that planes tend to stay in service for 20 to 30 years…
But some experts want the new standards to apply to any plane delivered to carriers after 2020, rather than simply for ***newly designed aircraft…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/11/usa-aviation-epa-idUSL1N0YX00720150611
10 June: Breitbart: Ben Shapiro: Obama Cracks Down on Airplane Emissions, Buys Massive New Air Force One
So the Obama administration wants to crack down on emissions from airplanes. Except, of course, if President Obama is aboard. Then, it’s a different story. The Air Force has now chosen a $367 million Boeing 747-8 (before upgrades) that runs 4,786 square feet; Business Insider calls the plane a “palace in the sky.” It’s the longest airliner ever and flies 8,000 nautical miles at a clip. The interiors are glossy and gorgeous, including leather couches, big screen TVs, top-of-the-line side tables, a state room that would make the MGM Grand envious, a huge office, and a conference room…
As for emissions, the current Air Force One burns 5 gallons of jet fuel for every mile flown, amounting to 21.1 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per gallon. The new Air Force One supposedly lowers fuel consumption by 14 percent. Nonetheless, the new Air Force One will rack up the emissions: one flight from Washington D.C. to Florida six weeks ago emitted more carbon than 17 passenger cars would in a year.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/10/obama-cracks-down-on-airplane-emissions-buys-massive-new-air-force-one/
21
Vice spins the headline but provides a few inconvenient facts:
12 June: Vice: Rob Verger: The Obama Administration Wants to Clean Up the Airline Industry
“Globally, aviation is responsible for about 700 million metric tons of CO2 per year,” Daniel Rutherford of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research organization, told VICE News. In fact, if the worldwide aviation industry as a whole was ranked as if it were a country, it would be the ***seventh-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, trailing Germany, he said.
“It’s currently unregulated at the global level, and overall emissions are expected to ***triple by 2050,” Rutherford added.
American planes alone comprise 29 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry globally, the EPA said…
https://news.vice.com/article/the-obama-administration-wants-to-clean-up-the-airline-industry
10 June: Toronto Sun: Lorrie Goldstein: Harper plays the climate game
It’s more reliable to judge politicians by what they do rather than what they say…
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, summit host and the driving force behind the declaration, has been increasing her nation’s use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, to power Germany.
As a result, 45% of Germany’s electricity now comes from coal — and much of that from a particularly dirty form called lignite — compared to 30% for renewables.
U.S. President Barack Obama also signed the decarbonization declaration.
But Obama recently approved oil drilling in the Arctic.
Under his administration, the U.S. has become the world’s biggest producer of oil and natural gas.
Obama has boasted about approving enough oil and gas pipeline during his presidency to more than encircle the Earth, except, hypocritically, for the Keystone XL.
Under Obama, U.S. coal exports to Asia and Europe hit record levels in 2012. (They’ve since fallen back somewhat).
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who also endorsed the G7 communique, has been a fierce defender of developing Canada’s oilsands and said it would be “crazy economic policy” to regulate them when oil prices are dramatically down…
Harper may have had a sincere conversion to belief in man-made global warming since then, but I suspect he remains a skeptic.
In any event, given Harper’s fierce, contemporary defence of the oilsands — despite global criticism — why would he agree to a document calling for the end of fossil fuel use by 2100?
The answer is that calling for decarbonizing the global economy 85 years from now costs him nothing politically, just as it costs Merkel, Obama and the other leaders of the G7 (the U.K., France, Italy and Japan) nothing.
The declaration is meaningless given that the G7 leaders provided no road map for getting to a decarbonized world by 2100, long after they will all be dead…
For Harper, joining the call for decarbonization is a political tactic for the October election, enabling him to appear to be on side with political opponents Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau, no matter how much he disagrees with them on carbon pricing, which they support and he opposes.
It will be interesting to see if Harper can keep a straight face.
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/06/10/harper-plays-the-climate-game
31
Thanks pat (my bolding)
As I have been saying, journalists know journalism, and very little if anything about engineering, and hey, why bother even checking when you need to sensationalise something.
Germany’s new USC coal fired plants are using that new technology to ensure lower emissions from their Lignite fed USC coal fired power plants.
The coal is pulverised, crushed to a talcum powder cosnsistency, prior to being injected into the furnace.
The waste heat from the generation process is now being used to dry the coal prior to injection, and emissions from these Lignite fed plants are the equivalent of the new tech USC plants fed by black coal, and the black coal fed USC plants have a significantly lower CO2 emissions rate than older style plants using the earlier technology from the 70’s.
It’s amazing how technology always advances, eh!
So fast in fact, that journalists can’t keep up.
Tony.
60
Well…yeah, sorta.
A few problems. First, the jounalists don’t want to “keep up”. They don’t believe there’s anything to keep up with/on. It’s all so simple and straight forward…dare I say even “settled”. You many have read/seen the recent article where 30 journalism students were asked how they would handle a “skeptic’s” point of view. Each of them said they would never print it, and would never give it the time of day, as it would just take up valuable space/time from “real” issues and “real” science.
No…there was a time (not in a galaxy far far away) when journalists were taught that they knew nothing about anything, and their job was to go figure it out, and become an expert on a subject, using investigative techniques. To trust NOTHING that ANYONE said. To double, no TRIPLE check every source, every so-called “fact”.
No…media/jounralists are no our friends.
30
In all the write ups about Port Augusta closing, they neglect to mention that is 60 years old.
We should be paying homage to the guys who mixed the concrete – that it lasted so long.
Still, a bit more wind power will not worry SA – send more GST please Mum.
00
Should we follow the Guardian claim,
That some beers will not taste the same,
Send those brewers a line,
That we’ve now switched to wine,
In support of their climate-change aim?
81
There is always Scrumpy!
10
presenting the very latest from fabulous Ms Christiana Figueres! much, much more at the link:
11 June: CarbonBrief: Leo Hickman: The Carbon Brief Interview: Christiana Figueres
CB: How would you define success in Paris and what are the obstacles to success?
CF: Well, obviously, success is always in the eye of the beholder. So, I’m sure that if you asked 200 people, you’d get 200 different answers. But, from a big picture, what is success? I think success is a guiding framework that will act as a North Star, if you will, for both increasing resilience and decreasing emissions, in an inverse relationship to each other…So, to me, the heart of the challenge is how do you decouple GDP from GHG? How do you support, in particular, developing countries to continue their growth: to bring their population out of poverty but to do so in a low-carbon, high-resilient way. If that is mapped out in Paris, and if the financial support for developing countries to be able to follow that path is made evident in Paris, then I think we have success.
CB: On that final night in Paris, what do you anticipate to be the issues that are still being discussed and negotiated? What are those key issues?
CF: I think, clearly, one of the very very difficult issues is the financial support for developing countries. Not because we don’t know what that is, but because there are challenges in making that evident… Financial flows occur without necessarily being tagged, just like you can tag a photo now on the internet, right. But that’s not the way finance occurs. You can’t really tag it – this is climate finance or this is not climate finance. It’s much more complicated that that. And increasingly we see blending of instruments, of financial instruments to support the financial cost of any initiative, of any investment. So, it’s a much more complex issue than we thought it was at the beginning…So, both because of the complexity, but also because there’s not a black and white answer to it, it’s going to be very much a, well, what is going to be on the table that provides comfort? So it’s a little bit hard to pin down and, frankly, it’s the developing countries that are going to have to decide, are they comfortable?
CB: The IPCC says that on current emission trends the world will use up the carbon budget for 1.5C in under a decade. Is 1.5C still politically possible?
CF: You know, it’s very interesting because the 1.5C and 2C came out of Copenhagen and most of the thinking and planning and policy design that has occurred since then has been targeting keeping us under 2C, so below 2C. And it’s only until recently that there has been a renewed concern around that, to find out is the 2C actually going to be appropriate, in particular, to protect the most vulnerable populations. Or should there be a ratcheting down to the 1.5C? It remains to be seen and is very much of a conversation right now…I don’t know that it is possible to say right now are we going to end up with 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9C? But it’s got to be within that range. There is no doubt that it has to be below 2C. How much below 2C – and it’s very obvious that lower temperatures provide more security and more safety. That is unquestioned.
CB: Treaty, protocol, legal instrument, outcome of legal force: does the legal form of the text matter, and what level of bindingness should the agreement have?
CF: If you ask governments about that question I don’t think that they would be able to answer that in one phrase. Because I think, contrary to the Kyoto protocol, this legal instrument that is being built here will not have one level of legal bindingness – and it’s interesting that you already use that word because it’s a word that we’ve actually created, it doesn’t really exist…but once we have a Paris agreement I don’t think that the whole agreement is actually going to have the same legal nature, but rather there will be several components, key components, that will have different legal nature.
CB: We’ve got the papal encyclical, the divestment movement, the growth of renewables, early evidence, as you’ve said, that emissions can be now decoupling from economic growth… Given external events, could the world tackle climate change without the UNFCCC?
CF: I think it is – first of all, it is already tackling climate change, right. Because you see already capital beginning to shift. Very, very interesting announcements from systemically important financial institutions…So you see both public and private capital shifting, and that is exactly what needs to happen here in order to change the economy. Now, if you ask me would that capital have shifted without a UNFCCC process? Maybe – but not now…But this is not about obeying the timing of the market, or even the timing of development of technology. This is about obeying the timing of science. So the UNFCCC, one of the very important things that this process has to do, is to raise the voice of urgency…in addition to the urgency, is the fact that this has to be done in a way that not only responds to the forces of the market and the development of technology, but this has to be done in a way that protects the most vulnerable. That would not occur without the UNFCCC.So, those two components are key and they do lead to a different outcome. An outcome that is much more directed by the moral imperative and the scientific urgency.
CB: Has the introduction of carbon budgets, that working group one of the IPCC gave us back at the end of 2013, been helpful to this process? …
CF: Well, I think what it has done is reminded everyone that we do have planetary boundaries. That we’re not here working with limitless resources. So, the concept of boundaries is very, very helpful and has worked in tandem with the sense of urgency. That is why we have a sense of urgency, because we only have a limited budget. And it is a budget for the rest of the history of mankind. This is not a budget for the next ten years, for the next hundred, or for the next thousand. That is the budget that we have for the rest of the history of mankind. That is a daunting concept to even begin to incorporate into decision-making. So, in that sense, I think it has brought a sense of ***realism and a sense of urgency into this discussion.
CB: But you’ve already said that of the INDCs that have come in already it looks like they don’t add up, or aggregate, to deliver 2C…
***CF: Completely clear.
CB: So it won’t be, say, UNEP? You’re going to that that internally. OK. But that is going to be challenging because of the apples and pears comparisons between the ways that certain countries have delivered their INDCs against certain baselines, etc…
CF: Which is exactly why we are going to say what we have here is a fruit salad. We have apples, we have pears and we, in fact, even have ***bananas…
CB: Finally, one last question: the French presidency have said they are willing to come forward with a text if progress here is too slow. Would that be constructive and welcome from your point of view?
***CF: Well, I must say that that was a very unfortunate interpretation of what the French presidency has said. And they have clarified I don’t know how many times. What they are saying is that a) they remain neutral in guiding this process and they are permitted to encouraging and shepherding this process to the end. And b) that they are committed to the work that is being done by governments currently under the guidance of the co-chairs – and you see them here working very, very hard supporting the work of the co-chairs. They are not going to come with their own text. This is not a Copenhagen 2.0. They are not going to come with their own text…But guidance from the president once we get to Paris is very different from saying they will put a text on the table that they have invented from nowhere. That is not the case.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/06/the-carbon-brief-interview-christiana-figueres/
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What a laugh !
This can be added to the list of other things supposedely caused by the global warming SCAM.
A (Not Quite) Complete List Of Things Supposedly
Caused By Global Warming:-
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html
The purveyors of this drivel should joing the circus.
Bloody clowns the lot of them !!
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Your list is incomplete Angry. They missed the following tragic AGW spinoff.
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Everyone and his brother seems to have a horse in this race. The trouble is, I can’t figure out what the ultimate prize is.
Is it prestige? Is it money? Is it self-satisfaction? Is it some dysfunctional need to impress people about your great credentials in a field no one ever gives a second thought to?
The best reason I can come up with is to be an also ran. If others have a horse in the race, I better get my horse in there too, lest I be left out — that sometimes very ugly human need to fit in with the group.
Besides, you wouldn’t want your mum (mies) to get hurt now, would you? 😉
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I know, it’s pretty lame. But I haven’t had enough coffee yet.
10
Not Lame at all but a rather fundamental question there Roy.
And nobody amongst the skeptics knows the answer and amongst the climate cult followers, not much point in asking that question as you would undoubtedly be informed you are that covering of every possible contingency, a “Denier”.
Denier of what, who the hell knows?
Just go and have that coffee and wait and sooner or later and like the equal maniacal madness of the medieval Flagellants sect whose catastrophe and penance based ideology are almost a parallel of the climate catastrophe cult, along with the accompanying physical mortification of whipping was described as a “mania”, the climate cultists sect too will fade into obscurity and no one will remember or more importantly, like those who have perpetrated innumerable horrors in the past, will want to remember it, particularly their role in promoting the whole catastrophe cult ideology and belief system.
In fact if anyone looks up the “Flagellents” in Wiki they might be quite astonished at the parallels between todays climate warming catastrophe cultists and the maniacal extremes of the Flagellents, the only difference being the physical self mortification of their own flesh by whipping which so far todays climate cultists seem to have avoided.
Maybe our species needs this mania type self mortification and blood letting every now and then. But if and why and for what deep psychological reason who knows?
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Simple logical solution – ban weekends. There’ll be nothing to ruin.
Five day weeks, except four where we used to have a long weekend.
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11 June: CarbonBrief: In depth: Trust high but progress slow at UN climate talks in Bonn
Sophie Yeo and Simon Evans in Bonn
After two weeks of negotiations, the text now stands at 85 pages, or 2,730 words shorter than before. The final deal signed in Paris is expected to come in at around 15 pages, which gives some indication of the scale of work needed over the next six months, if the summit is to be a success…
The co-chairs of the talks, Dan Reifsnyder from the US and Ahmed Djoghlaf from Algeria, resisted the idea that the pace had been too slow…
Parties also demonstrated that they were ready to trust the co-chairs. This was encapsulated at the end by countries giving them permission to go away and draft a new version of the text, as well as enabling them to conduct breakaway sessions separately…
Behind the scenes, there were more successes taking place, invisible to the watchful eyes of outsiders…
A packed schedule over the next six months will see diplomats attempting to lick the current draft into shape so that it can be easily adopted come Paris…
The text that the co-chairs have promised to release will be cleaner and more comprehensible…
Some parts of the text currently on the table will naturally form part of the durable centre of the Paris deal, while other parts of it are more likely to be included as the more detailed “rule book” that will set out how the agreement functions. In some cases, it is less clear cut, and this will also be indicated, the chairs explain in a note.
Their text will still not erase any of the ideas and views put forward by parties. But a ministerial meeting in Paris on 20 July will give high-level politicians the opportunity to engage on the substance of the text, which will guide parties as they engage on the actual content of the final deal…
Country delegates will meet again in August and October for further negotiating sessions, where they hope to produce a document closely resembling the one that will be signed in Paris.
For that to happen, talks need to move from procedure to substance – and fast.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/06/in-depth-trust-high-but-progress-slow-at-un-climate-talks/
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There seems to be a lot of Western Australian (WA) breweries in that list. 🙂
Chuckanut beer? That’s the one the local wags call “Chuckalot”?
Now I know why I drink the wines from Margaret River, WA.
30
“WA” as in Washington state? Not Western Aust?
10
Come in spinner.
🙂
00
I am getting old, am I missing something? The latest NSW NRMA magazine has a feature on electric cars beginning to have an effect on the Aussie driving landscape but costing a lot more than internal combustion engine versions of the same model, typically more than 30 per cent for limited range in most instances, one with “up to 502 kilometres range” but costing about four times what an equivalent five seat car would cost retail.
So if fossil fuels are no longer required to fuel transport vehicles where will the electricity come from to charge the batteries, unless the vehicle is an also too expensive hybrid? And having saved on fossil fuel costs, is that a saving when the battery pack has to be replaced, NRMA reports that Toyota have a good record and its batteries have an eight year warranty or 160,000 kilometres, Mitsubishi offers five years or 100,000 kilometres. I read a while back that a Toyota Prius hybrid replacement battery pack costs around $12K including labour to replace.
There is a fantastic BMW mini car too, all electric, up to 200 kilometre range between charges, but with a petrol engine optional range extender. Cost $64K ranging up to $70K with petrol engine. About three times the price of conventional engine cars of the same size.
I fail to see value for money.
However, in the same magazine there are other articles, one calls for more bicycle pathways so that there could be fewer cars on our roads. Another calls for more and better roads to cope with congestion from increasing numbers of vehicles.
I must be too old.
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Ever since the younger Whitlam “privatised” the NRMA, it has become a favoured plaything for minor ALP luminaries. It works for them because only a small % of the membership actually votes in management elections, so activists can easily organise themselves to vote in whosesoever turn it is next. All sorts of new “Assistant Management” positions are also being constantly decreed
The result is that an organisation ostensibly for motorists is more and more PC. I remember with some amusement that several years ago one of the earnest young female PC’s opined that advanced driver courses were dangerous because they taught too much self-confidence
Oh well …
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Brazilian drought caused by natural cycles, not global warming.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/04/04/brazilian-drought-could-last-30-more-years-meteorologist-says/
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A “Brazilian drought” would be caused by a shortage of Nair and Gillette products,I don’t know how CAGW would impact on those but then you never know?
41
The devastating hurricanes of the past 30 years maybe on the wane, but once again these are natural cycles and not AGW.
Hondurans need not be alarmed
‘The phenomenon known as El Niño is back this year. The event, involving the warming of water in the equatorial Pacific, increases strong wind shear in the Atlantic.
‘That reduces the intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes and prevents other systems from becoming powerful enough to be given names.
“What El Niño does is it suppresses the hurricane season, mainly during the peak months of the season, which are August, September and October,” Bell told reporters during a news conference in New Orleans last week.’
CNN
10
Now that rings a Bell.
10
The warmer the weather the bigger the beer sales . The breweries should be strongly supporting
global warming . They must have been hammered signing the Climate Declaration .
20
We have a stock of unused Crown Lager. Remembering last year’s thirst while working in the heat we stocked up this summer just gone when the lager was ‘on offer’, only to have a rather cool summer and a lack of inclination to drink the stuff. Right now I’d prefer a hot toddy!
10
Of the 10,000 breweries world wide a whooping 42 signed the climate declaration .
Lets see, so about .004 of 1 percent are wetting their shorts because they are scared
about global warming . There must be a way to show that as 97% . They could restrict their sample size to 43 .
It’s not like it hasn’t been done right ?
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Hops like it chilly, they grow masses around the Great Lakes, whereas chocolate needs equatorial climes to grow. It doesn’t appear to be getting any hotter or drier in Gh thereabouts.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/monthly-rainfall-ghana-sierra-leone.png
This meme has been around for years, a kind of urban myth, yet the Guardian continues to pump out fallacies without a care in the world.
The scribes on that miserable propaganda machine are not journalists.
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Folks, there is no point in battering the believers with facts. “Believers” have already failed the [snip] test and will not ever admit it. A better approach is to expose the [snip] problem for allowing “Believers” to become victims. The exposure of corruption at FIFA creates the meme for this, a meme that applies equally to the [snip] IPCC and the corruption at the UN.
🙂
[Editing applied as little as possible.] AZ
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OT – Politicians thinking properly,about time,it appears that the govt is paying smugglers not to bring people here.
Control of the marketplace is where it’s at,but no doubt the hand wringers will be out in force saying it is much better to spend approx $70,000.00 on illegal arrivals than the smaller amount to keep them out.
In the end we have to pay whether it is through legal diplomatic or military.
10
And through the nose. 🙁
20
I’m just waiting for them to tell us that the rampant AGW will ruin sex just to complete the quintet. After all, nothing seems to be off limits. This is now comedy.
40
On this side of the barricades we are all laughing like mad, but on the other side the religious nutters are stony faced.
I don’t think we will ever break this warmist cadre, the millenarian fever is strong in them, but the broader population remains ambivalent and yet to be wooed.
Satire is kryptonite to the warmist faithful, so we should use it often.
40
We can laugh at the Guardian, but in Australia we have Fairfax and ABC saying much the same, perhaps slightly more measured.
Here we have a situation where the networks treat global cooling as merely a punchline and not worth serious consideration.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/julia-seymour/2015/06/10/networks-treat-ice-age-and-cooling-concerns-punchlines-not
20
Based on the last 8 months, ISIL and their acolytes are a greater clear and present danger to chocoholics and coffee sippers than man-made global warming will ever be.
I want to see a cartoon of ISIL soldiers cancelling their plans for the global caliphate because they think fighting global warming is more important. Then one soldier says “but if oil is so bad why did god give the Prophet’s homeland so much of it?”
🙂
I’m courting a jolly good mod’ing here, aren’t I.
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