Fujimori et al estimate that if we aim for the 2°C Paris commitment as many as 84 million more people will be going hungry by 2050. Their solution, naturally, is to still aim for futile, global weather management targets, but to add another layer of socialist complexity and welfare. It’s only money.
If we feed corn to cars instead of people, and we limit land-use to carbon storage rather than food crops, how could the outcome be any other way? A million dead here, a million dead there, and pretty soon someone will be using their deaths to ask for for a grant, a tax, and a supranational committee.
For thirty years people have been saying we need to reduce our emissions as a precaution even though we can’t predict the climate. But when we can predict that people will starve, the principle seems to be do it anyway and “give them your money”. I can find zero mentions of the precautionary principle in their paper.
This paper is, yet again, another variation on a plea for more governance, more tax, more fiddling with global systems.
Inclusive climate change mitigation and food security policy under 1.5 °C climate goal
Abstract
Climate change mitigation to limit warming to 1.5 °C or well below 2 °C, as suggested by the Paris Agreement, can rely on large-scale deployment of land-related measures (e.g. afforestation, or bioenergy production). This can increase food prices, and hence raises food security concerns. Here we show how an inclusive policy design can avoid these adverse side-effects. Food-security support through international aid, bioenergy tax, or domestic reallocation of income can shield impoverished and vulnerable people from the additional risk of hunger that would be caused by the economic effects of policies narrowly focussing on climate objectives only. In the absence of such support, 35% more people might be at risk of hunger by 2050 (i.e. 84 million additional people) in a 2°C-consistent scenario. The additional global welfare changes due to inclusive climate policies are small (<0.1%) compared to the total climate mitigation cost (3.7% welfare loss), and the financial costs of international aid amount to about half a percent of high-income countries’ GDP. This implies that climate policy should treat this issue carefully. Although there are challenges to implement food policies, options exist to avoid the food security concerns often linked to climate mitigation.
Fun games you can play with carbon taxes: Use the graph to figure out how many million people your policy might kill.
With enough grant money it’s possible to generate fancy pants graphs exploring entirely pointless policies in full color.
Clearly the safest outcome is “NCP” or No Climate Policy. That’s the baseline. Higher emissions and more food security.
…
SSP means a “shared socioeconomic pathway”. NDC means Nationally Determined Contributions and all this jargon means Life Is Too Short to pursue this nonsense much further.
Three SSPs (SSP1, SSP2 and SSP3) are chosen for this study and they are referred to as ‘sustainable development’, ‘middle of the road’ and ‘regional rivalry’, respectively. From a climate change mitigation point of view, the challenge to mitigation is increase going from SSP1, over SSP2, to SSP3. We consider four mitigation levels: no climate policy (baseline), GHG emissions reductions by 2030 in line with the NDCs, and scenarios that limit global mean temperature in 2100 to below 2 ◦C and 1.5 ◦C in which cost-effective emissions reduction are assumed from in 2020 onwards.
Note that the current Paris agreement here (known as NDC) is near the baseline because almost no country has promised to do something meaningful. The other two options — actually aiming for the magical 2 ◦C and 1.5 ◦C — are wildly higher and harder and might as well be projections for Neverland.
What happened to “first do no harm”?
REFERENCE
Shinichiro Fujimori et al (2018) Inclusive climate change mitigation and food security policy under 1.5 °C climate goal, Environmental Research Letters, Volume 13, Number 7, http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad0f7/meta. Full PDF
I wonder at what age do children notice that building sand castles on a beach will not produce a habitation that will last. Compare the idea to building a tree house, or say, a cardboard play-house in the backyard.
Is the age 6 or 7 years?
Spending time and resources, including intellectual resources, on these 2 C. degree studies is to be working at the level of a 5 year old.
And what the xxxx is this about?
“ bioenergy tax, or domestic reallocation of income “
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I noticed that straightaway John H. It sounds like straight-out socialism to me…the sort where they take other people’s money, raised by their own hard work and hand it out to the feckless and greedy until it all runs out and then everyone is reduced to poverty level. This, of course, is thoroughly encouraged by great wodges of totally uncalled-for oppressive rules and regulations that destroy productive enterprise. We’ve seen so much of that this last century, have we not? A brilliant way to cull we plaguey humans. It is unbelievably disgusting to view and treat fellow human-beings like this…we have every right to be on this planet and to use (not misuse or abuse) its resources.
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They’re all on board the rainbow bandwagon to hell in New Zealand, even accountants whose emissions stem soley from flatus and expensive cars.
Deloitte joins with other Kiwi businesses committing to ambitious action to address climate change
So long as inclusion and equity solely include the starving, power impoverished confined to choosing between healthcare, eating or heating, 1 sigma below the mean of income, all must be well. We’re all in tune with ‘common purpose’ and ‘super-diversity’.
The biggest rorting redistribution in human history, endorsed by rainbow waving corporatist accountants is todays leading luminary in depravity, demonstrating the vacuousness and evil of moral relativism.
Meanwhile in Europe, Steve Bannon launches ‘The Movement‘ predictably and violently triggering the European Sorosophiles and MSM, while in the US they continue to #Walk Away.
Way past time for Oceania to embrace reality.
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Ironically they have shot themselves in the foot, the big end of town will be killed off…normal business doesn’t survive under true communism….
50
Yes and socialism is only another mass grave away.
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I see that they talk about “inclusive climate policy”, but is it diverse? Have they checked with the LGBTQ community? Can this really be more important that letting blokes use woman’s changing rooms?
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It’s such a socialist farce.
Dividing a perfectly coherent beam of white light through the prismatic ideology of ‘transformational’ globalism and then claiming the result to be manifestly ‘inclusive’ and ‘equitable’ … more Leftist inversion of reality.
Rainbows are very transient expression of diversity, but never equity. Planck (E=hf) informed us about that.
Blindly, idiotically, repetitively the Left sows the seeds for its own demise, ever since Marx and Engles pounded out their Communist Manifesto in 1848. The trick here will be to limit the body count and prevent them from destroying Western prosperity, civilisation and science in perpetuity, in the fraudulent name of eco-ism
20
I always knew that some “climate scientists” would say anything (true or false) to make the global mean temperature was rise. It is hard to imagine planning deaths of millions to keep their cash coming in. The might not be telling the truth about helping poor people.
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In the virtual Leftist World of The Conversation, adherence to the confabulating narrative of a seriously deluded Stephan Lewandowsky who was recently relied upon by a UK House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which published its “Interim Report on Disinformation and ‘fake news’,’” is de rigueur.
Fulsomely and illuminatingly discussed over at Climate Scepticism — Lewandowsky, Parliament, and the Gloucestershire Village Idiot.
60
Not 85 million starving? Only 84 million? Could we get lucky with just 83 million? Maybe a compassionate 1.4 ◦C reduction would famish 82.5 million while a tough 1.9 ◦C could knock out 85.5 million. 86 million, even. Better be careful how we twist those tax knobs and tap those regulation buttons. Check that death meter while you up the RET!
I’d say that there’s a 99.97% chance that less than 1.9% of available commonsense has gone into this “study”. The rest is bunk.
Should be used to bunk by now. Still can’t cop it. Especially the faux-precision where some Jerry Lewis numbers taken as base lead to other Jerry Lewis numbers, with fractions so you think it’s science and not some wally pulling assumptions out of his…
Ask them to move along.
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Note that “NDC . . . Nationally Determined Contributions”
started out being preceded by the word “Intended“!
This is like when, at the end of confession, the priest says “Go and sin no more.”
That always works.
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A global carbon tax?
Turnbull: “quick where do I sign?”.
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He’s working on it – it’s called the NEG.
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Who gets the global carbon tax? I’ll bet it’s not Turnbull or his government. But he probably wouldn’t figure that out until sometime after he signed it.
I’m constantly stunned at just how blind our politicians are. How they manage to breath and walk at the same time has me confused.
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It can be put down to arrogance, to stubborn to admit he is wrong, out of touch with reality, no common sense, etc., etc. One thing to note is his time is up at the next election if he’s still the leader because the party will be decimated, whether the people like Shorten or not.
30
In Canada:
We’re finally told what the carbon tax will cost us. Are you sitting down?
Households in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia will be hit with more than $1,000 of carbon tax per year, while those in British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba will pay around $650.
We can expect something along these lines here if Turnbull or Shorten continue to lead the nation.
Politicians have discovered a new source of revenue and they are NOT about to listen to any evidence to the contrary. At the bug environmental conference in Paris, they outright DENIED any right of any speaker to put on a contrary view. This is all despite the fact that over 30,000 people have signed a petition against Global Warming, which has been ignored as usual. Any opposition is simply ignored or silenced. Why not, there is too much money on the table for governments to just ignore. Guess it will definitely now be cheaper to retire to the Caribbean. You won’t have to pay $1,000 a year to heat your home.
10
Here in Australia every household already pays an Extra $1,000 a year through the rigged electricity system.
This is on top of the real cost of standard electrons produced by coal fired generators.
The “extra” payment has very poor legal basis and the arrangers and enablers of the smokescreen make hay while the Sun shines. Also when the wind blows or doesn’t blow.
How can people say that our President Trumble is not smart.
Soon that $1,000 donation may be much larger and that’s All that President Smirk is concerned about.
KK
30
It amazes me that the fools pushing this whole climate nonsense might be actually mice….
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2013/04/26/mind-bending-parasite-permanently-quells-cat-fear-in-mice/
“A mouse sniffs the air, catches the whiff of cat urine, and runs towards the source of the smell… and straight into the jaws of a cat.
This bizarre suicidal streak is the work of a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which has commandeered the mouse’s brain and turned it into a Trojan rodent—a vehicle for sneaking T.gondii into a cat.”
In this case, the parasite is Toxoplasma Socialisti , a known self limiting parasite.
Other symptoms of infection include screaming at the sky, TDS ( Trump Derangement syndrome ), willingess to destroy economic growth while pursuing fairy stories, aggressive and unpredictable behaviour, lack of ability to manage money, pursuit of pointless activities, IPCC-itis, and finally – production of “10:10” snuff movies depicting children being blown up….
Have I missed anything?
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‘Have I missed anything?’ Yes, Original Steve.
Abbott Derangement Syndrome, Josh’s vivid imagination, all the nonsense about our baking hot planet (not) while ignoring the cooler conditions elsewhere. Too much else, depressing, isn’t it?
This year does remind me of 1976 (as well illustrated by the Matt cartoon in the UK Telegraph) in that there was a long warm/hot dry spell in the UK while it was markedly cooler than usual for us in Cyprus that summer. I note that the temperatures were moderate in Greece this summer despite those awful, probably human-caused, bushfires.
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‘Have I missed anything?’ Yes, Original Steve.
Power. Just power. Power at any cost to others. Absolute power over everyone. Merciless power. Power for what? For power, of course. Just like uncle Lenin and his acolytes. How many hundred millions dead? Who even bothers thinking about that kind of thing? Just try again, more power, more death, any excuse.
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Its a religious war, IMHO…
“all those who hate Me, love death”
( Prov 8:36 )
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“The death of an individual is a tragedy. The deaths of a million is a statistic.”
— — — that great humanitarian and philanthropist, the Most Honourable and Humble Chairman Mao, Benefactor to all Humankind
40
and to the left a leader such as Stalin who was responsible for the death of 20+ million or more of his own people is considered a hero.
10
Thank you Jo, and yes, what did happen to “first do no harm”?
70
some of you may be aware of America’s “rising superstar”, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist. hard to miss her, as she is adored by FakeNewsMSM, no matter her many gaffes.
here she is talking to one of the many “comedians” who have become “respected” political pundits this Century, Trevor Noah (The Daily Show).
27 Jul: Townhall: Trevor Noah (Daily Show) Asks Ocasio-Cortez: ‘How Do You Pay for All These Ideas?’
by Lauretta Brown
Rising Democratic socialist star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained to Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show” Thursday how she planned to pay for the ideas that she campaigned on in her stunning primary defeat over fourth-ranking House Democrat Joe Crowley (NY)…
Ocasio-Cortez responded first by saying she had “sat down with a Nobel Prize economist last week,” laughing, “I can’t believe I can say that, it’s really weird.”
A meeting with a Nobel Prize economist was likely warranted given that Ocasio-Cortez faced intense criticism for getting basic facts about the unemployment rate wrong in a PBS interview earlier this month. She later tried to walk back her remarks.
However, having met with this prize-winning economist, Ocasio-Cortez presented a plan for getting money for her proposals, arguing first for raising the corporate tax rate…
“One of the things that we saw is, if people pay their fair share,” she said, “if corporations and the ultra-wealthy — for example, as Warren Buffett likes to say, if he paid as much as his secretary pays, 15 percent — if he paid a 15 percent tax rate; if corporations paid — if we reverse the tax bill, but raised our corporate tax rate to 28 percent, which is not even as high as it was before, if we do those two things and also close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there.”
***“That’s $2 trillion in ten years, and it’s — one of the wide estimates is that it’s going to take $3 trillion to $4 trillion to transition us to 100 percent renewable energy economy,” she continued…
She then argued for implementing a carbon tax claiming that would make “a large amount of revenue.”
“Now, if we implement a carbon tax on top of that so that we can transition and financially incentivize people away from fossil fuels,” she said, “if we implement a carbon tax, that’s an additional amount of a large amount of revenue that we can have.”…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabrown/2018/07/27/trevor-noah-asks-ocasiocortez-how-do-you-pay-for-all-these-ideas-n2504413
30 Jun: Salon: from Grist: Eric Holthaus: With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, Congress will likely gain a new climate champion
Ocasio-Cortez’s plan for tackling climate change deserves attention
Ocasio-Cortez is one of the first American politicians to put forward a climate change plan that would keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius…
To meet that goal while leaving space for developing countries to move at a slower pace, independent assessments suggest that the United States needs to reduce its emissions by approximately 75 to 125 percent or more — actually drawing carbon dioxide out of the air — by 2035. Ocasio-Cortez hopes to move the entire country to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.
The crash carbon diet would require “the complete mobilization of the American workforce to combat climate change,” as Ocasio-Cortez told HuffPost reporter Alexander Kaufman…
According to Ocasio-Cortez, such an effort would cost “trillions of dollars,” but would “not only save our planet from the ravages of climate change but would also lift millions of Americans out of poverty.”…
It’s an audacious plan that’s easy to dismiss as wishful thinking. But last night’s results just brought Ocasio-Cortez’s vision a step closer to reality.
https://www.salon.com/2018/06/30/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-victory-congress-will-likely-gain-a-new-climate-champion_partner/
NYT: Ocasio-Cortez won with 15,897 votes to 11,761 for her Democrat rival with 98% reporting, in a primary for New York’s 14th congressional district, which has a population of nearly 700,000.
The age of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
CNN-21 Jul. 2018
Trump could teach Ocasio-Cortez a thing or two about socialism
Washington Post – 3 days ago
Radical Democrats Are Pretty Reasonable
New York Times-3 Jul. 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset primary victory…
George Soros’s Media Network Worked To Help Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Win Primary
Daily Caller – 4h ago
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“The crash carbon diet would require “the complete mobilization of the American workforce to combat climate change,” as Ocasio-Cortez told HuffPost reporter Alexander Kaufman…”
Sounds like good old fashioned Communism to me…..told what to do, how to do it, and where to do it…then
collapse….what could possibly go wrong?
80
Yes but to what avail? China with a population of over 1 billion is building more and more coal fired power stations. So a crash carbon diet in the US would not only be a total waste of time in terms of saving the planet, it would be tantamount to an act of terrorism since it would leave the US vulnerable to a takeover after its economy and the society have collapsed.
00
Or more to the point, take down the USA and most western countries to create “equality” around the world…isnt that Socialism?
10
28,000 Democrats in 700,000 population = 4%. Doesn’t sound like a tidal wave of support even if she got 2.3% of the population in her favour.
30
There is no such thing as a democratic socialist. Socialist is sufficient. It describes what they are and what they do. It means death – eventually.
50
having read this piece before getting down to the writer’s credentials(?), I can only say, with academics like Marvel, western civilisation is literally doomed:
30 Jul: Scientific American: Hot Planet blog: Climate Change: We’re Not Literally Doomed, but…
…there’s space for action between “everything is fine” and “the apocalypse is upon us”
By Kate Marvel
(Kate Marvel is a climate scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. She received a PhD in theoretical physics from Cambridge University and has worked at Stanford University, the Carnegie Institution, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/hot-planet/climate-change-were-not-literally-doomed-but/
31 Jul: RenewEconomy: Butler lambasts “pathetic” emissions target, “silly” pursuit of coal
By Giles Parkinson
In a speech to the Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, Butler said he supported a settled platform, such as the National Energy Guarantee, but warned that weak targets would be locked in.
“There is real risk that these pathetic settings will be embedded into federal law that proves very difficult to change in the future,” Butler said.
His comments came as Victoria’s energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio and Greens leader Richard di Natale warned there would be no approval for the NEG at next week’s CoAG energy ministers meeting if it was to be held hostage to a later Coalition party room meeting.
CoAG energy ministers are due to hold their meeting on August 10, but the Coalition government has indicated that emissions targets will not be discussed until another meeting held the following Tuesday, after a party room meeting. But it wants CoAG to commit support for the NEG on the Friday…
The Greens are playing a prominent role because the ACT climate and energy minister Shane Rattenbury is a Green, and has indicated he will not vote for the policy while emissions target remained so low…
“Malcolm Turnbull is trying to get us to sign up to something that hasn’t gone to his own party room – a place full of climate sceptics,” D’Ambrosio said.
“Every time we get close to a national energy policy, the Coalition Party Room shoots it down. How can we have any confidence in what they’re asking from us if it hasn’t been through his party room first?
“We won’t support a scheme that leaves the states in the dark and leaves us all hostage to the extremists in Turnbull’s party room.”…
Di Natale said: “Fight for the right policy., fight for a future where your industry thrives. The public knows renewables are the future, they know it will bring down pollution and it will bring down prices.”…
Goldwind Australia’s John Titchen said the main issue with the NEG remained with the emissions policy, and left more than 90 per cent of the Paris climate task unaddressed.
“We should have steeper reductions in the first 5 years of 2020s …. then we would have options … to deliver more reductions if, as expected, it is required.”…
https://reneweconomy.com.au/butler-lambasts-pathetic-emissions-target-silly-pursuit-of-coal-76649/
50
The three main purposes of the climate fraud industry .
1. Raise taxes to fund world governance courtesy of the UN .
2. Mass depopulation … Civilly mind you . You know a little something in the water and crank those carbon taxes to expedite the elimination
of the poorest and sickest first .
3. Fleece tax payers by pretending to set the worlds thermostat .
There are other reasons but they pale in comparison .
31
Asians must stop eating meat:
30 Jul: Smithsonian: Will China’s Growing Appetite for Meat Undermine Its Efforts to Fight Climate Change?
The country consumes 28 percent of the world’s meat — twice as much as the United States. And that figure is only set to increase.
By Marcello Rossi, Undark Magazine
(Marcello Rossi is a freelance science and environmental journalist based in Milan, Italy. His work has been published by Al Jazeera, Smithsonian, Reuters, Wired and Outside among other outlets)
In the early 1980s, when the population was still under one billion, the average Chinese person ate around 30 pounds of meat per year. Today, with an additional 380 million people, it’s nearly 140 pounds…
But as the Chinese appetite for meat expands, the booming nation is faced with a quandary: How to satisfy the surging demand for meat without undermining the country’s commitment to curbing greenhouse gas emissions and combating global warming — goals that have been expressly incorporated into national economic, social development, and long-term planning under the Xi Jinping administration…
Experts at the advocacy group WildAid say that average annual meat consumption in China is on track to increase by another 60 pounds by 2030…
***No one knows exactly how much livestock contributes to the country’s mammoth carbon emissions. The last time Beijing produced official figures in 2005, it said that the national livestock sector accounted for more than half of the emissions from its overall agricultural activities. But one thing is for sure: how China will deal with soaring demand for meat is of paramount importance to both the nation and the rest of the world.
A 2014 study published in Nature by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Aberdeen stated that to keep up with the demand for meat, agricultural emissions worldwide will likely need to increase by up to 80 percent by 2050 — a figure that alone could jeopardize the ambitious plan to keep planetary warming below the 2-degrees Celsius benchmark set under the Paris climate accord…
Marco Springmann, a sustainability researcher at Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, said that if meat consumption in the Asian country keeps growing as predicted, the nation would produce “an additional gigaton of carbon dioxide equivalents in greenhouse gas emissions, more than the current emissions of the global aviation industry” alone, and an increase of about one-tenth above China’s current level of emissions. According to a WildAid report, China alone could account for a growth in greenhouse gas emissions from 1.2 gigatons in 2015 to 1.8 gigatons by 2030…
“These calculations do not include land-use change,” Richard Waite, an associate at the World Resources Institute’s Food Program, told me by telephone from Washington…
Programs aimed at curbing consumer demand for meat have begun to circulate…The government also teamed up with WildAid to run celebrity-driven, high-impact media campaigns to promote the benefits of eating less meat…
But accomplishing that is no easy feat…
According Steve Blake, WildAid’s acting chief in China, most Chinese consumers fail to appreciate the link between higher meat intake to global warming…
Jeremy Haft, author of “Unmade in China: The Hidden Truth about China’s Economic Miracle”:
“China’s remarkable development is regarded by many developing countries to be a model for lifting their own population out of poverty,” he noted. Given its centralized system, it has already proved it can be nimble in response to environmental risks — as happened with the transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy, which has caused national carbon dioxide emissions to decline or stay flat in the last few years, or with its subsidies for electrical vehicles, which has caused sales to skyrocket.
Now, Haft said, China needs to mount a similar effort to reduce meat consumption…
“If the country wants to become the world’s undisputed leading green superpower, it has to pave the way for a sustainable, low-carbon development [path] for low- and middle-income countries, inspiring them to follow suit,” Haft said. “And reducing emissions from the livestock sector should be part of the path.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/will-chinas-growing-appetite-for-meat-undermind-its-efforts-to-fight-climate-change-180969789/
30
There are indeed weird creatures out there.
20
Easily solved: Just have the Chinese roam the oceans like the Japanese doing whale “research”. Then again, apparently Marcello Rossi is completely unaware that fish are also made of meat. So how is eating them contributing to climate
changescam?That dude’s just a blurry iriot.
00
Oh yeh.. And all those greentards furiously waving their alleged virtue that man’s “livestock” is to blame for ruminating/farting the planet to death have cleverly forgotten about wildebeest and every other herbivore in Africa, South America etc.
“Meat” is bad? That’s what greentards are made of and are best removed from existence according to themselves.
00
Have been reading about the aftermath of WW2 in Europe – yes, we were taught about it in school, but of course we were the good guys who beat the bad guys and that was that – and the post-war programmes certain self-appointed chosen ones wanted to implement upon the German people; the most notorious one being the Morgenthau Plan which intended to strip “Germany of its industry and turn it into an agricultural country… an agrarian ‘pastoral’ society, unable to manufacture…” Link below to a BBC Radio4 audio documentary on the subject from 2012, “Things We Forgot To Remember” –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jgj0p
De-industrialisation? Toss city-folk out into the fields to toil, subsistence-like, as their ancestors had? A forced return to the ‘garden’? No modern-day utilities / essentials / necessities? Hmmm, sounds all too familiar to today’s chosen plan to ‘save the planet’. No thanks, I’ll pass.
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On the other hand, it was REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) in the British Army who helped to get the Volkswagon company manufacturing again post WW2.
11
“De-industrialisation? Toss city-folk out into the fields to toil, subsistence-like, as their ancestors had? A forced return to the ‘garden’? No modern-day utilities / essentials / necessities? Hmmm, sounds all too familiar to today’s chosen plan to ‘save the planet’. No thanks, I’ll pass.”
It has already been done and the results of the policy evaluated.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pol-Pot
20
haven’t seen this posted as yet. this is a big story…and it was suspect from the moment it was announced:
30 Jul: Guardian: PM personally approved $443m fund for tiny Barrier Reef foundation
Head of Great Barrier Reef Foundation tells Senate inquiry money was offered at meeting with Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg
by Lisa Cox
Malcolm Turnbull was at the meeting where $443.8m in funding was offered to a small not-for-profit foundation without a competitive tender process or any application for the money (LINK), an inquiry has heard.
Anna Marsden, the managing director of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, told a Senate inquiry on Monday the organisation was offered the funding at a meeting in Sydney in April between Turnbull, environment and energy minister Josh Frydenberg, the foundation’s chair John Schubert and environment and energy department secretary Finn Pratt.
The inquiry is examining the process (LINK) by which the foundation, which had just six full-time staff at the time, was awarded the funds and whether it has the capacity to deliver work required under the government’s reef 2050 plan.
“I’d like to state for the record that the foundation did not suggest or make any application for this funding. We were first informed of this opportunity to form a partnership with reef trust on the 9th of April this year,” Marsden told the hearing.
“And who was it that contacted you about that and who did they speak to?” said Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
“That was a meeting between the prime minister, minister Frydenberg, the secretary of the department and our chair,” Marsden said…
On Tuesday, Marsden wrote a letter (LINK) to the inquiry committee saying she made a mistake in her evidence and Pratt, the environment department secretary, had not been present at the meeting.
Marsden said the foundation was informed an allocation was being announced in the May federal budget and the government invited it to partner with the Reef Trust to “distribute these funds across five component areas of the reef 2050 plan”.
She said this was the sole purpose of the 9 April meeting and the foundation was not aware beforehand what the meeting was about.
Marsden said she was not present in Sydney but spoke to Pratt and assistant secretaries the next day to discuss next steps if the foundation accepted the offer.
She said a series of “collaboration principles” were determined and put to the foundation’s board “and once they were approved there was an exchange of letters between the minister and the chairman which cemented the agreement to enter into a partnership”.
Marsden said it was the foundation’s intent to be as transparent and accountable as possible “with everything the foundation is doing under this partnership” and the organisation had, in part, been selected because of its ability to attract additional money from the private sector.
The inquiry heard the foundation’s chairman’s panel, a corporate membership group made up of chief executives and directors of companies including Commonwealth Bank, BHP, Qantas, Shell and Peabody Energy, has 55 members, each of whom pay $20,000 a year for membership.
Marsden said the organisation tried to find members that shared similar values and commitment to the reef.
Asked how the values of coal companies such as Peabody aligned with reef protection, she said “they share a commitment to moving forward and transitioning away from fossil fuels and ensuring we can build the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef”.
She said the foundation was in the process of developing an investment policy and one of the key concerns the draft would address was how it would manage any potential conflicts of interest. But she said advice on projects the funding would pay for would be “grounded in science” with advice taken from key agencies such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Later in the hearings, Labor senator Kristina Keneally asked the environment and energy department about its role in the awarding of the funds.
“It’s still not clear to us how it came to be that the prime minister felt that he could meet with this foundation and offer them $443m of money,” she said.
Officials said the decision happened in “the confines of the budget process” and the government decided to approach the foundation.
Earlier in the day, environment NGOs said they were concerned the money was not awarded directly to agencies already working on the reef, that there was no tender process and that the grant agreement had little mention of climate change, which is the key threat to the reef.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/30/malcolm-turnbull-present-when-443-million-dollars-offered-to-small-group-without-tender-inquiry-hears
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30 Jul: Deutsche Welle: Current heat waves are linked to climate change, scientists confirm
Climate change has made the extremely high temperatures in Europe more than twice as likely to occur, a new analysis has revealed. How do scientists calculate the link between extreme weather events and climate change?
by Katharina Wecker
Like how epidemiologists link smoking to cancer, climate scientists work with statistical probability.
“Smoking is never the only reason — but it increases the likelihood to develop cancer,” Friederike Otto, researcher at the Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and member of the WWA, told DW…
The results are not yet peer-reviewed, because the WWA scientists are aiming to provide a quick analysis of current extreme weather events since public interest is high. They do plan to publish the results formally in a scientific journal, as they have done with previous analyses…
“It’s very important to provide illustrations of the effects of climate change,” Robert Vautard, a senior scientist with France’s Laboratory for Climate and Environment Sciences, told DW.
Only when we undestand what climate change looks like can we can prepare for it, he thinks…
“Our infrastructure and healthcare plans are based on heat waves and rainfall we have witnessed in the past. But we have to realize that the climate today is not the same it used to be, and it will be very different in the future,” Vautard added…
“Extreme heat events like this one will become more frequent and more intense as the globe continues to warm,” Andrew King, a researcher at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of Melbourne, told DW…
“We know that heat waves and hot summers, like the infamous hot summer of 2003 in Europe, will very likely occur in most years, even under only 2 degrees Celsius of global warming,” he added.
The Paris Climate Agreement seeks to limit global warming between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius but on our current track,we are moving towards 3 degrees warming.
The climate is not just getting hotter — it’s getting ***less predictable…
Variability of extreme weather events will increase, confirmed climate scientist Otto. While we may one year see heat waves, the next year we could experience extreme rainfall. And the picture can look very different from location to location…
“The dangerous thing about climate change is that what(sic) we are not adapted to the changes,” said Otto…
https://www.dw.com/en/current-heat-waves-are-linked-to-climate-change-scientists-confirm/a-44878983
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And now for something obscene …
According to the World Economic Forum, $5.7 trillion in green investment is needed annually by 2020 in developing nations.
This is equivalent to shifting $5 trillion in business-as-usual global investments into green investments — including $1.5 trillion into climate finance.
According to the 2017 United Nations Climate Press Release, significant gaps still exist in funding at the scale required to deliver a fully decarbonized and resilient global economy by 2050.
Climate Policy Initiative estimates that of the total $331 billion dedicated to climate finance in 2013, only $34 billion went to the developing countries.
This left a gap in the annual commitment of about $70 billion.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/can-results-based-climate-finance-prevent-adversity
U.N. chief warns staff, member states: We’re running out of cash
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-budget/u-n-chief-warns-staff-member-states-were-running-out-of-cash-idUSKBN1KG2OR?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5b5a1c8c04d301102be58360&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
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Quote is from the Abstract as quoted in Jo’s headline post;
In the absence of such support, 35% more people might be at risk of hunger by 2050 (i.e. 84 million additional people) in a 2°C-consistent scenario.
.
So that universal qualification , the get out clause, the insurance so beloved of the climate alarmists scientists, the insurance against being branded an idiot as soon as somebody sets eyes on your paper, a few grossly overused words so beloved of the global warming / climate change prediction industry, a Word used in nearly every single climate alarmist science paper ever to see the light of day, that one single word “MIGHT in this case “MIGHT be at risk” comes racing once again to the rescue of the hubris laden climate scientist who deservedly would be pilloried from horizon to horizon for making hard wired predictions which everybody knows full well that those predictions will never eventuate.
Furthermore, it must be that “Fujimori et al” has access to some form of a time machine in that he has this apparent uncanny ability to make predictions on events that are still over 30 years into the future or around year 2050 as well as having a very accurate and quite extraordinary insight into the precise statistics in another 32 years on the exact numbers of people, those 84 million people who MIGHT be going hungry by then.
With the inclusion of “Might be at risk” and using his own personnel time machine that has provided him with the statistics from 2050 to verify his predictions he can claim that he had very firm evidence for his hypothesis but scientifically he could not be absolutely certain that his hypothesis was completerly correct so he quite rightly hedged his claims with the “MIGHT be at risk in 2050 ” or in another 32 years time.
——–
Of course the corollary of all of this, particularly the claim “MIGHT be at Risk” is that if Fujimori et al wasn’t absolutely sure of his grounds for his claim and seeing it was another 28 years ahead and as he has not provided any evidence of the statistics from 2050 that he has apparently relied on to get his 2050 death statistics or maybe he just made a wild arsed guess at , the usual defining characteristic of climate alarmist scientists, then if he can’t prove his hypothesis for another generation at least , just what the hell was he doing in publishing this utterly useless toilet level paper in any case except to boost his own self glorification as it adds absolutely zero to the sum of human knowledge and no doubt denied the funding that he recieved for the paper from another researcher might have been able to use that funding to advance and create a far more beneficial outcome for the human race.
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Brilliant comment. Their constant use of weasel words (might, may, could, should etc.) are absolute proof that any “scientific” paper by the climate
changescam industry is actually by lead author Wild Guess et al.I hope their fake prognostications become their epitaph.
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Human extinction is their goal. They believe their goal justifies their means. They will succeed only if we allow them to succeed.
Politicians cannot be trusted because their goal is to get away with “it” without getting caught and to leave office much richer than they started. They also don’t think beyond the next election if that far into the future. Sadly, they have learned to fake sincerity. We keep believing them and voting them into office. Worse: we keep feeding them.
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this seems creepy to me. check the sponsors’ link:
30 Jul: MIT: The price of the pledge
Meeting Turkey’s Paris Agreement emissions commitment will require a dramatic shift to low-carbon energy sources, such as this solar farm in Kastamonu, Turkey.
MIT researchers examine Turkey to assess the impact of 2015 Paris climate commitments on a national economy.
by Mark Dwortzan, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
On first glance, it could be a tall order for Turkey to fulfill its Paris Agreement pledge, which targets a reduction in the nation’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 21 percent below business-as-usual levels by 2030. Fossil fuels comprise nearly all of Turkey’s energy mix, and low-carbon options have not yet gained traction. Wind and solar accounts for about 5 percent of energy generation and nuclear power plants are only in the planning stages…
To address this question systematically, a team of researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change developed a computational general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Turkish economy, TR-EDGE. Unlike similar CGE models, TR-EDGE includes a detailed representation of the energy-intensive electricity sector. The team’s analysis appears in the journal Energy Policy…
Using the model, Kat and his collaborators — Joint Program Deputy Director Sergey Paltsev and Research Scientist Mei Yuan analyzed four different scenarios: business-as-usual (BAU), which incorporates the government’s current plans for a nuclear program and tariff-funded renewables initiative; no-nuclear (NoN), which assumes no nuclear program; and the combination of each of those two scenarios with a national emissions trading policy.
The results show that a national emissions trading market would at once incent GHG emissions reductions and mitigate negative impacts on economic growth. Absent an emissions trading policy, fossil fuels — oil, natural gas, and coal — continue to comprise nearly all of Turkey’s primary energy mix in 2030. Implementing an emissions trading policy eliminates carbon-intensive coal-fired power generation by 2030 in both BAU and NoN scenarios. Keeping a nuclear program reduces GHG emissions by about 3 percent more than scrapping it (NoN), while lowering the price of carbon from $70 per metric ton of carbon dioxide to $50…
Based on these results, fulfilling Turkey’s Paris pledge would cost the economy about 0.8 (with nuclear) to 1.1 percent of its GDP by 2030.
“The results show that the targets that Turkey envisioned for the Paris Agreement are reachable at a modest economic cost,” says Kat…
The research was made possible by funding from the Turkish Fulbright Commission (Visiting Scholar Program) and the Joint Program’s consortium of sponsors (LINK).
http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-researchers-examine-turkey-economic-impact-paris-climate-commitments-0730
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pat:
I confidently predict that Turkey will continue to grow its economy as fast as possible. Especially after 2022 when even Blind Freddy will have noticed Global Cooling.
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30 Jul: SMH: David Wroe: Foreign Affairs ministry opts for secrecy over China infrastructure agreement
The Turnbull government has refused to release an agreement it signed with China covering the controversial “Belt and Road Initiative” infrastructure program on the grounds Beijing does not want it made public.
Trade Minister Steven Ciobo signed the memorandum of understanding last September for cooperation on building infrastructure such as roads, bridges and dams in third countries – including under the Belt and Road Initiative – during a visit to Beijing.
Canberra’s response to the so-called BRI has been a balancing act because, while it supports more infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific region and wants opportunities for Australian firms, it is concerned the initiative is a strategic play by Beijing to dominate the region and involves murky financing that could leave poor countries beholden to Beijing.
The MOU would be expected to state Australia’s conditions for cooperating with China – such as that projects are financially transparent, do not involve corruption, genuinely help other countries and do not burden them with unsustainable debt.
But the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has refused to release the agreement under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr Ciobo told Fairfax Media that “both parties are required to agree to release the text of the MOU and China has not agreed to do so”…
By contrast, New Zealand signed a memorandum of arrangement covering cooperation with China on the BRI last year and released the document in full…
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/foreign-affairs-ministry-opts-for-secrecy-over-china-infrastructure-agreement-20180730-p4zufm.html
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“A million dead here, a million dead there, and pretty soon someone will be using their deaths to ask for for a grant, a tax, and a supranational committee.”
Or in other words “A million dead here, a million dead there, and pretty soon were talking real genocide”
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behind paywall:
31 Jul: UK Times: Left or right, remain or leave — we are united in wanting a cleaner, greener future for our children
by Bernard Jenkin, Alex Sobel
Whisper it, but there’s something both of us agree on. It’s hard these days to find anything where all MPs are united, bar the continued abuse and harassment that elected representatives receive on social media. But on climate change the House of Commons is mostly united, and for good reason. A warming planet is one of the most serious long-term threats our country faces, a fact long acknowledged by defence chiefs. It’s why over 100 MPs from across all parties have signed a letter to the prime minister urging her to back a target for zero net emissions before 2050…
The landscapes and institutions we cherish are at acute risk from temperature rises. Our farmers, fishermen, NHS workers and firemen are among those expected to feel the full force of a projected increase in heatwaves and floods. It’s why the UK has proudly led global efforts to tackle this menace for the past two decades.
And it’s leadership that is expected at home: nearly 70% of Britons want the UK to remain part of the Paris agreement on climate change, which targets mid-century zero emissions… This is an agenda that should unite the country. It draws on support across the political spectrum.”…
31 Jul: Edie.net: Matt Mace: More than 100 MPs back calls for net-zero emissions target
More than 100 MPs have now signed a letter calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to establish a net-zero emissions target for 2050.
As revealed in an op-ed in The Times (LINK), Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin and Labour MP Alex Sobel reiterated the will of a growing number of MPs to enshrine a net-zero emissions target into UK law.
“A warming planet is one of the most serious long-term threats our country faces, a fact long acknowledged by defence chiefs. It’s why over 100 MPs from across all parties have signed a letter to the prime minister urging her to back a target for zero net emissions before 2050,” the MPs wrote.
The likes of Green Party’s Caroline Lucas, Lib Dem leader Vince Cable, Ed Davey and the Environmental Audit Committee’s chair Mary Creagh have backed the letter, which has now been signed by more than 100 MPs and 51 peers.
The letter (LINK) to the Prime Minister was originally penned in June and made the appeal after energy and clean growth minister Claire Perry announced in April that the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) would be instructed to provide formal advice to the government on how the UK’s emissions targets should be adjusted to align with its commitments under the Paris climate change agreement.
“Given the existing advice from the CCC, the likely conclusion of the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and that other countries have set net zero targets with dates between 2030 and 2050, including France, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and New Zealand, we believe this must be a target for zero greenhouse gases before 2050,” the letter notes…
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband is one of the signatories of the letter and recently told edie that the Government should set a precedent to other countries by introducing a net-zero target before December’s COP24 summit in Poland.
It is expected that additional MPs will add their signatures to the letter in the coming months. Members of the public can also invite them to sign through the Climate Coalition’s landing page (LINK).
https://www.edie.net/news/11/More-than-100-MPs-back-calls-for-net-zero-emissions-target/
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never let a crisis (heatwave) go to waste!
31 Jul: UK Express: UK is getting HOTTER claim experts: 2017 fifth hottest year in Britain’s entire HISTORY
LAST year was the fifth hottest in the UK since records began over 100 years ago, according to new Met Office data which also claims Britain is getting wetter.
By James Bickerton
Dr Mark McCarthy, science manager at the Met Office, said: “People may not recall 2017 as having been a particularly warm year, with a relatively wet summer and snow in December.
“Despite this, when looking at the longer term perspective, 2017 was still more than 1C above the 1961-1990 baseline and ranks as the fifth warmest year overall for the UK.”
Last year saw a temperature high of 34.5C at Heathrow on June 12…
Dr Stephen Cornelius, a climate expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature, said: “We’re in the age of consequences – extreme weather such as we’ve experienced this summer threatens our health, our water supplies and our natural world.”…
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/996518/2017-fifth-hottest-year-UK-climate-change-Met-Office-heatwave
31 Jul: Independent: Carbon emissions could throw Europe back to tropical climate last seen 50 million years ago, scientist warn
Temperatures seen during recent heatwave likely to become norm by end of century, according to comparison with ancient conditions
by Josh Gabbatiss
Researchers from the University of Bristol investigated conditions found on Earth during the early Paleogene, a period 56-48 million years ago…
Their results were published in the journal Nature Geoscience (LINK)…
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions-climate-change-europe-heatwave-paleogene-global-warming-a8470436.html
30 Jul: DailyStarUK: Brits to BOIL in tropical temperatures not seen for 56 million years
Brits could BOIL in new tropical temperatures not seen for 56 million years unless greenhouse gases are reduced, scientists say
by Lucy Domacwhoski
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as for Australia – forget the drought:
31 Jul: Daily Mail: Freak superstorms are smashing Australia three times more often than usual, risking catastrophic flash floods
•Experts warn against increased levels of intense rainfall over the past 50 years
•A new study suggests storms are hitting Queensland three times than expected
•Study co-author Seth Westra fears current infrastructure may not be enough
•It is part of a global research plan, published in Nature Climate Change journal
By Joy Joshi
The study, which focused on possible reasons for storms intensifying over the past 50 years, challenges Australia’s infrastructure, which researchers believe may be ‘overwhelmed by the capacity of intense rainfall.’…
The study’s co-author, University of Adelaide Associate Professor Seth Westra, said climate change is no longer ‘theoretical’ which is why engineers and policy makers need to take in account the dangers lying ahead.
‘For Australia as a whole the rate has doubled,’ he said.
‘In regions like Northern Queensland we were expecting an increase of seven per cent, rather it turned out to be 20 per cent. Which is highly concerning.’…
The study is a part of a global research program being led by Dr Selma Guerreiro from the UK’s Newcastle University which focuses on rainfall intensifying across the globe.
The research was conducted around the rainfall records from the mid 1960s to 2013…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6009079/Superstorms-smashing-Australia-three-times-usual-risking-dangerous-flash-floods.html
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Whatever happened to FlimFlam’s ‘lack of rain to fill the dams’ prediction?
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Koch Bros are still funding Republicans (or at least the RINOS), but apparently NYT started writing kindly about them recently (haven’t time to find the article I heard about) so watch this space!
31 Jul: The Hill: Trump: ‘Globalist Koch brothers’ have become a ‘total joke in real Republican circles’
By Kyle Balluck
President Trump ripped the Koch brothers one day after the political network formed by the billionaire conservative businessmen said it would not support a Republican Senate candidate in North Dakota.
“The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade,” Trump said in a series of tweets early Tuesday.
“I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them richer. Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn,” he added.
“They want to protect their companies outside the U.S. from being taxed, I’m for America First & the American Worker – a puppet for no one. Two nice guys with bad ideas. Make America Great Again!”…
Charles Koch said on Sunday that his network would be more aggressive in going after Republicans who have not adhered to fiscally conservative principles…
Koch also said he’s hopeful his network can support more Democrats going forward.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/399622-trump-globalist-koch-brothers-have-become-a-total-joke-in-real
much like the way Shorten/Labor drag out Medicare scares at election time, FakeNewsMSM is sure health care is a winner for the Dems in the mid-term elections:
31 Jul: The Hill: Sanders thanks Koch brothers for accidentally making argument for medicare for all
By Brooke Seipel
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thanked the Koch brothers on Tuesday for “accidentally making the case for Medicare for All” in a new analysis on the cost of single-payer healthcare.
Sanders made the comments in a video he posted to Twitter after a study published by Charles Blahous at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University — a center subsidized by the billionaire conservative activists Charles and David Koch.
“Let me thank the Koch brothers, of all people, for sponsoring a study that shows that Medicare for All would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period,” Sanders said…
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/399625-sanders-thanks-koch-brothers-for-accidentally-making-argument-for-medicare
you can get the picture from these latest articles at Deep State Axios:
31 Jul: Axios: Sam Baker: Exclusive poll: Democrats have an edge on health care
Democrats’ health care message is resonating with critically important blocs of midterm voters, according to the latest Axios/SurveyMonkey polling.
The big picture: Democrats are moving left on health care. Embracing the Affordable Care Act is now a given, and candidates are increasingly embracing a bigger role for the federal government. The voters they’ll need most this fall — including white suburban women and Millennials — are largely on board.
Axios: Alexi McCammond: The Democratic Socialists’ campaign playbook
America is not a socialist nation, and the Democratic Party is not a socialist party. But after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocker win in New York, a growing number of Democrats are pushing a formula to try to nudge both the nation and the party in Bernie Sanders’ direction.
The bottom line: This isn’t going to end — Ocasio-Cortez was just in California spreading the Democratic socialist message.
The template:
1.Find candidates who fit the rising Democratic coalitions: young, female, minority — ideally all three.
2.Go big or go home with policy fights: Medicare for all, a much higher minimum wage, down-with-corporations regulations.
3.Bet that the Trump phenomenon is transferable: that political parties are open to swifter change than commonly believed as long as you are loud and authentic.
Bring in Bernie. He remains a rock star with the far left, and a sure bet to juice crowds and attention.
We saw this in vivid display this past weekend in Michigan, when we went to see Ocasio-Cortez campaigning with Abdul el-Sayed, a progressive Democrat running for governor.
It was clear that people are craving this brand of politics in 2018. The energy at the rallies was undeniable. But just because a movement can get a thousand people out to a local university doesn’t prove it can win elections in Michigan, or across the country…
Axios: The health care surge: Why it’s rising as a midterms issue
Drew Altman, Kaiser Family Foundation
In recent elections, Republicans have effectively used health care and anti-Affordable Care Act sentiment to rally their base. Now, the repeal effort has made the ACA more popular and given Democrats a weapon to use to motivate their base and reach out to independents.
Between the lines: The importance of health care as a national priority is sometimes overstated — but our recent polling shows it really could be a decisive issue in the midterms. That’s because it has been surging as an issue for Democrats, and in an election many see as a referendum on President Trump, it may now be as important a factor as Trump is…
The other side: The ultimate role health care plays will depend on how effectively the issue is prosecuted in the campaign by Democrats, and how Republicans respond. And a lot can still happen between now and November to change voter priorities.
A big combat operation overseas, a report from the Mueller investigation or any big unexpected development could bump health care down the hierarchy of voter concerns…
https://www.axios.com/health-care-surge-2018-midterms-99265abc-e360-4a34-b6db-e2161ec4ced5.html
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30 Jul: Breitbart: Failed Former ‘Never Trump’ Koch Exec Marc Short Abandons Trump to Join CNN
by John Binder
Failed former “Never Trump” Koch brothers executive Marc Short, who joined President Trump’s White House last year to be Legislative Affairs Director, has abandoned the administration to join CNN, the president’s most vitriolic opponents in the establishment media…
In a segment featured on CNN, Short was introduced as a political commentator alongside CNN host Wolf Blitzer…
Last month, Short oversaw an amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens being crafted by House Republicans and House Speaker Paul Ryan that broke with Trump’s key “America First” agenda on immigration.
In his most prominent failure, Short was unable to secure border wall funding in the March omnibus spending bill that actually barred the construction of Trump’s wall, expanded “Catch and Release” for illegal aliens, and did not fund 1,000 new deportation agents as requested and was released, passed by Congress, and rushed to Trump’s desk within a few days.
On numerous occasions, Short touted amnesty for illegal aliens as a priority of the Trump administration and even questioned what Trump’s border wall would look like…
Before joining the Trump administration, Short was one of the leaders of the failed “Never Trump” movement inside the billionaire GOP mega-donor Koch brother’s network of organizations. The Koch brothers have promised to continue opposing Trump on immigration and trade, demanding more immigration and amnesty for the U.S. and for all trade barriers to be removed…
Short will also be joining a D.C. lobbying firm run by establishment Republicans, a group that is closely aligned with Vice President Mike Pence’s staff. Short previously worked for Pence, as did other establishment types and Never Trump allies who hold positions in the White House.
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/30/failed-former-never-trump-koch-exec-marc-short-abandons-trump-to-join-cnn/
30 Jul: Breitbart: Plutocrat Charles Koch: Trump Tariffs ‘Ridiculous,’ ‘Unfair’ to Foreigners
by John Binder
Billionaire plutocrat and GOP mega-donor Charles Koch says President Donald Trump’s tariffs on aluminum, steel, and thousands of Chinese-made imports are “ridiculous” and “unfair” to foreigners…
The latest Morning Consult Poll revealed about 71 percent of voters say cheap overseas labor displacing U.S. jobs has played a “significant role” or “somewhat of a role” in the steep decline in manufacturing employment years ago.
In a June Harvard/Harris Poll, 83 percent of Republican voters say they support tariffs on imported products like automobiles and electronics. Additionally, 81 percent of conservatives said they too supported tariffs, along with 61 percent of Americans living in rural communities.
Even when GOP voters and conservatives are told that Trump’s tariffs may lead to higher consumer prices, the vast majority continue to support the fair trade agenda. Nearly 75 percent of Republicans said they would still support the tariffs amid higher prices, and 70 percent of conservatives said the same…
Since 2001, free trade with China has eliminated at least 3.4 million American jobs for U.S. workers, as Breitbart News reported.
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/30/charles-koch-trump-tariffs-ridiculous-unfair-foreigners/
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29 Jul: Axios AM: by Mike Allen
5. Koch brothers rebrand
“The Democrats’ super villains for much of the last decade have quietly launched a rebranding effort [designed to] vanquish the ‘Koch brothers’ moniker,” AP’s Steve Peoples reports from a Koch donor retreat in Colorado Springs:
•”The catalyst came earlier in the year when ailing billionaire conservative David Koch stepped away from the family business, leaving older brother Charles as the undisputed leader of the Kochs’ web.”
•After a Charles Koch retreat, “company officials quickly began ***pushing journalists across the country to change references from ‘Koch brothers’ in their coverage to ‘Koch network’ or one of their less-recognizable entities.”
•”Asked about the shift, … Koch’s chief lieutenants explained that 82-year-old Charles Koch was always far more involved with their political efforts than his ailing [78-year-old] brother.”
Why it matters: “[T]he conservative network remains one of the nation’s most influential political forces.”
•”Koch officials have vowed to spend between $300 million and $400 million to shape the 2018 midterm elections.”
•Last year, the Charles Koch Foundation gave $90 million for projects on 300 college campuses.
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-f5428409-832e-42e1-973c-dcb9890a6a8d.html
***didn’t have to push too hard!
Koch network says it isn’t backing GOP candidate in key Senate race
NBC2 News-17 hours ago
The Koch network threatens to hold GOP to account
CNN-29 Jul. 2018
Top Koch network official: ‘The divisiveness of this White House is causing long-term damage’
CNN – 2 days ago
Koch Network Leaders Blast Trump White House As ‘Divisive’
Huffington Post – 3 days ago
Koch network project gears up to help inmates reenter society after prison
Washington Post-28 Jul. 2018
Kochs Won’t Help Top GOP Senate Candidate in Key State
New York Times – 19 hours ago
The Koch network has demonstrated in recent months…
Charles Koch Warns Trump Trade War Could Trigger Recession
New York Times – 2 days ago
The powerful Koch network is promising to punish politicians in either party…
New Koch network project aims to overhaul the criminal justice system
Axios-28 Jul. 2018
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31 Jul: Guardian: ‘Nutcase stuff’: Barnaby Joyce threatens to oppose national energy guarantee
Former deputy PM says if emissions target is placed on agriculture, he will vote against energy policy
by Gareth Hutchens
Barnaby Joyce has threatened to pull his support for the Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee if it places emissions targets on the agriculture sector.
He said it’s “nutcase stuff” to hear that the 26% target for pollution in the electricity sector under the Neg will increase pressure on sectors like agriculture to cut emissions so Australia can comply with international climate change commitments.
He said if the government allowed that to happen it would lose his support.
“If we go down that path then forget it, I’m out, see you later, good bye,” Joyce told (Peta Credlin on) Sky News on Tuesday evening.
“That’s just nut-case stuff. I mean we are sick of having all these caveats placed on us by green groups, by well-intentioned, well-paid people in Giorgio Armani suits, sitting back and pontificating about the world, and then leaving the bill [for taxpayers].
“No, we are not paying the bill for that. Those days are over,” he said.
Activist groups have been intensifying efforts to persuade Australia’s states and territories to demand the 26% emissions reduction target in the Neg to be ramped up, ***partly to save thousands of renewable energy jobs…
A projection from Green Energy Markets, funded by GetUp, showed up to 15,000 jobs in large scale renewables projects in Queensland and Victoria are at risk (LINK) unless the Neg’s emissions reduction targets are increased…
“In 2030, this would include 2.9 million fewer beef cattle, 8 million fewer sheep, 290,000 fewer diary cows and 270,000 fewer pigs,” the group says.
It says if the level of ambition for emissions reduction in electricity is increased, that would take pressure off other sectors of the economy where abatement costs are higher.
“The more that electricity generation reduces emissions, the less the agriculture sector needs to do,” the institute says…
(Joyce) said the Turnbull government needed to make power prices its first priority, and households didn’t want to hear about the Paris climate agreement.
“They do not want to hear about your solo, cavalier approach to changing the temperature of the globe,” he said.
Joyce said he believed the Turnbull government had time to revive its electoral fortunes, but must listen properly to voters’ concerns, particularly on energy prices.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/31/nutcase-stuff-barnaby-joyce-threatens-to-oppose-national-energy-guarantee
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31 Jul: Daily Mail: Smart meters will lead to ‘surge pricing’, admits Scottish Power amid plans for costs changing every half an hour
•Controversial plans could significantly change how households consume energy
•Could lead to soaring costs for watching TV and charging electronic devices
•Scottish Power said new tariffs would lead to price shifts every half an hour
•They will be put in place as soon as energy regulator gives them go ahead
By Sami Quadri
One of Britain’s biggest energy firms has admitted for the first time that smart meters will allow suppliers to introduce ‘surge pricing’.
Scottish Power said new tariffs which lead to price shifts every half an hour will be put in place as soon as the energy regulator gives them the go ahead.
The controversial scheme – which relies heavily on smart meters – could significantly change the way households consume energy.
It could lead to soaring costs for watching television, charging electronic devices and running the washing machine.
Energy prices on the new tariffs will peak on special occasions such as Christmas Day and Easter when millions of households are using electricity or gas at the same time, The Telegraph reported.
But it is hoped that a new wave of smart gadgets able to communicate with smart meters will end up lowering households’ bills in the long run by increasing efficiency.
Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottish Power, defended the tariffs saying they will ‘benefit customers by delivering a smarter grid’ and could offer ‘significant benefits’…
‘Network companies will be able to monitor the exact flow of power and manage the local network in real time to respond to how people live their lives…
‘For example, as we shift to electric transport with more people owning their own electric cars, smart meters could help avoid potential reinforcements to the grid which would be paid through customer bills.’
Surge pricing is technically permissible in the UK – but no companies currently deploy such tariffs as customers have to opt in to share their half hourly usage data.
Regulator Ofgem is currently deciding whether to allow this data to be collected as standard, which could lead to it becoming mainstream…
Scottish Power’s plan comes after a former chief staffer at energy regulator Ofgem warned the introduction of surge pricing was the ‘hidden agenda’ behind the smart meter rollout.
He said: ‘It is claimed that smart meters are safe and secure. Not having one, because they are not needed, is even more safe and secure.’
A spokesman for the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy said that nobody ‘will be forced into switching to a ‘time of use’ tariff.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6008959/Smart-meters-lead-surge-pricing-admits-Scottish-Power.html
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31 Jul: Reuters: China’s renewable power waste falls, but warns of challenges
by David Stanway
China’s renewable energy capacity has soared thanks to generous subsidies and ambitious targets, but the country does not have enough transmission capacity to deliver all the new power to customers, a problem known as curtailment.
To resolve the issue, the government has been trying to adjust the timing of construction and has set up an early warning system forcing regions suffering from excess capacity growth to slow down the pace of new approvals…
China’s total renewable energy capacity reached 680 gigawatts by the end of June, up 13 percent on the year, accounting for nearly 40 of total energy capacity.
Non-fossil fuel power – renewables and nuclear – accounted for 66.1 percent of China’s new installed energy capacity in the first half, up 5.4 percentage points compared to a year earlier…
Wind curtailment rates stood at 8.7 percent, down 5 percentage points on the year, while solar curtailment also fell 3.2 percentage points to 3.6 percent during the first half.
Liang said new demand had created more favourable conditions for the renewable sector, but it still faced big challenges.
“Over the long term, it is very important to establish an effective mechanism to absorb and utilise renewable energy,” he said…
The state planning agency said at the end of June that it would cap new capacity at 30 GW in 2018, compared to 53 GW last year.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/china-renewables-waste/chinas-renewable-power-waste-falls-but-warns-of-challenges-idUKL4N1UQ6G0
30 Jul: Reuters: Analysts raise EU carbon price forecasts as market reforms begin to bite
by Susanna Twidale
Analysts have raised their forecasts for carbon prices in the EU Emission Trading System (ETS) to 2020 after a bullish start to the year and on expectations that plans to reform the market will significantly curb oversupply.
Analysts expect EU Allowances (EUAs) to average 18.59 euros/ton in 2019 and 20.76 euros/ton in 2020, according to the survey of eight analysts by Reuters published on Monday…
The forecasts were up 34 percent and 13 percent, respectively, from prices given in April…
Analysts also for the first time gave forecasts for 2021 which averaged 21.88 euro/ton, almost 30 percent higher than current trading levels for the benchmark European carbon contract…
The number of sectors and companies eligible for this support will be reduced in the fourth trading phase of the scheme which runs from 2021-2030, meaning more firms will need to buy carbon allowances…
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-carbon-poll/analysts-raise-eu-carbon-price-forecasts-as-market-reforms-begin-to-bite-idUKKBN1KK15O
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while NYT has:
Our Coming Climate Issue: Losing Earth
New York Times-26 Jul. 2018
Next week’s issue of The New York Times Magazine is an unusual one…
FT has:
Financial Times Guide: The Energy Transition
Part 2/6: Citizens and consumers
State leaders, campaigners and individuals are grappling with how to balance demand for power with tackling climate change
The next instalment, on how energy use in transport is being revolutionised, will appear in September
Supported by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group
includes (ones I’ve checked are not behind paywall)
FT readers say carbon pricing is key to energy debate
More than 550 readers give us their take on global priorities
Tuesday, 31 July, 2018
Indonesia sticks with coal to meet energy demand
Reducing carbon emissions among developing nations is hard to achieve
Tuesday, 31 July, 2018
Pakistan pivots to coal to close energy gap
Plan to spend $35bn loan from China on new power stations looks set to continue under Khan
Tuesday, 31 July, 2018
Environmentalists split on clean energy’s next phase
Divestment campaigns are gaining traction but their true impact is hard to gauge
Tuesday, 31 July, 2018
Carbon pricing proposals tax US politicians and theorists
Plans to tackle ‘market failure’ of fossil fuel consumption stumble in Congress
Tuesday, 31 July, 2018
https://www.ft.com/reports/energy-transition-guide
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30 Jul: Nature Climate Change: How to pay the price for carbon
It is increasingly clear that achieving the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2 °C will require radical decarbonization, the prospects of which have become closely tied to carbon pricing.
Economists generally agree that some form of carbon pricing is an essential component of climate policy. However, there is no consensus on the price, the appropriate instruments or to whom carbon prices should apply. The immediacy of the carbon pricing question was apparent at the 6th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics, held the last week of June. Although environmental economics stretches beyond the issue of climate change, of the seven keynote lectures and plenary speeches, four dealt with some aspect of climate economics, including a plenary address by Meredith Fowlie titled ‘Carbon Pricing in the Real World’ (LINK)…
Many more sessions discussed the optimal design of a carbon tax in the United States, reform of the EU emissions trading scheme, how to design pricing instruments in the face of uncertainty and the challenges of implementation…ETC
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0256-0?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201807&spMailingID=57091865&spUserID=OTM5Nzg3ODc0NjcS1&spJobID=1443789531&spReportId=MTQ0Mzc4OTUzMQS2
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I am surprised.
Ten years ago Rudd told us this was the ‘Great Moral Challenge of our generation’.
Now it seems we have proof that he was right. Do we allow millions to die so that the Green Elite can tell us what we are doing wrong? Or do we allow the Green Elite more power while millions die?
To misquote someone else the Left admires, ‘A degree of warming is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.’
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KRudd WAS the great moral challenge of our generation. He put filthy words in my mouth by saying “sorry”, without my permission or any right to do so.
MNisquote: “Let him eat earwax”.
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I have a theory that in this modern world the further people are from the perceived centre of culture & civilization then the greater is their need to to be part of it. So that we here in Australia are prepared to sacrifice our nation’s economy on the chopping block of renewable energy in order to show the rest of the work just how civilised we really are. New Zealand even more so.
GeoffW
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Hello Everybody,
What political colour are our climate and energy policies in the so-called Western democracies? I think the answer depends upon how deeply you dig. Several commentators on Jo’s site have today and previously indicated that under the ‘environmental green’ there is a thick layer of ‘socialist red’. This is consistent with right-wing commentator James Delingpole’s book ” Watermelons” [Ref. 1]. However, Oxford professor of economic policy Dieter Helm [Refs. 2 and 6] has, I think, dug deeper than most by putting figures to our foolishness. As you can see from the quotes below (taken from [Ref. 2] he believes that:-
(i) Coal will continue to dominate world energy consumption in large part due to China and India (so Aussi coal exporters will do well – Australia’s domestic energy consumers much less so!) ;
(ii) Our present first-generation wind and solar renewable energy generators are a very significant money making scheme for their owners. This suggests that government policy throughout those Western countries subscribing to the IPCC Paris agreement has been captured by monopolistic capitalists [Refs. 2 and 6] and that in consequence electricity consumers will just have to pay well over the odds for electricity. What political colour are these monopolists, would you say?
I suspect that the West’s energy policies as described above are part and parcel of a larger problem that has been increasingly acknowledged since the end of the Cold War, namely a lack of confidence in our social and political settlements which in many countries (notably, but not exclusively, the USA and the UK) are less and and less egalitarian; excessive inequality decreases social cohesion and increases discord [see e.g. Refs. 3, 4, 5 and 7]. Clearly, we in the West need to tackle these issues, and a good place to start would be with our energy policies since energy takes an increasing share of household income for the stagnated middle classes and the poor – the rich are doing very nicely, thank you, and stand to do even better if these monopolistic practices continue unchecked.
QUOTES from Helm:-
Here are some key, highly critical quotes [with their page numbers] related to British, German, European and world energy/climate policies. The quotes come from the revised and updated version of Dieter Helm’s book, “The Carbon Crunch” [Ref. 2]. I have added some comments outside the quotation marks.
[page xii]. “Climate change policies are a magnet for rent-seeking lobbyists and vested interests – especially those associated with current renewables and nuclear.” This comment by Helm contrasts strongly with those in the Establishment who claim that there is literally no incentive for anyone to exaggerate current global warming, and that to believe in such exaggeration is to believe in a global conspiracy. I do not believe in a global conspiracy, but I do believe that there is a convergence of many vested interests which are benefitting hugely from the climate hysteria.
[page xiii]. “Indeed the only players in the climate change debates who appear to ‘know’ the answers are those who are certain that their chosen – subsidized – technologies are the right ones. Unfortunately there is a climate change ‘pork barrel’ and there are lots of snouts competing for a share of the spoils. The scale of their lobbying is awesome.”
[pages xiii – xiv]. “The NGOs and the green political parties remain resolutely unwilling to entertain any serious role for gas, and too often stand by watching as the dash-for-coal goes on, committing the world to an enormous expansion of coal power stations in the coming decade.” Perhaps ‘le mieux est l’ennemi du bien’ in this case. See also the quote from pages 6 – 7 below in relation to Germany’s new but very dirty coal generation plant.
[page xiv]. “Yet facts will out. The reality of rising emissions cannot be avoided … New initiatives and new policies will be needed. They are unlikely to come from Europe. Its bid for world leadership failed at Copenhagen, and the future of the climate lies mainly with China, India and the US.”
[page 4]. “The economic illiteracy is astonishing: for a long-term problem the Europeans chose a short-term target … But it has not stopped them trying to repeat the folly with another set of targets for 2030.”
[pages 6 – 7]. “Faced with what its leaders think of as a major threat, the Germans decided to enhance their contribution to tackling global warming by instantly closing eight nuclear reactors in 2011 (following the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident in Japan), presumably on the grounds that a tsunami might reach Munich. This low-carbon generation had of course to be replaced, and Germany fast-forwarded its development of more fossil fuel electricity generation – including several new coal power stations, some of which are based on yet more lignite. Lignite-based electricity generation is about as dirty as you can get. Germany is the largest lignite producer in the world, and the planet’s fourth largest coal consumer … The British decided to push on with one of the most expensive ways of generating low-carbon electricity known to man – intermittent offshore wind – and, copying the Germans, found an even more expensive option: rooftop solar and solar ‘farms’ for its northern climate … how could such expensive options be chosen first – and made all the more expensive as and when fossil fuel prices fell back? Moreover, what is the question to which offshore wind and rooftop solar are supposed to be the answer? It can’t be global climate change – wind farms in the North Sea will make no difference to climate change. They will not even make much difference to Britain’s carbon footprint.” See also the quote from page 212 below.
[page 8]. “… the emphasis has been on the production of carbon emissions in Europe … the reality is that Europe’s carbon consumption has been going up. In Britain’s case … focusing on carbon consumption reveals the true scale of the deception …” See also the quote from page 239 below.
[page 9]. “Far from running out of fossil fuels, we have more than enough to fry the planet …”
[page 22]. “The mantra about the sunny uplands of decarbonisation just keeps on getting trotted out. It’s hard to take seriously – that the world’s carbon-based economy can be decarbonized in a few decades without economic pain; that we will all be better off. Even more surprising is that apparently intelligent people actually seem to believe it.”
[page 80]. “The press releases of the wind lobby tend to be regurgitated by the media with few caveats and little questioning.” Perhaps it is here that I should quote the late Leonard Shapiro, an eminent student of soviet communism and professor at the LSE, who warned that “the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterances in which the first trace of unorthodox thought reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.” The largely one-sided discussion (= fake news?) of energy and climate policies by Establishment politicians and media suggests to me that the green movement has largely achieved this propaganda goal. For example, when I ask myself, “What scientific results could ever make alarmists reconsider their position?”, sadly I have, as yet, been unable to find an answer.
[page 99]. “How did Europe end up in this mess? How could so much money be spent to so little effect?” See also the quote from pages 100 -101 below.
[page 100]. “… by 2015 perhaps a quarter of all British households would be spending more than 10% of their disposable income on domestic energy, and will therefore technically be in fuel poverty. Similar numbers may also arise in Germany, and indeed elsewhere across Europe.”
[pages 100 – 101]. “…the EU failed to see that the [Renewables] Directive might have no impact on total emissions. A major dash-for-coal has been the result … It is a remarkable achievement to drive up costs, reduce competitiveness and security of supply, and still make little impact on emissions.”
[pages 102 – 103]. “This is how Europe got its short-term 20% renewable energy target. But it would be too great a compliment to the green political movement to give them all the credit for the Renewables Directive. They have been aided and abetted by industrial interests for whom renewables represent a very large carbon pork barrel. Subsidies attract industry, and with guaranteed contracts and political support, major European companies began to sing the greens’ tune. Siemens led the way in Germany … The renewables lobby groups grew in size and influence, and the lobbying became overt, loud and very effective, funded by the companies that stand to gain most from the subsidies.” Helm does not say so, but I presume that the banks in the City of London got their share of the spoils by providing the capital funding for many of these renewable energy projects.
[page 212]. “With the immediate closure of some of Germany’s nuclear capacity … there is a stark choice: build new gas or build new coal generation … The choice they are making is bad news for the climate and makes a mockery of the Energiewende … It is understandable that many greens do not want to get their hands dirty with gas, but they have to face up to the alternative: more coal, more emissions, and more climate change.”
[page 238]. “None of this should be at all surprising. For it is based on what to all intents and purposes is analogous to a fairy tale. Along comes what could be one of the greatest threats in human history, and it is claimed that the energy sector can be converted from an overwhelmingly carbon-based one to almost zero carbon in the space of half a century, all at just a small cost, or even a profit … For some in this fairy-tale world, we do not even need new technologies, but can achieve it all on existing technologies – namely current renewables and energy efficiency.”
[page 239]. “Anyone deluding themselves that we will be forced to decarbonize because we won’t have enough fossil fuels needs to look at the facts. That isn’t going to happen in the relevant timescale for tackling global warming – if ever.”
[pages 242 – 243]. “Everyone can see that there are price increases coming to pay for all the subsidies that have been doled out on their behalf to wind farm developers, land owners, and those quick enough to get in on the super-subsidies for rooftop solar – not to mention the numerous levies that pay for insulation.” I suspect this quote refers primarily to the UK … but readers in Oz and elsewhere may have their own tales of rip-off woe.
END of QUOTES from Helm.
REFERENCES:-
1. James Delingpole, “Watermelons”, Biteback Publishing, 2012.
2. Dieter Helm, “The Carbon Crunch”, Yale, revised & updated edition 2015.
3. Edward Luce, “The Retreat of Western Liberalism”, Abacus, 2018.
4. A.C. Grayling, Democracy and its Crisis”, One World, updated edition 2018.
5. Colin Crouch, “Post-Democracy”, polity, 2004.
6. T. Cave & A. Rowell, “A quiet word – lobbying, crony capitalism and broken politics in Britain”, Vintage Books, 2015.
7. Joseph E. Stiglitz, “”The Great Divide”, Penguin, 2015.
In summary, it seems that we in the West have allowed ourselves to get into rather a mess, a mess of increasing social inequality with governments prey to very persuasive monopolists. At least we should know a good place to start if and when we come to dismantling the current dispensations and improving our democracies to make them less vulnerable to such suborning.
Regards,
Idiot_Wind.
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[…] of course, seem to have conveniently missed that part. WUWT, GWPF and JoNova all spun the research as showing that climate action is bad and that even aiming for the 2C target […]
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