Canada to pull out of Kyoto...

...making Kyoto an irrelevance, and an embarrassment...Canada will announce next month that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, CTV News has learned. The Harper government has tentatively planned an announcement for a few days before Christmas, CTV's Roger Smith reported Sunday evening. The developments come as Environment Minister Peter Kent prepares for a climate conference in Durban, South Africa that opens on Monday, with delegates from 190 countries seeking a new international agreement for cutting emissions... More here...

The scary swindle is over...

...as we wake to the first day of a new electoral cycle here in NZ, we look to PM John Key's centre right government to address the herd of elephants that clutter up our living space. The king of the herd is the ETS. My last posts have mentioned the collapsing international carbon trading market and the recognition that the Durban environmental summit will be a waste of time. It is therefore inconceivable that an incoming government in NZ will continue to commit its citizens to hefty tax and commodity price rises to appease our masters within the UN. In Europe and in the UK in particular, the tide against carbon trading and climate alarmism is overwhelming. This, from the Telegraph's Christopher Booker...

"...The irony is, however, that just as the BBC adopted its new hard line on climate change, in the real world the story was beginning to shift. Ever more searching questions have come to be asked about the supposed “consensus” on man-made warming, and the BBC’s coverage has come to look ever more one-sidedly absurd. Last week, even Richard Black, another BBC proselytiser for man-made warming, was gloomily having to reveal the conclusion of a new IPCC report: that, over the next few decades, “climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variabilty”. In plain English, that means the great scare story is over. What a shame. But at what a price...more here... Hat tip Anon...

Collapse of the carbon market...

...is underway, and with it the hopes of the idealists and swindlers who hoped to change the world. This, from Reuters, spotted by sharp eyed commenter anon. is, as he describes "a game changer..."

LONDON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - European Union carbon prices could shed some 70 percent from current levels, as the bloc struggles with a mounting debt crisis and a glut of supply in the carbon market is unlikely to disappear until 2025, analysts at UBS said.
The investment bank also said the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), the 27-nation bloc's main policy tool to fight global warming, "isn't working" because carbon prices are "already too low to have any significant environmental impact."
"We expect the recent carbon-price decline to escalate into a 'crash' as carbon market supply should double over the coming months," UBS analysts wrote in a Thursday statement to clients...More here...
...and to finish, more re Green Party "baseless scaremongering" from The UK Guardian's George Monbiot...The Green party adviser's theories on the Fukushima nuclear disaster and a 'leukaemia cluster' in north Wales are baseless scaremongering... When I phoned Busby to ask him some questions about these issues, his responses were less than enlightening. He began as follows: "You can fuck off frankly." More here...

We told ya so...

...while the media have given every possible encouragement to governments to commit national economic suicide, and while they have parrotted every greenpeace sob and scare story, many scientists, politicians and members of the public have remained unimpressed. A few politicians such as Julia Gillard and Bob Brown in Australia have written their names in the great book of lunacy by committing their governments to (short term) economic ruin in the name of saving the planet... Bad idea, bad politics and exquisitely bad timing...

From the latest (deep green) Ecology magazine re the upcoming Durban environmental summit headlined ...

"Durban climate summit: is it time to forget about 2 degrees of warming?...Led by political academics, there is an emerging consensus that it is time to drop idealistic hopes of an all-encompassing and workable global deal...The summits in Copenhagen and Cancun continued what a number of observers believe is a forlorn quest to get the major polluting countries to agree a legally binding greenhouse gas emission reduction deal.‘We’ve been doing the same kind of approach for 20 years now, and it’s going nowhere’..." More here...

Matt Ridley. Gamechanger...

...Courtesy of eco-warrior Bishop Hill... The text of the Angus Millar Memorial Lecture. Delivered by Matt Ridley (author of The Rational Optimist) in Edinburgh 31st October 2011.

...My topic today is scientific heresy. When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad? How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?
Let us run through some issues, starting with the easy ones...

... I am now going to plunge into an issue on which almost all the experts are not only confident they can predict the future, but absolutely certain their opponents are pseudoscientists. It is an issue on which I am now a heretic. I think the establishment view is infested with pseudoscience. The issue is climate change...
Read the full text here>>

Essential.

Occupy Wall Street...

...the early years...

Is this man psychic ?

...this man being our greatest cartoonist - Tom Scott. The cartoon appeared in the Wellington Dominion the day before the final. And what a game. The stat's aren't out yet, but it's a safe bet that cardiac arrests were widespread during the last 40 minutes as the horror of a loss dawned upon us after years of hope and hype... Of course we won the game - thanks to a Stephen Donald "easy kick" ! Such is the power of prayer...

Occupy Wall Street...

...is the catchcry in the USA; a present day "Aux barricades !" to lefties and the disillusioned everywhere. While media interest is sustained the protestors have a cause and a forum. When attention wanes the left will have to fan the flames a little brighter to maintain interest . What is the aim of this protest though ? and why now ? Could it be that the sands have at last run out for the greens of the last 4 decades, and with those running out sands the green glue that holds the left together is gone ? And could this absurd street theatre be all the left has got left ? AGW or climate change is certainly an international dead duck. In the UK, the lefty Guardian simply says Climate Change - off the Boil. Closer to home, Julia Gillard's Labor Party with green help have passed the carbon tax. Leader of the opposition and next PM; Tony Abbott, has pledged it will go. In the USA President Barack Obama is despised by the green left for back pedalling on his green jobs promise and diluting his carbon tax proposals...and in Europe - in the throes of an economic death spiral, international carbon trading is a joke. More >> So where else for the left to go but take to the streets ? Street party/protest is the order of the day. How long before the left have a young martyr or two to galvanise themselves into further self indulgent hysteria ?

...and further to the RWC, the excitement is building, with this semi-final weekend. My hope is for an AB v Wales final. Cymru am byth !

Moaning about greenies ? Forget it...

...this cup; The Webb Ellis Trophy, will dominate our consciousness for 6 weeks, and the panic and the passion of it all will mean very little blogging from me during that time. Panic ? why's that ? Because yikes, we might not win ! never mind, we here in NZ are going to have a GREAT TIME and forget about life for a while...Here's some UK comment about the tournament, and I couldn't have put it better myself... a pleasing, recognisable rhythm develops. Rugby fans know what to expect from their World Cup because rugby’s world is a small one. The organisers may bang on about the event’s universality, with 20 teams spread across all five continents, but, essentially, it is a bruising reunion of old mates, the familiarity of the opposition somehow adding to its comfortable allure. Rugby folk know that the Australians and South Africans, the two teams to have won twice, will be implacable. They expect to see the New Zealanders choke, hilariously, on suffocating national expectation; to see the French being magnifique one second and merde the next; and to see the English flirting dangerously with antidotes to the usual under-performance of their football counterparts...and through it all, many lefties here in NZ remain a little aloof, seeing rugby as a bit infra dig, legalised thuggery if you like, and an AB victory as more votes for John Key so they try to pretend it's not happening. For the rest of us though, it's game on ! To all my UK cousins and friends (some of whom are in NZ in camper vans following Wales) and to all bemused observers elsewhere a small hint. Here in NZ, a RUCK is when the ball is lost from sight but on the ground. A MAUL is when the ball is elsewhere, perhaps lost for good, somehow being moved back or held by (one of our) players under his jersey. But don't worry about it at all, or get pedantic about the game ... enjoy the action and Party On ! More UK comment here... And, pour moi ? preferences ? with cloth cap on now...I were born upp noorth in Preston, so c'mon the Poms ! Me Mum were Welsh, so Cmryu am byth, c'mon the Taffies ! I lived as a single man in Sydney and love the place and its inhabitants, so Go Aussie ! but of course when push comes to shove, in the ruck or the maul or anywhere else it's AB's to win !

Oh no ! My neighbour's a greenie nutter...

...and a sanctimonious twit. Think this'll impress him ?

And just so you'll know I'm still on the job, isn't it strange that George Soros and Al Gore haven't taken legal action against the authors of statement like these...The super-corrupt left keeps funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to the modeling racketeers who crank out more press releases for even scarier headlines. Human gullibility is the only known perpetual motion machine in existence. It's what liberals are always looking for: an infinitely renewable source of energy. Global Frauding works like a huge criminal racket, and it should be subject to criminal prosecution, like Bernie Madoff. No wonder George Soros keeps funding the left out of the goodness of his heart. For him it has to be a big profit center. According to Center for Media Research, Soros has spent 48 million dollars funding media. Similar amounts of Soros money are funding all the usual fronts for the radical left, from Moveon.org to The Nation. This is going on while the major media like the New York Times are staggering toward bankruptcy. Soros and friends are buying influence on a huge scale.For a hedge fund manipulator, that means immense clout to make and break news stories. It's a dirt-cheap investment for huge potential returns. Is Soros using his tame regiments of lefties to make more money? Do bunny rabbits make babies in the woods? Read the full outrageous article here...

Trust science ? Part 2...

...Of all the unknown factors regarding our weather and climate, the role of clouds and their relationship and interaction with cosmic rays from the sun remains the most significant. While the red/greens and the IPPC state the science is settled, scientists at heart know there is much to learn. What is known for sure however, is that clouds contain water vapour, and water vapour constitutes an essential blanket around the planet and is largely responsible for the now maligned greenhouse effect - an effect which preserves life on earth rendering Earth our climate temperate. Many who doubt greenpeace's grasp of scientific reality have theorised that clouds, water vapour and cosmic rays from the sun constitute an essential and perhaps even a primary driver of our climate, and that CO2 occupies a back seat, rather than a major role in global warming. I've blogged before on this, and reported on the CLOUD experiment underway at CERN - the home of the large HADRON collider. The CLOUD experiment alone has the potential to be the final nail in the AGW coffin. While this report from CLOUD may not constitute that nail, it is possibly the decisive start of the endgame. Ian Sample, the science correspondent for the UK Guardian writes...

...Some climate models may need to be "substantially revised" in the light of new research into the airborne particles that seed clouds.One of the most detailed studies to date of the particles, known as aerosols, has found serious shortcomings in existing descriptions of how they arise in nature. The work suggests that one or more unidentified organic gases – produced either naturally or from human activities – has a significant influence on the Earth's cloud cover. The research, reported in the journal Nature, has implications for certain predictions about climate change because aerosol particles and the clouds they seed have a cooling effect on the Earth by reflecting radiation from the sun.Jasper Kirby head of the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment at Cern, the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, studied various gas mixtures of sulphuric acid, water and ammonia – the three gases thought to give rise to aerosol particles at the low altitudes where clouds form...more here...

...and Nigel Calder, writing on WuWT, has this to say... to see it on the broader canvas of the politicized climate science of the early 21st Century, the chief reaction becomes a weary sigh of relief. Although they never said so, the High Priests of the Inconvenient Truth – in such temples as NASA-GISS, Penn State and the University of East Anglia – always knew that Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis was the principal threat to their sketchy and poorly modelled notions of self-amplifying action of greenhouse gases.In telling how the obviously large influences of the Sun in previous centuries and millennia could be explained, and in applying the same mechanism to the 20th warming, Svensmark put the alarmist predictions at risk – and with them the billions of dollars flowing from anxious governments into the global warming enterprise...more here... and from Henrik Svensmark... convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans...The science is now all-but-settled on global warming... but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth...

Trust science, and scientists ? Sure can...

...Some media commentators with a special interest in science think they detect a palpable lack of trust within the community for science and scientists. As is often the case, such a lack of trust is over-stated. Its existence however, is real, and may be growing. It is seen in limited areas, particularly healthcare (and the billion dollar alternative medicine industry is responsible for this. Think iridology, homeopathy, reflexology, etc, etc.) Within climate science the distrust has arisen from the unholy alliance between climate scientists and politicians, inside and outside of Government, and the reluctance and inability of many within the climate science community to question political distortion of their findings. This comment below is unashamedly pinched from Australian Climate Madness and sums up the situation well...In reality... there isn't a lack of respect for scientists as a whole, there is a lack of respect for CLIMATE scientists and their associated advocates and public figures. We still trust doctors to make the right diagnoses, trust our engineers to build safe buildings and bridges, trust the particle physicists when they tell us that a multi-billion dollar circle of magnets kilometres across is required to find a new sub-atomic particle. No-one questions any of that. The problem with climate scientists and their hangers-on is the result of the actions of a small but visible minority, who are guilty of:

politicising science by advocating particular responses to climate change (most of which will damage our standards of living for no benefit)
claiming that the IPCC is an impartial review of climate science,
passing off greenpeace and WWF propaganda as credible science,
making catastrophist predictions about future climate,
conflicting themselves by accepting research grants from a government that itself advocates AGW alarmist policies,
playing down uncertainty in their results and claiming the science is settled,
fudging data in order to make it fit with their pre-conceived conclusions,
silencing dissent and skewing the peer-review process (so that it essentially becomes "pal-review")
refusing to share methods and calculations for independent confirmation of their results,
hypocritical do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitudes (eg. Al Gore and Flannery, above)
abusing and smearing (dare I say, disrespecting) anyone that dares mention any of the above.Those are the simple reasons why climate science as a discipline has lost respect. The public is not stupid, and it can see when it is being misled. More openness, more debate, more honesty and less divisive language would help reverse the trend. Read the full article here...

The London riots...

...which are spreading across England will of course be seen by the left as a symptom of inequality and by the right as a symptom of judicial weakness and political correctness. Both are probably partially correct. Like any complex issue, there are many facets and causes. Whatever the cause though, we here in NZ are likely to see the same anarchy in due course simply because our social environment is so similar. For enlightened comment see this from Cranmer...It is quite moving to read of Sikhs in Southall guarding their gurdwara, and of those three Muslims in Birmingham who died trying to protect their property and community. It is reported that some of those involved in the violence are as young as 10 or 11, and that it is principally being perpetrated by those in their late teens - early 20s. This is the price we pay for moral relativism. Parents and teachers can no longer instruct their children in the difference between right and wrong, and so there is no distinguishing between good and evil. If it feels right and good, do it: the moral course of action is what the individual determines. The truth is what you make it, for there is no universal view of morality; no absolute standard by which all may be judged. And so we must tolerate the beliefs and actions of others even when they impinge upon the rights and liberties of others. Our politicians have spent decades dismantling the foundations of our moral order; fracturing and fragmenting the culture that made England cohesive and the United Kingdom coherent. They have created a culture of rootless individualism, for which we are now paying the price. May God forgive them...more here...

Polar bears and satellites...

Global warming proponents can catch up on the sleep they lost worrying about the planet getting hotter with each passing day. (And polar bear fetishists can relax too,"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s.)

A NASA study which analyzes satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011, published in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing, reports that Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than global warming proponents' computer models have predicted.
The data also supports prior studies which suggested that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap is far lesser than what has been claimed by the global warming doomsters. The discrepancy between the model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming has given rise to heated debates for more than two decades. "The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Dr. Roy Spencer, study co-author and principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, said in a press re the oceans." Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. "At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being gained," Spencer said. When applied to long-term climate change, the research suggests that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modelers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle. Numerous decisive factors, including clouds, solar radiation, heat rising from the oceans and different time lags make it impossible to accurately identify which piece of Earth's changing climate is a feedback from man-made greenhouse gases. "There are simply too many variables to reliably gauge the right number for that," Spencer said. "The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations." The research team used surface temperature data gathered by the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain. The radiant energy data was collected by the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The six climate models were chosen from those used by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. " Read the full article here...

Be careful what you wish for...

..AND WHATEVER IT IS, if you don't get it, blame ex-President George W. Bush. He is responsible, check it out here... Ask the German greens, and greens worldwide who have been barking mad and nuclearphobic since their conception. Their fear of nuclear energy arises from the fact that nuclear energy represents the spectre of cheap electricity, and cheap electricity represents unbridled and unrestricted capitalism. They have a similar aversion to oil and the private car (for everyone except themselves of course) which has given billions of people the freedom the green left detest, a freedom to do as they wish - even to travel to their corporate capitalist workplace. Now, German greens have been granted their anti-nuclear wish - a nuclear free future. The German people have been told that a conversion to alternative energy sources, ie solar and wind power, will cost the average German consumer no more than the price of one latte per month... Surprise ! the truth may be a tiny bit different, and with the truth it may well be that the voting public, in Germany and around the world, will at last see the hypocritical greens for what they really are, the last faintly glowing embers of their red beginning...Chancellor Angela Merkel's government insists that electricity bills will only grow modestly as a result of the nuclear energy phase-out. Experts, however, disagree, with many pointing to Berlin's massive subsidies for solar power as the culprit...According to an assessment by the Rhenish-Westphalian Institute for Economic Research (RWI), the politicians' estimate of the costs of expanding renewable sources of energy is far too low, while the environmental benefits have been systematically overstated. RWI experts estimate that the cost of electricity could increase by as much as five times the government's estimate of one cent per kilowatt hour. In an internal prognosis, the semi-governmental German Energy Agency anticipates an increase of four to five cents. According to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, the additional cost could easily amount to "five cents or more per kilowatt hour." An internal estimate making the rounds at the Economics Ministry also exceeds the official announcements. It concludes that an average three-person household will pay an additional 0.5 to 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour, and up to five cents more in the mid-term. This would come to an additional cost of €175 ($250) a year. "Not exactly the price of a latte," says Manuel Frondel of the RWI. The problem is the federal government's outlandish subsidies policy. Electricity customers are already paying more than €13 billion this year to subsidize renewable energy. The largest subsidies go to solar plants, which contribute relatively little to overall power generation, as well as offshore wind farms in the north, which are far away from the countries largest electricity consumers in Germany's deep south..."We are dumping billions into the least effective technology," says Fritz Vahrenholt, the former environment minister for the city-state of Hamburg and now the head of utility RWE's renewable electricity subsidy Innogy. In its most recent report, the expert council on environmental issues assembled by the federal government advocates sharply reducing subsidies for solar power... "From the standpoint of the climate, every solar plant is a bad investment," says Joachim Weimann, an environmental economist at the University of Magdeburg. He has calculated that it costs about €500 to save a ton of CO2 emissions with solar power. In the case of wind energy, it costs only €150. In combination with building upgrades, the cost plummets to only €15 per ton of CO2 emissions savings. Environment Minister Röttgen did in fact intend to significantly reduce solar subsidies through the Renewable Energy Act. But then came the nuclear accident at the Fukushima plant in Japan, which lead to Germany's radical change of course. Now, in order to phase out nuclear energy as quickly as possible, every kilowatt hour of electricity is badly needed , no matter what the cost...The electricity that was once generated by those German nuclear power plants now comes primarily from the Czech Republic and France -- and is, of course, more expensive. The demand for electricity is expected to increase in the coming years, particularly with growing numbers of electric cars being connected to the grid as they charge their batteries.
Experts can only shake their heads in disbelief at the notion that solar roof panels could satisfy demand in the foreseeable future..read the full article from der Spiegel online here...

The demonisation of Christians...

...is a predictable response from the political left after the Norwegian massacre. Never mind that Christianity's 2 main tenets are to love God, and to love "thy neighbour as thyself"...two principles that the perpetrator Breivik ignored on his rampage. Breivik may think he is a Christian, but he will be remembered as a psychopathic monster... as a response to media stereotyping, this from the irrepresible Cranmer...The subliminal message is inescapable: ‘Left is good; Right is bad’, because right-wing beliefs breed right-wing philosophy which spawns right-wing extremism which is malignant. Ergo, those who tend towards the political Right must be subject to state surveillance.And so we arrive at the unquestionable BBC state orthodoxy and narrative of enlightenment. It is ‘spin’, but of such an Orwellian subliminal manipulation of the vernacular that any contrary utterance strikes a chord of jarring dissonance, and the speaker or writer is cast into political, social or spiritual oblivion. Norman Tebbit, Simon Heffer, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, Daniel Hannan, Peter Hitchens, John Redwood, Melanie Phillips, The Freedom Association... These are the new ‘fascists’ of the Right; they exist at the periphery of social acceptability, while the fascistic tendencies of those left-wing groups which seek to intimidate and silence any reasoned protest against socially-liberal, ecumenical, europhiliac multiculturalism are completely ignored.It appears now that if you believe in small state, low tax policies; are fiscally conservative; oppose on-tap abortion; support the traditional, nuclear family; seek to limit immigration; support withdrawal from the EU; advocate freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of belief, you are without doubt a racist, bigoted zealot, and almost certainly a ‘right-wing extremist’ or a ‘right-wing nutter’. And if it is ‘fascist’ or ‘extremist’ or ‘right-wing’ to say this, then it would appear that His Grace also needs watching. But so do the vast majority of Britons who are proud to stand up for such beliefs and advocate such policies, for there beats yet the Conservative heart of the nation...and from Holland...Dutch politician Geert Wilders called Norwegian suspect Anders Behring Breivik's twin attacks a "slap in the face of the global anti-Islam movement". The leader of the controversial Party for Freedom (PVV) made the statement after he was asked by Dutch media to clarify his own position, being at the forefront of verbal attacks on Islam in the Netherlands. "That the fight against Islamisation can be abused by a psychopath in such a violent way is disgusting and a slap in the face of the global anti-Islamist movement," said Wilders in a statement issued by his party. Wilders, who last month was acquitted by a Dutch court on hate speech and discrimination charges for statements made attacking Islam, said neither he, nor his party was responsible for the actions of the 32-year-old Norwegian, who claimed to be trying to bring about an anti-Muslim revolution.
"Neither the PVV is, nor I am, responsible for the actions of a lonely, ill-adjusted idiot who abused the peace-loving ideals of the anti-Islamist movement in such a violent manner, no matter how much some people would like that to be the case," he said. Wilders said he was "repulsed" by the fact that Behring Breivik referred to him and the PVV in a 1500-page manifesto, which was published immediately before the Norwegian started his bombing and shooting spree, killing 76. "We are democrats at heart and soul. The PVV has never issued a call to violence and will never do so," Wilders said. "We believe in the power of the ballot and the wisdom of the voter. Not bombs and pistols," he added...read the full report from The Australian here...

Well done that man...

...whoever he is, who leaked the emails from the UEA Climate Research Unit. He deserves accolades and our thanks. If Al Gore was thought fit to receive the Nobel Prize, Mr/Ms Anon should be similarly honoured. His actions precipitated ClimateGate, and for the alarmist greens life has never been the same. We now have a level of public debate and satire that is succeeding in turning public opinion away from fear, social control and economic disaster. This morning's NZ Herald carried a full page feature, aptly headlined "The great climate debate" between Chris de Freitas (Nature is the key) and Keith Hunter (The human component.) The verdict ? The science behind climate change is definitely not settled, the alarmist claims are not warranted, and the main drivers of climate change are natural. Similarly in Australia, the state funded ABC no less have announced a new comedy series At Home with Julia (Gillard) featuring the PM and her hairdresser partner. The blurb explains...They're just like any other busy modern couple, trying to balance their relationship with critical tasks like introducing taxes no one voted for...

Such news items and parody must send a shiver down green spines. In fact in the topsy turvy world of greenpeace bad news for humanity's future must be an absolute joy. So dependant are they on bad environmental news and a supportive media they have been able to manufacture it when it's not there. So of course people now laugh at their foolishness, their credibility sinks even lower and their army of young useful fools shrinks a little more. How terrible for their collective psyche then when research shows that their apocalyptic scenarios won't come to pass. Such as this news re sea level rises...analysis of the four longest continuous Australian and New Zealand records is consistent with the findings of US researchers Robert Dean and James Houston, who analysed monthly averaged records for 57 tide gauges, covering periods of 60 to 156 years. The US research concluded there was "no evidence to support positive acceleration over the 20th century as suggested by the IPCC, global climate change models and some researchers"...read the full article here...HT PKH

An environmental reformation...

...is at hand. Fossils of the environmental movement are on their knees, stunned by the influence of neo-liberal thinkers who see that decades of Malthusian doom gloom and catastrophe have failed. This reformation is profound and universal and will eventually see remants of the discredited green watermelons seek their political vehicle elsewhere. In NZ we think of relics such as Sue Bradford, John Minto and their newly formed Mana Party. Green navel gazing and regrouping is producing startling treats such as recantation from the likes of the Guardian's George Moonbeam Monbiot (I was wrong about nuclear energy)and the Daily Mail's Mark Lynas. This particular summation is excellent, and would of course please Denis Dutton, smiling above, and the late Petr Beckmann who tirelessly edited the pink monthly newsletter Access to Energy and the late, great Julian Simon, who saw it all coming in 1981 when he wrote "The Ultimate Resource" ...

...When Gregg Easterbrook's voluminous book A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism was published in 1995, it received the predictable reaction from the environmental community: outrage...Something similar happened in 2001 when Bjorn Lomborg published The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, which also argued that most environmental problems were overestimated and most global conditions were stable or improving...there are additional signs that at least a few within the environmental establishment are starting to have some long-overdue second thoughts. There are starting to appear serious books from major publishers that not only break with standard environmental orthodoxy but verge on outright optimism about the planet's future. Perhaps the most surprising is British journalist Fred Pearce's The Coming Population Crash and Our Planet's Surprising Future. There's not much left standing of Malthus and his epigones (especially Paul Ehrlich) after Pearce gets through mauling their factual and conceptual errors. And David Roberts, the deep-green writer for Grist.org who coined the term "climate hawks" to describe the most dedicated global-warming crusaders, wrote recently in The American Prospect that "after 20 years, it may be time to admit that the climate movement's fundamental strategy, not a deficit of personal courage or heroic striving, is behind the lack of progress."

With thanks to Climate Debate Daily...Read the full article here...

You're obsolete my baby...

...my poor old fashoned baby...sang the Rolling Stones (and the Ramones) in the 70's. If Mick, Keith or anyone else chose to re-launch the song these days, they could dedicate it to a carbon or emissions trading scheme. Any Western political enthusiast for such a dingbat scheme has to sell the fact that it will cost billions or trillions and it will have a negligible impact on the global environment. They also have to explain - very patiently to a cynical and fed-up and over-taxed electorate - that their country must be seen to be pulling its weight internationally. Not leading the international pack of course, but not shirking from an international obligation to inflict severe economic pain on themselves.

Such a political balancing act is getting more and more laughable, and more and more difficult.

The Spectator (Australia) looks at ETS's and carbon trading internationally and observes...Nonetheless, Ms Gillard and her senior ministers keep running the intellectually bankrupt argument that Australia...is catching up with other nations that are decarbonising their economies. So...start with North America (which has) given up on implementing either a carbon tax or an ETS...the overall impact on reducing US net emissions is negigible...It's the same story in Canada...where Stephen Harper's government increased its parliamentary majority...after promising not to legislate a carbon price. Check out China, where carbon emissions are steadily increasing...if Beijing really is an environmental leader why...in Kevin Rudd's colourful language, have its diplomats "ratf***ed global efforts to reach a genuinely global deal"? The answer is that China's leaders recognise that decarbonising the economy is a costly venture. Then there is the 27 member European Union: simply put, carbon pricing there has been a disaster...more here...

All this of course leading to the question, where does our ex-international currency trader, Prime Minister John Key see NZ heading ? With a population of just over 4 million, and carbon emissions that make up less than 0.01% of the world's total we are an environmental irrelevancy. Is John Key really so slavishly adherant to ex-PM Helen Clark's ideology and her employer that he would hobble our very fragile economy ? Has he in fact become a lemming trader ?

Kraut angst...

...over nuclear energy seems to be delivering a surprise or two. Germany of course is to phase out its nuclear energy industry in the wake of the Fukushima "meltdown". (A catastrophe that killed no-one, unlike the European mung bean massacre recently where up to 30 deaths were reported...a single organic farm in Germany has recently killed more people than have all the nuclear power plants Germany is rushing to shut down.) To replace electricity generated from nuclear energy it has been assumed that Germany would build 20 million windmills, and cover all its rooftops with solar panels. No way. Believe it or not... Germany is going to burn more coal...The German government wants to encourage the construction of new coal and gas power plants with millions of euros from a fund for promoting clean energy and combating climate change.The plan has come under stiff criticism, but the Ministry of Economics and Technology defended the idea. A spokeswoman said it was necessary as the government switches from nuclear to other renewable energy sources and added that the money would promote the most efficient plants possible. Funding for the initiative is limited to five percent of the energy and climate change fund’s annual expenditure between 2013 and 2016.Annual funding for the new plants could total more than €160 million per year between 2013 and 2014 alone, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported on Wednesday.The fund was first established to encourage nuclear plant operators to develop new, renewable forms of energy production. Now that nuclear power is to be phased out by 2022, the fund will pay for research into reducing carbon dioxide emissions from buildings, developing renewable energy sources and storage technologies for them.Opposition politicians and environmental groups said the plan was wrong because it would promote what they argued were climate-damaging plants. They also worried that money earmarked for other valuable projects could be reduced as a result.Oliver Krischer, a member in the Bundestag of the Green party, told the Berliner Zeitung that the country would do better to encourage more investment in energy efficiencyAnd the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) said additional coal-fired plants were entirely unnecessary...read more from Colonel Klink and Private Schultz here...
UPDATE...Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants...MORE from Der Spiegel online here...
...and simply because it's a treasure, the late Denis Dutton's review of Bjorn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" here...