GWPF Newsletter: Political Climate Change Hits Brussels

European Conservatives Dismiss Higher Climate Target As Left-Wing ‘Propaganda’

In this newsletter:

1) European Conservatives Dismiss Higher Climate Target As Left-Wing ‘Propaganda’
EU Observer, 14 March 2019
 
2) Dutch Govt Election Panic Prompts Sudden U-Turn On Climate Plan
De Telegraaf, 14 March 2019

 
3) Norway’s ‘Green’ Government Plans To Expand Arctic Oil Exploration
OilPrice.com, 14 March 2019
 
4) Ignore Climate Hysteria: California’s ‘Permanent’ Drought Was Fake News
Los Angeles Times, 14 March 2019
 
5) Children Climate Strike Inspired By Green Brainwashing
ABC News, 14 March 2019
 
6) Twelve Years Left? Alarmist Doomsayers Fuelling Kids’ Climate Strikes, Not Science
Daily Caller, 15 March 2019
 
7) The Real Agenda: Skiving Kids Chant “Theresa May’s A F***Ing Wh*Re”
Gaia Fawkes, 15 March 2019
 
8) Climate Control: Brainwashing In Schools
Andrew Montford and John Shade, Global Warming Policy Foundation

Full details:

1) European Conservatives Dismiss Higher Climate Target As Left-Wing ‘Propaganda’
EU Observer, 14 March 2019

The centre-right European People's Party (EPP) has slammed a call for a more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target as "unrealistic" and part of a left-wing "propaganda" effort.

On Thursday (14 March), the European Parliament adopted a resolution on climate change, partly in response to the growing protests among young Europeans.

One amendment tabled in Strasbourg said that MEPs would support an update of the EU's contribution to tackling global warming, and raising the 2030 greenhouse gas emissions target.

The current EU goal, to reduce at least 40 percent emissions by 2030, compared to 1990, was agreed in October 2014.

But that was before the first-ever global treatyon climate change was signed in Paris, and before increasing scientific evidence showed that more needed to be done to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

On Thursday, 306 MEPs supported including in the text a call to change the reduction target to 55 percent compared to 1990.

Support came mostly from the centre-left Socialist group, the Greens, the far-left GUE/NGL group, the Liberals, Italy's Five Star Movement, and 19 EPP members.

But most EPP members participating in the vote - 135 of them - voted against. In total 240 MEPs opposed the amendment on a more ambitious 2030 target.

"The position of the [EPP] group was against the 55 percent for 2030 because it is unrealistic and only introduced by Greens and socialists to make propaganda," an EPP spokesman told EUobserver, when asked to explain how the group voted.

"The debate in the group was about joining this propaganda or not, knowing that this resolution is useless (it isn't legally binding) and the majority of the group decided that we should not play the unrealistic game of the left-wing groups," he added.

Full story
 
2) Dutch Govt Election Panic Prompts Sudden U-Turn On Climate Plan
De Telegraaf, 14 March 2019

THE HAGUE – In order to save support for its climate plan the Dutch government is taking flight a week before provincial elections in the Netherlands.



It is promising that climate policy costs for ordinary citizens will be reduced while businesses will have to pay more. Only at the end of April will it be clear what the promises are worth.

The sudden U-turn of Prime Minister Rutte’s cabinet follows dramatic calculations by the Central Planning Bureau. This shows that the draft climate agreement by Ed Nijpels (chairman of the Dutch Climate Council) would lead to a large burden in increased costs for citizens. People on low income are particularly in danger of being hit hard.

Now the government is promising that energy bills for citizens will be lowered next year instead and tax increases for motorists to be scrapped.

The business community, on the other hand, is promised higher energy bills. Businesses will have to pay higher carbon taxes. The government is thus meeting the demands of a large part of opposition parties in the Lower House.

Remarkably, the new plans have not yet been worked out. For example, it is not yet clear how high the carbon tax will be and what the consequences will be of the new car policies. The cabinet has moved any clarity on these promises to the end of April – after the elections.

The Central Planning Bureau warned earlier today that companies will simply pass on 80% of the imposed climate costs to consumers. The government promises will thus hit Dutch citizen all the same.

Full story (in Dutch)
 
3) Norway’s ‘Green’ Government Plans To Expand Arctic Oil Exploration
OilPrice.com, 14 March 2019

Norway’s government is proposing to expand the area that will be offered for oil and gas exploration in the 2019 licensing round of acreage in mature areas, Petroleum and Energy Minister Kjell-Børge Freiberg said on Thursday.

Norway plans to include a total of 90 new blocks in the so-called APA annual licensing round this year, including 48 blocks in the Barents Sea, 37 blocks in the Norwegian Sea, and five blocks in the North Sea, Freiberg said.  

“It’s important to maintain the positive development in exploration activity in the Barents Sea. I hope this will lead to robust field development solutions and increased value creation in the north,” Reuters quoted Freiberg as saying in a statement.

There has been opposition to the extension of the acreage under the APA licensing round from politicians of the opposition and from environmentalists, who have argued that those licensing rounds with additional blocks are being used to expand exploration to beyond the scope of those rounds—that is mature and well-explored areas.

In the 2018 APA licensing round, Norway awarded 83 production licenses—a record number of awards for such rounds.

“53 years after the first licensing round, this new record confirms the industry’s belief in continued value creation and activity in Norway,” Freiberg said in January this year, when he announced the new licenses and the 33 different companies that were awarded ownership interests.

Full post
 
4) Ignore Climate Hysteria: California’s ‘Permanent’ Drought Was Fake News
Los Angeles Times, 14 March 2019

It’s official: California is 100% drought-free.



For the first time since 2011, the state shows no areas suffering from prolonged drought and illustrates almost entirely normal conditions, according to a map released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order in 2017 that lifted the drought emergency in most of the state, leaving some breathing a sigh of relief. But he cautioned Californians to keep saving water as some parts of the state were still suffering from extreme drought.

Now, two years later, that deficit seems to have been erased, thanks to an exceptionally wet winter.

“The reservoirs are full, lakes are full, the streams are flowing, there’s tons of snow,” said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “All the drought is officially gone.”

The Drought Monitor, which collects data from scientists from the National Drought Mitigation Center, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and dozens of weather agencies, last showed a drought map that was clear in December 2011.

In updating the map, scientists consult with hydrologists, water managers, meteorologists and other experts to determine the amount of water in the state’s reservoirs, the snowpack level and other key measurements. With the wet winter streak going strong, their reports have been good.

Full story
 
5) Children Climate Strike Inspired By Green Brainwashing
ABC News, 14 March 2019

Students striking over climate change inaction have been described as victims of “politically correct teaching” and include some who are “barely literate or numerate”.

Thousands of young people across the country — and countless more worldwide — will walk out of school on Friday in a global day of action to incite governments to do more to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Organisers believe crowd numbers will be triple those of student strikes held in November.

But Dr Kevin Donnelly, a conservative commentator and senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, claimed the movement was the product of “biased” academics and failings in education.

“I’ve just been on the Strike 4 Climate webpage, where you’ve got seven or eight-year-old kids barely out of nappies being involved in a strike,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

“A lot of these students are barely literate or numerate.

“I think it’s absurd.”

Dr Donnelly, an education expert who has written about political correctness which he says is “destroying” Australia, said 1,000 international scientists had dissenting views about the cause and extent of climate change.

He said there had been next to no recognition of this by academics who support the striking students.

“It’s all very well to be politically correct, but there’s no rationality or reason behind it that stands up,” he said, adding that students should protest on the weekend so they didn’t miss school.

Full story
 
6) Twelve Years Left? Alarmist Doomsayers Fuelling Kids’ Climate Strikes, Not Science
Daily Caller, 15 March 2019
Michael Bastasch

Thousands of students will skip school Friday over global warming as part of an international movement backed by adult activists and based on a misreading of the latest United Nations climate report.



In the U.S., strikers are calling “for the Green New Deal, for a fair and just transition to a 100% renewable economy, and for ending the creation of additional fossil fuel infrastructure,” according to the Youth Climate Strike website.

Young activists say “inaction has left us with just 11 years to change the trajectory of the worst effects of climate change.”

Isra Hirsi, the teenage daughter of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, is one of the protest leaders. Her mother joined the planned strike for Washington, D.C., and tweeted in support of the climate protests, “We need to listen to the wisdom of our kids!”

Monied environmental organizations are supporting the strikers, and The New York Times said “grown-ups should listen” to children protesters. So, what exactly are these children saying?

“The rest of my life is literally on the line,” 17-year-old activist Feliquan Charlemagne told The Washington Post. “I’m going to have to grow up in this if we don’t take action and don’t turn it around.”

“I have dreams to run for president in 2044, but will that even be a possibility for me if we don’t do anything by 2030?” Isabella Fallahi, a 14-year-old high school student, told The Post….

Student activists’ alarm isn’t surprising — it’s been nurtured by the media, climate activists and politicians in the wake of a U.N. report released in October.

Full story
 
7) The Real Agenda: Skiving Kids Chant “Theresa May’s A F***Ing Wh*Re”
Gaia Fawkes, 15 March 2019

Today schoolchildren are bunking off school again to protest the changing climate. Guido has obtained footage of the chant they were shouting outside Number 10: “One Two Three Four, Theresa May’s a f***ing wh*re.” 

Watch video here

Guido has it on good authority that people who appeared to be teachers were egging on the chanting…
 
8) Climate Control: Brainwashing In Schools
Andrew Montford and John Shade, Global Warming Policy Foundation

GWPF report finds eco-activism is being given a free rein in many UK schools. In every case of concern, the slant is on scares, on raising fears, followed by the promotion of detailed guidance on how pupils should live, as well as on what they should think.



Executive summary

We have found examples of serious errors, misleading claims, and bias through inadequate treatment of climate issues in school teaching materials. These include many widely-used textbooks, teaching-support resources, and pupil projects.

The National Curriculum has recently been reviewed by the government, but the proposed changes seem unlikely to prevent such practices.

Surveys show that many children are upset and frightened by what they are told is happening to the climate.

Teachers and administrators have a fairly free hand to choose textbooks, other materials, visiting speakers and school trips for pupils provided they fit in with curricular goals. This raises the risk that some may select alarming and politically loaded sources in order to win children over to the ‘environmental cause’.

This ‘cause’ is often presented through the notion of ‘sustainability’, a poorly defined catchword covering political and personal actions for which fundamental criticism is rarely entertained.

Many campaigning NGOs and other organisations with vested interests such as energy companies proffer teaching materials and other resources for use in schools. Some of it is presumably being used.

There are clear grounds for very serious concern. We therefore call upon the Secretary of State for Education and his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to undertake urgent inquiries into climate change education in our schools. Only a systematic evaluation of what is going on can determine the extent of the indoctrination as well as the emotional and educational harm to pupils that is undoubtedly resulting.

Full report

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.