The BBC’s Age Of Denial
In this newsletter:
1) Record Snowfall Across Himalayas Blamed On … Global Warming
GWPF & Press Trust of India, 19 March 2019
2) Climate Committee Chairman Is Paid £500,000 From Green Companies Set To Profit From New Policy He Helped To Push Through
David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 17 March 2019
3) Dutch Coalition Government May Lose Majority Due To Carbon Taxes
NL Times, 18 March 2019
4) Ireland’s Left-Wing Parties Oppose Higher Carbon Taxes
The Irish Times, 14 March 2019
5) The BBC’s Age Of Denial
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 16 March 2019
6) Peter Ridd’s Fight For Freedom Of Speech On Climate Change
Institute of Public Affairs
7) Dominic Lawson: Brainwashed At The Blackboard
Daily Mail, 18 March 2019
Full details:
1) Record Snowfall Across Himalayas Blamed On … Global Warming
GWPF & Press Trust of India, 19 March 2019
Last year scientists blamed global warming for decreasing snowfall in the Himalayas. This year record-breaking snowfall has been blamed on global warming. This ‘trend’ in increased snowfall is now predicted to continue in coming years. In climate science, anything goes…
No wonder the public is increasingly sceptical about this kind of knee-jerk claims and predictions.
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Press Trust of India, 18 March 2019
The unprecedented snowfall and prolonged cold weather in the Himalayan region this winter was caused by global warming, a weather scientist in Almora said Monday.
The trend will continue in the coming years as global weather patterns are changing rapidly, said Dr Sandeepan Mukherjee, a weather scientist at GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment and Sustainable Development based at Kosi in Almora.
“The erratic patterns of western disturbances, that cause rain and snowfall in winter months in the northern part of the globe, have become so due to the changing patterns of weather caused by global warming,” he said.
“It seems these erratic patterns will continue in the coming years with increase in global warming,” he added.
The first spell of rain and snowfall this winter was received in the Himalayan region on December 12 and the last was received as late as on March 13, residents of Munsiyari in Pithoragarh district said.
“There were 24 spells of snowfall in Munsiyari between December 12 and March 13 this year which broke the record of 1972 when there were 15 snowfalls,” Puran Pandey, a local said.
Full story
see also GWPF coverage of Himalayan ice and snow research
2) Climate Committee Chairman Is Paid £500,000 From Green Companies Set To Profit From New Policy He Helped To Push Through
David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 17 March 2019
As head of the UK’s climate change committee, Tory peer John Selwyn Gummer was a key figure behind last week’s controversial decision to ban fossil fuel central heating in new homes.
But in pushing for the radical change, he failed to declare that the firm he runs has received more than £500,000 from companies which are set to make millions from the decision.
The ban, from 2025, was announced by Chancellor Philip Hammond following the recommendations of two reports by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), chaired by Mr Gummer, now known as Lord Deben.
The reports both recommended homes should no longer be heated with natural gas but with hydrogen – even though it is an expensive, and, as yet, largely untried method.
Gummer did not declare he had any relevant private interests in either report, even though his family-run consultancy, Sancroft International, has received at least £299,699 from Johnson Matthey, which sells hydrogen technology.
Tory peer John Selwyn Gummer was a key figure behind last week’s controversial decision to ban fossil fuel central heating in new homes
The firm is also part of a lobby group, the Hydrogen Council, which campaigns for policy changes favouring the hydrogen industry.
Gummer is already being investigated by the Lords Commissioner for Standards, Lucy Scott-Moncrieffe, after The Mail on Sunday last month revealed that Sancroft was paid more than £600,000 by ‘green’ businesses, including Johnson Matthey, which stood to benefit from CCC decisions.
She is also examining more than a dozen occasions when Gummer, 79, spoke in Lords debates on matters affecting its clients.
Gummer, who as Agriculture Minister in 1990 famously fed his four-year-old daughter a beefburger at the height of the BSE crisis, has always declared his chairmanship and ownership of Sancroft.
However, he has never disclosed its clients – but has denied any conflicts of interest. It is understood he justifies this by saying Sancroft did not advise its clients how to influence Government policy.
In his spring statement, Mr Hammond also announced there would be new measures to increase the proportion of gas from biological sources supplied to homes. Sancroft has been paid more than £232,000 by businesses which make such gas, including £183,062 from Saria Ltd, which is building a network of UK plants which generate gas from waste and specially grown crops, such as maize and sugar beet.
The Mail on Sunday revealed last month that Mr Gummer’s company Sancroft International was paid more than £600,000 by ‘green’ businesses in consultancy fees
Spills from these sites, which are heavily subsidised by taxpayers, have caused numerous pollution incidents. Two years ago, a leak poisoned the River Teifi, with a devastating impact on what had been Wales’s finest trout and salmon stream.
In another report issued in November, the CCC also strongly supported such ‘biomass’ fuel, saying its use should be increased. Gummer did not declare any interests in it.
Last night MPs from both main parties voiced concern that Mr Hammond had followed CCC recommendations – adding to house-building and energy bills – despite Ms Scott-Moncrieffe’s ongoing investigation. Labour’s Graham Stringer said: ‘Gummer’s denials he has conflicts of interest now lack any credibility. It’s really disturbing that key Government policies are being influenced by someone who has vested interests on this scale.’
Monmouth Conservative MP David Davies added: ‘I’m very concerned that the Chancellor has announced huge and costly policy changes while the chairman of the committee which recommended them is being investigated. Until the inquiry is complete, these policies should be put on hold.’
Full post
3) Dutch Coalition Government May Lose Majority Due To Carbon Taxes
NL Times, 18 March 2019
On Wednesday the Netherlands will elect the members of the Provincial States, who in turn will determine the composition of the Dutch Senate. The expectation is that the coalition government will lose its current majority in the Senate.
The latest poll by Maurice de Hond shows right-wing party FvD gaining massive support compared to the votes the party got in the 2017 parliamentary election. Ruling party VVD, on the other hand, is losing support. The Provincial States elections are on Wednesday, March 20th.
In the parliamentary election, the FVD got 2 parliamentary seats. If that election was held again today, the party would get 18 seats, according to the poll. The VVD would see its seats drop from 33 to 22. That puts only a two seat difference between the two parties.
According to De Hond, this is partly due to the calculations of the government’s climate agreement, and the government’s response thereto.
The environmental assessment agency PBL and central planning office CPB calculated that the government’s goal of 48.7 megatons less CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 will likely not be reached by the plans in the climate agreement. They also calculated that Dutch households will lose an average of 1.3 percent of purchasing power by 2030 through these plans, with low income households being hit the hardest. And that industry is not doing enough to reduce emissions.
In response the government announced that it will lower energy taxes for citizens, and implement a CO2 tax on companies,among other things.
As a result, an increasing number of VVD voters now say they will vote FvD. According to De Hond, many VVD voters feel that the VVD is now implementing GroenLinks policy, while they themselves are skeptical about climate change and therefore believe that there should be less focus on reducing CO2 emissions.
Other coalition parties CDA and D66 also lost support in recent weeks, though gained some back over the past week. If the parliamentary election was held again today, D66 would drop from 19 parliamentary seats to 11, and the CDA from 19 to 10. The fourth government party, ChristenUnie, is the only coalition party that hasn’t lost support since the parliamentary election last year, increasing from 5 seats to 7.
Full story
4) Ireland’s Left-Wing Parties Oppose Higher Carbon Taxes
The Irish Times, 14 March 2019
Sinn Féin and Solidarity-People Before Profit have been accused of opposing progressive measures to tackle climate change by refusing to endorse a “carbon fee and dividend” proposal which would benefit (sic) the less well off.
The measure is proposed in a climate action report being finalised by an all-party committee, which is due to be published on March 28th.
The measure is a mechanism to shift people away from using fossil fuels, the single biggest source of carbon emissions, and to encourage greater use of renewable energy sources.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said on Wednesday, economic evidence had indicated how a fee-and-dividend model of carbon pricing, which returns all the revenue directly to citizens, was cash positive for those on lower incomes and achieved significant environmental benefits…
Solidarity-PBP TD Bríd Smith has opposed the measure as she claimed it had not worked in other jurisdictions, while Sinn Féin said it would not support it until other alternatives were in place for those who were dependent on fossil fuels….
5) The BBC’s Age Of Denial
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 16 March 2019
I doubt if a day goes past now without a blast of global warming propaganda from the BBC.
Isabel Hardman has a new five-part series on Radio 4, called the Age of Denial. Although it covers all forms of denial, it is clearly aimed at climate sceptics, as this opening episode makes obvious:
Hardman interviews Kari Marie Norgaard, a social scientist from Oregon, who has written a book about climate change denial.
You can listen to the first five minutes, but to give the gist, Norgaard visited a small town in western Norway in the winter of 2000/01 to do research for a book she was writing. She found that the winter that year was a mild one, with the snow arriving late.
But what really stunned Norgaard was that none of the locals wanted to talk about ‘climate change’, which she was convinced was to blame.
Hardman and Norgaard then discuss various reasons why this should be so, which amounts to no more than a load of psychobabble.
For some reason, it did not occur to either of them to ask what the locals knew already: that it was just the sort of weather event that they, or their forefathers, had seen in the past.
Indeed, when we check the actual data at Bergen, the longest-running site in the region, we find that those winter temperatures in 2000/01, far from being unusual, were the norm in the 1930s and 40s, and not infrequent at other times either:
In the remainder of the episode, Hardman discusses various theories from other psychoanalysts. But it is all just a spurious intellectual attempt to create a condition called ‘Denialism’. No doubt so that climate sceptics can be conveniently labelled and then ignored.
In reality, you don’t need to be a psychologist to understand why so many people are suspicious of what they are told about climate change. The answer lies in the fact that they see no evidence on the ground to support the barrage of apocalyptic warnings showered on them.
People who live near the coast can see with their own eyes that they are not about to be inundated by the sea. Temperature rise has been so small in the last century that most people would not even be aware of it if not told. As for extreme weather, older people know that there have always been floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms. Sadly it is the younger generation, who have no such experience, who are vulnerable to propaganda.
In short, people are far more knowledgeable than the sneering Isabel Hardman gives them credit for. And they know when they are being sold a pup.
Moreover, these ordinary people have far more pressing concerns in their daily lives than to be paranoid about climate change. Perhaps if Hardman came out of her metropolitan BBC bubble and talked to ordinary people, she might find this out for herself.
Rather than trying to package sceptics as people with psychological problems, she might ask why others have become totally paranoid about climate change. When I see school kids questioning the point of going to school when ‘their future could be ruined by climate change’, I truly despair.
What on earth are we doing to these youngsters? Do we really want them growing up so indoctrinated and unable to use their own faculties that they cannot even check the facts for themselves? Do we really want them to grow up so neurotic that they are scared of the weather?
Are we happy to see them marching around like a bunch of zombies, full of meaningless slogans about topics that they don’t have the slightest understanding about?
Full post
6) Peter Ridd’s Fight For Freedom Of Speech On Climate Change
Institute of Public Affairs
Dr Peter Ridd talks with the Director of Policy at the Institute of Public Affairs, Gideon Rozner about his fight for freedom of speech on climate change.
In May 2018, after an academic career of more than 30 years, Peter had his employment terminated as a professor of physics at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Peter had spoken against the accepted orthodoxy that climate change was ‘killing’ the Great Barrier Reef.
Peter’s court case has enormous implications for the international debate about climate change, and for the ongoing crisis surrounding freedom of speech.
Watch the interview by clicking on the image above
Sign up HERE for regular updates on Peter’s case, and to find out more about how you can support the fight for free speech.
7) Dominic Lawson: Brainwashed At The Blackboard
Daily Mail, 18 March 2019
If these ‘striking’ school- children were at all informed about CO2 emissions, they would be demonstrating not in Parliament Square but outside the London embassy of the People’s Republic of China.
Poorly informed: Climate change protesters wave a hammer and sickle next to a statue of Winston Churchill on Friday, March 15
The marching season seems to be upon us. Last week there was (another) so-called strike by schoolchildren ‘against climate change’. […]
These days, when the social media can whip up a firestorm of outrage over nothing and everything, it is remarkably easy to get people to join a campaign.
This was demonstrated by one Anders Colding-Jorgensen of the University of Copenhagen. In 2009 he created a Facebook group to protest against the demolition of the Stork Fountain (which adorns a square in the Danish capital).
No fewer than 10,000 people joined in the first week; after a fortnight, the group had over 27,000 pledging fealty. Then Colding-Jorgensen revealed that he had been conducting a social experiment to show how easy it was to mobilise people via false claims on the social media: there never was a plan to knock down the Stork Fountain.
This makes me wonder what has been told to the schoolchildren who have deserted their classrooms — with the encouragement of their teachers — to protest about alleged government inaction ‘against climate change’.
They have been led to believe that British politicians have been doing ‘nothing’ to reduce emissions of CO2.
Whoever taught them that is either ignorant, or deliberately covering up the fact that UK CO2 emissions have fallen consistently in each of the past six years (the result of government-mandated action to shut coal-powered power stations).
Last year, or so scientists tell us, UK CO2 emissions were at the lowest levels in more than 120 years, despite the fact that our population and output is vastly higher.
Add to this that the UK contributes little more than one per cent of global CO2 emissions, and you wonder — again — what these children have been told by their teachers.
Have they been told, for example, that China is building almost 260 gigawatts of new coal-fired power generating capacity (equivalent to roughly the entire U.S. coal power station fleet)?
Have they been told that last year China also financed more than a quarter of worldwide coal plant construction (to the tune of $36bn)?
If these ‘striking’ school- children were at all informed on the matter that exercises them so much, they would be demonstrating not in Parliament Square but outside the London embassy of the People’s Republic of China.
That’s the one with the red flag, as its government still claims to be faithful to Marxism. In fact, Communism is also fashionable among young would-be saviours of the planet.
A number of those demonstrating last week were waving the red flag complete with hammer and sickle. One of them was standing on the plinth with the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. He had doubtless never been told by his teachers that the late Soviet regime and its Eastern European satellites made Donald Trump look like an ecologist. [...]
I fear the ‘striking’ schoolchildren — many of whom were chanting ‘f*** Theresa May’ outside Downing Street — have been taught to think that Jeremy Corbyn was right that East Germany was a workers’ paradise (the Labour leader holidayed there, he admired it so much).
Perhaps it’s time for a march against Communism. Ending up outside the offices of the National Union of Teachers.
Full post
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.
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