GWPF Newsletter: Carbon Tax Opponents Keep On Winning

Did David Attenborough’s Film Crew Scare Walruses To Death?

In this newsletter:

1) Carbon Tax Opponents Keep On Winning
Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 17 April 2019
 
2) Editorial: Another Carbon Tax Defeat
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 18 April 2019

 
3) Eco-Anarchist Plot To Shut Down Heathrow Airport
Daily Mail, 18 April 2019
 
4) Extinction Rebellion Protesters Are Alienating Workers Who May Otherwise Support Them
The Daily Telegraph, 18 April 2019
 
5) Did David Attenborough’s Film Crew Scare Walruses To Death?
Andrew Montford, Reaction, 18 April 2019
 
6) Climate Change And The Ten Warning Signs For Cults
Medium, February 2019

Full details:

1) Carbon Tax Opponents Keep On Winning
Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 17 April 2019

Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) won a landslide victory against the liberal New Democratic Party (NDP) Tuesday night. UCP Leader Jason Kenney’s first priority: repeal the province’s carbon tax.

It’s the first time an Albertan government has been toppled after only one term in power, and it’s the third time in the last year conservatives have won a landslide victory on a platform centered around repealing carbon taxes.

“Friends, tonight the silent majority has spoken,” Kenney said in his victory speech. “They have chosen free enterprise values over the politics of resentment.”
Nearly one year ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a conservative, won a landslide election victory promising to repeal the province’s cap-and-trade program and join the legal fight against Canada’s federal carbon tax.

Ford joined Kenney at an anti-carbon tax rally in 2018 — where many attendees reportedly wore blue “MAGA” (Make Alberta Great Again) hats. Ford now has another ally in the legal and political fight against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.

Trudeau’s carbon tax went into effect in early April, slapping Canadian provinces with a federal carbon tax in the absence of a provincial carbon price. But Alberta’s election suggests Trudeau’s climate agenda may end up being politically damaging to his government.

“From its very introduction, the carbon tax has been very unpopular in Alberta,” Scott Hennig, president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said in a statement. “Even dressing it up and trying to bribe taxpayers with rebate cheques didn’t work.”

 “Alberta’s premier-elect Jason Kenney recognized this, and committed that Bill 1 would be to scrap the carbon tax. Clearly, it has been a big vote-getter for his party,” Henning said.

Kenney promised to repeal the province’s carbon tax, build stalled pipeline projects and create a “war room” to push back against “foreign-funded special interests” trying to hamper Alberta’s oil and gas-dependent economy.

Full story
 
2) Editorial: Another Carbon Tax Defeat
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 18 April 2019

Alberta conservatives oust the provincial left. Is Ottawa next? 

A provincial election in Canada isn’t usually big news, but Tuesday’s victory by the conservatives in the western province of Alberta is an exception. Voters elected as premier Jason Kenney, who had promised that his government’s first act would be to repeal the carbon tax imposed by incumbent Rachel Notley.

Readers may recall that when Ms. Notley’s left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) wrested power from a previous conservative party in 2015, it was supposed to represent the new wave of climate-change politics. If the left could win promising a carbon tax in the energy capital of Canada, then it could win anywhere and the demise of fossil fuels was inevitable.

Well, not so fast. Mr. Kenney, who served in the national cabinet under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, leads a United Conservative Party (UCP) formed two years ago by the merger of other parties. He mounted a bread-and-butter campaign, hammering away at the NDP’s carbon tax as “all economic pain, no environmental gain.” Upon victory he announced: “Alberta is open for business.”

In an oil-rich province that is to North America what Saudi Arabia is to the Middle East, Mr. Kenney’s victory was not unexpected. But few anticipated the huge margin by which he won. The UCP took 63 seats to 24 for the NDP.

The result will put more pressure on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his progressive anti-carbon agenda. His Liberal Party majority in Ottawa passed a law imposing a carbon tax on provinces that don’t impose their own. So once Mr. Kenney scraps his provincial tax, the national tax will kick in.

Three other provinces are already suing Mr. Trudeau’s government over the carbon tax, which is likely to be a major issue in the national election expected this year. Right-leaning parties now control five of Canada’s 10 provinces, including Ontario and Quebec.

Progressives keep touting the carbon tax as inevitable, but then why does it always lose at the ballot box? In 2014 Australia repealed a carbon tax two years after it was imposed. Last year French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to suspend increases in gas and diesel taxes after national protests. Voters in Washington state defeated a carbon tax for the second time in November, and legislators recently pulled a proposal for a statewide carbon tax in Maine.

Climate alarmists have convinced elites. Their problem is democracy.
 
3) Eco-Anarchist Plot To Shut Down Heathrow Airport
Daily Mail, 18 April 2019

Eco-warriors' plan to bring chaos to UK's busiest airport when millions make Easter getaway is exposed as 'thousands more activists are heading to London'

Climate change protesters are allegedly planning to shut down London Heathrow Airport tomorrow as the Easter holidays begin.

The Extinction Rebellion demonstrators are expected to start targeting the aviation industry, having already taken over London's streets and caused commuter misery.

Activists claimed they would 'raise the bar' on protests having already taken over Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus, Parliament Square and Marble Arch this week.

Internal messages seen by the Sun Online said:

'Tomorrow we raise the bar. We are going to shut down Heathrow.

'There is a deep remorse for those whose holiday and family plans will be disrupted tomorrow.  It is not our intention to cause further separation.

Protesters have allegedly been urged to travel to a bus stop near the airport to raise awareness of the impact that flying has on the environment.

The internal message also suggested the idea to demonstrators that 'if there are lots of us, there will be a low risk of arrest'.

Organisers say they are prepared to escalate the group's tactics if their demands 'are not met' - with 'thousands more rebels' expected to join in the coming days.

A Heathrow spokesman told MailOnline today: 'We are working with the authorities to address any threat of protests which could disrupt the airport.

Full story
 
4) Extinction Rebellion Protesters Are Alienating Workers Who May Otherwise Support Them
The Daily Telegraph, 18 April 2019

Extinction Rebellion activists are losing the support of the very same people they need to win over.

The protesters have targeted some of the busiest parts of central London to draw as much attention to their cause as possible. But by doing so, they risk losing public support.

Watch the video to see how the climate activists in London are making more enemies than friends.
 
5) Did David Attenborough’s Film Crew Scare Walruses To Death?
Andrew Montford, Reaction, 18 April 2019

Did David Attenborough’s camera crew block walruses safe exit to sea?

The new Netflix show Our Planet has quickly become very controversial. The focus of concern has been a sequence in which Pacific walruses fall from cliffs in the Siberian Arctic to their deaths. This, Sir David Attenborough claimed in his narration, was down to climate change, which had melted the sea ice and forced the walruses ashore.

But it wasn’t long before some fairly large holes began to appear in the story. One commentator pointed out a newspaper report of polar bears driving hundreds of walruses over the cliffs at a Siberian site called Cape Kozhenikova, a tiny peninsula around half a square kilometre in area, near the village of Ryrkaypiy. When it was subsequently shown beyond doubt that this was the location where the Netflix team had obtained their footage, alarm bells started to sound.

Other people pointed out that walruses have always hauled out on beaches, even when there is sea ice in the vicinity. Each autumn, they move along the northern coast of Siberia ahead of the sea ice reforming. If some ice lingers through the summer it can be useful as a safe place to haul out to rest, but if there is too much of it, access to food can be restricted. Either way, there certainly seems to have been a regular haulout at Ryrkaypiy before the era of global warming, and potentially through to the 1960s, when the growth of the village and a decline in the walrus population led to the site being abandoned.

However, the walruses returned in 2007, and seem to have visited every year since, in close proximity to a population of between 10 and 25 polar bears.

The existence of a haulout before the era of global warming strongly suggests that the events recorded by the Netflix team have little or nothing to do with carbon dioxide emissions. It’s far more likely to the result of a population explosion as a result of hunting restrictions.

Moreover, it seems that if there is a cliff in the vicinity off a haulout, then the walruses will usually find a way to climb it and fall off. There are many records of this happening at other locations in the Arctic. Walruses are not the smartest animals it seems.

But if the “global warming makes walruses jump off cliffs” story was looking a threadbare at the end of last week, over the last few days it has been left in tatters. For a start it has been shown that the Netflix crew were on site at Ryrkaypiy during the period when polar bears had been reported as driving walruses off the cliffs. The producers have denied that any polar bears were involved in the particular falls that were shown to viewers, but this claim seems to be terminally undermined by the fact that their Behind the Scenes video features a polar bear padding about behind a scientist being interviewed at the Ryrkaypiy haulout.

And it seems an extraordinary oversight not to mention the presence of bears – always close at hand in the tiny Cape Kozhenikova peninsula – or their involvement in causing many of the corpses that were filmed on the beach.

Then the blogger Paul Homewood pointed out that the cliff-fall sequence includes drone footage. When disturbed, walruses have a well-documented tendency to stampede, and the result is usually the deaths of many of the calves, trampled by the adults. Flying a drone over a walrus rookery could therefore be construed as reckless, but to do so on a cliff top doubly so.

And my own analysis of the geography of Cape Kozhenikova is even more worrying: it may well have been that the only position that allowed the crew to catch the footage they wanted placed them between the cliff-top walruses and their safe descent to the water’s edge. These nervous creatures may well have had a drone above them, polar bears to the west, the film crew to the south, and cliffs to the north and east.

So did the cliff-top walruses have nowhere to go except over the edge? Did the film crew choose to put them at risk in order to get their global warming tale? It seems more than possible. That said, there is no doubt that many walruses would have died at Ryrkapiy last autumn anyway – walruses haulout on land and fall off cliffs as a matter of course.

Full post
 
Here are the key questions David Attenborough and his team need to address:
GWPF calls for David Attenborough to come clean on ‘walrus tragedy porn’
 
6) Climate Change And The Ten Warning Signs For Cults
Medium, February 2019

Have you thought to yourself that the Climate Change movement seems more and more like a religious movement?



I have, so I researched how to identify a religious cult. Rick Ross, an expert on cults and intervention specialist,developed a list of ten warning signs for unsafe groups, which is published by the Cult Education Institute. So let’s take a look at all ten signs and compare:

1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.

The leading advocates of the Climate Change movement are politicians, entertainers, and even children. Climate preachers such as Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio lack any formal scientific training whatsoever, and live personal lives of unparalleled luxury while prescribing carbon austerity for the masses. Yet no one is permitted to point out their scientific ignorance or call attention to their hypocritical lifestyles.

Child advocates such as Greta Thuneberg and the crudely indoctrinated children of the “Sunrise movement” are essentially sock puppets for their shameless activist handlers. Refuse to bend the knee to these tiny fascists, as Diane Feinstein most recently did, and the mainstream left will relentlessly attack you as an accessory to mass murder.

The authority of Climate Change leaders is entirely unmerited and absolute, yet no one is permitted to hold them accountable for their ignorance, inexperience, or brazen lies. Thus, the Climate Change movement clearly meets the first warning sign for unsafe groups.

2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.

The conclusions of the Climate Change movement may not be challenged or questioned under any circumstances. Those who dare scrutinize the conclusions, methodology, or prescriptions of “climate scientists” are categorically dismissed as a “Climate Denier”, an excommunicated untouchable whose opinion is no longer valid on any subject.

Questions and critical inquiry aren’t merely dismissed or refuted. The unfortunate heretic immediately experiences a relentless ad hominem onslaught of scorn and hatred from the political and media left, and is often subjected to accusations of outright murder. Simply question the effectiveness of a “carbon tax” and you may find yourself tied to a stake.
There is no tolerance for questioning the Climate Change movement, and thus it clearly meets the second warning sign for unsafe groups.

3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.

Hardly anyone knows just how much money is spent on “Climate research” every year. The cost is spread out among laughably useless study grants, wind and solar farm subsidies, carbon offset credits, “green” building code evaluation and enforcement, salaries for bureaucrats solely dedicated to “climate concerns”……you get the idea, it’s a lot of hazy money.

The abhorrent practice of “sue and settle” was a flat out money laundering scheme that allowed sympathetic government officials to transfer millions of tax dollars to radical leftist environmental groups. The practice only ended when the Trump administration used executive power to clamp down on it.

The total amount of yearly financial expenditure on the Climate Change movement is vague, difficult to track, and often carried out in unethical manners. Thus, the Climate Change movement exhibits the third warning sign for unsafe groups.

4. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.

This one is pretty obvious. The Climate Change movement always shouts out revised and updated apocalypse predictions, eerily reminiscent of the stereotypical bum on the sidewalk with that “The End Is Near” sign. “The world will end in X years if we don’t do X” is the constant refrain. The years always pass, and the apocalypse never happens. Interestingly, this is a characteristic of multiple religious cults (such as the Seekers of Chicago, and the Order of the Solar Temple). At the moment, we apparently have 12 years to nationalize the entire economy and phase out fossil fuels before we all die a fiery death.

There’s also no shortage of conspiracy theories about who they consider to be Earth’s greatest saboteurs. They have an enemies list. The fossil fuel industry is at the top of it, with widespread tinfoil hat theories about oil companies burying patents for efficient renewable fuel recipes to keep us all guzzling gasoline.
The “repent or burn” doomsday preaching is the most well-known staple of the Climate Change movement, and quite clearly exemplifies the fourth warning sign for unsafe groups.

5. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.

Climate alarmists who leave, step back from, or even lightly criticize the movement are immediately subjected to vicious smear campaigns. Dutch professor Richard Tol experienced this phenomenon firsthand when he removed his name from an IPCC climate report and criticized the reports excessively apocalyptic predictions.

The smear campaign was led by Bob Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change ‘This has all the characteristics of a smear campaign”, Tol said. “It’s all about taking away my credibility as an expert.”

The treatment of Professor Tol is not uncommon, and clearly demonstrates that the Climate Change movement exhibits the fifth warning sign for unsafe groups.

6. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.

Professor Tol is not an anomaly. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, and countless other former IPCC in-crowd climate experts were subjected to smear campaigns from their colleagues and the news media for the crime of throwing cold water on the outlandish predictions of the Climate Change movement.
This pattern is all too familiar to anyone who has studied what happens to individuals who leave the Church of Scientology, and clearly meets the sixth warning sign for unsafe groups.

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.