British Farmers Accuse News Media Of Climate Alarmism
In this newsletter:
1) Chinese Scientists Warn Of Global Cooling, Impact Of Solar Activity
South China Morning Post, 11 August 2019
2) Germany To Abandon Fiscal Prudence To Save Its Shambolic Climate Policy
Reuters, 8 August 2019
3) British Farmers Accuse News Media Of Climate Alarmism
AgriLand, 10 August 2019
4) Australia’s Energy Regulator Sues Four Wind Farm Operators Over Blackout
Energy Live News, 8 August 2019
5) Fury at Blackout That Brought Britain Nearly To Its Knees
Mail Online, 10 August 2019
6) Against Censorship: The Climate Story Forbes Doesn’t Want You To Read
Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2019
7) Kathy Gyngell: An Expensive Taste Of Zero-Carbon Future
The Conservative Woman, 12 August 2019
8) Meet the BBC’s Anti-Meat Activist & His Fellow Eco-Zealots
Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2019
9) Under The Bottom Line: First British University Bans Meat, Others Likely To Adopt Climate Cult
The Guardian, 12 August 2019
Full details:
1) Chinese Scientists Warn Of Global Cooling, Impact Of Solar Activity
South China Morning Post, 11 August 2019
Research sheds light on 500-year Chinese climate cycle and suggests global cooling could be on the way.
A team of Chinese researchers says a period of global cooling could be on the way, but the consequences will be serious. Photo: Xinhua
A new study has found winters in northern China have been warming since 4,000BC – regardless of human activity – but the mainland scientists behind the research warn there is no room for complacency or inaction on climate change, with the prospect of a sudden global cooling also posing a danger.
The study found that winds from Arctic Siberia have been growing weaker, the conifer tree line has been retreating north, and there has been a steady rise in biodiversity in a general warming trend that continues today. It appears to have little to do with the increase in greenhouse gases which began with the industrial revolution, according to the researchers.
Lead scientist Dr Wu Jing, from the Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the study had found no evidence of human influence on northern China’s warming winters.
“Driving forces include the sun, the atmosphere, and its interaction with the ocean,” Wu said. “We have detected no evidence of human influence. But that doesn’t mean we can just relax and do nothing.”
Moon Lake, a small volcanic lake hidden in the deep forest of China’s Greater Khingan Mountain Range, where a team of scientists spent more than a decade studying the secrets hidden in its sediments. Photo: Baidu
Wu and her colleagues are concerned that, as societies grow more used to the concept of global warming, people will develop a misplaced confidence in our ability to control climate change. Nature, they warned, may trick us and might catch us totally unprepared – causing chaos, panic, famine and even wars as the global climate system is disrupted.
There are already alarming signs, according to their paper, which has been accepted for publication by the online Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Wu and her colleagues spent more than a dozen years studying sediments under Moon Lake, a small volcanic lake hidden in the deep forests of the Greater Khingan Mountain Range in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region. They found that winter warming over the past 6,000 years had not been a smooth ride, with ups and downs occurring about every 500 years.
Their findings confirmed an earlier study by a separate team of Chinese scientists, published by online journal Scientific Reports in 2014, which first detected the 500-year cyclical pattern of China’s summer monsoons and linked it to solar activity.
The 2014 research, which drew on 5,000 years’ worth of data, suggested the current warm phase of the cycle could terminate over the next several decades, ushering in a 250-year cool phase, potentially leading to a partial slowdown in man-made global warming.
Wu said the latest study, with 10,000 years’ worth of new data, not only helped to draw a more complete picture of the 500-year cycle, but also revealed a previously unknown mechanism behind the phenomenon, which suggested the impact of the sun on the Earth’s climate may be greater than previously thought.
According to Wu, the variation in solar activity alone was usually not strong enough to induce the rapid changes in vegetation the research team recorded in the sediment cores of Moon Lake. Instead, the scientists found the warming impact was amplified by a massive, random interaction between surface seawater and the atmosphere in the Pacific Ocean known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
As a result of the research findings, Wu said she was now more worried about cooling than warming.
Full story
2) Germany To Abandon Fiscal Prudence To Save Its Shambolic Climate Policy
Reuters, 8 August 2019
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany is considering ditching its long-cherished balanced budget policy to help finance a costly climate protection program with new debt, a senior government official said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has managed to raise public spending without incurring new debt since 2014 thanks to an unusually long growth cycle, record-high employment, buoyant tax revenues and the European Central Bank’s bond-buying plan.
But as Germany’s borrowing costs sink to new lows almost daily and its economy cools in light of weaker foreign demand and bruising trade disputes, domestic and international calls are becoming louder to provide extra fiscal stimulus by running a small deficit again.
“The challenge now is how to shape such a fundamental shift in fiscal policy without opening the floodgates for the federal budget,” the official, with knowledge of internal discussions in the finance ministry, told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“Because once it is clear that new debt is no longer taboo, everyone raises a hand and wants more money.”
For that reason, Berlin would link and limit any new debt strictly to the climate protection package that Merkel’s cabinet is expected to seal next month, the official said.
Merkel’s coalition government wants to cushion the effects of a planned exit from coal over the next two decades by pouring at least 40 billion euros ($45 billion) into affected regions and help them manage the shift away from fossil fuels.
Full story
3) British Farmers Accuse News Media Of Climate Alarmism
AgriLand, 10 August 2019
National Farmers’ Union president Minette Batters has accused the British media of “inflating” the findings of a report by published this week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC report on land use across the world and its impact on the climate concluded that better land management and dietary changes were needed.
However, NFU president Minette Batters said it was “frustrating” that some media outlets had inferred this meant the panel was recommending meat to be cut out altogether.
“Having gone through the report in detail, it is clear that the IPCC recognises the important role animal products play in a balanced diet,” Batters said.
When produced sustainably in low greenhouse gas emission systems, these are actually part of the solution to climate change.
“It is therefore incredibly frustrating to see this inflated within some part of the media to recommend a reduction of meat consumption in the UK.
Full story
4) Australia’s Energy Regulator Sues Four Wind Farm Operators Over Blackout
Energy Live News, 8 August 2019
Australia’s energy regulator is taking legal action against four wind farm operators over a state-wide blackout in South Australia in 2016.
The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) is seeking compensation in court action from subsidiaries of AGL Energy, Neoen, Pacific Hydro and Tilt Renewables connected to an event on 28thSeptember 2016 when severe weather conditions led to significant damage to the transmission lines, causing power loss.
Around 850,000 customers in South Australia did not have access to electricity on the day.
The AER alleges the wind farm operators failed to ensure their power generating units complied with their performance standard requirement and provide automatic protection systems to ride through the system disturbances.
Full story
5) Fury at Blackout That Brought Britain Nearly To Its Knees
Mail Online, 10 August 2019
UK Government launches probe into mystery simultaneous failure of wind farm and gas-fired power station as officials insist there is ‘no evidence’ of a cyber attack
Energy watchdog Ofgem has demanded an urgent report from National Grid after a major power cut yesterday caused travel chaos and cut electricity for almost one million people in England and Wales.
Huge swathes of the country were left without power after two major generators failed yesterday afternoon within minutes of each other.
The crisis began when a gas fired power station at Little Barford, Bedfordshire failed at 4.58pm, followed two minutes later by the Hornsea Offshore wind farm in the North Sea.
A major review has been launched into the blackout but the National Grid is ‘confident’ that there was no ‘cyber attack’ on the system.
Large swathes of the country were affected by power cuts yesterday including Bristol, Exeter and Newport. The capital was particularly badly affected, with the Victoria Line closed and King’s Cross evacuated
Full story
see also James Delingpole: Boris Johnson's Looming Wind Disaster
6) Against Censorship: The Climate Story Forbes Doesn’t Want You To Read
Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2019
This is the story journalist Doron Levin wrote for Forbes about the scientific research by Professor Nir Shaviv and Professor Henrik Svensmark, two members of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council. The Forbes editor, however, doesn’t seem to like the piece and has therefore removed it from its website. We publish the censored story here for interested readers to make up their own minds about the research by Nir Shaviv and Henrik Svensmark.
Global Warming? An Israeli Astrophysicist Provides Alternative View That Is Not Easy To Reject
The U.S. auto industry and regulators in California and Washington appear deadlocked over stiff Obama-era fuel-efficiency standards that automakers oppose and the Trump administration have vowed to roll back – an initiative that has environmental activists up in arms.
California and four automakers favor compromise, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) supports the president’s position that the federal standards are too strict. The EPA argues that forcing automakers to build more fuel efficient cars will make them less affordable, causing consumers to delay trading older, less efficient vehicles. Complicating matters is California’s authority to create its own air quality standards, which the White House vows to end.
However the impasse is resolved, the moment looks ripe to revisit the root of this multifactorial dustup: namely, the scientific “consensus” that CO2 emissions from vehicles and other sources are pushing the earth to the brink of climate catastrophe.
In a modest office on the campus of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, an Israeli astrophysicist patiently explains why he is convinced that the near-unanimous judgments of climatologists are misguided. Nir Shaviv, chairman of the university’s physics department, says that his research and that of colleagues, suggests that rising CO2 levels, while hardly insignificant, play only a minor role compared to the influence of the sun and cosmic radiation on the earth’s climate.
“Global warming clearly is a problem, though not in the catastrophic terms of Al Gore’s movies or environmental alarmists,” said Shaviv. “Climate change has existed forever and is unlikely to go away. But CO2 emissions don’t play the major role. Periodic solar activity does.”
Shaviv, 47, fully comprehends that his scientific conclusions constitute a glaring rebuttal to the widely-quoted surveys showing that 97% of climate scientists agree that human activity – the combustion of fossil fuels – constitutes the principle reason for climate change.
“Only people who don’t understand science take the 97% statistic seriously,” he said. “Survey results depend on who you ask, who answers and how the questions are worded. In any case, science is not a democracy. Even if 100% of scientists believe something, one person with good evidence can still be right.”
Full uncensored post
see also: Prof Nir Shaviv - Forbes Censored An Interview With Me
Science Bits, 10 August 2019
7) Kathy Gyngell: An Expensive Taste Of Zero-Carbon Future
The Conservative Woman, 12 August 2019
We can’t say we weren’t warned. Mrs May’s legacy eco-lunacy – her net zero carbon policy by 2050 – is going to come at great cost.
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer forecast a trillion pounds but others are already predicting that this almost incomprehensible figure is an underestimate.
The question no one seems to have put is: from where and from whom is all this money to come? Well, we have our first taste of the so-called zero carbon future with the news that British consumers already face a doubling of electricity prices to bail out the new wind farms coming on stream now – just those currently planned for.
A recently released report by Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University provides a stark warning of the implications for energy costs of this headlong flight from fossil fuels to renewables.
In it he explains that a number of large wind farms have contracts to supply power at extraordinarily low prices, ‘but the cost and performance data suggest that they will be unable to cover their costs’. From his detailed analysis of the latest wind farm data he calculates that we face a doubling of the electricity prices to finance the bail-out they’ll need.
He gives as one example Moray East, a site under construction in northern Scotland, where the operators will need to double their selling price at least if they are to break even. Hughes says they are playing a high-stakes poker game with the government, with the government as patsy:
‘They are probably gambling that if they threaten to go bust, the government will be forced to raise carbon taxes sharply. This will push market prices up, and the operators will simply walk away from their agreed contracts and trade at the new prices.’
Instead of seeing cheap renewables, he shows how the consumer will be hit by huge electricity price rises. He fears, too, that when the full impact of this is felt by the consumer and small businesses there is a real possibility that we see the public take to the streets, just as the gilets jaunes have been doing in France.
You can find his full report here.
Full Post and Comments
8) Charles Moore: Meet the BBC’s Anti-Meat Activist & His Fellow Eco-Zealots
The Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2019
Food will soon become the biggest crusade to purify the West from its prosperity and its pleasures.
The headlines said things like “Eat less meat to save the earth, urges UN”. So naturally the public will believe this is what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is saying in its latest report.
But is it, really? The report’s wording is guarded, preferring to speak about how “diversification in the food system”, including things like “coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds”, might help, rather than telling people to drop meat. Indeed, the title of the report is Climate Change and Land, with no mention of meat. If you google it under its correct name, up it comes, and no headlines about the eco-wickedness of meat appear. If you google it under variants of “IPCC report on meat”, you get headlines such as that above.
Why this difference? I think it is because of the power of those who set themselves up as interpreters of what they over-confidently call “the science”. The most powerful of these in Britain is Roger Harrabin. He is called the BBC’s Environment Analyst, but really he is their in-house evangelical preacher. Each day, the Reverend Roger announces the environmental news, turning it into a covert sermon. He is the even more slanted green equivalent of the BBC’s “reality check” correspondent on Brexit, Chris Morris, whose real job is to explain why the Leave side is wrong.
On Thursday morning, at six o’clock on Radio 4, the BBC news led with the IPCC story. Having quickly mentioned that the report was about land use, Harrabin then explained that because the panel is made up of “scientists and government representatives” and has a “need for UN consensus”, it “delivers messages in a lowest common denominator”.
The Reverend Roger, as keeper of the sacred mysteries, then explained what the boffins really meant: “Privately, some of the scientists say over-consumption of meat and dairy products in the West can’t go on.” Thus can some careful, rather colourless words by scientists about issues like “greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems” be turned into something we can all have an argument about. Farmers are disgusting! saith the preacher, Stop eating beef and sheep! We Westerners are much too fat!
In the Guardian, the green George Monbiot, who is not constrained by the thin veil of objectivity which Harrabin is forced to wear, was furious with the IPCC. It had been “nobbled”, he shouted. Its report was “pathetic”. He wanted us to know that “one kilo of beef protein has a carbon opportunity cost of 1,250 kg: that, incredibly, is roughly equal to driving a new car for a year.” “Incredibly” sounds the right word to me.
Full post
9) Under The Bottom Line: First British University Bans Meat, Others Likely To Adopt Climate Cult
The Guardian, 12 August 2019
A university has banned the sale of beef in campus food outlets in order to help tackle the climate emergency.
Goldsmiths, University of London, is also attempting to phase out single-use plastics and installing more panels to power its buildings in New Cross, as part of a move to become carbon neutral by 2025.
Beef products will no longer be available in the institution’s cafes and shops when the academic year begins in September, while an additional 10p levy will be added to the sale of bottled water and disposable plastic cups to discourage their use.
Prof Frances Corner, who took up the post of Goldsmiths’ warden this month, said the college would also switch to a completely clean energy supplier when its current contract ends and look into how all students could take curriculum options related to the climate crisis.
Full story
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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