Almost Everything You've Heard About The Amazon Fires Is Wrong
In this newsletter:
1) False Alarm: Amazon Burning Is Mostly Farms, Not Forests
Ronald Bailey, Reason, 23 August 2019
2) Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It's The "Lungs Of The World," Is Wrong
Michael Shellenberger, Forbes, 26 August 2019
3) The West’s Hysteria Over Amazon Fires Is Riddled With Colonial Arrogance
Brendan O'Neill, Spiked, 23 August 2019
4) Michael Mann Refuses To Produce Data, Loses Lawsuit
John Hinderaker, PowerLine, 24 August 2019
5) Fear Of Losing Votes, US Democrats Ban Presidential Climate Debate
ABC News, 24 August 2019
6) Patrick Michaels & Caleb Stewart Rossiter: The Great Failure Of Climate Models
Washington Examiner, 25 August 2019
ABC News, 24 August 2019
6) Patrick Michaels & Caleb Stewart Rossiter: The Great Failure Of Climate Models
Washington Examiner, 25 August 2019
7) Roy Spencer: How the Media Help to Destroy Rational Climate Debate
Roy W. Spencer, 25 August 2019
8) Merkel's Madness: €7,6 Trillion For Germany's Climate Project
Fritz Vahrenholt & Roland Tichy, GWPF, 24 August 2019
Fritz Vahrenholt & Roland Tichy, GWPF, 24 August 2019
9) And Finally: How To Lose The Climate War? Tell Britons They Can No Longer Own A Car
Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 22 August 2019
Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 22 August 2019
Full details:
1) False Alarm: Amazon Burning Is Mostly Farms, Not Forests
Ronald Bailey, Reason, 23 August 2019
Problematic deforestation continues, but the “lungs of the earth” are still breathing.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is one of the dumbest aphorisms ever coined. Speaking as a former television producer, I’d say a picture takes a thousand words to explain. Take this much-circulated NASA satellite photo showing vast smoke plumes over the Amazon region:
Combined with a report from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research that says the agency had detected 39,194 fires in the region, a 77 percent jump up from the same period in 2018, that picture has launched alarmed headlines around the world.
“Amazon rainforest is burning at an unprecedented rate,” declares CNN. The Daily Beast gives us “Record Number of Wildfires Burning in Amazon Rainforest.” Here’s NBC News: “Amazon wildfires could be ‘game over’ for climate change fight.”
Interestingly, when NASA released the satellite image on August 21, it noted that “it is not unusual to see fires in Brazil at this time of year due to high temperatures and low humidity. Time will tell if this year is a record breaking or just within normal limits.”
So why are there so many fires? “Natural fires in the Amazon are rare, and the majority of these fires were set by farmers preparing Amazon-adjacent farmland for next year’s crops and pasture,” soberly explains The New York Times. “Much of the land that is burning was not old-growth rain forest, but land that had already been cleared of trees and set for agricultural use.”
It is routine for farmers and ranchers in tropical areas burn their fields to control pests and weeds and to encourage new growth in pastures.
What about deforestation trends? Since the right-wing nationalist Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s president, rainforest deforestation rates have increased a bit, but they are still way below their earlier highs:
The New York Times
Various researchers have noted a U-shaped relation between environmental degradation and economic growth. As development takes off, levels of pollution and land degradation rise, but they begin to improve once certain thresholds of per capita incomes are attained. A 2012 study found, after parsing data from 52 developing countries between 1972 and 2003, that deforestation increases until average income levels reach about $3,100 per capita. As it happens, Brazilian per capita incomes reached $3,600 per capita in 2004,which is when deforestation rates began trending decisively downward.
While problematic deforestation is still taking place in the Amazon region, a 2018 study in Nature reported that the global tree canopy cover had increased by 865,000 square miles from 1982 to 2016. As Brazilians become wealthier, the deforestation trend in the Amazon will likely turn around toward afforestation, as it already has done many other countries.
Full story
2) Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It's The "Lungs Of The World," Is Wrong
Michael Shellenberger, Forbes, 26 August 2019
The dramatic photos shared by celebrities of the fires in Brazil weren't what they appeared to be. The photos weren’t actually of the fires and many weren’t even of the Amazon.
Ronald Bailey, Reason, 23 August 2019
Problematic deforestation continues, but the “lungs of the earth” are still breathing.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is one of the dumbest aphorisms ever coined. Speaking as a former television producer, I’d say a picture takes a thousand words to explain. Take this much-circulated NASA satellite photo showing vast smoke plumes over the Amazon region:
Combined with a report from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research that says the agency had detected 39,194 fires in the region, a 77 percent jump up from the same period in 2018, that picture has launched alarmed headlines around the world.
“Amazon rainforest is burning at an unprecedented rate,” declares CNN. The Daily Beast gives us “Record Number of Wildfires Burning in Amazon Rainforest.” Here’s NBC News: “Amazon wildfires could be ‘game over’ for climate change fight.”
Interestingly, when NASA released the satellite image on August 21, it noted that “it is not unusual to see fires in Brazil at this time of year due to high temperatures and low humidity. Time will tell if this year is a record breaking or just within normal limits.”
So why are there so many fires? “Natural fires in the Amazon are rare, and the majority of these fires were set by farmers preparing Amazon-adjacent farmland for next year’s crops and pasture,” soberly explains The New York Times. “Much of the land that is burning was not old-growth rain forest, but land that had already been cleared of trees and set for agricultural use.”
It is routine for farmers and ranchers in tropical areas burn their fields to control pests and weeds and to encourage new growth in pastures.
What about deforestation trends? Since the right-wing nationalist Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s president, rainforest deforestation rates have increased a bit, but they are still way below their earlier highs:
The New York Times
Various researchers have noted a U-shaped relation between environmental degradation and economic growth. As development takes off, levels of pollution and land degradation rise, but they begin to improve once certain thresholds of per capita incomes are attained. A 2012 study found, after parsing data from 52 developing countries between 1972 and 2003, that deforestation increases until average income levels reach about $3,100 per capita. As it happens, Brazilian per capita incomes reached $3,600 per capita in 2004,which is when deforestation rates began trending decisively downward.
While problematic deforestation is still taking place in the Amazon region, a 2018 study in Nature reported that the global tree canopy cover had increased by 865,000 square miles from 1982 to 2016. As Brazilians become wealthier, the deforestation trend in the Amazon will likely turn around toward afforestation, as it already has done many other countries.
Full story
2) Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It's The "Lungs Of The World," Is Wrong
Michael Shellenberger, Forbes, 26 August 2019
The dramatic photos shared by celebrities of the fires in Brazil weren't what they appeared to be. The photos weren’t actually of the fires and many weren’t even of the Amazon.
The increase in fires burning in Brazil set off a storm of international outrage last week. Celebrities, environmentalists, and political leaders blame Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, for destroying the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, which they say is the “lungs of the world.”
Singers and actors including Madonna and Jaden Smith shared photos on social media that were seen by tens of millions of people. “The lungs of the Earth are in flames,” said actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” tweeted soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. “The Amazon rain forest — the lungs which produce 20% of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire,” tweeted French President Emanuel Macron.
And yet the photos weren’t actually of the fires and many weren’t even of the Amazon. The photo Ronaldo shared was taken in southern Brazil, far from the Amazon, in 2013. The photo that DiCaprio and Macron shared is over 20 years old. The photo Madonna and Smith shared is over 30. Some celebrities shared photos from Montana, India, and Sweden.
To their credit, CNN and New York Times debunked the photos and other misinformation about the fires. “Deforestation is neither new nor limited to one nation,” explained CNN. “These fires were not caused by climate change,” noted The Times.
But both publications repeated the claim that the Amazon is the “lungs” of the world. “The Amazon remains a net source of oxygen today,” said CNN. “The Amazon is often referred to as Earth’s ‘lungs,’ because its vast forests release oxygen and store carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas that is a major cause of global warming,” claimed The New York Times.
I was curious to hear what one of the world’s leading Amazon forest experts, Dan Nepstad, had to say about the “lungs” claim.
“It’s bullshit,” he said. “There’s no science behind that. The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen but it uses the same amount of oxygen through respiration so it’s a wash.”
Plants use respiration to convert nutrients from the soil into energy. They use photosynthesis to convert light into chemical energy, which can later be used in respiration.
What about The New York Times claim that “If enough rain forest is lost and can’t be restored, the area will become savanna, which doesn’t store as much carbon, meaning a reduction in the planet’s ‘lung capacity’”?
Also not true, said Nepstad, who was a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. “The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, but so do soy farms and [cattle] pastures.”
Some people will no doubt wave away the “lungs” myth as nit-picking. The broader point is that there is an increase in fires in Brazil and something should be done about it.
But the “lungs” myth is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider that CNN ran a long segment with the banner, “Fires Burning at Record Rate in Amazon Forest” while a leading climate reporter claimed, “The current fires are without precedent in the past 20,000 years.”
While the number of fires in 2019 is indeed 80% higher than in 2018, it’s just 7% higher than the average over the last 10 years ago, Nepstad said.
One of Brazil’s leading environmental journalists agrees that media coverage of the fires has been misleading. “It was under [Workers Party President] Lula and [Environment Secretary] Marina Silva (2003-2008) that Brazil had the highest incidence of burning,” Leonardo Coutinho told me over email. “But neither Lula nor Marina was accused of putting the Amazon at risk.”
Coutinho’s perspective was shaped by reporting on the ground in the Amazon for Veja, Brazil’s leading news magazine, for nearly a decade. By contrast, many of the correspondents reporting on the fires have been doing so from the cosmopolitan cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which are 2,500 miles and four hours by jet plane away.
“What is happening in the Amazon is not exceptional,” said Coutinho. “Take a look at Google web searches search for ‘Amazon’ and ‘Amazon Forest’ over time. Global public opinion was not as interested in the ‘Amazon tragedy’ when the situation was undeniably worse. The present moment does not justify global hysteria.”
And while fires in Brazil have increased, there is no evidence that Amazon forest fires have.
Full post
3) The West’s Hysteria Over Amazon Fires Is Riddled With Colonial Arrogance
Brendan O'Neill, Spiked, 23 August 2019
Every now and then the environmentalist mask slips. And we get a glimpse of the elitist and authoritarian movement that lurks beneath the hippyish green facade. The hysteria over the rainforest fires in Brazil is one of those moments.
As well-off, privileged Westerners rage against Brazil for having the temerity to use its resources as it sees fit, and as they even flirt with the idea of sending outside forces to take charge of the Amazon, we can see the borderline imperialist mindset that motors so much green thinking.
In the space of a few days, greens have gone from saying ‘We care about the planet!’ to ‘How dare these spics defy our diktats?’. And it is a truly clarifying moment.
You don’t have to be a fan of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and spiked certainly isn’t, to feel deeply uncomfortable with the Western outrage over his policy on the rainforest.
Observers claim the Amazon is experiencing its highest number of fires since records began. That those records only began in 2013 should give the Western hysterics pause for thought – this isn’t the historically unprecedented End of Days event they claim it is.
There are always fires in the Amazon, some started by nature, others by human beings logging or clearing land for farming. Some of the current fires were started by people who need wood or land – how dare they! – while others are just part of the natural cycle.
More tellingly, NASA has attempted to counter the hysteria. Its data suggests that, while the number of fires might be larger than in the past few years, ‘overall fire activity’ in the Amazon is ‘slightly below average this year’.
How striking that the people who wave around NASA reports when making their case that mankind has had a terrible impact on the planet are ignoring NASA’s reports that there is less fire in the Amazon this year in comparison with the past 15 years.
The Brazil-bashers will not be convinced by reason. To them, the fact that there have been 74,000 fires in the Amazon between January and August is proof that human beings – well, stupid Brazilians – are plunging the planet into a fiery doom that will make Revelations look like a fairy story in comparison.
The Earth is ‘being killed,’ greens wail. ‘Our house is burning. Literally,’ says French President Emmanuel Macron, committing the grammar crime of saying ‘literally’ when he surely means ‘virtually.’
Unless the Elysée Palace really is on fire?
Leonardo DiCaprio says ‘if the Amazon goes, we the humans will go.’ So Brazil is killing us all. Bolsonaro, by giving a green light to development in the rainforest, is holding a gun to mankind’s head, apparently.
No wonder Macron has suggested holding an international conference on how to save the rainforest, while some greens have said we need to intervene.
Westerners going overseas to rescue natural resources from the ignorant natives? Yes, that went so well in the past.
The discussion about the rainforest is not only unhinged, using Biblical language to describe fairly routine events.
It is also riddled with a colonialist view in which people in the developing world are presented as irresponsible and destructive, while Westerners, like the leader of France, are held up as the saviors of nature and mankind.
This expresses one of the key ideas in the environmentalist movement – that the developing world cannot possibly industrialize and modernize as much as the West has, because if it does the planet will die.
Hence eco-Westerners’ fury with ‘filthy’ China, their loathing of Modi’s promises of modernity in India, and now their rage against Bolsonaro for elevating economic development over natural conservation.
They cannot believe these idiot foreigners are defying green ideology and seeking the kind of progress we Westerners already enjoy.
Full post
4) Michael Mann Refuses To Produce Data, Loses Lawsuit
John Hinderaker, PowerLine, 24 August 2019
Some years ago, Dr. Tim Ball wrote that climate scientist Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” At issue was Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to show a sudden and unprecedented 20th century warming trend.
The hockey stick featured prominently in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but has since been shown to be wrong. The question, in my view, is whether it was an innocent mistake or deliberate fraud on Mann’s part. (Mann, I believe, continues to assert the accuracy of his debunked graph.) Mann sued Ball for libel in 2011. Principia Scientific now reports that the court in British Columbia has dismissed Mann’s lawsuit with prejudice, and assessed costs against him.
What happened was that Dr. Ball asserted a truth defense. He argued that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud, something that could be proved if one had access to the data and calculations, in particular the R2 regression analysis, underlying it. Mann refused to produce these documents. He was ordered to produce them by the court and given a deadline. He still refused to produce them, so the court dismissed his case.
The rules of discovery provide that a litigant must make available to opposing parties documents that reasonably bear on the issues in the case. Here, it is absurd for Mann to sue Ball for libel, and then refuse to produce the documents that would have helped to show whether Ball’s statement about him–he belongs in the state pen–was true or false.
The logical inference is that the R2 regression analysis and other materials, if produced, would have supported Ball’s claim that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud on Mann’s part.
Mann says that his lawyers are considering an appeal. He can appeal to his heart’s content, but there is not a court in North America that will allow a libel case to proceed where the plaintiff refuses to produce the documents that may show whether the statements made about him were true or false.
Mann responded to the dismissal of his lawsuit in typically mean-spirited and dishonest fashion: “The dismissal involved the alleged exercise of a discretion on [sic] the Court to dismiss a lawsuit for delay.” The dismissal was for failure to obey a court order, and the delay went on for eight years.
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Roy W. Spencer, 25 August 2019
An old mantra of the news business is, “if it bleeds, it leads”. If someone was murdered, it is news. That virtually no one gets murdered is not news. That, by itself, should tell you that the mainstream media cannot be relied upon as an unbiased source of climate change information.
There are lots of self-proclaimed climate experts now. They don’t need a degree in physics or atmospheric science. For credentials, they only need to care and tell others they care. They believe the Earth is being murdered by humans and want the media to spread the word.
Most people do not have the time or educational background to understand the global warming debate, and so defer to the consensus of experts on the subject. The trouble is that no one ever says exactly what the experts agree upon.
When you dig into the details, what the experts agree upon in their official pronouncements is rather unremarkable. The Earth has warmed a little since the 1950s, a date chosen because before that humans had not produced enough CO2 to really matter. Not enough warming for most people to actually feel, but enough for thermometers to pick up the signal buried in the noise of natural weather swings of many tens of degrees and spurious warming from urbanization effects. The UN consensus is that most of that warming is probably due to increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel use (but we really don’t know for sure).
For now, I tend to agree with this consensus.
And still I am widely considered a climate denier.
Why? Because I am not willing to exaggerate and make claims that cannot be supported by data.
Take researcher Roger Pielke, Jr. as another example. Roger considers himself an environmentalist. He generally agrees with the predictions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding future warming. But as an expert in severe weather damages, he isn’t willing to support the lie that severe weather has gotten worse. Yes, storm damages have increased, but that’s because we keep building more infrastructure to get damaged.
So, he, too is considered a climate denier.
What gets reported by the media about global warming (aka climate change, the climate crisis, and now the climate emergency) is usually greatly exaggerated, half-truths, or just plain nonsense. Just like the economy and economists, it is not difficult to find an expert willing to provide a prediction of gloom and doom. That makes interesting news. But it distorts the public perception of the dangers of climate change. And because it is reported as “science”, it is equated with truth.
In the case of climate change news, the predicted effects are almost universally biased toward Armageddon-like outcomes. Severe weather events that have always occurred (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts) are now reported with at least some blame placed on your SUV.
The major media outlets have so convinced themselves of the justness, righteousness, and truthfulness of their cause that they have banded together to make sure the climate emergency is not ignored. As reported by The Guardian, “More than 60 news outlets worldwide have signed on to Covering Climate Now, a project to improve coverage of the emergency”.
The exaggerations are not limited to just science. The reporting on engineering related to proposed alternative sources of energy (e.g. wind and solar) is also biased. The reported economics are biased. Unlimited “free” energy is claimed to be all around us, just waiting to be plucked from the unicorn tree.
And for most of America (and the world), the reporting is not making us smarter, but dumber.
Why does it matter? Who cares if the science (or engineering or economics) is exaggerated, if the result is that we stop polluting?
Besides the fact that there is no such thing as a non-polluting energy source, it matters because humanity depends upon abundant, affordable energy to prosper. Just Google life expectancy and per capita energy use. Prosperous societies are healthier and enjoy longer lives. Expensive sources of energy forced upon the masses by governmental fiat kill poor people simply because expensive energy exacerbates poverty, and poverty leads to premature death. As philosopher Alex Epstein writes in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, if you believe humans have a right to thrive, then you should be supportive of fossil fuels.
We don’t use wind and solar energy because it is economically competitive. We use it because governments have decided to force taxpayers to pay the extra costs involved and allowed utilities to pass on the higher costs to consumers. Wind and solar use continue to grow, but global energy demand grows even faster. Barring some new energy technology (or a renewed embrace of nuclear power), wind and solar are unlikely to supply more than 10% of global energy demand in the coming decades.
And as some European countries have learned, mandated use of solar and wind comes at a high cost to society.
Not only the media, but the public education system is complicit in this era of sloppy science reporting. I suppose most teachers and journalists believe what they are teaching and reporting on. But they still bear some responsibility for making sure what they report is relatively unbiased and factual.
I would much rather have teachers spending more time teaching students how to think and less time teaching them what to think.
Climate scientists are not without blame. They, like everyone else, are biased. Virtually all Earth scientists I know view the Earth as “fragile”. Their biases affect their analysis of uncertain data that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Most are relatively clueless about engineering and economics. I’ve had discussions with climate scientists who tell me, “Well, we need to get away from fossil fuels, anyway”.
And maybe we do, eventually. But exaggerating the threat can do more harm than good. The late Stephen Schneider infamously admitted to biased reporting by scientists. You can read his entire quote and decide for yourself whether scientists like Dr. Schneider let their worldview, politics, etc., color how they present their science to the public. The unauthorized release of the ‘ClimateGate’ emails between IPCC scientists showed how the alarmist narrative was maintained by undermining alternative views and even pressuring the editors of scientific journals. Even The Guardian seemed shocked by the misbehavior.
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Singers and actors including Madonna and Jaden Smith shared photos on social media that were seen by tens of millions of people. “The lungs of the Earth are in flames,” said actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” tweeted soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. “The Amazon rain forest — the lungs which produce 20% of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire,” tweeted French President Emanuel Macron.
And yet the photos weren’t actually of the fires and many weren’t even of the Amazon. The photo Ronaldo shared was taken in southern Brazil, far from the Amazon, in 2013. The photo that DiCaprio and Macron shared is over 20 years old. The photo Madonna and Smith shared is over 30. Some celebrities shared photos from Montana, India, and Sweden.
To their credit, CNN and New York Times debunked the photos and other misinformation about the fires. “Deforestation is neither new nor limited to one nation,” explained CNN. “These fires were not caused by climate change,” noted The Times.
But both publications repeated the claim that the Amazon is the “lungs” of the world. “The Amazon remains a net source of oxygen today,” said CNN. “The Amazon is often referred to as Earth’s ‘lungs,’ because its vast forests release oxygen and store carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas that is a major cause of global warming,” claimed The New York Times.
I was curious to hear what one of the world’s leading Amazon forest experts, Dan Nepstad, had to say about the “lungs” claim.
“It’s bullshit,” he said. “There’s no science behind that. The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen but it uses the same amount of oxygen through respiration so it’s a wash.”
Plants use respiration to convert nutrients from the soil into energy. They use photosynthesis to convert light into chemical energy, which can later be used in respiration.
What about The New York Times claim that “If enough rain forest is lost and can’t be restored, the area will become savanna, which doesn’t store as much carbon, meaning a reduction in the planet’s ‘lung capacity’”?
Also not true, said Nepstad, who was a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. “The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, but so do soy farms and [cattle] pastures.”
Some people will no doubt wave away the “lungs” myth as nit-picking. The broader point is that there is an increase in fires in Brazil and something should be done about it.
But the “lungs” myth is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider that CNN ran a long segment with the banner, “Fires Burning at Record Rate in Amazon Forest” while a leading climate reporter claimed, “The current fires are without precedent in the past 20,000 years.”
While the number of fires in 2019 is indeed 80% higher than in 2018, it’s just 7% higher than the average over the last 10 years ago, Nepstad said.
One of Brazil’s leading environmental journalists agrees that media coverage of the fires has been misleading. “It was under [Workers Party President] Lula and [Environment Secretary] Marina Silva (2003-2008) that Brazil had the highest incidence of burning,” Leonardo Coutinho told me over email. “But neither Lula nor Marina was accused of putting the Amazon at risk.”
Coutinho’s perspective was shaped by reporting on the ground in the Amazon for Veja, Brazil’s leading news magazine, for nearly a decade. By contrast, many of the correspondents reporting on the fires have been doing so from the cosmopolitan cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which are 2,500 miles and four hours by jet plane away.
“What is happening in the Amazon is not exceptional,” said Coutinho. “Take a look at Google web searches search for ‘Amazon’ and ‘Amazon Forest’ over time. Global public opinion was not as interested in the ‘Amazon tragedy’ when the situation was undeniably worse. The present moment does not justify global hysteria.”
And while fires in Brazil have increased, there is no evidence that Amazon forest fires have.
Full post
3) The West’s Hysteria Over Amazon Fires Is Riddled With Colonial Arrogance
Brendan O'Neill, Spiked, 23 August 2019
Every now and then the environmentalist mask slips. And we get a glimpse of the elitist and authoritarian movement that lurks beneath the hippyish green facade. The hysteria over the rainforest fires in Brazil is one of those moments.
As well-off, privileged Westerners rage against Brazil for having the temerity to use its resources as it sees fit, and as they even flirt with the idea of sending outside forces to take charge of the Amazon, we can see the borderline imperialist mindset that motors so much green thinking.
In the space of a few days, greens have gone from saying ‘We care about the planet!’ to ‘How dare these spics defy our diktats?’. And it is a truly clarifying moment.
You don’t have to be a fan of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and spiked certainly isn’t, to feel deeply uncomfortable with the Western outrage over his policy on the rainforest.
Observers claim the Amazon is experiencing its highest number of fires since records began. That those records only began in 2013 should give the Western hysterics pause for thought – this isn’t the historically unprecedented End of Days event they claim it is.
There are always fires in the Amazon, some started by nature, others by human beings logging or clearing land for farming. Some of the current fires were started by people who need wood or land – how dare they! – while others are just part of the natural cycle.
More tellingly, NASA has attempted to counter the hysteria. Its data suggests that, while the number of fires might be larger than in the past few years, ‘overall fire activity’ in the Amazon is ‘slightly below average this year’.
How striking that the people who wave around NASA reports when making their case that mankind has had a terrible impact on the planet are ignoring NASA’s reports that there is less fire in the Amazon this year in comparison with the past 15 years.
The Brazil-bashers will not be convinced by reason. To them, the fact that there have been 74,000 fires in the Amazon between January and August is proof that human beings – well, stupid Brazilians – are plunging the planet into a fiery doom that will make Revelations look like a fairy story in comparison.
The Earth is ‘being killed,’ greens wail. ‘Our house is burning. Literally,’ says French President Emmanuel Macron, committing the grammar crime of saying ‘literally’ when he surely means ‘virtually.’
Unless the Elysée Palace really is on fire?
Leonardo DiCaprio says ‘if the Amazon goes, we the humans will go.’ So Brazil is killing us all. Bolsonaro, by giving a green light to development in the rainforest, is holding a gun to mankind’s head, apparently.
No wonder Macron has suggested holding an international conference on how to save the rainforest, while some greens have said we need to intervene.
Westerners going overseas to rescue natural resources from the ignorant natives? Yes, that went so well in the past.
The discussion about the rainforest is not only unhinged, using Biblical language to describe fairly routine events.
It is also riddled with a colonialist view in which people in the developing world are presented as irresponsible and destructive, while Westerners, like the leader of France, are held up as the saviors of nature and mankind.
This expresses one of the key ideas in the environmentalist movement – that the developing world cannot possibly industrialize and modernize as much as the West has, because if it does the planet will die.
Hence eco-Westerners’ fury with ‘filthy’ China, their loathing of Modi’s promises of modernity in India, and now their rage against Bolsonaro for elevating economic development over natural conservation.
They cannot believe these idiot foreigners are defying green ideology and seeking the kind of progress we Westerners already enjoy.
Full post
4) Michael Mann Refuses To Produce Data, Loses Lawsuit
John Hinderaker, PowerLine, 24 August 2019
Some years ago, Dr. Tim Ball wrote that climate scientist Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” At issue was Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to show a sudden and unprecedented 20th century warming trend.
The hockey stick featured prominently in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but has since been shown to be wrong. The question, in my view, is whether it was an innocent mistake or deliberate fraud on Mann’s part. (Mann, I believe, continues to assert the accuracy of his debunked graph.) Mann sued Ball for libel in 2011. Principia Scientific now reports that the court in British Columbia has dismissed Mann’s lawsuit with prejudice, and assessed costs against him.
What happened was that Dr. Ball asserted a truth defense. He argued that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud, something that could be proved if one had access to the data and calculations, in particular the R2 regression analysis, underlying it. Mann refused to produce these documents. He was ordered to produce them by the court and given a deadline. He still refused to produce them, so the court dismissed his case.
The rules of discovery provide that a litigant must make available to opposing parties documents that reasonably bear on the issues in the case. Here, it is absurd for Mann to sue Ball for libel, and then refuse to produce the documents that would have helped to show whether Ball’s statement about him–he belongs in the state pen–was true or false.
The logical inference is that the R2 regression analysis and other materials, if produced, would have supported Ball’s claim that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud on Mann’s part.
Mann says that his lawyers are considering an appeal. He can appeal to his heart’s content, but there is not a court in North America that will allow a libel case to proceed where the plaintiff refuses to produce the documents that may show whether the statements made about him were true or false.
Mann responded to the dismissal of his lawsuit in typically mean-spirited and dishonest fashion: “The dismissal involved the alleged exercise of a discretion on [sic] the Court to dismiss a lawsuit for delay.” The dismissal was for failure to obey a court order, and the delay went on for eight years.
Full post
5) Cold Feet: Fear Of Losing Votes, US Democrats Ban Presidential Climate Debate
ABC News, 24 August 2019
Democrats have shut the door to a presidential debate focused on climate change.
The proposal dominated the party’s convention this week in San Francisco and pitted party officials who oppose single-issue debates against activists, who see climate change as an existential threat that deserves special attention heading into the 2020 election.
On Thursday, the proposal failed in the Democratic National Committee’s resolutions committee, and on Saturday the DNC leadership delivered a final “no” vote.
DNC Chair Tom Perez, who opposed the proposal, said the committee has received “dozens” of requests for single-issue debates, all on “compelling issues,” and that it would be a mistake to “change the rules in the middle of the process.”
He also pointed out that the party has allowed candidates to appear at single-issue forums and town halls, and that many candidates will participate in a series of climate change forums on CNN and MSNBC this fall.
But a number of candidates, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, have endorsed the idea.
“This decision is as baffling as it is alarming. Our planet is burning— the least we can do as a party is debate what to do about it,” O’Rourke said on Twitter following the vote.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who made climate change the central issue of his campaign and proposed the idea of the debate in the first place, dropped out of the race this week.
Meanwhile, activists who argued that the singular threat posed by climate change set it apart from other issues denounced the DNC’s decision.
“This is downright irresponsible. Climate change is an emergency, but Tom Perez isn’t acting like it,” said Sofie Karasek, a spokesperson with Sunrise Movement, a youth-led environmental group. “We have just over ten years to completely transform our economy to avert catastrophe, but instead of being the adult in the room, Tom Perez is throwing procedural temper tantrums.”
Full story
6) Patrick Michaels & Caleb Stewart Rossiter: The Great Failure Of Climate Models
Washington Examiner, 25 August 2019
Weather balloon and satellite temperatures are the best data we have, and they show that the U.N.’s climate models just aren’t ready for prime time.
ABC News, 24 August 2019
Democrats have shut the door to a presidential debate focused on climate change.
The proposal dominated the party’s convention this week in San Francisco and pitted party officials who oppose single-issue debates against activists, who see climate change as an existential threat that deserves special attention heading into the 2020 election.
On Thursday, the proposal failed in the Democratic National Committee’s resolutions committee, and on Saturday the DNC leadership delivered a final “no” vote.
DNC Chair Tom Perez, who opposed the proposal, said the committee has received “dozens” of requests for single-issue debates, all on “compelling issues,” and that it would be a mistake to “change the rules in the middle of the process.”
He also pointed out that the party has allowed candidates to appear at single-issue forums and town halls, and that many candidates will participate in a series of climate change forums on CNN and MSNBC this fall.
But a number of candidates, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, have endorsed the idea.
“This decision is as baffling as it is alarming. Our planet is burning— the least we can do as a party is debate what to do about it,” O’Rourke said on Twitter following the vote.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who made climate change the central issue of his campaign and proposed the idea of the debate in the first place, dropped out of the race this week.
Meanwhile, activists who argued that the singular threat posed by climate change set it apart from other issues denounced the DNC’s decision.
“This is downright irresponsible. Climate change is an emergency, but Tom Perez isn’t acting like it,” said Sofie Karasek, a spokesperson with Sunrise Movement, a youth-led environmental group. “We have just over ten years to completely transform our economy to avert catastrophe, but instead of being the adult in the room, Tom Perez is throwing procedural temper tantrums.”
Full story
6) Patrick Michaels & Caleb Stewart Rossiter: The Great Failure Of Climate Models
Washington Examiner, 25 August 2019
Weather balloon and satellite temperatures are the best data we have, and they show that the U.N.’s climate models just aren’t ready for prime time.
Tropical mid-tropospheric temperatures, models vs. observations.Models in pink, against various observational datasets in shades of blue. Five-year averages; 1979–2017. Trend lines cross zero at 1979 for all series. Source: John Christy, GWPF 2019
Computer models of the climate are at the heart of calls to ban the cheap, reliable energy that powers our thriving economy and promotes healthier, longer lives. For decades, these models have projected dramatic warming from small, fossil-fueled increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, with catastrophic consequences.
Yet, the real-world data aren’t cooperating. They show only slight warming, mostly at night and in winter. According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there has been no systematic increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, and the ongoing rise in sea level that began with the end of the ice age continues with no great increase in magnitude. The constancy of land-based records is obvious in data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Should we trust these computer models of doom? Let’s find out by comparing the actual temperatures since 1979 with what the 32 families of climate models used in the latest U.N. report on climate science predicted they would be.
Atmospheric scientist John Christy developed a global temperature record of the lower atmosphere using highly accurate satellite soundings. NASA honored him for this achievement, and he was an author for a previous edition of the U.N. report. He told a House Science Committee hearing in March 2017 that the U.N. climate models have failed badly.
Christy compared the average model projections since 1979 to the most reliable observations — those made by satellites and weather balloons over the vast tropics. The result? In the upper levels of the lower atmosphere, the models predicted seven times as much warming as has been observed. Overprediction also occurred at all other levels. Christy recently concluded that, on average, the projected heating by the models is three times what has been observed.
This is a critical error. Getting the tropical climate right is essential to understanding climate worldwide. Most of the atmospheric moisture originates in the tropical ocean, and the difference between surface and upper atmospheric temperature determines how much of the moisture rises into the atmosphere. That’s important. Most of earth’s agriculture is dependent upon the transfer of moisture from the tropics to temperate regions.
Christy is not looking at surface temperatures, as measured by thermometers at weather stations. Instead, he is looking at temperatures measured from calibrated thermistors carried by weather balloons and data from satellites. Why didn’t he simply look down here, where we all live? Because the records of the surface temperatures have been badly compromised.
Globally averaged thermometers show two periods of warming since 1900: a half-degree from natural causes in the first half of the 20th century, before there was an increase in industrial carbon dioxide that was enough to produce it, and another half-degree in the last quarter of the century.
The latest U.N. science compendium asserts that the latter half-degree is at least half manmade. But the thermometer records showed that the warming stopped from 2000 to 2014. Until they didn’t. In two of the four global surface series, data were adjusted in two ways that wiped out the “pause” that had been observed.
The first adjustment changed how the temperature of the ocean surface is calculated, by replacing satellite data with drifting buoys and temperatures in ships’ water intake. The size of the ship determines how deep the intake tube is, and steel ships warm up tremendously under sunny, hot conditions. The buoy temperatures, which are measured by precise electronic thermistors, were adjusted upwards to match the questionable ship data. Given that the buoy network became more extensive during the pause, that’s guaranteed to put some artificial warming in the data.
The second big adjustment was over the Arctic Ocean, where there aren’t any weather stations. In this revision, temperatures were estimated from nearby land stations. This runs afoul of basic physics.
Full post
7) Roy Spencer: How the Media Help to Destroy Rational Climate DebateComputer models of the climate are at the heart of calls to ban the cheap, reliable energy that powers our thriving economy and promotes healthier, longer lives. For decades, these models have projected dramatic warming from small, fossil-fueled increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, with catastrophic consequences.
Yet, the real-world data aren’t cooperating. They show only slight warming, mostly at night and in winter. According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there has been no systematic increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, and the ongoing rise in sea level that began with the end of the ice age continues with no great increase in magnitude. The constancy of land-based records is obvious in data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Should we trust these computer models of doom? Let’s find out by comparing the actual temperatures since 1979 with what the 32 families of climate models used in the latest U.N. report on climate science predicted they would be.
Atmospheric scientist John Christy developed a global temperature record of the lower atmosphere using highly accurate satellite soundings. NASA honored him for this achievement, and he was an author for a previous edition of the U.N. report. He told a House Science Committee hearing in March 2017 that the U.N. climate models have failed badly.
Christy compared the average model projections since 1979 to the most reliable observations — those made by satellites and weather balloons over the vast tropics. The result? In the upper levels of the lower atmosphere, the models predicted seven times as much warming as has been observed. Overprediction also occurred at all other levels. Christy recently concluded that, on average, the projected heating by the models is three times what has been observed.
This is a critical error. Getting the tropical climate right is essential to understanding climate worldwide. Most of the atmospheric moisture originates in the tropical ocean, and the difference between surface and upper atmospheric temperature determines how much of the moisture rises into the atmosphere. That’s important. Most of earth’s agriculture is dependent upon the transfer of moisture from the tropics to temperate regions.
Christy is not looking at surface temperatures, as measured by thermometers at weather stations. Instead, he is looking at temperatures measured from calibrated thermistors carried by weather balloons and data from satellites. Why didn’t he simply look down here, where we all live? Because the records of the surface temperatures have been badly compromised.
Globally averaged thermometers show two periods of warming since 1900: a half-degree from natural causes in the first half of the 20th century, before there was an increase in industrial carbon dioxide that was enough to produce it, and another half-degree in the last quarter of the century.
The latest U.N. science compendium asserts that the latter half-degree is at least half manmade. But the thermometer records showed that the warming stopped from 2000 to 2014. Until they didn’t. In two of the four global surface series, data were adjusted in two ways that wiped out the “pause” that had been observed.
The first adjustment changed how the temperature of the ocean surface is calculated, by replacing satellite data with drifting buoys and temperatures in ships’ water intake. The size of the ship determines how deep the intake tube is, and steel ships warm up tremendously under sunny, hot conditions. The buoy temperatures, which are measured by precise electronic thermistors, were adjusted upwards to match the questionable ship data. Given that the buoy network became more extensive during the pause, that’s guaranteed to put some artificial warming in the data.
The second big adjustment was over the Arctic Ocean, where there aren’t any weather stations. In this revision, temperatures were estimated from nearby land stations. This runs afoul of basic physics.
Full post
Roy W. Spencer, 25 August 2019
An old mantra of the news business is, “if it bleeds, it leads”. If someone was murdered, it is news. That virtually no one gets murdered is not news. That, by itself, should tell you that the mainstream media cannot be relied upon as an unbiased source of climate change information.
There are lots of self-proclaimed climate experts now. They don’t need a degree in physics or atmospheric science. For credentials, they only need to care and tell others they care. They believe the Earth is being murdered by humans and want the media to spread the word.
Most people do not have the time or educational background to understand the global warming debate, and so defer to the consensus of experts on the subject. The trouble is that no one ever says exactly what the experts agree upon.
When you dig into the details, what the experts agree upon in their official pronouncements is rather unremarkable. The Earth has warmed a little since the 1950s, a date chosen because before that humans had not produced enough CO2 to really matter. Not enough warming for most people to actually feel, but enough for thermometers to pick up the signal buried in the noise of natural weather swings of many tens of degrees and spurious warming from urbanization effects. The UN consensus is that most of that warming is probably due to increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel use (but we really don’t know for sure).
For now, I tend to agree with this consensus.
And still I am widely considered a climate denier.
Why? Because I am not willing to exaggerate and make claims that cannot be supported by data.
Take researcher Roger Pielke, Jr. as another example. Roger considers himself an environmentalist. He generally agrees with the predictions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding future warming. But as an expert in severe weather damages, he isn’t willing to support the lie that severe weather has gotten worse. Yes, storm damages have increased, but that’s because we keep building more infrastructure to get damaged.
So, he, too is considered a climate denier.
What gets reported by the media about global warming (aka climate change, the climate crisis, and now the climate emergency) is usually greatly exaggerated, half-truths, or just plain nonsense. Just like the economy and economists, it is not difficult to find an expert willing to provide a prediction of gloom and doom. That makes interesting news. But it distorts the public perception of the dangers of climate change. And because it is reported as “science”, it is equated with truth.
In the case of climate change news, the predicted effects are almost universally biased toward Armageddon-like outcomes. Severe weather events that have always occurred (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts) are now reported with at least some blame placed on your SUV.
The major media outlets have so convinced themselves of the justness, righteousness, and truthfulness of their cause that they have banded together to make sure the climate emergency is not ignored. As reported by The Guardian, “More than 60 news outlets worldwide have signed on to Covering Climate Now, a project to improve coverage of the emergency”.
The exaggerations are not limited to just science. The reporting on engineering related to proposed alternative sources of energy (e.g. wind and solar) is also biased. The reported economics are biased. Unlimited “free” energy is claimed to be all around us, just waiting to be plucked from the unicorn tree.
And for most of America (and the world), the reporting is not making us smarter, but dumber.
Why does it matter? Who cares if the science (or engineering or economics) is exaggerated, if the result is that we stop polluting?
Besides the fact that there is no such thing as a non-polluting energy source, it matters because humanity depends upon abundant, affordable energy to prosper. Just Google life expectancy and per capita energy use. Prosperous societies are healthier and enjoy longer lives. Expensive sources of energy forced upon the masses by governmental fiat kill poor people simply because expensive energy exacerbates poverty, and poverty leads to premature death. As philosopher Alex Epstein writes in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, if you believe humans have a right to thrive, then you should be supportive of fossil fuels.
We don’t use wind and solar energy because it is economically competitive. We use it because governments have decided to force taxpayers to pay the extra costs involved and allowed utilities to pass on the higher costs to consumers. Wind and solar use continue to grow, but global energy demand grows even faster. Barring some new energy technology (or a renewed embrace of nuclear power), wind and solar are unlikely to supply more than 10% of global energy demand in the coming decades.
And as some European countries have learned, mandated use of solar and wind comes at a high cost to society.
Not only the media, but the public education system is complicit in this era of sloppy science reporting. I suppose most teachers and journalists believe what they are teaching and reporting on. But they still bear some responsibility for making sure what they report is relatively unbiased and factual.
I would much rather have teachers spending more time teaching students how to think and less time teaching them what to think.
Climate scientists are not without blame. They, like everyone else, are biased. Virtually all Earth scientists I know view the Earth as “fragile”. Their biases affect their analysis of uncertain data that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Most are relatively clueless about engineering and economics. I’ve had discussions with climate scientists who tell me, “Well, we need to get away from fossil fuels, anyway”.
And maybe we do, eventually. But exaggerating the threat can do more harm than good. The late Stephen Schneider infamously admitted to biased reporting by scientists. You can read his entire quote and decide for yourself whether scientists like Dr. Schneider let their worldview, politics, etc., color how they present their science to the public. The unauthorized release of the ‘ClimateGate’ emails between IPCC scientists showed how the alarmist narrative was maintained by undermining alternative views and even pressuring the editors of scientific journals. Even The Guardian seemed shocked by the misbehavior.
Full post
8) Merkel's Madness: €7,6 Trillion For Germany's Climate Project
Fritz Vahrenholt & Roland Tichy, GWPF, 24 August 2019
Angela Merkel has called for a further tightening of Germany’s climate target – the nation should become CO2-neutral. By 2035, the costs will be twice of Germany’s economic output of a whole year. Which household can raise an extra 1,000 euros per month?
For Angela Merkel, these are just a few words: “We want to be climate neutral by 2050.” In the devotional mood at the Protestant Church Congress in Dortmund, where the Chancellor spoke these words, the faithful applauded her. No wonder: After all, the former investigative journalist Hans Leyendecker had announced ex cathedra – as president of the Kirchentag: “Anyone who does not acknowledge that climate change is man-made has no place at the Kirchentag.”
It is no longer a question of scientific debate and research, but of a new dogma of faith – who would dare to have any doubts if his name were not Galileo Galilei? The Chancellor was able to bask in glow of the unity that religion offers the heart. Who wants to calculate what it means financially for German households if words are followed by deeds? The Chancellor now doesn’t want “any more chicken feed” in climate policy, as she had already announced a few days earlier to her MPs of the parliamentary CDU/CSU party group. The Fridays for Future demonstrations demand a reduction of CO2 emissions to zero by 2035, the PR disaster caused by Youtuber Rezo’s “The Destruction of the CDU” video and the election successes of the Greens have obviously had an effect on the Chancellor.
People remember 2011 and Markel’s rash decision to prematurely abandon nuclear power. When the German chancellor believes that Germans want to save the world, she decides very quickly, whatever the cost. Only votes and public mood counts. Economic or other rational considerations no longer play any role – just like her decision to open the border for all and sundry. And now the jump onto the climate bandwagon because of demonstrating pupils and singing Protestants.
After a two-hour visit to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) on 14 June, Merkel apparently decided to turn German climate policy on its head. After his discussion with Merkel, PIK Director Ottmar Edenhofer announced euphorically: “Following the financial crisis and the refugee crisis, the Chancellor is now tackling the climate crisis”. Well then, one is tempted to add, what could go wrong with that!
“Pillepalle” (chicken feed) – by this Merkel apparently means the previous CO2 reduction target of 90% by 2050. Once – in 1994 – the then head of Deutsche Bank Hilmar Kopper had caused outrage because he arrogantly described the sum of 50 million German marks as “peanuts”. It became the ‘worse word of the year.’ But what is Merkel’s Pillepalle in comparison? It is a number with twelve instead of seven zeros behind the number five. With so many zeros, the citizen’s perspective and the Chancellor’s overview are quickly lost.
It amounts to about 4,600 billion euros, but it could also be 5,000 billion, i.e. 4.6 or five trillion. This was calculated by experts from the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities for their report published in November 2017 (“Sector coupling – Studies and considerations for the development of an integrated energy system”). Per household in Germany, this total would mean additional monthly costs of either 640 euros (if the reduction is to be achieved by 2035) or 320 euros if the reduction is to be achieved by 2050. Monthly, mind you, not annually. So this is Merkel’s Pillepalle from the point of view of the people who have to pay for it.
The decisive finding from this research – financed by the Federal Government – is not only the astronomical sum of investment, capital and operating costs. When it comes to saving emissions, it’s the same as in competitive sports: the necessary training effort for further performance improvements increases as you get closer to the absolute maximum of what’s possible. This means that every additional CO2 reduction step is significantly more expensive than the previous one.
Full post
Fritz Vahrenholt & Roland Tichy, GWPF, 24 August 2019
Angela Merkel has called for a further tightening of Germany’s climate target – the nation should become CO2-neutral. By 2035, the costs will be twice of Germany’s economic output of a whole year. Which household can raise an extra 1,000 euros per month?
For Angela Merkel, these are just a few words: “We want to be climate neutral by 2050.” In the devotional mood at the Protestant Church Congress in Dortmund, where the Chancellor spoke these words, the faithful applauded her. No wonder: After all, the former investigative journalist Hans Leyendecker had announced ex cathedra – as president of the Kirchentag: “Anyone who does not acknowledge that climate change is man-made has no place at the Kirchentag.”
It is no longer a question of scientific debate and research, but of a new dogma of faith – who would dare to have any doubts if his name were not Galileo Galilei? The Chancellor was able to bask in glow of the unity that religion offers the heart. Who wants to calculate what it means financially for German households if words are followed by deeds? The Chancellor now doesn’t want “any more chicken feed” in climate policy, as she had already announced a few days earlier to her MPs of the parliamentary CDU/CSU party group. The Fridays for Future demonstrations demand a reduction of CO2 emissions to zero by 2035, the PR disaster caused by Youtuber Rezo’s “The Destruction of the CDU” video and the election successes of the Greens have obviously had an effect on the Chancellor.
People remember 2011 and Markel’s rash decision to prematurely abandon nuclear power. When the German chancellor believes that Germans want to save the world, she decides very quickly, whatever the cost. Only votes and public mood counts. Economic or other rational considerations no longer play any role – just like her decision to open the border for all and sundry. And now the jump onto the climate bandwagon because of demonstrating pupils and singing Protestants.
After a two-hour visit to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) on 14 June, Merkel apparently decided to turn German climate policy on its head. After his discussion with Merkel, PIK Director Ottmar Edenhofer announced euphorically: “Following the financial crisis and the refugee crisis, the Chancellor is now tackling the climate crisis”. Well then, one is tempted to add, what could go wrong with that!
“Pillepalle” (chicken feed) – by this Merkel apparently means the previous CO2 reduction target of 90% by 2050. Once – in 1994 – the then head of Deutsche Bank Hilmar Kopper had caused outrage because he arrogantly described the sum of 50 million German marks as “peanuts”. It became the ‘worse word of the year.’ But what is Merkel’s Pillepalle in comparison? It is a number with twelve instead of seven zeros behind the number five. With so many zeros, the citizen’s perspective and the Chancellor’s overview are quickly lost.
It amounts to about 4,600 billion euros, but it could also be 5,000 billion, i.e. 4.6 or five trillion. This was calculated by experts from the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities for their report published in November 2017 (“Sector coupling – Studies and considerations for the development of an integrated energy system”). Per household in Germany, this total would mean additional monthly costs of either 640 euros (if the reduction is to be achieved by 2035) or 320 euros if the reduction is to be achieved by 2050. Monthly, mind you, not annually. So this is Merkel’s Pillepalle from the point of view of the people who have to pay for it.
The decisive finding from this research – financed by the Federal Government – is not only the astronomical sum of investment, capital and operating costs. When it comes to saving emissions, it’s the same as in competitive sports: the necessary training effort for further performance improvements increases as you get closer to the absolute maximum of what’s possible. This means that every additional CO2 reduction step is significantly more expensive than the previous one.
Full post
9) And Finally: How To Lose The Climate War? Tell Britons They Can No Longer Own A Car
Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 22 August 2019
People will have to get out of their cars if the UK is to meet its climate change targets, MPs say.
The Science and Technology Select Committee says technology alone cannot solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
It says the government cannot achieve sufficient emissions cuts by swapping existing vehicles for cleaner versions.
The government said it would consider the committee’s findings.
In its report, the committee said: “In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation.”
It echoes a report from an Oxford-based group of academics who warned that even electric cars produce pollution through their tyres and brakes.
The AA said the committee had underestimated the power of new technology to solve pollution in cars.
But the MPs are demanding improvements in public transport, walking and cycling, which benefit health as well as the climate.
They also criticise the government’s recent policies on the costs of transport.
They point out that most of the increase in average new car emissions in 2017 was caused by consumers choosing more polluting models because financial incentives to buy cleaner cars are insufficient.
Full story
Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 22 August 2019
People will have to get out of their cars if the UK is to meet its climate change targets, MPs say.
The Science and Technology Select Committee says technology alone cannot solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
It says the government cannot achieve sufficient emissions cuts by swapping existing vehicles for cleaner versions.
The government said it would consider the committee’s findings.
In its report, the committee said: “In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation.”
It echoes a report from an Oxford-based group of academics who warned that even electric cars produce pollution through their tyres and brakes.
The AA said the committee had underestimated the power of new technology to solve pollution in cars.
But the MPs are demanding improvements in public transport, walking and cycling, which benefit health as well as the climate.
They also criticise the government’s recent policies on the costs of transport.
They point out that most of the increase in average new car emissions in 2017 was caused by consumers choosing more polluting models because financial incentives to buy cleaner cars are insufficient.
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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