Melting Glacier Reveals More Evidence Of Very Warm Medieval Warm Period
In this newsletter:
1) COVID-19 Could Help Solve Climate Riddles
Scientific American, 17 April 2020
2) Melting Glacier Reveals More Evidence Of Very Warm Medieval Warm Period
Phys.org, 16 April 2020
3) UK Climate Assembly Calls Lockdown A ‘Test Run’ For Greener Lifestyles
Reuters, 19 April 2020
4) France Faces Climate Shutdown As Green Soviets Demand Ban On Cars, Hypermarkets & 5G
The Times, 14 April 2020
5) France’s Climate Convention Has Come Back To Bite Macron
The Spectator, 18 April 2020
6) Modelling Catastrophe In A Climate Of Fear
Jaime Jessop, Climate Scepticism, 19 April 2020
7) Grim Outlook For Electric Cars In Europe
EUObserver, 17 April 2020
EUObserver, 17 April 2020
8) Climate Campaigner & Former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Faces Lifetime Ban From Liberal Party
The Australian, 19 April 2020
The Australian, 19 April 2020
9) And Finally: Half of Britain's CO2 Emissions Are Hidden In Imports
The Times, 16 April 2020
The Times, 16 April 2020
Full details:
1) COVID-19 Could Help Solve Climate Riddles
Scientific American, 17 April 2020
Pollution declines from pandemic shutdowns may aid in answering long-standing questions about how aerosols influence climate
Nitrogen dioxide levels over parts of the Northeast were about 30 percent lower in March 2020 (top) than average for 2015–2019 (bottom) because of the pandemic shutdowns. Nitrogen dioxide reacts with other chemicals in the air to form particulate pollution. Credit: NASA
As the world scrambles to contain the spread of COVID-19, many economic activities have ground to a halt, leading to marked reductions in air pollution. And with the skies clearing, researchers are getting an unprecedented chance to help answer one of climate science’s thorniest open questions: the impact of atmospheric aerosols. What they learn could improve predictions of the earth’s climatic future.
“We hope that this situation—as tragic as it is—can have a positive side for our field,” says aerosol researcher Nicolas Bellouin of the University of Reading in England.
Aerosols are tiny particles and droplets that are emitted into the air by myriad sources—from fossil-fuel burning to fertilizer spraying and even natural phenomena such as sea spray. They alter cloud properties and intercept sunlight, with some scattering solar radiation and others absorbing it.
All of these factors influence global temperature—sometimes in competing ways. Overall aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate, offsetting some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases—but just how much they have done so to date, or will do so in the future, remains unclear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could increase temperatures by anywhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, with the wide range linked, in part, to scientist’s incomplete understanding of the influence of aerosols. “The fact that the aerosol effect on climate, so far, is so uncertain has held us back,” says atmospheric scientist Trude Storelvmo of the University of Oslo.
Part of the problem in parsing out the role of aerosols has been that their sources could not simply be turned off to compare what happens with and without them. But now the response to the pandemic has effectively done so. Scientists are now jumping at the opportunity to spot the differences in everything from specific cloud properties to changes in local temperatures before and after aerosol emissions dropped. “If this goes on, one pretty damn sure prediction that I can make is that we will see a lot of scientific papers on this in a couple of years,” says atmospheric scientist Bjørn Samset of the Center for International Climate Research in Norway.
One question that Samset, Bellouin and others are hoping to answer is what fraction of aerosols in the atmosphere arise from human activities rather than natural sources. Aerosol emissions vary greatly from place to place, and it is normally difficult to assess their origin based on remote satellite measurements or sparse ground instruments. The current drop, however, could offer information about the background levels of natural aerosols. Earth scientist Drew Shindell of Duke University aims to investigate the relative contributions of different human activities.
In China—where some sectors, such as transportation, have shut down more extensively than others, including electricity generation—the mix of aerosols in the air appears to be shifting and could help indicate which activities produce which aerosols. “That’s one thing I find really interesting about the shutdown,” Shindell says.
Aerosols also influence cloud formation, which happens when water droplets condense onto particles. Where more aerosols are present, they can create longer-lasting, more reflective clouds—processes that affect the earth’s temperature but that have been notoriously hard to include in computer models. Storelvmo and other researchers now aim to study cloud patterns in the relative absence of aerosols in order to infer their influence. Comparing these data to simulations of the atmosphere before and after shutdowns “would be a very good test for our models to see if they can reproduce what was observed,” she says. Samset also plans to investigate clouds and hopes to look into the challenging question of how aerosols impact where and how much it rains. For him, he says, finding an answer would be “the holy grail.”
Full post
2) Melting Glacier Reveals More Evidence Of Very Warm Medieval Warm Period
Phys.org, 16 April 2020
Melting glacial ice high in the Norwegian mountains has revealed the full extent of the Lendbreen mountain pass, an important trade route from the Roman era until the late Middle Ages.
Archaeologists made a systematic survey along the edge of the melting ice in the area of the mountain pass at Lendbreen, Norway. JOHAN WILDHAGEN, PALOOKAVILLE
A team of researchers from the Innlandet County Council and NTNU University Museum in Norway and the University of Cambridge in the U.K. has found a large quantity of Viking-era artifacts in a long-lost mountain pass in Southern Norway. In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, the group describes the location of the pass, explains why it is suddenly revealing artifacts, and outlines what has been found thus far.
The pass was found back in 2011 on Lomseggen Ridge near a receding patch at Lendbreen glacier. Prior research suggested the reason the artifacts were emerging was because the glacier has been shrinking due to global warming. The team canvased the area over the years 2011 to 2015.
The search resulted in the discovery of a host of artifacts, 60 of which have been dated to between the years 300 AD to 1000. Analysis of the artifacts suggested there were two kinds of travelers through the pass—locals and long-distance trekkers.
The researchers suggest locals used the pass to travel between summer and winter homes. Some of the artifacts also suggested that the pass was used mostly during the times when it was covered with snow—the very rocky terrain would have made walking or riding horses difficult. Snow would have smoothed the trail, making traversal less difficult.
The researchers found items such as tunics and mittens, along with horse fittings such as shoes and bits. They also found remnants of sleds, and in one case, the remains of a dog with a collar and leash. Thus far, no human remains have been found in the area and such findings appear unlikely due to the short distance of the pass—it is just 700 meters long.
The researchers also found multiple cairns along the pass—rocks piled in such a way as to provide a guidepost, helping travelers navigate the easiest path through. They even found a small shelter, likely for travelers who found themselves in the midst of a sudden snowstorm.
Full post
see also
* Alpine melt reveals ancient life
* Green Alps instead of perpetual ice
The Alpine Susten pass, as it might have appeared in Roman times, around 2000 years ago. The Stei glacier has retreated to the level of the Tierberg hut (2795 m), the tree level lies clearly higher. Picture: from “Die Alpen“ / Atelier Thomas Richner based on a draft from Christoph Schlüchter. large
3) UK Climate Assembly Calls Lockdown A ‘Test Run’ For Greener Lifestyles
Reuters, 19 April 2020
London, 19 April -- Working from home and other measures to help stem the spread of the coronavirus outbreak in Britain show how quickly the country could change its ways to address climate change too, participants in the Climate Assembly UK said on Sunday.
“With coronavirus, (the government) has had to act because they had no choice in the matter. With climate change, they need to act in the same way,” said Marc Robson, 46, a British Gas installer and one of the 110 members of the citizens’ assembly.
As with the response to the COVID-19 respiratory disease, “people will die if we don’t do it”, the Newcastle resident warned in a video interview.
“And we all need to buy into this as well. It needs to be explained to the public that if we don’t change what we’re doing, it’s going to cost us, big time.”
The assembly, chosen to reflect Britain’s diverse geographic and demographic makeup, as well as different viewpoints on climate change, has met once a month in Birmingham since January to hear from experts on climate science and policy.
It is expected to submit over the summer its recommendations to the government on how Britain should meet a legally binding goal to cut its climate-heating emissions to net zero by 2050.
But with coronavirus restrictions now in place on public gatherings, the assembly this weekend was held for the first time online – a change some assembly members saw as a “test run” for potential climate-smart shifts they had been discussing.
Full story
4) France Faces Climate Shutdown As Green Soviets Demand Ban On Cars, Hypermarkets & 5G
The Times, 14 April 2020
President Macron’s attempt to appease yellow-vest protesters has saddled him with radical ecological policy proposals likely to further damage the wobbling French economy.
They stem from his decision to delegate the fight against climate change to 150 members of the public chosen at random.
That group has now come up with a plan to modify the way the French shop, travel and produce food, including the closure of out-of-town hypermarkets to encourage shopping locally, and shelving the 5G network because it uses 30 per cent more electricity than previous iterations.
The panel also wants to prohibit the sale of cars that emit more than 110g of CO2 per kilometre by 2025 — far below that emitted by most existing vehicles, in effect outlawing them — and a ban on advertising hoardings to prevent consumers driving long distances to buy products they do not need.
Television, radio, internet and press advertisements for products generating high levels of CO2 would also be banned, and those that were authorised would have to carry the wording: “Do you really need this? Overconsumption harms the planet.”
Full story (£)
5) France’s Climate Convention Has Come Back To Bite Macron
The Spectator, 18 April 2020
President Macron now has to find a way to evade the consequences of his idiot exercise.
Those of us who are sceptical about the worth of citizens’ assemblies have been noting with interest the upshot of the French citizens’ convention for the climate which delivered its recommendations this week.
The thing about these assemblies of randomly selected citizens mulling over thorny issues is that they’re a brilliant way for elected politicians to shift the responsibility for really unpopular policies onto someone else. Except they can go horribly wrong.
President Macron used this device to deal with the threat from the gilets jaune, back in those distant days when citizens could actually assemble in France. He had to deal with a movement that was driven by the concerns of predominantly rural voters who felt ignored by the elite while placating the urban young exercised about climate change. What better than to go through the motions of direct democracy to appease the first group while giving the random citizens a brief that would ensure that their conclusions appeased the environmentalists? The convention was asked how to ensure that French carbon emissions would be reduced by 40 per cent in 2030 from 1990 levels.
The upshot was precisely as you’d expect: the convention has come up with proposals that no sane politician would actually want to take to the electorate, especially not in rural France. They recommend closing hypermarkets, shelving the 5G network because it uses more electricity, prohibiting the sale of cars whose emissions exceed that of most current models, and banning hoardings that might encourage people to drive further to buy things.
Advertisements, whether print broadcast or online, for items generating excessive CO2 would be banned; those that were authorised would be forced to carry the words: ‘Do you really need this?’. Some of the proposals are decent, such as encouraging the use of local shops over chain stores, but the overall effect is bossy, authoritarian and appallingly expensive for poorer people.
The president now has to decide how to deal with this embarrassment. You see, he made the mistake at the outset of declaring that the convention’s proposals would be taken seriously; they would be implemented immediately, put before parliament for legislation, or submitted to a referendum. That was then, when no one anticipated a situation where the French economy would be shrinking by six per cent in a year.
The problem with citizens’ assemblies is that its members don’t, unlike elected politicians, actually have to deal with the consequences of their breezy and idealistic proposals. In the first place, they are rarely representative of the entire population: in France, 25,000 people were approached to see if they wanted to take part; most refused, and 150 were chosen. Most of those are people with an agenda, who are prepared to give up entire weekends in return for a stipend of £74 (€86) a day plus expenses. In other words, political activists and people with time on their hands.
It was the same with the Irish citizens’ assembly on abortion. As in that case, the conclusions people come to depend on the agenda they are presented with. If the experts who brief them have a particular bias, pro-choice or hardcore green, then the recommendations will reflect that. The Irish body wasn’t presented with pro-foetus experts except as a minority view (you can see the programme online); I’d wager that the French convention was similarly skewed towards environmentalists rather than economists.
The thing about normal democracy is that it’s a way for us to choose people to make difficult decisions about policy and then implement them in law. In exceptional cases, the true direct democracy of a referendum can be used. Delegating these choices to a collection of unelected individuals is passing the buck. Mr Macron now has to find a way to evade the consequences of his idiot exercise. The old rule applies: never ask people their opinion unless you know the answer you want them to come up with, and then fix the process to make sure that’s what happens.
6) Modelling Catastrophe In A Climate Of Fear
Jaime Jessop, Climate Scepticism, 19 April 2020
Three months ago in Davos, Little Greta believed that action based upon fear, based in turn upon the scary output of climate models, would save the world and restore the God given right of her generation to inherit a ‘habitable planet’. Today, we have adults panicked into taking action on Covid-19 who have destroyed the hopes and aspirations of the younger generation, wrecking their education and bequeathing to them an austere future.
"Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.”
We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly.”
Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is."
So said Greta, at Davos, 3 months ago, even as another crisis was rapidly emerging, a new, real, more imminent crisis which would grip the world and force governments to act – largely, in retrospect, out of fear, not knowledge, not masses of data, not hope.
At first, UK scientists said don’t panic, then they said PANIC in big, bold capital letters. They got it wrong – twice. They got it wrong the first time because they didn’t know enough about the Wuhan Virus to casually float the idea of ‘herd immunity’.
The now thoroughly discredited WHO was telling us that the fatality rate was 3.4% and R0 (the average number of people one person infects) was a lot higher than ‘flu, meaning that, if left unchecked, the disease would rip through communities and very rapidly overwhelm hospitals, meaning that the death rate would rise even higher.
This appeared to be happening in Italy, though not in Germany, not in Japan, not in South Korea and not in a few other countries besides. It’s still not happening. The UK has been hard hit, even in lockdown, but it’s not happening here either. Nightingale is empty. But at the time, public fear, whipped up by the media, and amplified by ‘new’ modelling data, dictated that the government act to save lives and save the NHS.
They got it wrong the second time because they relied upon an epidemiological model (adapted from an old ‘flu model) which predicted 510,000 deaths from a virus which we knew virtually nothing about. Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, London said ‘DO SOMETHING OR PEOPLE WILL DIE!’ So the government did something and people still died, not in their hundreds of thousands, but, it would seem, in numbers probably irrespective of a lockdown which was initiated too late in the day and was nowhere near strict enough to have a measurable effect on what is probably an exceptionally contagious virus. American IMHE modellers got it wrong a third time, predicting loads more deaths in the UK and the US, even in lockdown, than actually occurred.
Climate change modellers never get it wrong, simply because even when their models don’t agree with reality, this is either because the observations are wrong, or because they still ‘do a reasonable job’ of modelling past and present climate change (especially when inconvenient ‘blips’ are ironed out by retrospective adjustments to the data), but principally because the subject of their claimed modelling expertise lies many years off in the future – climate change to be expected in 2050 or 2100, when the real impacts will begin to be felt. Imperial’s and IMHE’s worst case scenarios look way off, just weeks after they were proposed and after governments acted on the modeller’s advice. Their assumptions are being rapidly challenged by new data and research.
Nothing similar happens in climate change land. Their worst case scenario (RCP8.5), though comprehensively debunked, still lives on and is still being defended by Met Office scientists on the basis that ‘carbon feedbacks (however unlikely) cannot be ruled out’.
People are still scared by Covid-19; they’re scared of dying, naturally, not in many years’ time because of bad weather, but next week, due to some horrible illness which probably escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. The government and the Medicine Men currently in control of control of government decision-making, use that fear to control us and to convince us of the legitimacy of their policy. Thus, mostly, we have obediently stayed at home, and acted responsibly whilst out, but that’s not enough for the police who’ve taken great pleasure in making up their own list of #CovidCrimes and harassing and fining innocent members of the public guilty of committing mass murder by not staying at home. However, the data keeps rolling in and the research keeps piling up, even as we sit on the sofa and watch our economy go down the tubes and our civil liberties disappear in the haze of ‘the new normal’.
Covid-19 is not the disease we thought it was 2 months ago and the unintended consequences of lockdown (given hardly a moment’s thought by epidemiologists and politicians singularly intent on saving lives and saving ‘our NHS’) look set to be even more severe than the consequences of the disease itself.
It’s all very odd, because a few months ago, adults at Davos nodded approvingly whilst Greta reprimanded them for giving her generation false hope, saying that she wanted everyone to panic and take action.
Little Greta believed that such action based upon fear, based in turn upon the scary output of climate models, would save the world and restore the God given right of her generation to inherit a ‘habitable planet’. Today, we have adults panicked into taking action on Covid-19 who have destroyed the hopes and aspirations of the younger generation, wrecked their education and who are busy bequeathing to them an austere future where their parents are out of work and their prospects for their own futures look bleak. This is basically the same as #netzero or the Green New Deal of course, but a global depression won’t save the planet in the process. Hence why some climate fanatics are OK with lockdown and economic ruin as long as it morphs long term into Green austerity.
There are signs that now Boris is on the mend, things might start to change and the government may be reconsidering its obsessive lockdown strategy, but I’m not that hopeful as yet, having witnessed the Minister for Suicide Prevention, Nadine Dorries, state on Twitter that lockdown will continue until a vaccine is developed, Grant Shapps telling us not to book a summer holiday, Dominic Raab telling us that an ‘equally distributed’ vaccine is our only hope, No. 10 telling us to stay at home and bake a cake, and five government ‘tests’ for ending lockdown which can never be met.
Full post & comments
Scientific American, 17 April 2020
Pollution declines from pandemic shutdowns may aid in answering long-standing questions about how aerosols influence climate
Nitrogen dioxide levels over parts of the Northeast were about 30 percent lower in March 2020 (top) than average for 2015–2019 (bottom) because of the pandemic shutdowns. Nitrogen dioxide reacts with other chemicals in the air to form particulate pollution. Credit: NASA
As the world scrambles to contain the spread of COVID-19, many economic activities have ground to a halt, leading to marked reductions in air pollution. And with the skies clearing, researchers are getting an unprecedented chance to help answer one of climate science’s thorniest open questions: the impact of atmospheric aerosols. What they learn could improve predictions of the earth’s climatic future.
“We hope that this situation—as tragic as it is—can have a positive side for our field,” says aerosol researcher Nicolas Bellouin of the University of Reading in England.
Aerosols are tiny particles and droplets that are emitted into the air by myriad sources—from fossil-fuel burning to fertilizer spraying and even natural phenomena such as sea spray. They alter cloud properties and intercept sunlight, with some scattering solar radiation and others absorbing it.
All of these factors influence global temperature—sometimes in competing ways. Overall aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate, offsetting some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases—but just how much they have done so to date, or will do so in the future, remains unclear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could increase temperatures by anywhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, with the wide range linked, in part, to scientist’s incomplete understanding of the influence of aerosols. “The fact that the aerosol effect on climate, so far, is so uncertain has held us back,” says atmospheric scientist Trude Storelvmo of the University of Oslo.
Part of the problem in parsing out the role of aerosols has been that their sources could not simply be turned off to compare what happens with and without them. But now the response to the pandemic has effectively done so. Scientists are now jumping at the opportunity to spot the differences in everything from specific cloud properties to changes in local temperatures before and after aerosol emissions dropped. “If this goes on, one pretty damn sure prediction that I can make is that we will see a lot of scientific papers on this in a couple of years,” says atmospheric scientist Bjørn Samset of the Center for International Climate Research in Norway.
One question that Samset, Bellouin and others are hoping to answer is what fraction of aerosols in the atmosphere arise from human activities rather than natural sources. Aerosol emissions vary greatly from place to place, and it is normally difficult to assess their origin based on remote satellite measurements or sparse ground instruments. The current drop, however, could offer information about the background levels of natural aerosols. Earth scientist Drew Shindell of Duke University aims to investigate the relative contributions of different human activities.
In China—where some sectors, such as transportation, have shut down more extensively than others, including electricity generation—the mix of aerosols in the air appears to be shifting and could help indicate which activities produce which aerosols. “That’s one thing I find really interesting about the shutdown,” Shindell says.
Aerosols also influence cloud formation, which happens when water droplets condense onto particles. Where more aerosols are present, they can create longer-lasting, more reflective clouds—processes that affect the earth’s temperature but that have been notoriously hard to include in computer models. Storelvmo and other researchers now aim to study cloud patterns in the relative absence of aerosols in order to infer their influence. Comparing these data to simulations of the atmosphere before and after shutdowns “would be a very good test for our models to see if they can reproduce what was observed,” she says. Samset also plans to investigate clouds and hopes to look into the challenging question of how aerosols impact where and how much it rains. For him, he says, finding an answer would be “the holy grail.”
Full post
2) Melting Glacier Reveals More Evidence Of Very Warm Medieval Warm Period
Phys.org, 16 April 2020
Melting glacial ice high in the Norwegian mountains has revealed the full extent of the Lendbreen mountain pass, an important trade route from the Roman era until the late Middle Ages.
Archaeologists made a systematic survey along the edge of the melting ice in the area of the mountain pass at Lendbreen, Norway. JOHAN WILDHAGEN, PALOOKAVILLE
A team of researchers from the Innlandet County Council and NTNU University Museum in Norway and the University of Cambridge in the U.K. has found a large quantity of Viking-era artifacts in a long-lost mountain pass in Southern Norway. In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, the group describes the location of the pass, explains why it is suddenly revealing artifacts, and outlines what has been found thus far.
The pass was found back in 2011 on Lomseggen Ridge near a receding patch at Lendbreen glacier. Prior research suggested the reason the artifacts were emerging was because the glacier has been shrinking due to global warming. The team canvased the area over the years 2011 to 2015.
The search resulted in the discovery of a host of artifacts, 60 of which have been dated to between the years 300 AD to 1000. Analysis of the artifacts suggested there were two kinds of travelers through the pass—locals and long-distance trekkers.
The researchers suggest locals used the pass to travel between summer and winter homes. Some of the artifacts also suggested that the pass was used mostly during the times when it was covered with snow—the very rocky terrain would have made walking or riding horses difficult. Snow would have smoothed the trail, making traversal less difficult.
The researchers found items such as tunics and mittens, along with horse fittings such as shoes and bits. They also found remnants of sleds, and in one case, the remains of a dog with a collar and leash. Thus far, no human remains have been found in the area and such findings appear unlikely due to the short distance of the pass—it is just 700 meters long.
The researchers also found multiple cairns along the pass—rocks piled in such a way as to provide a guidepost, helping travelers navigate the easiest path through. They even found a small shelter, likely for travelers who found themselves in the midst of a sudden snowstorm.
Full post
see also
* Alpine melt reveals ancient life
* Green Alps instead of perpetual ice
The Alpine Susten pass, as it might have appeared in Roman times, around 2000 years ago. The Stei glacier has retreated to the level of the Tierberg hut (2795 m), the tree level lies clearly higher. Picture: from “Die Alpen“ / Atelier Thomas Richner based on a draft from Christoph Schlüchter. large
3) UK Climate Assembly Calls Lockdown A ‘Test Run’ For Greener Lifestyles
Reuters, 19 April 2020
London, 19 April -- Working from home and other measures to help stem the spread of the coronavirus outbreak in Britain show how quickly the country could change its ways to address climate change too, participants in the Climate Assembly UK said on Sunday.
“With coronavirus, (the government) has had to act because they had no choice in the matter. With climate change, they need to act in the same way,” said Marc Robson, 46, a British Gas installer and one of the 110 members of the citizens’ assembly.
As with the response to the COVID-19 respiratory disease, “people will die if we don’t do it”, the Newcastle resident warned in a video interview.
“And we all need to buy into this as well. It needs to be explained to the public that if we don’t change what we’re doing, it’s going to cost us, big time.”
The assembly, chosen to reflect Britain’s diverse geographic and demographic makeup, as well as different viewpoints on climate change, has met once a month in Birmingham since January to hear from experts on climate science and policy.
It is expected to submit over the summer its recommendations to the government on how Britain should meet a legally binding goal to cut its climate-heating emissions to net zero by 2050.
But with coronavirus restrictions now in place on public gatherings, the assembly this weekend was held for the first time online – a change some assembly members saw as a “test run” for potential climate-smart shifts they had been discussing.
Full story
4) France Faces Climate Shutdown As Green Soviets Demand Ban On Cars, Hypermarkets & 5G
The Times, 14 April 2020
President Macron’s attempt to appease yellow-vest protesters has saddled him with radical ecological policy proposals likely to further damage the wobbling French economy.
They stem from his decision to delegate the fight against climate change to 150 members of the public chosen at random.
That group has now come up with a plan to modify the way the French shop, travel and produce food, including the closure of out-of-town hypermarkets to encourage shopping locally, and shelving the 5G network because it uses 30 per cent more electricity than previous iterations.
The panel also wants to prohibit the sale of cars that emit more than 110g of CO2 per kilometre by 2025 — far below that emitted by most existing vehicles, in effect outlawing them — and a ban on advertising hoardings to prevent consumers driving long distances to buy products they do not need.
Television, radio, internet and press advertisements for products generating high levels of CO2 would also be banned, and those that were authorised would have to carry the wording: “Do you really need this? Overconsumption harms the planet.”
Full story (£)
5) France’s Climate Convention Has Come Back To Bite Macron
The Spectator, 18 April 2020
President Macron now has to find a way to evade the consequences of his idiot exercise.
Those of us who are sceptical about the worth of citizens’ assemblies have been noting with interest the upshot of the French citizens’ convention for the climate which delivered its recommendations this week.
The thing about these assemblies of randomly selected citizens mulling over thorny issues is that they’re a brilliant way for elected politicians to shift the responsibility for really unpopular policies onto someone else. Except they can go horribly wrong.
President Macron used this device to deal with the threat from the gilets jaune, back in those distant days when citizens could actually assemble in France. He had to deal with a movement that was driven by the concerns of predominantly rural voters who felt ignored by the elite while placating the urban young exercised about climate change. What better than to go through the motions of direct democracy to appease the first group while giving the random citizens a brief that would ensure that their conclusions appeased the environmentalists? The convention was asked how to ensure that French carbon emissions would be reduced by 40 per cent in 2030 from 1990 levels.
The upshot was precisely as you’d expect: the convention has come up with proposals that no sane politician would actually want to take to the electorate, especially not in rural France. They recommend closing hypermarkets, shelving the 5G network because it uses more electricity, prohibiting the sale of cars whose emissions exceed that of most current models, and banning hoardings that might encourage people to drive further to buy things.
Advertisements, whether print broadcast or online, for items generating excessive CO2 would be banned; those that were authorised would be forced to carry the words: ‘Do you really need this?’. Some of the proposals are decent, such as encouraging the use of local shops over chain stores, but the overall effect is bossy, authoritarian and appallingly expensive for poorer people.
The president now has to decide how to deal with this embarrassment. You see, he made the mistake at the outset of declaring that the convention’s proposals would be taken seriously; they would be implemented immediately, put before parliament for legislation, or submitted to a referendum. That was then, when no one anticipated a situation where the French economy would be shrinking by six per cent in a year.
The problem with citizens’ assemblies is that its members don’t, unlike elected politicians, actually have to deal with the consequences of their breezy and idealistic proposals. In the first place, they are rarely representative of the entire population: in France, 25,000 people were approached to see if they wanted to take part; most refused, and 150 were chosen. Most of those are people with an agenda, who are prepared to give up entire weekends in return for a stipend of £74 (€86) a day plus expenses. In other words, political activists and people with time on their hands.
It was the same with the Irish citizens’ assembly on abortion. As in that case, the conclusions people come to depend on the agenda they are presented with. If the experts who brief them have a particular bias, pro-choice or hardcore green, then the recommendations will reflect that. The Irish body wasn’t presented with pro-foetus experts except as a minority view (you can see the programme online); I’d wager that the French convention was similarly skewed towards environmentalists rather than economists.
The thing about normal democracy is that it’s a way for us to choose people to make difficult decisions about policy and then implement them in law. In exceptional cases, the true direct democracy of a referendum can be used. Delegating these choices to a collection of unelected individuals is passing the buck. Mr Macron now has to find a way to evade the consequences of his idiot exercise. The old rule applies: never ask people their opinion unless you know the answer you want them to come up with, and then fix the process to make sure that’s what happens.
6) Modelling Catastrophe In A Climate Of Fear
Jaime Jessop, Climate Scepticism, 19 April 2020
Three months ago in Davos, Little Greta believed that action based upon fear, based in turn upon the scary output of climate models, would save the world and restore the God given right of her generation to inherit a ‘habitable planet’. Today, we have adults panicked into taking action on Covid-19 who have destroyed the hopes and aspirations of the younger generation, wrecking their education and bequeathing to them an austere future.
"Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.”
We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly.”
Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is."
So said Greta, at Davos, 3 months ago, even as another crisis was rapidly emerging, a new, real, more imminent crisis which would grip the world and force governments to act – largely, in retrospect, out of fear, not knowledge, not masses of data, not hope.
At first, UK scientists said don’t panic, then they said PANIC in big, bold capital letters. They got it wrong – twice. They got it wrong the first time because they didn’t know enough about the Wuhan Virus to casually float the idea of ‘herd immunity’.
The now thoroughly discredited WHO was telling us that the fatality rate was 3.4% and R0 (the average number of people one person infects) was a lot higher than ‘flu, meaning that, if left unchecked, the disease would rip through communities and very rapidly overwhelm hospitals, meaning that the death rate would rise even higher.
This appeared to be happening in Italy, though not in Germany, not in Japan, not in South Korea and not in a few other countries besides. It’s still not happening. The UK has been hard hit, even in lockdown, but it’s not happening here either. Nightingale is empty. But at the time, public fear, whipped up by the media, and amplified by ‘new’ modelling data, dictated that the government act to save lives and save the NHS.
They got it wrong the second time because they relied upon an epidemiological model (adapted from an old ‘flu model) which predicted 510,000 deaths from a virus which we knew virtually nothing about. Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, London said ‘DO SOMETHING OR PEOPLE WILL DIE!’ So the government did something and people still died, not in their hundreds of thousands, but, it would seem, in numbers probably irrespective of a lockdown which was initiated too late in the day and was nowhere near strict enough to have a measurable effect on what is probably an exceptionally contagious virus. American IMHE modellers got it wrong a third time, predicting loads more deaths in the UK and the US, even in lockdown, than actually occurred.
Climate change modellers never get it wrong, simply because even when their models don’t agree with reality, this is either because the observations are wrong, or because they still ‘do a reasonable job’ of modelling past and present climate change (especially when inconvenient ‘blips’ are ironed out by retrospective adjustments to the data), but principally because the subject of their claimed modelling expertise lies many years off in the future – climate change to be expected in 2050 or 2100, when the real impacts will begin to be felt. Imperial’s and IMHE’s worst case scenarios look way off, just weeks after they were proposed and after governments acted on the modeller’s advice. Their assumptions are being rapidly challenged by new data and research.
Nothing similar happens in climate change land. Their worst case scenario (RCP8.5), though comprehensively debunked, still lives on and is still being defended by Met Office scientists on the basis that ‘carbon feedbacks (however unlikely) cannot be ruled out’.
People are still scared by Covid-19; they’re scared of dying, naturally, not in many years’ time because of bad weather, but next week, due to some horrible illness which probably escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. The government and the Medicine Men currently in control of control of government decision-making, use that fear to control us and to convince us of the legitimacy of their policy. Thus, mostly, we have obediently stayed at home, and acted responsibly whilst out, but that’s not enough for the police who’ve taken great pleasure in making up their own list of #CovidCrimes and harassing and fining innocent members of the public guilty of committing mass murder by not staying at home. However, the data keeps rolling in and the research keeps piling up, even as we sit on the sofa and watch our economy go down the tubes and our civil liberties disappear in the haze of ‘the new normal’.
Covid-19 is not the disease we thought it was 2 months ago and the unintended consequences of lockdown (given hardly a moment’s thought by epidemiologists and politicians singularly intent on saving lives and saving ‘our NHS’) look set to be even more severe than the consequences of the disease itself.
It’s all very odd, because a few months ago, adults at Davos nodded approvingly whilst Greta reprimanded them for giving her generation false hope, saying that she wanted everyone to panic and take action.
Little Greta believed that such action based upon fear, based in turn upon the scary output of climate models, would save the world and restore the God given right of her generation to inherit a ‘habitable planet’. Today, we have adults panicked into taking action on Covid-19 who have destroyed the hopes and aspirations of the younger generation, wrecked their education and who are busy bequeathing to them an austere future where their parents are out of work and their prospects for their own futures look bleak. This is basically the same as #netzero or the Green New Deal of course, but a global depression won’t save the planet in the process. Hence why some climate fanatics are OK with lockdown and economic ruin as long as it morphs long term into Green austerity.
There are signs that now Boris is on the mend, things might start to change and the government may be reconsidering its obsessive lockdown strategy, but I’m not that hopeful as yet, having witnessed the Minister for Suicide Prevention, Nadine Dorries, state on Twitter that lockdown will continue until a vaccine is developed, Grant Shapps telling us not to book a summer holiday, Dominic Raab telling us that an ‘equally distributed’ vaccine is our only hope, No. 10 telling us to stay at home and bake a cake, and five government ‘tests’ for ending lockdown which can never be met.
Full post & comments
7) Grim Outlook For Electric Cars In Europe
EUObserver, 17 April 2020
Sales of electric cars in Europe would be much smaller than expected in 2020 due to coronavirus supply chain disruptions and low petrol prices, a US credit rating agency, Fitch, has said.
Consumers might also shun the cars as pandemic-impoverished governments lagged on installing electric charging stations and other infrastructure. EU car firms would miss CO2 targets due to the factors and risked incurring fines unless laws were changed.
EUObserver, 17 April 2020
Sales of electric cars in Europe would be much smaller than expected in 2020 due to coronavirus supply chain disruptions and low petrol prices, a US credit rating agency, Fitch, has said.
Consumers might also shun the cars as pandemic-impoverished governments lagged on installing electric charging stations and other infrastructure. EU car firms would miss CO2 targets due to the factors and risked incurring fines unless laws were changed.
8) Climate Campaigner & Former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Faces Lifetime Ban From Liberal Party
The Australian, 19 April 2020
A former Turnbull government adviser from the conservative bloc of the state executive has asked for an extraordinary general meeting to vote on Turnbull’s expulsion within weeks.
Australia’s former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull faces expulsion from the Liberal Party
Could the dysfunctional relationship between Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and the Liberal Party finally be set for a hostile divorce?
An email calling for Turnbull to be expelled from the party and slapped with a lifetime ban was sent to NSW Liberal state executive members on Sunday afternoon. If the motion is successful, Strewth understands this would be the first time anyone has been chastised with a lifetime Liberal membership ban, let alone Australian’s 29th prime minister.
Christian Ellis — a former Turnbull government adviser from the conservative bloc of the state executive — has asked for an extraordinary general meeting to vote on Turnbull’s expulsion within weeks.
Ellis was scathing in his email rebuke, focusing on the former Liberal leader’s scorched-earth book A Bigger Picture, published on Monday.
“Malcolm Turnbull has shown in the last few weeks how he is not a servant of the Liberal Party, but himself,” Ellis wrote.
“I intend to move for the immediate expulsion of Malcolm Turnbull from the Liberal Party. On top of this, as he may no longer be a member, I will move for a lifetime ban to be imposed on him.”
Full story ($)
The Australian, 19 April 2020
A former Turnbull government adviser from the conservative bloc of the state executive has asked for an extraordinary general meeting to vote on Turnbull’s expulsion within weeks.
Australia’s former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull faces expulsion from the Liberal Party
Could the dysfunctional relationship between Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and the Liberal Party finally be set for a hostile divorce?
An email calling for Turnbull to be expelled from the party and slapped with a lifetime ban was sent to NSW Liberal state executive members on Sunday afternoon. If the motion is successful, Strewth understands this would be the first time anyone has been chastised with a lifetime Liberal membership ban, let alone Australian’s 29th prime minister.
Christian Ellis — a former Turnbull government adviser from the conservative bloc of the state executive — has asked for an extraordinary general meeting to vote on Turnbull’s expulsion within weeks.
Ellis was scathing in his email rebuke, focusing on the former Liberal leader’s scorched-earth book A Bigger Picture, published on Monday.
“Malcolm Turnbull has shown in the last few weeks how he is not a servant of the Liberal Party, but himself,” Ellis wrote.
“I intend to move for the immediate expulsion of Malcolm Turnbull from the Liberal Party. On top of this, as he may no longer be a member, I will move for a lifetime ban to be imposed on him.”
Full story ($)
9) And Finally: Half of Britain's CO2 Emissions Are Hidden In Imports
The Times, 16 April 2020
The UK has been less successful at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than the official record claims as nearly half our carbon footprint now comes from emissions released overseas to produce imported goods, a report has said.
Emissions from making products such as clothing, foods and electronics imported into the UK are counted in official statistics as the responsibility of the manufacturing country, not Britain.
These “hidden emissions” accounted for 46 per cent of the UK’s overall carbon footprint last year, according to the report by the University of Leeds. The proportion has grown rapidly from 14 per cent in 1990 partly because of the closure of some UK manufacturing and a shift to importing more of the energy-intensive goods consumed here.
Between 1990 and 2016 emissions within the UK’s borders fell by 41 per cent but the consumption-based footprint dropped by only 15 per cent, mainly due to imported goods and services.
The UK last year made a legally binding commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 but this target excludes emissions from producing imports.
Full Post (£)
The Times, 16 April 2020
The UK has been less successful at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than the official record claims as nearly half our carbon footprint now comes from emissions released overseas to produce imported goods, a report has said.
Emissions from making products such as clothing, foods and electronics imported into the UK are counted in official statistics as the responsibility of the manufacturing country, not Britain.
These “hidden emissions” accounted for 46 per cent of the UK’s overall carbon footprint last year, according to the report by the University of Leeds. The proportion has grown rapidly from 14 per cent in 1990 partly because of the closure of some UK manufacturing and a shift to importing more of the energy-intensive goods consumed here.
Between 1990 and 2016 emissions within the UK’s borders fell by 41 per cent but the consumption-based footprint dropped by only 15 per cent, mainly due to imported goods and services.
The UK last year made a legally binding commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 but this target excludes emissions from producing imports.
Full Post (£)
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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