Aid Groups Accused Of Colonial Mentality
In this newsletter:
1) Energy For Africa Week: Aid Groups Accused Of Colonial Mentality
The Zimbabwean, 30 June 2020
2) Eco-Colonialism In Africa
GWPF TV, 30 June 2020
GWPF TV, 30 June 2020
3) Geoff Hill: Heart Of Darkness & Energy Security
GWPF, 30 June 2020
4) New Study: Green Energy Programs Mainly Benefit Wealthy
E&E News, 29 June 2020
5) Antarctic Penguins Could Experience ‘Population Boom’ Due To Global Warming
GWPF, 30 June 2020
4) New Study: Green Energy Programs Mainly Benefit Wealthy
E&E News, 29 June 2020
5) Antarctic Penguins Could Experience ‘Population Boom’ Due To Global Warming
6) Dominic Lawson: Less Ice Makes P-P-Penguins Perkier!
Daily Mail, 29 June 2020
Daily Mail, 29 June 2020
7) Apocalyptic Science: How The West Is Destroying Itself
Bruce Pardy, Financial Post, 26 June 2020
Bruce Pardy, Financial Post, 26 June 2020
8) And Finally: Climate Crisis? What Climate Crisis?
Successful Farming, 26 June 2020
Successful Farming, 26 June 2020
Full details:
1) Energy For Africa Week: Aid Groups Accused Of Colonial Mentality
The Zimbabwean, 30 June 2020
Dr Peiser said it was important for donors and the World Bank to support local solutions rather than imposing what he called “a new form of colonialism”.
Zimbabwe can set an example to the world in domestic power supply, according to the head of a London think tank.
Dr Benny Peiser who leads the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) said the building of Lake Kariba in the 1950s — still the world’s largest dam — and the coal-fired power station at Hwange “are cases where Africa looked after itself”.
Dr Peiser was speaking on Monday 29 June at the start of the Energy for Africa week.
“Zimbabwe is now in a dire state economically due to mismanagement and a terrible record on human rights,” he said, “but Kariba is still there and the power stations near the coal fields are being re-tooled.”
Dr Peiser told The Zimbabwean it was important for donors and the World Bank to support local solutions rather than imposing what he called “a new form of colonialism”.
“More than 600 million Africans lack something so basic as electricity and yet we have donors denying funds for a power plant because it uses fossil fuel. Imagine that in a country like Tanzania with four billion tons of coal in the ground.”
In recent years, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mozambique, Botswana and Zimbabwe have all voiced criticism of aid groups over what they say is a dictatorial policy on energy.
A HUMAN RIGHT
“Electricity is a human right,” Dr Peiser said. “We accept that in Europe, the US, Australia, but somehow Africans should get by on diesel generators, or fire wood when the winter cold sets in.”
He said clean technology for coal has seen countries like India and China using it increasingly to reduce air pollution.
The GWPF was established by Lord Nigel Lawson who in the 1980s served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of Margaret Thatcher’s reboot of the British economy.
Lord Lawson (right) with Dr Benny Peiser of the GWPF
Dr Peiser said the GWPF had no preference for solar, wind, hydro or fossil fuel, and that every country had a right to make its own choice.
“There is a new colonialism just as oppressive as the original,” he said. “Some in the environmental movement believe they can sit in London, New York or Paris with the comforts of modern life and dictate to Africa how they should generate power.”
The week-long focus on energy in Africa will include release of videos and discussion papers on how to lift the supply of electricity across the continent.
Ethiopia has embarked on a dam-building project for hydro power while South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe get almost all their energy from coal. Kenya and Uganda are installing solar plants in arid regions.
UNEMPLOYMENT DRIVES MILITIA
Dr Peiser said industry was “all but impossible” with electricity and this lay at the heart of unemployment.
“The loss of hope that comes with poverty drives young people to join militia and even terror groups, or to emigrate, with thousands drowning or being taking hostage in their desperate attempt to reach Europe.”
Wits University in Johannesburg has one of the world’s most advanced clean-coal laboratories.
“If we can burn fossil fuel cleanly there is no reason not to use it,” Dr Peiser said. “But that decision must be taken by sovereign states in Africa and Asia, and not be imposed from outside.
“The colonial mentality of the World Bank and in the donor industry needs to end and it needs to end now,” he said.
The Zimbabwean, 30 June 2020
Dr Peiser said it was important for donors and the World Bank to support local solutions rather than imposing what he called “a new form of colonialism”.
Zimbabwe can set an example to the world in domestic power supply, according to the head of a London think tank.
Dr Benny Peiser who leads the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) said the building of Lake Kariba in the 1950s — still the world’s largest dam — and the coal-fired power station at Hwange “are cases where Africa looked after itself”.
Dr Peiser was speaking on Monday 29 June at the start of the Energy for Africa week.
“Zimbabwe is now in a dire state economically due to mismanagement and a terrible record on human rights,” he said, “but Kariba is still there and the power stations near the coal fields are being re-tooled.”
Dr Peiser told The Zimbabwean it was important for donors and the World Bank to support local solutions rather than imposing what he called “a new form of colonialism”.
“More than 600 million Africans lack something so basic as electricity and yet we have donors denying funds for a power plant because it uses fossil fuel. Imagine that in a country like Tanzania with four billion tons of coal in the ground.”
In recent years, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mozambique, Botswana and Zimbabwe have all voiced criticism of aid groups over what they say is a dictatorial policy on energy.
A HUMAN RIGHT
“Electricity is a human right,” Dr Peiser said. “We accept that in Europe, the US, Australia, but somehow Africans should get by on diesel generators, or fire wood when the winter cold sets in.”
He said clean technology for coal has seen countries like India and China using it increasingly to reduce air pollution.
The GWPF was established by Lord Nigel Lawson who in the 1980s served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of Margaret Thatcher’s reboot of the British economy.
Lord Lawson (right) with Dr Benny Peiser of the GWPF
Dr Peiser said the GWPF had no preference for solar, wind, hydro or fossil fuel, and that every country had a right to make its own choice.
“There is a new colonialism just as oppressive as the original,” he said. “Some in the environmental movement believe they can sit in London, New York or Paris with the comforts of modern life and dictate to Africa how they should generate power.”
The week-long focus on energy in Africa will include release of videos and discussion papers on how to lift the supply of electricity across the continent.
Ethiopia has embarked on a dam-building project for hydro power while South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe get almost all their energy from coal. Kenya and Uganda are installing solar plants in arid regions.
UNEMPLOYMENT DRIVES MILITIA
Dr Peiser said industry was “all but impossible” with electricity and this lay at the heart of unemployment.
“The loss of hope that comes with poverty drives young people to join militia and even terror groups, or to emigrate, with thousands drowning or being taking hostage in their desperate attempt to reach Europe.”
Wits University in Johannesburg has one of the world’s most advanced clean-coal laboratories.
“If we can burn fossil fuel cleanly there is no reason not to use it,” Dr Peiser said. “But that decision must be taken by sovereign states in Africa and Asia, and not be imposed from outside.
“The colonial mentality of the World Bank and in the donor industry needs to end and it needs to end now,” he said.
2) Eco-Colonialism In Africa
GWPF TV, 30 June 2020
In the 2010s, the World Bank ended its financial support for developing economies’ fossil fuel projects such as coal-fired power stations.
Click on the image above to watch the short video
That decision was the result of pressure from green campaigns, which continue to lobby public institutions such as universities to divest from fossil fuels.
Green political campaigns have also targeted financial institutions, warning them that their investments could become ‘stranded’ by climate policies.
The UK government has followed this political agenda and diverted international development and aid funds towards green energy projects.
But the consequences of these campaigns and decisions are not felt in the places where they are made.
They are felt thousands of miles away, where the need for energy and development is urgent.
The result of switching emphasis away from the cheapest, most abundant and most reliable forms of energy has been a vast opportunity cost.
Western demands for sustainability put limits on economic growth in the developing world, that would not be tolerated anywhere else.
African countries’ economic and industrial development has been inhibited by the ‘sustainability’ agenda that has been imposed on them.
GWPF TV, 30 June 2020
In the 2010s, the World Bank ended its financial support for developing economies’ fossil fuel projects such as coal-fired power stations.
Click on the image above to watch the short video
That decision was the result of pressure from green campaigns, which continue to lobby public institutions such as universities to divest from fossil fuels.
Green political campaigns have also targeted financial institutions, warning them that their investments could become ‘stranded’ by climate policies.
The UK government has followed this political agenda and diverted international development and aid funds towards green energy projects.
But the consequences of these campaigns and decisions are not felt in the places where they are made.
They are felt thousands of miles away, where the need for energy and development is urgent.
The result of switching emphasis away from the cheapest, most abundant and most reliable forms of energy has been a vast opportunity cost.
Western demands for sustainability put limits on economic growth in the developing world, that would not be tolerated anywhere else.
African countries’ economic and industrial development has been inhibited by the ‘sustainability’ agenda that has been imposed on them.
3) Geoff Hill: Heart Of Darkness & Energy Security
GWPF, 30 June 2020
Be afraid of the dark
GWPF, 30 June 2020
Be afraid of the dark
You could have knocked me over with a candle. It was October 2017 and I was with a group of journalists quizzing US energy secretary Rick Perry on his first visit to Cape Town, when someone asked why Washington was spending billions on electricity plants in Africa. I expected a politician’s answer: human rights, good work, a policy that cares about the less fortunate.
‘It’s a security issue’, he said. ‘Militia and terror groups are a magnet for young men without jobs, and if there’s no grid or power, you can’t industrialise’. He rolled off the numbers. More than 600 million Africans – half the population – are not on the grid. America uses more electricity in a day than Ghana or Tanzania generate in a year.Investors are keen on the continent, but a lack of capacity keeps them away.
Perry comes across as someone who understands how tough life can be for some Americans and how much harder it is in the developing world. He hasn’t always been a politician; he served in the US Air Force, rising to the rank of captain, and flying humanitarianmissions to Africa and Central America. He has a grasp of the world outside Washington. In his youth he worked in many roles, including as a door-to-door salesman. And he holds the record as the longest serving governor of Texas where, he says, he was exposed to ‘the anguish of unemployment and the hopelessness people feel when they can’t get a job’.
The border between Mexico and the US is more than 3000 kilometres long, and two-thirds of it lies in Texas. As governor, Perry took a special interest in immigration. The number of illegal crossings fell during his 12 years in office, but he insisted that poverty, poor governance and unemployment is what drove people to seek a better life.
‘I see the same problem when young people trek hundreds of miles through the Sahara Desert to try crossing the Mediterranean into Europe’, he said. ‘Thousands have drowned, others made it, but many are deported. I don’t believe we should vilify these exiles, butthe answer also doesn’t lie in moving them somewhere else. Rather, we need to make their countries of origin a better place to live’. These, he said, were issues of conscience. Good things to do.
‘They’re what American aid and foreign policy is about: making a better world’. I sensed a ‘but’ coming on:
But I and the administration, along with Congress, we represent the American people. So while we’re helping Africa, there has to be something for the tax-payers because it’s their money. Bringing real levels of power to Africa, the kind we take for granted at home, is good for America because it helps us end the scourge of terror. It cuts illegal migration and it makes economies stronger, so they have the buying power to trade with the US and boost American jobs.
After nearly four decades of reporting on Africa, I have heard a lot about aid, usually from two perspectives. The first says it’s some kind of moral responsibility for rich countries to help the poor, and I get that. The second points to billions spent across half a century with little to show. So Mr Perry made sense to me. Widening access toelectricity wasn’t America’s duty or Africa’s right. It was money on the ground with potential for both sides to reap a profit.
Left or Right, from Donald Trump to French President Emmanuel Macron or Sweden’s Stefan Löfven, there’s agreement that Africa has a problem with jobs. From a poor city like Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Africa’s richest shopping zone at Sandton in Johannesburg – with the likes of Chanel and Gucci plying their trade – there are young people out of work, or serving tables in spite of having good grades for English and algebra.
When it comes to unemployment, numbers are hard to find, and not because the state doesn’t come up with them. The UN, World Bank, and most national governments have detailed charts on the workforce. In South Africa, for example, the figure depends on whether you count part-time jobs, subsistence agriculture and those not looking for work. Pretoria puts the jobless rate at around 25%, most of them urban.
However, when polling companies ask, ‘Do you have a job?’, more than double that number say ‘No’. The difference lies in what’s known as the informal sector. Across cities and towns, you’ll see people from their mid-teens to middle age sharpening knives or fixing tyres and exhausts along the roadside. Others stand at traffic lights, holding fruit or a tangle of phone chargers. Officially, they have jobs but, when polled, most say the opposite. Vending, they say, is a way to pay the rent while looking for work.
South Africa is the continent’s richest nation, with a GDP of close on $400 billion, so what chance for the Central African Republic, whose total economy is less than 2% of that? Nothing will change there without access to electricity; according to the World Bank, close on nine out of ten are not on the grid. In many places, it’s about what engineers call, ‘the last half mile’. Electricity is there, but minus the lines connecting it to homes. With rapid urbanisation, slums and squatter camps spring up around cities. People use paraffin stoves or make illegal connections to a pylon, resulting in the so-called ‘shack fires’ that kill thousands every year.
Rick Perry’s speech made headlines. I wrote a front-page story for The Washington Times and, after the press event, he held meetings with African energy ministers to set his plan in place. But he had one more rider. ‘When people don’t have electricity, they don’t care where it comes from’, he said. ‘In Texas, we’ve done wonders with wind power, and Africa has potential there, and especially for solar. But on a continent rich in gas and coal, countries must have a right to use their own resources’. America, he said, was there to help, ‘not to dictate’. He closed as he’d begun. This was a security issue, reducing the pull of al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and the human traffickers. Bringing jobs and industry to a continent out of work.
‘More than anything, our power project is there to give people hope’, he said. ‘Because, make no mistake, if we don’t, someone else will’
You can read Geoff Hill’s full essay here
4) New Study: Green Energy Programs Mainly Benefit Wealthy
E&E News, 29 June 2020
California policies designed to incentivize renewable energy and energy efficiency mostly benefit wealthy ratepayers, according to a new study.
California is often called a leader on renewable energy and energy efficiency, but the benefits of the state's clean energy programs might not be equitably distributed, according to a new study.
In the Los Angeles area, California's renewable energy, energy efficiency and electric vehicle programs are disproportionately rewarding wealthy ratepayers, whose high energy use is being "subsidized" by other ratepayers in the area, researchers at UCLA's California Center for Sustainable Communities found.
Analyzing electricity and gas billing data in Los Angeles County from 2006 to 2017, the study published in the journal Elementa reported that residents living in "disadvantaged communities" — or predominantly low-income areas that bear the brunt of environmental pollution — in Los Angeles consume an average of 55% as much electricity and 60% as much natural gas as those living in higher-income communities.
Residents of those higher-income communities also purchase electric vehicles and solar panels in greater numbers, reaping the state government subsidies and tax credits associated with programs for those technologies, the study said.
Other studies have shown that wealthier residents are also more likely than middle- and low-income residents to take advantage of California's energy efficiency programs, such as rebates for people who upgrade household appliances or purchase electric or hybrid vehicles.
For example, Californians can receive a rebate of up to $7,000 when they buy or lease a new plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, a fully electric vehicle or a fuel-cell EV, according to the state's Climate Investments program.
Full story ($)
5) Antarctic Penguins Could Experience ‘Population Boom’ Due To Global Warming
For Adélies, swimming is four times faster than walking, meaning faster access to food and, in turn, healthier offspring and longer lifespans.
The research team electronically tagged nearly 200 penguins in the Antarctica with GPS devices, video cameras and other equipment to monitor the effects of less ice.
The penguins were shown to be able to conduct shorter dives while catching more krill, due to not having to locate cracks in the ice for breathing while submerged.
This higher foraging success led chicks to grow faster and higher body mass in adult males and females.
It turns out that these penguins are happier with less sea-ice,’ said lead researcher Yuuki Watanabe at the National Institute of Polar Research in Tachikawa, Japan.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but the underlying mechanism is actually quite simple.
They may be sleek in the water but are pretty slow waddlers overland.’
Antarctica, the Earth’s southernmost continent, has actually experienced a steady increase over the course of decades in the extent of its sea ice – frozen seawater.
This contrasts with its polar twin, the Arctic, which has suffered through a marked decrease.
Full story
6) Dominic Lawson: Less Ice Makes P-P-Penguins Perkier!
Daily Mail, 29 June 2020
Hot news from the Antarctic: the penguins are prospering. And why is that interesting? Because this is the creature which was supposed to be the principal victim of climate change and the consequent loss of sea ice.
Yet last week, researchers from Japan's National Institute of Polar Research produced a report showing that the Adélie penguin (whose only home is the Antarctic) has been thriving like never before — and it's because of the changing habitat.
Having tagged 175 of these endearing birds, the scientists discovered that the penguins caught more krill because of the loss of ice. 'Counterintuitively for this ice-dependent species, body conditions and breeding success improved in the ice-free environment,' they explained.
One of the researchers added: 'For penguins, swimming is a whopping four times faster than walking', so they were able to forage in larger areas for shorter periods of time.
And what of that creature even more loved by humans: the polar bear? Three years ago a National Geographic video of a solitary starving polar bear, its rib cage distressingly visible, became an internet sensation, watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people.
'This is what climate change looks like,' said National Geographic.
Well, that particular polar bear was clearly in a bad way. But over the past 15 years, the polar bear population has risen from around 22,500 to as much as 31,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Meanwhile, the Adélie penguins are loving the climate. Can we be forgiven for driving cars now?
‘It’s a security issue’, he said. ‘Militia and terror groups are a magnet for young men without jobs, and if there’s no grid or power, you can’t industrialise’. He rolled off the numbers. More than 600 million Africans – half the population – are not on the grid. America uses more electricity in a day than Ghana or Tanzania generate in a year.Investors are keen on the continent, but a lack of capacity keeps them away.
Perry comes across as someone who understands how tough life can be for some Americans and how much harder it is in the developing world. He hasn’t always been a politician; he served in the US Air Force, rising to the rank of captain, and flying humanitarianmissions to Africa and Central America. He has a grasp of the world outside Washington. In his youth he worked in many roles, including as a door-to-door salesman. And he holds the record as the longest serving governor of Texas where, he says, he was exposed to ‘the anguish of unemployment and the hopelessness people feel when they can’t get a job’.
The border between Mexico and the US is more than 3000 kilometres long, and two-thirds of it lies in Texas. As governor, Perry took a special interest in immigration. The number of illegal crossings fell during his 12 years in office, but he insisted that poverty, poor governance and unemployment is what drove people to seek a better life.
‘I see the same problem when young people trek hundreds of miles through the Sahara Desert to try crossing the Mediterranean into Europe’, he said. ‘Thousands have drowned, others made it, but many are deported. I don’t believe we should vilify these exiles, butthe answer also doesn’t lie in moving them somewhere else. Rather, we need to make their countries of origin a better place to live’. These, he said, were issues of conscience. Good things to do.
‘They’re what American aid and foreign policy is about: making a better world’. I sensed a ‘but’ coming on:
But I and the administration, along with Congress, we represent the American people. So while we’re helping Africa, there has to be something for the tax-payers because it’s their money. Bringing real levels of power to Africa, the kind we take for granted at home, is good for America because it helps us end the scourge of terror. It cuts illegal migration and it makes economies stronger, so they have the buying power to trade with the US and boost American jobs.
After nearly four decades of reporting on Africa, I have heard a lot about aid, usually from two perspectives. The first says it’s some kind of moral responsibility for rich countries to help the poor, and I get that. The second points to billions spent across half a century with little to show. So Mr Perry made sense to me. Widening access toelectricity wasn’t America’s duty or Africa’s right. It was money on the ground with potential for both sides to reap a profit.
Left or Right, from Donald Trump to French President Emmanuel Macron or Sweden’s Stefan Löfven, there’s agreement that Africa has a problem with jobs. From a poor city like Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Africa’s richest shopping zone at Sandton in Johannesburg – with the likes of Chanel and Gucci plying their trade – there are young people out of work, or serving tables in spite of having good grades for English and algebra.
When it comes to unemployment, numbers are hard to find, and not because the state doesn’t come up with them. The UN, World Bank, and most national governments have detailed charts on the workforce. In South Africa, for example, the figure depends on whether you count part-time jobs, subsistence agriculture and those not looking for work. Pretoria puts the jobless rate at around 25%, most of them urban.
However, when polling companies ask, ‘Do you have a job?’, more than double that number say ‘No’. The difference lies in what’s known as the informal sector. Across cities and towns, you’ll see people from their mid-teens to middle age sharpening knives or fixing tyres and exhausts along the roadside. Others stand at traffic lights, holding fruit or a tangle of phone chargers. Officially, they have jobs but, when polled, most say the opposite. Vending, they say, is a way to pay the rent while looking for work.
South Africa is the continent’s richest nation, with a GDP of close on $400 billion, so what chance for the Central African Republic, whose total economy is less than 2% of that? Nothing will change there without access to electricity; according to the World Bank, close on nine out of ten are not on the grid. In many places, it’s about what engineers call, ‘the last half mile’. Electricity is there, but minus the lines connecting it to homes. With rapid urbanisation, slums and squatter camps spring up around cities. People use paraffin stoves or make illegal connections to a pylon, resulting in the so-called ‘shack fires’ that kill thousands every year.
Rick Perry’s speech made headlines. I wrote a front-page story for The Washington Times and, after the press event, he held meetings with African energy ministers to set his plan in place. But he had one more rider. ‘When people don’t have electricity, they don’t care where it comes from’, he said. ‘In Texas, we’ve done wonders with wind power, and Africa has potential there, and especially for solar. But on a continent rich in gas and coal, countries must have a right to use their own resources’. America, he said, was there to help, ‘not to dictate’. He closed as he’d begun. This was a security issue, reducing the pull of al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and the human traffickers. Bringing jobs and industry to a continent out of work.
‘More than anything, our power project is there to give people hope’, he said. ‘Because, make no mistake, if we don’t, someone else will’
You can read Geoff Hill’s full essay here
4) New Study: Green Energy Programs Mainly Benefit Wealthy
E&E News, 29 June 2020
California policies designed to incentivize renewable energy and energy efficiency mostly benefit wealthy ratepayers, according to a new study.
California is often called a leader on renewable energy and energy efficiency, but the benefits of the state's clean energy programs might not be equitably distributed, according to a new study.
In the Los Angeles area, California's renewable energy, energy efficiency and electric vehicle programs are disproportionately rewarding wealthy ratepayers, whose high energy use is being "subsidized" by other ratepayers in the area, researchers at UCLA's California Center for Sustainable Communities found.
Analyzing electricity and gas billing data in Los Angeles County from 2006 to 2017, the study published in the journal Elementa reported that residents living in "disadvantaged communities" — or predominantly low-income areas that bear the brunt of environmental pollution — in Los Angeles consume an average of 55% as much electricity and 60% as much natural gas as those living in higher-income communities.
Residents of those higher-income communities also purchase electric vehicles and solar panels in greater numbers, reaping the state government subsidies and tax credits associated with programs for those technologies, the study said.
Other studies have shown that wealthier residents are also more likely than middle- and low-income residents to take advantage of California's energy efficiency programs, such as rebates for people who upgrade household appliances or purchase electric or hybrid vehicles.
For example, Californians can receive a rebate of up to $7,000 when they buy or lease a new plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, a fully electric vehicle or a fuel-cell EV, according to the state's Climate Investments program.
Full story ($)
5) Antarctic Penguins Could Experience ‘Population Boom’ Due To Global Warming
Daily Mail, 24 June 2020
Antarctic penguins could experience a ‘population boom’ due to global warming as melting sea ice means they have to spend less time foraging for food.
Large group of Adelie penguins on an ice floe in Antarctica. Adélie penguins on the continent covered more ground in less time by swimming instead of walking as they searched for prey, which meant healthier and more robust populations
Antarctic penguins could experience a ‘population boom’ due to global warming as melting sea ice means they have to spend less time foraging for food.
Large group of Adelie penguins on an ice floe in Antarctica. Adélie penguins on the continent covered more ground in less time by swimming instead of walking as they searched for prey, which meant healthier and more robust populations
Another false alarm goes up in smoke
Japanese scientists describe the Adélie species of penguin, which is native to Antarctica, as a ‘rare global warming winner’ thanks to melting ice.
In low-ice conditions, penguins are able travel more by swimming than by walking, which increases their access to foods such as fish and krill.
Japanese scientists describe the Adélie species of penguin, which is native to Antarctica, as a ‘rare global warming winner’ thanks to melting ice.
In low-ice conditions, penguins are able travel more by swimming than by walking, which increases their access to foods such as fish and krill.
For Adélies, swimming is four times faster than walking, meaning faster access to food and, in turn, healthier offspring and longer lifespans.
The research team electronically tagged nearly 200 penguins in the Antarctica with GPS devices, video cameras and other equipment to monitor the effects of less ice.
The penguins were shown to be able to conduct shorter dives while catching more krill, due to not having to locate cracks in the ice for breathing while submerged.
This higher foraging success led chicks to grow faster and higher body mass in adult males and females.
It turns out that these penguins are happier with less sea-ice,’ said lead researcher Yuuki Watanabe at the National Institute of Polar Research in Tachikawa, Japan.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but the underlying mechanism is actually quite simple.
They may be sleek in the water but are pretty slow waddlers overland.’
Antarctica, the Earth’s southernmost continent, has actually experienced a steady increase over the course of decades in the extent of its sea ice – frozen seawater.
This contrasts with its polar twin, the Arctic, which has suffered through a marked decrease.
Full story
6) Dominic Lawson: Less Ice Makes P-P-Penguins Perkier!
Daily Mail, 29 June 2020
Hot news from the Antarctic: the penguins are prospering. And why is that interesting? Because this is the creature which was supposed to be the principal victim of climate change and the consequent loss of sea ice.
Yet last week, researchers from Japan's National Institute of Polar Research produced a report showing that the Adélie penguin (whose only home is the Antarctic) has been thriving like never before — and it's because of the changing habitat.
Having tagged 175 of these endearing birds, the scientists discovered that the penguins caught more krill because of the loss of ice. 'Counterintuitively for this ice-dependent species, body conditions and breeding success improved in the ice-free environment,' they explained.
One of the researchers added: 'For penguins, swimming is a whopping four times faster than walking', so they were able to forage in larger areas for shorter periods of time.
And what of that creature even more loved by humans: the polar bear? Three years ago a National Geographic video of a solitary starving polar bear, its rib cage distressingly visible, became an internet sensation, watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people.
'This is what climate change looks like,' said National Geographic.
Well, that particular polar bear was clearly in a bad way. But over the past 15 years, the polar bear population has risen from around 22,500 to as much as 31,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Meanwhile, the Adélie penguins are loving the climate. Can we be forgiven for driving cars now?
7) Apocalyptic Science: How The West Is Destroying Itself
Bruce Pardy, Financial Post, 26 June 2020
The most serious threat to the West is not China or Russia but its visceral disgust with itself.
A growing proportion of people — in universities, the media, politics and corporate structures — now reject the premises upon which their own thriving societies are built.
Critical Theory drives government policies and shape public attitudes: Capitalism is oppressive. Private property rights cause environmental destruction. Prosperity causes climate change. Peter J. Thompson/National Post files
If you live in a Western nation like Canada in the 21st century, you have more freedom, prosperity and peace than most of the rest of the world at most other times in history. Yet these countries have never been at greater risk. The threat is not pandemics, climate change or war but something more insidious.
Modern Western civilization grew out of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ascendancy of reason in human affairs produced the scientific method and later the Industrial Revolution. Add in the rule of law, individual liberty, private property and capitalism, and you have the basic recipe that has raised most of humanity out of poverty over two centuries.
New academic doctrines are moving the world, or at least the West, from this triumph to decline. They dismiss science — real science — in favour of political agendas, in which theory trumps facts.
Few people are familiar with Critical Theory and its related doctrines, yet these ideas today drive government policies and shape public attitudes. Capitalism is oppressive. Private property rights cause environmental destruction. Prosperity causes climate change.
The most serious threat to the West is not China or Russia but its visceral disgust with itself. A growing proportion of people — in universities, the media, politics and corporate structures — now reject the premises upon which their own thriving societies are built.
Critical Theory opposes everything that makes the West work. Unlike traditional academic inquiry, which seeks to explain and understand with logic, analysis and the scientific method, these doctrines are less theories than programs. Their purpose is to condemn cultural norms, tear down existing orders and transform society.
It all starts with Marx. Between the two world wars, scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt began to investigate why Marxism was failing to catch on in the West. They broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as Critical Theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent, and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted. As Marx wrote, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
Critical Theory should not be confused with critical thinking. To think critically is to reason. Critical Theory’s imperatives are ideological assertions not based on scientific data or deduction.
In his seminal 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Max Horkheimer, sometimes referred to as the father of critical theory, distinguished between the scientific or empirical tradition of enquiry and a critical approach that integrates numerous disciplines and incorporates historical and social influences in the enterprise of enquiry.
Unlike the scientific method, which accepts observation as evidence and reproducibility as confirmation of truth, in Critical Theory, knowledge is contingent upon its origins and the social environment from which it comes. While Critical Theory shares Marx’s condemnation of capitalism and the power imbalances that define economic relationships, it rejects Marx’s essential empiricism in favour of melding science, philosophy, sociology and history into a single interdisciplinary enquiry.
Critical Theory is not a singular school of thought but a scholarly umbrella that consists of multiple approaches and variations that defy easy encapsulation.
Like Critical Theory, they are activist and political. They lead with their conclusions. Embedded within them is the central tenet of postmodernism, a philosophical movement of the mid- to late 20th century. Postmodernism challenges the premises of Enlightenment reason, particularly the claim that observation and rationality can identify objective truth, whether moral or scientific.
The argument has merit: neither morality nor the scientific premise that what we perceive is real are capable of proof. Postmodernism’s Achilles heel is not its central thesis but its failure to follow it. If there is no truth, then no universal conclusions can be reached, and therefore all questions must be left to individuals.
Postmodernism embraces Critical Theory and vice versa. Progressives are apt to insist that truth is relative and subjective when they encounter facts that they do not like, but otherwise eagerly enforce “truths” that they prefer. There is no truth. […]
Indoctrination works. Hear something often enough from people in authority and you begin to believe it. In the decades following its birth at the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory and its variations made an inexorable march through universities, influencing such disparate disciplines as sociology, literary criticism and linguistics, infiltrating professional schools like teachers’ colleges and law schools, and dominating “grievance studies” such as women’s studies, gender studies and media studies.
The final conquest is now in progress inside science, technology, engineering and medical faculties. Generations of graduates, taught to believe in Critical Theory rather than how to think critically about it, now populate governments, corporate boards, human resource departments, courts, media outlets, teachers’ unions, school boards and classrooms. Critical Theory is embedded in elementary school curricula. Children carry the guilt and resentment of living in a society that they are taught is fundamentally unjust. No coup is more effective than one committed by a people against itself.
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Bruce Pardy, Financial Post, 26 June 2020
The most serious threat to the West is not China or Russia but its visceral disgust with itself.
A growing proportion of people — in universities, the media, politics and corporate structures — now reject the premises upon which their own thriving societies are built.
Critical Theory drives government policies and shape public attitudes: Capitalism is oppressive. Private property rights cause environmental destruction. Prosperity causes climate change. Peter J. Thompson/National Post files
If you live in a Western nation like Canada in the 21st century, you have more freedom, prosperity and peace than most of the rest of the world at most other times in history. Yet these countries have never been at greater risk. The threat is not pandemics, climate change or war but something more insidious.
Modern Western civilization grew out of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ascendancy of reason in human affairs produced the scientific method and later the Industrial Revolution. Add in the rule of law, individual liberty, private property and capitalism, and you have the basic recipe that has raised most of humanity out of poverty over two centuries.
New academic doctrines are moving the world, or at least the West, from this triumph to decline. They dismiss science — real science — in favour of political agendas, in which theory trumps facts.
Few people are familiar with Critical Theory and its related doctrines, yet these ideas today drive government policies and shape public attitudes. Capitalism is oppressive. Private property rights cause environmental destruction. Prosperity causes climate change.
The most serious threat to the West is not China or Russia but its visceral disgust with itself. A growing proportion of people — in universities, the media, politics and corporate structures — now reject the premises upon which their own thriving societies are built.
Critical Theory opposes everything that makes the West work. Unlike traditional academic inquiry, which seeks to explain and understand with logic, analysis and the scientific method, these doctrines are less theories than programs. Their purpose is to condemn cultural norms, tear down existing orders and transform society.
It all starts with Marx. Between the two world wars, scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt began to investigate why Marxism was failing to catch on in the West. They broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as Critical Theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent, and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted. As Marx wrote, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
Critical Theory should not be confused with critical thinking. To think critically is to reason. Critical Theory’s imperatives are ideological assertions not based on scientific data or deduction.
In his seminal 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Max Horkheimer, sometimes referred to as the father of critical theory, distinguished between the scientific or empirical tradition of enquiry and a critical approach that integrates numerous disciplines and incorporates historical and social influences in the enterprise of enquiry.
Unlike the scientific method, which accepts observation as evidence and reproducibility as confirmation of truth, in Critical Theory, knowledge is contingent upon its origins and the social environment from which it comes. While Critical Theory shares Marx’s condemnation of capitalism and the power imbalances that define economic relationships, it rejects Marx’s essential empiricism in favour of melding science, philosophy, sociology and history into a single interdisciplinary enquiry.
Critical Theory is not a singular school of thought but a scholarly umbrella that consists of multiple approaches and variations that defy easy encapsulation.
Like Critical Theory, they are activist and political. They lead with their conclusions. Embedded within them is the central tenet of postmodernism, a philosophical movement of the mid- to late 20th century. Postmodernism challenges the premises of Enlightenment reason, particularly the claim that observation and rationality can identify objective truth, whether moral or scientific.
The argument has merit: neither morality nor the scientific premise that what we perceive is real are capable of proof. Postmodernism’s Achilles heel is not its central thesis but its failure to follow it. If there is no truth, then no universal conclusions can be reached, and therefore all questions must be left to individuals.
Postmodernism embraces Critical Theory and vice versa. Progressives are apt to insist that truth is relative and subjective when they encounter facts that they do not like, but otherwise eagerly enforce “truths” that they prefer. There is no truth. […]
Indoctrination works. Hear something often enough from people in authority and you begin to believe it. In the decades following its birth at the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory and its variations made an inexorable march through universities, influencing such disparate disciplines as sociology, literary criticism and linguistics, infiltrating professional schools like teachers’ colleges and law schools, and dominating “grievance studies” such as women’s studies, gender studies and media studies.
The final conquest is now in progress inside science, technology, engineering and medical faculties. Generations of graduates, taught to believe in Critical Theory rather than how to think critically about it, now populate governments, corporate boards, human resource departments, courts, media outlets, teachers’ unions, school boards and classrooms. Critical Theory is embedded in elementary school curricula. Children carry the guilt and resentment of living in a society that they are taught is fundamentally unjust. No coup is more effective than one committed by a people against itself.
Full post
8) And Finally: Climate Crisis? What Climate Crisis?
Successful Farming, 26 June 2020
With a rebound in U.S. production, the world soybean crop will be a record 364 million tonnes in 2020/21, up 8% from this season, said the International Grains Council on Thursday.
Successful Farming, 26 June 2020
With a rebound in U.S. production, the world soybean crop will be a record 364 million tonnes in 2020/21, up 8% from this season, said the International Grains Council on Thursday.
Record-setting corn and wheat crops were also forecast for 2020/21 and would contribute to the first increase of global stocks in four years.
Record global production of soybeans would be accompanied by record-large exports, so that the soybean stockpile would rise by only 1 million tonnes. Brazil was forecast to harvest a record crop for the second year in a row. The IGC forecast for Brazil, 129.4 million tonnes, is slightly smaller than the USDA’s latest estimate of 131 million tonnes. The IGC and the USDA say the U.S. crop will top 112 million tonnes.
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Record global production of soybeans would be accompanied by record-large exports, so that the soybean stockpile would rise by only 1 million tonnes. Brazil was forecast to harvest a record crop for the second year in a row. The IGC forecast for Brazil, 129.4 million tonnes, is slightly smaller than the USDA’s latest estimate of 131 million tonnes. The IGC and the USDA say the U.S. crop will top 112 million tonnes.
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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