Swedish Fascism: University in Shock Ban on Academic Freedom and Debate

Sweden has been quietly Fascist for a long time and Warmism is just the latest excuse

by John O'Sullivan

Extremist pro-green Swedish university shackles academic freedom and bans all teaching that doesn’t conform to dogma of human-caused global warming: The latest victim targeted by global warming fascists is Swedish professor, Dr. Claes Johnson who is smacked down for speaking the truth by his employers, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

It’s no coincidence that Johnson, a world-leading mathematics professor has been silenced in the very week his co-authored climate skeptic book, ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ stormed has stormed the science best seller listings after rave reviews.

Johnson is among 22 leading international experts who have dared to join forces and speak out in a blockbuster of a book that exposes the fraudulent science and calculations built into the theory of man-made global warming. The two-volume publication skillfully shreds the lies of government climatologists that faked the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by falsely multiplying the numbers three times over.

Cynics are claiming the teaching ban is a knee-jerk panic reaction to these startling revelations that Johnson had dared to explain in depth to his inquisitive students. The math professor reports that this latest gagging is most extreme because it includes required material for his students and may be fatally damaging to their studies.

Dr. Johnson laments, “the course, has been "stopped" by the President of the Royal Technological Institute KTH, because the book contains a mathematical analysis of some models related to climate simulation.”

More HERE






Alarmist Doomsday warning of rising seas 'was wrong', says British Met Office study

A partial backdown

Alarming predictions that global warming could cause sea levels to rise 6ft in the next century are wrong, it has emerged. The forecast made by the influential 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which would have seen cities around the world submerged by water, now looks ‘unlikely’.

A Met Office study also rules out the shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s conveyor belt, which would trigger Arctic winters in Britain like those seen in the film The Day After Tomorrow.

However, the report says the IPCC was right to warn of a sea level rise of up to 2ft by 2100, and that a 3ft rise could happen.

The IPCC underestimated the danger posed by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the release of methane from warmer wetlands, the report adds.

Vicky Pope, head of climate science at the Met Office, said: ‘In most cases, our new understanding has reinforced results from the IPCC report – and the degree of impact is about the same.’

The 2007 analysis was criticised last year after it was found to have wrongly claimed Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

The new Met Office report is the first serious attempt to update the science of global warming since the publication of the IPCC Fourth Assessment. The new Government funded study, says the worst case scenario is now a one metre (3.3 ft) rise.

In 2007 the IPCC reported preliminary evidence that the Atlantic conveyor belt that brings warm water north and keeps Britain relatively mild for its latitude during winters was breaking down. But more recent observations show the currents are stable.

However, the report also has bad news. It says there is new evidence that the Arctic will become largely free of ice during most summers earlier in the century than the IPCC warned, and that the Greenland ice sheet is more likely to melt in centuries to come than previously thought. It also warns that the release of methane from warming wetlands will be greater than thought in 2007 - leading to more global warming in the coming decades.

SOURCE






Cancun summit: cutting carbon emissions will help combat obesity

They're getting desperate now

Cutting carbon emissions will help combat obesity even if global warming is a myth, a senior scientist has said. The world needs to go on a “fossil fuel diet” to stop both climate change and obesity, according to health experts.

Professor Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there is a direct correlation between and carbon emissions and expanding waistlines. He said as soon as countries begin using cars and other energy intensive machines, it not only causes an increase in greenhouse gases but also in the population's average weight, because people exercise less.

He said that the health problem was another reason to tackle carbon emissions. “There is an almost linear relationship between carbon consumption and average BMI,” he said. “The world is getting hotter and the world is getting fatter. Fundamentally fossil fuel energy is the cause of both.

“The world needs to go on a fossil fuel-controlled diet even if climate change is a hoax – which I do not think it is – the world would still have to go on a fossil fuel controlled diet otherwise our healthy systems will just break down, we will not be able to deal with the growth in obesity.

“The decarbonisation of the transport and greener lifestyles are going to be good for health as well as being good for the planet.”

SOURCE






Get your fracking facts right

The Warmists hate fracking but their objections to it are very shallow. No energy extraction process is without problems. Comment below from Australia

Hydraulic fracturing - fracking (Herald style), or fraccing (used by the natural gas industry) - represents a potential goldmine for Australia. It is the key to developing energy resources potentially much bigger than the natural gas deposits off Western Australia that have been part of the resources export boom that protected Australia from the global recession and is beginning to change the entire economy.

The natural gas fields off the coast of Western Australia have enough energy to sustain all of Australia's baseload needs for hundreds of years, and slash greenhouse emissions in the process, yet these reserves are exceeded by what lies below much of NSW and Queensland, trapped inside enormous reserves of coal, according to the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association. All up, with natural gas we are sitting on another Saudi Arabia.

But we are also being told that much of this is destructive energy, that the process of hydraulic fracturing, which is how coal seam gas is extracted from coal beds, can only be achieved by an unsustainable level of water depletion, and an unacceptable risk to ground water tables.

That is why the short word used for hydraulic fracturing is essentially becoming synonymous with environmental vandalism. Now exploratory drilling for coal seam gas is about to begin within Sydney itself, in St Peters, because Sydney is sitting on the sort of coal beds that can yield commercial coal seam gas.

You would certainly believe this was bad if you had seen the new film Gasland, a horror movie in documentary form. You would also hate fracking if you believed the Greens. Having killed off the Rudd government's proposed emissions trading scheme, the Greens are now busy clogging the development of the technology which represents transformative change in reducing greenhouse emissions - natural gas, nuclear power, and now coal seam gas, the energy source extracted by fracking.

The chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, Belinda Robinson, says: "The Greens have described climate change as 'the greatest threat to our world in human history', yet their political response is to oppose, at every turn, the development of Australia's gas industry." In contrast to this view, every possible argument to the development of coal seam gas in Australia can be found in Gasland, an American documentary now showing in some Australian theatres and on Qantas long-haul flights.

I enjoyed Gasland. How can one not be moved by claims that a relatively new technology, hydraulic fracturing, poses an innate threat to ground water supplies wherever it is used? The film features some wild images, such as when Mike Markham turns on the kitchen tap in his home in Colorado, puts a lit lighter to the flowing water, and the water bursts into flame. This, we are told, is what fracking does to your water supply. It makes you sick. It makes your home dangerous.

Gasland also features stark images of entire communities that have become sick after their water supply was contaminated by natural gas. It features despoiled landscapes. It also features a brace of scientists.

The scientists are important because the maker of Gasland, Josh Fox, is not a scientist. He is a good filmmaker, but he is also a polemicist, intent on revealing what he believes is a vast conspiracy of silence.

He also may have trouble with the truth. Large factual holes can be found in Gasland. Yes, Markham's kitchen water caught on fire, but the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission had already conducted a study of his property before Gasland was made and concluded that his water was contaminated by natural gas - it's impossible to miss - but the gas was naturally occurring, not the result of nearby coal seam gas mining. The film simply ignores this, as it does with several other similar findings in properties used as other examples.

This is the inconvenient truth that Gasland skirts. If you live above coal seam beds, your wells have a chance of natural contamination. It doesn't require coal seam gas mining for this to happen, but Gasland blames mining every time. It prefers the dramatic to the accurate, such as this claim: "[The process] blasts a mix of water and chemicals 8000 feet (2438 metres) into the ground. The fracking itself is like a mini-earthquake . . . in order to frack, you need fracking fluid, a mix of over 596 chemicals."

But nearly all the fluids used are a mixture of water and sand, along with a handful of chemicals - not 596 - most of which can also be found in household items, such as emulsifiers in ice cream. Numerous other bald claims made in Gasland are simply untrue. I downloaded eight pages of scientific material debunking the film.

No energy extraction process is without problems. But the idea that fracking is run by secretive cowboys, largely beyond the bounds of environmental oversight, is wrong on every count. Gasland, in other words, is like the Greens: it spouts far more hot air than strictly necessary.

SOURCE





Crazy Green/Left Australian Federal government wants to take river water away from irrigated farms and let it run out to sea as "environmental flows"

And even their chosen bureaucrat thinks it's destructive -- so has resigned

JULIA Gillard has declared the shock resignation of Mike Taylor as chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority won't halt the government's water reforms. The Prime Minister said the government would replace Mr Taylor, and did not share his concerns that the Water Act made it difficult to balance the environmental and socio-economic impacts of cuts to water allocations aimed at rescuing rivers in the basin.

Mr Taylor has written to Water Minister Tony Burke to say the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is not empowered to undertake the “entire complex task” of water reform and that “it is time for the government to reconsider the next phase”.

His resignation, to take effect at the end of January, comes amid growing controversy over government's plan to buy back water from regional irrigators.

The authority confronted widespread anger during a series of community consultations following the release of a draft guide to its basin plan, which outlined widespread cuts to water allocations. The authority was asked by Mr Burke to balance socio-economic impacts with the need to restore environmental river flows to the Murray-Darling Basin.

Mr Taylor said the draft guide, which advocated returns of between 3000-4000 gigalitres of water per year to the environment, was developed with full regard to the requirements of the Water Act, and in close consultation with the Australian Government Solicitor.

He said in a statement that “balancing the requirements of the Water Act 2007 against the potential social and economic impact on communities will be a significant challenge”.

But Ms Gillard today gave no indication the government would seek to amend the Water Act, despite the problems identified by Mr Taylor, and said basin reforms would stay on track.

“As Mr Taylor makes clear in his letter of resignation, he has a particular view about the meaning of the Water Act and the way in which the Murray-Darling Basin reforms should occur,” she said.

“Particularly he believes that the overriding outcome that should be sought from these reforms is the environmental outcome. As Prime Minister, my view is that we must optimise across the environmental, social and economic areas of work.

“That is the aim of these reforms - to ensure that we've got a healthy river, we've got food production and we've got viable regional communities. We want to optimise across those three areas.

“The government will continue to see these reforms with optimisation across these three areas. The government will appoint a replacement as chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and our reform program will stay on track.”

Mr Burke said the government was standing by its own interpretation of the Water Act. He also said that would ensure that Mr Taylor's resignation would not detract from the government's goal of “seeing healthy rivers, strong communities and continued food production”.

“It has been known for some time that there has been a difference of opinion between the government and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority over the interpretation of the Water Act,” he said in a statement. “The government stands by its interpretation of the Water Act, which was the view of the previous government when the Water Act was introduced by Malcolm Turnbull.”

But farming groups and the Coalition seized on Mr Taylor's resignation as evidence of a problem with the Water Act's focus on environmental requirements. Executive director of the Australian Farm Institute, Mick Keogh, said the Murray-Darling Basin Authority had always felt constrained by the Act because of the environmental requirements.

“I think the Murray-Darling Basin Authority made it quite clear very early on that they felt constrained by the Water Act 2007 in that it put a very high level of focus on environmental requirements and then only allowed consideration of socio-economic factors, subject to having met those environmental requirements or standard,” he told The Australian Online.

“They (the MDBA) actually published their understanding of the requirements of the legislation quite early in the piece. And Mike has maintained that line constantly.”

Mr Keogh said the resignation of Mr Taylor “highlights that the process was already in trouble and I think that's widely recognised”. “So it is going to take quite a deal of effort to put it back together and get some common agreement.”

Opposition water spokesman Barnaby Joyce repeated his call for an investigation into the Water Act and for any necessary changes to be made. “My concerns have obviously been confirmed by Mike Taylor,” he told The Australian Online.

Senator Joyce said there were clear differences in the legal advice received by Mr Burke in relation to the ability of the Act to take into account environmental and social considerations and what Mr Taylor's own understanding was. “I'll be looking forward to discussing with Mr Taylor and I understand the predicament he's in.”

Senator Joyce said that one of the next steps forward was to “come up with the proper changes (to the Act) if required to bring about a triple bottom line outcome.”

NSW independent Tony Windsor, who heads an inquiry into the impact of the social and economic costs of the proposed cuts to water allocations, did not advocate changes to the Water Act. He said parliament would have the final say on the shape of any cuts in water allocations and repeated his argument that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority had no real authority.

“Irrespective of the pros and cons of whether the Act does this or whether people in the authority agree with one another, any decision-making will be the parliament making decisions. “And so we can argue whether the Act's good or the Act's bad. At the end of the day the issue will be addressed by the parliament, because the authority has no authority to do anything.

“The authority has to work under the Act. That doesn't mean the parliament has to take any notice of the authority,” Mr Windsor said. “For the process, it's best to actually move forward. The parliament will make the decisions irrespective of what the authority does.”

SOURCE





Defeated Democrats still clinging to Warmism

The political collapse of cap-and-trade climate legislation won't dislodge greenhouse gas emissions reductions from the top of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's agenda next year, Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) vowed today.

Briefing reporters on her priorities for the international climate talks proceeding in Mexico (see related story), Boxer framed her hard-fought re-election victory last month -- as well as Californians' rejection of a bid to delay the landmark state global warming law -- as a sign of public support for cutting carbon emissions without a comprehensive climate bill.

"What we have to do is just let people know the truth" about the science of climate change, Boxer said. The oil industry-backed ballot measure aimed at stalling California's state law lost decisively, she asserted, after supporters of emissions limits "pulled open the curtain" with a well-funded messaging campaign (

"We're going to continue, in this committee, to tell the truth," Boxer added [If only ....]. "That's going to mean some robust debate, and I like that -- let the American people see the deniers, and let them see the science. ... I believe in the American people's wisdom."

Boxer said she expects the environment panel to keep the climate issue front and center through briefings, hearings and other events in 2011. Even as she acknowledged that the cap-and-trade approach passed last year by the Democratic-controlled House is dead for the time being, Boxer said committee action on some form of a climate bill could well come in the 112th Congress.

"We have many things we can do here through the budget process" to make progress on limiting emissions, she said, citing energy efficiency and a renewable electricity standard as potential areas for accord next year. "We will do a comprehensive bill when we have the votes to do that."

Senate Democrats' loss of six seats last month, coupled with the GOP takeover of the House, leaves energy policymakers on the Hill facing multiple fronts of battle over dismantling or delaying U.S. EPA emissions regulations set to take effect next year.

While noting that she is "not blind to" the need for a coordinated defense against any challenges to the Obama administration's authority over greenhouse gas cuts, Boxer also sounded a bipartisan note on the long-postponed congressional transportation debate.

The Californian said she already has talked with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's incoming chairman, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), about keeping the nation's cash-strapped highway trust fund intact. The two will sit down "at the soonest opportunity" to discuss the parameters for a new long-term transportation reauthorization bill, Boxer added.

The environment panel chairwoman also hinted at a communications strategy aligning that transportation bill with the administration's work to tout the environmental benefits of its hike in automobile fuel economy. A long-term reauthorization will be aimed at "reducing congestion," Boxer said, adding later that "cutting congestion is another way of cutting pollution."

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

*****************************************