End the Children’s Climate Crusade

Climate guru Petteri Taalas: 'Climate change is not yet out of control, but the debate is – It has the features of a religious extremism.'" So read the English translation of the headline of a September 6 news report in Finland’s financial newspaper Talouselämä (The Journal) citing an interview with Taalas, a PhD in meteorology and secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the validity of Taalas’s concern than the use of children to promote the worldwide climate delusion, a scare for which there exists not a shred of physical evidence. Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is a case in point.

After crossing the Atlantic in what she incorrectly dubbed a zero-carbon yacht to address the recent UN climate summit, her actions mobilized millions of climate change demonstrators, many of them children, in more than 100 countries to join protests. In an angry speech at the UN, Thunberg told world leaders that they had “stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words…You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us.”

But young people like Thunberg lack the maturity and experience to make sense of this immensely complex issue. They are simply being used as "human shields" for adult climate activists who recognize that the climate scare will soon lose credibility as global warming Armageddon fails to materialize as forecast. Indeed, prominent scientists maintain that the world may have already begun to cool in response to a weakening Sun, a phenomenon far more dangerous than any possible human-induced warming.

In our August 20 America Out Loud article, The Disgraceful Use of Children to Promote the Climate Change Delusion, we explained:

3,500 years ago, there was also a climate-related group which took advantage of children. Called “Baal,” it was wide-spread in the Middle East where it was based on climate related to food production.

At the center of Baal was the human sacrifice of children to supposedly achieve some change in the weather.

If there was not enough rain, bring more children [to sacrifice]

Too much rain, bring more children

Too hot, more children

Too cold, more children

The dreadful people engaged in this practice were chased out of the Middle East by the Israelites, who settled in the area with Moses and Joshua. This was generally accomplished by a leader of Israel calling all the priests of Baal to a large meeting in the Baal sacrificial area and then sending in the military to eliminate them.

Bringing Thunberg across the ocean to help the flagging U.S. climate movement and to recruit more naive children into its ranks also brings to mind the Hitler Youth, who were known for widespread inculcation of German children. As we wrote in America Out Loud:

Its members were viewed as “ensuring the future of Nazi Germany and were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology.”

Education and training programs for the Hitler Youth were designed to undermine traditional German society, invoke fear, and enable its members to become faithful foot soldiers. They appropriated traditional organizations like the Boy Scouts movement, church groups, and other social groups. Sacrifice for the cause was inculcated into their training. 

Fast-forward to today, when mass hysteria is focused on mobilizing children to speak out on climate change even though they haven’t learned to think critically or how to analyze our complicated climate. They use soundbites to repeat that are meant to silence [skeptics] and fit on a protest poster. How do you reason with a child holding a sign that says, “There is no Planet B!”? Or that sea levels are rising (which has been happening since the end of the last glaciation [and is not accelerating])? Try explaining to a child holding a picture of a polar bear that asks, “What Will You Do To Save Me?” that the Arctic animal is thriving despite less sea ice.

There are many similarities to those who followed Baal and totalitarian movements. It’s the sacrifice of children for power or politics. Of course, it produces serious harm to children in their personal growth and harm for the future of the country by creating division and strife over nothing.

And the situation is going to soon become very hard on Thunberg as her former allies begin to desert her extremist stance. Along with 15 other child protesters, she has filed a formal complaint to the UN that various nations (e.g., Brazil, Germany, Turkey and France) “had violated international children’s rights by failing to take sufficiently bold measures to reduce carbon emissions,” reported The Times (UK) on September 26. France’s President Macron told French broadcaster Europe 1, “These radical positions will naturally antagonise our societies.” The Times further reported:

Brune Poirson, the French ecology minister, questioned whether Ms Thunberg could succeed in “mobilising people with despair, with what is verging on hatred, setting people against one another.”

Yesterday Boris Palmer, 47, a prominent figure in the German Green party and the mayor of the university city of Tübingen, said he was worried that her movement was becoming “radicalised” and urged her followers to ignore her call to “panic” about the climate. “If you’re panicking, you’re no longer in a position to deal with things thoughtfully, and therefore you don’t achieve your goals,” he told Die Welt.

The Baal movement, which sacrificed children to supposedly improve the climate, vanished three-and-one-half millennia ago. The Hitler Youth ended with the downfall of the Third Reich. It’s time for the children’s climate crusade to end as well.

SOURCE

A declaration on climate to help  scared children<>/b>

Some children and young people are obviously genuinely scared by the climate propaganda they have been exposed to by their teachers and others who should've known better.   Being scared about the future is a rotten way to move towards the world of work and achievement.  These youngsters urgently need our help.  Getting them to read the declaration below would be an easy start to what may be a long process:

'There is no climate emergency

A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming

The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted

The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models

Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth

CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters

There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and insects, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.

Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities

There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, we will have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.'

This has been signed by hundreds of scientists and climate policy experts.  Monckton of Brenchley describes them as follows: 'The Global Climate Intelligence Group, whose objective is to put the science back into climate science, comprises scientists, professionals and researchers from many nations, has already attracted some 500 signatures for what began life scant weeks ago as the European Climate Declaration.

The group, and the declaration, are the brainchild of Professor Guus Berkhout, emeritus professor of Geophysics in the Delft University of Technology. Professor Berkhout is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

SOURCE 

See here




Climate Rhetoric Begets Child Abuse ... and Suicide

Alarmists have convinced young people that there is no hope for earth.

Greta Thunberg’s prominence is sullied by the incredibly unfortunate reality that the teenager has been grotesquely proselytized and exploited by a cabal of opportunistic adults intent on leveraging a fraudulent climate crusade to elevate globalism, dispense with capitalism, and rupture the fossil-fuel industry.

Thunberg has made two particularly inauspicious remarks this year, starting at January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, where she conveyed, “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 the house was on fire, because it is.”

Then, at this week’s United Nations Climate Action Summit, she intoned, “You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”

Ricochet editor-in-chief Jon Gabriel observes, “None of this is healthy, neither for Ms. Thunberg nor for anyone else. Especially other kids.” Indeed it’s not.

As foolish as it may sound to rational thinkers, climate anxiety is blighting the impressionable minds of our youth. An extremely disheartening tweet is currently floating around Twitter in which a man informs us that a 14-year-old kid at his wife’s school took his own life due to overwhelming fear related to climate change.

Furthermore, Gabriel notes, “According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly one-third of all 13- to 18-year olds will experience an anxiety disorder. The numbers continue to go up; between 2007 and 2012, anxiety in children and teens rose 20 percent. The suicide rate for young Americans is now the highest ever recorded. Between 2000 and 2017, the number of suicides has doubled for females aged 15 to 24. Males between 15 and 19 killed themselves at a rate of 17.9 per 100,000, up from 13 per 100,000 in 2000.”

In other words, while committing suicide over something as nuanced as global warming should be incomprehensible, child anxiety isn’t all that unusual. And it can come in any form. Child suicide “is no joke,” says Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, who broke ties with the organization in the 1980s. “Young people have always been vulnerable to feelings of hopelessness. Greta is fueling those fears.”

And yet it’s very important that we peg the real catalyst of that fear. It’s not Thunberg. It’s those who have convinced her and others that “mass extinction” is underway. The corollary is more suicides.

We’re constantly being lectured that people will die from global warming. The irony is that people are dying over global-warming rhetoric.

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How to stop Greta Thunberg and Co making your children sick with worry

Psychologists are warning that apocalyptic forecasts of climate catastrophe issued by Greta and groups such as Extinction Rebellion are triggering mental health problems among youngsters.

Last week psychologists at Bath University reported a ‘tsunami’ of children turning to doctors, therapists and teachers for help to calm their worries of impending doom, with some prescribed psychiatric drugs.

Child psychiatrist Dr Kathryn Hollins advises a frank discussion – because a desire to be more environmentally friendly is a positive thing. ‘Let them know they are not alone in having worries,’ she says. ‘Ask them what they are scared of and where they got these thoughts from.’

She says that reassurance will come from putting things into perspective. Rising sea levels might have an immediate effect on the lives of polar bears, but not on those living in the UK, she explains.

Teacher and psychoanalyst Emma Gleadhill warns against banning material but instead recommends researching together – to help children adopt a balanced view.

‘That way you can discuss concerns, information, distressing predictions and traumatising video footage, and encourage their response to be less doom-laden and more proactive,’ she says.

For younger children, perhaps watching a David Attenborough documentary in chunks, rather than the whole thing, will allow bite-size discussions to take place – which will be easier for them to cope with and digest.

Gleadhill stresses the importance of balancing horror stories with successes, saying: ‘Find the good news stories about the environment, where change in policy is having a fundamental impact on our planet in a positive way.’

A quick search online reveals that the ozone is healing, the second-largest coral reef is no longer endangered and air pollution in China is reducing.

One of the things children talk about as being most scary is the idea of being helpless. But there are examples of consumer power bringing about change, adds Gleadhill.

For instance, there’s the 5p levy on plastic bags introduced in 2015 thanks to newspaper and public campaigning.

‘This reduced the number of single-use plastic bags given out by major retailers by 85 per cent, way more than anyone anticipated,’ she says

University of Bath psychologist Caroline Hickman suggests talking about ‘wants’ and ‘needs’. She says that next time your child wants you to buy them something, stop to have a conversation that asks: do we really need it or could we get by without?

Whether it’s a pair of trainers, a toy or a snack, its production, delivery and disposal will affect our planet – and if we consume less, we can have a positive impact on the environment.

In more severe cases where children are catastrophising, and anxiety is affecting everyday life, it’s worth seeking professional help.

Cognitive behavioural therapy, which focuses on helping people change irrational beliefs can help.

Therapists also challenge the type of ‘absolute’ thinking that might make children think ‘I’ll never get on a plane again’ or ‘No one is doing anything – I can’t stand it!’

Wherever your child is on this spectrum, Hickman, Gleadhill and Hollins all recommend letting children go to marches – as it helps them feel their voices are being heard, and that they can make a difference. This, ultimately, is the message you want to give a child suffering from eco-anxiety.

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Australia: Labor ‘dragging heels’ in drought efforts

The Labor party is in the grip of the Greenies, who hate dams.  But building more dams is the only way to cope with drought

Deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie has lashed the Labor state governments of Queensland and Victoria for “dragging their heels” when it comes to building new dams.

Senator McKenzie told Sky News on Sunday the lack of co-operation between the Federal government and their state counterparts meant “drought busting” infrastructure was being prevented from “getting off the ground.”

“This is one of the most frustrating topics I think as a National Party MP and somebody that cares about rural and regional Australia,” she said. “We’re a government that has been able to manage the economy well enough we’ve got money on the table to build infrastructure … that helps us to be able to droughtproof for the next time.”

“The reality is the Commonwealth government can’t just roll in with our diggers and graders and roll into a state and start digging,” Senator McKenzie said. “We have to have a partner in this in state because the sovereignty of states to actually build the things the money’s on the table.”

As revealed by The Australian, the Victorian government has ruled out building any new dams, saying climate change will mean not enough water will flow into them to make them worthwhile.

“At the end of the day if you’ve got Lisa Neville here in Victoria saying no more dams despite the CSIRO saying we should get on with it and you’ve got [Anastasia] Palaszczuk up in Queensland dragging her heels on Rookwood and other drought-busting infrastructure and you get NSW finally coming to the table today with $84 million dollars, which is fantastic news, the reality is we’ve been here this whole time waiting.”

Senator McKenzie also announced the Farm Household Allowance would be extended and made available to farmers for four years every decade instead of once over the lifetime of a farmer.

“Right now farm household allowance you’re only able to access for four years in your entire lifetime as a farmer, which is just ridiculous,” she said. “In this country every two decades we’re going through a period of significant hardship, as we are now, so we’ve made a change now that every decade, farmers will be able to access this payment for up to four years.”

It comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced an additional $100 million in drought relief funding.

Of this, more than $50 million will be put towards expanding and simplifying the Farm Household Allowance, a payment for farmers struggling to pay bills. The latest package comes on top of the $7 billion set aside in drought relief funding.

Senator McKenzie said the subsidy program wouldn’t affect Australia’s free trade agreements.

“This is this is not an American or US-style farm bill subsidy program at all and as an exporter that exports 70 per cent of what we produce we don’t want to be doing anything here at home that puts us at risk our ability to trade.”

SOURCE 

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The actual problem with the Green New Deal

It's not green

UK: Both here and in the US there’s this thing called the Green New Deal. A vast and transformative project to, well, actually, to move the world over to an entirely different economic structure. The claimed justification being the need to deal with climate change. Caroline Lucas is to launch the proposal for legislation. There’s a problem with it though:

It’s been more than 10 years in the making, and is the top demand of the youth strikers gathering on Friday for the UK’s largest ever climate protest – which is why Friday is also the first attempt in Britain to put legislation in place to make a Green New Deal a reality for our country. Working with the Labour MP Clive Lewis, I am launching the full version of a Green New Deal bill (formal title, the decarbonisation and economic strategy bill), which sets out a transformative programme driven by the principles of justice and equity. It aims to move our economy away from its harmful dependence on carbon, at the scale and speed demanded by the science, and to build a society that lives within its ecological limits while reversing social and economic inequality.

The problem being that selection of words, justice, equity, social, economic, inequality. None of which have anything to do with climate change of course.

Assume that we do have that technical problem of climate change, as the IPCC avers. The science of how to deal with it is well known. It’s a technical problem with a technical solution, the carbon tax. As we have droned boringly on about for at least the past decade.

There is nothing at all within this solution that requires the following:

"and the eradication of inequality"

Climate change is being used as an excuse to impose an extremely partial meaning of the words  justice, equity, social, economic, inequality. A meaning which very large portions of the population don’t agree with  - as evidenced by the fact that no plurality, let alone majority, has ever voted to impose the meanings being used here upon us all.

For that reason, if no other, the proposal must be rejected.

There are, of course, other reasons too. Like the manner in which all of the science of climate change - William Nordhaus, The Stern Review, the IPCC’s own reports and economic models - say that this isn’t even the correct way to deal with climate change itself. The carbon tax is.

We’re in a Rahm Emmanuel world here, never letting a crisis go to waste. The correct response to such manipulations being an Anglo Saxon wave and then going off to do the right thing instead.

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Capitalism Against Climate Change

Capitalism, not socialism, will produce the technology to address environmental concerns. 

The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change recently released a report claiming that the world’s oceans are warming to an alarming degree. “The oceans are sending us so many warning signals that we need to get emissions under control,” claimed the report’s lead author, marine biologist Hans-Otto Portner. “Ecosystems are changing, food webs are changing, fish stocks are changing, and this turmoil is affecting humans.”

The New York Times informs us, “The report, which was written by more than 100 international experts and is based on more than 7,000 studies, represents the most extensive look to date at the effects of climate change on oceans, ice sheets, mountain snowpack and permafrost.”

The report asserts that if fossil-fuel emissions continue their rapid rise, then “the maximum amount of fish in the ocean that can be sustainably caught could decrease by as much as a quarter by century’s end.” One of the report’s coauthors, Michael Oppenheimer, argued, “The oceans and the icy parts of the world are in big trouble and that means we’re all in big trouble, too. The changes are accelerating.”

Quick, somebody tell Barack Obama that he’ll need a supply of sandbags for his new $15 million oceanfront home.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, climate protesters physically blocked roads Monday, stopping traffic for hours. At least one of them held up a sign saying, “Capitalism Is Killing The Planet.” Actually, capitalism is the way to save the planet. And as we’ve repeatedly noted, the real motivation behind all this environmental activism is not the environment at all; rather it’s an excuse to push the socialist agenda. Yet as Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly wrote in their 1992 book entitled Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege, “When historians finally conduct an autopsy of the Soviet Union and Soviet Communism, they may reach the verdict of death by ecocide. For the modern era, indeed for any event except the mysterious collapse of the Mayan empire, it would be a unique but not an implausible conclusion.”

What Feshbach and Alfred point out is the fact that communism, not capitalism, was proved to be massively damaging to the environment and people. “No other great industrial civilization so systematically and so long poisoned its land, air, water, and people” as the Soviet Union. Not coincidentally, the world is now seeing a similar disregard for the environment from the central planners in communist China.

By 2017, U.S. carbon emission had dropped to 1993 levels. According to economist Mark Perry, “For that impressive ‘greening’ of America, we can thank the underground oceans of America’s natural gas that are now accessible because of the revolutionary, advanced drilling and extraction technologies of hydraulic fracking and horizontal/directional drilling, and are increasingly displacing coal for the nation’s electricity generation.”

In other words, capitalism and free enterprise will enrich more people and provide more solutions for our planet’s issues than any socialist pipe dream, all the promises of the “Green New Deal” notwithstanding.

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Fracking Ban Proposed By 2020 Dems Would Kill Millions of Jobs

Fracking has put U.S. on path to energy independence, lowering carbon emissions

A proposed fracking ban put forward by leading Democratic presidential candidates would have a devastating impact on U.S. jobs, energy independence, and even national security, according to several studies.

Reports from the American Petroleum Institute, Independent Petroleum Association of America, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce painted a stark picture of the economic fallout from ending fracking, a process which has transformed the United States into the top oil and natural gas producer in the world.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), and Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) are among eight remaining 2020 candidates who have called for an all-out ban on fracking, despite the fact that the drilling method has put the United States on a path to energy independence. The practice has also led to cleaner energy alternatives and lower carbon emissions, a key goal of climate change activists.

Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is a drilling and extraction method of releasing oil and gas from underground shale rocks, using high-pressure liquid to break them apart.

Environmental opponents argue fracking's positives are offset by issues such as contamination of drinking water, air pollution, methane leaks, links to causing earthquakes, and the lowering of proximate property value.

‘A ban … would destroy more than 14 million jobs'
A 2016 report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found the economy would suffer dramatically if lawmakers banned fracking.

"A fracking ban would be a disaster for the U.S. economy, exceeding the economic harm caused by the financial crisis, the housing bust, and the Great Recession—combined," the report said. "Those concurrent events cost the United States around 8 million jobs. A ban on fracturing would destroy more than 14 million jobs, all while raising costs for families and considerably reducing American energy security."

It explored how a theoretical ban would affect the American economy if begun on Jan. 1, 2017, and it concluded that over five years it would roughly double gas prices, raise natural gas prices by 400 percent, and raise electricity prices by 100 percent.

The spike in energy prices would raise the cost of living by $4,000 a year, and household incomes would drop by $873 billion. The report concluded the U.S. gross domestic product would be reduced by $1.6 trillion.

Texas (1,499,000 jobs lost), Pennsylvania (466,000), Ohio (397,000), and Colorado (215,000) would see more than a combined 2.5 million jobs lost from a fracking ban alone over that span, the report said, taking into consideration its effect on energy prices, incomes, manufacturing, and energy security.

President Donald Trump, a fracking supporter, won Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio in the 2016 election, and he lost Colorado by less than 5 points. Last month in Pennsylvania, he lauded fracking's success and the country's energy production.

"We have the greatest resources, which really came about over the last few years," he said. "Nobody knew this. Fracking made it possible. Other new technologies made it possible. And now we’re the number-one—think of it, as I said—the number-one energy producer in the world."

"They wanted to take away your wealth," he added. "They didn’t want you to drill. They didn’t want you to frack. They didn’t want you to do steel. They wanted to take away your wealth."

A spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Washington Free Beacon a ban on fracking would be devastating.

"The United States is currently the number one producer of crude oil and natural gas on the planet, surpassing both Russia and Saudi Arabia in crude oil production," Cruz's spokesman said in a statement. "Texas is the leading U.S. producer of both crude oil and natural gas, producing more than one-third of the nation's crude oil, and a quarter of the nation’s natural gas. This success is due in large part to the shale revolution. A fracking ban would be catastrophic to Texas and the United States as a whole—destroying jobs, wreaking economic havoc, and putting our nation’s security at risk."

Sen. John Cornyn (R., Tex.) and Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), both up for reelection in 2020, also told the Free Beacon a ban would be ruinous.

"This innovative technology has created tons of jobs, lowered utility bills, and established Texas as a global energy powerhouse," Cornyn said. "This would devastate our country’s leading economy."

"Radical policies like the Green New Deal and a federal ban on fracking would be devastating for Colorado—wiping out billions of dollars of the economy, destroying tens of thousands of jobs, and recklessly inducing an immediate recession," Gardner said. "These are some of the most irresponsible actions any leader can propose."

A separate report from the American Petroleum Institute concluded bans on fracking, fossil fuel production, and other "keep it in the ground" policies would cost 5.9 million jobs and a cumulative GDP reduction of $11.8 trillion. The trade group found the losses would stem from lower economic growth due to lower domestic energy production.

A 2019 report by the National Association of State Energy Officials found the natural gas industry employed 625,639 Americans, with more than a quarter of them (162,928) working in mining and extraction.

The report stated natural gas fuels employed 270,626 workers in 2018. That year, the market increased by 17,000 jobs, or about 7 percent. Mining and extraction jobs supported over 60 percent of the natural gas fuels industry.

The fracking boom has helped the United States become a world leader in natural gas production and consumption. An IHS Markit research firm report in 2018 estimated it would surge another 60 percent over the next 20 years, following a 60 percent increase with the advent of the shale boom in the late 2000s.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America found from 2007 to 2016 that advancements in fracking and horizontal drilling technology helped oil production and natural gas production spike 75 and 39 percent, respectively.

"The shale boom has reshaped the nation's electric grid, fueled a petrochemical boom along the Gulf Coast and created a burgeoning U.S. industry in liquefied natural gas exports," the Houston Chronicle reported. "Of course, the shale oil surge wouldn't have happened without the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques used to triggered the shale gas revolution."

Another analysis from the nonpartisan Rapidan Energy Group found oil production from shale formations would decrease by 3 million barrels per day over the first year of a ban beginning on Jan. 1, 2022. The advisory firm independently conducted the study for its clients and shared the findings with the media.

Representatives for Warren, Sanders, and Harris did not return requests for comment. Neither did Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.), or Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), the only Democratic senators from the four states in the study. Sen. Pat Toomey's (R., Pa.) office pointed the Free Beacon to his tweet noting natural gas's critical role in Pennsylvania, while Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) did not reply.

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How Climate Change Pseudoscience Became Publicly Accepted

Political and corporate leaders gathered for the climate week in New York City have urged significant action to fight global warming. But, given the high costs of the suggested solutions, could it be that the suggested cure is worse than the disease?

As a liberal who grew up in a solar house, I have always been energy-conscious and inclined toward activist solutions to environmental issues. I was therefore extremely surprised when my research as an astrophysicist led me to the conclusion that climate change is more complicated than we are led to believe. The disease is much more benign, and a simple palliative solution lies in front of our eyes.

To begin with, the story we hear in the media, that most 20th-century warming is anthropogenic, that the climate is very sensitive to changes in CO2, and that future warming will, therefore, be large and will happen very soon, simply isn’t supported by any direct evidence, only a shaky line of circular reasoning. We “know” that humans must have caused some warming, we see warming, we don’t know of anything else that could have caused the warming, so it adds up.

However, there is no calculation based on first principles that leads to a large warming by CO2—none. Mind you, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports state that doubling CO2 will increase the temperatures by anywhere from 1.5 degrees to 4.5 degrees C, a huge range of uncertainty that dates back to the Charney committee from 1979.

In fact, there is no evidence on any time scale showing that CO2 variations or other changes to the energy budget cause large temperature variations. There is, however, evidence to the contrary. Tenfold variations in CO2 over the past half-billion years have no correlation whatsoever with temperature; likewise, the climate response to large volcanic eruptions such as Krakatoa.

Both examples lead to the inescapable upper limit of 1.5 degrees C per CO2 doubling—much more modest than the sensitive IPCC climate models predict. However, the large sensitivity of the latter is required in order to explain 20th-century warming, or so it is erroneously thought.

In 2008, I showed, using various data sets that span as much as a century, that the amount of heat going into the oceans, in sync with the 11-year solar cycle, is an order of magnitude larger than the relatively small effect expected simply from changes in the total solar output. Namely, solar activity variations translate into large changes in the so-called radiative forcing on the climate.

Since solar activity significantly increased over the 20th century, a significant fraction of the warming should be then attributed to the sun, and because the overall change in the radiative forcing due to CO2 and solar activity is much larger, climate sensitivity should be on the low side (about 1 to 1.5 degrees C per CO2 doubling).

In the decade following the publication of the above, not only was the paper uncontested, more data, this time from satellites, confirmed the large variations associated with solar activity. In light of this hard data, it should be evident by now that a large part of the warming isn’t human, and that future warming from any given emission scenario will be much smaller.

Alas, because the climate community developed a blind spot to any evidence that should raise a red flag, such as the aforementioned examples or the much smaller tropospheric warming over the past two decades than models predicted, the rest of the public sees a very distorted view of climate change—a shaky scientific picture that is full of inconsistencies became one of certain calamity.

With this public mindset, phenomena such as that of child activist Greta Thunberg are no surprise. Most bothersome, however, is that this mindset has compromised the ability to convey the science to the public.

One example from the past month is my interview with Forbes. A few hours after the article was posted online, it was removed by the editors “for failing to meet our editorial standards.” The fact that it’s become politically incorrect to have any scientific discussion has led the public to accept the pseudo-argumentation supporting the catastrophic scenarios.

Evidence for warming doesn’t tell us what caused the warming, and any time someone has to appeal to the so-called 97 percent consensus, he or she is doing so because his or her scientific arguments aren’t strong enough. Science isn’t a democracy. 

Whether the Western world will overcome this ongoing hysteria in the near future, it’s clear that on a time scale of a decade or two, it would be a thing of the past. Not only will there be growing inconsistencies between model and data, a much-stronger force will change the rules of the game.

Once China realizes it can’t rely on coal anymore, it will start investing heavily in nuclear power to supply its remarkably increasing energy needs, at which point, the West won’t fall behind. We will then have cheap and clean energy-producing carbon-neutral fuel, and even cheap fertilizers that will make the recently troubling slash-and-burn agriculture redundant.

The West would then realize that global warming never was and never will be a serious problem. In the meantime, the extra CO2 in the atmosphere would even increase agriculture yields, as it has been found to do in arid regions in particular. It is plant food after all.

SOURCE 







GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Four current articles below

Climate: The Conversation becomes a lecture

The Conversation has always been heavily behind the alarmist side of the climate debate, and has featured in this blog many times in the past.

Now however it has taken the extraordinary step of banning any dissenting views on climate:

Climate change deniers, and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation, are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet. As a publisher, giving them a voice on our site contributes to a stalled public discourse.

That’s why the editorial team in Australia is implementing a zero-tolerance approach to moderating climate change deniers, and sceptics. Not only will we be removing their comments, we’ll be locking their accounts.

There is a huge range of dissenting opinion, from outright “denial” to educated and careful scientific critique, but we can be sure that The Conversation will interpret the ban as widely as possible so that nothing disrupts the desired consensus viewpoint. No doubt will be allowed.

The Catholic Church had the same idea when they sentenced Galileo to house arrest for “falsely” claiming the Earth orbited the Sun. Look how that worked out…

We really haven’t come that far since the 1600s.

SOURCE 

Time to up the ante on climate change strategy

A sobering lesson from the latest UN science report on climate is not how much still needs to be done but how little has been achieved for all the effort and money already spent.

Temperatures are rising and fossil fuel use is increasing with no sign of peaking. Despite the extraordinary growth in renewable energy the world overwhelmingly is powered by fossil fuels. This will continue as the yearly rise in global energy use is greater than investment in renewable energy, which has been showing signs of fatigue.

To change the trend, the UN’s United in Science report calls for a doubling of effort to meet the two-degree target and a five-fold step-up to limit future warming to the more ambitious 1.5C.

Rather than new findings, the report brings together the already published state of play. It mentions recent extreme weather and says the pace of sea level rise has accelerated from 3mm to 4mm a year.

The main purpose of the report was to lay a foundation for action at the special UN climate summit called by Secretary General Antonio Guterres in New York this week. About 60 nations were to make presentations to the UN Assembly on what they would do to increase action on climate change.

The report underscores the fact pledges made under the Paris Agr­eement will not achieve anywhere near what is judged to be needed.

According to the report, current commitments are estimated to lower global emissions in 2030 by up to six gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent compared to a continuation of current policies. If implemented this would still see temperatures rise by between 2.9 and 3.4C by 2100, the report says.

This level of ambition is a fraction of what the UN says is required. But none of the big emissions nations, the US, China, India or the European Union are expected to offer to do more.

Rather, discussions remain mired in the same old arguments about how there must be different responsibilities for developed and developing countries and funding.

The UN report says technically it still is possible to bridge the gap in 2030 to ensure global warming stays below 2C and 1.5C. But the evidence is that even existing ambitions are proving difficult for many countries to honour.

This should be no surprise. It has been anticipated by big thinkers such as Bill Gates and was at the heart of a Mission Innovation program unveiled in Paris to boost research funding. Governments, including Australia, have fallen well short on what was pledged.

It is time to redouble efforts to invest in new solutions.

SOURCE 

'Australia's got nothing to apologise for': Scott Morrison hits back at 'completely false' critics of his climate change policies in his United Nations address

Scott Morrison has hit back at critics of his climate change policies during an historic address to the United Nations.

The prime minister has faced backlash for missing special climate conference in the United States and the government has been accused of lacking a 'credible climate or energy policy'.

While speaking to the general assembly in New York on Wednesday, Mr Morrison fired back, accusing critics of overlooking or ignoring the efforts Australia had made.

'Australia is doing our bit on climate change and we reject any suggestion to the contrary.

'Australia's internal... and global critics on climate change willingly overlook or, perhaps, ignore our achievements, as the facts simply don't fit the narrative that they wish to project about our contribution.'

He said the country was committed to its target of cutting emissions by 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, describing that as a 'credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution'.

During his speech he highlighted that Australia was responsible for just 1.3 per cent of global emissions and how the country had pledged $13.2 billion to invest in clean energy technologies in 2018

Ahead of the speech, the Prime Minister said Pacific leaders he spoke with were often surprised to learn what Australia was doing on climate.

'Oftentimes the criticisms that have been made about Australia are completely false,' he told reporters in New York.

'Where do they get their information from? Who knows? Maybe they read it, maybe they read it.'

Asked if he was saying it was 'fake news' - a favourite insult of US President Donald Trump - he replied: 'I'm not saying that. All I'm saying is when I've spoken to them, they've been surprised to learn about the facts about what Australia has been doing'.

He told the UN that Australia would beat its 2020 Kyoto targets and claimed it would also meet its 2030 Paris pledge.

Environment department figures show Australia's emissions have risen since 2014.

Under the Paris agreement, all countries are expected to update their pledges to cut emissions at the 2020 climate conference in Glasgow. But Mr Morrison indicated that at this stage, Australia is unlikely to do so. 'We have our commitments, and we're sticking to those commitments,' he said.

Mr Morrison also confirmed to the UN that Australia won't contribute any more to the global Green Climate Fund.

The May budget papers said Australia made its last payment into the fund in December 2018.

Instead, Australia is redirecting $500 million of its aid money to help Pacific Island nations become more resilient in the face of the effects of climate change. 'I'm not writing a $500 million cheque to the UN, I won't be doing that. There's no way I'm going to do that to Australian taxpayers,' Mr Morrison told reporters.

SOURCE 

Climate pressure on Suncorp

Suncorp is Queensland's biggest insurer and a major bank

ENVIRONMENTAL activist shareholders of Suncorp say its lucrative insurance business is under threat from global warming weather events but have failed to get the Queensland financial group to target specific reductions in fossil fuel investments.

Environmental group Market Forces moved at Suncorp's annual general meeting yesterday to push the company to set targets to reduce investment in and underwriting of oil and gas projects.  Suncorp has already committed to phasing out investments in coal by 2025.

Suncorp chairman Christine McLoughlin said the company accepted that human activity was causing climate change and the frequency of severe weather events was accelerating. But Ms McLoughlin said Suncorp had taken steps to reduce its exposure to the fossil fuel sector and disclosure of specific investment targets was not needed.

She said fossil fuel-related business made up less than 1 per cent of its insurance business and a negligible part of its lending and investment portfolio.

Activist shareholders said that targets were necessary as Suncorp's insurance business came under threat from worsening natural disasters linked to global warming.

Activist Jan McNicol said Suncorp's insurance business could end up in a "death spiral" due to global warming. However, a resolution that would have led to Suncorp disclosing short, medium and long-term fossil fuel reduction targets was voted down by an overwhelming majority of shareholders.

Grazier Simon Gedda said that he became convinced human activity was causing worsening weather conditions when a flood hit his central Queensland property in 2017 and was "14 foot" higher than the previous record flood in 1991.  He told the AGM he was concerned that continued investment by Suncorp in oil and gas projects would put its insurance clients at continued risk of severe weather events.

Suncorp CEO Steve Johnston said the company's involvement in funding and underwriting of fossil fuel projects was minimal and there were no plans to in-crease its investments in oil and gas.

"Courier Mail" 27 Sept. 2019

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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The climate strikes aren’t about climate, they are about anti-capitalism

Most of the deluded kids on the climate “strikes” last week didn’t have a clue why they were there.

Enthusiastically cheered on by the mainstream media, it was a cheeky bludge off school and all they were doing was trying to “save the planet” right?

No of course not. These gullible kids are being exploited by all kinds of extreme-Left and anti-capitalist groups in order to bring about a wholesale societal change, using our children as their innocent pawns.

The website for the strikes refers to the need for “climate justice” which we all know is code for wealth redistribution from rich countries to poor, and an excuse for the usurping of normal democratic processes.

And as we no longer educate children to think for themselves, you can bet this brainwashing will last decades – possibly their entire lives.

Shameful.

SOURCE  H/T Climate Lessons




NY Judges advise wind developer to comply with WHO turbine noise standards

Judges in the state Article 10 approval process for large energy projects made recommendations that would require Invenergy's Number Three Wind Farm to do better in a number of project areas to secure the coveted Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need before construction can begin.

"The recommended Certificate Conditions... are designed to ensure that the Project's impacts are minimized and avoided to the maximum extent practicable, that the Project will be constructed and operated in compliance with all applicable State and local environmental and public health and safety laws and regulations," the document states.

While back-and-forth negotiations throughout the past year resulted in a number of changes and conditions agreed upon by the wind farm and various parties to the process, if the state Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment accepts the recommendations made by Presiding Examiner Maureen F. Leary, administrative law judge for state Public Service, and Associate Examiner Molly T. McBride, administrative law judge of the DEC, Number Three still has significant work to do, especially relating to noise control.

Noise from turbines can be made by mechanical components, a "whooshing" sound in certain weather conditions from acoustic pulsations and the controversial "infrasound," which is less "heard" and more sensed as a constant due to vibrations and pulses, the document said.

Number Three had disputed the negative impact of the noise on health and referred to it instead as an "annoyance," setting a 45-decibel limit.

"WHO 2009 and WHO 2018 along with the positions of Department of Public Service staff and Department of Health provide the Siting Board with a sufficient basis in the record to reject Number Three Wind's position that wind turbine noise at levels below 46 dBA is not associated with health impacts."

Based on the World Health Organization's findings, the judges recommend a 40-decibel long term limit outdoors, 30 decibels indoors and a short term, eight-hour, outdoor limit of 42 decibels for residents that do not participate in the project and 50 decibels for those that do.

Number Three had not set an indoor limit.

The judges also noted that the wind company arrived at its plan based on faulty information gathering.

In order to verify the results of Number Three's modeling assumptions, the Public Service Department did some modeling of its own.

"The Public Service staff modeling results showed that 34 non-participating receptors [residents] exceed the short-term design goal of 45 dBA with levels as high as 48 dBA... combined with the Maple Ridge and Copenhagen facilities, 68 receptors [residents] exceed that design goal with levels as high as 51 dBA."

As a result, they recommended the Siting Board require Number Three to re-model the noise impact of its project, taking measures at both about 5 feet (1.5 meters) and 13 feet (4 meters) above ground and calculate the cumulative impact of existing turbines from the Copenhagen and Maple Ridge wind farms on residents.

Citing a lack of key details in the Number Three proposed sound monitoring process, the judges advised adding a condition requiring Number Three follow post-construction noise monitoring and complaint procedures recommended by Public Safety based on the precedence of Cassadaga and Baron Winds wind farms that have passed through the Article 10 process.

Judgments were also made on the potential harm the wind project could cause to protected species of protected grassland birds and bats.

Number Three could be expected to file a final Endangered or Threatened Species mitigation plan within two months, including methods to "fully avoid impacts" on the threatened Upland Sandpiper and Northern Harrier grassland bird species, or, if it can prove avoiding impact isn't possible, steps it will take to minimize impact and provide value to the species.

The DEC had suggested to avoid impacting the birds, the company should move nine turbines and all infrastructure from the birds' habitat area, create an 820-foot buffer around the occupied habitat during breeding season with no construction from April 23 to Aug. 15.

Recommendations require the company to monitor its impact on any endangered or protected species over the life of the project and make changes to decrease it as necessary, including the number of animals, especially the birds and bats, killed because of the turbines throughout its 30-year duration.

Referencing DEC staff testimony given earlier in the summer, the judges wrote "wind turbines are currently the single greatest known source of mortality for several bat species in North America," and that "post-construction fatality studies in New York State revealed that most turbine-caused fatalities are to migratory tree bats."

The judges recommended the siting board accept the agreement the DEC and Number Three reached in June to institute a "curtailment" program to guard Northern Long Eared Bats, a protected species in the project area.

Under the program, turbines use will be limited when wind speeds are below a certain point between July 1 and Oct. 1, beginning 30 minutes before sunset and continuing until 30 minutes after sunrise when temperatures are greater than 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although flicker, or the shadows, cast by the turning turbine blades in the right conditions, has been often cited by the grassroots Tug Hill Alliance for Rural Preservation and other county residents as an issue, the judges did not recommend the 30-minutes per day limit on operations causing flicker.

Instead, they followed the precedent set by the Baron Winds project requiring Number Three to either temporarily "curtail" wind turbine operation in response to complaints to keep flicker under the 30-hour annual limit or "to provide physical mitigation measures."

Among previously agreed upon certificate conditions minimizing the project's visual impact, Number Three had disputed being required to use or consider installing the Aircraft Lighting Detection System, subject to FAA approval, which would turn the red lights on based on radar detection of aircraft.

The judges, however, agreed that it would be an important tool to decrease the visual impact of the project at night and should be examined.

With regard to removing the wind farm, or "decommissioning" it, after it has run its course, the judges found Number Three's plan to be insufficient and recommended a number of conditions before certificate approval.

In the revised plan, Number Three would estimate the cost to remove all wind farm components and restore access roads without including income from salvaging or re-selling the materials and provide an irrevocable letter of credit to cover the total costs.

Every five years, those amounts will be reconsidered and the letter updated, if the recommendations are followed.

Turbines that have not been working for over a year should be removed by the company automatically, the judges said.

Issues including invasive species, plants and forests, wildlife excepting birds and bats, ice throw, turbine collapse, electric and magnetic fields and compliance with state energy policies were among those that were judged to have been sufficiently addressed by Number Three and various experts via documentation or testimony already provided.

Certificate conditions, in some of these cases, were already agreed upon after previous proceedings.

The 254-page document was filed online Aug. 22, on the state Department of Public Service's site dedicated to the project.

Recommendations for 138 certificate conditions and 32 additional documentation packages verifying the completion of those conditions clarify steps the wind company must take if the siting board follows the judges' advice.

In July, the siting board chairman informed Number Three that the extensive changes to the project amounted to a revision. A 45-day extension to the pre-set 12 month timeframe to the Article 10 process that would have ended in September was put in place and the company was required to submit $75,000 in additional intervenor funding.

SOURCE 




The Cynical Myth of a Global Warming "Consensus"

An article of faith of the modern environmental movement is the scientific "consensus" behind man-made global warming. Global warming activists and even some serious scientific organizations claim that 97% of the world's scientists unreservedly accept this theory. It is often the first and most common argument used by climate activists, from Al Gore to the Greenpeace climate warriors protesting in front of the White House.

Pope Francis incorporated this belief into his 2015 "green" encyclical, Laudato si': "A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system."1 He repeated it during an airplane interview on September 6, 2017, on the return flight from a trip to Colombia. A reporter asked the Pope if, in light of the recent devastation in the United States caused by Hurricane Harvey, he thought there was a "moral responsibility" for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

He agreed entirely, appealing to a "consensus" of scientists: ".Whoever denies this should go to the scientists and ask them. They speak very clearly. The scientists are precise. you see the effects and scientists say clearly which is the path to follow. [So] if one is a bit doubtful that this is not so true, let them ask the scientists. They are very clear. They are not opinions on the air, they are very clear. And then let them decide, and history will judge their decisions."

Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the Pope's right-hand man for climate activism, stated: "From the scientific point of view, the sentence that the earth is warmed by human activity is as true as the sentence: The earth is round!"

Is there a "scientific consensus" about man-made global warming? Can there be any such thing as a scientific "consensus" in the first place? Do 97% of scientists believe in global warming?

The answer to all three questions is an unequivocal NO, and we will analyze each one in depth.

What Is a "Scientific Consensus" Anyway?

The word "consensus" is confusing at best and deceptive at worst. There is no infallible "pope" of science who declares one or another scientific theory to be fact and all others to be heretical. Science has relatively few absolute, unchangeable truths and many theories of varying degrees of certitude. A scientific theory is not infallible simply because a democratic majority of scientists say so.

And what is the definition of "scientific consensus?" Different scientific theories are accepted by various numbers of scientists to varying degrees, all of which are labeled "consensus." If 50% + 1 of scientists accept a theory, does that make a "consensus?" Or does it have to be 75% or more? If so, why?

What about the degree of adherence to a scientific theory? If 90% of scientists believe a theory is "probably correct," but only 10% affirm that is "certainly correct" (which is the case in many scientific debates) does that make a "consensus?" If so, why?

Most importantly, why is it wrong to question a "scientific consensus" (however one defines it) in the first place? As any honest scientists will admit, in every scientific field, disagreement is common, and widespread "consensus" is the exception. Scientific knowledge is constantly undergoing challenges, upheavals, and paradigm shifts thanks to new discoveries. Indeed, the history of science is littered with the wrecks of refuted theories.

The Media's Comical but Worrisome Eco-Catastrophe Obsession
In biology, for example, our knowledge and theories about the cell have changed more from Charles Darwin's death in 1882 to today than in the previous 10,000 years of human history combined. Astronomy has learned more about the planets, galaxies, and the universe in the twentieth century than in the 1,800 years since Ptolemy.

Scientists continually propose scientific theories that buck mainstream "consensuses." Even today, we do not have certainty about basic scientific questions such as the size of the universe, the nature or existence of "black holes," the age of the Earth, or even whether light is a particle or a wave. Our understanding of the atom has undergone numerous transformations over the last 200 years and continues to do so.

Climate science is extremely complex. Every year, we learn more and more about the many factors that influence the Earth's climate. Scientists can and do make incorrect assumptions or conclusions based on faulty theories or incomplete data. In the seventies and eighties, many scientists, scientific organizations, and most of the media declared a scientific "consensus" that a global cooling trend was underway that would lead to a new Ice Age. Now, some of the very same scientists tell us that anyone who questions global warming is a "denier." Either the "consensus" was wrong then, or it is wrong now.

Appealing to authority rather than evidence-as proponents of the man-made global warming theory are doing when they claim a "scientific consensus"-is anything but scientific. It is nothing less than an attempt to silence opposition, shut down all debate and scare the general public into submission.

Do 97% of Scientists Endorse the UN's Position on Global Warming?
To this end, the most common argument used by climate activists such as Al Gore is that 97% of scientists worldwide explicitly endorse the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) position that man-made global warming is happening, that it is caused mostly by man's activities, and that it is a grave threat to humanity and the Earth.

It is quite an intimidating figure. Anyone who dissents from man-made global warming, therefore, must be a member of a tiny, dangerous, isolated fringe. Perhaps they chose the 97% figure because 90% still leaves too large of a minority in opposition, but 99% or 100% is not very believable. At any rate, it is a very well chosen number for psychological effect.

The average observer might think that such a solid number as 97% has equally solid evidence to back it up. In reality, the most commonly cited studies presented to support the "97%" figure are misleading at best, and fraudulent at worst.

We will cite one of the most respected government scientific organizations in the world, NASA. On its web site dedicated to man-made global warming, NASA lists four studies to support its claim that "97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities."3

One study cited is "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" by historian Naomi Oreskes. In 2004, Oreskes took 928 papers published in scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 and searched them for evidence of support for global warming. She did not search the whole paper, but rather those papers "abstracts," which is the summary written at the very beginning of the paper that summarizes its main points. She claimed that 75% of the abstracts either implicitly or explicitly supported the IPCC's view that humanity is responsible for most of the global increase in temperature for the past fifty years.

Oreskes's conclusions are flawed for several reasons. First, many of the articles she cites mention global warming only in passing, or assume some human impact on climate. A much smaller number explicitly endorses the IPCC view. Oreskes did not make any distinction and lumped them all together as supporting the IPCC. She also did not make any distinction between authors who believe global warming is dangerous and those who believe it is benign.

Second, she reviewed only the abstracts of the 928 scientific papers for evidence of support for global warming, and not the papers themselves. Abstracts routinely misrepresent the content and conclusions of the papers and are often chock full of keywords for search engine purposes. This is no different than reading the blurb on the back cover of a book and drawing conclusions about the author's positions on topics other than what he wrote about.

Third, most of the scientific papers are not about climate change, and most of their authors are not specialists in any of the climate sciences. Oreskes also ignores the many hundreds of articles published by prominent climate skeptics that raise serious doubts about man-made global warming.

Fourth, in 2008, medical researcher Klaus-Martin Schulte published a scientific study of the Oreskes report and found that only 7 percent explicitly endorsed the IPCC view on global warming

Another scientific paper cited by NASA and widely used to push the 97% myth is by Australian cognitive scientist John Cook. In 2013, he published a paper in Environmental Research Letters in which he analyzed the abstracts of 11,944 published scientific papers, published between 1991 and 2011 that include the words "climate change" or "global warming." According to his very broad criteria, of all the papers that express an opinion about man-made global warming, 97.1% endorsed the IPCC position that humans are the main cause.

This paper was immediately debunked by a scientific paper published in Science & Education by David Legates, Wei-Hock Soon, William Briggs, and Christopher Monckton, in which they found that, in reality, of all the scientific papers that express an opinion on global warming, only 1% were found to explicitly endorse the IPCC's position.

Richard Tol, a lead author of the UN's IPCC reports, flatly rejected Cook's findings:

"Cook's sample is not representative. Any conclusion they draw is not about `the literature' but rather about the papers they happened to find. Most of the papers they studied are not about climate change and its causes, but many were taken as evidence nonetheless. Papers on carbon taxes naturally assume that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming-but assumptions are not conclusions. Cook's claim of an increasing consensus over time is entirely due to an increase of the number of irrelevant papers that Cook and Co. mistook for evidence."5

Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law
Also cited by NASA is a 2009 study by then-University of Illinois student Maggie Zimmerman and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran. But just like the previous two, it also contains serious flaws.

Zimmerman's "study" consisted of a two-minute online survey sent to 10,257 scientists working at universities and government agencies asking for their opinion about man-made global warming. A total of 3,146 responded. Of these, she eliminated the scientists whose area of expertise-cosmology, physics, meteorology, solar science, etc.-would lead them to think that the Sun might have a major influence on the Earth's climate. Only about 5% self-identified as climate scientists.

The survey asked two questions: "When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?" and "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" Those questions are ambiguous, since "significant" could mean many different things, and is certainly not the same as the IPCC report which affirms man as the primary factor. The questions also do not ask if such warming is harmful or benign for the planet, an important distinction.

To get the 97% figure, Zimmerman restricted her criteria only to self-identified "climate scientists" who must have published at least 50% of their peer-reviewed publications in the last five years on the subject of climate change. This is a serious flaw in methodology since she would include a person who published three papers in the past five years if two of them were on climate change, but not another who published 40 papers of which only 19 were on climate change.

In short, the Zimmerman paper is a seriously flawed study that was widely promoted by the media to push a political agenda, not science. It was designed to produce one and only one result (the 97% myth) which happens to be the party line pushed by climate activist organizations.

Other studies cities by NASA, such as that done by William R. L. Anderegg in 2010, then a student at Stanford University, are just as flawed. Like the others, he scanned the abstracts of hundreds of scientific papers looking for clues of the authors' positions on global warming. To achieve the "97%" figure, he restricted his definition of "climate scientists" to those who are the "most published," which happens to be disproportionally populated by a small group of dedicated activist scientists. He removed those scientists who explicitly signed statements against the IPCC position on climate but included those who had not. In his view, silence on the issue meant that those authors accept the extreme position of the IPCC on man-made global warming.

Conclusion

It is disgraceful that a heretofore respected organization such as NASA would cite such weak and easily refuted studies to sustain its shaky hypothesis on man-made global warming. It is not a fact, but an unproven assertion that 97% of scientists accept unequivocally the IPCC's position.

There is no scientific consensus on man-made global warming. The only consensus among scientists is that there is no consensus. Rank and file climate scientists simply disagree on how much warming is occurring (if any), the causes of this warming, the role of man's activities in this warming, whether or not such warming is benign or dangerous to civilization, and what measures mankind should take to address it (if any).

Although the jury is still out on the danger of global warming, a far worse threat to the common good is the cynical promotion of global warming as a fact by people and organizations such as NASA who know better. Much worse is the Vatican, led by Pope Francis, using the full weight and moral authority of the Catholic Church to give such a fraudulent claim legitimacy.

SOURCE 





More buckets of icy cold energy reality

Democrats, Green New Dealers and UN gabfest attendees need to get `woke' on eco-energy

Paul Driessen

The full-court press is on for climate chaos disaster and renewable energy salvation. CNN recently hosted a seven-hour climate event for Democrat presidential aspirants. Every day brings more gloom-and-doom stories about absurd, often taxpayer-funded pseudo-scientific reports on yet another natural event or supposed calamity that alarmists insist is due to fossil fuels that provide 80% of US and global energy.

MSNBC just hosted another two-day Democrat presidential candidates climate forum at Georgetown University - where I spoke at a contrarian program. Meanwhile, a big Climate March took place in New York City, while protesters tried to block Washington, DC streets. They were all kicking off the UN's "Global Climate Week" in NYC, featuring a Youth Climate Summit and UN General Assembly event where world leaders will demand "global action" to supposedly stop the supposed climate crisis.

Their standard solution is biofuel, solar, wind and battery power. My recent article dumped buckets of icy cold reality on several of those claims. They obviously need to be doused with a few more icy buckets.

To reiterate: Wind and sunshine are free, renewable, sustainable and eco-friendly. However, the lands and raw materials required for technologies to harness this widely dispersed, intermittent, weather-dependent energy to benefit humanity absolutely are not. In fact, their environmental impacts are monumental.

The Democrat candidates and their supporters want to replace coal and gas backup power plants with batteries, to ensure we have (much more expensive) electricity even when intermittent, weather-dependent wind and sunshine refuse to cooperate with our need for 24/7/365 power for our electricity-based homes, schools, hospitals, factories, businesses, computers, social media and civilization.

So let's suppose we blanket the United States with enough industrial-scale wind and solar facilities to replace the 3.9 billion megawatt-hours Americans used in 2018 - and we manufacture and install enough king-sized batteries to store sufficient electricity for seven straight windless or sunless days.

We would need something on the order of one billion 100-kilowatt-hour, 1,000-pound lithium and cobalt-based battery packs - similar to what Tesla uses in its electric vehicles. (This does not include the extra battery storage required to charge up the cars, trucks and buses we are supposed to replace with EVs.)

All these batteries would support the millions and millions of Green New Deal solar panels and wind turbines we would have to build and install. They would require prodigious amounts of iron, copper, rare earth metals, concrete and other raw materials. And every one of these batteries, turbines and panels would have to be replaced far more often than coal, gas, nuclear or hydroelectric power plants.

Indeed, what are we going do with all those worn-out and broken-down turbines, panels and batteries? The International Renewable Energy Agency has said disposing of just the worn out solar panels that the UN wants erected around the world by 2050, under the Paris Climate Treaty's solar energy goals, could result in two times the tonnage of the United States' total plastic waste in 2017!

So another icy cold reality is this: All this "free, renewable, sustainable, eco-friendly, ethical" energy would require the biggest expansion in mining the world has ever seen. But when was the last time any environmentalist or Democrat supported opening a single US mine? They detest mining.

Which brings us to the dirtiest pseudo-renewable, pseudo-sustainable energy secret of all - the one these folks absolutely do not want to talk about: slave and child labor.

Because of rabid environmentalist opposition, the United States and Europe no longer permit much mining within their borders. They just import minerals - many of them from China and Russia. And the same groups that extol the virtues of wind, solar and battery power are equally opposed to Western mining companies extracting rare earth, lithium, cadmium, cobalt and other minerals almost anywhere on Planet Earth - even under rigorous Western labor, safety, environmental and reclamation rules.

That means those materials are mined and processed in places like Baotou, Inner Mongolia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly under Chinese control. They are dug out and processed by fathers, mothers and children - under horrific, unsafe, inhuman conditions that few of us can even imagine ... under almost nonexistent labor, wage, health, safety and pollution standards.

Those renewable energy, high-tech slaves get a few pennies or dollars a day - while risking cave-ins and being exposed constantly to filthy, toxic, radioactive mud, dust, water and air. The mining and industrial areas become vast toxic wastelands, where nothing grows, and no people or wildlife can live.

For cobalt alone - say UNICEF and Amnesty International - over 40,000 Congolese children, as young as four years old, slave away in mines, from sunrise to sundown, six or even seven days a week. That's today. Imagine how many will be needed to serve the "ethical green energy utopia."

Green New Dealers demand sustainable, ethical, human rights-based coffee, sneakers, T-shirts, handbags and diamonds. Absolutely no child labor, sweat shop, or toxic, polluted workplace conditions allowed. But they have little or nothing to say about the Chinese, Russian and other companies that run the horrid operations that provide their wind turbines, solar panels, smart grids - and batteries for their cell phones, Teslas, laptops and backup electrical power.

I've never seen them make ethical wind turbines, solar panels and batteries an issue. They've never protested outside a Chinese, Russian or Congolese embassy, or corporate headquarters in Beijing, Moscow or Kinshasa. They probably don't want to get shot or sent to gulags.

And just a few weeks ago, California legislators voted down Assembly Bill 735. The bill simply said California would certify that "zero emission" electric vehicles sold in the state must be free of any materials or components that involve child labor. The issue is complicated, the legislators said. It would be too hard to enforce. It would imperil state climate goals. And besides, lots of other industries also use child labor ... they "explained."

As Milton Friedman said, there is no free lunch. Wind, solar, biofuel and battery power are not free, clean, green, renewable or sustainable. America must not let delusion, dishonesty and ideology drive public policies that will determine our future jobs, prosperity, living standards, freedoms and civilization.

What Green New Dealers are talking about has nothing to do with stopping dangerous manmade climate change - or with real sustainability, resource conservation or environmental protection. It has everything to do with increasingly socialist, largely taxpayer-financed activists, politicians, regulators and crony capitalists controlling people's lives; dictating our energy use, economic growth, job opportunities and living standards; and [getting%20richer,%20more%20powerful]getting richer, more powerful and more privileged in the process.

Meanwhile poor, minority and working class families - pay the price. And destitute families in hungry, impoverished, electricity-deprived nations pay the highest price. China, India, Indonesia and Africa are not about to give up their determined efforts to take their rightful, God-given places among Earth's healthy and prosperous people. They are not going to stop using fossil fuels to reach their goals.

They are not going to let anyone - including the UN, EU, US Democrats and other eco-imperialists - tell them they can never enjoy those blessings. Or they will be "allowed" to improve their health and living standards only at the margins, only to levels achievable with wind, solar and cow dung power.

That's why, even as the United States reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 12% between 2000 and 2017 - India's plant-fertilizing CO2 emissions soared by 140% and China's skyrocketed 194% - further greening Planet Earth. In 2019 alone, China alone will add more coal-fired generating capacity than what all existing US coal-fired power plants generate.

While all these countries continue using more and more fossil fuels to improve their economies, health and living standards - why in heaven's name would the United States want to join Green New Dealers and other crazies in an environment-destroying ban-fossil-fuels economic suicide pact?

Via email





Australian scientist lets the drought cat out of the bag

A transcript from a talk he gave Wednesday 19 June, 2019, at he Sydney Environment Institute (SEI), University of Sydney.  He is Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes:

“…this may not be what you expect to hear. but as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.

That may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented, but there is no reason a priori why climate change should made the landscape more arid.

If you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last one hundred years there’s no trend in data. There is no drying trend.  There’s been a trend in the last twenty years, but there’s been no trend in the last hundred years, and that’s an expression on how variable Australian rainfall climate is.

There are in some regions but not in other regions.

So the fundamental problem we have is that we don’t understand what causes droughts.

Much more interesting, We don’t know what stops a drought. We know it’s rain, but we don’t know what lines up to create drought breaking rains.”

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Climate Change Protestors 'Shut Down' D.C. Streets, Increase Carbon Emissions

Climate change protestors from "Shut Down DC" blocked intersections in the district on Monday morning, causing gridlock in the city and increasing carbon emissions.

The protestors held signs that read "Capitalism is Killing The Planet," "Green New Deal" and "Bezos Earns Our Planet Burns."

Twitter users pointed out that the protestors are actually raising emissions by blocking traffic. "This is only creating more traffic, more idling card, more emissions into the air. this is extremely ironic"

Some supporters of the protest did not agree with the approach.

This whole #ShutDownDC is just backwards thinking at its finest. Agree with the message, completely disagree with the execution! The disruptions will increase emissions and the focus will be on street blockages, not climate change.

I commute by Metro, but let me just say that the theory of change behind #ShutDownDC - blocking major intersections while punishing neither lawmakers, many of whom aren't in Washington this morning, nor fossil-fuel dependent corporations, which mostly aren't based here - is dumb.

Another user @sasquasages wrote, "Everyone at #ShutDownDC... get a job."

"Thanks #ShutDownDC for all the doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals who couldn't make it to their a.m. appointments," wrote Twitter user @kristinleigh_93.

SOURCE 





Modi visit to Houston backdrop for one of the largest LNG deals in U.S. history

A visit to Houston by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become the backdrop for one of the largest liquefied natural gas supply deals in U.S. history.

Executives with Houston liquefied natural gas company Tellurian and India's Petronet LNG signed a $2.5 billion deal in Modi's presence during a private Saturday evening ceremony at the Post Oak Hotel at Uptown in Houston's Galleria district.

Under the deal, Petronet pledged to invest $2.5 billion in Tellurian's proposed Driftwood LNG export terminal in Lake Charles, La., in exchange for the rights to 5 million metric tons of LNG per year over the lifespan of the project.

In an exclusive interview with the Houston Chronicle, Tellurian board Chairman Charif Souki called the deal a "win-win-win" for the United States, India and the company.

"It's a win for the United States because it creates an outlet for our surplus gas," Souki said. "It's a win for India because they have secured cheap gas for a long period of time. And it's a win for Tellurian because we have provided a bridge between a nation with too much gas and a nation that needs as much gas as it can get as an affordable price."

The signing ceremony took place a day before the Indian prime minister was set to appear at a rally with President Donald Trump at NRG Stadium. The two leaders are expected to speak about wider cooperation between the two nations. Tellurian is one of three corporate sponsors of the event.

With India getting more than half of its electricity from coal, Modi set a goal to have natural gas make up 15 percent of India's power generation energy mix by 2030. As a result, Petronet and other companies are building new LNG import terminals and expanding the number of natural gas pipelines to encourage wider use of the cleaner-burning fuel.

"Increasing natural gas use will enable India to fuel its impressive economic growth to achieve Prime Minister Modi's goal of a $5 trillion economy while contributing to a cleaner environment," Tellurian CEO Meg Gentle said in a statement.

Souki described the deal with Petronet as one of the largest investments made by a foreign company into a U.S. infrastructure project. It tied for the largest LNG supply deal in U.S. history in terms of volume.

Horizontal drilling paired with hydraulic fracturing has transformed the United States from a natural gas importer into an export powerhouse.

Over the next two years, projects capable of producing up to nearly 90 million metric tons of LNG per year are expected to reach final investment decisions that will require more than $200 billion of construction work through 2025, global research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates.

SOURCE 




UK: Solar panels: Thousands of customers complain

Thousands of people who bought solar panels have complained to a financial watchdog that they are not bringing them the returns they were promised. Many people took out loans to pay for panels on the promise they would save thousands of pounds in electricity costs and make money generating power.

They say they have not had the expected savings, and the Financial Services Ombudsman has had 2,000 complaints.

Barclays Bank has put aside œ38m to deal with potential claims.

Brian Thompson from Rowlands Gill, Gateshead, told BBC Inside Out he was contacted by a salesman for PV Solar UK but told him he did not want to take a loan on as he was preparing for retirement.

He said he was told the move would provide money towards his pension, which persuaded him, and he took out a loan with Barclays of more than œ10,000 over 10 years.

Mr Thompson said the payments he was getting back from the power his solar panels sent to the National Grid did not correspond with what he was told.

"I had to dip into my savings which I was putting away for retirement to pay the loan off. To me it was lies," he said.

The Financial Services Ombudsman said it had received 2,000 complaints about solar panels

An independent survey of Mr Thompson's system showed even after 20 years the income from the panels would not cover the cost of the loan.

Barclays offered him some compensation but Mr Thompson said it was not enough.

PV Solar UK went into liquidation in 2017.

Robert Skillen, who was the director of the firm when Mr Thompson bought his system, said Mr Thompson's panels would make him money.

Mr Skillen is now in business claiming to help people who have been missold solar panels. He did not want to be interviewed.

Tony Walch, from Bolton, was told he would be better off by œ30,000 over 20 years when he bought solar panels from MyPlanet.

He said: "They were very, very persuasive. Everything they said was plausible. It was a no-brainer."

Tony Walch said everything he was told was plausible
He took out a loan of œ15,000 but he said the panels did not generate the amount of electricity he was promised. They also overheated, damaging the equipment, and he believed they had cost him more than œ500 a year.

MyPlanet went into liquidation in 2016.

Former director Mark Bonifacio said all calculations had been made using strict methodology, and the performance of the systems was impossible to predict because of different factors affecting performance.

He said MyPlanet installed more than 15,000 systems, and customers would be getting free electricity.

Debbie Enever, from the Financial Ombudsman Service, said: "We have got about 2,000 complaints about solar panels at the moment and more coming through every week."

Loans for solar panels were taken out through Barclays Bank, which said: "We always seek to ensure customers are satisfied with our financial products. Where customers have cause to complain we will review each case individually."

SOURCE 






The Passion of Zealots
 
A young person concerned about climate change joined 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg at a congressional hearing this past week. Jamie Margolin is 17 and part of a lawsuit filed by children against the federal government over climate change. Not content to work their way through democratic processes, they hope federal courts will force resolution on their behalf.

Margolin spoke out about her fears. She told Congress that she was not sure she would have a future. She said in her testimony: "I want the entirety of Congress - in fact, the whole U.S. government - to remember the fear and despair that my generation lives with every day, and I want you to hold on to it. How do I even begin to convey to you what it feels like to know that within my lifetime the destruction that we have already seen from the climate crisis will only get worse. What adds insult to injury is the fact that we keep getting promised what isn't there. On college applications, I keep getting asked what I want to be when I grow up . Everyone who will walk up to me after this testimony saying I have such a bright future ahead of me will be lying to my face." She went on to say the planet is collapsing. She believes there are only 18 months left to get it right - a far shorter period than most activists claim.

Some will applaud her for the painful truths she is telling the grown-ups around her. In fact, progressive activists increasingly rely on children to speak for them, believing it provides a shield to criticism. But it also provides some great dangers.

Just listen to these children and the adults around them. They believe, with the passion and faith of zealots, time is running out. They believe the democratic processes are failing them. They believe the planet is collapsing and we will all die. They believe this as a matter of faith, not science. The science does not suggest we will all die. The science does not suggest the planet is collapsing. But they believe it and will not be dissuaded from it.

In Great Britain, police arrested a group of environmental activists who planned to fly drones over Heathrow Airport to shut down air traffic. In Europe, "travel shaming" has become a trend in which people shame those who decide to get on airplanes. It has actually impacted Europe's aviation industry.

The problem is that these zealots get massive, positive media coverage. As in other situations, media coverage tends to provoke more of the same behavior. Though the left might cheer that on, they should be cautious because of where this will likely lead.

Already, the United States has had to deal with ecoterrorists in the Northwest. It is only a matter of time before those who believe the world is going to end without radical action decide to take radical action. They will, as all zealots do, decide they are doing it for the good of everyone - even those who do not realize it. Zealots convinced of their own righteousness are dangerous people. When they conclude the courts have failed them, the democratic processes have failed them and the government itself has failed them, violence will be their only recourse. They will have plenty of supporters in the media willing to justify it. After all, they are all convinced the world will end in a decade if they sit idly by.

Listen to the environmental zealots, and hear for yourselves how salvation is obtained. It is not pretty. The United States has done more than most countries to cut its emissions, but the zealots always demand more. They do so because, as long as sinners still sin, those who should be saved cannot be. In Christianity, the unrepentant sinner will not find salvation. For the saved, however, access to heaven is not dependent on the unrepentant. In environmentalism, the penitent environmentalist will not find salvation as long as the polluters pollute. If the government won't stop the sin, the zealots will have to.

SOURCE 





Australia: 'It doesn't feel justifiable': The couples not having children because of climate change

I really enjoy reports like this.  It would  be great if all Greenie fools took themselves out of the gene pool that way

Morgan and Adam have always wanted children but fears over climate change are making them reconsider.

The committed pair, aged 36 and 35, are part of a growing trend for young couples to abandon plans for a family because of the climate crisis.

Millions of people around the world rallied for climate action over the past two days, including 300,000 in Australia on Friday, ahead of a United Nations climate action summit on Monday.

"I feel so sad, it's such a hard thing to let go of," says Morgan, who works in logistics. "My conscience says, 'I can't give this child what I've enjoyed, I can't give them the certainty of a future where they can be all that they can be ... or have the things they should have, like breathable air and drinkable water'."

Morgan is feeling "pretty damn certain" a baby is off the cards, even though she fears she might regret it. She has at least two close friends in their early 30s, with good partners, who have made the same decision.

Her partner Adam, who works in web development, agrees. "I have a lot of love to give and would love to raise a child . but it doesn't feel justifiable. The world is heading blindfolded towards catastrophe."

Prince Harry made headlines when he revealed in an interview in British Vogue, in the September issue guest-edited by his wife Meghan, that the couple would have two children "maximum" for the sake of the planet.

The idea of limiting family size to two children to represent net zero population growth has been around for decades. But is no children the new two children?

Dr Bronwyn Harman, a lecturer at Edith Cowan University in Perth who studies people without children, says it is a progression of the same theme. She says some people are avoiding parenthood because they are worried for their unborn children, while others are motivated not to make things worse.

"They're saying things like `we don't want to add children into the mix and put more strain on the planet'," Harman says. "It's started coming up [in my research] in the past six months but it's not very common."

The phenomenon is growing. The Age and Sun-Herald have spoken to 20 and 30-somethings all over Australia wrestling with the dilemma. Most asked to use first names only to avoid online harassment.

"I'm terrified that in another 50 years, if my hypothetical child was all grown up, what would our world look like?" says Jessica Ivers, 29. The digital specialist and yoga teacher from Northcote in Melbourne says she is "100 per cent certain" about her choice.

In Mackay in Queensland,  community organiser Emma, 32, says she and her partner Mick, 33, were planning to start trying for a family next year but changed their minds after the federal election.

"After the LNP won - with no climate plan - we cried and agreed that the dream of a family wouldn't be for us," Emma says. "It's a terrifying thought for us that the world will be uninhabitable in a few decades if we continue charging ahead with fossil fuels and approving coal mines like Adani."

Melanie, 24, from Highgate Hill in Brisbane terminated an unplanned pregnancy last year and says the climate crisis was the "ultimate deciding factor". She read scientific articles about the best and worst-case scenarios and decided she would never have children.

"It's been a hard year coming to terms with the reality of the situation," says Melanie. "I cannot justify bringing children into a world in the midst of a mass extinction event and facing total ecological collapse. "

Shalini, 33, and David, 35, from Summer Hill in Sydney have decided not to have biological children but would like to adopt or foster in the future.

"It makes more sense for us to look after a child that is here and needs someone rather than make more children," says David, a 3D animation artist.

Shalini, a public servant, says climate change is a big reason, along with her focus on career.

"I don't eat meat and I'm really conscious about consuming goods and services that that are more sustainably produced and in the same vein, I don't want to produce more people," Shalini says. She finds it hard to discuss with friends because she doesn't want them to feel judged.

Maddie, 32, from the lower north shore, sought counselling to deal with her grief and anxiety over climate change and her dilemma over having children.

"My psychologist is having more and more couples coming to her about this," she says. "The first thing she said to me was, `this is not a manifestation of normal anxiety, this is a real threat and real grief that you're carrying'."

Maddie would love children but feels an obligation to fight for her newborn niece and friends' children instead.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures suggest one in four women aged 15 to 35 will never have children. Harman says roughly two-thirds of those women make an active choice to be "child-free" while one-third are "childless" because of circumstances, including fears over the state of the world.

A global trend

In Britain musician and activist Blythe Pepino, 33, kicked off the "BirthStrike" - a movement of people pledging not to have children "due to the severity of the ecological crisis and the current inaction of governing forces in the face of this existential threat".

In February, US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez commented on the grim scientific outlook and political inaction: "It does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK still to have children?"

American singer and actress Miley Cyrus, 26, told Elle magazine's August 2019 US issue that Millennials didn't want to reproduce because they knew the Earth could not handle it.

"We're getting handed a piece-of-shit planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child," Cyrus says. "Until I feel like my kid would live on an Earth with fish in the water, I'm not bringing in another person to deal with that."

Yet even at the coalface of climate change research, some see this as extreme. Earlier this month, Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation (parent body of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), weighed into the debate.

"The latest idea is that children are a negative thing," Taalas told a Finnish magazine. "I am worried for young mothers, who are already under much pressure. This will only add to their burden."

He warned facts could be hijacked to justify "extreme measures" in the name of climate action.

Taalas told The Sun-Herald  in a statement he supports strong climate action and a science-based approach offers hope.

"We must not be driven to despair, given that reasonable solutions are available to the international community, governments and civil society," he says.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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