Tuesday, December 10, 2019



No time for science at COP25

The official signage throughout the UN facility reads “COP25: #TimeForAction”. Not “COP25: #TheLatestScience”. Not “COP25: #PursuingTruth”. No, it is “#TimeForAction”. And the “Time for Action” theme permeates the exhibits of climate activist groups, protesters, and even the exhibit booths of the various nations. Action is our theme, gosh darn it, and everybody better be on board.COP 25: Climate propaganda crowds at objective science

With the UN so fully committed to urgent and immediate action, what does that tell us about the objectivity of its incessant ‘science’ reports? The answer is clearly that all reports must diminish or completely ignore scientific evidence countering the alarmist narrative. The funding, forward momentum, and very existence of the international climate bureaucracy depends on the perpetuation of the asserted climate crisis. Not only does scientific evidence contradicting the alarmist narrative create substantial embarrassment for a world body committed to “TimeForAction,” but it jeopardizes the jobs, salaries, and very existence of the enormous international climate bureaucracy.

So here at COP25, the United Nations pushes political propaganda rather than objective science. To the limited extent science is presented, it is one-sided and resting on flimsy evidence.

The people of the world deserve more for all the tax dollars we send to the United Nations climate establishment.

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French wine climate scare debunked

Wine must be getting more popular, as climate alarmists are increasingly claiming global warming is harming wine production. That is the consistent playbook for climate alarmists – figure out what people like and then claim climate change is destroying it.

During recent months, climate alarmists and their media sock puppets have frequently been claiming global warming is devastating French wine production. Titles of some recent media articles include:

“Heat-stricken French wine harvests sound climate alarm” – Reuters

“Can French wine survive the climate change fiasco? – RFI France

“Winemaking In France Is Being Disrupted By Climate Change” – NPR

However, just as we have shown for previous false wine scares regarding California, Italy, and Greece, the objective data show French wine production consistently benefits from ongoing warming temperatures.

As we reported as part of a recent article addressing the fake Greek wine crisis:

Global wine production set a new record last year. Even more remarkably, wine production set a new record despite a steady decline during the past five years in the amount of planted vineyards. Fewer acres of vineyards yielding record total production is astonishingly good news for wine production. Italy was the largest producer.

So could it be that somehow France is defying the global trend – as well as the trends in nearby Italy and Greece – and somehow French wine production is suffering? Hardly.

Not only is global wine production improving throughout the world, it is also improving in France. French wine production approached record highs in 2018, recovering from the negative impacts of late spring frosts in 2017 (a negative event that will become rarer if temperatures continue their modest recent rise) that hampered production. See here.

Perhaps global warming is actually harming French wine production … in some alternate universe. However, in the world we live in, French wine production continues to improve as the Earth modestly warms. Despite the lies the climate alarmists and their media mouthpieces tell us.

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Carbon Policies Are ‘Futile Gesture Politics’

A prominent economist says that Britain’s climate and energy policies are ‘futile gesture politics’, and will fail to bring about any change to the climate.

Dr Ruth Lea, who has wide-ranging experience of working in the civil service, the financial sector and policy institutions, says that while politicians celebrate their increasingly ambitious decarbonisation targets, most of the world is ignoring them:

“The UK now represents just 1% of global emissions, so any reduction we make will not even be noticed. And it will be offset many times over by increases in the developing world, which continues to burn cheap coal and gas as fast as it can.”

And Lea warns that politicians’ determination to be seen to ‘do something’ about climate change carries major political risks:

“The decarbonisation programme that we are embarking on will be extraordinarily expensive and will hit businesses and consumers harder every year. That can’t carry on for ever, and eventually a major political price will be paid.”

Dr Lea’s comments mark the publication of a series of her essays on climate policy by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

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Solar Variability And Climate

Talk by Prof. Joanna D. Haigh

Below we present one of the most informative and dispassionate summaries, from a top UK physics professor, on the role of solar variability on climate.

Commenting on Professor Haigh’s presentation, Colin Mill wrote:

“A wonderfully clear discussion of this aspect of the science. Thank you. I was interested to hear Joanna say at 15:39 that the radiometer instrumentation isn’t quite there yet – a very important point to make in the face of those talking about the science being settled. Unfortunately there are many other areas where the instrumentation is, or has been, lacking. I did my Ph.D in cloud microphysics in the 1970s and spent some 20 years in cloud physics research. Clouds remain rather poorly understood while having the potential to massively modify the radiative balance of the Earth interacting, as they do, with both incoming and outgoing radiation over most of the solar spectrum (cf. CO2).

Small changes to, for example, the Cloud Condensation Nucleus spectrum (CCN) could change the albedo and the lifetime of clouds that in turn could affect the radiative balance. Unfortunately, there are many problems on the question of CCN – a lack of any significant and reliable historical measurements combined with an incomplete understanding of the sources (especially those of organic origin that may have been modified by, for example, land usage, changes in vegetation type etc.). Certainly in my day you could depress yourself about your chances of doing meaningful work in cloud physics simply by running two notionally identical CCN counters side by side sampling the same air only to observe that they didn’t agree by factors of 50% or more.”



Joanna Dorothy Haigh, CBE, FRS, FRMetS (born 7 May 1954) is a British physicist and academic. Before her retirement in 2019[5] she was Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. She is a former head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society.

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Matt Canavan challenges Anthony Albanese to voice Adani coal support

The dreaded coal has got the Australian Left all in a twist

Resources Minister Matt Canavan has challenged Labor leader Anthony Albanese to say he supports the Adani coal mining project during his tour of central Queensland this week.

Speaking to Sky News on Monday Senator Canavan said the trip presented a test for Mr Albanese and the Labor Party. “They say now they support the export of coal,” he told Sky News. “I haven’t heard Anthony Albanese say three simple words: ‘I support Adani.’”

Mr Albanese’s visit to regional Queensland comes as the Labor Party lays the foundations for policies it will be taking to the next federal election.

Party members are debating how to approach climate change and how ambitious the party should be in relation to its emissions reduction target.

Labor’s ambivalence of coal and the Adani project have been blamed for former leader Bill Shorten’s poor results in regional Queensland and the Hunter Valley, which saw massive swings against the party.

This was backed by Labor’s scathing internal review, which found ambiguous language around the Adani coal mine cost the party votes in coal mining regions.

Mr Albanese told Nine Newspapers on Monday Australia’s priority should be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under strong global agreements, but that this would not be achieved by stopping coal exports.

He echoed this sentiment when speaking to 2GB Radio on Monday, where he said the scrapping of coal exports would just lead to more coal being used from other places in the world.

“[It would] likely lead to an actual increase in global emissions because much of our coal is much better quality than is available from the alternatives,” Mr Albanese said. “So, we need to be sensible about the way we examine this. We do need to reduce our use of fossil fuels around the world.”

Greens MP Adam Bandt savaged the Labor leader. “As Australia burns and Sydney chokes, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are abandoning climate action. Liberal and Labor value coal more than human life,” he told reporters in Melbourne.

“Coal is fuelling the fires, coal is fuelling the drought, and coal is fuelling the smoke over Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. If you don’t have a plan to get out of coal you don’t have a plan to deal with the climate crisis. We stopped selling asbestos and we need to phase out coal exports too.”

But Mr Albanese said Australia needs a “sensible” approach to dealing with emissions, arguing coal will be phased out by the market anyway. “I think, very clearly, it’s obvious to all there won’t be a new coal-fired power built in Australia. The market is indicating that just won’t happen. There’s nothing stopping it at all except for the economics.”

The Australian revealed on Monday revealed Jenny Hill, the Labor Mayor of Townsville, had lashed the ALP’s “anti-worker” and “disruptive” environmental wing, arguing federal Labor did not have an answer to problems in north and central Queensland and was too focused on “elitists” in capital cities.

Ms Hill’s intervention came as Labor MPs Meryl Swanson and Terri Butler warned at a conference held by a Labor think tank on the weekend against ­talking down coal jobs in favour of lower-paid jobs in the renewables sector.

Mr Albanese told Nine Newspapers the environmental “climate change convoy” of activists led by former Greens leader Bob Brown to Queensland during the election campaign hurt the climate change cause by offending voters.

SOURCE 

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