Ross McKitrick: The only thing wrong with the globalist climate agenda — the people won’t have it
It’s tempting to dismiss the outcome of COP28, the recent United Nations climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates, as mere verbiage, especially the “historic” UAE Consensus about transitioning away from fossil fuels. After all, this is the 28th such conference and the previous ones all pretty much came to nothing. On a chart showing the steady rise in global CO2emissions since 1950 you cannot spot when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol entered into force (2002), with its supposedly historic language binding developed countries to cap their CO2 emissions at five per cent below 1990 levels by 2012, which they didn’t do. The 2015 Paris Agreement also contained “historic” language that bound countries to further deep emission reductions. Yet the COP28 declaration begins with an admission that the parties are not on track for compliance.
Still, we should not overlook the real meaning of the UAE Consensus. COP agreements used to focus on one thing: targets for reducing greenhouse gases. The UAE Consensus is very different. Across its 196 paragraphs and 10 supplementary declarations it’s a manifesto for global central planning. In their own words, some 90,000 government functionaries aspire to oversee and micromanage agriculture, finance, energy, manufacturing, gender relations, health care, air conditioning, building design and countless other economic and social decisions. It’s all supposedly in the name of fighting climate change, but that’s just the pretext. Take climate away and they’d likely appeal to something else.
Climate change doesn’t necessitate such plans. Economists have been studying climate change for many decades and have never considered it grounds to phase out fossil fuels, micromanage society, manage gender relations and so on. Mainstream scientific findings, coupled with mainstream economic analysis, prescribe moderate emission-pricing policies that rely much more on adaptation than mitigation.
The fact that the UAE Consensus is currently non-binding is beside the point. What matters is what the COP28 delegates have said they want to achieve. Two facts stand out: the consensus document announced plans that would cause enormous economic harm if implemented, and it was approved unanimously — yes, by everyone in the room.
The first point is best illustrated by the language around eliminating fossil fuels. Climate policy is supposed to be about optimally reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As technology gradually allows emissions to be de-coupled from fuel use, there may eventually be no need to cut back on fuels. But activist delegates insisted on abolitionist language anyway, making elimination of fossil fuels an end in itself. Such fuels are of course essential for our economic standard of living, and 30 years of economic analysis has consistently shown that, even taking account of emissions, phasing out fuels would do humanity far more harm than good. The Consensus statement ignores this, even while claiming to be guided by “the science.”
The second point refers to the fact that all representatives of all governments worldwide endorsed policies that will, if implemented, do extraordinary harm to their own people. Where governments have made even small attempts to take these radical steps, the public has rebelled. This calls into question whom the COP28 delegates actually “represent.” A few elected officials did attend, but no one voted for the great majority of attendees. And have no doubt: even if some heads of state, whether courageous or foolhardy, did go to COP intent on opposing the overall agenda, they would almost certainly be browbeaten into signing the final package.
The UAE Consensus is the latest indication that the real fault line in contemporary society is not right versus left, it’s the people versus (for lack of a better word) the globalists. A decade ago this term was only heard on the conspiracy fringe. It has since migrated to the mainstream as the most apt descriptor of a permanent transnational bureaucracy that aspires to run everything, even to the public’s detriment, while insulating themselves from democratic limits.
A hallmark of globalists is their credo of “rules for thee but nor for me.” Thousands of delegates fly to Davos or to the year’s COP, many on private jets, to be wined and dined as they advise the rest of us to learn to do without.
On both COVID-19 and climate change, the same elite has invoked “the science,” not in support of good decision-making, but as a talisman to justify everything they do, including censoring public debate. Complex and uncertain matters are reduced to dogmatic slogans by technocrats who force-feed political leaders a one-sided information stream. Experts outside the process are accorded standing based solely on their obeisance to the preferred narrative, not their knowledge or qualifications. Critics are attacked as purveyors of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Any opposition to government plans therefore proves the need to suppress free speech.
Eventually, however, the people get the last word. And despite nonstop fear-mongering about an alleged climate crisis, the people tolerate climate policy only insofar as it costs almost nothing.
The climate movement may think that by embedding itself in the globalist elite it can accelerate policy adoption without needing to win elections. In fact, the opposite is happening. Globalists have co-opted the climate issue to try to sell a grotesque central planning agenda that the public has repeatedly rejected. If the UAE Consensus is the future of climate policy, climate policy’s failure is guaranteed.
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Revisiting the greenhouse effect—a hydrological perspective
Demetris Koutsoyiannis & Christos Vournas
Abstract and figures
Quantification of the greenhouse effect is a routine procedure in the framework of hydrological calculations of evaporation. According to the standard practice, this is made considering the water vapour in the atmosphere, without any reference to the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), which, however, in the last century has escalated from 300 to about 420 ppm. As the formulae used for the greenhouse effect quantification were introduced 50-90 years ago, we examine whether these are still representative or not, based on eight sets of observations, distributed in time across a century.
We conclude that the observed increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration has not altered, in a discernible manner, the greenhouse effect, which remains dominated by the quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere, and that the original formulae used in hydrological practice remain valid. Hence, there is no need for adaptation due to increased CO2 concentration.
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How Science Exposes Man-Made Global Warming & Pandemic Fakery
Independent scientists are making the link between the two biggest science frauds – climate and the pandemic. In a new video presentation Dr Denis Rancourt reveals how the junk science has been crafted to fool us all.
Too many scientists fear to objectively describe what is a man or woman or say how many genders there are because of wokeism and poisonous post-normal science. That is the canary in the coal mine to this systemic woke dismantling of sane, objective reasoning.
But pushback is coming from advocates for the traditional scientific method. One such champion is Dr Denis Rancourt, a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. In his latest public address captured on video There Was No Pandemic and There is No Climate Change, Dr Rancourt puts forward the case that almost all that ails modern science and medicine has a root cause.
We are hearing more about The Big Picture – a broad-view urged on us by independent scientists from diverse disciplines who, in their online community forums, are typifying much of what my own organisation has worked so hard to do since foundation in 2011.
For well over a decade Principia Scientific International has been calling for more high caliber multi-speciality scientists and researchers to join together to resist the rise of monolithic corporate and political misuse of science, heavily influenced by secretive NGO’s.
We have been faced with the most well-funded psyop dominating public institutions and mainstream media. Only those with the intellectual acumen and intuitive curiosity to address the underlying malaise of western society will identify the true causes and shine a light on the challenges faced in turning around our decline.
Dr Rancourt offered this Reality check:
“There is a large structurally embedded industry of doomsday narrative. In addition, individuals are reared in a dominance hierarchy and therefore constantly seek messaging about fitting in. The result is that we adopt the State religion. Even if the State is occupied by an exploitative elite, we continue to uphold and follow any State religion that has been sufficiently implanted.
In this case, the State religion is that we are cared-for by mother earth but that our bad behaviour is poisoning mother earth and that we are therefore all at risk, unless we adopt the new stringent conditions that should be imposed globally. Non-believers should be rooted out and isolated. We should demand that all our peers and our representatives do what is proscribed by the State religion.
Meanwhile corporate criminality, while dressed in the colours of the State religion, will continue at an accelerated rate, and our minds and bodies will continue to be occupied.3”
At Principia Scientiific International our path coincided with Dr Denis Rancourt over half a dozen years ago when he entered the online debate over the scientific cornerstone of the man-made global warming hoax – the greenhouse gas theory.
Our groundbreaking book, Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory earned widespread favorable reviews.
As a team of mostly applied scientists we proved that carbon dioxide is not a devil, it is a saintly blessing. It is not the climate control knob, it is essential plant food. Not only that, this trace atmospheric gas (a mere 0.04 percent of the atmosphere) cannot possibly make our climate warmer as Industry Experts show: CO2 Worse Than Useless In Trapping Heat/Delaying Cooling.
In fact, award-winning Dr Pierre Latour, a senior scientist at DuPont specialising in real-world CO2 applications showed that carbon dioxide cools our planet in four provable ways. [1]
Our latest book, Slaying The Virus And Vaccine Dragon similarly debunks vaccine lies during the COVID19 pandemic. [2]
Dr Rancourt is succeeding in helping shift the discussion towards joining all the dots. Not just redolent in academic argumentation befitting a seasoned university professor, he is open to public debate, unlike the academics on the alarmism gravy train.
Like us, Rancourt discerns that the key players in these scams share a Malthusian malcontent about the success of capitalism and their intent is to decimate the world’s population on the altar of ‘saving the planet‘ by introducing unelected one world government communism as per “You will own nothing and be happy.”
https://principia-scientific.com/how-science-exposes-man-made-global-warming-pandemic-fakery/
**************************************************Major backflip by Australian government on electric vehicles outrages environmentalists
A promise by the Albanese government to unveil mandatory pollution caps for new vehicles sold in Australia by the end of 2023 has been broken, sparking fears its landmark EV policy will be put on ice.
In April, Labor committed to introducing a new fuel efficiency standard, with a favoured model to be unveiled 'before the end of this year'.
Under the standard, automotive brands will be penalised when they sell cars with high-polluting internal combustion engines in an effort to spur the uptake of electric and other low-emissions vehicles.
Aside from Russia, Australia is the only developed nation without fuel efficiency standards.
As a result, passenger vehicles can emit as much as 50 per cent more carbon dioxide than in similar overseas markets, as less efficient cars are still imported to Australia.
At the same time, just eight per cent of new cars sold in Australia in the last 12 months were electric vehicles, while this figure was almost 17 per cent in Europe.
But despite assurances of long-awaited fuel efficiency standards by year's end, Transport Minister Catherine King is still yet to unveil the proposed legislation.
In September, modelling work undertaken by ACIL Allen for the proposed standard which was due to be completed in August was extended through to January 30 2024.
Weighing on the proposal are fears that against a backdrop of the rising cost of living, the standards - which could potentially limit the number of cars available to consumers or increase the cost for some high-polluting models - could open the government up to Coalition scare campaign in the lead up to the next election, industry sources said.
Others said Ms King had been consumed by other matters across her portfolios including her controversial decision to block Qatar Airways' bid to increase flight capacity and the independent review of Australia's $120 billion infrastructure pipeline.
In a statement, a spokesman for Transport Minister Catherine King would not provide a timeline for when the proposed standards could be released.
'Designing the best possible fuel efficiency standard (FES) to suit Australia's circumstance is complex, and the Australian Government is committed to taking the time to get it right,' the spokesman said.
But with Australians heading back to the polls by May 2025 at the latest, advocates for a more ambitious standard feared the policy could be shelved in its entirety.
Independent member for North Sydney, Kylea Tink, who has spearheaded calls for stringent fuel efficiency standards in federal parliament, said the Albanese government had demonstrably failed to meet its commitment.
'It's definitely a pretty clear case of a broken promise,' Ms Tink said.
'It's worse than frustrating that we're going to end 2023 without fuel efficiency standards ... there is no line of sight on them.'
Citing the failed commitment by two previous Labor governments to introduce a similar efficiency standard, Ms Tink said it was imperative that the government was held to account on its promise.
'Up until now, at least the government's been prepared to say: 'Yes, they're definitely coming and here's the timeline',' Ms Tink added.
'Now there's no timeline - that really concerns me.'
The Climate Council's head of advocacy, Dr Jennifer Rayner, agreed that it was critical that the government delivered on its commitment, ensuring access to cleaner and cheaper-to-run cars.
'Every day we delay putting a fuel efficiency standard in place, Aussies are missing out on the three-in-one benefits of cheaper costs, cleaner air, and greater choice,' Ms Rayner said.
However, car dealers and their industry association representatives have urged the government to take a more cautious approach to the new standards, citing the need the for strong community support for the change.
Tony Weber, chief executive of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, said despite the delay, it was paramount that time was taken to ensure the standard reflected the demands of the Australian car market.
'It's absolutely critical that the government takes time and gets this right. That's critical for environmental outcomes and for consumers,' Mr Weber said.
'There's no point in going for what others are calling for - a stringent target - which means essentially in the very near future, the only cars that will be able to be sold will be complete electric vehicles.
'There are so many segments of the market that there is not an electric vehicle capability among mainstream brands - and that's before we talk about price.'
Mr Weber also pointed to the need for a scale-up in supporting infrastructure to drive the uptake of the low-emission vehicles.
'We need to have the product supported in the marketplace ... rather than people who just purely talk about a target.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12913993/Albanese-backflip-electric-vehicles.html
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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