UK: Met Office “Dramatic Increase” Temp Claim Is Unprovable

Earlier this month, the Met Office claimed that ‘climate change’ was causing a “dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes and number of temperature records in the U.K.”

Given what we now know from recent freedom of information (FOI) revelations about the state of its nationwide temperature measuring network, it is difficult to see how the Met Office can publish such a statement and keep a straight face.

The claims were the headline findings in the operation’s latest state of the U.K. climate report and are said to be based on “observations from the U.K.’s network of weather stations, using data extending back to the 19th Century to provide long term context”.

That would be the network where nearly eight out of ten stations are deemed by the World Meteorological Organisation to have ‘uncertainties’ – i.e., potential errors – between two and five degrees C.

The same junk stations that provide ‘record’ daily temperatures often in the same places, such as the urban heat furnace that is Heathrow airport. The same junk measurements that the Met Office uses to claim collated measurements down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade.

The WMO rates weather stations by the degree of nearby unnatural or natural temperature corruption.

Classes 4 and 5 have possible corruptions of 2°C and 5°C respectively and these account for the vast majority of the Met Office sites.

The WMO suggests that Class 5 should not be used to provide an accurate measurement of nearby air temperatures, yet nearly a third of the Met Office sites are classified in this super-junk category.

Only classes 1 and 2 have no uncertainties attached and only these should be used for serious scientific observational work. But, inexplicably, the Met Office has very few such uncorrupted sites.

Even more worryingly, it seems to show no sign of significantly increasing the paltry number of pristine sites.

Human-caused and urban heat encroachment are the problems, with extreme cases found at airports, which can add many degrees of warming to the overall record.

But this has been known for some time, and it is a mystery why the Met Office has not done anything about it. Recent FOI disclosures reveal that over eight in 10 of the 113 stations opened in the last 30 years are in junk classes 4 and 5.

Worse still, 81 percent of stations started in the last 10 years are junk, as are eight of the 13 new sites in the last five years.

It’s almost as if the Met Office is actively seeking higher readings to feed into its constant catastrophisation of weather in the interests of ‘Net Zero’ promotion. Whatever the reason – incompetence or political messaging – serious science would appear to be the loser.

As currently set up, the Met Office network is incapable of providing a realistic guide to natural air temperatures across the UK. Using the data to help calculate global temperatures is equally problematic.

Of course, the Met Office can rely on its helpful messengers in the mainstream media not to breath a word about this growing scientific scandal. The central plank of ‘Net Zero’ fear-mongering is rising temperatures and claims that ‘extreme’ weather is increasing as a result.

Temperatures have risen a bit over the last 200 years since the lifting of the mini ice age, the clue to the pleasant bounce being obvious to all. But this is not enough to force the insanity of ‘Net Zero’ on humanity, so fanciful climate models and bloated temperature databases are also required.

The compliant media are uninterested, but the cynicism and outright derision over the Met Office’s temperature antics are growing. The Met Office regularly posts on X and it cannot be unaware that a growing number of replies are less than complimentary.

Last week, it announced the “warmest day of the year” based on measurements taken at Heathrow.

The following are a few of the more polite comments it received:

What is it about LHR that could make it hotter than surrounding areas? I will give you a clue – concrete and hot jet exhausts maybe?

Real temperatures should be taken out in the open away from London.

…manipulating temperatures to fit the climate agenda.

Might as well measure inside an oven.

It’s all made up to fit your agenda.

I have a brighter red highlight in my fonts that I can lend you if you think the one you choose does not does not push the propaganda enough!

Remind us where you were taking temperature recordings in the last century, because it wasn’t on the roasting tarmac of airports.

Urban heat islands should not count and you know it but the grift continues.

In its recent annual report, the Met Office claimed that “our new analysis of these observations really shines a light on the fastest changing aspects of our weather as a consequence of climate change”.

It is not just temperature data that is brought to the ‘Net Zero’ table, but rainfall as well. The indefatigable investigative journalist Paul Homewood took a look at how the Met Office spun precipitation in a recent article in the Daily Sceptic.

He agreed with the Met Office’s claim that rainfall has risen since 1961, but asked why that year was chosen to start the timeline. The graph below shows why.

England and Wales are rainy countries, but their island position in the North Atlantic leads to regular seasonal, yearly and longer-term decadal variations. The year 1961 fell within a drier interlude, and current totals are similar to those around the 1930s, 1880s and 1780s.

Helped by the widespread availability of satellite images and measurements, the Met Office does an excellent job in forecasting short-term weather and is of great benefit to shipping, the military, agriculture and the general population.

But the state body funded by over £100 million a year is clearly riddled with ‘green’ activists who, on the evidence that a number of sceptical journalists have presented, are using unreliable figures, carefully-curated statistics and inaccurate measurements to promote their own attachment to the insanity of hydrocarbon elimination.

https://principia-scientific.com/met-office-dramatic-increase-temp-claim-is-unprovable/

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Facebook removes pro-nuclear energy content

Dozens of Facebook users promoting pro-nuclear lobby group Nuclear for Australia’s content have had posts removed for being “misleading”, triggering claims some people are trying to “suppress vital information that could change the future of our country”.

Months out from the federal election – in which nuclear will be a key issue – and after anti-nuclear groups had their content blocked or accounts temporarily deleted across social media platforms, Nuclear for Australia has received 44 complaints from supporters who have had posts taken down.

The users had shared a ­Nuclear for Australia petition to legalise nuclear energy and a video interview between the organisation’s founder, Will Shackel, and businessman Dick Smith supporting the energy source in June and July.

But a Meta spokeswoman played down the issue, denying it had censored the two posts The Australian was able to share with it.

“Based on the information available, we believe the content was removed due to a technical error by our automated systems. The error was identified and fixed in late July and all impacted posts were reinstated,” the spokeswoman said.

Facebook users were told their posts were removed because “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way” and “your post goes against our community standards on spam”.

“We want you to share freely with others. We only remove things or restrict people to keep the community respectful and safe,” Meta says in an automated response.

Mr Shackel will email supporters on Wednesday asking for contributions to “help us bypass the roadblocks and bring the truth to light”.

“The truth about nuclear energy could transform Australia’s future but has been blocked from reaching the people who need to hear it most,” he says in a copy of the email.

“This isn’t just a minor inconvenience – it’s a clear indication of the political will of some to suppress vital information that could change the future of our country.”

Mr Smith, whose face and voice have been used in fraudulent ads online, said it was impossible for the government to legislate against removal of material but they needed to step in and treat Meta and other tech giants as publishers, ensuring they were liable for what they put on their platforms.

“You end up with this situation where they let through fraudulent ads run by criminal gangs but at the same time they delete genuine posts,” Mr Smith said.

Renew Economy, which posts clean energy news and analysis, had the same automated response from Meta as Nuclear for Australia did when a post sharing analysis by University of Queensland economist John Quiggin was removed on July 22.

The analysis was headlined “Czech nuclear deal shows CSIRO GenCost is too optimistic, and new nukes are hopelessly uneconomic” and found building two to four megawatt nuclear plants in Australia would “probably cost $50bn-$100bn, and not be complete until well into the 2040s”.

The Climate Council had a TikTok video hitting out at the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy taken down on July 21 for violating community guidelines of “integrity and authenticity”.

The video reappeared a few days later after a staff member appealed, saying the video was ­science-based and had been reviewed by researchers at the organisation prior to it going live.

The Climate Council says it understands TikTok pulls videos only after users lodge complaints and is investigating how many complaints it takes to get a post removed.

The Australian Conservation Foundation had its account on X suspended on July 22 for violating the social media platform’s rules “against evading suspension” after a user reported them.

The organisation appealed the decision and after the ACF made contact with an Australian-based employee at X, the account was switched back on that night.

ACF’s X profile was suspended for a second time on August 4 with no warning and was down for nearly two days, with the social media platform saying its account had been flagged as spam by mistake.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said at the time he didn’t always agree with the ACF but the suspension was “another outrageous example of social media trying to shut down voices for climate action”.

Mr Shackel posted on X: “Breaking: Australian Conservation Foundation has had its X account suspended. Perhaps the disinformation caught up with them …”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety was examining the influence and impacts of social media on Australian society, including how digital platforms influenced what Australians saw and heard online.

“Digital platforms have a range of community standards, terms of service and policies to support the integrity of the information and accounts on their platforms,” she said.

“Debate on matters of public interest is a hallmark of our democracy.”

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said social media platforms should not censor legitimate political debate, noting freedom of expression was fundamental to society.

“The last thing we need are digital giants telling us what we can and cannot say but the Albanese government sees things differently,” he said. “If its deeply flawed misinformation bill had become law, political censorship by big tech would have become rampant.”

Mr Bowen was approached for comment but his office referred The Australian to his previous remarks attacking the removal of Renew Economy’s Facebook post and the ACF’s X account.

Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said: “Labor and others should not rob Australians of their right to a mature conversation about the role zero-emissions nuclear energy could play in Australia as part of a balanced energy mix.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/facebook-removes-pronuclear-energy-content/news-story/03f0994c82eb006062be542a7898276f

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Ford cancels plans for Electric SUV

Ford Motor is cancelling plans for a large electric sport-utility vehicle and expects to take US$1.9 billion in related special charges and writedowns, as automakers continue adjusting their EV plans because of softer-than-expected demand.

The Dearborn, Mich., automaker said it is scrapping plans for an electric three-row SUV, citing tough pricing pressure as automakers resort to aggressive discounts to move their EVs. This spring, Ford had said it would delay plans for that model by two years, to a 2027 release date.

Ford instead will offer hybrid gas-electric versions of future large, three-row SUVs, a popular vehicle category that includes the brand’s Explorer and Expedition nameplates.

The company’s moves are the latest example of automakers unwinding EV-investment plans they made years ago, when it looked like there was big untapped consumer demand for battery-powered models. There has been more hesitancy among car shoppers than auto executives initially expected, with surveys showing concerns about high prices and finding places to charge.

General Motors last month pushed back the timeline on the opening of a suburban Detroit factory that is being renovated to build electric pick-ups and delayed the release of a Buick EV.

Ford also pushed back the launch of a new electric pick-up truck by one year, until 2027, the second time it has pushed back the timeline. In addition, Ford said it would trim its capital spending on fully electric vehicles to about 30% of its budget, from 40%.

“Based on where the market is and where the customer is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions,” Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said.

Ford shares rose 1.5% in midday trading Wednesday. The stock remains down 11% in 2024.

Ford has said its EV business is on pace to lose about $5 billion this year. In the three-month period ended in June, the automaker lost about $44,000 on every electric vehicle that it sold.

Executives have said the company is trying to reduce the losses on its current EV line-up while making sure future offerings turn a profit.

Carmakers are trying to strike a tricky balance on electric vehicles. Tougher tailpipe-emissions rules, along with the rapid rise of Chinese EV makers, are pressuring them to invest in the technology. But consumer interest in EVs has waned after a burst of enthusiasm.

For example, while Ford is recalibrating its plans to include more hybrids, it also is moving ahead with the rollout of several full EVs. It will start making an electric commercial van in 2026 and two new pick-up trucks a year later.

One of the trucks will be a midsize pick-up, built using a new, lower-cost EV system that has been under development for nearly two years by a team of about 100 Ford engineers in Irvine, Calif. Led by former Tesla executive Alan Clarke, that project is designed to produce several electric models that Ford says will be profitable and allow the company to compete with Chinese EV makers.

Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley has said that China’s EV companies have the advantage of a lower-cost supply chain and that Ford needs to find ways to lower its own costs to compete.

“We believe that the fitness of the Chinese in EVs will eventually wash over our entire industry in all regions,” Farley told analysts last month.

Ford said it would take a special, noncash charge of $400 million to write down expenses related to the cancellation of the electric SUV. The move also may result in additional expenses of $1.5 billion, which would be reflected as special items in future quarters, the company said.

GM and other traditional automakers also have pulled back or delayed some EV investments, citing slower-than-expected demand for vehicles that run on batteries alone.

Sales of fully electric models rose 6.8% through the first half of the year, according to Motor Intelligence data, a sharp deceleration from near 50% growth in 2023.

Meanwhile, sales of hybrid vehicles have risen sharply over the past year, and many automakers have said they plan to roll out more of them as an interim step for customers who aren’t ready to make the leap to a fully electric model.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/ford-cancels-plans-for-electric-suv/news-story/b17b87abc9e7933a6b79c2d3a95a25cd

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Huge Increase in Coral Produces Third Year of Record HIGHS on the Great Barrier Reef

Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.

Travelling back from the reality inhabited by the Guardian, it can be reported that last year’s gains were eye-catchingly large. On the Northern GBR, hard coral cover leapt from 35.8% to 39.5%, in the central area it rose from 30.7% to 34%, while in the south it went from 34% to 39.1%. The report is the result of monitoring of hard coral cover reefs from August 2023 to June 2024 by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The percentage of hard coral cover is a standard measurement of reef conditions used by scientists and is said to provide a simple and robust measure of reef health. Similar reports have been published by the AIMS over the last 38 years.

For the first two years of record coral growth, the narrative-driven mainstream media ignored the recovery story. But this year, the suspicious might contend, something had to be done to blunt the sensational news of the stonking rises. Help has come in the form of a paper just published in Nature which uses proxy temperature measurements and climate models to suggest temperatures around the vast reef area are the highest recorded in 400 years. This time period is the blink of an ecological eye-lid given that coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years during periods when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide have been markedly different. Nevertheless, this is said to pose an existential threat despite it being known that sub-tropical corals thrive between 24°C-32°C, and in fact seem to grow faster in warmer waters.

Natural bleaching, when the coral expels algae and turns white, can occur with temporary local temperature changes, but evidence from many years of scientific observation suggests the corals often and quickly recover. Long term changes in water temperature – tiny compared to coral’s optimum conditions – pose no threat, but alarmists concentrate on the bleaching events to warn of possible ecological collapse. The Guardian noted a recent fifth mass bleaching in eight years across the reef, driven, it claimed, by “global heating”. So far, its readers are in the dark as to how this squares with the recent record growth.

A decade of mass bleaching, relentlessly catastrophised in the interests of Net Zero by activists in the media, academia and politics, does not appear to have done much harm to the recent growth in the Northern GBR.

Or the central area.

Or even in the south where the water temperatures are slightly cooler.

To read the latest AIMS report is to read the best possible spin on the story that the reef is heading for disaster. And, of course, it is all down to the unproven changes in climate that are said to be caused by human activity. It is claimed this will cause more frequent and long-lasting marine ‘heatwaves’, a product no doubt of a climate model. It is generally suggested that these heatwaves and mass bleaching were rare prior to the 1990s, although how anyone can know this is a mystery. Detailed GBR observations and temperature recordings barely stretch back a few decades.

As is often the case with publicly-funded operations, the political message is never far from the surface. Thus we learn that “enabling coral reefs to survive these stressful conditions requires a combination of a reduction in global greenhouse emissions to stabilise temperatures… and the development of interventions to help reefs adapt to and recover from the effects of climate change”. No doubt this last proposal requires large amounts of money from the taxpayer to cover the costs of such worthy work.

Not everyone goes along with the coral fear-mongering. The distinguished scientist Dr. Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for 40 years and notes that coral numbers have “exploded” in recent years. He says that all 3,000 reefs in the world’s largest system have excellent coral. “Not a single reef or even a single species of reef life has been lost since British settlement,” he reports. The impact of bleaching is “routinely exaggerated by the media and some scientific organisations”. In his view, the public is being deceived about the reef. “How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science community which has embraced emotion, ideology and raw self-interest to maintain funding,” he observes.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/08/09/huge-increase-in-coral-produces-third-year-of-record-highs-on-the-great-barrier-reef/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Energy transition powered by wishful thinking

Changing an energy system is challenging. Governments have to ensure a reliable supply of electricity all day, every day. Ideally, in an orderly transition there would be like for like capacity replacement. The Albanese government has failed to balance the objectives of affordability and reliability as it embarked on its decarbonisation strategy. It legislated a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 that needs renewable energy to reach the 82 per cent target.

The government’s focus has centred on meeting these targets regardless of costs to households, the economy and our national interest. Legitimate concerns are described as the actions of “bad-faith actors” using “mistruths and outright misinformation”. Such comments may find favour in a speech to a sympathetic audience but do nothing to advance an important debate about our country’s future.

Any serious analysis of the energy transition should be grounded in fact, not wishful thinking. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Anticipating the loss of 90 per cent of our coal-fired generation in the next decade and with looming gas shortages, we need to ensure reliable baseload power into the future. The evidence shows the unreliability of intermittent, weather-dependent renewables. In July, the penetration of renewables in the grid fell to a low 10.2 per cent. It would be folly to believe you could rely on a predominantly renewables grid to power the economy.

Neither can there be any certainty about power prices with weather-dependent renewables. Across the past few months increased demand for heating has driven huge price volatility. Together with the lack of wind generation and a small number of unplanned forced outages, spot prices spiked to record levels.

On July 29 all the national electricity market regions registered simultaneous spot prices hikes at 18:00. The figures, expressed in megawatt hours, ranged from $3500 in Tasmania to $4092 in South Australia. The next evening at that time, prices rose between $15,600 in Tasmania and $17,377 in Victoria. At 20:15 the SA price reached $17,499.94 a megawatt hour. SA, with the highest penetration of renewables, took the prize for the highest prices.

So much for Energy Minister Chris Bowen trumpeting that wholesale power prices were falling. In the June quarter wholesale prices averaged $133 a megawatt hour, 23 per cent higher than the corresponding quarter last year. Far from receiving a cut of $275, prices have risen by 22 per cent, up to $1000, and will continue on this upward trajectory. Our power prices are among the world’s highest.

Energy poverty will continue growing as the costs of 10,000km of new transmission are still to be passed on in our power bills.

Last year, with falling investment in renewables, calls for greater government support grew louder. Bowen came to the rescue with yet another subsidy. His capacity investment scheme is based on taxpayers underwriting a vast expansion of 32 gigawatts of renewable energy.

Future risk will be transferred from investors in renewables to the taxpayer in secret contracts for difference. If revenues fall below the floor, taxpayers will fund the difference. Gas critical for firming and the viability of manufacturing was excluded from the scheme. We’re still in the dark about the total system costs of the transition, with estimates ranging from hundreds of billions into the trillions.

What are the aggregate costs from the public purse? Labor’s promise of transparency and accountability is undermined by non-disclosure and secrecy. Hopefully the Senate can pursue the public’s right to know.

There’s little progress to date in meeting the 2030 emissions and renewables targets. In Labor’s first year emissions grew by four million tonnes, a 0.8 per cent increase to June last year. Emissions across last year fell by a mere 0.5 per cent, registering a 29 per cent reduction below the 2005 base level. The Climate Change Authority’s 2023 report said the government “was not yet on track to meet its 2030 targets” and its policy agenda had “not yet translated into the emissions reductions we need”. Any claim the government is on track to reach a 42 per cent reduction, just falling short of target, is not based on fact, just wishful thinking.

Renewables have reached the halfway point at 40 per cent, with six years left to meet the target. The minister previously advised the 82 per cent target required installing 40 7MW wind turbines every month and 22,000 solar panels every day to 2030 as well as the transmission links. That won’t happen. Opposition in the regions is growing, even in Labor’s heartland seats, while social licence declines. Every transmission project is well over time, storage capacity is inadequate, Snowy 2.0 is delayed for years and battery storage limited to two to four hours.

There’s a lot at stake in this energy transition, so it’s necessary to see through the spin. According to reputable experts, the 2030 targets won’t be met. Despite this, the government is considering raising the 2035 emissions target to between 65 per cent and 75 per cent.

If we’re to avoid the pathway to economic calamity it’s surely time for a plan B informed by independent energy experts. The country needs an orderly energy transition plan that’s grounded in reality, not wishful thinking.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/energy-transition-powered-by-wishful-thinking/news-story/0a72a42ad0d894e4eab0949b0e6e5488

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Yet More Calls To Make Climate Skepticism Illegal

Given how rigid the official orthodoxy is when it comes to the public health ‘crises’, the ‘climate emergency’ and the supposed moral defects of Western civilization, it’s no surprise that the slur words of choice today are “anti-vaxxer”, “racist”, “homophobe”, “Islamophobe”, “far right” and, not least, “climate denier”

The “climate denier” epithet is used to shut down rational debate on the climate with specious claims about “settled science”.

As the physicist Steve Koonin says:

“I find it particularly abhorrent to have a call for open scientific discussion [on climate change] equated with Holocaust denial, especially since the Nazis killed more than two hundred of my relatives in Eastern Europe.”

The scurrilous epithet resurfaced last week in an article in the Guardian entitled – cue shock, horror – “Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of U.S. Congress.”

How much longer will this heresy be tolerated?

In an interview on GB News with Andrew Doyle, British environmentalist Jim Dale demanded the criminalisation of climate denialism. He said that “climate deniers” are “dangerous” for society and their scepticism about Net Zero “pollutes the discourse”.

Mr. Dale demurred in spelling out just exactly what sanctions should be applied to “illegal” opinions about ‘climate change’, stating that it would be up to politicians like Sir Keir Starmer.

That interview took place three months ago, and Starmer is now Prime Minister. Having moved from his previous role as the Director of Public Prosecutions to Parliament and then to the highest political office in the U.K., his response to last week’s riots has been to push for quick and harsh sentences, threatening freedom of speech.

Sky News reported on Thursday that a woman was arrested over a social media post on the Southport stabbing attack that killed three little girls and injured several others. Evidently, her media post was considered “dangerous” as she publicly shared a mistaken description of the perpetrator of the Southport killings.

The question of her intentions did not seem to be an issue in that arrest, although she still hasn’t been charged.

The U.S. Supreme Court holds that the legal threshold from protected to unprotected speech is crossed when the words in question are “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and they’re “likely to incite or produce such action”.

Both those tests have to be met for the words to lose their protected status under the First Amendment, something known as the Brandenburg test.

In the U.K., the land of the Magna Carta, recent court cases suggest that no such test is necessary for criminal conviction for “stirring up violence” online or indeed even for believing in “forms of toxic ideology which has [sic] the potential to threaten public safety and security”.

The blurring of the line between “criminal thought” and criminal conduct is a sad reflection of jurisprudence in the U.K.

One day before the arrest of the woman who posted inaccurate information about the Southport killer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, warned:

“We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media to look for this material, and then follow up with arrests…

You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false.”

UK Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told a reporter in response to a question about Elon Musk supposedly “whipping up hatred” on X:

“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.”

The purpose of blaming the riots on social media, of course, is that it deflects from the real issue: a great many Britons disapprove of the government’s complicity in the scale of the mass immigration of the past two decades.

That ‘thoughtcrime’ has fueled the riots in the country is reflected in the deluge of mainstream media headlines singing from the same hymn sheet:

Reuters: “Misinformation fuels riots”

BBC News: “Social media misinformation ‘fanned riot flames’ in North East”

CNBC: “Online disinformation sparked a wave of far-right violence”

Sky News: “Southport attack misinformation fuels far-right discourse on social media”

CNN: “U.K. riots show how social media can fuel real-life harm. It’s only getting worse”

Time: “Misinformation Stoked Anti-Migrant Riots”

In an Orwellian world where the carrying of machetes on the streets of British cities may more easily escape prosecution than the “far right thuggery” of “keyboard warriors”, Mr. Dale’s wish to criminalise “misinformation” about ‘climate change’ may come true.

Dis- or misinformation is whatever the state says it is. The moral crusade is the war over disinformation with little discussion of underlying policy issues. Policy choices supportive of a ‘Net Zero’ ‘fossil fuel’-free electric grid by 2030 are non-partisan “givens” – with little debate in or out of parliament – as the Covid lockdowns were when they were imposed.

Thus it is no surprise that the Counter Disinformation Unit which targeted dissent during Covid has been rebooted by the Starmer government as the National Security Online Information Team to monitor social media in the wake of the riots.

Will the reborn secretive Covid-era spy agency start ‘flagging’ social media posts that question Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State at the oxymoronically named Department of Energy Security and Net Zero?

Never mind that a ‘fossil fuel’-free electricity grid in Britain by 2030 – the interim goal enroute to a fully Net Zero Britain by 2050 – “is as likely as the second coming of Christ”, as David Starkey said in a recent interview.

Removal of climate contrarian posts on social media is bad enough on its own, but will it eventually become a prosecutable offense in the UK to point out the tension between ‘Net Zero’ and energy security, or to assert that ‘Net Zero’ policy targets constitute an onslaught on people’s standards of living and a denial of reality?

Will some future Britain sport an unelected offshoot of the judiciary, paid to hunt down, prosecute and jail those who dare to dispute the climate scam?

https://principia-scientific.com/yet-more-calls-to-make-climate-skepticism-illegal/

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Australia: Activists ‘stand in way of Indigenous economic empowerment’, says Roy Ah-See

Green activists are abusing land rights acts at the cost of economic empowerment and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is failing to listen to the Aboriginal authority on the lands of a vetoed $1bn gold mine, one of the most ­respected leaders of the Wiradjuri nation warns.

Despite her own department originally approving the project and the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council challenging the grounds of her decision, Ms Plibersek has said she declared an Indigenous protection order over a Regis Resources goldmining project near Blayney because of its importance to the Wiradjuri people of central NSW.

Ms Plibersek was holding firm on Monday as she came under ­attack from both the Business Council of Australia and the Coalition for her decision. BCA chief executive Bran Black warned of an investment drain and opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman ­Jacinta Nampijinpa Price called the veto a “serious threat to economic development for Indigenous Australians”.

Last Friday, Ms Plibersek said: “Because I accept that the headwaters of the Belubula River are of particular significance to the ­Wiradjuri/Wiradyuri people in ­accordance with their tradition, I have decided to protect them.”

Roy Ah-See – one of the most senior Wiradjuri leaders on the national stage and the former chair of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council – said the Labor frontbencher was wrong to prefer the views of opponents over the written advice of the ­Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council.

Mr Ah-See said he was not speaking on behalf of the group, but wanted to speak up for the ­recognised cultural authority of the local land council.

“If it’s got the support of the local Aboriginal land council that should be enough for the minister to listen to the recognised Aboriginal party,” he said.

“If you don’t have that structure, you have chaos … We can have anyone ringing up saying they’re Wiradjuri and it doesn’t feel right to me. That’s why the land council is so important ­because in order to become a member there are certain requirements and restrictions. They are the statutory authority.”

Mr Ah-See said environmentalists believed Aboriginal lands should be locked up.

But economic empowerment for Aboriginal people in Blayney should come first, he added.

“The green attitude is that all our land should be locked up for environmental national parks and that wasn’t the intent of the NSW land rights legislation,“ the Wiradjuri leader said.

“The environmental view is that Aboriginal people should be environmentalists, that’s not true. That shoe doesn’t fit. We are balanced. It is about economic empowerment for us.

“We want to create economic opportunities for the future generations and we are not going to do that by locking up our land and using them as environmental corridors or offsets for other developers. That’s crazy.”

The BCA predicted an investment drain due to unwieldy planning and regulation in the wake of the Albanese government’s eleventh-hour decision to stop the $1bn goldmine.

 Orange Land Council’s own heritage committee “truth tested” claims about the impact of the McPhillamys project, finding “they could not be substantiated”.

“The proposed development would not impact any known sites or artefacts of high significance,” the land council wrote to the NSW Independent Planning Commission last year.

Mr Black said that if projects were approved under federal and state law they shouldn’t then be put at risk by activist inspired lawfare. This followed an extraordinary statement to the Australian Stock Exchange by Regis Resources on Monday, criticising Ms Plibersek’s decision to declare an Indigenous protection order over the project, despite the minister having approved it under commonwealth environmental laws.

The resources sector has warned of a dangerous precedent set by Ms Plibersek’s intervention last week to accept a section 10 application under the 1984 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Heritage Protection Act to protect the land on which a tailings dam for the mine had already been approved by the NSW and federal government.

“I constantly hear from CEOs that Australia is missing out on major investments because our planning and regulation systems are difficult to navigate, duplicative and cumbersome,” Mr Black said.

Sky News host Chris Kenny says resource projects being blocked because of “Indigenous heritage claims” has the mining industry “worried” about the sovereign risk of trying to invest in Australia.

“We need an approval system which balances economic, environmental and social benefits of projects and provides transparent decisions.

“If projects are supported by communities and meet all the approval requirements, they should not be put at risk by activist actions or lawfare.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/indigenous/activists-stand-in-way-of-indigenous-economic-empowerment-says-roy-ahsee/news-story/9309442394be1996f4026bd3430ab19f

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No, Evie Magazine, Climate Change is Not Causing Anxiety

Evie Magazine, a conservative-leaning women’s publication, recently posted an article titled “Climate Change Anxiety Is A Cause For The Decline In The Birth Rate,” in which the author claims that human-caused global warming is leading to climate anxiety which misdirects its wrath at larger families. This is mostly false. Climate change is not producing anxiety so much as false and misleading alarmist media coverage is, but it is true that blaming large families for bad weather is equally wrong.

The article begins with writer Carolyn Ferguson claiming that “last year was the hottest year on record for the world,” and that the United States is somehow warming faster than the rest of the world, and that “many are feeling the effects of global warming this year.” This is false.

The idea that any given country is heating up faster than the rest of the world has been done to death, and has been claimed for just about every single country on the planet. It should be obvious that every place on earth cannot be warming faster than the rest of the world. Scientists are selecting regions and comparing them independently over different timeframes, using different datasets and methods, whatever timeframe is most optimal to show the most warming. This makes these comparisons basically worthless.

The fact for the United States is that the record of high temperature anomalies, that is, extreme heat, has not shown an increase in those high temperature events since the best records begin in 2005.

Likewise, as discussed in this Climate Realism post, the change in the number of days with temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit has actually declined for the majority of the country. Only 10 U.S. states show an increasing trend.

Even looking at proxy data globally which give an idea of ancient temperatures do not indicate we are in a period that can be described as “the hottest on record.” Today’s temperatures according to some sources appear similar to that of the Medieval or Roman warm periods, roughly 1000 to 2500 years ago, respectively. Media claims to the contrary are just propaganda.

The majority of the abnormal warming from last year occurred in Antarctica, where temperatures remained well below freezing, but was simply “less cold” than normally occurred during certain months, particularly September. A significant portion of last year’s heat globally was boosted primarily due to the natural El Niño cycle, which is known to bump up average temperatures for much of the globe. This effect is easily traced in the temperature records.

This is not to say an average warming has not occurred over the past hundred-plus years, but it is not unprecedented nor is it alarming.

The Evie post proceeds to claim that aggression rises amid higher temperatures, writing “one of the most often overlooked corollaries is a rise in communal anger and aggression.”

The “heat makes people crazy” idea has been floated several times over the years, but even the article the Evie post links to admits that it’s likely heat is not the main factor in most of the studies that found aggression. The social sciences and psychology experiments are rifle with uncontrollable variables. Without attempting to conduct any studies, the plain fact that places like Florida and Mexico, the Bahamas, and other hot tropical locales are popular relaxation destinations seems to throw cold water on the hypothesis. Why would anyone go someplace that makes them angrier or more aggressive for vacation?

Discomfort can be aggravating, certainly, but it’s not just higher temperatures alone. Ferguson then gets to the claim that mental health professionals are “seeing more patients come in with symptoms of climate change anxiety, which is supposedly the root of many activists’ anger when it comes to large families.”

Climate Realism has written extensively about how misleading the climate anxiety diagnosis is, here, here, and here, for examples, often shifting the blame from the true culprits. Something like “climate anxiety” does exist – but it is a media-driven phenomenon because of the constant drumbeat of impending doom, not from actual lived experience of warming. Constant media coverage telling people that we are hurtling towards “global boiling,” that every weather extreme is because of you and your neighbor’s use of gasoline, including from typically conservative publications like Evie Magazine, is what is causing anxiety in people.

While Evie is right that climate activists should not turn their ire on big, traditional families, they are wrong that climate anxiety is a legitimate phenomenon.

As Ferguson correctly concludes in her piece, if someone decides not to have kids, “that’s their prerogative, but they should know this decision will likely have little impact on saving our planet.”

https://climaterealism.com/2024/08/no-evie-magazine-climate-change-is-not-causing-anxiety/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Guardian Hypes Miniscule Amount Of Drax ‘Carbon’ Emissions

Last week, that bastion of accurate reporting; The Guardian, made a big deal about how much ‘carbon’ emissions the Drax power station produced

The article carried the headline ‘Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report’

It is not a long article, so I reproduce it in full:

The Drax power station was responsible for four times more carbon emissions than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired plant last year, despite taking more than £0.5bn in clean-energy subsidies in 2023, according to a report.

The North Yorkshire power plant, which burns wood pellets imported from North America to generate electricity, was revealed as Britain’s single largest carbon emitter in 2023 by a report from the climate thinktank Ember.

The figures show that Drax, which has received billions in subsidies since it began switching from coal to biomass in 2012, was responsible for 11.5m tonnes of CO2 last year, or nearly three percent of the UK’s total carbon emissions.

Drax produced four times more carbon dioxide than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, which is due to close in September. Drax also produced more emissions last year than the next four most polluting power plants in the UK combined, according to the report.

According to the Coal Countdown website, Ratcliffe is ‘fully compliant with current emissions regulations’, yet it is still being closed next month.

Issued in October 2001, the Large Combustion Plant Directive aimed to reduce ‘carbon’ emissions throughout Europe. The deadline of 1st January 2008 allowed plants that did not comply with the strict emission limits to opt-out, whereby they could operate for a further 20,000 hours or until 2015 at which point they had to close.

Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: “Burning wood pellets can be as bad for the environment as coal; supporting biomass with subsidies is a costly mistake.”

The company has claimed almost £7bn from British energy bills to support its biomass generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions for each unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal, according to Ember and many scientists. In 2023, the period covered by the Ember report, it received £539m.

The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade.

Drax has won the support of the government thanks to claims that its generation is “carbon neutral” because the trees that are felled to produce its wood pellets absorb as much carbon dioxide while they grow as they emit when they are burned in its power plant.

The company plans to fit ‘carbon-capture’ technology at Drax using more subsidies, to create a “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS) project and become the first “carbon-negative” power plant in the world by the end of the decade.

A spokesperson for the company dismissed the thinktank’s findings as “flawed” and accused its authors of ignoring its “widely accepted and internationally recognised approach to carbon accounting”.

“The technology that underpins BECCS is proven, and it is the only credible large-scale way of generating secure renewable power and delivering carbon removals,” the spokesperson added.

A government spokesperson said the report “fundamentally misrepresents” how biomass emissions are measured.

“The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is clear that biomass sourced in line with strict sustainability criteria can be used as a low-carbon source of energy. We will continue to monitor biomass electricity generation to ensure it meets required standards,” the spokesman said.

Climate authorities, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee, which provides official advice to ministers, have included BECCS in their long-term forecasts for how governments can meet their climate targets.

The government’s own spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has warned that ministers have handed a total of £22bn in billpayer-backed subsidies to burn wood for electricity despite being unable to prove the industry meets sustainability standards.

Mayo said: “Burning wood for power is an expensive risk that limits UK energy independence and has no place in the journey to net zero. True energy security comes from homegrown wind and solar, a healthy grid and robust planning for how to make the power system flexible and efficient.”

The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year.

The article concludes with the usual Guardian guff about the planet never being hotter, and how only alarmist propaganda is ‘science’.

It should not be forgotten that human activity only produces four percent (39 billion tons annually) of the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 96 percent of it (920 billion tons annually) comes from natural processes, which we have no control over.

Achieving global ‘net zero’ would do two things. First, it would reduce the amount of CO2 by four percent, and second, it would destroy our civilisation, with the survivors eking out a subsistence-level existence without electricity, akin to where we were three or four hundred years ago.

If we did actually achieve ‘net zero’, nine out of ten people wouldn’t survive the first winter, but it seems this is what the powers that be wish to be our fate.

https://principia-scientific.com/guardian-hypes-miniscule-amount-of-drax-carbon-emissions/

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UK Leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch was in the north-east to hear where the Conservative government had "gone wrong"

Conservative leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch claims she didn’t back her party’s decision to extend the windfall tax on oil and gas firms – and accused Labour of “doubling down” on their “mistake”.

The former business secretary was in Aberdeen on Thursday as part of a UK-wide “listening tour” to hear where the Conservative government had “gone wrong”.

Speaking to the P&J, she warned Labour’s plan to increase and extend the energy profits levy will be “catastrophic”.

The MP admitted her former Tory government had made a mistake by extending the windfall tax by an extra year.

She said: “I think Labour is doubling down on one of the mistakes we made. “Where we got things right, Labour is not doing those things. Where we got things wrong, Labour is doubling down.”

She added: “I think Labour is operating on a mindset from the 1970s and 1980s, that if you just tax things, the money will come in freely. “They don’t understand that sometimes businesses will go elsewhere.”

The Conservative MP said she was keen to meet industries such as the oil and gas sector because she had a “different view when I was in government”.

On Thursday, she took part in talks with trade body OEUK, followed by a visit to Hunting Energy Services in Portlethen, and an event with members.

Badenoch hits out at GB Energy

Mrs Badenoch also dismissed Labour’s plans for GB Energy, a new publicly-owned clean energy company, which will be headquartered in Scotland.

Labour says it will own, manage and operate clean power projects up and down the country, backed by £8.3 billion over the new parliament.

“I have no idea what exactly it is they’re setting up,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Tory MP was also asked about comments by Scottish Tory leadership contender Murdo Fraser who took a brutal swipe at outgoing leader Douglas Ross.

He said the party had been failed by him and by the last three Conservative prime ministers.

Mrs Badenoch said: “It is clear that we are not in government anymore and that must be because we got some things wrong.

“Whether it’s specific individuals or specific policies, we should have a debate about that.”

The former business secretary is an early frontrunner in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party leader.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/6553387/kemi-badenoch-windfall-tax-aberdeen/

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Extremist Special advisers on energy policy in Britain

Labour SpAd teams are coming together and beginning normal operation

Miliband is retaining his long-term advisers. Guiding the UK’s energy policy operation will be climate activist Tobias Garnett, the former coordinator of Extinction Rebellion’s legal strategy team who represented the road-gluing activists in court.

Garnett believes our trajectory is currently “descending swiftly into a politics of ecofascism forged in the crucible of scarce resources, droughts, floods, climate wars and forced migration.” Doesn’t quite sound like politics that will “tread lightly on people’s lives”…

Also on the team is Jonty Leibowitz, whose passion is arguing for socialist reforms to football that include:

A 100% tax “imposed on transfers from abroad“. Just like China’s…

Extra 2% tax on all transfer fees with higher rates from Premier League clubs.

To fix “the deep wealth inequalities between the men’s and women’s games“, introduce a “mandatory wealth tax or levy for all clubs which do not promote equal resource and pay for both games“. An own goal against your own national sport…

When it comes to his energy brief Leibowitz’ contribution is a policy paper which argues that “regional banking” should be forcibly re-oriented to “financing the energy transition“. Ideas shared by radical Corbynite and “green” bank devotee Miatta Fahnbulleh – recently appointed energy minister…

SpAd Eleanor Salter’s focus is “integrating nature into the climate offer“. Salter thinks a “fundamental shift” is required to deal with the “climate breakdown“, which includes “taking many cars off the roads altogether.”

Her other “nature” proposals include allowing anyone to traipse across private property to make “the countryside open to all” but especially to gypsies, whose “access rights are already under threat from the authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which seeks to criminalise trespass.”

And who would have guessed that Salter once said our “best sources of hope” come from Jeremy Corbyn, and that Extinction Rebellion has been “hugely successful… a great accelerator for activism”…

SpAds are often relied on to temper the barmy ideas of their Cabinet Minister. No chance of that in Ed’s team…

https://order-order.com/2024/08/12/revealed-milibands-extreme-left-policy-team/

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Outrage as Aussies are slugged with "Sun tax"

A hidden 'sun' tax slugging Aussies who have made the switch to solar has been slammed by energy advocates as 'madness' and a 'rip-off', accusing energy companies of 'wanting to charge people' making energy from sunlight.

Distributors in some Australian states have moved in the sneaky tariff, known colloquially as a sun or solar tax, as households begin to embrace the shift to renewables in the hopes of power bill relief.

But the new measures will result in those households being slugged for sending the solar energy they generate back to the electricity grid during peak times - something providers hope will encourage households to store their self-generated power and use it, rather than hoping for a credit if it is exported back to the grid.

Renewable energy advocate Heidi Lee Douglas has been highly critical of the plan, saying it was 'not a bright idea' to penalise people for 'taking control of their power bills with cheaper, cleaner solar' during a cost of living crisis.

'Energy companies want to charge people with solar panels to make energy from sunlight, and that's simply not fair,' Ms Douglas, the chief executive of renewable advocacy organisation Solar Citizens, said.

'The new two-way tariff is a blunt instrument that charges people with solar panels for feeding their energy into the grid during the day, rather than supporting them to store their energy or feed it back into the grid at another time.

'Rather than stick people with penalties for not having batteries they can't afford in a cost of living crisis, households need more support to access the benefits of battery storage.

'People in NSW were absolutely furious, and Queenslanders will be livid when they find out more about the big tariff rip-off planned for households with solar panels.'

A sun tax refers to a new export tariff for customers using solar, part of a two-way pricing structure where users are effectively penalised for exporting solar-generated energy when the network is overloaded - such as in the middle of the day.

According to Canstar, the tariff also rewards people who export the energy produced by their solar panels back to the electricity grid during times of high demand.

Energy providers mostly pay households for electricity fed back into the grid in the form of rates called solar feed-in tariffs (FiTs).

Canstar states the tax is designed to prevent gridlock on electricity networks, encouraging households to use their own solar energy first, rather than sending it back to the grid.

Ms Douglas said one of the biggest impact of the sun tax was the message it sent to households thinking about installing solar.

She explained it would discourage them from doing so, saying: 'It's madness to charge people for sunlight.'

'What we really need to do in a cost of living crisis is accelerate the rate of rooftop solar installations by providing access to solar for those who have so far missed out - like renters, social housing, and apartments,' Ms Douglas said.

While the tariffs came into place in mid-2022, most households and businesses won't see any major change until next year.

This is due to distributors needing to submit a price proposal to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to demonstrate why they need it.

Some distributors in NSW and the ACT have already outlined the changes and how the costs would look for the average household or small business.

Ausgrid, the largest energy provider on Australia's east coast, revealed they were imposing such a two-way tariff in July - charging customers 1.2c/kWh for the electricity they produce during the peak export period of 10am-3pm.

The company said customers would receive a payment of 2.3c/kWh for electricity exported to the grid during peak demand hours between 4pm-9pm each day.

In a statement, Ausgrid said they wanted to encourage customers to use their self-generated electricity while providing a 'safe, reliable supply' to everyone.

Solar batteries are widely viewed as a way to store the unused energy generated from solar panels - so it can be used at another time.

But the measure is costly, setting households back anywhere from $8750 to more than $20,000 depending on the scale of the battery and the provider.

The NSW State Government has said it will introduce a rebate starting at $1600 for battery storage systems from November 1.

Queenslanders will not be slugged with a sun tax until 2025 but the state government rolled out a rebate on home solar battery systems allowing people to offset the cost of purchase and installation.

However, it closed in May.

'The Queensland government must find ways of getting more households powered by solar and create the incentives to shift people into having solar and batteries,' Ms Douglas said.

'About 60 per cent of the community is currently locked out of the benefits of solar, including renters and people living in apartments or social housing, and they have among the most to gain from reduced energy bills.

It comes as data from the clean energy regulator reveals many of Sydney's outer suburbs are embracing solar and battery storage.

In Marsden Park, in Sydney's west, households are 87 per cent more likely to have these systems in place, followed by Tumbulgum and Tweed Heads at an uptake rate of 71 per cent.

But in more established suburbs across the state, those rates were far lower.

Only 2.9 per cent of dwellings in Elizabeth Bay, Potts Point, Rushcutters Bay and Woolloomooloo had solar energy and battery storage in place.

In Ultimo, only 4.8 per cent of households had embraced the new technology while Darlinghurst and Surry Hills had 5.3 per cent of dwellings taking up solar.

David Sedighi, chief operating officer of power solutions provider VoltX Energy, said these figures could be put down to government mandates for new home constructions.

'Energy savings aside, solar has made these new homes more energy efficient, enabling people to meet compliance for a Building Sustainability Index (BASIX) certificate,' he said.

'We know having solar makes a new home more attractive to prospective buyers in the future too, as the cost of energy increases.

'The so-called sun-tax where energy providers charge customers a tariff for rooftop solar exported to its network will also drive demand for batteries.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13753959/Sun-tax-solar-panel-green-energy.html

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Climate Deniers of the World, Unite!

You have nothing to lose but your freedom

Given how rigid the official orthodoxy is when it comes to the public health ‘crises’, the ‘climate emergency’ and the supposed moral defects of Western civilization, it’s no surprise that the slur words of choice today are “anti-vaxxer”, “racist”, “homophobe”, “Islamophobe”, “far right” and, not least, “climate denier”.

The “climate denier” epithet is used to shut down rational debate on climate change with specious claims about “settled science”. As the physicist Steve Koonin says: “I find it particularly abhorrent to have a call for open scientific discussion [on climate change] equated with Holocaust denial, especially since the Nazis killed more than two hundred of my relatives in Eastern Europe.”

The scurrilous epithet resurfaced last week in an article in the Guardian entitled – cue shock, horror – “Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of U.S. Congress.”

How much longer will this heresy be tolerated?

In an interview on GB News with Andrew Doyle, British environmentalist Jim Dale demanded the criminalisation of climate denialism. He said that “climate deniers” are “dangerous” for society and their scepticism about Net Zero “pollutes the discourse”. Mr. Dale demurred in spelling out just exactly what sanctions should be applied to “illegal” opinions about climate change, stating that it would be up to politicians like Sir Keir Starmer.

That interview took place three months ago, and Starmer is now Prime Minister. Having moved from his previous role as the Director of Public Prosecutions to Parliament and then to the highest political office in the U.K., his response to last week’s riots has been to push for quick and harsh sentences, threatening freedom of speech.

Sky News reported on Thursday that a woman was arrested over a social media post on the Southport stabbing attack that killed three little girls and injured several others. Evidently, her media post was considered “dangerous” as she publicly shared a mistaken description of the perpetrator of the Southport killings. The question of her intentions did not seem to be an issue in that arrest, although she still hasn’t been charged.

The U.S. Supreme Court holds that the legal threshold from protected to unprotected speech is crossed when the words in question are “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and they’re “likely to incite or produce such action”. Both those tests have to be met for the words to lose their protected status under the First Amendment, something known as the Brandenburg test. In the U.K., the land of the Magna Carta, recent court cases suggest that no such test is necessary for criminal conviction for “stirring up violence” online or indeed even for believing in “forms of toxic ideology which has [sic] the potential to threaten public safety and security”. The blurring of the line between “criminal thought” and criminal conduct is a sad reflection of jurisprudence in the U.K.

One day before the arrest of the woman who posted inaccurate information about the Southport killer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, warned: “We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media to look for this material, and then follow up with arrests… You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false.” UK Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told a reporter in response to a question about Elon Musk supposedly “whipping up hatred” on X: “Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.”

The purpose of blaming the riots on social media, of course, is that it deflects from the real issue: a great many Britons disapprove of the government’s complicity in the scale of the mass immigration of the past two decades. That ‘thoughtcrime’ has fueled the riots in the country is reflected in the deluge of mainstream media headlines singing from the same hymn sheet:

Reuters: “Misinformation fuels riots”

BBC News: “Social media misinformation ‘fanned riot flames’ in North East”

CNBC: “Online disinformation sparked a wave of far-right violence”

Sky News: “Southport attack misinformation fuels far-right discourse on social media”

CNN: “U.K. riots show how social media can fuel real-life harm. It’s only getting worse”

Time: “Misinformation Stoked Anti-Migrant Riots”

In an Orwellian world where the carrying of machetes on the streets of British cities may more easily escape prosecution than the “far right thuggery” of “keyboard warriors”, Mr. Dale’s wish to criminalise “misinformation” about climate change may come true.

Dis- or misinformation is whatever the state says it is. The moral crusade is the war over disinformation with little discussion of underlying policy issues. Policy choices supportive of a Net Zero fossil fuel-free electric grid by 2030 are non-partisan “givens” – with little debate in or out of parliament – as the Covid lockdowns were when they were imposed. Thus it is no surprise that the Counter Disinformation Unit which targeted dissent during Covid has been rebooted by the Starmer government as the National Security Online Information Team to monitor social media in the wake of the riots.

Will the reborn secretive Covid-era spy agency start ‘flagging’ social media posts that question Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State at the oxymoronically named Department of Energy Security and Net Zero? Never mind that a fossil fuel-free electricity grid in Britain by 2030 – the interim goal enroute to a fully Net Zero Britain by 2050 – “is as likely as the second coming of Christ”, as David Starkey said in a recent interview.

Removal of climate contrarian posts on social media will be one thing. But will it eventually become a prosecutable offense in the UK to point out the tension between Net Zero and energy security, or to assert that Net Zero policy targets constitute an onslaught on people’s standards of living and a denial of reality? Will some future Britain sport an unelected Climate Change Committee sitting in judgement, Star Chambers-like, over climate deniers that congregate in secretive forums at 55 Tufton Street, that bastion of libertarian and right wing organizations?

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/08/13/climate-deniers-of-the-world-unite/

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New UK government bets on green energy. Companies are wary

As Britain’s oil and gas giants scale back their global green-energy ambitions, the UK’s newly elected government is launching a multibillion-dollar effort to regain the country’s place as a global pacesetter for clean energy.

A new state-backed company, funded by increased taxes on oil and gas production, will invest in many renewable-energy projects around the country. Industry executives are split on whether the plan can meet the government’s ambitious goals.

Great British Energy has about GBP8.3bn, or around $US11bn, to invest in renewable projects over the next five years. Its mandate is to speed up the adoption of green energy to help the government hit its target of decarbonising the electricity grid by 2030.

That would require an enormous build-out of renewables across Britain. More than double the existing capacity of onshore wind, triple the solar power and nearly quadruple the offshore wind would be needed to hit the target, according to consulting firm Oxford Economics.

Britain’s dependence on energy imports has left it vulnerable to supply shocks in recent years. When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a surge in prices, it prompted calls in the UK for the country to wean itself off foreign supplies, including by accelerating its green-energy plans. Britain generated 46 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources last year, government figures show.

“In an unstable world, the only way to guarantee our energy security and protect bill payers … is to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels and towards homegrown clean energy,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in a July statement that set out GB Energy’s plans.

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has advocated a speedier shift toward homegrown clean energy.Picture: James Glossop/Getty Images
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has advocated a speedier shift toward homegrown clean energy.Picture: James Glossop/Getty Images
Since taking office, the new Labour government has ended a longstanding de facto ban on onshore wind power in England, approved the construction of three new solar farms and raised the amount of subsidies available for renewable energy this year by more than 50 per cent to a record GBP1.5bn.

Meanwhile, some companies are pulling in the opposite direction. Under pressure from shareholders, London-based oil giants BP and Shell have dialled back their green transition plans to maintain the typically higher returns that come from oil and gas production and trading.

In June, BP scaled back its plans for biofuels production in the U.S. and Germany. In July, Shell said it would pause construction work at a Dutch biofuels plant, casting doubt on the future of a facility the company had said would be one of Europe’s largest, churning out sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel.

Executives of both companies have said they would continue to invest in low-carbon energy, but will steer away from capital-intensive projects that lack a clear path to the kind of profits that investors have come to expect from oil and gas.

Oil-industry executives have also voiced scepticism about Britain’s energy plans, which include increasing and extending a so-called windfall tax on oil and gas production to fund GB Energy. Companies have criticised the UK’s shifting tax regime, saying it hinders their ability to forecast returns on long-term investments.

“However this is played, the stability is key. More changes at the goalposts just undermines the element of stability that we would advocate for,” Shell chief executive Wael Sawan said in a recent interview.

Renewable-energy executives say they are hopeful that the government’s plan can help accelerate funding for low-carbon projects, the way the US Inflation Reduction Act spurred investment in renewable-power plants and battery production. Much of the incentive driving IRA-related spending comes from tax credits.

In Britain, direct government investment in low-carbon projects should reduce risks for investors and pull in more funds, proponents say. “We’ve already seen interest from discussions we’ve had with some of our investors,” said Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, a London-based renewable-power provider.

GB Energy’s first move was a deal with the Crown Estate, an entity that oversees most of the seabed around Britain’s coastline, to undertake early development work for offshore wind projects.

Efforts to reduce planning timelines for projects might be “a bit boring and gnarly,” but they are key to getting major renewable developments online, said Alistair Phillips-Davies, CEO of British power generator SSE.

For instance, a proposal to expand what SSE says will eventually be the world’s largest offshore wind farm has been held up over the past three years by snags in the permitting process. SSE is currently leading the development of the project in the North Sea.

While state-owned energy companies are relatively common in Europe, Britain already has a growing, well-funded renewables sector.

The UK has long had levers to stimulate funding in renewables, including a mechanism that offers companies a guaranteed rate for electricity, said Rob Gross, director of the UK Energy Research Centre, an independent institute that receives government funding. That mechanism is widely credited for propelling Britain’s offshore wind market to the second-largest in the world.

Renewable markets such as offshore wind and solar already have plentiful funding as well, said Michael Liebreich, CEO of consulting firm Liebreich Associates. GB Energy could be better utilised if it narrowed its focus on nascent technologies such as long-duration battery storage and floating offshore wind to signal the government’s commitment to those markets, he added.

Another concern is that GB Energy’s cash pile is too small to tackle the costly challenge of connecting green-energy projects to the UK’s electricity grid. More than 700 gigawatts of renewable projects are waiting for a connection, according to the UK energy regulator, around 12 times what the country currently has in renewable capacity.

The UK grid was initially built to deliver power from coal-fired plants to cities and industry. To hit the government’s green-power target, some 2,500 miles of new and upgraded transmission lines would be needed, according to data provider Aurora Energy Research. That would cost several times GB Energy’s budget.

Meanwhile, proponents of continued oil and gas drilling warn against potential new limits to production in the North Sea. The Labour Party had pledged in its election campaign to end new drilling licenses there, though it is yet to confirm its plans. The UK still sources around half its gas from the region.

“Their manifesto says oil and gas production in the North Sea will be with us for decades to come, so we’ll be reminding of that,” BP CEO Murray Auchincloss said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/new-uk-government-bets-on-green-energy-companies-are-wary/news-story/be268fdcc8dbe50d7c6e29ecd24cedfa

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Dumb Head Girl Eco-Activist Explains How Best to Deal With Your “Climate Feelings” in Perhaps the Stupidest Climate Change Essay of all Time

Many valued readers advised against wading more deeply into Unlearn CO2, that doubtful and ridiculous tome of climate lunacy that first came to my notice a week-and-a-half ago. Why should we waste our attention on the ravings of crazy people, they asked? Surely, our time is better spent pondering what the well-informed, the measured and the mature have to say.

I understand the objection, but I must reluctantly disagree. Climatism is a political programme bound to a broad social movement. Most of its momentum comes not from The Science or The Experts, but from diffuse cultural forces that we should probably try to understand, if only because they are driving our entire civilisation straight into the ground. Against all advice, I will therefore steer the plague chronicle into this ridiculous quagmire of leftoid green babble, with a look at our first lesson in Unlearnings, namely ‘Unlearn Repression’.

This superficial and disorganised essay is the work of an infuriating young woman named Katharina van Bronswijk. She’s a psychotherapist best known for her 2022 book, Climate in Our Heads. Fear, Anger, Hope: What the Ecological Crisis is Doing to Us. It belongs to that genre of inevitably unreadable monographs in which the author herself appears on the cover, looking windswept, pioneering and undaunted:

“Climate feelings” are van Bronswijk’s niche in the extremely crowded enterprise of CO2-bothering. In ‘Unlearn Repression’ she argues that we should not suppress our negative feelings about climate change, but rather embrace them in constructive ways on behalf of the planet.

Now, van Bronswijk is the kind of deeply unoriginal person who just says the same things over and over. Everything she writes in ‘Unlearn Repression’ flows directly from Climate in our Heads; she’s been digesting, reheating and reworking this same overboiled intellectual artichoke for almost two years now, through various media interviews and even in this English-language TEDx Talk. Throughout this woman’s work is the vague anxiety that the climatists have perhaps overdone it with doom and gloom, and that a lot of people have had enough of hearing about a climate apocalypse that never quite happens.

Van Bronswijk is naturally very dumb, but more than that she is painfully condescending, oblivious, verbose and just awash in litres of estrogen. I defy anyone to read her work and not come away from it a raging misogynist. This odious overpromoted schoolmarm belongs out of sight in a childcare centre teaching young children the alphabet. Perhaps she should also be in a choir, or part of a local environmental club dedicated to collecting litter in parks. That our society has denied van Bronswijk and so many others like her these proper outlets for their instincts and instead pushed them into public activism and intellectual production itself explains a great deal of what is wrong with the world.

‘Unlearn Repression’ opens with some autobiographical details, because of course everything van Bronswijk talks about is all about van Bronswijk. Like so many Germans of her generation, she was radicalised by school climate propaganda – specifically, by her teacher’s fateful screening of that classic propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth:

Back then… I was happy for the welcome distraction of watching a film instead of doing normal lessons. But afterwards I was shocked and asked my mum for answers to all the questions and challenges. She didn’t have any solutions for me, how could she? I was alarmed and started to think about the impending consequences of climate change and what could be done about it. I found approaches in newsletters from NGOs and by reading up on animal and environmental protection… That was when my dream bubble burst and I realised: the world is unfair and, unlike all the Disney stories of my childhood, there will be no single heroine who saves the world. And there is no magical or technical miracle solution either.

Al Gore’s film so terrified the young van Bronswijk, that for a while she retreated into conspiratorial theories about why climate change is not happening, which qualifies our crayon psychotherapist to pronounce upon the psychology of those who deny the climate. This deeply evil and irrational movement is driven primarily by “white men” because they “still enjoy most of the privileges in our society, and therefore have the most to lose”.

The necessary change in our way of life and the upheavals of recent decades are threatening these privileges. We’re questioning the role of “men”, we’re questioning social narratives of superiority through gender, through academic attainment, through professional success, through the burning of fossil fuels… through the over-consumption of luxury goods. This is understandably unsettling and can trigger feelings ranging from anger to a sense of threat… for those who will have to give up their privileges in the future.

We are only on the third page of this abomination and already van Bronswijk is laying bare her ulterior motives. At first, she thought climate change was terrifying and she sought after reasons to doubt it was happening, but then she realised it was just great for sticking it to old white men, and so once again she was fully on board. Before even mentioning one single, concrete negative consequence of carbon emissions, van Bronswijk is deploring male “privilege,” and those advantages of the wealthy and the well-educated that climatism must sooner or later spell the end of. All of these villains will have to give up their “fancy cars”, they will have to go without their precious “status symbols” and those things they “consider especially masculine”. It is the standard, shopworn ressentiment of leftism in general, presenting merely a different matrix of justification.

This is a political programme that naturally inspires anger in people, and in this way we come to our first Climate Emotion. Sometimes, van Bronswijk writes, “our biographical background means that we tend to repress certain emotions and overcompensate with others”. Those “angry citizens” (“Wutbürger”) who vote for AfD are in fact dealing with feelings of “fear” or “insecurity”, which they repress by expressing “Anger at the Greens, at people who eat a vegan diet, who live in big cities, who are young, who have a refugee background, and so on and so forth”.

While this airtight pop-psychological analysis shows that the anger of the climate denialists is illegitimate, there is another kind of anger that we must embrace, if reluctantly. This is Climate Anger:

Climate anger makes us aware of the injustices of the world out there and our own limitations. For many, fairness and justice are extremely important values – and when there is a lack of inter-generational, social or global justice, this makes many people angry. A large part of the local population sees climate change as a threat and also the need for a transformation of our lives, and many want this transformation to be fair.

The problem, as van Bronswijk sees it, is that nobody can agree on what amounts to “fairness”, which opens “a great potential for conflict…. if people can’t regulate their anger and channel it constructively”. A lot of leftists really, really love anger; Antifa are some of the most murderously enraged people I’ve ever encountered. Alas, van Bronswijk’s schoolmarmery warns her against this more entertaining approach. She would prefer to “regulate our anger” and use it as a motivation to “sign up for projects in social justice, go to protests and support petitions”. That’s right, you might be angry that the earth is melting before your eyes, but the best thing to do about that is to self-soothe by… attending Friday lunch hour demonstrations, volunteering and signing things. It’s at least some comfort that if the climatists are ever out of power, their crack schoolmarm brigades will fight rearguard actions in favour of destroying the economy and our lives in the most tepid and ineffectual ways imaginable.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/08/14/dumb-head-girl-eco-activist-explains-how-best-to-deal-with-your-climate-feelings-in-perhaps-the-stupidest-climate-change-essay-of-all-time/

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Bumper crop of stories of BBC climate bias

Net Zero Watch has just published its annual review of the state of the BBC’s climate reporting. The author, climate and energy writer Paul Homewood, has had plenty of material to choose from, and his paper outlines more than 30 of the most egregious misrepresentations of the facts, with climate change spuriously blamed for everything from hot weather in Spain, sighting of rare bird species in England, to potholes in the roads.

Paul Homewood said:

The BBC produces so many ludicrous climate stories, the only difficulty is deciding what to leave out of the report.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

If the BBC wants to reverse the ongoing decline in its audience share, and the decline in its reputation as a reliable news source, it is going to have to start taking climate and energy seriously. Employing correspondents who are fanatical environmentalists, and then giving them a free hand, leads to coverage that is superficial at best and misleading at worst. Paul Homewood’s report shows just how bad things have become.

Tall Climate Tales from the BBC, 2023 can be downloaded from the Net Zero Watch website.

https://www.netzerowatch.com/campaigns/view-email/fVNtrUH0XuW0nNL3M_BYEwRYVPEMGN1ztR-EZEPNdogjlHOagY89WEAk8q-UN-NgKs5ppHc4pzRjZLxWcSsBtAk21bk1-wWQB9-z_vY4yYOO5haJZhpVY-9tmeQHJ28YkYkZX9EZa-q9GGKBgTDaiXmaT8Hh0yqxYKki_w== ?

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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The Incestuous Green Blob

Introduction

Back in March, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee produced a report on long-duration energy storage (LDES). This report urged the Government to “get on with it.” Among its key recommendations were to ask the Government to “support no-regrets investments for hydrogen.”

However, some of the members of the committee have significant conflicts of interest and incestuous relationships that call into question the objectivity of the report and the integrity of Government.

What did the Lords LDES Report Say?

The Executive Summary of the report talks about “cheap” renewables and insists the prize for investing in storage is that the electricity system will be cheaper. We do not need to rehearse all the arguments against this statement again. It is sufficient to note that all existing renewables, whether funded by Contracts for Difference (CfDs), Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) or Feed-In-Tariffs (FiTs) are currently more expensive than gas-fired electricity, as most recently discussed here.

A grid that is solely or mostly powered by renewables will therefore be more expensive than a gas-fired grid. However, as wind and solar power are intermittent in nature, they require some sort of backup or storage to ensure that the grid can always meet demand. Adding storage adds extra capital costs to the system but does not increase the amount of electricity generated. This extra expenditure must therefore increase the full system costs of electricity. So, the opening premise of their report is wrong, calling into question the rest of their analysis.

They then go on to quote extensively from the Royal Society report on long term storage (dismantled here) which farcically suggested the system cost of a renewables plus hydrogen storage grid would be ~£60/MWh. However, this cost is less than half what we pay for renewables alone today and much lower than the prices being offered in AR6. The required electrolysers, storage caverns and generators will not come cheap and will further increase the system cost of electricity. It is likely that the true costs of a renewables plus hydrogen grid will be three or four times that suggested.

How Did the Lords Get it so Wrong?

It is worrying that such an eminent committee should get things so wrong. To understand how and why they made such a glaring error, we need to look at the composition of the committee.

Baroness Brown of Cambridge chairs the Lords Science and Technology Committee. Her register of interests shows she is also the chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). By pure coincidence, Baroness Brown is also a non-executive director of Ceres Power Holdings which describes itself as a leading developer of “electrolysis for the creation of green hydrogen and fuel cells for power generation”. Baroness Brown’s other interests include chairing the Carbon Trust and she is also a non-executive director of wind farm operator and developer Ørsted.

Seen in this context, it becomes easier to see why the LDES report is so enthusiastic about renewables and securing spending on hydrogen storage.

However, the web of relationships runs even wider. Professor Keith Bell acted as Specialist Advisor to the committee in the production of the LDES report. Professor Bell is also a member of the CCC having taken up the position of power sector specialist in 2019 and recently had his contract extended to April 2025.

Incestuous Links to Government

Baroness Brown also has strong links to the new Head of Mission Control at DESNZ, Chris Stark. After leaving his position as Chief Executive of the CCC, Stark was appointed as Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust, which is chaired by Baroness Brown. Mr. Stark is also listed as Baroness Brown’s staffer on the House of Lords website.

One wonders if it is appropriate for one of the most senior people responsible for decarbonising the grid by 2030 should be a staffer for a Baroness and have such a close relationship with someone with such obvious vested interests in wind power and hydrogen.

We can see that the tentacles of the green blob have extended deep into the heart of the establishment and Government. One might term this situation a two-tier system of ethics. The extensive web of commercial interests and personal relationships makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the recommendations of the Lords Science and Technology Committee report on long term energy storage are tainted. It is also difficult to take seriously any recommendations made by the Climate Change Committee and the new Head of Mission Control. It’s so incestuous, seriously someone should check their hands and feet for extra digits.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-144503629

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The Economic Folly of a ‘Carbon’ Tax

The push for a ‘carbon’ tax has regained popularity as the fiscal storm in 2025 and ‘climate change’ debates intensify

Advocates claim it’s a solution to pay for spending excesses while reducing ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions. But a ‘carbon’ tax is a misguided, costly policy that must be rejected.

A ‘carbon’ tax functions more like an income tax than a consumption tax, capturing all forms of work, including capital goods production and building construction.

These sectors are heavy on ‘carbon’ emissions, meaning the tax disproportionately burdens them, stifling investment and innovation — much like a progressive income tax, but with broader economic repercussions.

For example, in the US, the construction sector alone accounts for about 40 percent of ‘carbon’ emissions. A ‘carbon’ tax would heavily penalize this industry, reducing its capacity to grow, generate new housing, and create jobs.

Moreover, implementing a ‘carbon’ tax involves massive administrative costs. The federal tax code is already complex and costly; a ‘carbon’ tax would exacerbate these issues.

Determining net ‘carbon’ emissions is a nuanced process subject to ever-changing and arbitrary federal definitions, increasing compliance costs for businesses and consumers.

A study by the Tax Foundation found that a ‘carbon’ tax would cost billions of dollars annually in administrative costs, a burden that would ultimately fall on consumers through higher prices, less economic activity, and fewer jobs.

The US economy is already suffering from regulatory costs of $3 trillion annually, including many energy-related restrictions, and the Biden administration has added more than $1.6 trillion in regulatory costs since taking office.

One core principle of free-market capitalism is that it comes with limited government. A ‘carbon’ tax contradicts this principle by expanding governmental regulation of everyday economic activities.

The tax revenues would also enable further overspending, though that’s questionable given the supposed purpose of the tax is to reduce ‘carbon’ emissions and, therefore, the taxes collected.

Furthermore, a ‘carbon’ tax could favor certain production methods over others, disrupting the level playing field that free markets thrive on and leading to inefficiencies and market distortions.

The government picks winners and losers by favoring specific methods, undermining competition and economic growth. ‘Renewable’ energy projects are likely to receive preferential political treatment, skewing investments away from the market’s more efficient, practical technologies.

Pigouvian taxes, aimed at correcting negative externalities, are often cited to support a ‘carbon’ tax. These taxes are named after economist Arthur Pigou and are designed to correct the negative effects of externalities by imposing costs equivalent to the external damage.

But they can be counterproductive as they are bound to be the wrong tax rate, distorting economic activity.

‘Carbon’ taxes fail to account for complex economic interactions and unintended consequences. The PROVE It Act, for instance, proposes a new ‘carbon’ tax framework but lacks a clear, consistent, and scientifically sound basis for implementation.

This uncertainty raises the stakes for economic disruption and consumer cost increases.

Another critical issue in the ‘carbon’ tax debate is ‘who decides?’

Climate science is ever evolving, and economic models predicting the outcomes of ‘carbon’ taxes are fraught with uncertainties. Placing high costs on consumers based on unsettled science and unpredictable economic impacts is not a prudent policy approach.

We should promote voluntary measures and technological advancements that naturally reduce emissions through market activity.

Importantly, the EPA does not consider carbon dioxide a harmful pollutant in the traditional sense, as it is essential for life.

We need carbon dioxide to breathe and enjoy a fulfilling life. This further questions the rationale behind taxing ‘carbon’ emissions, as it imposes undue economic strain in an attempt to regulate a naturally occurring and necessary element.

Even if America hadn’t been doing better than other countries that joined the Paris Treaty for goals on ‘carbon’ emissions, China (and India) aren’t interested, thereby putting more of the unnecessary cost of reducing these emissions on Americans.

Moreover, the cost of ‘carbon’ taxes can be significant. Increasing production costs leads to higher prices for goods and services, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income households — especially when they already suffer from high inflation.

This regressive nature undermines its purported environmental benefits, placing a heavier burden on those least able to afford it. For example, a $50-per-ton ‘carbon’ tax could increase household energy costs by up to $300 annually, hitting hardest those who can least afford it.

Countries implementing ‘carbon’ taxes, like some in Europe, have seen mixed results. Emissions reductions have been minimal, while economic growth has been hampered.

These policies often result in job losses and decreased global competitiveness, showcasing the unintended consequences of such interventions. For instance, France’s ‘carbon’ tax led to widespread protests and economic disruption, illustrating such policies’ social and economic challenges.

While the intention behind a ‘carbon’ tax — to reduce American ‘GHG’ emissions in an effort to combat global ‘climate change’ — is questionable in itself, the economic realities and principles of free-market economics prove it is a flawed approach.

With the fiscal storm likely coming next year, Congress should just say no to the PROVE It Act and the ‘carbon’ tax in general.

The bottom line is that increasing the government’s footprint through such a tax is neither conservative nor market-oriented. Instead, we should focus on market-driven solutions that encourage innovation and efficiency without imposing heavy-handed regulations.

https://principia-scientific.com/the-economic-folly-of-a-carbon-tax/

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Who Is Directing the War on Agriculture and Nutrition?

By Paul Driessen

Elite billionaire organizations and foundations, government agencies and activist pressure groups are funding and coordinating a global war on modern agriculture, nutrition, and Earth’s poorest, hungriest people. Instead of helping more families get nutritious food, better healthcare and higher living standards, they’re doing the opposite, and harming biodiversity in the process.

The World Economic Forum wants to reimagine, reinvent and transform the global food system, to eliminate greenhouse gases from food production. Central to its plan is alternatives to animal protein: meal worm potato chips, bug burgers instead of beef patties, and meat loaves and sausages made from lake flies, for instance. Fixing the WEF’s toxic workplace is apparently a low priority.

A UN Food and Agriculture Organization report advises that turning “edible insects” into “tasty” food products can create thriving local businesses and even promote “inclusion of women.”

Created to alleviate global poverty, the World Bank has decided the “manmade climate crisis” is a far greater threat to impoverished families than contaminated water, malaria and other killer diseases, hunger, or even two billion people still burning wood and dung because they don’t have reliable, affordable electricity. It has unilaterally decreed that 45% of its funds – an extra $9 billion in FY2024 – will be shifted to helping the poor “better withstand the devastation of climate change.”

(The Bank has also decided that even more of its taxpayer funding – $300-million instead of “only” $70-million – should be gifted to the Palestinian Authority, which pays terrorists to murder Israelis.)

Of course, most of the better and lesser-known environmental pressure groups are also deeply involved in food, agriculture and energy policy campaigns: Greenpeace, Sierra Club, EarthJustice, Friends of the Earth, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety, La Via Campesina (The Peasant Way), Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, and countless others.

Like the rest of the “agro-ecology” movement, they deride and malign modern agriculture as a scourge inflicted by greedy mega-corporations. They oppose fossil fuels, pesticides, herbicides and biotechnology. They extol “food sovereignty” and the “right to choose.” But their policies reflect top-down tyranny and bullying, with little room for poor farmers to embrace modern agricultural technologies and practices.

In addition to WEF, FAO and World Bank support, these hard-green organizations have the ideological, organizational and financial backing of the US Agency for International Development, EU agencies, and a host of progressive and far-left American, European and other foundations.

The US-based AgroEcology Fund was created by the Christensen Fund, New Fields Foundation and Swift Foundation. Its funding and programs are overseen by the New Venture Fund, which helps “charitable” and “educational” organizations direct funds to programs that align with what many characterize as neo-colonialist and eco-imperialist goals.

Other major players include the Schmidt Family Foundation, Packard Foundation, Ford Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Ben and Jerry Foundation.

This is serious money – hundreds of millions of dollars per year in food, agriculture and climate change funding. It completely overshadows the piddling $9,000 that Kenyan farmer Jusper Machogu raised via donations to his “climate realism” website – much of it given to neighbors, so they could drill water wells, buy tanks of propane or get connected to the local grid.

And yet Mr. Machogu incurred the wrath of the BBC’s “Climate Disinformation Officer.” (Yes, the Beeb actually has such a position.) The CDO attacked him for “tweeting false and misleading claims” about climate change and saying Africa should develop its oil, gas and coal reserves – instead of relying entirely on intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar. Even worse, the farmer had the temerity to accept donations from non-Africans, including “individuals with links to the fossil fuel industry and groups known for promoting climate change denial.”

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is another major donor to agro-ecology outfits. It’s part of the legacy of guilt-ridden oil money from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. corporate trust – an inheritance that includes nearly 1,000 climate-related institutions, foundations and activist organizations.

As Canada’s Frontier Centre put it, “Every time you hear a ‘climate change’ scare story, [the person writing it] was PAID. He is a Rockefeller stooge. He may not know it, but his profession has been entirely corrupted.” Far worse, I would add, the writer and his (or her) organization are complicit in perpetuating global poverty, energy deprivation, hunger, disease and death – because the fearmongering drives destructive energy and food production policies.

Alone or collectively, these policy corrupters must not be underestimated in this war to preserve and expand modern energy, agriculture and global nutrition. Thankfully, there is increasing pushback. Many families simply do not want to be trapped in poverty, disease, mud-and-thatch huts, an absence of educational opportunities for their children, and a future of backbreaking, dawn-to-dusk labor in little subsistence-farming fields.

That’s especially so when films, news stories and cell phones present American and European farming equipment and practices – and the crop yields, wealth, health, homes, leisure time and opportunities that accompany those modern agricultural systems.

Poor farmers also see China, India, Indonesia and other countries rapidly industrializing and modernizing by using oil, gas and coal. They see rumblings of change in many countries that are intent on charting their own courses, with fossil fuels as the energy foundation for that growth. They’re rejecting the eco-colonialism and eco-imperialism that wealthy Westerners seek to impose on them.

They are getting the message that humanity has faced climate fluctuations and extreme weather events throughout history … and survived them, dealt with them, adapted to them, prospered. That there is no real-world evidence that manmade greenhouse gas emissions – especially the trivial amounts generated by agriculture – have replaced the powerful natural forces that caused past climate changes.

They increasingly realize that organic and subsistence farming requires vastly more land – which would otherwise be wildlife habitats – than modern mechanized farming, to get the same yields. Plowing those habitats would decimate plant and animal diversity.

That locking up fossil fuels, and relying instead on biofuels and plant-based feed stocks for thousands of essential products, would require even more acreage. So would mining for massive amounts of metals and minerals to manufacture wind, solar and battery technologies.

Most importantly, they understand that humanity today has far greater wealth, far more knowledge, far better technologies and resources than any past generations.

To suggest that we cannot adapt to climate changes, or survive and recover from extreme weather events, is simply absurd. To suggest that farmers should revert to … or remain stuck in … ancient farming practices and technologies – to save the world from computer-generated manmade climate disasters – is eco-imperialism at its most lethal.

South Africa’s electricity minister recently said his country will not be “turned into a guinea pig for a worldwide Green New Deal.” Hopefully, all developing countries will soon apply that same attitude to anarchists who would use the world’s poor as guinea pigs in global agricultural and nutrition experiments.

https://heartland.org/opinion/who-is-directing-the-war-on-agriculture-and-nutrition/

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Australian Greenie antisemitism

Police were called to a Sydney council chambers on Tuesday night after a Greens-led pro-Palestine protest turned ugly, forcing the abandonment of the meeting amid safety concerns after Jewish speakers were targeted, before officers escorted out staff and councillors.

The protest, co-organised by Inner West Greens councillor Dylan Griffiths, had been weeks in the making and designed to whip up frenzied support for his Boycott, Divest, Sanction motion, described previously as a “campaign ploy” before September’s local government elections.

It comes after Anthony Albanese’s criticism of the party’s inflammatory rhetoric, and The Australian’s special report, ‘Greens Extremes’ which revealed how its grassroots members had prioritised “revolution” over rates, roads and rubbish at a council level.

About 100 protesters took to the Inner West council’s final pre-election meeting on Tuesday in Ashfield, which was adjourned three times due to the partisan crowd, before eventually being abandoned.

Decked in keffiyehs, speakers – all of whom were allowed to speak by Labor mayor Darcy Byrne, a break in protocol in an olive-branch move – included those behind the Prime Minister’s electorate office picket, and hurled epithets including “baby killers” and “Nazis” toward Labor councillors, and claimed that they were paid “blood money” and had “sold their soul to Zionists”.

The mayor was forced to abandon the five-hour-long meeting about 11pm after the motion, which sought to investigate cutting council’s ties companies or products associated with Israel, was voted down, prompting pro-Palestine chanting of “river to the sea”, shouts of “shame”, and swear words.

Labor’s eight councillors, including the mayor, who voted against the motion, were forced to stay in chambers – as were council staff and elected colleagues – before the police arrived and escorted them out to their cars, given safety concerns with the large and angry crowd.

One pro-Palestine activist rubbished concerns and the experience of anti-Semitism described by one Jewish resident who spoke against the motion, before she then evoked the mayor’s deceased parents, which drew an emotional call to order by a taken aback Mr Byrne.

The few speakers who spoke against the motion, understood to all be Jewish residents, were booed by members of the gallery and one was called “Ms Netanyahu” for saying that while she supported Palestine she felt a BDS policy would worsen local social cohesion.

Others waved Palestine flags in the faces of Jewish residents speaking against the motion while some gallery members made a triangle symbol with their hands, eyewitnesses alleged, which is often associated with Hamas’ inverted triangle symbol.

On Wednesday, Mr Byrne said the actions and behaviour of the gallery, and organising group Inner West 4 Palestine, were “extreme”.

“The intimidating and abusive conduct of this group was unsafe, dangerous and undemocratic,” he said.

“The harassment and abuse of Jewish citizens who attended the meeting was appalling and completely unacceptable.

“There is no place for racism or religious vilification of any group in the Inner West.

“Overrunning the council chamber and preventing democratic decision making from taking place is not a political tactic that should be normalised in Australia.”

It had been the longest public gallery in the history of the council and the BDS motion meant council’s anti-racism strategy was unable to be discussed or voted on.

The Greens’ new slate of candidates for September’s election were also involved, pictured seated in the front row as activists hurled abuse at councillors.

ALP insiders have previously said the Greens would routinely stoke tensions and encourage targeting of electorate offices and other forums, like seen at Inner West Council, before wiping their hands clean of any responsibility.

“They go ‘That’s nothing to do with us, we had no idea’,” one Labor source said.

It was a full-circle moment for the Inner West after Marrickville Council, which now makes up part of the Local Government Area, introduced its own BDS policy in 2011, but later revoked it after uproar.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/police-called-as-greensled-antiisrael-sydney-council-protest-turns-ugly/news-story/e65896aaa2f6badf17abe7a18da75908

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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