Worse than Chernobyl? Radiation in parts of Marshall Islands is far higher, study says

All this fuss about radioactivity is premised on the conventional assumption that any level of radioactivity is bad for you. In fact, only  exceptionally high radiation exposures are dangerous and the exposures in the islands were not measured against that standard.

Take the case of Japanese travelling salesman man Tsutomu Yamaguchi.  He was badly burnt after exposure to the Hiroshima blast during WWII.  So he went home to have his wounds looked after -- to Nagasaki.  So he copped the Nagasaki blast as well. So he died immediately, of course.  He did not.  His burns healed and he lived to 93.


Yamaguchi

What Leftist scientists just will not acknowledge is the reality of hormesis.  Radiation is such a great thing to scare people with that they won't let it go.  Hormesis occurs when exposure to low levels of something dangerous will often strengthen you against higher levels of that thing. And the effects of ionizing radiation are often strongly hormetic. Even medium doses can be protective.

There is a review article here in an academic journal which finds that hormesis fits the facts much better than the conventional assumptions


Think of the most radioactive landscapes on the planet and the names Chernobyl and Fukushima may come to mind.

Yet research published Monday suggests that parts of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific, where the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests during the Cold War, should be added to the list.

In a peer-reviewed study, Columbia University researchers report that soil on four isles of the Marshall Islands contains concentrations of nuclear isotopes that greatly exceed those found near the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plants. On one isle, those levels are reported to be 1,000 times higher.

All four of the islands are currently uninhabited, and three of the four — Bikini, Enjebi and Runit — are in atolls where nuclear testing took place. But one of the islands, Naen, which measures less than an acre, is in Rongelap Atoll, nearly 100 miles away.

Researchers found concentrations of plutonium-238 on Naen, raising the possibility that the island was used as an unreported dumping ground. Plutonium-238 is a radioisotope associated with nuclear waste and not generally with fallout, said Ivana Nikolic Hughes, a coauthor of the research and an associate professor of chemistry at Columbia.

The only other place the team detected this isotope was at Runit, where the United States entombed nuclear waste from bomb testing under a leaking concrete dome.

“We can’t say for sure that [dumping on Naen] is what happened,” said Nikolic Hughes, who directs Columbia’s K=1 Project — a multidisciplinary program dedicated to educating the public about nuclear technology. “But people should not be living on Rongelap until this is addressed.”

The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have reignited debate on the U.S. government monitoring residents’ health in the Marshall Islands and its assurances that locals face little risk from radioactivity.

Some researchers have declared Rongelap safe for re-habitation. But the Columbia study suggests that, for now, people not return to Rongelap or Bikini atolls, where Naen and Bikini are located, until certain areas have been more thoroughly cleaned. More than 600 people have already returned to parts of Enewetak Atoll — where Runit and Enjebi are located.

“We are concerned about what is being consumed on Naen and at what level,” said James Matayoshi, the mayor of Rongelap Atoll. He said he didn’t like the idea of people collecting food from Naen and the islands near it, because he doesn’t know what kind of risk that poses for his constituents’ health.

Others are not so sure the study’s results are valid.

Terry Hamilton, the U.S. Department of Energy’s lead researcher on Marshall Island radiation issues, said although the Columbia team’s approach seemed reasonable given the costs of pursuing such research in a remote part of the world, he was concerned their methodology and equipment could have overestimated the radiation they were detecting.

Both Nikolic Hughes and her husband, Emlyn Hughes, a Columbia University particle physicist and co-director of the K=1 project, rejected claims their methodology was flawed. The intent of their studies, they said, was to provide the Marshallese with an independent assessment — research not considered suspect because it was conducted by a government responsible for the contamination.

“The work provides valuable background information for local policymakers,” said Jan Beyea, a retired radiation physicist who has worked with the National Academy of Sciences but was not involved with the research. He added the results could tip the question of resettlement either way.

“Implicitly, I think these results might caution efforts to return, because of the readings found,” Beyea said. On the other hand, he noted, information that only certain uninhabited islands have levels that exceed agreed-upon safety standards could mean “the return to some places might be made easier.”

More HERE






Heat wave hype

Get ready for a hot one. Most regions of the U.S. have heat waves in store this weekend.

What should we do about it?  How about the beach?  Swimming pools, ice cream, air conditioning, barbecues.  Enjoy it.  Keep cool and well hydrated.  Check up on the elderly and vulnerable.

What shouldn’t we do?  Hype it up as a global warming talking point.

Weather and climate are not  the same.  We are experiencing weather.  The Earth has experienced around a half degree of warming, almost entirely last century.  It’s too little to meaningfully feel, let alone to account for a 100 degree July day.

Similarly, winter cold snaps are weather as well.

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi posted a veritable trove of climate data at CFACT.org to debunk the heatwave scare.

After analyzing the charts, graphs and numbers, here is his conclusion:

This is not about climate and weather, it is about using them to further a political agenda. Keep telling people how bad it is, if they don’t look at the counter-arguments, or are prevented from hearing them by the Alinsky like tactics of Isolate, demonize and destroy, then the end is predictable. And it’s not positive.

Heat and cold waves both happen.  Attributing heat to climate, while dismissing cold as weather, is propaganda.

The media should listen to Joe Bastardi and knock it off.

SOURCE





EPA Administrator Explains What’s Changed at the Agency Since the Obama Years: Interview

For Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, it’s important to make sure states—not the federal government—are making the calls on environmental issues when possible. He joins The Daily Signal for an exclusive interview to explain his views on federalism, regulation, and more. Read the interview, posted below, or listen on the podcast:

Daniel Davis: I have the privilege of being joined now in studio by Andrew Wheeler. He is the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Administrator, thanks for being here.

Andrew Wheeler: Thank you, Daniel. It’s great to be here.

Davis: So you became the acting EPA administrator just over a year ago and were confirmed later, I believe in February of this year?

Wheeler: Yes, Feb. 28.

Davis: OK. Looking back over your full year as a EPA administrator, acting and official, what are a couple of the top achievements that you really look back on and are proud of?

Wheeler: First, it’s gone really fast. It’s been a very fast year. But getting our major regulation out a couple of weeks ago on the Affordable Clean Energy rule, huge accomplishment. We reorganized our regions, we got that done this spring. But just moving forward on so many different regulatory fronts and improving the overall structure of the agency has just been really gratifying.

Davis: During the Obama administration, a number of states were often frustrated with their relationship with the EPA. Tell us about your approach with states and with governors and how you approach regulatory issues under this administration.

Wheeler: Certainly. We defer so much more to the states. You know the big difference between the Clean Power Plan, which is the Obama regulation and the ACE, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which was our regulation to address greenhouse gases from the electric power sector, is that we rebalanced it. We gave the authority back to the states.

What the Obama administration tried to do was make all of the energy decisions at the federal level about what types of fuel different states should be able to use. That’s not the role of the federal government. That’s not the role of the EPA.

That authority has historically been with the states and the state public utility commissions. So we have rebalanced that and returned that authority back to the states. And that’s just one example, but we’re doing that in all of our regulatory efforts.

Davis: One of those key regulatory issues was the Waters of the United States rule originally proposed under the Obama administration. And earlier this year, your agency proposed a revised version of that rule, which determines what counts as an official body of water subject to federal regulation.

Tell us about the EPA’s thought process in revising that rule.

Wheeler: Sure. First of all, the Obama regulation, as soon as it was issued, was stayed by a number of courts. In fact, today we have the Obama regulation, I believe, in effect in 22 states, and the 1980s definitions are enforced in 28 states. So it’s really a patchwork approach right now.

What we did is we took a step back, we took a look at the Clean Water Act, we took a look at the Supreme Court decisions. And we put forward a proposal, the Waters of the U.S. proposal, that we believe follows the law.

The second and the overarching guiding principle for us on the Waters of the U.S., the new definition that we have, which we’ll be finalizing by the end of this year, is that the property owner should be able to stand on his or her property and decide for themselves whether or not they have federal waters on their property without having to hire an outside attorney or consultant to do that for them.

And then third is we’re also for the first time acknowledging the fact that some waters are protected by the states and other waters should be protected by the federal government. We don’t have to overlap on every single waterway.

If the United States were to walk away from regulating water tomorrow, which we’re not going to, but if we were, most waterways would already be protected under state law. So we’re recognizing that for the first time.

Davis: The EPA uses a lot of scientific models to develop its regulations when it comes to defining waters of the United States. Obviously, there’s been controversy in recent years over how to define that and the subjectivity of what is a water of the United States. Is that primarily a legal question or is it really more dictated by science?

Wheeler: It is both. But if you go back to the original Clean Water Act, it says navigable waters are waters in the United States. So what we did is we clearly defined what is a water in the United States, but we also define what is not a water of the U.S.

For example, we clearly defined that agricultural ditches are not waters of the U.S. And I don’t think Congress intended a ditch next to a row of corn should be considered a water of the U.S. But there are certainly some scientific questions at play as far as adjacency to navigable waters for wetlands, other water bodies such as that.

So science does play a role in it, but I believe the Obama administration took it to an extreme on the science side instead of taking a look at what is truly a navigable water. And according to the supreme courts, what are the waterways that the United States government should be stepping in.

Davis: The EPA in the past has often developed major rules using science that the public didn’t have access to, wasn’t able to publicly evaluate.

What have you, under your leadership, been doing to increase the transparency so that the public can have access to the science that’s being used as the basis for these regulations?

Wheeler: We put forward a science transparency proposal, and we are working to finalize that this year.

What that does is require that any of the science that the federal government, the EPA uses for our regulatory purposes should be made available to the public. So the underlying research, the underlying data. We believe that transparency will lead to better regulations.

I started my career at the EPA working in the Toxics office on TRI, the Toxics Release Inventory, which was a Community Right-to-Know Act. And I really do believe that the public has a right to know the information that the government is using to design their regulations.

So by putting the science out there and allowing anybody to take a look at how we’re making our regulatory decisions, I think will lead to better regulations, better regulatory decisions, and decisions that will have better support with the American public.

Davis: And will that rule pretty much apply to all regulations? They all have to be based on publicly available data?

Wheeler: Yes. There will be some exceptions. Certainly, for example, some health studies data that involves people. We have to follow the HIPAA requirements, so that people’s individual health information is not released to the public. But that can be masked, and it can be taken care of and still be released in a meaningful manner so that people can understand what we’re using.

Davis: But you also recently issued a memo directing EPA offices to issue new rules regarding how they perform cost-benefit analysis on regulations. Can you explain that and what’s the goal of that?

Wheeler: Again, it’s part of transparency and making sure the American public understands what we’re basing our regulations on and why.

To the heart of that is the cost of the regulations. We owe it to the American public to explain to them what are the costs of a regulatory action and what are the benefits.

What we did last year is we proposed a regulation that would have applied cost-benefit analysis across the board to all of our regulations. We took a look at that, we took comments on it, and we decided the better approach would be to require that under each of our statutes because each statute has a different scientific basis, each statute has a different regulatory basis.

We’re going to move forward first under the Clean Air Act, and we’ll have that done by the end of this year. We will propose a new regulation that will require cost-benefit analysis to be done for all the Clean Air Act regulations, and then we will go statute by statute across all of our major statutes under the EPA jurisdiction.

Davis: Great.

In the past, the EPA has also sometimes justified new and costly rules by appealing to co-benefits, which, for our listeners, is essentially indirect benefits that don’t have much to do with the original purpose of the regulation but are used to justify it. It’s something that some of our Heritage experts here have written on a lot.

How do you perceive this issue of co-benefits? And what’s the EPA doing now to address any past abuse?

Wheeler: First of all, I think it’s fine for us to take a look at the co-benefits and explain what co-benefits might be, but that should not be the basis for a regulatory decision.

What the Obama administration did in particular on the Mercury Air Toxics regulation was the benefits that they calculated came from particulate matter, and … I believe it was 98% or 99% of the benefits for the mercury regulation were from addressing particulate matter.

We already have regulations addressing particulate matter, and we regulate particulate matter or PM down to the that is safe for people. What the Obama administration did was go beyond that, and then use those benefits to justify their standards for mercury.

The Supreme Court actually remanded that regulation back to the agency and said, “Your cost-benefit analysis is suspect. You need to take a second look at that.” Which is what we’re doing and redressing the mercury standards, and we should have our final regulation out on the Mercury Air Toxics rule by the end of this summer.

And what we’re doing is following what the Supreme Court told us to do, which is to do a more balanced approach of looking at the cost-benefit analysis and make sure that we are attributing the benefits of the regulation to the purpose of the regulation and I think we owe that to the American public.

Davis: Yeah.

Well, looking ahead to the rest of the year and next year, are there any other big items that come down the pike that folks should be looking out for from the EPA?

Wheeler: Sure. We will be finalizing our CAFE standards for the automobile sector in the next couple of months, we will finalize our Waters of the U.S. regulation by the end of this year, and we will be proposing a new regulatory program for lead and copper pipes.

This is for the drinking water, and this is what happened in Flint, Michigan, with the lead in Flint, Michigan. So we are updating that regulatory approach. It hasn’t been updated in over 20 years.

We’ll be proposing a new regulation that will help identify the lead pipes around the country that need to be replaced more quickly, and also take a look at mandatory testing for schools and day care centers and that proposal should be out sometime over the next month.

Davis: You mentioned the CAFE standards for vehicles. … I know California has played a big role in trying to set standards. Tell us about that, and how have you been pushing back on California?

Wheeler: First of all, the attorney general from Louisiana, Attorney General [Jeff] Landry, said that CAFE does not stand for the California Assumes Federal Empowerment. The federal government should be setting the CAFE standards for the entire country, not the state of California.

Now, we worked with California. We tried to negotiate with them a standard that would be appropriate for the entire country and that California could live with, and they just will not negotiate with us. They just will not come to the table. It’s really a shame.

And they’ve been in the press criticizing everything that we do instead of coming forward with a plan that would work.

[California’s] … standard just looks at CO2 from cars. We believe that there are other public policy goals that should be addressed under a CAFE standard, including public safety and the lives of our citizens.

Our proposal—as we proposed last year—will actually save American lives. It will reduce the price of a new automobile by $2,300. Right now, the average age of cars on the road is 12 years old, it used to be 8.

Older cars are less safe, and they’re worse for the environment. So by reducing the price of a new car, we believe that we [will] get more people buying newer cars—getting the older cars off the road—safer vehicles, better for the environment. And [it] will be a better program for the entire country.

SOURCE




Climate trillions frittered in the wind

This year, the world will spend $US162 billion ($230bn) subsidising renewable energy, propping up inefficient industries and supporting middle-class homeowners to erect solar panels, according to the International Energy Agency. In addition, the Paris Agreement on climate change will cost the world from $US1 trillion to $US2 trillion a year by 2030. Astonishingly, neither of these hugely expensive policies will have any measurable impact on temperatures by the end of the century.

Climate campaigners want to convince us that not only should we maintain these staggering costs, but that we should spend a fortune more on climate change, since our very survival is allegedly at stake. But they are mostly wrong, and we’re likely to end up wasting trillions during the coming decades. I will outline how we could spend less, do a better job addressing climate change, and help far more effect­ively with many of the world’s other ills.

Global warming is a real, man-made problem — but it is just one of many challenges facing humanity. We shouldn’t base our policy decisions on Hollywood movies or on scare scenarios but on the facts. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even if we did absolutely nothing to respond to global warming, the total impact by the 2070s will be the equivalent to a 0.2 per cent to 2 per cent loss in average income. That’s a challenge that requires our attention — but it’s far from the end of the world.

Over-the-top environmental activists are not only out of synch with the science but they also are out of touch with mainstream concerns. A global poll by the UN of nearly 10 million people found that climate change was the lowest priority of all 16 challenges considered. At the very top, unsurprisingly, are issues such as better education, better healthcare and access to nutritious food. We need to address climate change effectively — but we should remember that there are many other issues that people want fixed more urgently.

The present approach to climate change isn’t working. If fully implemented, analysis of the leading climate-economic models shows that the Paris Agreement will cost $US1 trillion to $US2 trillion every year in slowed economic growth. Our response to climate change is so expensive because alternative energy sources remain expensive and inefficient in most scenarios. It is still very expensive to switch from fossil fuels — hence the fortune being spent on subsidies, to little overall effect.

Leading global energy researcher Vaclav Smil says: “The great hope for a quick and sweeping transition to renewable energy is wishful thinking.” Former US vice-president Al Gore’s chief scientific adviser, Jim Hansen, who put global warming on the agenda in 1988, agrees: “Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”

Despite costing a fortune, the Paris Agreement will have virtually no impact on global temperatures. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has estimated that even if every country makes every single carbon cut suggested in the Paris treaty to the fullest extent, CO2 emissions would be cut by only 1 per cent of what would be needed to keep temperature rises under 2C. Incurring an annual $US1 trillion cost while failing to rein in temperature rises is a very poor idea.

A realistic and credible response to global warming needs to bring China and India on board. They are not going to slow their economies and imperil the fossil-fuel-driven growth that is lifting millions out of poverty.

When 27 of the world’s top climate economists and three Nobel laureates looked at the gamut of potential climate solutions for my think tank, Copenhagen Consensus, they found that the current approach, which tries to make fossil-fuel energy as expensive as possible, is very inefficient. Moreover, it is likely to fail since citizens in most countries are unlikely to accept the steep energy price hikes that these policies require. We can look to France’s “yellow vest” protests or to the elections in The Philippines, the US and Australia of politicians who loudly reject these policies to see that voters are making their choices heard.

What will actually fix climate change, keep India and China on board, and remain palatable with voters is a policy driven by green energy research and development. We need to innovate the price of zero CO2 energy below that of fossil fuels. That way every country in the world can afford to — and want to — make the switch.

Far more investment is required. On the sidelines of the 2015 Paris climate summit, 20 world leaders including then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull promised to double green energy research and development to $US30bn by 2020. International Energy Agency data shows rich OECD countries have not increased their spending, which remains at less than $US16bn today.

Leaders globally should commit to spending an extra $US84bn annually. This will likely produce the green technologies that can outcompete fossil fuels. It would also mean we would have plenty of money left over to help resolve all the other challenges that people say are a much bigger priority.

How to fix everything else

The Copenhagen Consensus worked with 50 teams of top economists and several Nobel laureates to carefully examine the global ambitions the world has set for 2030, the so-called Sustainable Development Goals, to identify those that will help the most. It turns out that instead of spending all the resources on inefficient climate policies we can solve climate change more effectively — and then actually fix most other problems with the money left over.

One of the best investments is in access to contraception and family planning. Right now, 215 million women are unable to choose the number, timing and spacing of their children. This matters because unwanted pregnancies claim the lives of young mothers. Being better able to space births means parents will invest more in each child, reducing child deaths and ensuring better education outcomes.

Moreover, with fewer children a year, each child will have access to more capital, boosting economic growth. Achieving near-universal access to family planning carries an annual price tag of $US3.6bn, but allowing women more control over pregnancy means 150,000 fewer maternal deaths and 600,000 fewer orphaned children each year, along with a “demographic dividend” boosting economic growth. Every dollar spent would produce social benefits worth $US120.

Nutrition is an area where tiny amounts of spending have huge and lifelong effects. Since the 1980s, the West has become focused on hunger only when the media swoops into areas horrendously affected by starvation. Pictures of vultures waiting for a malnourished child are what it takes to get us to send food, and this often comes way too late.

Unsurprisingly, this is an incredibly ineffective way to help, not the least because it is very expensive to keep sending food every day forever, but also because it relies on an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. There are two crucial things we need to do instead.

First, we need to focus on pregnant mothers and on infants during their first 1000 days, which is the most crucial time for brain development. A landmark study in Guatemala that began in the 60s reveals that investment in better nutrition at this early time changes lives completely: it leads to better educational outcomes, better jobs and even to more stable marriages.

Spending just $US100 helps a child to be stronger and smarter, stay longer in school and ultim­ately become a much more productive member of society. For the children, it can increase lifetime incomes by 60 per cent. The benefits are worth, on average, 45 times more than the costs. This will cost $US10bn a year.

Second, to create more lasting food impacts, we need to invest in agricultural research. This will make farmers able to produce more nutritious, reliable crops, especially in developing and fragile countries. We can generate extra yield increases by investing in agricultural R&D and by boosting the use of better (sometimes genetically modified) seeds, which give farmers more resilience and ability to withstand climate shocks, while lifting the poorest out of hunger. For a cost of $US2.5bn a year, we can produce benefits worth $US85bn. Each dollar spent will help generate more food security, reduced food prices and other social benefits worth $US35.

The world’s biggest infectious disease killer isn’t HIV or malaria but tuberculosis.

TB used to be a scourge in rich societies, having killed a billion people during the past 200 years. Yet we mostly fixed TB in the developed world a century ago, and thus TB today receives far too little attention and resources, with only 4.6 per cent of development assistance for health, a paltry $US1.7bn. This is a disease we know how to detect and treat — and we know that treatment stops multiple cases and prevents deaths or years of impairment. Reducing TB deaths by 90 per cent would cost $US8bn a year but result in 1.3 million fewer deaths. The benefits to society would be worth $US43 for every dollar spent.

The most powerful thing governments could do to transform lives would cost next to nothing at all: embrace freer trade. During the past 25 years, China lifted 680 million people out of poverty through trade, and there are similar stories from Indonesia, Chile and others. Genuine, global free trade would have benefits that would reach every single country. Far more than any aid dished out by donor countries, lowering trade barriers is the most powerful way to reduce extreme poverty. A completed global Doha trade deal would make the world $US11 trillion richer each and every year by 2030 according to research considered by the Nobel laureates.

The world’s worst-off would benefit the most. In developing nations, the increased wealth from the Doha deal would be equivalent to an extra $US1000 for every single person, every single year by 2030. This alone would cut the number of people living in poverty by 145 million in just 11 years. The annual cost would be $US20bn in pay-offs to those sectors (such as farmers in wealthy countries) who would lose out, and who politically are holding up the deals.

The list goes on. We could halve malaria infections for $US500m annually, save a million children’s lives through $US1bn of increased immunisation, triple preschool access in Africa for $US6bn and get every child in Africa through primary school for $US9bn. We could halve global coral reef loss for $US3bn, and save two million babies from death every year for $US14bn through policies such as providing expecting mothers with nutrients and protection from disease, having nurses and clean facilities at birth and ensuring best practice childcare afterwards.

All of these amazing policies will cost in total $US78bn. Together with the $US84bn for green energy R&D, the total comes to $US162bn — or what we’ll spend on subsidising inefficient renewables this year.

Our choice

The total benefit to humanity from achieving this total list of policies will be around $US42 trillion. This would be the same as increasing the average income in the world by 50 per cent, and the benefits would mostly help the world’s poorest.

Of course, we also can spend 10 times as much on the Paris Agreement and generate about a thousand times fewer benefits from slightly reduced temperatures.

The choice really is clear. Do we want to be remembered in the future for being the generation that overreacted and spent a fortune feeling good about ourselves but doing very little, subsidising inefficient solar panels and promising slight carbon cuts — or do we want to be remembered for fundamentally helping to fix both climate and all the other challenges facing the world?

SOURCE





Climate change signals part of socialist plot

Comment from Australia

In his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay describes how crowd psychology drove numerous “national delusions”, “peculiar follies” and “psychological delusions” in the 16th and 17th centuries. US financier Bernard Baruch recounted similar madness preceding the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Without wanting to appear disrespectful to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and her councillors, something about their declaration of a “climate emergency” suggests a similar psychological irrationality.

Their gullibility matches that of audiences at the UN climate conference in Poland and the Davos World Economic Forum who sat spellbound as 16-year-old Greta Thunberg lectured them on climate catastrophism.

Moore and her colleagues mindlessly chant slogans about how “climate change poses a serious risk to Sydneysiders” because “successive federal governments have shamefully presided over a climate disaster … Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased for four consecutive years. (The) federal government’s policies are simply not working.”

It’s true. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising marginally. But per capita they are falling. Even if you believe CO2 influences global temperatures, at 1.3 per cent of global emissions and a 1 per cent growth rate, they are hardly a danger to the planet. Besides, Australia is on track to meet its Paris commitment. A recent study found the world overall has only a 5 per cent chance of reaching its goals.

Australian National Univer­sity research confirms our per capita renewables deployment rate is four to five times faster than in the EU, the US, Japan and China. Contrast this with a world that, for the first time since 2001, saw no year-on-year growth in renewable power capacity.

With Australia already leading the world, how much more is the government expected to do? How many more billions must taxpayers and industry pay?

Virtue signalling is one thing, but it is deceptive for the City of Sydney Council to claim that by next year it will use 100 per cent renewable energy. It surely must know that in NSW 80 per cent of electricity is coal-generated.

Still, Sydney, along with another 651 trendy green councils in 15 countries, is now eligible to attend a group hug where the collective can again remind governments to “adopt an emergency response to climate change and the broader ecological crisis”, as a campaign launched in left-wing stronghold New York City has just declared. It’s the first US city with more than a million residents to do so.

Democratic-controlled Los Angeles City Council flirted with the idea but simply passed a ­motion to set up a Climate Emergency Mobilisation Department.

Conspicuously, no Chinese city has had the urge, despite China’s “greenhouse” gas emissions growing at the fastest pace in seven years and outpacing the US and EU combined. No Indian city has either, despite faster emissions growth than any other major energy-consuming nation.

Meanwhile, Britain, France, Canada and Ireland have capitulated. Britain has introduced legislation to become CO2 neutral by 2050. It will mean a change to almost every aspect of life and carries an estimated cost of more than £1 trillion ($1.8 trillion). Ireland, having missed both domestic and EU emissions targets, is simply virtue signalling.

As financial and social costs accumulate, it is not surprising to find signs of mania fatigue.

Growing numbers of credible whistleblowers and respected climate scientists are calling into question the integrity of the science. Their claims that global warming theory is unproven and that data is “untrustworthy” and “falsified” are slowly entering mainstream consciousness.

Repeated catastrophic deadlines have proved false. Climate-change threats to food produc­tion proved unfounded. Between 2005 and 2016, there was a global decline of 15 per cent in undernourished people, despite the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declaring 2016 the hottest year on record.

And, inevitably, faith and reality are colliding. University of Colorado scientist Roger Pielke Jr calculates getting to net zero global CO2 emissions by 2050 “requires replacing one million tonnes of fossil fuel consumption every day, starting now”.

These impracticalities and increasing voter hostility mean governments representing more than half the world’s population can’t agree on a long-term net zero emissions target. Nor on a UN scientific report on the ­impact of a 1.5C rise in global temperatures. Perhaps most revealing of all is the growing realisation that climate change is not about science but politics.

Potsdam Institute director Ottmar Edenhofer confirms this: “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy,” he warns. “This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more. We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres agrees: “The whole climate change process is a complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.”

This is orthodox Marxist, socialist ideology and the West is being bullied into parting with trillions of dollars for the privilege of surrendering to an authoritarian central government. When enough people grasp this, the climate change delusion bubble will burst. Perhaps this explains why desperate organisers of protests such as the Extinction Rebellion are now resorting to violence.

Meanwhile, like Wile E. Coyote, Moore and her global catastrophists are suspended over the cliff, leaving behind a trail of destruction. Sooner or later they will look down, leaving us to pick up the pieces.

SOURCE 

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

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

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