Serious Errors In IPCC Ocean Report Revealed

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has called on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to correct serious errors in its recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

In a letter to the IPCC, Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, has highlighted a number of errors and misinterpretations in the IPCC’s report which are based, to a significant degree, on a flawed study which was recently retracted.

In his letter, Dr Peiser points out that the IPCC’s overall conclusion on ocean heat uptake

“is based to a significant degree on a paper by Cheng et al. (2019) which itself relies on a flawed estimate by Resplandy et al. (2018). An authors’ correction of this paper and its ocean heat uptake estimate was under review for nearly a year, but in the end Nature requested that the paper be retracted (Retraction Note, 2019).

“While the [IPCC’s] conclusion that the rate of ocean heat uptake has increased in recent years may probably be right, the evidence you cite for there being ‘high confidence’ and ‘high agreement’ is rather doubtful due to your inclusion of flawed evidence of the retracted paper by Resplandy et al. (2018).”

What is more, there is also doubt about the IPCC’s conclusion that ocean heat uptake has been accelerating in recent years. According to its own report the overall ocean heat uptake between 0-2000 m was nearly 10% higher over 1993-2017 than over the second half of that period, 2005-2017, suggesting that OHU may have been declining slightly rather than accelerating over the last 25 years.

In light of these flaws, the GWPF is calling on the IPCC to correct the evident errors and reduce its confidence rating accordingly.

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The unsaid reality







The biomass scam: Should Africans truly burn more trees?

Why are the World Bank and other international institutions promoting widespread use of charcoal for heating and cooking in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)?

During the recent 2019 “climate week,” the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change touted increased reliance on biomass as a tool in fighting climate change.

The Dogwood Alliance objected to the IPCC report, claiming that biomass (largely charcoal) contributes to deforestation.

Dogwood’s arguments reflect the views of Norimitsu Onishi, whose 2016 article in The New York Times pointed out that burning charcoal not only poses human health concerns, it also constitutes a massive threat to the environment.

The UN Environment Programme predicts that Africa’s demand for charcoal – currently 23 million tons a year — is likely to double or triple by 2050. Africa’s charcoal production doubled in the past two decades and now accounts for more than 60 percent of the world’s total, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Rapid urbanization increased demand for charcoal – the preferred way to cook in SSA cities.

Onishi acknowledged that charcoal is cleaner and easier to us than firewood, and cheaper and more readily available in much of Africa than gas or electricity. As a result, 80 percent of SSA families use charcoal as their primary energy source.

The World Health Organization reports that over 4.3 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution resulting from burning charcoal and other solid fuels in open fires and leaky stoves – more than from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

The WHO further stated that lack of access to electricity for at least 1.2 billion people exposes households to very high levels of fine particulate matter. Lack of electricity also results in other health risks (burns, injuries, and poisonings) and constrains other opportunities for health and development – such as studying or engaging in small crafts and trades.

Electrifying Africa

Why, over a century after affordable electricity began to transform Western society, is over half of Africa still not connected to any electric grid?

The World Bank notes that SSA’s household electrification rate averaged 42 percent in 2016 – with Rwanda at 80 percent and Guinea-Bissau at 30 percent.

Three factors hinder demand for electric power in much of Africa, according to ZimbabweSituation.com. Many firms and households already connected to the grid in SSA face regular blackouts. Poor grid reliability typically means continued reliance on charcoal, forcing connected households to pay for two energy sources.

Next, where electricity bills take up a large share of household income, access to electricity is significantly low. Countries with poor grid penetration typically use higher tariffs to finance infrastructure to improve their electric grids. But high tariffs translate into high energy bills that deter consumers.

The cost and complexity of the connection process also hampers electrification. Where generation capacity is insufficient, utilities may delay new connections until infrastructure investments catch up with consumer demand. But the Catch-22 is that these administrative barriers, red tape, and connection costs drive down demand.

In most places, according to Patrick Conners, the Energy Guy, wood competes dollar for dollar with natural gas but pollutes much more and requires far more work: hauling and stacking the wood, stoking and tending the fire, and cleaning out all the ashes afterward.  A furnace gives much more uniform heat without the smoke and draft issues.

African electricity costs and reliability will only come with modernization and expansion of the electric grid. The late Steven Lyazi, who worked with the Congress of Racial Equality in Uganda, acknowledged that the availability of solar energy is good news to millions of Africans who rely on firewood, dung, and charcoal for cooking. But, he added, solar and wind are, at best, stopgap solutions on the way to energy security.

“Many people,” said Lyazi, “don’t know that Africa has some big dreams.” Just one — the proposed 466-mile Trans East Africa electric railway would require much more energy that wind and solar can now provide. Africa, Lyazi explained, has great potential for nuclear energy, coal, oil, and natural gas – but powerful (largely European) environmentalists (including the World Bank) have opposed funding such projects.

Lyazi, who died in a bus accident in 2017, urged Africans to being using their abundant natural resources (defying European environmentalists who have stymied fossil fuel, hydroelectric, and nuclear power projects in Africa) to build natural gas pipelines from oilfields (that today is mostly burned and wasted, while the oil is mostly exported) to generate affordable electricity for millions? Why not build nuclear and coal plants and hydroelectric projects?

Why not indeed?

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Leading Journal Calls Climate Science Dissent A Mental Disorder

Germany may be reintroducing a dark period where political opponents are simply declared mentally ill by the state and forcibly hospitalized for “treatment.”

A case for psychotherapy

In a recent paper dubbed “The Denial of the Apocalypse – Dealing with the Climate Crisis from the Perspective of Existential Psychotherapy” appearing in the German Das Psychotherapeutenjournal (The Psychotherapist Journal), author Fabian Chmielewski explains which “denial processes are effective and what the psychotherapists could and should concretely do about it.”

Panic over climate change is normal

According to Chmielewski, a psychologist with a practice in Hattingen, being in a panic about the rapidly approaching climate apocalypse is, in fact, rational behavior, while having doubts and remaining calm about it is abnormal and thus needs to be addressed.

The journal’s editorial, written by Hans Schindler, comments that although Chmielewski’s paper is contentious, it is “a suitable impetus for the necessary debate about the sociopolitical responsibility of our professional group and for the discussion about the possibilities – and limits – of engagement in our roles as psychotherapists and citizens.”

Leading journal in Germany

Das Psychotherapeutenjournal is not just some crackpot publication that gets little attention in Germany, rather it is indeed the organ of the Bavarian State Chamber of Psychological Psychotherapists.

The abstract of Fabian Chmielewski paper:

"A broad consensus of serious research warns of the scenario of a soon inevitable spiral of man-made climate change. Nevertheless, both large sections of the population and decision-makers do not seem to be adequately interested in the impending destruction of the world as we know it.

The gloomy prophecies of climate scientists are played down or even denied, the necessary climate policy steps are not taken.

The article looks at these phenomena from the perspective of existential psychotherapy and tries to point out possible causes and mechanisms of this repression as well as to derive concrete psychotherapeutic ‘interventions.’

It also argues for the active participation of psychotherapists in health campaigns against this widespread “existential neurosis”.

Chmielewski claims that the “Fridays for Future” strikes and demonstrations are the clearest and most media-effective indication of the impending doomsday scenario, and calls for the implementation of the drastic climate policy measures demanded by science and that both doctors and psychologists warn of the health consequences of climate change and giving it top priority.

Here, he suggests, panic is the psychologically appropriate response.

Chmielewski notes that at its annual general meeting, the Marburger Bund(association of physicians) demands:

“Stopping climate change caused by humans and its consequences for human health must also be given absolute priority in health policy action”.

In the paper, Chmielewski writes that in recent times, various psychologists and psychotherapists have marked climate change as an “existential threat” (Psychologists for Future, 2019).

And when it comes to scientific dissent with regards to the upcoming climate doomsday, auditor Chmielewski writes that despite the scientific certainty of climate doomsday:

Nevertheless, important decision-makers are either completely denying man-made climate change or trivializing it and the urgency of the pressure to act. […]

Also commenting on Chmielewski’s paper at the critical German achgut.com here, Air Tuerkis notes that generally, therapists are rightly afraid to impose a certain point of view on people.

But according to Chmielewski: “Exceptions are to be made, however, if an acute own or foreign endangerment is present”.

The concept of an ‘acute danger to oneself or others‘ is quite explosive here. It releases the therapist, for example, from the duty of confidentiality.

The term normally aims at impending criminal offenses that pose a danger to life and limb and above all the danger of suicide. In Bavaria, the legislator speaks of a danger to public safety to a considerable extent.”

In other words, back to the dark days of Soviet-style punitive political psychiatry. Dissenters should be medicated into changing their views.

SOURCE 





Australian climate protesters have set taxpayers back MILLIONS - and businesses have lost even more money

Climate change protesters have cost Australia's police forces millions of dollars and staff had to be diverted from road safety and domestic violence complaints to patrol last week's chaos.

Victoria Police Commander Tim Hansen said 16,000 patrol hours had been spent policing the Extinction Rebellion protests, which blocked traffic in Melbourne's CBD causing widespread disruption. 

'It's had a huge impact on our resourcing out in the regions and out in the suburbs,' Commander Hansen told reporters on Sunday.

The cost is thought to be at least $3million, the Herald Sun reported, although Victoria Police say the exact cost is still being determined.

'What I can say is the overtime budget is in the hundreds of thousands already,' Commander Hansen said.

Victoria Police will not try to make protesters pay for the cost of policing, however, as Commander Hansen said it was a community protest in a public space.

'The first gateway in considering whether user pays is applicable is there needs to be a level of commerciality,' he said.

Police had to be re-tasked from suburban patrol duties and from specialist units to cope with the mass disruption during which 111 people were arrested.

'Because of the need to resource this protest, we've had to take some resources away from those programs,' Commander Hansen said.

'Sustained and unplanned protest activity has seen a dilution of these policing programs.'

Queensland police said on Friday that more than 150 officers had to be deployed each day, arresting a total of 125 protesters during the week including several who glued themselves to the William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane's CBD on Friday. 

'More than 150 general and specialist police have worked each day this week to deal with the unlawful behaviour undertaken by Extinction Rebellion protesters,' Acting Chief Superintendent Fleming said in a release on Friday.

Daily Mail Australia understands this figure does not include police at the watch house, or the cost of administrative staff needed to process those arrested.

The disruptions also cost Queensland businesses thousands in lost productivity the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland said.

'On any given day, data from Tom Toms shows that $2.4 million is lost in productivity due to traffic and congestion – with protests of this magnitude, it swells to a loss of $3.5 million,' spokesman Dan Petrie told the Courier Mail.

Extinction Rebellion Southeast Queensland responded by saying the large police presence was not necessary because their protests were non-violent.

'We are seeing unprecedented bushfires and droughts due to climate change,' an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia via email. 'These disasters are already destroying businesses. Disruption is necessary to demand urgent climate action. XR is a non-violent movement, and the large police presence was unnecessary.'

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