Great Barrier Reef breaks coral cover record again

Greenie prophecies of its demise prove wrong -- as all their prophecies do

London, 4 August -- Official data released today reveals that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in excellent health, with coral cover reaching record levels for the second consecutive year.

The increase will be surprising to members of the public, who are regularly hit with scare stories about coral bleaching and false tales about a reef in long-term decline.

A new note, published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, explains that the data shows clearly how a handful of coral bleaching events that have affected the reef since 2016 have had very limited impact on overall coral cover.

Dr Peter Ridd says:

“In recent years, the media around the world has been reporting coral bleaching events in increasingly apocalyptic terms. This data proves that they are simply scaremongering.”

GWPF director, Dr Benny Peiser said:

“This is just the latest example of empirical data making a mockery of the catastrophists. For how much longer do they think they can get away with it?”

Dr Ridd’s paperis titled entitled "The Good News on Coral Reefs"

https://mailchi.mp/9817ba74a104/great-barrier-reef-breaks-coral-cover-record-again-190539?e=cc88839e92

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Nederland is showing how not to tackle climate change

For weeks now, Dutch farmers have been protesting against the government’s plans on nitrogen emissions cuts, creating havoc in the country. Angry farmers have been withholding deliveries to grocery shops, dumping manure or tyres on motorways or at politicians’ homes, and blocking traffic. Farmers in other countries in Europe and North America have organised protests in solidarity with Dutch farmers and as a warning to their governments not to go the same way. Europe’s right-wing politicians used the protest movement to forward their own agenda. This may be just the beginning of wider unrest over agriculture.

What is the trigger behind those protests? It started with manure that is produced plentifully by Dutch livestock farms. When mixed with urine, it produces ammonia and nitrous oxide. The first one gets into the air and water, harming wildlife; the second is a potent greenhouse gas. Fertilisers too have nitrogen compounds.

The Dutch government propose cutting 50 per cent of nitrogen emissions by 2030. This plan includes a radical cut in livestock. The government estimates 11,200 farms will have to close and another 17,600 farmers will have to significantly reduce their livestock numbers.

Dutch farmers have used the protests to force the government to rethink their measures before the bill becomes a law later this year. This is about their way of living and earning. Those who can afford to continue will have to do so differently. Technology and changing farming habits are part of the solution. Others will be forced to shut.

The protests in response to these plans have attracted widespread domestic support. The Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB, an agrarian interest party, is currently in joint second-place in the Dutch polls, reaching a high of 18 per cent in Politico‘s poll of polls earlier in July.

Politically this debate is flaring up not only in the Netherlands. Far-right politicians and conspiracy activists are piggy-backing on those protests. Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, and even Donald Trump, have framed the protests as climate tyranny against hard-working people. The Polish government is the latest to officially back those protests. They have been lobbying the European Commission to back down on its emissions reduction plans for the agricultural sector. The Dutch protests are helpful in their endeavour.

The Netherlands is one of the most intensely farmed countries in Europe. It is the world’s fourth-largest dairy exporter and second-largest overall food exporter. Per square mile, they have 238 cows compared to 100 in the UK or 80 in Germany. This means more manure to dispose of and thus more emissions. Agriculture accounts for 86 per cent of Dutch nitrous oxide emissions. While many farmers accept that things have to change, they disagree with the way the government imposed its plans. For farmers, their way of life is at stake.

The Dutch protests are a reminder that climate policies cannot simply be imposed without rupture or intense exchanges. But this debate should not be reduced to government targets or farmers’ identities. To achieve climate transition it will be crucial to engage farmers, to cultivate an openness to new forms of farming that helps biodiversity and the climate.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/the-netherlands-is-showing-how-not-to-tackle-climate-change

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Billionaire-Funded Eco Group Quietly Acquires Farmland in Rural America for Sinister Plan, Aided by Feds

A billionaire-funded group’s plan to seal off hundreds of thousands of acres of land from agricultural use is drawing condemnation in Montana, with residents of the rural state pointing to the group’s plan as a threat to their way of life.

The American Prairie has obtained over 450,000 acres of land in Montana alone since 2004, with the plan of reserving them for wildlife and a “fully functioning ecosystem,” according to Fox News.

The group’s foreign donors include Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and deceased German businessman Erivan Haub.

The group has applied for authorization from the Bureau of Land Management for bison grazing on large portions of its Montana land holdings twice since 2017, using laws ordinarily intended to apply for livestock grazing.

Bison are wild animals, rather than livestock, with no role in modern-day commercial food production.

Montanans aren’t enthusiastic about the billionaire-funded group’s plans to seal off farmland from ranching and agricultural use.

The central Montana counties where the group has aggressively expanded its land holdings are heavily dependent on cattle ranching. Much of the lands the group now owns were once used by ranchers in the area.

The American Prairie Foundation plans to release wild bison onto their land holdings, a plan that’s concerning to local cattle ranchers. The ranchers fear the animals will infect their livestock with brucellosis, a disease that affects cattle and elk.

In a statement provided to the Western Journal, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen criticized the Bureau of Land Management for approving bison grazing on federal land leased by the group on Thursday.

“After shutting out public input from local communities, it’s not a surprise that President Biden’s Bureau of Land Management would rubber-stamp this radical proposal that is another step toward displacing northeast Montana’s livestock industry and replacing it with a large outdoor zoo.”

“My office is reviewing the decision closely to determine our next steps to protect ranchers and ensure the State’s interests are upheld.”

Knudsen said, “It’s just flatly illegal,” referring to the use of federal grazing permit laws for wild bison in another statement to Fox News.

Other residents of the state are pointing to the American Prairie Foundation’s plan as an encroachment on their communities from out-of-state interests.

“Those donors are able to write those contributions off as a charitable donation, so they don’t have to live with the consequences of what they’re doing to these communities,” said Chuck Denowh, policy director at the United Property Owners of Montana, speaking to Fox.

Eight hundred bison already live in lands either owned or leased by the American Prairie Foundation. The group hopes to increase its bison population by thousands.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/billionaire-funded-eco-group-quietly-acquires-farmland-rural-america-sinister-plan-aided-feds

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Climate tropes: Don’t be fooled

Judith Sloan

Last week, I wrote about the importance of language as a means of influencing people’s thinking and, indeed, decision-making. When it comes to manipulating language, turning meanings on their head and creating short-hand terms to deride opponents, the Left has won hands down.

I used examples from economics because that’s what I know best. But let’s face it, climate tropes are another outstanding case in which language is constantly used to persuade doubters to change their minds and to bolster the case for action, aka feathering the nests of green rent-seekers.

One example is renewable energy. It’s misleading because it fails to highlight the two key features, its intermittency and its low density relative to fossil fuels. But I guess weather-dependent, unreliable energy just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

It’s worth interrogating some climate tropes because they are important to understanding how well-heeled electors fall for the claims of activists – think here of the good burghers of Kooyong, Wentworth and the like. (To be sure, having lots of assets and high incomes incline these folk to hold post-material, worthy opinions even if they know in their hearts a lot of it is wishful thinking, at best, and complete hogwash, at worst.)

Let’s start with the most fundamental of all climate chestnuts – the science is settled. Any sensible person would immediately smell a rat. What the hell is ‘the science’? There is no such thing as ‘the science’. The very process of scientific discovery means nothing is truly settled. The best scientific approach is to test a refutable hypothesis but most climate science uses black-box, simplified models with untested predictions the main output. When the predictions are back-cast using data that is already in the can, the errors are there for all to see. But for climate scientists, there are always excuses.

(Some of you may have followed the recent ructions in medical science. In the case of the efficacy of antidepressants working to affect serotonin uptake, it turns out that there is no evidence and many millions of prescriptions may have been written for no benefit to patients. Fraud turns out to be the foundation for the incorrect belief – scientific belief – that the build-up of plaque in the brain is the principal cause of dementia. But, hey, the science was settled.)

Another favourite climate platitude is that renewables are cheaper than other forms of electricity generation. A very large number of current Labor ministers fall for this line. The Prime Minister is still banging on about cheaper, more reliable renewable energy and making some ludicrous suggestion that Australia can become a renewable energy superpower – another climate cliché.

Even Defence Minister Richard Marles who is no fool, has fallen into the same trap. ‘We’ve made it very clear we’re going to act on climate change in a way which gets more renewables into the electricity grid. The real thing now is that renewable power is cheap power, and then we’ll see electricity prices come down.’ Here’s the thing, Dick, the wholesale price of electricity in Australia has risen as the proportion of renewables in the grid has risen. In the middle of last decade, the wholesale price was around $70 per megawatt hour; it is now around $350, after a very substantial expansion in renewable energy installations.

Even the green activist regulator, the Australian Energy Market Operator, has conceded that the recent high wholesale electricity prices and convulsions in the National Electricity Market are in part due to the lack of coal-fired generation. That’s right, not having enough coal has been causing problems. The failure to link increases in subsidised renewable energy in the grid – recently, mainly as a result of state government and corporate initiatives – to the exit and unreliability of coal-fired power is a potent reminder of how removed green dreamers are from reality. Why would any rational owner spend money maintaining or extending the life of a 24/7 coal-fired electricity plant when various governments deliberately undercut their business models and gun for their exit?

A dictum frequently used by the climate crowd and associated politicians is ‘international pariah’. Unless Australia signs up to ambitious targets; fully commits to the Paris climate agreement; contributes to the climate fund for developing countries, we risk becoming an ‘international pariah’.

But if you read international media, as I do, there is hardly ever a mention of Australia being an international pariah on climate action. Sure, egg-heads like Alok Sharma, UK parliamentarian and president of Cop 26, and John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, criticise Australia’s emissions reductions. But these men do this for their own self-serving reasons while Canada and New Zealand, whose leaders are fully-signed up climate evangelists, largely escape criticism because they make the right climate sounds even though their emissions reductions are much worse. And do you ever hear Sharma or Kerry, who regularly fly around the world in private jets, criticise China, the world’s largest emitter by far? It’s obvious to any rational person that China has been playing the West like a violin, pretending to be concerned about the climate while cashing in (and cornering the market) on the export of renewable paraphernalia.

Don’t get me on to electric vehicles. The preferred term is Zero Emitting Vehicles, to emphasise their virtue. As if? EVs involve 40 per cent more emissions before they even hit the road. And given that electricity is generated mostly by fossil fuels in almost all countries, it’s a bald-faced lie to call them zero emitting. We are being taken for fools. It’s time to fight back.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/climate-tropes/

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

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

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

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