Get Ready for More Hype From Climate Fearmongers!
“Climate cops” are holding their annual Conference of the Parties (COP) doom-fest
In case you hadn’t heard, radical environmentalists and their globalist, “Great Reset” allies, people I like to call “climate cops,” are holding their annual doom-fest. The 27th “Conference of the Parties,” or COP, of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change started November 6 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and has drawn some 40,000 participants from pretty much every country in the world. It’s set to last two weeks.
True to form, organizers are using it as another opportunity to demand global action to fight catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Cornwall Alliance will comment from time to time about this COP, as we’ve done about previous ones.
The Associated Press reported on its first day that COP27 was taking place “amid a multitude of competing crises, including the war in Ukraine, high inflation, food shortages and an energy crunch.” Every one of these competing crises, including even the war in Ukraine, is in part a consequence of the very climate and energy policies promoted for the last three decades, and every one of them is exacerbated even now by exactly those policies.
Prodded by past COPs, developed countries have rushed to substitute wind and solar energy for abundant, reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy. The result, predicted by critics, has been higher energy prices and, simultaneously, increasingly fragile energy infrastructures, especially in Europe. Those fragile, poorly supplied energy infrastructures led to European nations’ growing reliance on Russia for natural gas. That dependence, in turn, led to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculating that the risk that Europe would respond militarily to an invasion of Ukraine was slim — and he was right. European nations’ support for Ukraine has been tepid compared with the nearly $20 billion in aid the United States has given.
Meanwhile, pressured by developed nations, many developing nations have been forced to rely increasingly on wind and solar rather than fossil fuels, slowing their economic growth and prolonging poverty for their billions of people. That makes those nations vulnerable to the oil and gas price shocks that came with the war in Ukraine.
And more recently, again at the insistence of the COPs, some nations are adopting agricultural policies that depress crop yields in the name of fighting global warming.
Put them all together, and these mean higher prices for increasingly unavailable energy and food. I.e., the architects of all this suffering are the very people lecturing the world from Sharm el Sheikh for the next two weeks.
Negotiators at COP27 have put “loss and damage” — a.k.a. “reparations” — on the agenda, too. The idea is that wealthy nations, which developed their wealth using hydrocarbon energy and therefore are to blame for global warming and the increased numbers and intensity of extreme weather events, owe developing nations financial assistance as they deal with climate disasters.
Never mind, of course, that according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the hard data show no increase in the frequency or intensity of such events. The fact is, developing country cops are shaking down the developed countries for damage that would have occurred anyway.
Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, opened COP27 by saying, “This is a once in a generation opportunity to save our planet and our livelihoods,” essentially the same thing said by chairmen of lots of past COPs. Apparently, once in a generation means once a year. Kind of short generations, I guess.
The outgoing chair of the talks, British official Alok Sharma, said: “As challenging as our current moment is, inaction is myopic and can only defer climate catastrophe. We must find the ability to focus on more than one thing at once.” He added, “How many more wake up calls do world leaders actually need?” He cited recent devastating floods in Pakistan and Nigeria, and historic droughts in Europe, the United States, and China — but he did not point out that even the IPCC says you can’t attribute such events, which have happened over and over throughout history, to current climate change.
Over 120 world leaders were expected to join the 40,000 attendees, including President Joe Biden. But China’s President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India don’t plan to come. Their absence — China is the world’s number one emitter of greenhouse gases, and India is number three — means major deals for further cuts in emissions will be hard to achieve. Those countries have made it clear that they don’t intend to curb their emissions. Why? Because hydrocarbon energy is essential to their continued efforts to lift their people out of poverty — and they’re big enough and powerful enough to resist pressure from the climate alarmists in the West.
Good for them. Poverty is a far greater risk than anything related to climate — as the 98% decline in mortality from weather-related disasters over the last hundred years demonstrates.
That doesn’t mean no harm can come from COP27. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, the likely Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, where all spending bills must originate, is likely to put a significant crimp in the climate alarmists’ plans here. Let’s hope so.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/92844-get-ready-for-more-hype-from-climate-fearmongers-2022-11-14
**********************************************************EU refuses to agree climate compensation fund
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Talks about how to compensate vulnerable countries for the damage caused by climate change are not ready to agree on a funding mechanism, a European Union negotiator said on Friday, but did not exclude progress on the issue at COP27.
The topic, known as "loss and damage", has for the first time made it to the formal agenda at the conference in Egypt in what was seen as a breakthrough for developing nations.
The European Union has said at the COP27 summit it does not rule out the possibility of a fund, a shift after rich countries have long resisted the idea because of fears of spiralling liability for emissions historically linked the developed world.
EU negotiator Jacob Werksman said negotiations were not ready to agree on a single funding solution, but he hoped the COP27 summit would achieve more than just scheduling further talks on climate compensation.
"We don't think that this process is ready to agree in principle that a new fund or facility is the right or the only way forward," he told a news conference.
Donors must act now to save East Africa from famine, IRC says
"But we are not excluding that and couldn't exclude that as a significant part of the conversation."
Climate-vulnerable countries say wealthy industrialised nations should help to pay for irreversible damage from floods, storms and rising seas, after decades of emissions have caused global temperatures to rise.
Developing countries are pushing for a climate loss and damage fund, and say alternative proposals such as a "Global Shield" initiative to strengthen disaster insurance by the Group of Seven (G7) leading economies, but are not a substitute for a new U.N. scheme.
Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), told Reuters the U.N. talks should create the fund because they are a rare forum where every country gets a say, including poor and climate-vulnerable states.
"What more legitimacy do you want than a process where all the states have signed up?" Robertson said. "It's gonna be a lot more work. But isn't it worth it?"
The EU has cautioned that new U.N. funds can take years to launch and that other funding routes could be more efficient in helping states struck by climate disasters.
Government ministers will take over negotiations at COP27 next week after diplomats have wrangled over technical details this week, and the aim is to clinch deals by the summit's scheduled close on Friday.
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Escaping From the COP-27 Insane Asylum
“Show us the money!” climate activists demand, and rich countries are expected to pony up.
Do I hear $100 billion? Would you give $1 trillion? Now, then, would you give $2 trillion?
The climate reparations bidding war is on. What began at $100-billion-a-year at COP-21 in Paris rapidly ballooned to $1.3-trillion on the eve of COP-27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh-Down, Egypt and now stands at $2.4-trillion annually! And we’re nowhere near “going once, going twice, sold.”
Of course, it was always about the money – endless sums of cash supposedly to help developing countries (like China!) adapt to dangerous manmade climate change, cover entire regions with wind and solar, and secure “fair, just and equitable” reparations for soaring temperatures, rising seas, destructive storms, floods, droughts and famines allegedly caused by countries that have used fossil fuels since 1850.
Yes, China. The Middle Kingdom has long postured itself as a developing country, when it comes to when it might start building fewer coal-fired power plants and slowly shift to “renewable” energy.
Now China says it will pay non-cash climate reparations, if the United States pays in dollars. Of course, any US, UK, German et cetera “fair share” would be exorbitant – and paid while they “transition” rapidly away from fossil fuels, regardless of the economic, social and ecological costs.
As Oliver Hardy would say, “Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” Joe, John and the rest of Team Biden’s climate-obsessed, fossil-fuel-eradicating, eco-justice warriors.
They and their activist, media and academia allies created the climate scare – the assertion that fossil fuel emissions alone are driving today’s climate and weather. Never mind that average global temperatures climbed significantly (Baruch Hashem) since the last Pleistocene ice age; sea levels rose some 400 feet; and floods, droughts, hurricanes and other disasters ravaged planet and humanity countless times. Anything happening today, however, is due to countries that got rich using fossil fuels. Or so they insist.
Therefore, naturally, COP-27 organizers, activists and attendees now say the “climate crisis” requires enormous payments from rich countries to poor countries – or more accurately, from poor people in rich countries to rich kleptocrats in poor countries. That raises another inconvenient truth.
Not long ago, Obama “science advisor” John Holdren intoned: “Only one rational path is open to us – simultaneous de-development of the [United States and other over-developed countries] and semi-development of the under-developed countries, in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.” This de-development ideology is shared by many others.
Well, de-development and de-industrialization are already underway in Britain, Germany and elsewhere, because wind, solar and battery (WSB) energy cannot possibly replace abundant, reliable, affordable, non-weather-dependent fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Jobs, companies and entire industries are already disappearing across Europe, as it destroys fossil fuel power plants but has nothing viable to replace them.
So how are all these de-developing Formerly Rich Countries (FRCs) going to deliver billions or trillions annually, to pay climate reparations and help poor countries develop? They cannot possibly do so.
Even worse, eco-imperialist developed countries continue demanding that poor countries develop only to the minimal extent made possible with WSB technologies. Rich countries, the World Bank and global financial institutions also refuse to finance anything but pseudo-renewable energy.
These unconscionable policies perpetuate joblessness, poverty, disease and death – and advance the other basic goal of “climate stabilization” programs: controlling our lives and living standards. But poor nations have inalienable, God-given rights to develop, using fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power – and petroleum as feed stocks for fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, plastics and hundreds of other miraculous life-enhancing, life-saving products (developed by countries that are now expected to pay reparations).
Developed nations must help developing nations reach those goals. Instead, they too often block pathways to better lives. Still more outrageous, the USA and Europe have the nerve to ask African, Asian and Latin American nations to produce more oil and gas, but only for export to the USA and Europe!
Meanwhile, in Britain is setting up “warm rooms,” where people can go for a few hours a day, instead of freezing hungry and jobless in dark apartments. It’s as though Merry Old England has suddenly been transported back to the Middle Ages, by politicians who put climate virtue signaling above their constituents’ basic needs.
Meanwhile, Germany is dismantling an industrial wind power installation – so that it can extract the lignite coal underneath, to run generating plants, to keep factories operating and homes warm!
Even crazier, these are just a few examples of the insanity gripping the world’s political classes, especially during Conferences of Parties (COPs) on climate change. Happily, escaping this insane asylum requires little more than recognizing a few simple realities.
* The vast majority of nations signed the Paris climate treaty solely for the money – which they are now beginning to realize they will never receive. Moreover, coal, oil and natural gas still provide 82% of the world’s energy; nuclear, hydroelectric and biomass (wood and dung) provide most of humanity’s remaining energy needs, and less than 2% comes from wind and solar.
* Developing countries will be using fossil fuels for decades to come – and emitting more plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide in the process. Even if developed countries totally eliminated their fossil fuel use, atmospheric greenhouse gas levels will continue to climb.
* The 1.5 degrees C that we are supposed to avoid to avert catastrophe is arbitrary, meaningless – and tied not just to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but to the end of the Little Ice Age. Another degree or two of warming would be mostly beneficial, whereas another little or big ice age would devastate agriculture, habitats and wildlife.
* The entire climate crisis agenda is based on computer models that (a) cannot possibly reflect all the forces that govern climate, and (b) consistently predict planetary warming that is two to three times greater than actually recorded by satellites, weather balloons and surface temperature monitors.
* Basing economy-destroying, life-altering policies on useless models is sheer insanity – especially if the replacement energy comes from WSB systems that would require mining, processing, manufacturing and installations on scales that would ravage our planet.
The only reason these realities are so little known is that climate activists, politicians, academics, and news and social media studiously demonize, censor, silence, deplatform and demonetize scientists, economists and energy experts who challenge climate crisis narratives.
Thankfully, the Truth will eventually win out. Perhaps that is already happening at COP-27.
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ESG Endangering America’s Farms and Your Food: State Treasurers
The latest threat to farming can be identified in three familiar letters.
State treasurers at the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) told The Epoch Times on Nov. 14 that the United States’ agricultural base could be jeopardized by the top-down push for environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) scoring.
“It’s a real threat,” Nebraska State Treasurer John Murante said.
Farming is critical to the Cornhusker State’s economy, as that nickname suggests. The University of Arkansas reports that Nebraska produced over $21 billion in agricultural cash receipts during 2020.
During a panel discussion with Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder and SFOF CEO Derek Kreifels, Murante warned that ESG criteria in the financial sector pose a real risk to agriculture as we know it.
Many asset managers and leading banks have committed to “Net zero by 2050,” often through participation in United Nations-linked entities such as the “Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero” and “Climate Action 100.”
If those powerful institutions decide farming and ranching are excessively harmful to the climate, the flow of capital to agriculture could slow to a trickle—well before consumers feel the impact at their dinner tables to know the impact of the ESG efforts.
“When it comes to farmers and ranchers, how to get to net zero when using fertilizer, which is produced by natural gas, is extremely difficult—if not impossible—which is why we sometimes joke that the policy of certain asset managers seems to be that farmers can continue growing food, they just can’t use water or fertilizer to grow them,” Murante told The Epoch Times.
“The attack,” he said, “has already begun.”
Murante pointed out that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently joined former president Bill Clinton at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in September.
Murante warned, “They’re not talking in theory, they’re not using rhetoric, they’re making commitments to make it happen, and we don’t think it is at all appropriate for public finances to be used for that purpose.”
Murante believes the dramatic increases in fertilizer prices since 2021 can be traced in part to ESG or ESG-like policies that are among the factors increasing the price of energy.
And activist investors who want companies to divest from fossil fuels as fast as possible aren’t exactly eager to fund new fossil fuel exploration and production.
Between July 2021 and July 2022, the cost of anhydrous ammonia surged from $726 a ton to $1,469 a ton, per the University of Illinois. That’s over 200 percent of the original price. Other fertilizer prices similarly increased during the same period, according to the same source.
“Anytime you drive up energy costs, you make farming and ranching extraordinarily difficult,” he said.
“Farmers are not Wall Street bankers. They can’t afford to just absorb a 200 percent increase in their cost of goods and their cost of doing business,” he continued.
Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder shares these concerns over ESG and farming, as well as other core industries for many states, including his.
“Louisiana is heavy in oil and gas and heavy in agriculture,” he told The Epoch Times.
Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick told The Epoch Times he was not aware of many examples of ESG policies directly impacting farmers and ranchers. But he agreed that ESG is indirectly harming food production through its effect on energy prices and inflation.
“I think that we can certainly attribute the rise in the cost of energy to ESG activism,” he said.
He believes the ESG risk to farmers and ranchers will increase significantly if ESG-style regulations on banking and the private sector continue to expand.
Fitzpatrick is especially worried about the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) proposed principles on what the U.S. government agency has classified as climate-related financial risks.
Virtually all banks in the United States carry FDIC coverage.
Coupled with proposed climate risk rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a hard line on climate from the FDIC could ultimately make things even harder for food producers, Fitzpatrick believes.
“That’s when you’re really going to have a significant impact on [agriculture], I think."
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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