William Shakespere, Climate Denier

"The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists", as one UK article is headlined..

Even members of the UN's notorious IPCC are jumping ship in inceasing numbers. The politicized "science" of the Warmists is dying. Copenhagen was the watch. Of course governments are sticking to the party line - think of all those taxes and controls they will have to rescind.

Expect the Obamessiah to do the same, How will Denocrats set up a new vote delivering machine based around "Cap and Trade" patronage (Better known as Cap n' Tax) if their main warmist narrative vanishes?. Warmism was nothing if not a neo-Marxist powergrab that stimulated the all left's political erogenous zones.

For the moment the Warmist hoax is fading. The world citizenry, led by the Anglophone common law nations (USA, Britain, India, Canada, Australia etc) etc have forefronted their citizenry in rejecting the claims of cranks and frauds. The deep roots of individual liberty in common law countries have made them more deaf to the siren songs of the politicians.

Europeans, in contrast, with their historical acceptance of tyranny, have bought the warmism, but even their faith is fading.

The Warmists' computer models are incapable of predicting the weather a year from now, yet claim to predict it 100 years hence. The citizens have also seen off the reptilian polticians of the left who would seek to strait-jacket our lives into some weird asylum of "ethical green living" that gives them complete power over us.

Blow blow, thou winter wind. Thou were not so unkind as a poltician's powerlust.

Another Brick in The Warm

The problem with debating Warmers, those who believe in climate change caused by human industrial activity, is that for many it's a matter of faith and not of reason.

Indeed, getting them to agree to examine contrary evidence is like trying to discuss vegetables with a hyena.

So here is scant hope any will bother with the very interesting news that world CO2 atmospheric levels may have not risen at all in 100 years according to University of Bristol research summarized in Science Daily.

Only faith can explain why so many sensational untruths are clung to ( polar bears are decreasing, sea levels are quickly rising, the world is getting hotter every decade, the UN's laughable 'hockey stick' climate graph is true and so on).

A religious type of belief can acxcount for why so many otherwise intelligent, and often well-intentioned people fail to grasp that there is an inherent difference between alleged global warming and pullution or envirnnmental issues. It is possible to bve dedicated to the latter issues without embracing the former.

To point out that polar bears are healthily increasing, that there has been no overall global temperature rise for a decade, that the sea rise of about 3mm a year is in line with historical levels and that the 'hockey stick' was devastatingly demolished by experts in statistics years ago, brings to their faces a moment of puzzlement.

However this quizzical glance is the look of people who are questioning why you are an obvious nut case - not the expression of those hoping to chew over new facts.

Climategate, the emerging fact that the notorious UN Intergovernmental report was censored and doctored between the scientifically agreed draft and the final published document or evn the delightful debacle of Copenhagen 2009 will do nothing to dent the faith of the Warmers.

Notes On Global Warming

The following headline gave me the muse to jot these notes down to a dear friend and ardent global warming believer. He wonders why the Arctic is breaking up.

'Germany breaks record for 'lowest ever October temperature'

Of course that the Arctic has less ice could be due to global temperature distribution i.e. some colder parts getting warmer, some warmer parts getting colder etc.

In the Antarctic for example, one side of the continent has ice increasing, whilst the other side has ice shelves breaking up. However, there is no difference at all in the total quantity of ice

Or it could be, as in the Medieval Warming, we are going through a post-Little Ice Age uptake. There is evidence of that.

The Arctic cannot be ice free in 2010 be due to global warming. There is no global warming in the past decade. The sum total of world temperatures has stayed the same. Some areas have decreased. Some have increased. That is empirical data.

All the global warming scenario is computer modeling on future projections or past interpretations, lacking more than fragmentary data. For example, scientists can see via Greenland ice drilling exactly when the world heated and cooled ( often rapidly) back to 100,000 years. But they have no incontrovertible data of to why - we can be sure man made CO2 cannot be the cause.

In the case of these global cooling and heating cycles, the temperatures of the oceans and especially the distribution of deep hot and cold spots that shift ( and many of which are barely discovered) may turn out to be the greater influence.. It could be solar related. There are numerous hypotheses. Politicians will go for the one that gives them power,money and control, via fear.

There is no status quo of the world's climate, never has been and never will be.

To imagine that the pet scientists (90% of whose hypotheses are traditionally wrong and discarded or superseded) of politicians, who wish to tax and control us, and a United Nations desperate for a source of legitimacy for transnational power grabs, have the single answer is laughable. Rather than sleep walk to disaster as you put it by ignoring global warming, I would call it "nose led".

People are blown up every day, but politicians tell us there is no real Muslim terrorists. We are meant to believe them. The world gets cooler and warmer every age naturally or mysteriously, and we are not meant to believe it.That's not very relevant but I would imagine despotism, wars, bad governance, mad economics and mass cultural shifts will be far more responsible for people dying in the next hundred years that 2.5 degrees Celsius. Why can we imagine the Israelis surviving global warming easily, but not the Arabs? The answer lies outside the clouds and winds, my friend.

We should accept global warming (but not pollution or no dirty energy replacements) as basically inevitable and divert the many trillions of dollars (one estimate, the cost of both World Wars x 5) that are going to be vainly and corruptly spent by politicians trying to avert the unavoidable, into directly improving the lives, defenses and education of the poor - who will then take care of their own warming in their own national consensuses.

When Hydrogen Equals C02

Honda makes first hydrogen cars

The FCX Clarity emits none of the gases responsible for global warming

The Japanese car manufacturer Honda has begun the first ever commercial production of a hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.

The medium-sized four-seater, called the FCX Clarity, runs on hydrogen and electricity, emitting only water vapour.

Honda claims the vehicle offers three times better fuel efficiency than a traditional, gasoline-powered car.

As someone who totally supports the use of cleaner energy, regardless of global warming debates, this is good news. However the thorn in the rose, and what is not widely understood, is that hydrogen does not occur on earth in gas form. It can only be manufactured by using energy, and a lot of it at that. The cheapest and best way to crack hydrogen from water would be by using nuclear power, otherwise it would have to be done by fossil fuels, making the net saving in carbon emissions very minimal.

Once more, like so many "green products" this turns out to be a PR gimmick more than something we shall all be driving in 5 years, or perhapos even 50.

Eating Climate Propaganda

A good example of the unsubstantiated claims of global warming hysterics is found at the very well read BBC News. What looks like a straight news piece "Clashes at Nairobi Food Protest" includes at the end the mandatory, and totally unsubstantiated, "climate change" mantra so beloved of the soft-left social controllers that totally dominate the BBC.

"World population growth, increased food consumption in emerging economies such as China, climate change and increased land being given over for biofuel production are all having an impact on the price of food." says Aunty Beeb.

Of course,there is little evidence that "climate change" a.k.a. "weather" is responsible. The excellent page on Wikipedia here does note "climate change" as one of the debatable reasons for food shortages, but assigns it last on the list and in the follow up data, provides almost no evidence for the assertion, even in the exhaustive footnotes and quoted scientific papers.

The Beeb of course has it has as number 3 in their list, that also includes the beloved leftist Malthusianism , "world population growth" is the primary cause. Translation? Abort the little brown buggers and we will be fine.

What the Beeb does not have in their list are factors like: the effect of the anti-free market OPEC cartel on oil and fertilizer prices, the frantic resistance to GMO foods displayed by the grossly overweight European Union populations and their blackmail of developing countries that want to employ GMO crops, the anti-capitalist subsidizing of food prices in especially the EU but also the USA, the role of anti-democratic misgovernment in Asia ( North Korea) and Africa (Kenya included) in producing artificial famines and other factors.

Wikipedia notes quite correctly that "Systemic causes for the world-wide food price increase continue to be the subject of debate." but not amongst the leftists at the BBC, where the matter is cut and dried. Wikipedia experts say:

"Initial causes of the late 2006 price spikes included unseasonable droughts in grain producing nations and rising oil prices. Oil prices further heightened the costs of fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture. Other causes may be the increasing use of biofuels in developed countries (see also Food vs fuel),^[1] and an increasing demand for a more varied diet (especially meat) across the expanding middle-class populations of Asia.^[2][3] These factors, coupled with falling world food stockpiles have all contributed to the dramatic world-wide rise in food prices.^[4] Longterm causes remain a topic of debate. These may include structural changes in trade and agricultural production, agricultural price supports and subsidies in developed nations, diversions of food commodities to high input foods and fuel, commodity market speculation, and climate change."

One factor for sure is the lunatic insistence of the climate dogmatists on bio-fuel production. Whereas the production of bio-diesel in arid climates using the jojoba plant would, for example, be of enormous benefit to poor countries in Africa, instead we have the world's rain forests being cut down ( with a huge loss of bio-diversity) to plant palm oil or large food areas being put over to corn based ethanol, as just one example of the unintended effects of the climate control freaks agitprop.

A conservative perspective starts with the idea that perfect human socio-political or economic institutions are impossible, and that something like "global warming" will always involve trade-offs and systemic solutions, many of which will be imperfect and flawed, and always subject to continuous review and adjustment based on human priorities and freedoms. This is absolutly not what the Beeb wants to hear or broadcast.

Let Them Eat Strawberries

It's an odd time when millionaire greenies in the developed world hit out a semi-starving Africans in the name of climate change. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramasay wants his namesake, the Fat Controller, to arrange legislation to ban all out of season foods in UK, a move that would devastate hundreds of thousands of workers in developing countries.

"I don’t want to see asparagus on in the middle of December. I don’t want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home grown."

Perhaps in a few hundred square miles worth of ecologically friendly heated winter greenhouses?

A much better suggestion would be to close down British agriculture totally so that Ramsay and his fellow New Labour trendies can use the country for what they really want anyway: a vast picnic site where entertaining yokels will doff their hats and tug their forelocks as they watch Gordon and his pals rock up in his Ferrari ( great choice of green car, except it's red and has 12 cylinders) to eat Kiwi Fruit and Foie Gras canapes all washed down with a 1968 Le Mernot de Petites Villages.

"He says it would cut carbon emissions as less food would be imported and also lead to improved standards of cooking. "

Yes, the Brits can't wait to go back to a traditional winter dish of pureed parsnips with a slice of deep fried blood pudding. These people are simply hilarious.

Flower Power!

The Kenya flower and horticulture industry, long the main forex earner and biggest employer of single women with children in Kenya, continues it's fightback against global-warming Gorons of the "better dead than fed" school. These have tried to have Kenya's exports to UK banned under various absurd "carbon footprint" claims. These aim at the vital airfreight links between Kenya and Europe.

The Standard reports the Kenya Flower Council initiative here:

Kenya has launched a new campaign to protect its UK market against attempts to block its products over environmental concerns.

Horticultural industry players have launched the ‘Grown Under the Sun’ campaign to inform British consumers about the development benefits associated with sourcing fresh produce from Kenya.

Kenya has in the recent past faced major battles to protect its EU market following campaigns by supermarkets in the UK to block its products over environmental concerns.

It seems absurd that wealthy first world consumers have to learn of the obvious benefits of Third World people providing them with flowers and vegetables, when the near collapse of the WTO talks over Western subsidies that work against poor farmers are common knowledge.

At the same time, Kenya is looking forward to the first of it's fuel efficient Boeing 787 Dreamliners for Kenya Airways so that we can benefit from direct flights between Kenya and the USA. This would be a hiuge boost to our tourism and horticulture industries. Right on cue, up popped another Goron on the BBC from the "Environment and Aviation Group" or like sounding busybody to lecture us that environmentalists fear the Dreamliner will make flying more "attractive". Oh yes, the world is going to fly less in future. Let's all bicycle to New York.

Koffi's Klimate Kalamity

One of my biggest problems with the climate change doomsayers is that they try and couch global warming in terms of morality, when actually it's all about money. Environmentalism is becoming the new moral touchstone. Anyone who questions that the developing world is being made to suffer disproportionate devastation by greedy rich nations spewing carbon into the atmosphere is looked upon about as badly as someone who grabs a megaphone and starts hollering the "n" word in public.

Yet green is the new colour prejudice, whereby everyone who is not a shade of Ireland is an ignorant,selfish,dangerous and wicked person.

Morality is a subject that is endlessly relative: one man's probity is another's perversion. However money is something that, at least since the collapse of Marxism, we can all more or less agree upon. It's hard to argue that more government equals less economic growth, that free markets trump closed ones, that wealth must be generated before it can be shared and so on. Except when it comes to global climate change and environmentalism.

Ron Bailey asks the excellent question: Is global warming worse than what governments might try to do about it? If the UN joins in, as with the recently concluded Nairobi UN Conference on climate change, we should pause. When Kofi Annan delivers yet another one of his passive aggressive lectures along the lines of "the debate is over, we are all going to die and rich people are the cause of that", then global warming should give over to global worrying.

He has the UK government's Stern Review to back him, showing how little,supposedly, it will take of world GDP to stabilize greenhouse emissions over the next 100 years. Only 1% per annum to avoid the ecological apocalypse that awaits us all! It all sounds so reasonable. However most developing countries cannot gain GDP increase over their population growth.

Kenya has hardly managed more than 1.5% annual growth in GDP vs +3.5% population increase for two decades. Imagine Kenya sustains 4% GDP growth over the next 20 years. Adding 1% cost of "environmental management" actually will mean that Kenya will remain considerably poorer two decades hence than it is now, on paper at least.

Yet poor countries maintain, not unreasonably, than they cannot affcord any cut in their already precarious GDP growth, so the green management costs would have to be borne by the developed world. This will put the actual cost to developed countries at something more like 2-3% of their annual GDP. However, various developed countries like many in Europe and Japan for years, have managed less that 2% GDP increase per annum. What sounds reasonable suddenly becomes politically impossible.

These are the sort of sobering facts that should enlighten the climate change debate, not as at present a cross between a scientific Inquisition and a morality play.

The realm of climate change and the infamous Kyoto Protocol abound in similar perversities. For example, Kyoto gives rich countries carbon credits for preserving forests which soak up carbon dioxide, but no incentive whatsoever for developing countries to do the same. That helps account for the incineration of the tropical forests in Indonesia,Malasia and Borneo which are, you guessed it, adding to global warming.

Ron Bailey asks if the hundreds of trillions of dollars that the Stern Report "modest proposal" actually means in GDP terms was put to use on building wealth and technology, what would be the result? Arguably that poor countries could grow richer and therefore afford to handle the results of global warming (the way Holland manages rising sea levels with an economy worth only $500 billion a year).

Unlike what Kofi Annan says when using the UN Climate Change Conference as a moral wedge for more power us by the United Nations, the debate is far from over. It is in fact just beginning.

More Climate Emissions

Nairobi is hosting the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is meant to be looking into about a post-Kyoto Protocol world and what is to be done about it. Already the meeting has been an enormous success on two fronts. Foreign activists managed to rent members of Kenya's colourful tribes, in some cases probable pre-literate ones and parade them around with "Wanted, George Bush The Toxic Texan" placards. This will guarantee more fauxphoto opportunities for the MSM. Next, every news media in Kenya and internationally has been able to spin stories about Bush "renouncing Kyoto" to stoke anti-Americanism.

Of course, it was Bill Clinton who shelved the Kyoto Protocol in 1999, before Bush was even elected, after the US senate voted 95-0 that they would never ratify it. True, Clinton, in a typically showbiz gesture, signed an intent of the Kyoto Protocol in Rio in 1998. Democratic senator Byrd, from Clinton's own party, co-sponsored the motion in the senate.

The good news is that China will surpass the USA as the world's largest emitter of CO2 sometime in 2009. Will anyone in the world media notice?

There is no doubt that climate change has been damaging Africa's human viability for the past 14,000 years of inter-glacial warming, and also no contention that such warming has quickened and will have a devastating effect on marginal Africa. The grand irony is that African countries are queuing up to sell all the CO2 laden oil and mineral products they can to China, who will soon be polluting them out of existence.

African environmentalists might be doing wise things like insisting that any energy and minerals sold to China as raw materials be subject to verifiable lower CO2 emissions. Instead most of them are too busy blaming America.

No wonder the US senate resolution that passed so resoundingly in 1999 repudiating the Kyoto Protocol said it:

"would not ratify the Protocol unless rapidly developing countries such as China were included in its requirements to reduce greenhouse gases. The Clinton Administration announced it would not send the treaty to the Senate for ratification."

Meanwhile The Guardian, haven of America-bashing, announces that the oh-so-Green Europeans have totally failed to meet their Kyoto obligations. We can say one thing for George Bush, he sure gets around.