Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
A 2021 publication by the government of Canada released last month called Species at Riskin Nunavut says the region is “now observing higher numbers of polar bears“, and that management goals are “more focused on maintaining or reducing numbers in communities and in sensitive areas (i.e. bird colonies)“. Local Inuit are said to be “concerned about the increasing number of encounters and property damages” caused by polar bears.
Polar bear in Arviat, Nunavut, 3 October 2022. Chris Mikijuniak photo.
Polar bears in Canada are considered a species of ‘special concern’ (COSEWIC 2018), not threatened as they are in the USA. See the map of Nunavut below.
They steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that an increased number of bears compared to the 1970s is also a factor in many regions, as bear numbers continue to rebound from the effects of overhunting (Crockford 2019, 2020).
In addition, no mention is ever made of the fact that more adult males in many populations–a direct result of hunting restrictions or outright bans–puts competitive stress on young bears who may then cause a wide variety of problems out of desperation. Problems include many near-miss encounters, fatal and non-fatal attacks, and extensive property damage (including ruined snow machines, see below).
Back in the 1980s, seeing more polar bears meant there were actually more bears around. But now, scientists insist that seeing more bears means there are fewer bears because of less sea ice–and that these bears are attracted to human habitations because they are desperate for food (i.e., more conflicts due to a “shortage of ice”).
The logic of this is often hard to fathom, especially when many serious problems with bears occur when sea ice is abundant, including the 2018 fatal attack in Foxe Basin that required an ice breaker to rescue the survivors (Crockford 2019).
Here’s a quote from a Labrador polar bear safety guide from 2019 that simply makes sense:
The more people you have out on the land and the more bears you have, the higher potential you have for a bear-human encounter.”
It seems to me that Inuit in Nunavut are quite right to be concerned about rising polar bear numbers, regardless of what’s happening with sea ice.
The first harvest restrictions were imposed in the 1960s. Since then, the Polar Bear has been an iconic species at risk on a national and international scale, creating additional pressure to conserve the species. However, science and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ ) are now observing higher numbers of Polar Bears, and the management goals are more focused on maintaining or reducing numbers in communities and in sensitive areas (i.e. bird colonies). Inuit are concerned about the increasing number of encounters and property damages by Polar Bears; this may be due to a combination of factors, including rising population numbers in some areas and a reduction in sea-ice duration and extent.
Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats.
Crockford, S.J. 2020. State of the Polar Bear Report 2019. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 39, London. PDFhere.
Nearly half of Canadians say they want a federal election in 2023, a new poll finds, and a slim majority indicate that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should step down as Liberal leader in the new year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers an address at the Laurier Club Holiday Event, an event for supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada, in Gatineau, Que., on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
Nearly half of Canadians say they want a federal election in 2023, a new poll finds, and a slim majority indicate that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should step down as Liberal leader in the new year.
Conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Global News, the poll shows that 49 percent of Canadians hope for a federal election next year, despite one not being legally mandated until 2025 and the NDP’s promise to keep the minority Liberal government in power so long as their “supply and confidence” agreement holds till then.
The desire for an election varies across provinces, with those living in Atlantic Canada (63 percent), Alberta (60 percent), Saskatchewan (55 percent), Manitoba (55 percent), B.C. (53 percent), and Quebec (60 percent) showing more interest than those residing in Ontario (46 percent), said the poll, released on Dec. 26.
Nationally, only 43 percent believe that a federal election will take place.
A majority of Canadians (54 percent) said Trudeau should step down as Liberal leader in 2023 and that the country should have a new prime minister, though just 27 percent believe he will do so.
This view is more widely held by men (58 percent) than women (49 percent), according to the online poll. Researchers noted a similarity in regional variation, with Alberta (65 percent) being most likely to hold this position. Atlantic Canada took the second spot at 57 percent, while Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario tied at 56 percent. B.C. followed closely behind at 54 percent whereas only 43 percent of Quebecers think Trudeau shouldn’t run in the next election.
The approval rating for Trudeau (45 percent) is higher than that of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre (41 percent), according to the poll.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who recently returned to her role after a short hiatus, has an approval rating of 39 percent.
Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois, had the approval of 43 percent of Quebecers, while approval for People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier was 26 percent.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh received the highest approval rating at 53 percent.
In an interview with Global News, Ipsos CEO Darrell Bricker said popularity doesn’t necessarily mean more votes.
“As we’ve seen in elections past with NDP leaders, they tend to do well in the polls and they don’t do so well on Election Day,” Bricker said. “So even though they might like him a little bit, they’re not necessarily prepared to vote for him unless something changes.”
The survey was conducted based on a sample of 1,004 Canadians aged 18 and over Dec. 14–16. It is considered accurate within plus or minus 3.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
Is Jordan Peterson about to lose his licence to practice psychology in Ontario? That’s what Peterson is claiming online and, so far, the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO) has not denied it.
Peterson took to Twitter on Tuesday to say that he was ordered to take social media training or face a disciplinary hearing.
“BREAKING: the Ontario College of Psychologists @CPOntario has demanded that I submit myself to mandatory social-media communication retraining with their experts for, among other crimes, retweeting @PierrePoilievre and criticizing @JustinTrudeau and his political allies,” Peterson tweeted Tuesday morning.
Peterson isn’t being asked to reconsider his actions towards a fellow psychologist online, he’s being asked to submit to social media training for political statements he’s made. None of the people who have lodged complaints are clients, Peterson said, nor are they connected to clients. They haven’t experienced personal harm from Peterson, but they want the good doctor to be punished.
In a series of tweets, Peterson said that many professions in Canada are now run by associations or colleges that are highly political and which impose fear on their members. He said this included physicians, lawyers, psychologists and among others.
“This means that your care and legal counsel has been rendered dangerously unreliable,” Peterson tweeted.
Canadians: your physicians, lawyers, psychologists and other professionals are now so intimidated by their commissar overlords that they fear to tell you the truth. This means that your care and legal counsel has been rendered dangerously unreliable.
There are currently about 1,300 graduates of this school, and the list of alumni includes several names of those who went on to become leaders of the health institutions of their respective nations:
How is it that more than 190 governments from all over the world ended up dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in almost exactly the same manner, with lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination cards now being commonplace everywhere? Always vaccines, never therapeutics like vitamin D, zinc, ivermectin or — like Trump suggested — HCQ.
The answer may lie in the Young Global Leaders school, which was established and managed by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, and that many of today’s prominent political and business leaders passed through on their way to the top.
The German economist, journalist, and author Ernst Wolff has revealed some facts about Schwab’s “Young Global Leaders” school … in a video from the German Corona Committee podcast.
The story begins with the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is an NGO founded by Klaus Schwab, a German economist and mechanical engineer, in Switzerland in 1971, when he was only 32. The WEF is best-known to the public for the annual conferences it holds in Davos, Switzerland each January that aim to bring together political and business leaders from around the world to discuss the problems of the day. Today, it is one of the most important networks in the world for the globalist power elite, being funded by approximately a thousand multinational corporations. …
Wolff points out that very few graduates of the Global Leaders school list it on their CVs. He says that he has only seen it listed on one: namely, that of the German economist Richard Werner, who is a known critic of the establishment. …
Another thing that the Global Leaders graduates have in common is that most of them have very sparse CVs apart from their participation in the program prior to being elevated to positions of power, which may indicate that it is their connection to Schwab’s institutions that is the decisive factor in launching their careers. This is most evident when the school’s alumni are publicly questioned about issues that they have not been instructed to talk about in advance, and their struggles to come up with answers are often quite evident. Wolff contends that their roles are only to act as mouthpieces for the talking points that those in the shadows behind them want discussed in public debate. …
Transcript of Peterson Video Above
When I look at Trudeau there’s a couple of things that I see. I see someone who hasn’t grown up. One of the most appalling things about the budget, as far as I was concerned, is that it provides ample evidence (if such was not already sufficiently provided) that Trudeau is exactly what you would be afraid of. He doesn’t have an answer to a problem that isn’t overwhelmingly predictable ideologically.
It’s like you don’t even need him, you just have to run the ideology, it has the answers. What’s the big problem: equity between men and women? I’m sorry that’s not the big problem, that’s not even scratching the surface of the problem with that approach. And your solutions? You can learn those your first week in women’s studies. They are the sorts of solutions children toy with when they have no idea what they’re contending with. Well there’s there’s not a lot there I’m afraid.
Fixing these complex systems is unbelievably complicated and you’re likely to make them worse when you’re mucking about with them haphazardly. And so it’s way easier just to do what Trudeau said back in 2016. Why do we have women half of the cabinet? Because it’s 2016! It’s almost impossible to overstate how shallow that comment is. And not only shallow but also casually malevolent in an unconscious sense. Because he had a job to do, which was to evaluate his MPs thoroughly and skeptically and pick the best people, period. But that isn’t what he did. Instead he said: “Oh well, it’s 2016 so I’ll appoint half women.”
Everybody gave them a pass on that so here we are now. We have a budget that’s equity focused, well good luck with that.
When I look at Trudeau there’s a couple of things that I see. I see someone who hasn’t grown up so he’s Peter Pan. I see someone who knows how to behave in public. That’s one thing you can say, he’s got that that easy charisma and charm that comes from being good-looking and being from a favored background. He’s got by on that favored background.
I believe that if he had any true character that he would not have run. Because he ran on the strength of his name and he hadn’t earned the right to do that. But people elected him, and so here we are, and this is what we get. He pulled out the ideological card when he formulated the cabinet and Canadians all went: “Oh isn’t that cute.” No it’s not cute, it’s not acceptable and now we’re paying the price for it.
In fact, data from the State Climate Extreme Committee (SCEC) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that not a single record was set for high or low temperature, rainfall, snowfall, or hail in 2022.
As documented at Climate Realism, throughout 2022 mainstream media outlets claimed climate change was the cause of myriad, disparate extreme weather events that occurred throughout the year. From extreme winter weather, to hurricanes, to wildfires, to flooding, to drought, and beyond, the media asserted particular instances of extreme weather were indicative of worsening trends driven by climate change.
This is false.
In fact, data from the State Climate Extreme Committee (SCEC) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that not a single record was set for high or low temperature, rainfall, snowfall, or hail in 2022.
Furthermore, the SCEC’s data show that nearly double the number state high temperature records were set or tied between 1900 and 1940 than were set or tied from 1980 to 2022, the recent period of modest warming.
Indeed, four times more state high temperature records were set or tied in the single decade spanning 1930 to 1939 (25), nearly 100 years of climate change ago, than were set or tied between 2000 and 2022 (six), which environmentalists have claimed are the warmest decades on record.
Concerning extreme precipitation, more state records were set for rainfall within a 24-hour period between 1950 and 1970, when the earth was cooling and many scientists were warning of a return of the ice age, than between 2000 and 2022.
Any way you measure it, 2022 was not a record setting year for extreme weather. Data produced by the climate woke Biden administration says so. That’s the truth the mainstream media can’t handle.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
The year 2022 global wide ACE data outcome is about 29% lower than the average over the 30 year-long (1991 through 2020) climatology period tracked by Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project data base.
After nearly 4 decades of Democrat driven flawed and failed politically contrived climate alarmist propaganda claims of worsening global climate impacts NOAA’s measured worldwide hurricane season science data for all year 2022 tropical storms shows that global wide storms were at their lowest strength levels in the last 42 years (since 1981) as shown by the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy reflecting the combined frequency, intensity and duration of all storms) data below from Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science which tracks NOAA’s National Hurricane Center tropical storm data.
The year 2022 global wide ACE data outcome is about 29% lower than the average over the 30 year-long (1991 through 2020) climatology period tracked by Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project data base.
This decades long measured global wide tropical storm declining strength data trend outcome contradicts the data deficient and unsupported climate alarmist claims that tropical storms and hurricanes are growing ever stronger because of “climate change” that is falsely hyped by both the climate alarmist propaganda media and their Democrat political leaders.
Additionally, NOAA’s science measured tropical storm data through year 2022 clearly demonstrates that global hurricanes are not trending stronger in numbers, duration or intensity in the Northern Hemisphere Oceans, Southern Hemisphere Oceans and North Atlantic Ocean (as shown by ACE data graphs for these ocean regions below) despite the alarmist media concealment of this science data from public view.
The Northern Hemisphere year 2022 ACE is about 33.5% lower than the average of the 1991 to 2020 climatology period, the Southern Hemisphere year 2022 ACE is about 36% lower than the 1991 to 2020 climatology period and the North Atlantic year 2022 ACE is about 22.4% lower than the 1991 to 2020 climatology period.
The Northern Hemisphere Oceans and North Atlantic Ocean year 2022 Colorado State University Real Time TC Statistics ACE profiles compared to the 1991 to 2020 climatology 30-year period are shown below that clearly display the significantly reduced year 2022 ACE levels despite flawed propaganda hype by climate alarmists and media to falsely fabricate claims of increasing storm strengths.
Not only does the climate alarmist media conceal data clearly establishing the fact that global and ocean region hurricanes and tropical storms are not trending stronger they are also grossly misrepresenting the trend in global weather storm costs by erroneously using absolute dollar cost trend comparisons between years instead of using comparisons of these costs configured as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) data as established by the United Nations as the appropriate economic basis for making weather damage yearly cost comparison trends.
AP climate alarmist propaganda reporter Seth Borenstein and other alarmist reporters continue to falsely misrepresent cost trend comparisons of global weather events by deliberately concealing GDP global weather event cost trend data comparisons and incompetently reporting these costs in absolute dollars as noted below from a recent AP article.
“That’s the state of climate change in the 2020s that $268 billion in global disaster costs is a 12% drop from the previous year, where damage passed $300 billion.
The number of U.S. weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage is only at 15 through October and will likely end the year with 16 or 17, down from 22 and 20 in the last two years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But because of Hurricane Ian, overall damage amounts are probably going to end up in the top three in American history.
Weather disasters, many but not all of them turbocharged by human-caused climate change, are happening so frequently that this year’s onslaught, which 20 years ago would have smashed records by far, now in some financial measures seems a bit of a break from recent years.”
The graphs below address that the total number of global weather events and their costs as expressed as a percentage of GDP are not trending upward which contradicts claims of increasing cost trends as erroneously hyped by climate alarmist flawed methodology which inappropriately use absolute dollars figures in attempting to make these cost trend comparisons.
The climate alarmist AP article noted above as well as many other climate alarmists articles trying to falsely portray increasing severe weather events fail to address at all the lack of increasing numbers and severity of U.S. tornadoes over the last 18 years (2005 through 2022) as shown by the latest NOAA data below which shows only 5 of the last 18 storm year totals were above the mean range with the two highest values occurring 12 to 15 years ago. Year 2022 totals were below the mean.
The number of strongest tornadoes (EF3+) has in fact been consistently declining from 1970 through 2020 as shown by NOAA data in the graph below.
This blatant failure by the climate alarmist media to address the reality of declining weather event severity and instead conceal such data is just another example establishing the dishonesty and deception of climate alarmist propaganda articles in their efforts to hide measured science data from public view and instead rely upon science data unsupported claims and contrived propaganda.
NOAA’s measured hurricane strength data both globally and regionally over many decades exposes the flawed and failed climate alarmist claims that hurricanes are growing stronger as being both erroneous and dishonest.
UN adopted methodology of measuring global weather storm cost trends using percentage of GDP assessments (instead of flawed assessments using absolute dollar yearly total comparisons as employed by climate alarmists) show the costs of global weather events are not trending upward as erroneously claimed by climate alarmists and media.
Hybrid vehicles prone to catch fire…difficult to extinguish
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It’s safe to say most people are compelled to buy an hybrid or electric car because they wish to reduce their impact on the environment and climate.
Unfortunately, many don’t seem to be aware of an electric car’s poor lifetime carbon budget and wind up spending a lot money for doing very little or nothing good for the environment.
Another problem is the higher tendency for hybrid cars to catch fire due to a technical fault. I saw firsthand during the recent New Year’s celebration as one hybrid car just 100 meters air distance from our home caught fire shortly after midnight (images here) and ended up burning the adjacent home.
According to the authorities, a Kia hybrid passenger car caught fire for unknown reasons and the flames spread quickly to the carport and from there to the adjoining residential house.
Despite the rapid action of the fire department, some property damage was also caused to the neighboring house by the effects of the heat. A parked BMW was also affected by the heat of the fire.
No one was injured. The police estimate the property damage to be at least 500,000 euros.
The homeowner and neighbors were unable to get the hybrid car fire under control.
In terms of protecting the climate, the burned car – produced with the intention of being gentle to the environment – ended up leaving a gaping environmental footprint on the planet.
Reports show that hybrid cars are in fact more prone to catch fire than vehicles with internal combustion engines. Pure electric cars are reported to be the least fire-prone. The biggest challenge, however, is that it’s far more difficult to extinguish a burning battery of an electric car.
Highway safety: EVs are massively heavy, dangerous
When it comes to overall highway safety, experts and data suggest that there’s nothing safer on the road than the good old internal combustion engine vehicle:
Chalk this up as “60 Minutes” hosting the worst peddler of false knowledge since Dan Rather left the set.
CBS kicked off 2023 by touting “mass extinction” blather by Paul Ehrlich, the guy who’s been peddling radical and misanthropic eco- garbage since his book “The Population Bomb” in 1968.
That screed began: “The battle to feed all humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
This may qualify as the drop-dead dumbest announcement of the ’60s and should have disqualified him from the status of Expert by the end of the 1970s. But the left-wing media never tire of him.
They can’t get enough of this ecological self-loathing. The human race is always a pestilence on the planet.
Pelley led off the show with Ehrlich warning that “I and the vast majority of my colleagues think we’ve had it; that the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
The former CBS evening anchorman made one brief nod to Ehrlich being wrong: “The alarm Ehrlich sounded in ’68 warned that overpopulation would trigger widespread famine. He was wrong about that. The Green Revolution fed the world.”
Then he added that Ehrlich’s book also predicted “that heat from greenhouse gases would melt polar ice and humanity would overwhelm the wild. Today, humans have taken over 70 percent of the planet’s land and 70 percent of the freshwater.”
Polar ice hasn’t melted into a puddle and humanity hasn’t “overwhelmed the wild.” In reality, the world has been “reforested” in recent years due to less land being used for agriculture.
CBS isn’t looking for a debate. No one is brought in to assess Team Ehrlich’s claims. Instead, one colleague boasted “I don’t think you’ll find a scientist that will say we’re not in an extinction crisis.”
But they could.
Scientist Michael Shellenberger took to Substack and reported: “The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the main scientific body that tracks species, says just 6% of species are critically endangered, 9% are endangered, and 12% are vulnerable to becoming endangered.
Further, the IUCN has estimated that just 0.8% of the 112,432 plant, animal, and insect species within its data set have gone extinct since 1500.”
Ehrlich despises humanity. Nothing he says should be given the slightest credibility.
Ehrlich has forever offered terribly daft predictions.
NBC “News” gave him several six-minute chunks of time on the “Today” show in 1989 and 1990 to be wrong.
Try this nutty passage from 32 years ago: “We’ll be facing a sea-level rise not of one to three feet in a century, but of 10 or 20 feet in a much shorter time.
The Supreme Court would be flooded. You could tie your boat to the Washington Monument. Storm surges would make the Capitol unusable. For ‘Today,’ Paul Ehrlich in Washington, D.C., on the future shoreline of Chesapeake Bay.”
The late Julian Simon, author of “The Ultimate Resource,” made a bet with Ehrlich in 1990 that the price of five natural resources would rise or fall over the next 10 years. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten.
Simon was right on all five. They all fell in price.
Ehrlich was all wrong, as usual. But Simon was never contacted by NBC.
As he asked us in 1990, “How many times does a ‘prophet’ have to be wrong before he stops being a prophet?” The answer is “nobody at CBS or NBC cares about the truth.”
Excellent article by Marian Tupy of @HumanProgress about how wrong Ehrlich has been and remains about the state of the world and its prospects for the future.https://t.co/KUeJ5UKlu6
Record busting temperatures in Europe have given people a temporary reprieve from skyrocketing energy bills and the risk of blackouts.
European winter heatwave prompts calls for action on climate change
Record-high winter temperatures have swept across parts of Europe over the new year, prompting calls from activists for faster action on climate change while offering short-term respite to governments struggling with high gas prices.
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Hundreds of sites have seen temperature records smashed from Switzerland to Poland to Hungary, which registered its warmest Christmas Eve in Budapest and saw temperatures climb to 18.9 degrees Celsius on January 1.
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French tourist Joana Host said: “It’s like nice weather for biking but we know it’s like the planet is burning”.
“So we’re enjoying it but at the same time we’re scared,” she said.
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Short-term respite from Europe’s energy crisis
The unusually mild temperatures have offered some short-term relief to European governments that have struggled to secure scarce gas supplies and keep a lid on soaring prices after Russia slashed deliveries of the fuel to Europe.
European governments have said this energy crisis should hasten their shift from fossil fuels to clean energy — but in the short term, plummeting Russian fuel supplies have left them racing to secure extra gas from elsewhere.
Gas demand has fallen for heating in many countries due to the mild spell, helping to reduce prices.
Scientists say climate change has made unusual weather events such as the winter heatwave more likely.(Reuters: Jon Nazca)
Just a few weeks ago much of Europe was enduring an Arctic blast.
Weather tracker: what is behind Europe’s cold spell?
Lauren Herdman (Metdesk) Mon 12 Dec 2022 22.34 AEDT
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The current cold spell in Europe will persist this week as high pressure continues to stagnate over western Russia. The cold weather is linked to a weak, split polar vortex in the stratosphere, which allowed high pressure to build across Greenland last week. This in turn led to Arctic air flooding south across the UK on northerly winds. The polar vortex is due to strengthen, eventually helping to end the cold spell with low pressure to the west of the UK becoming dominant.
Much of western and central Europe, including the UK, will stay consistently around 5C below typical values for this time of year, with many places struggling to rise above freezing even during the daytime. Change is on the horizon, however, as low pressure systems begin to encroach into Europe towards the weekend. Latest forecasts show temperatures in western Europe returning to average by the start of next week, though in central and northern Europe extreme cold will persist a little longer. In contrast, Spain, which has experienced a record-breaking warm and dry autumn, will finally have some recognisably wintry temperatures.
A person with his bicycle in snow-covered St James’s Park, London, as the cold weather continues. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
I’m glad our European friends are catching a break from unaffordable heating bills, but the season isn’t over yet. I have yet to see evidence of Western European Governments doing anything constructive to alleviate the risk of ongoing energy shortages.
The Government should consider cutting motorway speed limits to 64mph to reduce transport emissions and dependence on oil imports, MPs have said.
Liz Truss told the hustings that the smart motorway experiment ‘hasn’t worked’ CREDIT: Heathcliff O’Malley for The Telegraph
The measure is among many that the Commons environmental audit select committee, in its report out on Thursday about reducing the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels, has said that Westminster should consider.
The report got under way shortly after the war in Ukraine and addressed both the UK’s energy independence and the net zero transition.
It said that solar panels should be installed on new developments and the Government should set an end date for oil and gas licensing.
MPs on the committee criticised a lack of plans by ministers to reduce pollution from transport, which accounts for 23 per cent of Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The committee added that the Government should consult on measures, such as those listed in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 10-point plan to cut oil use, which was drafted in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
The IEA’s plan also included the introduction of car-free Sundays in cities, working from home three days a week and alternating car access to roads depending on licence plate numbers.
The committee was divided on whether the Government should continue to grant new oil and gas licenses, but acknowledged that doing so was not incompatible with the UK’s goals to reach net zero by 2050.
It said that domestic oil and gas would be necessary to power the economy through the green transition, but called for an end date for new licenses to be set by the Government “well before 2050”.
Writing for The Telegraph, below, Philip Dunne, a Tory MP and the chairman of the environmental audit committee, said: “Decisions need to be made now that will secure our energy supplies, resilient enough so that we are never again so vulnerable to the whims of brutal and autocratic regimes.”
The Commons environmental audit committee has recommended reducing the national speed limit to cut emissions CREDIT: James Fraser/Rex
I don’t remember any of this being proposed in any party’s manifesto at the last election.
And to claim, as Dunne does, that this will protect us all from Putin’s whims is utterly fraudulent. Imports of gas from Russia only amount to 6% of total imports, which could easily be replaced by new North Sea gas developments.
“… higher statutory lending limits, lower equity-to-loan requirements and the use of callable capital – money pledged but not paid in by member governments – for lending. …”
Exclusive: World Bank seeks more funds to address climate change, other crises -document
By David Lawder 5 minute read January 4, 20236:42 AM GMT+10 Last Updated a day ago
WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) – The World Bank is seeking to vastly expand its lending capacity to address climate change and other global crises and will negotiate with shareholders ahead of April meetings on proposals that include a capital increase and new lending tools, according to an “evolution roadmap” seen by Reuters on Monday.
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The bank said proposals under consideration include higher statutory lending limits, lower equity-to-loan requirements and the use of callable capital – money pledged but not paid in by member governments – for lending.
Development experts say this shift would greatly increase the amount of lending compared to the current capital structure, which only utilizes paid-in capital.
An atrium is seen at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
I find the “Callable Capital” proposal particularly unsettling.
If the Biden Administration is legally able to agree to changes to World Bank governance within the existing charter, without having to ratify any new treaties, this might open a back door for international climate projects to access US taxpayer’s funds which have not yet been paid to the bank, without oversight from the newly elected Republican Congress.
Introducing the term: Astronomical Harmonic Resonances (AHR). To see the figures cited below, go to the original article (here). A familiar topic to long-time Talkshop visitors, e.g. here. – – – The mechanism and even the existence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) have remained under debate among climate researchers, and the same applies to general temperature oscillations of a 60- to 90-year period, writes Antero Oilia, Ph.D. @ Climate Change Dispatch.
The recently published study of Ollila and Timonen has found that these oscillations are real and they are related to 60- and 88-year periodicities originating from the planetary and solar activity oscillations.
These oscillations can be observed in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation (PMO), and actually in the global surface temperature (GST). The similarities between the GST, AMO, PMO, and AHR (Astronomical Harmonic Resonances) are obvious in Fig. 1.
The oscillations are not limited only to temperatures.
Researchers have studied oscillations of day lengths, magnetic field magnitudes, sunspot lengths, auroral records, cosmogenic isotopes like 14C and 10Be, Indian moons intensities, sediments of NE Pacific, 14C of tree-rings, and sea carbonates.
The oscillations periods of these studies vary from 60 to 90 years. The most common and prominent periodicity is 88 years and is called the Gleissberg cycle. Named after Wolfgang Gleissberg, who discovered in 1958 that solar cycles weaken and strengthen over about 80 years.
The sun has been suggested to be the origin of an 88-year oscillation since this period can be connected to the repetitive occurrence of the basic Schwabe cycle of 11 years. This solar cycle length varies typically from 10 to 14 years, which explains why the Gleissberg cycle length varies around 88 years.
The other main periodicity of the research studies is around 60 years. The researchers normally suggest no origin for this periodicity.
Ermakov, Scafetta, and Ollila have analyzed that the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn can create temperature variations of 60 years by moving the solar system barycenter, which causes variations in the cosmic dust amount entering the atmosphere. The temperature effect happens through cloudiness variations.
The authors have studied how well the variations of astronomical harmonic resonances (AHR) could explain the 60-year temperature variations, which are based on instrumental records and on the tree-ring data of the supra-long Scots pine tree-ring record for northern Finnish Lapland (subsequently called the Finnish timberline pine chronology (FTPC)), stretching to the year 5634 BC.
The strong feature of the FTPC tree-sing signal is the one-year accuracy of the tree-ring method and therefore it is the most effective form of proxy information on the past climate.
The radial growth of (tree-ring width) is regulated by the average summer temperature in cool areas and precipitation in arid areas. The minimum factor for pine growth in Lapland (the northern part of Finland) is temperature.
The FTPC tree-ring series is the longest tree-type series in the world. The explanation is that so-called pine subfossils once sank into the oxygen-free swamps and the bottom mud of lakes for millennia.
The FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) analysis was carried for finding out the main periods for the FTPC signal, the AHR signal, and the Ljungqvist temperature proxy data, Fig. 2.
These analyses show that the well-known Gleissberg cycle of 80 to 90 years is the dominating cycle caused by the sun’s activity changes but the observed 60-year cycle can be connected to the dominant frequency of the AHR signal.
The authors have combined the AHR signal and the Gleissberg signal. These signals had a common maximum in 1941 which explains the warm period of the 1930s.
These two oscillations may also be in opposite phases or close maximum or minimum phases. In Fig. 3 the combined signal of 60- and the 88-year signal is the blue break line curve and the red curve is the FTPC signal.
The maximum combined temperature effect of AMO and Gleissberg oscillations was in 2020, and now their impact is slowly descending. In addition to these oscillations’ impacts, the Sun’s activity seems to also decrease.
Abstract The mechanism and even the existence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) have remained under debate among climate researchers, and the same applies to general temperature oscillations of a 60–90-year period. The objective of this study is to show that these temperature oscillations are real and not artifacts and that these oscillations have different external cosmic origins. The authors have studied how well the variations of astronomical harmonic resonances (AHR) could explain the 60-year temperature variations, which are based on instrumental records and on the tree-ring data of the supra-long Scots pine tree-ring record for northern Finnish Lapland (subsequently called the Finnish timberline pine chronology [FTPC]), stretching to the year 5634 BC. Powerful volcanic eruptions have significant temperature-decreasing impacts, and they are the major disturbances to eliminate in analysis. The similarities between the temperatures of the tree-ring trend and the AHR trend are easy to observe even by the naked eye. The statistical analysis shows that these two signals are statistically related. The analyses also show that the well-known Gleissberg cycle of 88 years is the dominating cycle caused by the Suns‘ activity changes but the observed 60-year cycle can be connected to the AHR cyclicity. – – – From the author’s website: Climate change 5: Cosmic theory (slide show)
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