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.
Two US business professors argue that the looming climate catastrophe (which they believe has been caused solely by human greenhouse gas emissions) necessitates that “the shape and structure of modern capitalism will have to be changed.”
Two University of Michigan professors insist we “must reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to zero” to stabilize the planet’s temperature. But because 80% of our energy use still comes from carbon-based sources today, “ending it will not be easy.” The death of all fossil fuel industry must be imposed, euthanasia-style.
It has now reached the point that academic elites are no longer concealing their real inclinations and intentions in massaged semantics or subtleties.
Two US business professors argue that the looming climate catastrophe (which they believe has been caused solely by human greenhouse gas emissions) necessitates that “the shape and structure of modern capitalism will have to be changed.”
No more roads. No more plastic or steel or electronic products. No more air travel. All the industries that use petroleum products of any kind, no matter how essential, must end this practice, effective immediately. Fossil fuel use must be 100% eliminated.
The cost to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions? Estimates range from $100 to $150 trillion over the next 30 years.
And putting a price on carbon use doesn’t nearly go far enough. It’s not possible to get to zero emissions just by making fossil fuel use more expensive. The entire fossil fuel industry – the producers as well as the recipients – must undergo, as the authors put it, “compassionate destruction.”
If there is any resistance to the total destruction of fossil fuel use, then euthanasia – “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals,” must be put into practice. Imposed. Forced.
“A future in which we address climate change may require that the entire sector be euthanized, imposing death ahead of its imminent arrival.”
It is not our job to question. The situation is so real, so dire, that our only job now is to “come to terms with the extreme decision that has to be made for the patient.”
IPCC computer models predict a higher warming in the lower and mid-troposphere, but the latest Met Office retrospective adjustments produce 36% faster warming on the surface.
The increasing disconnection between the frequently-adjusted global surface temperature datasets and the accurate satellite measurement of the troposphere is casting further doubt on the unproven hypothesis that humans cause all or most climate change by burning fossil fuels. IPCC computer models predict a higher warming in the lower and mid-troposphere, but the latest Met Office retrospective adjustments produce 36% faster warming on the surface. “The lack of much tropospheric excess warming over surface warming suggests that changes in greenhouse gases are likely not a significant factor in current warming,” note scientists in a recently published Clintel report.
All the main surface temperature datasets have had large amounts of heating added to their retrospective records of late. Clintel notes that the recent update of the Met Office’s HadCRUT dataset showed 0.2°C more warming than its predecessor. In 2013, similar retrospective adjustments added considerable heating. As the Daily Scepticreported last month, Professor Ole Humlum disclosed that since January 2008, the GISS database run by NASA increased its surface air temperature between 1910 to 2000 from 0.47°C to 0.67°C, a boost of 49% over this period. “Frequent and large corrections in a database unavoidably signal a fundamental uncertainty about the correct values,” noted Humlum.
Of course, the global average temperature plays a crucial part in persuading populations that there is a ‘climate crisis’, and only a collectivist Net Zero political solution holds the key to survival. But it can be seen that these frequent upwards adjustments of surface temperatures are causing inconvenient problems elsewhere in the global warming narrative. The satellite record shows that global warming ran out of steam a couple of decades ago once powerful natural El Niño effects are discounted, with any remaining change almost confined within margin of error territory. It needs only a moderately sceptical mind to question some of the recent adjustments.
According to the accurate satellite record, there have been two temperature pauses this century. The first one from around 2000 to 2014 was debated in scientific circles, and the Met Office wrote a paper on the event titled The Recent Pause in Global Warming. The latest pause has lasted since the small temperature uptick caused by one of the most powerful El Niño natural weather oscillations ever recorded in 2016.
But all signs of the pause have been expunged by HadCRUT4 and the latest update HadCRUT5. The hockey stick is alive and well at the Met Office with Clintel reporting a 37% cooling applied from 1850 to 1910, and a substantial jump of 38% from 2000 to 2020. Pause, what pause – the question springs to mind. Clintel notes that the recent past has the best data and the movements are “surprising”. In addition, with swings such as this from one version of HadCRUT to another, it is asked: “Just how accurate can their estimates of global surface warming be?” Of course, all of this movement is helpful in trying to nudge towards the invented climate ‘tipping point’ of a 1.5°C rise since 1850. As I noted last Friday, there was the regular annual media outing for the claim that temperatures could hit 1.5°C “within five years”, a story that has been doing the rounds for about five years.
This latest examination of the global temperature dataset is published in Clintel’s new detailed examination of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Reports, and is titled The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC. In a wide-ranging assessment, the Clintel scientists find that the UN climate body emphasises worst-case scenarios, rewrites climate history and has a “huge bias” in favour of bad news. We have covered this important new work in detail here, here and here. A spokesman for Netherlands-based Clintel has told the Daily Sceptic that the mainstream media have ignored its work, while the Dutch national press agency refused to circulate a press release.
The key take-away was the finding that the IPCC based 42% of it predictions and impact suggestions on a scenario called SSP5-8.5 that assumes up to 5°C of warming within less than 80 years. Even the IPCC believes the scenario is of “low likelihood”. In addition, this implausible scenario impacts about 50% of all climate science literature, much of which forms the basis of “screaming headlines”.
The comparison of the surface temperature record – complete with all its potential corruptions such as urban heat effects, poor device-siting and constant retrospective adjustments – against the satellite record, is of considerable interest. Clintel notes climate models backed up by scientific logic suggest that with additional warming on the ground, temperatures in the lower troposphere should actually be higher. This is due to the effect of condensing water vapour releasing latent heat that warms the surrounding area. Clintel finds that the Met Office surface datasets is warming 36% faster than the UAH satellite record, compiled since 1979 by the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The linear trend since that date is warming of 0.19°C per decade for HadCRUT, compared with only 0.14°C per decade from UAH. The authors note that this suggests “there are problems with the land-based temperature data or the processing of it”.
Chris Morrison isthe Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
Instead of arresting Just Stop Oil climate protestors, who appear to be maintaining an illegal road block, British police arrested a commuter who lost his temper at police inaction.
British commuter loses his temper at Just Stop Oil. Source Twitter, fair use, low resolution image to identify the subject.
Instead of arresting Just Stop Oil climate protestors, who appear to be maintaining an illegal road block, British police arrested a commuter who lost his temper at police inaction.
I really hope the gentleman who was arrested got let off with a warning. Who knows what real crimes were being committed, while the police were busy being distracted by the need to prevent ordinary members of the public from giving Just Stop Oil protestors a kicking.
Maybe the police were waiting for reinforcements, so they had enough officers to arrest the protestors, that would be an understandable reason for their hesitation to act. But what I saw on the video looks bad.
WUWT does not condone violence, but I couldn’t help imagining myself in the shoes of the guy who was arrested. We’ve all been in a situation where we were desperate to get somewhere, to keep the boss happy, or get back to our kids. To be stopped by a bunch of petroleum cloth wearing anti oil protestors, on top of all the usual nightmare traffic problems which British drivers face, that would be hard to accept.
There’s precedent: Ukraine has carried out numerous sabotage operations during the war. And in the summer of 2022, Germany was actually warned about a possible Ukrainian attack on the pipelines.
Ever since the Nord Stream sabotage took place, I’ve argued that Ukraine is the most likely culprit.
It had a strong motive: eliminating Germany’s incentive to defect from the pro-Ukraine coalition. It would have been much less risky for Ukraine than for either Russia or a NATO country. There’s precedent: Ukraine has carried out numerous sabotage operations during the war. And in the summer of 2022, Germany was actually warned about a possible Ukrainian attack on the pipelines.
Back in March, various Western newspapers reported that “pro-Ukraine saboteurs” may have been responsible. Although there was “no evidence” that Zelensky or his top generals were involved, the saboteurs “might have connections to the Ukrainian Government or its security services”, wrote the New York Times.
In its own reporting, the Times referred to a “suspected private sponsor, a Ukrainian not affiliated with President Zelensky’s government”, and claimed that his name “has been circulating in intelligence circles for months”.
The alleged plot involved “a yacht, elite divers, forged passports and the procurement of shaped explosive charges only available to the gas and oil industry”. The yacht, where it is said investigators found “traces of explosives”, was later identified as the Andromeda – a 50ft pleasure boat.
As to who the “suspect private sponsor” might be, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitungreported that he is a “Ukrainian oligarch” who “used to be active in politics”, and that the sabotage took place on his birthday. All this points to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose birthday is September 26th – the date of the bombing.
In the latest development, the Timesreports that Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigation is “exploring fresh leads in a theory implicating Ukraine”. (The theory is the same as before – the one involving the Andromeda.)
Investigators think the attack “could only have been carried out with help from a state security service”, and they have “uncovered evidence that may point to Ukrainian involvement”. Note that until the reports about “pro-Ukraine saboteurs” appeared, European officials had been insisting that a “state actor” must be responsible.
In addition to the two Ukrainians who are said to have founded the company that rented the Andromeda, German authorities have identified two others who may have been part of the ship’s crew – one of whom is believed to have served in the army.
The main reason to doubt the ‘Andromeda theory’ is that it’s difficult to believe such a small team of people, using only a pleasure boat, would have been able to carry out the operation. It’s a “James Bond” theory, as one commentator put it. On the other hand, U.S. national security advisor Fiona Hill has said that “Ukraine could have found a way of doing this: we’ve seen them be extremely inventive”.
Aside from the possibility that Russia is responsible, something of which German investigators are apparently “unconvinced”, the main rival theory is Seymour Hersch’s – which pins the blame on U.S. President Joe Biden. While his story may yet be corroborated, various inaccuracies and inconsistencies have been identified and I don’t find it nearly as plausible as the one implicating Ukraine.
The latest inaccuracy in Hersch’s reporting concerns his article ‘THE UKRAINE REFUGEE QUESTION’, where he includes Hungary in a list of countries that are “allies of Ukraine and declared enemies of Vladimir Putin”. This simply isn’t true: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been highly critical of Zelensky and is generally considered Europe’s most Russian-friendly leader.
According to leaked documents seen by the Washington Post, Zelensky has expressed “rage” toward Hungary and even suggested blowing up the Druzhba pipeline which transports oil from Russia. So it sounds like the feeling’s mutual. (Incidentally, the Post’s revelation constitutes further circumstantial evidence for Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage.)
If Hersch can’t get basic details right, it’s hard to trust his more audacious claims about the bombing of Nord Stream. I still don’t buy it.
Readers may recall that last year, NOAA and media outlets touted a very active hurricane season that turned out (thankfully) to be a dud. What impact will the end of La Niña and return of El Niño have this year? What other factors are at play?
With hurricane season around the corner, Stanley Goldenberg, a scientific expert in hurricane research, joins us for the newest episode of Climate Change Roundtable. Goldenberg joins host Anthony Watts and expert panelist Linnea Lueken to discuss what the current data and forecasts indicate for the upcoming hurricane season.
Readers may recall that last year, NOAA and media outlets touted a very active hurricane season that turned out (thankfully) to be a dud. What impact will the end of La Niña and return of El Niño have this year? What other factors are at play? Join us to find out!
Climate Change Roundtable airs every Friday at 12pm CT. Tune in to the LIVE program to ask questions to put panelists, have your comments featured on the show, and interact with like minded viewers.
I appreciate that Australia’s not the centre of world affairs, but keep in mind that more than 60 Australian scientists helped write the latest IPCC report.
By Tony Thomas, journalist – contributor to Quadrant Online, based in Melbourne Australia
I appreciate that Australia’s not the centre of world affairs, but keep in mind that more than 60 Australian scientists helped write the latest IPCC report.
I’ve been a journalist in Australia since 1958. I went straight from school at 18 to The West Australian newspaper, doing news and light features. I also studied literature at university part-time for eight years. In 1971 I switched to Economics and business coverage. I retired from paid journalism in 2001 but I continue writing unpaid for the right-of-centre blog Quadrant Online. In the past ten years I’ve published 460 essays there. All up I’ve been reporting for 65 years and I’m now 83 not out.
I’ve authored close to a dozen books on anthropology, business, history, current affairs and climate, including five collections of my Quadrant essays.
I also like to make my stuff funny. The most effective weapon against climate cultists is to play back their own overblown nonsense — with academics my favourite targets.
My first article for Quadrant in 2012 was about the supposedly drowning Pacific atolls, which in fact are growing in area. Their problem is high birth rates and destructive lifestyles, not rising seas. But this drowning island myth never dies, in fact just a fortnight ago I forced our government-funded ABCTV to correct their latest Tuvalu item.
My first big climate article a decade ago was titled The Fictive World of Rajendra Pachauri, an expose about the long-time chair of the IPCC who later resigned hastily because he was caught out groping a young female staffer in his think-tank. The second article was The Integrity of the Australian Academy of Science, which no one had questioned before. I interviewed the president, who is a microbiologist called Suzanne Cory, and she readily agreed that climate science at that time in 2012 wasn’t settled. This was heresy and her climate minders soon got her to change her tune.
Both main Australian political parties, sadly, aspire to net zero CO2 by 2050. The 2030 target involves installing 22000 solar panels a day for eight years and more than one maxi-sized wind turbine a day. These days I happily write on the emerging train wreck as green politics collides with energy realities.
My talk today will be about the world’s mainstream climate journalists, and the many third-party institutions that are snowing them with alarmist stuff. These bodies warn them off accessing sceptic material, and shower them with money and honors for writing the net zero and alarmist lines.
I began this researching a month or two ago. And every time I check out one of these organisations influencing the media behind the scenes, I discover new ones. They are breeding like rabbits.
A week ago I noticed that Matt Taibbi and 8 colleagues – Matt was a conduit for Elon Musk to disclose Twitter censorship — had been working on the same project – they’ve just published a “Report on the Censorship Industrial Complex”, a compendium of no less than 50 govt/big-tech/ and NGOs feeding the approved lines to the media and shutting down opposing views and platforms.
Those groups don’t just go after climate and covid sceptics, but all conservative material. My own “finds” partly overlap.
I’ve found it costs very little to set up an outfit to bias the climate media. Some of these groups have got huge results from budgets of just 5, 10 or 20 million dollars. Moreover the climate propaganda is usually wrapped inside a platform of worthy roles like training third-world reporters to do a good job. I’m ignoring those feel-good operations.
BBC Verify
I mentioned these groups popping up everywhere.
Just this week I picked up material about the BBC boasting about its truth-checking, called BBC Verify.
I watched a BBC News video from yesterday by Marianna Spring, whose title is “Disinformation and social media correspondent” for BBC Verify. She uses several dummy accounts to keep tabs on unapproved media material.
She targets what she calls “conspiracy theory newspapers, alternative media, the “UK conspiracy movement”, and far right figures and local communities.
You can guess what all this really means.
It’s pretty rich given the BBC’s own conspiracies such as “28-gate” dating from 2006. The BBC pretended that a group of 28 external “best scientific experts” had advised the BBC not to give climate sceptics any coverage. After many years of FOI battles to drag out the names, and the BBC using 3 top barristers, the 28 “best scientific experts” turned out to be just 3 scientists, and a mob of 25 Greenpeace and other activists, vested business interests and even someone from the US Embassy. In 2018 the BBC policy reaffirmed to deny sceptics any platform on the BBC.
Trusted News Initiative
BBC has also co-launched a group called Trusted News Initiative. Core membership is newswires Associated Press, AFP, Reuters,Washington Post, and Australia’s government-owned broadcaster ABC. Trusted News has partnered with the online giants Meta/Facebook, Google, Youtube, and Microsoft to rapidly flag what it calls climate and health “misinformation” . The heavyweight in there is Google News Initiative backed by $US300 million of Google money.
Trusted News finds something it doesn’t like and spreads the word among members immediately. They set about knee-capping these sites by warning away advertisers. They’ve already destroyed many popular right of centre sites. One victim Robert Kennedy Jr is suing Trusted News for treble damages on anti-trust grounds. Well done, BBC.
Australia’s Climate Council
My native Australia has an influence group with a stranglehold on our media, that extends into the Pacific region.
Climate Council is led by Australia’s most influential alarmist, Dr Tim Flannery, whose qualification is actually in mammal paleontology. His predictions have been as bad as Paul Ehrlich’s. During a big drought here 15 years ago he predicted it would be permanent and that two of our capital cities would become waterless ghost towns. Two state governments spent billions installing seawater desalinators that have never been needed as floods — not drought — became the problem.
His Climate Council is chaired by a billionaire’s offspring and runs on a $US6m budget. I calculate most funding now is from tycoons and the usual foundations including Rockefellers. It has several investors in renewables on its board, with no concern about conflict of interest. In fact one top alarmist scientist here, Dr David Karoly, was quoted,
The ability to make money while simultaneously solving climate change, can be an appealing proposition to people with deep pockets.”
The council includes a huge 20-member media spinning team. It is incredibly successful in planting stories in the media. Time after time I detect the fingerprints of the Council behind our country’s climate reporting.
The Council’s 2022 annual report boasts of its “drumbeat” of climate calamity, citing the planting of more than 22,000 stories in the media last year intended to influence “millions” of Australians. And it claims a further 20,000 media items “supported” via third-party climate enthusiasts. That’s 800 items a week obligingly regurgitated by stenographers identifying as journalists.
For example, reporters here originally just reported on recent bushfires and floods. After the Climate Council influencers got to work, the journos began routinely calling the fires and floods “climate-caused” or “climate fuelled”. In the Council’s own words, it has “well socialised” journos to parrot the alarmism.
One effective technique has been to create a standing committee of first responders to weather disasters, like firefighters, emergency service leaders, medicos and so on. They brief the reporters as if they have credibility in climate science, rather than rescuing old ladies from their flooded houses.
The council has found and trained another 200 local leaders of all descriptions as “trusted voices” to spruik the climate message, because they know that grassroots local material is more influential than big-picture science.
The Council has saturated local government leaders with climate alarm. 175 councils now claim a “climate emergency” – that’s coverage of 70% of our population.
The council actually trains journos in workshops run with the journos’ union. The goal is partly to inoculate them against sceptic arguments, claiming these are “misinformation”. Typical journo education from the Council is that
# Coal and gas are expensive compared with renewables
# Renewables are reliable
# Renewables create net jobs and
# Australia can make a difference to the world climate even though it does only 1-2% of the emissions.
The Council, although claimed to be non-political, wades into federal election campaigning for green candidates. It helped remove the conservative govt in last year’s elections and bring in our present climate-crazed radical government.
The Council’s CEO is a young woman who’s passionate, smart, wholesome and very photogenic. How can we grizzled old sceptics compete with her?
Covering Climate Now
The most sinister and effective global influencer/manipulator of the media is Covering Climate Now or CCNow.
More than 500 Media outlets have signed on with CCNow pledging to hype climate alarm and suppress critical views. It’s claimed CCNow members have 2 billion readers in 60 countries.
The big endorsers are the global newswires Reuters, Bloomberg, and Agence France Presse. Many if not most US TV and radio outlets have signed up. It’s really deplorable that the science journals Nature and Scientific American have joined CCNow and signed away their objectivity.
CCNow was started four years ago by the Guardian, The Nation magazine and the Columbia School of Journalism. It wants to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom — from politics and weather to business and culture. It showers reporters with resources and story templates and ideas and pushes absurdities like a billion “climate refugees” by 2050.
Given that the Guardian is a key member, it’s not surprising that CCNow’s founders view fossil fuel executives as criminals against humanity. They also want to “revoke the social licences” of “deniers” in the same way tobacco companies were shafted last century.
CCNow has its style guide for the world’s media, here’s some samples:
Bottom line, there’s no excuse to skip the climate connection in your stories. Here’s some simple language to help:
This [heatwave] is exactly the sort of extreme weather that scientists around the world associate with climate change or a warming planet.
This [hurricane] comes at a time when human-caused climate change is consistently making storms more intense.
It tells journos, “You can also try an analogy or turn of phrase:
Climate change isn’t solely to blame for extreme weather, but…
… itstacks the deckagainst us.
… it’sbaked inwith our weather, and oftena key ingredientin the outcome.
… it supercharges normal weather patterns,like steroids.
I had trouble rooting out who funds CCNow, and discovered that even the Wattsupwiththat blog tried and failed two years ago, suggesting it was the usual gaggle of leftist foundations.
Agence France Presse
I’ll give you a look now at one key member of CCNow, the newswire Agence France Presse. It has 1700 journalists operating in 150 countries. It’s independent but gets about 40% of its funding from French government subsidies.
AFP’s signed the CCNow pledge to hype climate alarm
despite AFP’s clear ethical code of objectivity. This code states
AFP may under no circumstances take account of influences or considerations liable to compromise the objectivity of the information; it may under no circumstances fall under the controlof any ideological, political or economic grouping;
AFP readers are getting their global warming fix from AFP’s specialist Marlowe Hood, who has the title “global coordinator for climate change”. This journo has laughably self-titled himself “Senior Editor, Future of the Planet”. He tells us he was “born at 314 ppm (that is, when CO2 was 314 parts per million) and he now calls himself a “herald of the Anthropocene.” His stories have headlines like “Acceleration of global warming ‘code red’ for humanity“and “Climate cataclysms set stage for key UN science report.”
He was at an Oxford conference in 2009 on (supposed) impacts of a (supposed) 4degC warming. He wrote, “And suddenly the reality of global warming and the human misery it will trail in its wake hit me in the gut and left me gasping for air. Humanity is standing at the crossroads of a “sixth mass extinction”
Prizes and Rewards
For the environmental journo rat-pack, there beckons not just awards and acclaim for saving the planet, but great gobs of cash. AFP’s Mr Hood pocketed a $US110,000 prize from Spain’s BBVA Foundation two years ago .
Elizabeth Kolbert, writer for the New Yorker, has peddled her ridiculous “Sixth Extinction” scare for the past eight years. She picked up a Heinz prize of $US100,000 from the wife of Biden’s loopy “special presidential envoy for climate” John Kerry. She got another $US110,000 award from BBVA last September.
The BBC’s not very accurate climate journo Matt McGrath got the same BBVA $US110,000 windfall in 2019 for his “accurate” reporting. Typical McGrath scare-stuff was from the IPCC confab in Korea in 2018: “Final call to save the world from ‘climate catastrophe’.” There’s been a lot of such “final calls”.
Covering Climate Now hands out prizes like confetti. So do academies like Arizona State University, which on Earth Day last year handed out cash to climate writers for their pieces headed, “Is It OK to Have a Child?”; and “In Search of Environmental Hope,”; and “A year’s diary of reckoning with climate anxiety.” A special mention by Arizona University involved an essay chapter aptly titled, “The Great Derangement.”
Earth Journalism Network
My essay last week in Quadrant was about a UK based group called Earth Journalism Network or EJN. It targets journos in the third world to spread the alarmist message. It’s sponsored by a bigger group called Internews which was created to help improve third world journalism.
Internews Europe has a twin relationship with Internews US. When combined, the pair claim to be the world’s second or third largest media supporting group.
Earth Network claims to have trained 15,000 third world reporters to produce more than 15,000 stories. The network writes climate stories itself to plant in third world countries. It woos low-income journos with a host of small money grants and has distributed 500+ fellowships so far. Indeed the network has had more than 11,000 journos applying for its money, 1000 successfully.
The Network pays for dozens or scores of these journos to have a great trip to big climate conferences, especially the annual UN Cops. The Network even provides money to small third world news organisations, many of them financially struggling.
The Network knows how important visuals and graphics are to stories, so it has 10 regional centres pumping out net-zero friendly graphics for free use in the third world.
I can’t find out how much the Network has paid out, only that its “sub-grants” total $3m.
Funders are the usual Hewletts, the Packards, the Rockefellers, plus giants like the European Commission, UN aid agencies, and the governments of the US, UK and Sweden.
I found a good example of how it woos journos in South Africa, giving them ideas and templates for these stories. Here’s two of their prompts to South African journos:
* What risks will South Africa face if it fails to transition to a low carbon economy by 2050? In contrast, what benefits will the country enjoy from aligning its climate commitments to its developmental agenda?
* How is the climate change bill poised to solidify South Africa’s commitment towards reaching net zero?
What’s the reality? South Africa is facing blackouts even worse than the 10-12 hours a day at present. More than half the country – possibly 80% – is without electricity at any given time. It’s now preparing for blackouts even as long as 32 hours to prevent collapse of the grid. It appears that South Africa is on the edge of a total blackout, thanks to incompetence, corruption and especially its absurd renewables and anti-coal policies . But Earth Network is helping ensure the media sticks with the net-zero advocacy.
NewsGuard
I noticed an international crowd called NewsGuard launching in Australia two months ago. It partners with Microsoft. It flags health and climate websites with green or red flags depending whether Newsguard approves of them. You can add Newsguard as an extension to your browser for a token amount of about $50 a year.
Newsguard wants to drive advertising revenue away from the unapproved sites.
Who funds Newsguard? The liberal Knight Foundation, Publicis and others.
Where does it operate? US, UK, Europe and Australia.
It’s already red-flagged 20% of the Australian sites it’s looked at. In the US it’s flagged nearly half the sites.
Almost any sceptic claim leads to red-flagging, such as extreme events not being fuelled by climate, or sea level rise not accelerating. It is even rating TV news and talk shows.
The fearful part is Newsguard’s broad reach. It targets journos, bureaucrats and so far 900 libraries with 7 million users, plus schools. I can imagine a teacher shying away from letting kids look at a red-flagged site. It’s just Newsguard’s inhouse liberal journos and activists choosing the colors.
My final look is at Science Feedback – based in France.
Science Feedback claims to use blue-chip scientists to “Combat misinformation to protect democracy.” It supposedly fact-checks and gives a score to climate and vaccine articles for journalists and editors.
The scientist reviewers need a PhD plus an article in top-quartile publication in past four years.
The Feedback’s web says, “Climate Feedback and Health Feedback use on-call academics to quickly highlight hype or spin in news reports and warn reporters against repeating misstatements of fact.“
Revenue is about $1.3m, which finances 16 staff
It’s used by NYT, Politifact, Guardian, Washpost, BBC, etc
The group is part-funded by Chinese-controlled TikTok. Feedback also partners with TikTok to check viral videos for misinformation. Other funders are Meta/Facebook (also a partner), the Intl Fact-Checkng network, and Google News Initiative, which began with $300m Google funding.
Science Feedback laughably claims to be non-partisan . But I’ve counted 10 fact checks against Prof Ian Plimer, a leading Australian sceptic geologist, which seems a bit obsessive. I found no fact-checks of everyone who claimed the Great Barrier Reef was dying when right now it’s showing record coral cover.
In recent months Feedback was among the consortium going after Elon Musk and Twitter. Feedback, like other liberal groups, was working to deprive unapproved sites of advertising.
Who are these Feedback non-partisan scientists? They’re the usual suspects like Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth of Climategate fame, Stephan Rahmstorf of the extremist Potsdam Institute, Peter Gleick who was involved in an ethics scandal ten years back which he said he deeply regretted, and Gavin Schmidt of NASA.
In the Australian context I recognise the standard alarmist scientists like Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick who attributes weather extremes to warming and three of those Barrier Reef scientists. There’s also a data quality expert from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The Bureau is right now in the firing line for low-quality temperature recording and refusal to allow critics access to check it.
A number of the Australian scientists on the Feedback panel are notorious for doing a disgusting rap video a decade ago about “we’re climate bleep scientists, what we say is true, sucking bleep in Copenhagen.” It was not even juvenile, they were professors and post-PhDs singing this, and who wants such people steering the transformation of our society – for the worse.
I’ve looked at a few more media manipulators like the Oxford University Climate Journalism Network, Climate Central, and Poynters but I’ve rabbited on long enough. In six words, don’t trust the media on climate. #####
New York City leaders have boasted about using worker retirement savings to advance their climate agenda. They may come to regret it after several city workers this month sued their pension funds for putting climate over financial returns.
New York City leaders have boasted about using worker retirement savings to advance their climate agenda. They may come to regret it after several city workers this month sued their pension funds for putting climate over financial returns.
This could be a significant test of politicized investment by public pensions. New York law and regulation impose strict fiduciary duties on trustees of such funds. [emphasis, links added]
Plans are required to invest “for the exclusive benefit of the participants and beneficiaries” and with “care, skill, prudence, and diligence.”
State courts have ruled that trustees owe a “duty of undivided and undiluted loyalty” to retirees and workers.
Yet three big public pensions—the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York, and Board of Education Retirement System of the City of New York—have instead made investment decisions based on climate goals.
The three plans manage about $150 billion.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio led this climate socialism in 2018 when he declared that city pension plans would have to divest fossil-fuel-related assets within five years to show the city is “leading the fight against climate change.”
The mayor, city officials, and union representatives control the boards of the three pension funds, which complied with his orders.
“Our first-in-the-nation divestment is literally putting money where our mouth is when it comes to climate change,” Mr. de Blasio crowed.
But it’s not his money. New York City’s police and firefighter pension funds notably refused to divest from fossil fuels because it would violate their fiduciary duty.
“The money in the pension fund does not belong to us, nor to the comptroller, nor to the mayor,” a police pension fund trustee explained.
“Itbelongs to the active and retired police officers who have worked and sacrificed to earn their pensions. Our views on any social or political issuecannot enter into the equation. The same is true for the elected officials who sit on the board.”
But social and political issues dominate the investment calculation of the city’s progressive leaders.
In 2021 pension trustees voted to double their plan investments in “climate change solutions” and committed to eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions from their portfolios by 2040 to ensure “we have a livable planet for future generations,” to quote Mr. de Blasio.
In February the city employees’ pension fundadopted a plan to “decarbonize the market, not just our portfolio, and keep fossil fuels in the ground.”
This action “shows just how completely the Trustees have allowed non-pecuniary, climate-related objectives to become the lodestar in their management of Plan assets,” says the lawsuit filed in state court.
The lawsuit notes that the S&P 500 energy sector rose 58%in value last year. When pension funds don’t meet their target rate of return, taxpayers have to chip in more.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander’s budget forecast this year estimates that city taxpayers will spend nearly $10 billion over the next four years to make up for pension fund investment shortfalls last year.
As State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in 2019, “You can’t lose sight of the fact that while we certainly want companies to do the right thing on climate change, at the end of the day we have to produce returns that supportretirement benefits of 1.1 million New Yorkers.”
Government pension funds in other states have also made climate and social policy an investment focus, if not as brazenly as those in New York.
With the recently published Synthesis Report, the IPCC finished its sixth assessment cycle, consisting of seven reports in total. An international team of scientists from the 1500-strong Climate Intelligence Foundation (Clintel) has assessed several claims from the Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) reports.
The following letter was sent to Dr. Lee, the Chair of the IPCC earlier today (May 25th, 2023) by Dr. A.J. (Guus) Berkhout, President of Clintel, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Professor Dr. Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC, c/o World Meteorological Organization 7bis Avenue de la Paix C.P. 2300 CH -1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland.
The Hague, May 25, 2023
Dear Dr. Hoesung Lee,
With the recently published Synthesis Report, the IPCC finished its sixth assessment cycle, consisting of seven reports in total. An international team of scientists from the 1500-strong Climate Intelligence Foundation (Clintel) has assessed several claims from the Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) reports. Results have been summarized in Clintel’s report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC:
As background information, I wish to remind you of the 2010 InterAcademies Council (IAC) review of IPCC procedures, which was commissioned in the aftermath of disastrous publicity regarding errors in earlier IPCC reports and revelations of efforts by IPCC Lead Authors to stifle debate. The IAC concluded in part (emphasis added by me):
Given that the IAC report was prompted in part by the revelation of errors in the last assessment, the committee examined IPCC’s review process as well. It concluded that the process is thorough, but stronger enforcement of existing IPCC review procedures could minimize the number of errors. To that end, IPCC should encourage review editors to fully exercise their authority to ensure that all review comments are adequately considered. Review editors should also ensure that genuine controversies are reflected in the report and be satisfied that due consideration was given to properly documented alternative views. Lead authors should explicitly document that the full range of thoughtful scientific views has been considered.[1]2010 InterAcademies Council (IAC) review of IPCC procedures
We regrettably conclude that the IPCC has failed to follow this advice and the AR6 exhibits the same flaws as before, namely biased selection of evidence, failure to reflect genuine controversies and failure to give due consideration to properly documented alternative views.
To give one example, the IPCC ignored crucial peer-reviewed literature, showing that normalised disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and that human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920. The IPCC’s authors asserted the opposite conclusions based on cherry-picked evidence, claiming increases in damage and mortality due to anthropogenic climate change, and the review process failed to correct this inaccuracy.
Clintel’s 180-page report, The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, is the first large scale international ‘assessment’ of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. In 13 chapters the Clintel report shows that IPCC makes numerous serious scientific errors that overall reflect a bias in favour of ‘bad news’ and against ‘good news’. This was the case throughout the report and especially in the preparation of the Summary for Policy Makers. The good news about disaster losses and climate related deaths was left out of the Summary for Policy Makers all together, for instance.
Additionally, where the IPCC AR6 has taken account of evidence that points away from a dismal, worst-case outlook, such as recognition that the RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 emission scenarios are low likelihood and that models systematically overstate warming in the tropical troposphere, these findings are buried deep in the chapters and are not emphasized for the media or policy makers. Even worse, despite having concluded in its discussion of emission scenarios that the extreme ones are low likelihood, they are nevertheless given maximum prominence in other parts of the report for the purpose of projecting climate impacts.
Finally, we note that the IPCC has remained silent while the UN Secretary-General and other high-ranking officials repeatedly misrepresented the findings of the IPCC. For example, Secretary-General Guterres said of the Working Group 1 report:[2]
“Today’s IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”Secretary-General Guterres
The AR6 Working Group 1 report did not say these things, yet the IPCC never corrected him nor challenged any of the similarly inaccurate media coverage that distorts the contents of your report.
With all respect Dr. Lee, seriously misleading the world on such an important subject and on such a large scale is unacceptable for a UN organization that claims to be scientific. The errors and biases that Clintel has found in the AR6 report are worse than those that led to the 2010 IAC Review, indicating ongoing failure of the IPCC to live up to its mission.
The Clintel network therefore requests the following:
That the IPCC commissions a team with representation from Clintel and other independent persons not involved in IPCC Leadership to review whether the IPCC has fully implemented and followed the reforms recommended by the 2010 IAC Review, and whether more reforms are needed.
That the IPCC reviews prominent statements by major world leaders and media outlets paraphrasing the contents of the AR6 and correct the record where those statements are misleading or inaccurate.
That the IPCC meets with representatives from Clintel to receive input on the key deficiencies highlighted in our report that require a formal correction.
Looking forward to your response,
Yours sincerely,
Dr. A.J. (Guus) Berkhout, President of Clintel, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
P.S. The main objective of the Climate Intelligence Foundation (Clintel) is to generate knowledge and understanding of the causes and effects of climate change, as well as of the effects of climate policy. Clintel published the World Climate Declaration, which has now been signed by more than 1500 scientists and experts worldwide, thus rivalling in size and credentials the IPCC’s Working Group authorship lists. See www.clintel.org.
The letter is lightly edited to get it into blog post format.
“Can it really be that a multiplicity of stakeholders in climate matters – scientists, scientific institutions, activists and NGOs, the media, politicians – are all contributing to misinformation in the service of persuasion?”
Although focussed on hard science, Koonin’s Unsettled broaches Sociology of Climatology in Chapter 10 (WHO BROKE “THE SCIENCE” AND WHY); commencing:
“Can it really be that a multiplicity of stakeholders in climate matters – scientists, scientific institutions, activists and NGOs, the media, politicians – are all contributing to misinformation in the service of persuasion?”
Koonin answers “yes,” suggesting the culprit is: “not some secret cabal, but rather a self-reinforcing alignment of perspectives and interests.” He then walks us through his “multiplicity of stakeholders.”
Climate apocalypticism attracts politicians wishing to keep the public terrified and clamouring for safety.
The media disseminates climate horror because “news is a business” and “if it bleeds it leads.” As newsrooms shrink overworked journalists, sans science degrees, cannot properly research climate stories:
“…the general lack of knowledge of what the science actually says, the drama of extreme weather events and their heart-rending impact on people, and pressures within the industry all work against balanced coverage in the popular media.”
Governments, businesses and NGOs have “messages” that employees must deliver to stay employed or to attain promotions, tenure etc:
“…more than a few climate contrarians have suffered public opprobrium and diminished career prospects for publicizing data that doesn’t support the “broken climate” meme.”
NGOs like 350.org, Union of Concerned Scientist, and Natural Resources Defence Council solicit donations with scary distortions of climate science. (This is off. Climate NGOs draw funds from Big Green philanthropies, vested corporate interests, and captured government agencies. Climateworks and Energy Foundation boast annual receipts, respectively, of $425 ml and $230 ml. Neither solicit from the public.)
According to Koonin: “individuals and organizations in the scientific community are demonstrably misrepresenting the science.”
Scientific institutions: “seem more concerned with making the science fit the narrative than ensuring the narrative fits the science.”
Regarding climate: “…institutions that prepare the official assessment reports have a communication problem, often summarizing or describing the data in ways that are actively misleading.”
Scientists hype research, fudge uncertainty, and covet publicity.
The public believes whatever science authorities say, and presumes journalists know what they’re talking about. Authorities oblige the public’s abhorrence of gray areas by keeping them wholly in the dark.
As evidenced above, Koonin references mostly generic social phenomena. Financial pressure, groupthink and hype underly all discourse, not merely climate science. Koonin doesn’t adequately distinguish climate from other overegged topics, nor explain why climate is even on the agenda. Aware of this defect, he offers glimpses into the unusual treatment given Climatology; particularly the fear-borne ignorance exhibited by scientists whenever the topic arises. Climatology generates: “an eyes-shut-fingers-in-the-ears position I’ve never heard in any other scientific discussion.” And: “otherwise rigorous and analytical scientists abandon their critical faculties when discussing climate…”
Koonin rebukes the National Academies of Science for publishing reviews of climate assessments so lacking in objectivity as to betray an intent to manipulate. A 2019 joint climate statement, freighted with misinformation, signed by each NAS academy president, bewildered Koonin:
“I’m quite sure that this personal statement of the presidents in a news release was not reviewed by the usual Academies procedures; if it had been, its deficiencies would have been corrected.”
Climatology also receives unique treatment from politicos and journos. Politicians must pitch renewable energy as the only way to solve an urgent crisis; because the Energy Transition won’t sell if framed as one option for solving some distant problem. Politicians won’t discuss climate science uncertainties, nor admit the true cost of the Energy Transition. Thus, when crafting climate messaging: “…the science is jettisoned in favour of The Science, and “simplified” for use in the political arena, which allows the required actions to be portrayed as simple as well – just eliminate fossil fuels to save the planet.”
Alarmist media articles aren’t just the result of overloaded, undereducated journos. A legion of “Climate Reporters” zealously monger doom.
Koonin understands that the Energy Transition is the dog wagging the Climate Change tail:
“Science should not be partisan, but climate science’s intersection with energy policy all but guaranteed that it would become so.”
“…as alternative energy grows, there is financial incentive for politicians to hype climate catastrophe.”
Unsettled is a naïf’s confession. In 2004 Koonin thought Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming was a legit hypotheses sincerely held by honest scientists. Few climate contrarians, under 50, can say the same.
Koonin’s main claim is that the actual scientific literature doesn’t jibe with what alarmists call The Science. His testimony resonates because he’s a top-tier scientist who’s actually read the national and international climate assessments. The thought-fields Koonin wonders onto, however, are Climate Change Communication and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. These too are sciences, complete with literary canons to which Unsettled’s 200+ footnotes make nary a reference.
Koonin apologises for, and defends, the science establishment. He fears a corrupted Climatology undermines public confidence in the entire scientific project. He prefers “misinformation” but describes “disinformation.” Connecting his own dots, its obvious key US government agencies, and leading US scientific institutions, are instruments of hostile forces. This, added to the Energy Transition’s hobbling of the American economy, warrants designating climate alarmism as treason. Koonin ain’t there yet.
Source
Koonin, Stephen E. Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, And Why It Matters; BenBella Books, Dallas, TX, 2021; Chapter 10 “WHO BROKE ‘THE SCIENCE’ AND WHY” pages 185-96.
I wrote Global Cooling almost exactly two years ago. In it I noted that my part of the UK had experienced a very cold winter, and I also observed that the database of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was showing a 0.52C year-on-year fall in global land and ocean surface temperature between February 2020 and February 2021.
I wrote Global Cooling almost exactly two years ago. In it I noted that my part of the UK had experienced a very cold winter, and I also observed that the database of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was showing a 0.52C year-on-year fall in global land and ocean surface temperature between February 2020 and February 2021. Since I wrote that, I have been keeping an eye on NOAA’s monthly global climate report with a view to seeing whether or not that cooling trend was continuing.
The strange thing I have noticed is that although land temperatures don’t seem to be doing anything dramatic, NOAA’s monthly reports are full of hyperbole about global temperatures generally. For instance, the report published earlier this month in respect of April 2023 assures us that “April 2023 was the fourth-warmest April for the globe in NOAA’s 174-year record.” Yet, at the same time, we learn that although “Africa had its fourth-warmest April on record”, “South America tied 2007 for its ninth-warmest April” andit was only the 22ndwarmest April on record in Asia, with the smallest April temperature anomaly since April 2010. In Pakistan, the national mean temperature for April was actually 0.26°C below the average. Meanwhile, North America, Europe and Oceania all saw April 2023 ranking outside the 20 warmest Aprils on record. Arctic sea ice saw only the eleventh smallest April extent on record (tied with April 2004). We are told that parts of Antarctica saw temperatures above average, but parts were below average, so there’s nothing much to see there either. Intriguingly, we also learn that “[l]ess than 1% of the world’s surface had a record-cold April.” That sounds pretty undramatic, but it does mean that some parts of the earth’s land mass saw a record cold month in records going back 174 years:
Coinciding with the release of the January 2023 Global Climate Report, the NOAA Global Surface Temperature (NOAAGlobalTemp) dataset version 5.1.0 replaced version 5.0.0. This new version includes complete global coverage and an extension of the data record back in time an additional 30 years to January 1850.
As for the year to date, it’s a similar story:
The January–April global surface temperature also ranked fourth warmest in the 174-year record at 1.03°C (1.85°F) above the 1901–2000 average of 12.6°C (54.8°F). According to NCEI’s statistical analysis, the year 2023 is very likely to rank among the 10 warmest years on record.
So, global warming continues unabated, then. Or does it? Not on land, it doesn’t. So far as the year to date is concerned, Europe and Africa apparently both come in with the third warmest, but South America saw only its seventh warmest first four months of the year, while Asia came in with the ninth warmest, North America with its fifteenth warmest, and Oceania tied with 1992 for the twenty-third warmest start to the year to date.
What is the explanation? It seems to be that sea surface temperature warming is ongoing (“Global ocean temperatures set a record high for Apr, and marked the second-highest ocean temperature on record for any month”), but that temperatures on land aren’t being so obliging to the alarmists. I thought I’d take a look at land temperature anomalies, and since 2016 is still said to be the warmest year on record, that seemed like a good place to start.
The global temperature across land surfaces for April 2016 set a new record, at 1.93C above the 20th century average. By April 2017 that anomaly had collapsed to just 1.37C above the twentieth century average, and was the joint fourth highest April temperature in the (then) 130 year record, the same as 2000 and 2010. April 2018 saw another fall, albeit more modest, to 1.31C above the average, and was thus only the ninth warmest April within the database. April 2019 saw rising temperatures, and came in at 1.48C above the average, making it the joint third April (tied with 2012). April 2020 saw another rise, to 1.66C above the average, and the excitement was palpable – it was second only to 2016. April 2021, however, saw the significant temperature drop I noticed when writing two years ago. It was just 1.25C above the twentieth century average, and was in a paltry twelfth place in the record books. April 2022 came in at 1.45C, warming alarmist hearts, as it was back up to sixth place. Yet April this year was cooler again, at just 1.31C above the twentieth century average, and registering 11th place in the record books. So here we are with land temperatures in April 2023 sitting at a whopping 0.62C below the record set in April 2016.
Of course, nobody will be talking about that. Interestingly, the northern hemisphere land temperature in April 2023 was only the 17th highest on record, yet the southern hemisphere land temperature is said to be the second highest on record. Year to date, by the way, sees southern hemisphere land temperatures as the tenth warmest on record, but northern hemisphere land temperatures as the fourth highest on record. Make of all that what you will.
Meanwhile, I would welcome an explanation as to how the southern hemisphere land temperature for April 2023 can be the second highest on record, while its constituent parts were all ranking much lower in the record books. Remember – South America joint 9th; Oceania outside the top twenty; Asia (granted it’s more a northern than a southern hemisphere continent), 22nd warmest; and Africa (also straddling the equator), fourth warmest.
I can’t help wondering if there’s really much point to all of this. I’d also like to know more about the latest dataset version, but that’s for another day.
The Heartland Institute
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