Day: April 12, 2024

Complete Washout for Story Claiming Climate Change is “Hitting Vulnerable Indonesian Trans Sex Workers”

An extraordinary story suggesting that male prostitutes in Indonesia self-identifying as ‘trans women’ are struggling to make a living due to climate change has been doing the rounds of mainstream media.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

An extraordinary story suggesting that male prostitutes in Indonesia self-identifying as ‘trans women’ are struggling to make a living due to climate change has been doing the rounds of mainstream media. The online Independent reported one sex worker complaining that “no one is coming out during the longer rainy season’, while another noted, “I no longer want to endure the heat and rain on the streets”. Needless to say, the actual data fail to give much credence to their weather woes. A lot of rain falls in tropical Indonesia but in the heaviest months of December, January and February during the period 1991-2020, the annual average of 833.6 mm was little changed from the 827.5 mm that fell 100 years ago. Over the entire period there has been an unnoticeable annual increase of 55 mm to 2,772.41 mm. Meanwhile the average annual temperature in Indonesia dropped by 0.14°C to 26°C from 2016 to 2022.

The U.K. blog Mumsnet ran a thread noting the Independent’s headline “How climate change is hitting vulnerable Indonesian trans sex workers”, and asked: “Is this the most ‘woke’ headline ever”? The first comment remarked: “I don’t think I’ve seen even Titania McGrath manage to get so much oppression into so few words.” The first comment under the Independent’s original story asked: ‘Is this a Babylon Bee article”?

In fact the game being played here is a serious one, as regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will be only too well aware. The Independent story is credited to “Reuters correspondents” and is part of a global campaign to insert the fear of  ‘climate change’ – human-caused of course – into almost every conceivable situation. The use of such emotional language is designed to drive up fear to support the Net Zero collectivisation. “Indonesia is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and trans women, who tend to face more stigma and marginalisation than trans men or other LGBTQ+ Indonesians, are also among those hardest hit by extreme weather,” reports Reuters. It is appears that as well as seeking to adapt their “precarious livelihoods” to the new “climate reality”, attempts are also being made to “raise awareness” of the challenges posed by extreme weather.

Street walking in a Muslim-majority country undoubtedly has perils, but to use such a situation to blame the climate is ridiculous. As we have noted, the climate in Indonesia has been remarkably stable over the last century – a tad more warmth, and more or less the same amount of rain.

The above World Bank graph plots a five-year smoothed average temperature in Indonesia since the start of the last century. In common with other countries in the tropics, the warming has been around half that seen in the heavily urbanised lands further north. The average temperature in 2022 at 26°C was only 0.5°C higher than the 1922 recording of 25.5°C.

Looking at the aggregated accumulation precipitation data from the World Bank above shows little change going back over 100 years, and certainly nothing that would have been obvious to the local inhabitants. According to the Independent account, sex workers in the rainforest region of West Java “are among the most affected by extreme weather”, and there is no doubt rainfall is slightly higher at the 1,000 metre elevation. But light relief is also available since the average annual temperature is over 2°C cooler than the country as a whole.

Of course Reuters has considerable form when it comes to whipping up political fear of a changing climate. Over the last two years, the Reuters Institute has been running the Oxford Climate Journalism Network that has seen over 400 journalists from across the world take lengthy sabbaticals to be indoctrinated into the campaign to push a climate ‘emergency’ narrative into every imaginable story. Currently undergoing such education is Marco Silva from the BBC Verify unit. One past course speaker has speculated on the need for “fines and imprisonment” for expressing scepticism about “well-supported” science. Delegates are groomed to “move beyond their siloed past” as climate journalists into a strategic position within newsrooms, “combining expertise with collaboration”.

Billionaire funds also back Covering Climate Now, an operation run out of the Columbia Journalism Review in New York and supported by media operations including Reuters, the Guardian, Bloomberg and Agence France-Presse. It claims to feed over 500 media outlets with written stories and narratives. It seeks a “reframing” of the way poodle journalists cover climate change. In other words, the relentless amplification for obvious political and cultural purposes of an invented climate emergency by constant story catastrophisation of the climate.

In passing, it might be observed that calling a journalist a journalist does not necessarily mean that he/him/she/her/they is a journalist.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Climate Murder? Media Picks Up Novel Legal Theory Suggesting Big Oil Is Homicidal

A new narrative is making its way through major media outlets about major oil corporations: climate change that they purportedly caused is taking lives, and they could be held liable for homicide.

From The Daily Caller

NICK POPE

CONTRIBUTOR

A new narrative is making its way through major media outlets about major oil corporations: climate change that they purportedly caused is taking lives, and they could be held liable for homicide.

In recent weeks, numerous outlets have run stories or opinion pieces promoting or otherwise examining the novel legal theory, which is the subject of a new paper published by the Harvard Environmental Law Review, according to a Tuesday E&E News report detailing the architects’ efforts to market their idea to prosecutors. The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Newsweek, Inside Climate News and other outlets have all recently published pieces promoting the idea that leading oil companies could or should be charged with murder for their role in climate change, which the theory’s architects claim has caused thousands of deaths in the U.S.

David Arkush, who runs Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, a professor at George Washington University’s law school, articulated the theory in a March paper. Public Citizen is a left-of-center organization founded by failed Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader that, among other things, pressures American International Group (AIG) to stop providing insurance coverage for fossil fuel companies, according to its website and Influence Watch. (RELATED: Dems, Media Push New Study Linking Climate Change To Inflation, But Economists Aren’t Buying It)

“Activists and journalists have called executives of major oil companies ‘mass murderers,’ lamenting that ‘millions of human beings will die so that they can have private planes and huge mansions,’ and a growing chorus of communities devastated by [fossil fuel companies’] lethal conduct have begun to demand accountability,” the authors state in their paper. “But as of this writing, no prosecutor in any jurisdiction has charged [fossil fuel companies] with any form of homicide over climate-related deaths. They should.”

The paper also suggests that the American Petroleum Institute (API), a leading trade association for the oil and gas industry, was involved in the industry’s purported attempts to obscure the effects of emissions.

“The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint,” a spokesperson for API told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

The two authors contend that energy corporations were aware of the warming that emissions from their products and operations would cause for decades, and that those companies decided to mislead the public and obscure what effects those emissions may have. A similar narrative lies at the heart of climate lawsuits that have been filed against energy companies in numerous jurisdictions across the U.S. in recent years.

Arkush wrote a Wednesday piece for Newsweek laying out his theory and referencing these climate lawsuits, opining that the fossil fuel industry’s purported “crimes may be among the, if not the, most consequential in human history.” The Boston Globe ran a similar opinion piece authored by Arkush and another official for Public Citizen on March 17.

The Guardian ran its own piece about the climate homicide theory on March 21, using the headline “Fossil fuel firms could be tried in US for homicide over climate-related deaths, experts say.” Clean Technica, a site that promotes green energy, ran a March 16 piece on the new legal theory with the headline “Climate Criminals — Prosecuting Big Oil For Environmental Crimes.”

Inside Climate News published an April 4 story on the subject, using the headline “Should Big Oil Be Tried for Homicide?” and including excerpts from interviews with the two architects of the climate homicide theory. The pair suggested that the aim is not to punish individuals or seek vengeance, but instead achieve results that would prompt companies to shift their investments away from fossil fuels, according to Inside Climate News’ story.

However, Inside Climate News did quote legal experts who expressed skepticism about the theory’s merits.

“I do not believe that a criminal prosecution on homicide charges against the major oil companies is appropriate or can be sustained,” John Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in corporate law, told the outlet.

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Will feds decimate one owl species to help another?

Nearly 500,000 barred owls in northern California, Oregon, and Washington state will soon be under the gun if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service goes ahead with its latest scheme to save the endangered northern spotted owl.

From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Nearly 500,000 barred owls in northern California, Oregon, and Washington state will soon be under the gun if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service goes ahead with its latest scheme to save the endangered northern spotted owl.

In November, the Fish and Wildlife Service unveiled its barred owl management proposal, the centerpiece of which is the removal of approximately 500,000 barred owls via the shotgun or other forms of euthanasia from the habitat of its smaller cousin, the northern spotted owl.

“Barred owl removal is not something the Service takes lightly,” Jodie Delavan, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Service, told McClatchy News on March 26. “However, the Service has a legal and ethical responsibility to do all it can to recover northern spotted owl populations.” A final barred owl “management strategy” and a record of decision is expected later this year, Ms. Delavan told McClatchy News.

Since the barred owl is protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, killing them — in this case, by the hundreds of thousands — will require a federal permit or regulation. And that is a step the feds appear to be prepared to take.

That the barred owl is covered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is quite appropriate because the bird — beginning in the early 20th century — began migrating westward from eastern North America. By the 1980s, it was well established in the Pacific Northwest, where it occupies the same habitat as the smaller northern spotted owl. The two species feed on the same prey, with the more aggressive barred owl outcompeting its cousin, sometimes even killing northern spotted owls.

When the problem first garnered public attention in the early 1990s, the preferred explanation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmental groups was that the commercial logging of old-growth forests was responsible for the loss of the northern spotted owl’s habitat and thus was behind the bird’s dwindling numbers. Saving old-growth forests, where Douglas fir and hemlock prevail, was seen by the Clinton administration as the preferred solution, and policies were put in place that restricted logging on federal land in the Pacific Northwest. Those policies succeeded in shutting down many sawmills and destroying timber-dependent communities throughout the region.

The Clinton administration even orchestrated an “Owl Summit” at which federal officials and environmentalists congratulated themselves for caring so much about the fate of the northern spotted owl. Those who pointed out that the problem lay not with old-growth forests but with the encroaching barred owl were ignored.

Over 30 years after the summit and the bird’s being added to the Endangered Species List, the situation faced by the northern spotted owl has worsened. While ignoring the mistake it made in blaming the loss of old-growth forest for the northern spotted owl’s declining numbers, the feds now acknowledge that the problem lies with the barred owl. Seizing the bull by the horns — to mix metaphors — the Fish and Wildlife Service initiated an experiment that involved the killing of 2,485 barred owls with 12-gauge shotguns in five different areas, the Modesto Bee reported March 26.

Having concluded that nonviolent removal of the barred owls was impractical, the feds appear to have settled on a lethal approach. This means showing a preference for one species of owl over another, with the “invasive” barred owl coming up short. But is the barred owl really an invasive species, or is it simply expanding its territory, as many species of birds and mammals are prone to do?
The Owl Research Institute, a Montana-based nonprofit focused on owl conservation, is reviewing the government’s proposal.

“Central to this discussion is the determination of whether Barred Owls truly meet the criteria for an invasive species, or if they represent a more adaptable species capable of natural expansion by themselves, as some have suggested,” the institute said in a March 26 statement emailed to McClatchy News.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is operating under the 1973 Endangered Species Act, a statute that has fallen woefully short in fulfilling its mission of recovering species at risk. In the case of the northern spotted owl, the law was used in the 1990s to curtail commercial logging in the Pacific Northwest. That was a political goal pursued by environmentalists in and out of government. As is now clear, it did nothing to improve the lot of the northern spotted owl.

Today, federal wildlife managers are seriously considering an avian version of ethnic cleansing to carry out their “legal and ethical responsibility” under the Endangered Species Act. The statute allows bureaucrats to play God, even if their policies turn out to be ungodly. If they go through with their plan and shotguns are trained on hundreds of thousands of owls, the Endangered Species Act will have reached a new level of absurdity.

This article originally appeared at The Washington Times

Part 4. Golden Gorgonians & So Many Fishes – John Brewer Reef, April 2024

There used to be crevasses overlaid with large pink plate corals just beyond the boat where you jump off into the lagoon at John Brewer reef, and so I never made it around to the reef front proper – at least not down the sandy front to a depth of 22 metres.

From Jennifer Marohasy

By jennifer 

There used to be crevasses overlaid with large pink plate corals just beyond the boat where you jump off into the lagoon at John Brewer reef, and so I never made it around to the reef front proper – at least not down the sandy front to a depth of 22 metres.

I was there last Thursday, at the reef front and I was mesmerised.

(I hope you are reading this on a large screen, so you can see the detail when you play the clips/the few frames.)

So many soft corals, especially Gorgonian fans in shades of purple and gold, feather stars, and fish, and more fish – so many little fishes in every shape and colour.

https://vimeo.com/932856064

I was disappointed in my buoyancy on both dives at John Brewer reef last Thursday; it seemed to be all over the place.   The secret I’m told is to be calm.

https://vimeo.com/932839333

Then again, how is one to keep calm when everywhere that I looked there was something more spectacular, than what we had just swam past!

More spectacular. And when it came to the Jointed Razorfish (Aeoliscus strigatus) they were swimming on their heads. And I was meant to stay calm.

https://vimeo.com/932848013

There is no relief.  Even now.  When I close my eyes: I see fishes.

John Brewer Reef, Thursday 4th April 2024. credit Stuart Ireland.

*******

The photograph at the top of this post, and the three clips are, of course, by the perfectly calm Stuart Ireland filmed at John Brewer Reef on 4th April, 2024.  So much thanks to our guide, Paul Crocombe who is a PADI Master Scuba Instructor, and a Master Reef Guide and the owner of Adrenalin Dive.