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.
Join The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely — along with special guest Matthew Wielicki — to discuss the coming Climate Lockdowns. We will also cover some of the crazy climate news of the week, including rap music being used to raise climate awareness among the illiterate in Pakistan, the continued blackballing of non‑alarmist climate scientists, and how the road to Hell is being paved with green intentions.
During COVID, power‑mad government officials around the globe shut down society to protect us from a contagious virus that killed a small percentage of those who got it. Restaurants, parks, and beaches were closed. Gatherings larger than what could fit in a phone booth were canceled. They even told us not to celebrate Thanksgiving with our loved ones for “the greater good.”
Today, power‑grabbers in Canada are banning hikers from the woods in the Maritimes and imposing enormous fines on those who dare set foot in their own public forests. Why? Because of the Canadian wildfires. And this kind of madness is just the beginning.
Join The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely — along with special guest Matthew Wielicki — to discuss the coming Climate Lockdowns. We will also cover some of the crazy climate news of the week, including rap music being used to raise climate awareness among the illiterate in Pakistan, the continued blackballing of non‑alarmist climate scientists, and how the road to Hell is being paved with green intentions.
Be there LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, and X. We’ll hit all these topics — and more — and answer your questions in the live chat.
BBC Disinformation head Marianna Spring is a fierce defender of the BBC’s institutional climate bias, and a critic of anti-Covid lockdown conspiracy theorists.
When the BBC’s disinformation correspondent lied on her CV
Marianna Spring admitted she made an “awful misjudgement” when playing up her role in coverage of the Russia World Cup for the BBC
6 SEPTEMBER 2023 5:21 PM
We all make mistakes when we are young, and sometimes they grow in irony as time passes. Case in point: Marianna Spring, the BBC’s disinformation correspondent who, I can reveal today, was once caught red-handed lying in her CV to win a job.
…
Five years ago, in 2018, Spring was looking for work as a Moscow stringer for US-based news site Coda Story. In her application to editor-in-chief Natalia Antelava, she included a CV in which claimed to have worked alongside BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford on the corporation’s coverage of the football World Cup held in Russia.
The entry in her CV read: “June 2018: Reported on International News during the World Cup, specifically the perception of Russia, with BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford.”
This claim was, unfortunately, pure disinformation. In reality, she had merely met Rainsford in a couple of social situations. The claim was a lie.
The New European claims she learned her hard lesson, and now upholds the highest standards of journalistic integrity as BBC’s disinformation correspondent.
Here’s a sample of Mariana’s writing;
Covid denial to climate denial: How conspiracists are shifting focus
Published 16 November 2021 By Marianna Spring Specialist disinformation reporter, BBC News
Members of an online movement infected with pandemic conspiracies are shifting their focus – and are increasingly peddling falsehoods about climate change.
Matthew is convinced that shadowy forces lie behind two of the biggest news stories of our time, and that he’s not being told the truth.
“This whole campaign of fear and propaganda is an attempt to try and drive some agenda,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s climate change or a virus or something else.”
Originally from the UK, Matthew has been living in New Zealand for the past 20 years. The country is one of several that have aimed to completely stamp out Covid-19 through strict lockdowns.
Troubled by the New Zealand government’s approach, he turned to social media for news and community. The online groups he joined – opposed to vaccines and masks – exposed him to completely unfounded conspiracies about sinister global plots behind the Covid-19 pandemic.
…
The White Rose network
It’s part of a larger pattern. Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine Telegram groups, which once focused exclusively on the pandemic, are now injecting the climate change debate with the same conspiratorial narratives they use to explain the pandemic.
The posts go far beyond political criticism and debate – they’re full of incorrect information, fake stories and pseudoscience.
Thank goodness for people like Marianna Spring, who after allegedly lying on her CV, went on to help us understand conspiracy theorists who criticise the urgent need for government enforced Covid lockdowns are just like conspiracy theorists who oppose renewables, and deny we are in the midst of a climate crisis.
One the one hand, cutting fossil fuel pollution is necessary for avoiding severe destruction over the long term. But such cuts will make the earth much hotter in the short term.
One recent study cast the well-known declines in air pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic in a darker light.
…
That’s because the shuttered factories and power plants led to a corresponding crash in emissions.
…
After the cuts, the study found that light reaching the surface increased by 7 percent.
…
A draft study led by Columbia University climate scientist James Hansen suggests that the recent rise in temperatures doesn’t come from greenhouse gases at all, but from the reduction in sulfate aerosols since the early-2000s.
…
Not all climate scientists accept Hansen and company’s conclusion.
“I have nothing but respect & reverence for [Hansen] … but I think he is wrong on this one,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann tweeted.
Anthropogenic aerosols mask the climate warming caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs). In the absence of observational constraints, large uncertainties plague the estimates of this masking effect. Here we used the abrupt reduction in anthropogenic emissions observed during the COVID-19 societal slow-down to characterize the aerosol masking effect over South Asia. During this period, the aerosol loading decreased substantially and our observations reveal that the magnitude of this aerosol demasking corresponds to nearly three-fourths of the CO2-induced radiative forcing over South Asia. Concurrent measurements over the northern Indian Ocean unveiled a ~7% increase in the earth’s surface-reaching solar radiation (surface brightening). Aerosol-induced atmospheric solar heating decreased by ~0.4 K d−1. Our results reveal that under clear sky conditions, anthropogenic emissions over South Asia lead to nearly 1.4 W m−2 heating at the top of the atmosphere during the period March–May. A complete phase-out of today’s fossil fuel combustion to zero-emission renewables would result in rapid aerosol demasking, while the GHGs linger on.Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00367-6
Note James Hansen did not participate in the above study which discusses the impact of the Covid lockdown on global warming. The Hill also article referenced a draft James Hansen study which attempts to link clean air policies since 2010 to recent global warming.
What can I say? The solution seems obvious.
Instead of demanding coal plants reduce sulphate emissions, sulphate and particulate emissions should be encouraged. That way we could save everyone from global warming by raising the sulphate burden of the atmosphere, while we wait for the solar panels to kick in and replace fossil fuel.
Two days ago I posted what I thought would be quite an innocuous twitter thread about the implications of the U.K. Government’s target of ‘Net Zero’ by 2050.
1. Reminder of what ‘net zero’ really means. This graphic from UK Govt FIRES project. Key points: all airports except Heathrow, Belfast & Glasgow to close by 2030. NO FLYING at all by 2050. No new petrol/diesel cars by 2030; by 2050 road use restricted to 60% of today’s level. pic.twitter.com/0s0dI9kAHK
Specifically, I showed this graphic from the U.K. Government-funded FIRES project that summarised its recommended necessary strategy to achieve Net Zero by 2050 based only on evolutionary technological developments (the report it’s from has been around since 2021 and I’ve even posted about it before).
Now, for clarification ‘Net Zero’ means total greenhouse gas emissions (including methane) must be less than their removals (such as from planting trees). The FIRES report instead focused on an absolute zero target because they recognise the absence of novel revolutionary scalable technologies for 1) capture and removal of these gases and 2) non-fossil fuel mass transportation and energy production. In other words, if you realistically want to achieve the Net Zero target by 2050 you essentially have to go for absolute zero.
My twitter thread highlighed the eye-watering points that the strategy required:
All airports in the U.K. except Heathrow, Belfast and Glasgow to close by 2030.
No flying at all by 2050.
No new petrol or diesel cars by 2030.
By 2050 road use restricted to 60% of today’s level.
Food, heating and energy restricted to 60% of today’s level by 2050.
Beef and lamb to be phased out by 2050.
I said that, apart from the extreme limitations on personal freedom and travel, this means either a colder, hungrier population or massive depopulation.
Within less than 24 hours the tweet had amassed well over three million impressions (by far the highest I’ve ever achieved).
And, whereas three years solid work undertaking Covid data analysis and exposing the manipulation and flaws of the entire ‘official’ narrative had never led to a single mainstream media article or interview, I was invited on to Laura Ingraham’s popular Fox News show last night to speak about this.
(The interview was actually pre-recorded an hour before it was aired and quite a lot of what I said for context, such as the Covid lockdown trial run and new technology challenges, didn’t make the cut.)
So, although the FIRES report is not new it seems that finally people are waking up to the lunacy of the Government’s Net Zero target and why it is doomed to fail (as explained by Professor Michael Kelly).
But it’s still a surprise that it is a surprise to so many. All of this is consistent with UN/WEF Agenda 21, the UN ‘World at 2050′ agenda, and the WEF Great Reset with its ‘Build Back Better’ in which you’ll “own nothing and be happy”, and eat bugs instead of meat. Of course ’15 minute cities’ now being pushed everywhere are key to all of this (everything that’s happening now in that respect and how it fits into Agenda 21 was explained in Rosa Koire’s 2011 book). As I said in 2021, the Covid lockdowns were always going to be the precursor for climate lockdowns.
Until he retired in January, Norman Fenton was Professor in Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London.
You must be logged in to post a comment.