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.
Conspiracy nuts have had a field day over the delayed release of work compiled by the British Intelligence Services warning of possible eco-collapse, mass extinctions, food shortages, conflicts and mass migration. In fact, the flimsy 14-page report is little more than a cutting job from the Guardian. Twenty-six mostly usual suspect sources are named, and highlights of the most extreme scenarios are cherry-picked in yet another Net Zero Blob effort to create population panic
Conspiracy nuts have had a field day over the delayed release of work compiled by the British Intelligence Services warning of possible eco-collapse, mass extinctions, food shortages, conflicts and mass migration. In fact, the flimsy 14-page report is little more than a cutting job from the Guardian. Twenty-six mostly usual suspect sources are named, and highlights of the most extreme scenarios are cherry-picked in yet another Net Zero Blob effort to create population panic. Who knows how much taxpayer money was wasted on this compilation – AI could have done the job in under a minute. The obvious reason for the delay in publication was that someone intelligent in the Intelligence Services said something along the lines: ‘We can’t publish this BS, we will look complete idiots.’
The claim is that the original report was blocked at the top of the British government for being too negative. This is obvious nonsense. No claim of eco-system collapse and devastating climate change would ever be considered too extreme by almost the entire British political class, at least if past evidence is anything to go on. It appears that the report was compiled by the Joint Intelligence Committee, which coordinates the work of MI5 and MI6. It only saw the light of day with publication by the Government’s environment department following a Freedom of Information request from the Times newspaper. Green author and activist Rupert Read was suitably affronted by what was seen as a cover up.
The report is strewn with fake scares that have been widely debunked over the years. The surprise is to see some of them still being published by bodies with reputations to lose. It would be interesting hear Rupert Read debate some of these contentious matters, but, alas, along with Caroline Lucas, George Monbiot and Clive Lewis MP, he signed a 2018 letter to the Guardian stating that he would no longer lend his “credibility” by talking to those who question the opinions around human-caused climate change.
It is claimed in the report that the rate of extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years, and this is said to “suggest a sixth mass extinction may be underway”. These types of claims require copious computer modelled estimates and assumptions, but they have a problem in connecting with observed reality. In a paper recently published by the Royal Society, it was found that extinction rates for animals and plants have “generally declined in the last 100 years”. Past extinctions are said to “strongly suggest” that climate change is not an important threat to biodiversity. The paper’s conclusions about extinctions are not new, and there is not a scintilla of scientific proof that the planet is in, or facing, a sixth mass extinction of animal and plant life.
All eco systems are said to be degrading around the world and population sizes of monitored vertebrate species are claimed to have fallen by an average of 68% since 1970. This is an old scare and arises from the bi-annual activist WWF ‘Living Planet’ report. Needless to say, this highly improbable figure has been effectively debunked. In 2020, a group of Canadian biologists examined a previous decline figure of 69% and showed that it was a statistical freak. They revealed that the estimate was driven by 2.4% of wildlife populations, adding, “if these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase”. Put simply, population of wildlife species often dramatically wax and wane – it’s called nature.
Collectors of laughable cherry-picking would have been delighted with a ‘case study’ that claimed falling coffee harvests are driving migration from central America to the USA. Not any more they are not, thanks, of course, to President Trump. Disease in 2012-2015 and what is characterised as “highly erratic weather” in 2018 led to particularly bad harvests. It happens, might be the realistic explanation. Although yields have recovered in recent years, production in this part of the world is hampered by primitive farming methods and small holdings. Central America is a world outlier. Elsewhere, coffee growing is booming with global production doubling over the last 30 years. Higher productivity farms in neighbouring Brazil and Columbia can often achieve double the hectare yields recorded in central America.
The report highlights biodiversity loss that it says will cause crop failures and intensify natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. If only there was substantial evidence to back all this up. Nowhere in this silly report is it mentioned that crops yields are soaring almost everywhere you look due to the enormous boost recently supplied by hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser. If you want half the world to starve, stop drilling for oil and gas. As is common in activists’ agitprop, there is no mention either of the recent 14% ‘greening’ of the Earth caused by higher levels of carbon dioxide. A good case can be made that natural famine has been eliminated globally for the first time in human history.
A number of desert areas are reducing in size and some marginal areas sustaining a better quality of life. Trees around the world, including those in the Amazon, have been putting on bulk in CO2 party time. The millions, make that billions, of climate refugees on the move exist only in the fevered imaginations of Guardian readers. Meanwhile, natural disasters show no sign of intensifying, while the number of global human fatalities caused by them has dropped 99% over the last 100 years.
The report relies heavily on the computer modelled fantasy world of ‘tipping points’. By 2030 there is said to be a “realistic possibility” that the boreal forests will start to collapse. Of course, the actual evidence suggests otherwise. In recent years, boreal forests in the northern hemisphere have become greener and more productive, helped by gentle climate warming and increased CO2 feeding levels. There has even been some measurable northwards expansion. The FOA Global Forest Resources Assessment indicates that boreal forests have shown relatively little net change in total area over recent decades.
This ridiculous scare alone gives us an idea about what is going on here. Humans affect the environment they live in, as do all species, but political extremists are given free rein to magnify to truly absurd levels the dangers of exploitation. Their solution is a neo-Malthusian command-and-control Net Zero takeover that would inevitably cause societal and economic collapse. When people are starving and destitute, biodiversity will be torn to shreds. Cobbling together 14 pages of reheated sandwich board-scares that have been doing the rounds for decades is an absurd waste of time for security professionals with presumably better things to do.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
No green activist operation makes clearer why they need to ban free speech and cancel scientific debate to achieve Net Zero hegemony than the Guardian newspaper. Last Saturday, we learnt from its Environment Editor Damian Carrington that campaigners had said the UK’s TV and radio regulator Ofcom was allowing GB News and others to ‘flout” accuracy rules and broadcast “climate change denial”, whatever that last phrase means. C
No green activist operation makes clearer why they need to ban free speech and cancel scientific debate to achieve Net Zero hegemony than the Guardian newspaper. Last Saturday, we learnt from its Environment Editor Damian Carrington that campaigners had said the UK’s TV and radio regulator Ofcom was allowing GB News and others to ‘flout” accuracy rules and broadcast “climate change denial”, whatever that last phrase means. Carrington noted in response to frequent suggestions of inaccuracy in UN climate models going back to 1979, that, “in fact, UN climate models have been remarkably accurate”. How Carrington, one of three journalists of the year in 2023 at the Green Blob-funded Covering Climate Now, can write this with a straight face is anyone’s guess.
Net Zero is dead in the United States and there has been a welcome revival of the scientific process that has killed off the ridiculous notion that a science opinion can somehow be ‘settled’. The recent official climate report from the US Department of Energy noted that climate models are the primary tool used to project future change in response to higher levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. “Of great concern is the fact that after several decades of the climate modelling enterprise… the range of future warming they produce in response to a hypothetical doubling of CO2 extends over a factor three.” This range of disagreement has not decreased for decades, the five eminent science authors add.
Tittle-tattling Reliable Media is behind the GB News campaign and, egged on by Guardian Central, the anti-science desperation is clear. One GB News contributor described climate change as “rubbish’. Another described it as a “scam”, an opinion recently expressed at the United Nation’s General Assembly by the elected President of the US Government. It might be thought that the scientific process can withstand a few harsh words, but Reliable Media is outraged. It charges that Ofcom has “effectively suspended its accuracy rules on this life-and-death issue”.
Carrington finds room for reporting the fine of £17,000 levied recently by the French equivalent state broadcast regulator Arcom on the centre-Right TV channel CNews. In this case a contributor had dared to air the opinion that climate change was “a lie, a scam”.
The French complaint was made by the activist Eva Morel from QuotaClimat. She stated that:
When the media blur the line between facts and opinions, it doesn’t lead people to trust in alternative truths; it leads them to trust in nothing at all. Sowing doubt about climate science serves to obstruct climate action and it endangers lives.
In an excellent article in Watts Up With That?, Eric Worrall pointed out that the problem with enforced agreement on the ‘facts’ is that in science, “there is no such thing as a fact which cannot be challenged”.
Ofcom rules specifically note that an example of an issue which it considers to be broadly settled is the “scientific principles behind the theory of anthropogenic global warming”. This is plainly anti-science. For a start, the scale of human-caused global warming is a scientific hypothesis (opinion), not a validated theory. Ofcom’s claim is a political notion concocted by state bureaucrats who obviously have little understanding of the language of science and the way it actually works. In fact, Ofcom seems vaguely aware of the stupidity that lies behind its fashionable claim. Carrington reports that it has received 1,221 complaints related to the ‘climate crisis’ since January 2020 and none had resulted in a ruling that the broadcasting code had been breached.
Worrall is withering in his concluding assessment of the shenanigans of activists seeking to quash dissenting scientific voices in public spaces.
My point is, to declare some facts are beyond challenges, especially ‘facts’ produced by artefacts as flimsy as climate models, is to strike at the foundations of freedom of expression and scientific inquiry. Forcing broadcasters to embrace a uniform, government-approved version of unassailable facts, then claiming they somehow have freedom of expression, is utter nonsense.
Reliable Media is a grubby little hard-Left operation. Few details of its finances and funding are available since it was formed as a limited-by-guarantee company to take forward the ‘Just Stop Hate’ and ‘Just Stop Heat’ campaigns. It claims that it is making “climate change denial unprofitable”, and it does this by seeking to destroy the ability of free speech media operations such as the increasingly successful GB News to attract advertisers. If this is its aim, it presumably has good legal advice, although its latest filed accounts to June 2024 suggest money might be tight. A sum of £107,940 is said to be held as cash at bank, but an identical sum is set aside for creditors due within one year. Whatever its financial position, its activities resemble those of the class sneak, running off to teacher to blub about the bigger boys, those who are more confident and entrepreneurial, better at sports and more successful with the girls. As the brilliant comedy song writer Dominic Frisby sang, maybe jokingly, in his composition about ways to stop freaks like Ed Miliband: “We need to bring back school bullying.” Science, he adds, is only discovering the value of it now.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
What follows is an article in my mini-series about fake climate change stories from the Guardian and the BBC about sundry locations around the world. Earlier episodes in the series included The Gambia Gambit, Niger Negatives, Volte-Face , The Cancun Con, Japanese Bears and Malawian Mystery. This one was triggered by the headline (“South Korea’s fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?”) to a recent article on the BBC website.
What follows is an article in my mini-series about fake climate change stories from the Guardian and the BBC about sundry locations around the world. Earlier episodes in the series included The Gambia Gambit, Niger Negatives, Volte-Face , The Cancun Con, Japanese Bears and Malawian Mystery. This one was triggered by the headline (“South Korea’s fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?”) to a recent article on the BBC website.
The gist of the article is that 75% more people in South Korea were killed or went missing in accidents in the surrounding seas in 2024 than in 2023. According to the BBC, most were fishermen whose boats were sunk or capsized. Happily, for the BBC’s narrative, it managed to find a couple of people to say what it wanted to hear. Mr Hong, who chairs the Jeju Fishing Boat Owners Association, duly obliged:
The weather has changed, it’s getting windier every year…Whirlwinds pop up suddenly. We fisherman are convinced it is down to climate change.
In addition:
…This year, the head of the taskforce [set up by the South Korean government to investigate the accidents] pinpointed climate change as one of the major causes…
However, he did (as, in fairness, the BBC reports) also highlight other problems — the country’s aging fishing workforce, a growing reliance on migrant workers, and poor safety training.
We are then told that the seas around South Korea have warmed between 1968 and 2024 at twice the global average, that warming waters contribute to extreme weather at sea as well as causing some fish species to migrate.
The BBC may have been mildly disappointed that while Professor Kim Baek-min, a climate scientist at South Korea’s Pukyong National University, said that climate change was creating the conditions to make strong, sudden wind gusts more likely, he qualified that statement by adding that a clear trend had not yet been established. For that, he said, more research and long-term data is needed.
Further undermining the BBC’s climate change narrative, the article also mentioned that increasingly, elderly captains must rely on help from migrant workers from Vietnam and Indonesia. Often these workers do not receive sufficient safety training, and language barriers mean they cannot communicate with the captains – further compounding the dangers.
The daughter of a fisherman who died when his trawler capsized in February this year says it has become too easy for boat owners to blame climate change for accidents. Even in cases where bad weather plays a role, she believes it is still the owners’ responsibility to assess the risks and keep their crew safe. “Ultimately it is their call when to go out,” she said.
Finally, as regards aspects of the BBC article undermining its climate change narrative, we are also told that the government’s taskforce is recommending that boats be fitted with safety ladders, fisherman be required to wear life jackets, and that safety training be mandatory for all foreign crew. It also wants to improve search and rescue operations, and for fisherman to have access to more localised and real-time weather updates.
So much for the BBC article. It’s worth noting that the data can be presented rather differently. For instance, we learn from the Baird Maritime website that while the number of casualties tragically increased by around 75% from 2023 to 2024, the number of incidents increased by only 5.3 per cent over the same time period. Moreover, of these cases, collisions accounted for more than 34 per cent, and other accidents that have been identified include safety-related cases (26.2 per cent) and fires and explosions (19.8 per cent). In other words, around 80% of the accidents don’t appear to be weather-related.
As reported by Reuters, one of the most tragic fishing boat accidents from 2024 had nothing to do with weather or climate. One of the rescued sailors told the Yonhap news agency that the boat capsized when they were hauling up fishing nets to transfer the catch to another vessel.
While the main thrust of the BBC article was to the effect that climate change was making the weather more dangerous for South Korean fisherman, the other strand of its case was to the effect that warming waters caused by climate change was causing fish stocks to relocate, with the result that South Korean fishermen are being forced to travel further from shore, and to more dangerous waters, in a desperate attempt to find fish:
…They [warming waters] are also causing some fish species around South Korea to migrate, according to the country’s National Institute of Fisheries Science, forcing fisherman to travel further and take greater risks to catch enough to make a living….
…A few years ago, Mr Kim began to notice that the popular silvery hairtail fish he relied on were disappearing from local waters, and his earnings plunged by half.
Now his crews have to journey into deeper, more perilous waters to find them, sometimes sailing as far south as Taiwan.
“Since we’re operating farther away, it’s not always possible to return quickly when there’s a storm warning,” he said. “If we stayed closer to shore it would be safer, but to make a living we have to go farther out.”…
…Because the problem will likely worsen. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisationforecasts that total fish catches in South Korea will decline by almost a third by the end of this century, if carbon emissions and global warming continue on their current trajectories.
There you have it, in a nutshell. It’s all the fault of climate change, driving the fish stocks away and making the seas more dangerous. But could there be another explanation for the declining fish stocks?
One doesn’t have to look far to discover that the elephant in the room is over-fishing by the Chinese. Needless to say, the BBC doesn’t mention it. A serious article (perhaps one that involved BBC Verify, who never seem to mark the BBC’s homework) would have talked about over-fishing, but that would have undermined the opportunity for yet another headline implying more global horrors due to climate change.
The Global Fishing Watch website tells a different story. It notes that while squid provides a vital source of income for fishers in Japan and South Korea, since 2003, squid populations in the two countries had plummeted by around 80 percent. Both countries introduced measures to reduce fishing pressure, but the trend remained the same. Then they asked: what was taking place throughout the waters of neighboring North Korea? Large numbers of industrial vessels were seen heading towards North Korea from China, despite U.N. sanctions banning foreign fleets from fishing in the waters of the rogue state. And there was another tragic trend: hundreds of small fishing boats from North Korea were washing up along the coast of Russia—their crews missing, starving or dead.
…They found more than 900 large vessels of Chinese origin fishing in North Korean waters, in violation of U.N. sanctions. Estimates suggest they caught nearly half a billion dollar’s worth of Pacific flying squid from 2017-2018, measuring more than 160,000 metric tons, or as much as Japan and South Korea’s catch combined.
…The scale of the fleet involved in this illegal fishing is about one-third the size of China’s entire distant water fishing fleet. It is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by vessels originating from one country operating in another nation’s waters. By synthesizing data from multiple satellite sensors, we created an unprecedented, robust picture of fishing activity in a notoriously opaque region.…
The Oceana website made the point equally as forcefully as recently as June this year. In an article discussing the waters of the Yellow Sea, shared between South Korea and China, it observed that China is disregarding, on a massive scale, the bilateral fisheries agreement signed by the two countries in 2001. This established a co-managed area called the Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ) within the contested area, where both countries have fishing rights. Within this zone, both Chinese and South Korean vessels are permitted to fish. Surrounding the PMZ, there are “transitional zones” designated for each country, with an agreement to gradually reduce fishing in each other’s transitional zones and eventually return control of these zones back to their respective country.
Oceana’s work revealed the following:
Despite the shared nature of the PMZ, and despite the recent agreements to reduce fishing, China continues to dominate the fishing activity in these areas. In the three-year period between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024, South Korean vessels appeared to fish for just 66,267 hours in the jointly managed PMZ. Meanwhile, Chinese vessels appeared to fish for over 8 million hours – over 100 times more than South Korea. This is enabled by China’s massive fishing fleet, the largest of any country in the world. In the PMZ, China operated over 30 times as many fishing vessels as South Korea. Even in South Korea’s “transitional zone” where China should be scaling back its fishing, China outpaced South Korea’s apparent fishing hours by 36%, with over twice as many active vessels.
Is it any wonder that fish stocks are disappearing from the waters around South Korea, and that South Korean fishermen are having to travel further from home in their aging fishing vessels, in search of fish? One might have thought the BBC article would have touched on this fundamental issue. One might have though that, but one would be wrong.
But what the hell? Let’s just blame climate change.
Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.
Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.
Travelling back from the reality inhabited by the Guardian, it can be reported that last year’s gains were eye-catchingly large. On the Northern GBR, hard coral cover leapt from 35.8% to 39.5%, in the central area it rose from 30.7% to 34%, while in the south it went from 34% to 39.1%. The report is the result of monitoring of hard coral cover reefs from August 2023 to June 2024 by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The percentage of hard coral cover is a standard measurement of reef conditions used by scientists and is said to provide a simple and robust measure of reef health. Similar reports have been published by the AIMS over the last 38 years.
For the first two years of record coral growth, the narrative-driven mainstream media ignored the recovery story. But this year, the suspicious might contend, something had to be done to blunt the sensational news of the stonking rises. Help has come in the form of a paper just published in Nature which uses proxy temperature measurements and climate models to suggest temperatures around the vast reef area are the highest recorded in 400 years. This time period is the blink of an ecological eye-lid given that coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years during periods when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide have been markedly different. Nevertheless, this is said to pose an existential threat despite it being known that sub-tropical corals thrive between 24°C-32°C, and in fact seem to grow faster in warmer waters.
Natural bleaching, when the coral expels algae and turns white, can occur with temporary local temperature changes, but evidence from many years of scientific observation suggests the corals often and quickly recover. Long term changes in water temperature – tiny compared to coral’s optimum conditions – pose no threat, but alarmists concentrate on the bleaching events to warn of possible ecological collapse. The Guardian noted a recent fifth mass bleaching in eight years across the reef, driven, it claimed, by “global heating”. So far, its readers are in the dark as to how this squares with the recent record growth.
A decade of mass bleaching, relentlessly catastrophised in the interests of Net Zero by activists in the media, academia and politics, does not appear to have done much harm to the recent growth in the Northern GBR.
Or the central area.
Or even in the south where the water temperatures are slightly cooler.
To read the latest AIMS report is to read the best possible spin on the story that the reef is heading for disaster. And, of course, it is all down to the unproven changes in climate that are said to be caused by human activity. It is claimed this will cause more frequent and long-lasting marine ‘heatwaves’, a product no doubt of a climate model. It is generally suggested that these heatwaves and mass bleaching were rare prior to the 1990s, although how anyone can know this is a mystery. Detailed GBR observations and temperature recordings barely stretch back a few decades.
As is often the case with publicly-funded operations, the political message is never far from the surface. Thus we learn that “enabling coral reefs to survive these stressful conditions requires a combination of a reduction in global greenhouse emissions to stabilise temperatures… and the development of interventions to help reefs adapt to and recover from the effects of climate change”. No doubt this last proposal requires large amounts of money from the taxpayer to cover the costs of such worthy work.
Not everyone goes along with the coral fear-mongering. The distinguished scientist Dr. Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for 40 years and notes that coral numbers have “exploded” in recent years. He says that all 3,000 reefs in the world’s largest system have excellent coral. “Not a single reef or even a single species of reef life has been lost since British settlement,” he reports. The impact of bleaching is “routinely exaggerated by the media and some scientific organisations”. In his view, the public is being deceived about the reef. “How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science community which has embraced emotion, ideology and raw self-interest to maintain funding,” he observes.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
The world is ‘greening’ at an astonishing and rapidly growing rate and deserts are shrinking almost everywhere you look. All due, it seems, to a natural rise in carbon ‘plant food’ dioxide, not forgetting the small annual 4% portion contributed by humans burning hydrocarbons. Inconvenient to the political Net Zero narrative of course – along with high numbers of polar bears, cyclical recovery in Arctic sea ice and recent record growth of coral on the Great Barrier Reef – so there is naturally little mention in mainstream media and politics.
The world is ‘greening’ at an astonishing and rapidly growing rate and deserts are shrinking almost everywhere you look. All due, it seems, to a natural rise in carbon ‘plant food’ dioxide, not forgetting the small annual 4% portion contributed by humans burning hydrocarbons. Inconvenient to the political Net Zero narrative of course – along with high numbers of polar bears, cyclical recovery in Arctic sea ice and recent record growth of coral on the Great Barrier Reef – so there is naturally little mention in mainstream media and politics. “Desertification is turning the Earth barren,” reports the Guardian, and the expansion of drylands is leaving entire countries “facing famine”. Great story, shame about the facts. A recent article in Yale Environment 360 states that rather than shrivelling and dying, vegetation is growing faster and deserts are retreating.
In fact many scientists now think that this process will continue to accelerate into the future. According to the Yale article, CO2 is “fast-tracking” photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilises vegetation growth in even some of the driest places, observes Yale. For some time there has been “growing evidence” of global greening in all biomes, not just drylands, evidence that we can note has been ignored by the promoters of Net Zero. A Carbon Brief ‘explainer’ claimed that desertification has been described as the greatest environmental challenge of our time “and climate change is making it worse”.
Carbon Brief is funded by green activist billionaires including Sir Christopher Hohn, a past provider for recently jailed Roger Hallam and Extinction Rebellion. Its desert climate hysteria, like that of the Guardian, is therefore to be expected. Interestingly, Yale Environment 360, which is part of the Yale University School of the Environment, also receives heavy direct and indirect financial support from activist groups including ClimateWorks along with the Hewlett and Ford Foundations. The article is significant since it represents a ‘mainstream’ breakthrough in discussing global greening which has been obvious for some time in specialist scientific circles.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the Yale article tries to rain a little on the greening parade with a dose of climate gloom. Greening created by agricultural irrigation of fields can “obliterate arid-land ecosystems”. But this surely is human-caused and nothing to do with a changing climate. “Save the deserts” may not be a popular environmental message, “but arid eco-systems matter”, continues Yale. Of course there will be many who point out that if a few scorpions have to up sticks to make way for the better nutrition of millions of African children, this is a small price to pay.
The article highlights much of the recent scientific work on global greening that has received coverage in publications like the Daily Sceptic but has been downplayed and more often than not ignored by messengers of the Net Zero narrative.
Ground-breaking work in 2016 saw a team of 33 scientists from eight countries study NASA satellite images, and they found that since 1980 between a quarter and a half of the planet’s vegetated areas had shown an increase in their leaf area index (LAI), a standard measure of the abundance of plant life. Work at this time suggested a 14% increase in vegetation. A 2021 study at the University of California concluded that there had been a 12% increase in photosynthesis, with CO2 fertilisation again the primary cause. A 2020 assessment from scientists at the Woodwell Climate Research Centre found that greening was “much more extensive than previously acknowledged”, and more than three times greater than desertification. Yale noted findings that the greening encompassed 41% of the world’s drylands, from India to the African Sahel and northern China to south-eastern Australia.
Chinese scientists have also been on the case. Last year, researchers at Lanzhou University found a “global divergence” between aridity and leaf area in drylands during the past three decades. This “decoupling” was said to be due to the effect of CO2.
In February, the Daily Sceptic reported on another group of Chinese scientists who found that over the last two decades about 55% of global land mass revealed an “accelerated rate” of vegetation growth. “Global greening is an indisputable fact,” they state.
They produced the above map based on four datasets that showed greening accelerating since 2000 in 55.8% of the globe. Faster growth in India and the European plains (dark blue colouring) was said to be the most obvious. Healthy growth can also be observed in the Amazon region, equatorial East Africa, southern coastal Australia and Ireland.
None of these findings should be a great surprise. CO2 levels have been much higher in the past going back 600 million years. Plants thrive at levels three times higher than current atmospheric CO2 and the near denudation amounts of the last few million years. During the last glacial period up to around 12,000 years ago, levels of atmospheric CO2 dropped to such dangerously low levels that plant – and human – life was severely threated. Even with the small recovery we have seen in the recent past, plants grow larger and utilise existing water resources much more efficiently. This recovery of CO2 levels in the atmosphere holds out hope for higher food resources in many parts of the world that suffer from periodic famines.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
A few days ago both the Guardian and the BBC (the usual suspects, in other words) published articles on their websites about a recent Report by the Environment and Climate Change Committee of the House of Lords (its first Report of the 2023/24 session).
A few days ago both the Guardian and the BBC (the usual suspects, in other words) published articles on their websites about a recent Report by the Environment and Climate Change Committee of the House of Lords (its first Report of the 2023/24 session). Perhaps surprisingly, the Guardian went with the less sensationalist headline: “Make used electric cars cheaper and tackle battery fears, peers tell ministers – Grants needed towards buying EVs as well as a battery health testing standard to reassure consumers”. The BBC, by contrast, decided to focus on the “misinformation” angle: “Electric cars: Lords urge action on ‘misinformation’ in press”.
The Guardian article played it with a reasonably straight bat, highlighting some main points from the Report, such as (these are the views of the Committee, as reported by the Guardian – they are not my views):
The need for Ministerial intervention to boost the secondhand EV market, and to allay “uncertainty and concerns” over the health and longevity of EV batteries;
Measures should be taken to reduce the disparity between the upfront costs of ICE vehicles and EVs (by the use of “targeted grants”);
The subsidies could be “tapered away” when EV prices finally reach compatibility with the price of ICE cars;
Planning regulations should be reviewed to “turbo-charge” the rollout of charging infrastructure;
VAT rates should be cut for public charging to help those without access to off-street parking; and
Investment should made into UK battery recycling facilities.
A brief mention was made of supposed misinformation in the media:
The Lords said: “By emphasising the costs while failing to stress the benefits and robustly counter misinformation, the government is not building public confidence.
“The concern the government expressed to us about the scale of misinformation has not been matched by commensurate urgency in tackling it. Faced with conflicting claims and alarmist headlines, consumers need a go-to source of comprehensive, clear and balanced information.”
The BBC, by contrast, homed in on the suggestion of misinformation, not just in its headline, but in the body of the article, including (to make sure that readers get the message) in its opening sentence:
The government must do more to counter “misinformation” on electric vehicles published in parts of the UK press, a Lords enquiry has said.
The third paragraph stressed it too:
The Lords Climate Change Committee urged the government to build consumer confidence and push back against what it called mistruths on range and cost.
And then the bulk of the article also emphasised this angle:
Baroness Parminter, chair of the committee, told the BBC that both government officials and other witnesses to the enquiry had reported reading disinformation on the subject in national newspapers.
“We have seen a concerted effort to scare people… we have seen articles saying that cars are catching fire – but had evidence that the fire risk is absolutely the same as [petrol and diesel] cars,” she said.
The Lords committee did not single out any newspaper in particular.
Testifying before the committee, Richard Bruce, Director of Transport Decarbonisation at the Department for Transport, conceded there was a problem.
He said: “I do think there has been an impact from a concerted campaign of misinformation over the last 14 months or so that has been pushing consistent myths about EVs that people absorb and which is reflected in their appetite [for purchasing EVs].
“There is an anti-EV story in the papers almost every day. Sometimes there are many stories, almost all of which are based on misconceptions and mistruths, unfortunately.”
Baroness Parminter said the government needed to step in and provide reliable information to consumers.
Misinformation – nasty stuff. And then the Times went and ignored the misinformation angle and concentrated on the lack of EV sales instead, with a very different headline: “Private buyers slam brakes on electric vehicles”. The focus of the Times piece was very much on the fact that EV sales are now slowing rather than accelerating, especially among private (as opposed to fleet) buyers.
Paul Homewood responded quickly with a piece seeking to point out that much of the negativity in the media about EVs would more properly be labelled facts rather than misinformation. Commenting on Baroness Parminter’s claims about media misinformation, he asked:
Now I wonder what all this information might be?
The fact that EVs cost £10k more than an equivalent petrol?
EV manufacturers own data which says you only get a fraction of the mileage that their blurb claims?
The fact that it costs more per mile than a petrol car if you have to use a public charger, even after paying fuel duty?
The fact the second hand prices for EVs have fallen through the floor, making buying a new EV even less attractive?
The fact that, regardless of the number of public chargers installed, drivers without offstreet parking will face the prospect of queuing to use a charger?
Are these all facts that the good Baroness would like to suppress?
With so many different takes on the Committee Report, I thought it would be useful to take a look at what it did say, at least with regard to “misinformation” and communication strategies. We can probably most realistically see where the Committee is coming from just by looking at the title it used to front up the Report: “EV strategy: rapid recharge needed”.
Including the usual endpieces, appendices, summaries etc, the whole thing runs to 128 pages, so I will concentrate on only one aspect of the Report – the one focussed on by the BBC and by Paul Homewood, namely the question of “misinformation”. It is probably useful to start by asking what the Committee hoped to achieve by holding its Inquiry. Appendix 3, page 128 might be the best place to start. Here the Committee notes that “[t]he transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) is central to the Government’s efforts to meet its target of reaching net zero by 2050, legislated in June 2019” and states that its aims are therefore:
To understand how the Government will achieve its upcoming 2030 and 2035 deadlines for the phase out dates for non-zero emission vehicles, with a focus on passenger cars, as well as exploring the main obstacles and barriers to meeting these targets.
To understand the costs, alongside the benefits, associated with the 2030 phase out date, and to understand Government progress towards decarbonising car usage by this earlier date.
To assist those supplying evidence, 34 questions were posed under six separate headings (“Government approaches”; “EV market and acquiring an EV”; “Experience of using an EV”; “End of life disposal of EVs”; “National and regional issues”; and “International perspectives”). So far, so sensible, and no complaints from me. The “misinformation” aspect picked up on so assiduously by the BBC might have stemmed from a couple of questions, namely question number 4:
Given that the Government should apply a behavioural lens to policy— which involves people making changes to their everyday lives, such as what they purchase and use—is there a role for clearer communication of the case for EVs from the Government? If so, who should take the lead on delivering that?
And question number 5:
What is your view on the accuracy of the information in the public domain relating to EVs and their usage?
For my purposes, the most directly relevant section of the Report is Chapter 2, headed “Strategic Approach and Public Messaging”. This runs from paragraph 10 to paragraph paragraph 31, so that is what I will talk about here.
This section of the report begins by fussing over “mixed messaging” and ‘a lack of clear and consistent messaging from the Government, which “provided a vacuum for inaccurate press reporting to fill the void.”‘ There then follow concerns expressed by people who seem to have a vested interest in promoting EV sales and the related infrastructure, such as Dr Chris Pateman-Jones, CEO of Connected Kerb EV Charging Solutions, who is worried about the pushing back of dates.
There follows a lot of heat and noise, but not a lot of light is cast on the issue of “misinformation”. We are told that alarming headlines in the media about the risk of EV fires are unjustified. The sole justification for concern about such headlines (which may be exaggerated, but which are not without a kernel of truth) is that “…as the Association of British Insurers told us, the fire risk of EVs does not exceed that of traditional ICE vehicles.” Possibly true, but valid concerns remain about the intensity of the fires when they do occur, and the difficulty of putting them out. That isn’t mentioned in the Report.
The Committee allows that there are some legitimate concerns about EVs “such as those suggesting some EV brands mislead customers about the range of their cars.”
Having conceded as much, the Report then subjects us to an array of witnesses complaining about misinformation, without actually citing any examples – Ford Motor Company “suggested” in written evidence the “apparent emergence” of a “vocal anti-EV campaign”, though if their written submission contained examples, the Committee doesn’t share them with us. Apparently, however, they think this “is due to the Government’s approach being insufficiently consumer-centric.” Several witnesses (Lauren Pamma, Programme Director at the Green Finance Institute; Mike Hawes, Chief Executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT); and Richard Bruce, Director of Transport Decarbonisation at the Department for Transport) told the Committee that media coverage of EVs was inaccurate and portrayed EVs in a disproportionately negative light. In questions and answers (the online report provides a link to them) Richard Bruce said (in the answer gleefully quoted by the BBC):
I do think there has been an impact from a concerted campaign of misinformation over the last 14 months or so that has been pushing consistent myths about EVs that people absorb and which is reflected in their appetite [for purchasing EVs]. There is an anti-EV story in the papers almost every day. Sometimes there are many stories, almost all of which are based on misconceptions and mistruths, unfortunately.
Maybe, maybe not, but he didn’t enlighten us in his answer under questioning by the Committee as to what those supposed mistruths are. Nor did the Committee ask. But they happily printed the allegation in their Report.
Then we are told about areas of confusion and legitimate concern on the part of consumers – the misconception that ownership of petrol and diesel cars will be banned, not just the sale of new vehicles; concerns about critical minerals and their mining; limited understanding about recycling and end-of-life; and risks and health and safety. Unfortunately, other than labelling the first one as a misconception, the Committee doesn’t enlighten us as to which they think are legitimate concerns, nor do they explain why they lump legitimate concerns in with misinformation and misconception.
Next the Committee worries that consumers lack “clear and accurate information on the full life-cycle emissions of an EV to have confidence that they are purchasing genuinely environmentally-friendly products”. Amusingly, this is particularly important “following earlier policies that erroneously encouraged the uptake of diesel vehicles under the assumption that they were less damaging to the environment.” I wonder if that constituted misinformation at the time?
We are told:
The International Council on Clean Transportation reported in 2021 that full life-cycle emissions for battery electric vehicles in Europe (including the UK) are approximately 66–69 per cent lower than their petrol equivalents and that this is likely to improve with further improvements in battery technology and manufacturing.
No doubt it does, and I am no position to question its findings, but I do observe that it is an organisation dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport, which partners with many similar such organisations. A look at its website suggests that it is massively enthusiastic about EVs. Admittedly I didn’t look very hard, but I couldn’t find any reference to e.g. rare earths and pollution associated with extracting the minerals needed for EV batteries. So far as I am concerned, any report on “clean” transportation should look at all aspects associated with the manufacture and use of vehicles, not just greenhouse gas emissions (after all, whatever the propagandists would have us believe, CO2 is not “dirty”).
Although the Report overlooks this truth here, it cottons on to the bigger point (that there is more to “pollution” than greenhouse gas emissions) in paragraph 18, saying that “[a]side from the drop in carbon emissions, many witnesses highlighted benefits EVs offer to public health including improved air quality and reduced noise.” Then we are told: “According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, road transport is the main source of air pollution from nitrous oxides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and particulate matter”. A footnote at this point takes us to a short online DEFRA document (“What are the causes of air Pollution”). The problem here is that while a number of the pollutants are undoubtedly attributable to road transport (especially vehicles of the ICE variety), we are also told that “[r]oad transport gives rise to primary particles from engine emissions, tyre and brake wear and other non-exhaust emissions.” As Jit pointed out in No Smoke Without Tyres the particulates associated with tyres of heavier vehicles (often EVs) might be a substantial problem. However, the Report doesn’t mention this, for some reason.
Then we learn that:
Many witnesses called for an accessible and honest source of information on the EV transition: bringing together government and industry sources, addressing consumer questions, advertising current Government incentives, tackling misinformation and raising awareness about the benefits of EVs with the public.
Follow the footnote, and the witnesses in question turn out to be EV proponents, by and large (e.g. Carbon Copy; the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations; Connected Kerb; Electrifying.com). They are, of course, entitled to submit their views, but the Committee isn’t obliged to accept and regurgitate them unquestioningly.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the SMMT argues that more information is needed about the costs as well as the benefits of EVs, and that early adopters usually enjoy the benefits of off-street parking and home-charging, as well as having deeper pockets to pay for more expensive EVs. They argue that “more information and support is likely to be needed for those drivers for whom the benefit of making the transition is more marginal”. That sounds like a euphemism for the need to throw money at people who can’t afford expensive EVs and who will have to charge them at (expensive) commercial charging points. Credit to the Committee for inserting the point in the Report, but it’s worth noting that such a critical point merited only single short paragraph in their Lordships’ and Ladyships’ view.
Also of interest is the list of matters relating to EVs where drivers/potential owners require reassurance (in order, starting with the greatest concern): that the batteries will last; that charging will be convenient; that charging will be quick enough; that range would always be sufficient for any necessary journey; that EVs are as green as reported; that EVs will have decent resale value; the driving experience. Based on my limited experience, I think that only the last point is easily met.
Clearly cost is hugely significant in persuading the public to buy (or lease) EVs, as the Report briefly concedes:
Zapmap, an app which helps EV drivers search for available chargepoints, suggested that financial incentives and disincentives are more effective than environmental benefits in influencing the majority…
At this point, for some reason, the Report repeats the claim by Richard Bruce about “a very concerted campaign of mistruths and myths.” Again, no examples are supplied to back up this (repeated) claim.
Similarly, the claim by Anthony Browne that:
we have concerns about a certain amount of misinformation that is going on, and we will carry on playing the role, as Governments always try to do, of countering the misinformation and working with industry to do so. There is now quite a big industry, such as the charging operators, which has an incentive to ensure the successful take-up of electric vehicles, and we will work with them to try to diminish the misinformation
is repeated. But again, follow the footnote, and under questioning he was not asked to provide examples of the alleged information, and so the claim is slipped into the Report several times without the alleged misinformation ever being identified.
As if that isn’t enough, this sub-section of the Report concludes with four summary paragraphs (in bold print for emphasis) which make the same claim yet again.
So much for the Report’s claims of misinformation, so eagerly seized upon in the BBC report. It’s a little ironic then that a recent BBC website article headed “Rather than fearmongering putting people off e-bikes, reasonable cautions and supportive infrastructure would allow cities to reap the many benefits of e-bikes while protecting lives” then gives us this:
Third-party batteries are risky because “the way to ensure that these bikes are as safe as possible is to make sure that the battery, the motor and the charger were all designed to work together”.
Even if an e-bike kit is safe at the point of sale, later modifications can create incompatibilities. Mr Slone explains, “It could be a perfectly safe battery pack, but if it’s a mismatched charger that perfectly safe battery pack can become a very significant safety hazard and can go into what’s called thermal runaway.”
Thermal runaway is a kind of explosive chain reaction where a cell inside a lithium-ion battery overheats, which then spreads to the many other cells in the battery…
…To give people a chance of escape, any means of delaying the spread of a fire or toxic gas can help. “Even if someone doesn’t have a dedicated storage cabinet, if they have a room that’s enclosed with doors that’s away from where they sleep, that might be safer than leaving it in kind of a common area,” says Mr Slone. It can also help to keep e-bikes away from flammable materials.
The London Fire Brigade has advised riders to let their batteries cool down before recharging, charge on flat hard surfaces, avoid extreme temperatures, and keep fire alarms in good condition….
…Another frequently dispensed piece of advice is to never leave a charging battery unattended, especially overnight.
For a delivery cyclist working a 14-hour shift, “the most natural thing in the world would be to come home at the end of your shift, plug your bike in…right there at the door, and go to bed,” Mr Slone notes. But it can have tragic consequences…
It’s all right, though, because the article ends with this reassurance:
Rather than fearmongering putting people off e-bikes, reasonable cautions and supportive infrastructure would allow cities to reap the many benefits of e-bikes while protecting lives.
One of the “scientific experts” who attended the BBC seminar in 2006 was Andrew Simms, who wrote this for the Guardian in 2008:
If you shout “fire” in a crowded theatre, when there is none, you understand that you might be arrested for irresponsible behaviour and breach of the peace. But from today, I smell smoke, I see flames and I think it is time to shout. I don’t want you to panic, but I do think it would be a good idea to form an orderly queue to leave the building.
Because in just 100 months’ time, if we are lucky, and based on a quite conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change.
It’s the same sort of tired, unscientific drivel we’ve read times many in the past.
Simms, of course, is entitled to his views, no matter how wrong they may be.
But it says everything about the BBC’s approach to climate change that they would rather listen to his views instead of the many sceptical scientists they could have invited.
The Guardian story, “Small island nations take high-emitting countries to court to protect the ocean,” and Reuters article, “Island states seek climate protection from Law of the Sea,” are just two of the news stories today covering a case brought by the Commission of Small Island States (COSIS), which includes as members, the Bahamas, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Antigua, and Barbuda among other small island nations.
The Guardian and Reuters, along with other mainstream media outlets and news services, are covering a “landmark” hearing in a case a group of small island nations are bringing to have carbon dioxide emissions from developed nations considered pollution under the Law of the Sea treaty, requiring countries to take action to prevent or mitigate emissions. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not pollution but rather is a naturally occurring gas necessary for life on earth and is not toxic at levels more than 10 times what they are today. Nor does data show carbon dioxide emissions are driving dangerous ocean or weather conditions which specifically threaten island nations justifying them having standing to bring a lawsuit.
In a landmark hearing, small island nations disproportionately affected by the climate crisis will take on high-emitting countries in a court in Hamburg, Germany, on 11 September, in what is being seen as the first climate justice case aimed at protecting the ocean.
During the two-day hearing, the nations – including the Bahamas, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Antigua, and Barbuda among others – will ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Itlos) to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions absorbed by the marine environment should be considered pollution.
…
Most countries have obligations under the legally binding UN convention on the law of the sea to take measures to prevent, reduce and control marine pollution.
If the case, brought by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS), is successful, these obligations would include carbon-emission reduction and protection of marine environments already damaged by CO2 pollution.
Foremost among the claims made by COSIS is that rising CO2 is: causing sea levels to increase at a rapid rate threatening to swamp the islands; producing more extreme weather; and acidifying the seas. Each of these claims is false.
Concerning rising seas and island nations, Climate Realism has published multiple posts showing that island nations are not being swamped by rising seas, here, here, and here, for example. Indeed, data shows that they are expanding in size, development, and population.
Nor is purported CO2 induced climate change causing worsening tropical storms threatening islands survival, as demonstrated in Climate Realism reports here and here, for instance.
Also, contrary to COSIS assertions, the world’s seas are not becoming dangerously acidic due to rising CO2. This idea has been thoroughly refuted by the EPA’s own data and by other research as presented here, here, and here.
In short, COSIS’ Law of the Sea claims raised in the international court in Germany lack merit. COSIS can’t show that increased carbon dioxide is a pollutant because it is necessary to life and not toxic at any foreseeable levels. Nor can COSIS demonstrate that increased CO2 it is causing dangerous climate change in general, much less that it is producing any of the specific harms which they cite as evidence of climate damage, because none of the problems they claim are occurring are, in fact, taking place.
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 fossil fuel industry has spent billions on winning over the public. Green activists must learn from its tactics
It’s happening all over – biblical downpours in New York state, unquenchable fires in Canada – and yet humanity is not acting as if it is confronting a planetary emergency. Extreme weather is fast becoming the norm in the US, and yet Americans tell pollsters it is a low priority, ranking it 17th out of 21 national issues in a recent Pew survey. Even when the impact is personal, as it was for many Australians when bushfires raged through the country in 2019, opinions prove stubbornly hard to shift: one study found that among those “directly impacted” by the fires, around a third saw no connection to the climate. They were “unmoved.”
How can this be? How can we, like Nero, fiddle while the Earth burns? …
This specific problem, like the climate crisis itself, is made by human beings – which is simultaneously enraging and encouraging. Enraging, because it is born of a greed that puts gargantuan profit ahead of a habitable planet. Encouraging, because most problems made by human beings can be fixed by them. Enter the climate movement – the scientists, the activists, the campaigners who have done so much for so long to combat this threat. Except, it turns out, they are part of the problem too.
The trouble is, they have not been communicating the threat loudly enough or in the right way. …
Yet “climate change” doesn’t work either. Mere “change” is too gentle: it doesn’t indicate whether the change will be negative or positive. It is not immediate: it hints that its consequences will be felt only in the future, when we are feeling them right now. Which is why this newspaper is right to speak of a climate crisis or emergency.
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell” ― Carl Sandburg
Jonathan, please stop wasting our time. At least try to be original.
Climate activists have already tried changing the words multiple times, and have failed utterly.
In the wake of all the mistruths told during the height of the Covid outbreak, the blatant manipulations, abuses of power, and panic mongering, a growing number of people just don’t believe wild claims of imminent catastrophe anymore, no matter what spin you put on it.
Texas is trapped under a “heat dome” that is expected to bring more record highs and strain the power grid. As the heatwave expands through parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and all the way across the Gulf coast, tens of millions are facing excessive heat warnings.
Houston, the largest city in Texas, hit a high of 100F (38C) today, and officials are expecting daily high temperatures in Austin to remain above 100F for the next several days.
Houston is of course massively affected by UHI. Danevang is a tiny community 115km south of Houston, and temperatures there reached 99F during the week. But temperatures get over 100F there most years. Clearly the heat was at its most intense between the start of the record in 1896 and the 1960s:
This is yet another example of the media’s conspiracy to catastrophise regular summer weather.
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