Censor the Internet to Save the Planet

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

 

“Governments Should Act Now to Curb Climate Disinformation” demands a letter backed by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has close ties to the British government, along with over 50 other organizations.

The open letter calling for ending free speech to save the planet from global warming accuses social media, broadcast and publishing companies of being “enablers to planetary destruction” for allowing dissenting views and demands that governments step in and crack down.

The groups call on “governments worldwide to take immediate and decisive action” and urge that “those responsible must be held accountable.” Or free speech will destroy the planet.

Signatories to the censorship call also include the Union of Concerned Scientists, which would like to ban scientific debate, Avaaz, the radical Kairos Fellowship and Reporters Without Borders which started out protecting freedom of information, but now suppresses it.

While green censorship is not a new phenomenon, the open letter includes the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition demands that governments and companies adopt its “universal definition” of climate disinformation and misinformation as encompassing not only those who reject the idea that the world is getting hotter because of human activity, but everyone who dissents from the details of the UN IPCC ‘consensus’ and its policies.

Either you’re 100% in agreement with the green movement or you’re a threat to the planet.

The proposed green censorship policy would ban any alternative interpretations of climate figures which is vital to scientific discourse. It would also outlaw any criticism of green policies.

CAAD links to a site that defines ‘climate delay’ as ‘climate denial’ (and therefore ‘climate disinformation’) and so any global warming proposal that falls short of the radical leftist ‘consensus’ agenda is really a form of misinformation that must be censored to save the planet.

Even proposals “put forward in good faith” that “contain partial truths” are “dangerous!” and must be stopped. Ideas such as “individualism” and “technological optimism” must be suppressed or the planet will be destroyed. Warnings about the pollution levels in China, the loss of jobs or higher fuel prices may not be allowed to “pollute” the discourse any longer..

The new green censorship push isn’t just about silencing broader dissent, but any dissent.

Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg who accept global warming, but disagree about the scope of it and the best remedies, are a target, so are elected officials, writers and activists who disagree with making unilateral cuts while giving China a pass, and those who warn about the impact of green taxes and price hikes on the public. What began as a proposal to censor those who question global warming has become a demand to censor anyone who asks any questions at all.

While some might question the impact of the green censorship push, Google has already bowed to initial demands from the Conscious Advertising Network and began demonetizing videos.

CAN, one of the members of CAAD, claims that it supports “freedom of speech, diversity of opinion, and human rights.” CAN is actually a censorship network whose members include the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Omnicom, one of the four largest ad agencies in the world, along with the Islamist TellMama group and numerous other ad agencies and leftist activist groups.

A follow-up letter by Check My Ads, a CAAD member organization, to Google demanded that it eliminate advertising for FOX News, Town Hall, Epoch Times and others from its ad exchanges. The targets of the green censorship included scientists like Lomborg and Steven Koonin, the former Under Secretary for Science in the Department of Energy in the Obama administration, along with thinkers like Jordan Peterson, journalists like Katie Pavlich and the popular PragerU series.

The materials that the CAAD members described as “climate disinformation” in need of censoring were not just direct challenges to global warming dogma, but even publicly stating the obvious fact that the Texas wildfires were not caused by global warming.

The Texas wildfires were caused by downed power lines. But CAAD would like Google, Amazon and most advertisers to ban anyone who rejects the false claim that they were caused by global warming. CAAD claims that critics of global warming claims are spreading “disinformation”, but the disinformation alliance is the one not only spreading, but mandating disinformation.

The most troubling CAAD member may be the Center for Countering Digital Hate which has close ties to the Labour Party and the extremist Starmer government in the UK..

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was the only world leader to show up to the failed UN COP29 conference in Azerbaijan, where he argued that “there is no national security without climate security”. The implications of tying global warming to national security is that it allows extreme measures of the kind that the Starmer regime already used to violently suppress protests against Islamic terrorists and justifies censorship in the name of national security.

The climate disinformation censorship push defines nearly any dissent as a dangerous threat. It defines its side of the argument as a scientific consensus and claims that any deviation from that consensus will kill billions of people. Survival requires a totalitarian worldwide censorship machine of unprecedented scope to end debate and force everyone to submit to their regime.

Governments have to eliminate opposition or, as the open letter describes it, “take concrete steps to ensure information integrity, paving the way for meaningful climate action.” and “the spread of disinformation continues to undermine and delay our collective ability to act.” Any dissent creates delays on government action and undermines the collective.

The familiar totalitarian rationale used by every dictatorship has now gone ‘green’.

Is green censorship really about the planet? Some of the same organizations involved in green censorship, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Conscious Advertising Network have pursued censorship for other leftist causes. Environmentalism is only one of a revolving suite of pretexts for silencing the opposition through corporate and political pressure.

Green censorship is really red. Its purpose is to erase conservatives, moderates and any disagreement from the marketplace of public opinion by declaring that dissent is a crisis. The crisis shifts but its ultimate aim, the end of any challenges to leftist power, never does.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

The UN Climate Body does not Back Climate Alarmist Claims

May 6, 2024 By Tom Harris

Climate alarmists often tell us that their frightening forecasts are backed up by the best available science. In particular, they point to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that they tell us are the gold standard of climate science research. If the IPCC said it, it must be true, they proclaim!

The late Dr. Jay Lehr and I have often written about the serious flaws in the IPCC reports. Indeed, much of the IPCC science has been shown to be wrong, leading many participating scientists to resign from the body.

As documented in the Climate Change Reconsidered series of reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (the most recent of which appears at right), there are thousands of scientists across the world publishing in leading peer reviewed journals who show that much of what the IPCC conclude is incorrect. Consequently, basing our nations’ climate and energy policies only on what the IPCC say would be irresponsible, even reckless.

But in many cases, climate campaigners are not even following the conclusions of the IPCC. In this article, I will discuss what the IPCC actually said in their reports and show some examples (there are many) where even the UN body itself contradicts what alarmists tell us.

First, it is important to understand what the various confidence levels used by the IPCC mean. They are:

• Very Low: Indicates very limited evidence or low agreement. 
• Low: Suggests limited evidence or agreement. 
• Medium: Represents moderate evidence or agreement. 
• High: Signifies substantial evidence or high agreement. 
• Very High: Implies robust evidence or very high agreement12.

Climate alarmists often tell us that we should expect to see increases in flooding due to man-made climate change. But the IPCC finds no trends in flooding globally. Specifically, the IPCC write on p. 1569 of the latest Assessment Report, the sixth:

“In summary there is low confidence in the human influence on the changes in high river flows on the global scale. In general, there is low confidence in attributing changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events to human influence because of a limited number of studies, differences in the results of these studies and large modelling uncertainties.”

Similarly, in the Fifth Assessment Report the IPCC wrote:

“There continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.”

Note that they don’t even feel confident enough to conclude that floods are increasing or decreasing!

It seems that after every intense rainfall event, we are told that we will see even more of these due to man-made climate change and these are responsible for more flooding. But the IPCC actually says:

“Attributing changes in heavy precipitation to anthropogenic activities (Section 11.4.4) cannot be readily translated to attributing changes in floods to human activities, because precipitation is only one of the multiple factors, albeit an important one, that affect floods.”

Even the Trudeau government’s left-leaning Environment and Climate Change Canada in its 2019 climate report said,

“There do not appear to be detectable trends in short-duration extreme precipitation in Canada for the country as a whole based on available station data.”

OK, not more rain. So there must be more drought then, right? No, the latest IPCC report says:

“There is low confidence in the emergence of drought frequency in observations, for any type of drought, in all regions.”

Oh, but hold on, we will have more and more heat waves across the US and Canada due to man-made (anthropogenic) climate change, activists tell us. No, the IPCC says we don’t really know. In particular, the IPCC indicates low confidence (~20%) for the detection of trends in extreme heat and the attribution of such trends to human causes for both central and eastern North America.

But what about more and more intense storms? For example, the derecho (which is a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms, and occasionally thunderstorms, that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds) a year ago in Ottawa, Canada and other extreme winds and storms that are blamed on anthropogenic climate change. Concerning extreme winds (between 60S and 60N), the IPCC says:

“the observed intensity of extreme winds is becoming less severe in the lower to mid-latitudes, while becoming more severe in higher latitudes poleward of 60 degrees (low confidence)”

Note: cities at or north of 60 degrees latitude include Reykjavik, Iceland (64°N), and Helsinki, Finland (60°N). OK, so Fins and Icelanders might have a reason to worry about stronger winds, but not us.

The IPCC also shows no upwards trends in landfalling hurricanes, including the strongest storms.

How about winter storms that are often blamed on anthropogenic climate change? The IPCC says, concerning winter storms:

“There is low confidence in observed recent changes in the total number of extratropical cyclones over both hemispheres. There is also low confidence in past-century trends in the number and intensity of the strongest extratropical cyclones over the Northern Hemisphere…”

But what about tornadoes, hail and lightning? Surely those are increasing because of man-man climate change, or are at least happening differently now to how they were a decade ago, right? No, the IPCC says:

“observational trends in tornadoes, hail, and lightning associated with severe convective storms are not robustly detected due to insufficient coverage of the long-term observations”

“But, but, but, more forest fires are caused by climate change, OK?” environmentalists sputter.

The IPCC are not very confident about this. They write:

“There is medium confidence [in contrast to ‘high’ or ‘very high’ confidence] that weather conditions that promote wildfires (fire weather) have become more probable in southern Europe, northern Eurasia, the US, and Australia over the last century.”

Interestingly, the Royal Society wrote in a 2020 blog post:

“Fire activity is on the rise in some regions, but when considering the total area burned at the ground level, we are not seeing an increase an overall increase.”

In summary, Working Group 1 of the Sixth Assessment Report had “low confidence in the direction of change” of most of the climate impacts that most excite activists, sensational media and politicians, namely precipitation, drought, fire weather, cyclones and hurricanes, snow and ice, sea levels, coastal erosion and ocean acidity, you name it. Generally, it also has “low confidence” that a wider range of detrimental climate impacts will occur beyond 2050, except under “worst case” scenarios.

Finally, it should be noted that the terms 'climate emergency' or 'climate crisis' are only mentioned once in the latest IPCC assessment reports, and that is merely with regards to media coverage, not what the IPCC actually says is real. Specifically the IPCC write:

“Also, some media outlets have recently adopted and promoted terms and phrases stronger than the more neutral ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming,’ including ‘climate crisis,’ ‘global heating,’ and ‘climate emergency’ (Zeldin-O’Neill, 2019).”

So, when you next hear politicians, media and activists claim that their proclamations are backed up by the IPCC, have some fun with them and insist that they show you where the IPCC say what they say they say. And then sit back and watch them sputter and bluster and do their best to avoid the question.

Readers interested in delving more deeply into this topic are encouraged to read:  

• Climate Change Reconsidered reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
• SERIES: What the media won't tell you about . . . Floods (substack.com)
• SERIES: What the media won't tell you about . . . hurricanes (substack.com)
• SERIES: What the media won't tell you about . . . U.S. heat waves (substack.com)
• SERIES: What the media won't tell you about . . . Drought in Western and Central Europe (substack.com)

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition

The IPCC Radical Climate Change Agenda Is a Neo-Marxist, Postmodern Value Narrative

By Jerome Corsi  May 10, 2023

In combating the global warming (aka, climate change) movement, we fail to understand that the radical left today lives in a value-relative phenomenology shaped by a mixture of postmodernism blended with neo-Marxism. It misses the mark merely to refute the hoax science behind the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s decision to eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels.  The sad truth is that government-funded climate scientists know CO2 is not the control knob of Earth’s temperature. The postmodernist mind lives in the John Lennon world where “reimagining” is required to advance us into their carbon-free utopia. In this bizarre world, post-modernism rejects the Enlightenment’s confidence in a fact-based, rule-driven reality anchored by scientific proof that overrides subjective desires. To them, reality is a “language game” (in Wittgenstein’s terms) or, as they say, a “narrative.”.........To Read More....

 

The Briefing Begins In CHECC v. EPA

October 22, 2022/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

In a post last week, I gave notice that battle was about to be joined with the EPA over what it claims to be the “science” behind global warming alarm. The case is called the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) v. EPA, now pending in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. CHECC challenges EPA’s 2009 Finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. At the outset of the Trump administration, CHECC filed a Petition for reconsideration and rescission of the Endangerment Finding. That Petition was finally denied by EPA on April 20, 2022, more than a year into the Biden administration, and the appeal followed. I am one of the attorneys for CHECC.

The opening Brief on behalf of CHECC was filed on October 14, and a week later on October 21 an amicus curiae brief was filed in support of CHECC by the CO2 Coalition, together with Professors William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT. I was going to start off with a review of the CHECC brief, which I helped to prepare, but as luck would have it our CHECC brief got “bounced” by the clerks at the DC Circuit. 

For those of you who have never dealt with court clerks, there is a great resemblance to the DMV, or perhaps to the old Soviet bureaucracy. The alleged ground for bouncing our brief was that we had used too many acronyms — things like EPA, IPCC, GHG (greenhouse gases), GAST (global average surface temperature), and so forth. Our use of such acronyms was somehow deemed excessive, so we need to go back and make some very minor modifications before there is a completely final version of the brief. Rather than confuse things by referring to a brief that will shortly change in minor ways, I’ll start today by covering some of the highlights of the CO2 Coalition amicus brief.

First, we are extremely honored to have such distinguished and serious scientists supporting our position. For those who haven’t heard of them, Professors Happer and Lindzen are, respectively, the senior atmospheric physicists on the faculties of Princeton and MIT. Their lists of titles, awards and honors are almost endless, and occupy several pages in the brief. The CO2 Coalition is a large group of top scientists and people in related fields with specialties related in one way or another to the global warming subject matter, and whose views lean toward skepticism. Happer is the Chair of the CO2 Coalition, and Lindzen is a member.

You might think that tackling the “science” of CO2-driven atmospheric warming is just too heavy a lift to get a court interested, and maybe that’s where this court will end up. But this brief shows why the subject is not really that complicated. At page 18 the brief quotes the famous aphorism of physicist Richard Feynman, “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” In other words, it’s just a question of finding a few, or even one, example where the theory relied on by EPA is contradicted by the data.

The brief minces no words in distinguishing real science from the government-dictated orthodoxy and consensus on which EPA relies. This is from the summary of argument:

Scientific knowledge is determined by the scientific method, through which theoretical predictions are validated or rejected by observations. If the theoretical predictions do not work, the theory is rejected. That’s real science. Scientific knowledge is not determined by government-controlled opinions, consensus, peer review, or theoretical models that do not work. Those are false science. This brief applies the scientific method to the Endangerment Findings and its supporting Technical Support Document and demonstrates both are scientifically corrupted and thus must be rescinded .. . . .

In subsequent sections the brief compares IPCC model predictions of catastrophic warming — specifically relied upon by EPA in the Endangerment Finding’s Technical Support Document — to temperature observations thus far in the real world. They include this famous chart from Congressional testimony given by John Christy back in 2017:

From the brief, commenting on the divergence of theory from observations:

We now know the IPCC theoretical climate models, an early version of which was used in the Endangerment Findings and Technical Support Document, fail the basic test of the scientific method and, thus, should not be used. Without a valid theoretical model, the IPCC’s future climate projections and scenarios have no scientific validity. For this reason alone, the Findings and Technical Support Document should be rescinded.

And the brief does not just end after demonstrating that EPA’s theoretical projections of climate catastrophe have been scientifically invalidated. Pages 30-32 are then devoted to a presentation of new work by Professor Happer and co-author William van Wijngaarden demonstrating why the capacity of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to warm the atmosphere is largely saturated at current concentrations, such that further increases in concentrations only have the potential to cause insignificant further warming. The Happer/van Wijngaarden paper is definitely technical and challenging to understand. However, in the context of this dispute, it is just an additional argument not essential to victory. The key point is that EPA’s “science” has been invalidated by evidence.

By all means read the entire brief if you have the time and inclination. We are very grateful to the CO2 Coalition and Professors Happer and Lindzen for their support.

Here we go again: New UN ‘IPCC report is apocalyptic, catastrophic’ – Certain doom unless – we follow UN central planning dictates!

 By Marc Morano - Climate Depot August 9, 2021

 

“Here we go again. The UN will never quit until we cut off their funding and stop enabling it. The UN chief Antonio Guterres, a former president of Socialist International — is touting tipping points and “irreversible” changes unless we are obedient to their demands that we turn over our economic, energy and way of life to their centrally planned vision. Quick! Pay up and empower the UN to take over your life or the climate will get you! Reality-based headline: ‘Former top socialist who runs the UN wants issues yet another worthless anti-scientific extreme scenario report demanding huge centralized changes in society that will empower the UN to further impose restrictions on you.’ And the climate will not notice one whit. How many more climate tipping points do we have to listen to?

[See:Earth ‘serially doomed’: The official history of climate ‘Tipping Points’ began in 1864 – George Perkins Marsh, the father of American ecology warned: Unless men changed their ways it would be reduced ‘to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.’]

“It is more recycled nonsense. I don’t know how else to say it stronger. I can’t believe they just do this relentlessly every three to five years, and here we are again.”This is essentially the belief that unless we submit to a future where government overlords will control everything, we will face a catastrophe. The UN is literally trying to lobbying you into voting for politicians who want to take ‘climate action.’ Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: “IPCC author whose company sells RCP8.5 products wants people to ‘get scared’ and for the report to affect how people vote,” Pielke added. 

Morano: “We already know these reports are designed to scare the world into climate action."

 (See: Gore admits UN IPCC report was ‘torqued up’ to promote political action – ‘How [else] do they get the attention of policy-makers around the world?’)The UN is now scaring people to vote the way using the UN’s unscientific extreme model-based scenarios!”

 [Also see the real motivation behind the reports:New UN IPCC report ‘will motivate all nations to deliver urgent emission reductions’ & commit to ‘climate finance’]

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: “So this is a BIG problem. The scenarios IPCC admits are unlikely [to] dominate the report w/ 41.5% of all scenario mentions. The scenarios judged most likely under current trends get only 18.4% of mentions. Implausible scenarios (8.5 + 7.0) total 53% of mentions, more than half!” “The literature is heavily biased to extreme scenarios,” “From AR5 WG1 to AR6 WG1 the emphasis on 8.5 scenarios increased dramatically,”  “The IPCC AR6 WG1 is not in fact neutral w/ respect to scenario assumptions because it has an overwhelming emphasis on unlikely (it’s word), implausible (our word) scenarios,”

 “The United Nations is a self-interested lobbying organization. If the UN fails to define CO2 as driving a climate crisis, it fails to be in charge of the solution, it fails to have annual conferences all over the globe.” … “It’s like the mafia coming into its neighborhood and saying ‘I’d hate something bad to happen to you with that climate — if you pay us, we can protect you from the climate.’ The UN is saying unless we go Marxist, the climate is gonna get us. It’s time for us to say hell no, to the UN, to the Green New Deal and expose this corrupt science.” Mark Marano

“They’ve turned science into lobbying and there’s nothing to alarm the American public. In fact, the climate death rate over 100 years has declined 95 plus percent. In other words, our fossil fuel use has protected us. It’s taken an unsafe climate and made it safe and the UN claims we need to make ourselves poorer to make us produce a climate better.” Mark Marano

 “This is the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), the result of negotiations between governments. In other words it is a political statement, not a scientific document. The latter won’t be published until much later, probably long after COP26. And as [UN Sec. Gen] Guterres makes clear, the whole object of the SPM is to scare governments into signing up to the UN agenda at COP26.”

Analysis: ‘The reality is that our weather is no worse now than it was 150 years ago’ IPCC report is ‘highly subjective projections of what might happen in the future’...........

Much More Here.............

More Fake Five-Alarm Climate Crises from the Mainstream Media, the IPCC

By Paul Driessen | August 28, 2019

“Mainstream” news outlets have dutifully featured climate cataclysm claims that have no basis in reality.

Efforts to stampede the USA and world into forsaking fossil fuels and modern farming continue apace.

UN and other scientists recently sent out news releases claiming July 2019 was the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth” – nearly about 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F) “above pre-industrial levels.” That era happens to coincide with the world’s emergence from the 500-year Little Ice Age. And “ever recorded” simply means measured; it does not include multiple earlier eras when Earth was much warmer than now.

Indeed, it is simply baseless to suppose that another few tenths of a degree (to 1.5 C above post-Little Ice Age levels) would somehow bring catastrophe to people, wildlife, agriculture and planet. It is equally ridiculous to assume all recent warming has been human-caused, with none of it natural or cyclical.

Moreover, as University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer has noted, this past July was most likely not the warmest. The claim, he notes, is based on “a fairly limited and error-prone array of thermometers which were never intended to measure global temperature trends.”

The measurements come primarily from airports and urban areas that are artificially warmed by cars, jets, asphalt, air conditioning exhausts and other human heat sources that warm the measuring sites as much as ten degrees F above temperatures in rural areas just 10 to 25 miles away. They do not reflect satellite data or “global reanalysis” estimates that would give a much more accurate picture.

The “hottest month” assertions also ignore major changes in measurement technologies, especially for ocean data, over the past 100-150 years. Perhaps most important, they ignore the paucity or absence of data for millions of square miles of oceanic, Siberian, Arctic and other regions, many of which have much cooler temperatures that would drive average planetary temperature figures downward. (And let’s not forget the record cold temperatures recorded for February 2019 in many parts of the world.)

The news media, however, dutifully repeated the spurious hottest-ever assertion as fact – and made no effort to seek out or quote skeptical experts like Spencer. Far worse, most of the experts who developed and propagated the overheated planet claims know all of this. But they have a narrative, an agenda, and are not going to let inconvenient facts get in the way. The “mainstream media” behaves similarly.

Then, a few days later, the same doom-saying “experts” issued dire warnings that global agriculture is on the brink of disaster. A “landmark report” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said our dangerously warming planet is continuing to damage lands and forests, imperiling mankind’s ability to produce food. Climate change has become a growing danger to global food supplies, it intoned.

Prolonged rains well into the 2019 Midwestern U.S. spring season certainly delayed planting and could affect 2019 corn and other harvests. However, bumper crops elsewhere in the world cast serious doubt on this latest round of IPCC and media fear-mongering.

India’s rabi (winter) wheat crop weighed in at an official record of 101.2 million tons. Near-record corn (maize) exports and sunflower seed harvests were forecast for Ukraine. In Argentina, wheat farmers expect a record harvest – and in Crimea too. The Canadian National Railway logged all-time grain movement records. The USDA’s October 2018 Crop Report showed record northern USA canola production.

 Better hybrid seeds, biotech seeds, and modern fertilizers, pesticides, tractors and farming practices all played a role, as did weather that cooperated with farmers, if not with climate alarmists. However, another major factor is more carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere – which helps crop, forest and grassland plants grow faster and better, and also withstand droughts better. In fact, Dr. Craig Idso has estimated, rising CO2 levels generated some $3.2 trillion in cumulative extra global crop yields between 1961 and 2011, and another $9.8 trillion in predicted CO2-enhanced global crop harvests by 2050.

And now, in a bout of schizophrenia, the IPCC has further muddled its climate chaos message. Now it claims modern agriculture and forest industries are “victims” of climate change. They also cause climate chaos and must thus be part of “the solution.” Agriculture is responsible for over a quarter of total global greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide and methane), and therefore must change its practices to save the world.

Plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, and methane represents 0.00017 percent – of which one-third is from natural sources (termites, swamps and bogs) and two-thirds from human activities: 39 percent of that from fossil fuels, 16 percent from landfills, 9 percent from waste management and 27 percent from farms.

In other words, agricultural methane could possibly be 27 percent of two-thirds of 0.00017 percent of atmospheric methane (CH4) – and that barely detectable 0.00003 percent (30¢ out of $1-million) of the atmosphere is supposedly driving dangerous manmade climate change. And based on that, we must change our farming and eating habits.

Instead of beef, humans must switch to nutritious and environmentally sound alternatives like green pepper, soy, asparagus and squash, says the IPCC. Instead of the full package of beef, pork and poultry, we should eat buckwheat, soy, pears and kidney beans – or other “globally optimal plant replacements.” Of course, locusts, grasshoppers, grubs and other insects are also excellent protein sources, it notes.

The 20,000-some activists, bureaucrats and politicians heading to Salt Lake City for the August 26-28 UN climate change and sustainability conference will no doubt be following that sage advice. (Perhaps they’ll share their menu and Bugs Not Beef recipes.) They could also have had a global teleconference, instead of flying and driving halfway around the world – instead of spending millions of dollars, consuming millions of gallons of aviation and vehicle fuel, and emitting prodigious quantities of CO2 and CH4.

But they’re much more comfortable lecturing the hoi polloi of humanity on how we must travel, eat, and heat and cool our homes (no cooler than a comfortable 82 F in summer, say EPA-Energy Star experts) in more sustainable and climate friendly ways. UN elites much prefer to tell the poorest people on the planet how much they will be permitted to develop and improve their living standards.

Dangerous manmade climate change deniers like me were of course not invited to participate in this taxpayer-financed UN event. We never are. So the Heartland Institute organized a separate August 26 program nearby, at which alternative evidence and perspectives were presented and live-streamed.

Heartland speakers will explain why climate change is some 97 percent natural, not manmade (contrary to that supposed, and phony, 97 percent consensus that says otherwise); and why real-world evidence does not support IPCC claims about dangerously rising seas, increasingly violent storms or worsening droughts. My talk focusrf on why biofuel, wind, solar and battery technologies are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable.

I point out, for example, that replacing 100 percent of U.S. gasoline with ethanol would require some 360 million acres of corn – seven times the land area of Utah. Replacing the more than 25 billion megawatt-hours of electricity the world consumed in 2018 would require some 100 million 400-foot-tall 1.8-MW bird and bat-butchering wind turbines that would actually generate electricity only about 20 percent of the time.

Assuming just 15 acres apiece, those monster turbines would require some 1.5 billion acres – nearly 80 percent of the entire Lower 48 United States! And those wind turbines would need some 200 times more raw materials per megawatt than combined-cycle gas turbine power plants. Building and installing them would require massive increases in mining and quarrying all across the globe.

The UN and IPCC delegations and Green New Dealers absolutely do not want to talk about any of this – much less about slave and child labor for cobalt, rare earth and other metals that are the foundation for their make-believe renewable, sustainable, no-fossil-fuel future. No wonder they don’t invite us.

These are vitally important issues. They demand robust, evidence-based debates – with all interested and affected parties participating – including the world’s poor and manmade climate chaos skeptics.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, climate change, sustainability and human rights.

More Five-Alarm Crises from the IPCC

By Paul Driessen

Efforts to stampede the USA and world into forsaking fossil fuels and modern farming continue apace.

UN and other scientists recently sent out news releases claiming July 2019 was the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth” – nearly about 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F) “above pre-industrial levels.” That era happens to coincide with the world’s emergence from the 500-year Little Ice Age. And “ever recorded” simply means measured; it does not include multiple earlier eras when Earth was much warmer than now.

Indeed, it is simply baseless to suppose that another few tenths of a degree (to 1.5 C above post-Little Ice Age levels) would somehow bring catastrophe to people, wildlife, agriculture, and the planet. It is equally ridiculous to assume all recent warming has been human-caused, with none of it natural or cyclical.

Moreover, as the University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientist, Dr. Roy Spencer has noted, this past July was most likely not the warmest. The claim, he notes, is based on “a limited and error-prone array of thermometers which were never intended to measure global temperature trends.”

 

The measurements come primarily from airports and urban areas that are artificially warmed by cars, jets, asphalt, air conditioning exhausts and other human heat sources that warm the measuring sites as much as ten degrees F above temperatures in rural areas just 10 to 25 miles away. They do not reflect satellite data or “global reanalysis estimates” that would give a much more accurate picture.

The “hottest month” assertions also ignore major changes in measurement technologies, especially for ocean data, over the past 100-150 years. Perhaps most important, they ignore the paucity or absence of data for millions of square miles of oceanic, Siberian, Arctic and other regions, many of which have much cooler temperatures that would drive “average planetary temperature” figures downward. (And let’s not forget the record cold temperatures recorded for February 2019 in many parts of the world.)

The news media, however, dutifully repeated the spurious hottest-ever assertion as fact – and made no effort to seek out or quote skeptical experts like Spencer. Far worse, most of the experts who developed and propagated the “overheated planet” claims know all of this. But they have a narrative, an agenda, and are not going to let inconvenient facts get in the way. The “mainstream media” behaves similarly.

 

Then, a few days later, the same doom-saying “experts” issued dire warnings that global agriculture is on the brink of disaster. A “landmark report” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said our dangerously warming planet is continuing to damage lands and forests, imperiling mankind’s ability to produce food. Climate change has become a growing danger to global food supplies, it intoned.

Prolonged rains well into the 2019 Midwestern US spring season certainly delayed planting and could affect 2019 corn and other harvests. However, bumper crops elsewhere in the world cast serious doubt on this latest round of IPCC and media fear-mongering.

India’s rabi (winter) wheat crop weighed in at an official record of 101.2 million tons. Near-record corn (maize) exports and sunflower seed harvests were forecast for Ukraine. In Argentina, wheat farmers expect a record harvest. In Crimea too. The Canadian National Railway logged all-time grain movement records. The USDA’s October 2018 Crop Report showed record northern USA canola production.

 

Better hybrid seeds, biotech seeds, and modern fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, and farming practices all play a role, as did weather that cooperated with farmers, if not with climate alarmists. However, another major factor is more carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere – which helps crop, forest, and grassland plants grow faster and better and also withstand droughts better. In fact, Dr. Craig Idso has estimated, rising CO2 levels generated some $3.2 trillion in cumulative extra global crop yields between 1961 and 2011 and another $9.8 trillion in predicted CO2-enhanced global crop harvests by 2050.

 

And now, in a bout of schizophrenia, the IPCC has further muddled its climate chaos message. Now it claims modern agriculture is not just a “victim of climate change.” It also causes climate chaos and must thus be part of “the solution.” Agriculture is responsible for over a quarter of total global greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide and methane), and therefore must change its practices “to save the world.”

Plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is 0.04% of the atmosphere, and methane represents 0.00017% – of which one-third is from natural sources (termites, swamps and bogs) and two-thirds from human activities: 39% of that from fossil fuels, 16% from landfills, 9% from waste management and 27% from farms.

In other words, agricultural methane could possibly be 27% of two-thirds of 0.00017% of atmospheric methane (CH4) – and that barely detectable 0.00003% (30¢ out of $1-million) of the atmosphere is driving dangerous manmade climate change. Based on that, we must change our farming and eating habits.

Instead of beef, humans must switch to “nutritious and environmentally sound” alternatives like green pepper, soy, asparagus and squash, says the IPCC. Instead of the full package of beef, pork and poultry, we should eat buckwheat, soy, pears and kidney beans – or other “globally optimal plant replacements.” Of course, locusts, grasshoppers, grubs and other insects are also excellent protein sources, it notes.

The 20,000-some activists, bureaucrats and politicians heading to Salt Lake City for the August 26-28 UN climate change and sustainability conference will no doubt be following that sage advice. (Will they share their menu and veggie-insect recipes with us?) They could also have had a global teleconference, instead of flying and driving halfway around the world – instead of spending millions of dollars, consuming millions of gallons of aviation and vehicle fuel, and emitting prodigious quantities of CO2 and CH4.

But they’re much more comfortable lecturing the hoi polloi of humanity on how we must travel, eat, and heat and cool our homes (no cooler than a comfortable 82 F in summer, say EPA-Energy Star experts) in more sustainable and climate-friendly ways. UN elites much prefer to tell the poorest people on the planet how much they will be “permitted” to develop and improve their living standards.

 

Dangerous manmade climate change “deniers” like me were of course not invited to participate in this taxpayer-financed UN event. We never are. So the Heartland Institute organized a separate program, a few blocks away, at which alternative evidence and perspectives will be presented and live-streamed.

Heartland speakers will explain why climate change is some 97% natural, not manmade (contrary to that phony 97% consensus that says otherwise); and why real-world evidence does not support IPCC claims about dangerously rising seas, increasingly violent storms or worsening droughts. My talk will focus on why biofuel, wind, solar and battery technologies are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable.

I will point out for example that replacing 100% of US gasoline with ethanol would require some 360 million acres of corn – seven times the land area of Utah. Replacing the more than 25billion megawatt-hours of electricity the world consumed in 2018 would require some 100 million 400-foot-tall 1.8-MW bird and bat-butchering wind turbines that would actually generate electricity only about 20% of the time.

Assuming just 15 acres apiece, those monster turbines would require some1.5 billion acres – nearly 80% of the entire Lower 48 United States! And those wind turbines would need some 200 times more raw materials per megawatt than combined-cycle gas turbine power plants. Building and installing them would require massive increases in mining and quarrying all across the globe.

The UN and IPCC delegations and Green New Dealers absolutely do not want to talk about any of this – much less about slave and child labor for cobalt, rare earth, and other metals that are the foundation for their make-believe “renewable, sustainable, no-fossil-fuel” future. No wonder they don’t invite us.

These are vitally important issues. They demand robust, evidence-based debates – with all interested and affected parties participating – including the world’s poor and manmade climate chaos skeptics.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports, and articles on energy, climate change, sustainability, and human rights.
 

                

Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death

By Paul Driessen (Hardcover - Mar 15, 2006)

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We're All Going to Starve to Death...Again

August 12, 2019 By Jeffrey Folks

According to the draft of a new United Nations IPCC report, "Climate Change and Land," the world's land and water resources are in dire shape. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report was produced by 108 experts from 52 countries, nominated by governments, observer organizations, and IPCC bureau members. (I don't recall getting an invitation, despite my extensive interest in energy use and food economics — wonder why!) The "experts" insist that deserts are expanding, extreme weather is destroying crops, and 10 percent of the Earth's people are already going without food. Soon mankind as a whole will be short of food, millions will starve, and nations will be plunged into chaos as populations engage in warfare and mass migration in search of food.

Ho...hum. It's Thomas Malthus all over again........To Read More....

Happer Is Right Person to Lead Objective Federal Climate Commission

 H. Sterling Burnett March 12, 2019


The left-wing media’s rumor mill has been rumbling in recent weeks like an upset stomach in need of an antacid at the thought that President Donald Trump will soon form a Presidential Commission on Climate Security (PCCS) to objectively examine the science behind the oft-repeated claim that humans are causing dangerous climate change.

A PCCS is long overdue, and award-winning physicist William Happer, the administration’s senior director of the National Security Council office for emerging technologies, is the perfect person to run it.

Such a committee should have been formed before 1992 when President George H. W. Bush brought the United States into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Bush put the cart before the horse, agreeing to the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) despite the fact no comprehensive assessment of the state of climate science had been undertaken.

The IPCC wasn’t charged with examining the causes and consequences of climate change but, from the start, was directed to limit its inquiries into the “human causes” of change.

A problem can’t be understood if only one aspect of it is studied. It’s like the parable of the blind men and the elephant—if all the blind men had only been allowed to touch the trunk.........To Read More...

CFACT and COP24

COP 24: “We are still in” climate campaign flunks basic reality

2018-12-16T05:27:33+00:00By Paul Driessen|

Whether it’s global temperatures, changing weather patterns, Arctic, Antarctic or Greenland ice, hurricanes and tornados, wildfires, floods or droughts – or the need for and viability of renewable energy – deception, misrepresentation, disinformation and even fabrication are their stock in trade...........

 

COP 24: Packed house at CFACT’s Poland climate forum

2018-12-15T00:28:50+00:00By Craig Rucker|

In the audience at CFACT's Poland forum were veterans of the Solidarity movement who freed Poland from Socialism thirty years ago. They do not want to go back. They turned this scholarly forum into a lively discussion of energy, global warming and Polish independence. We were honored............

COP 24: Good news and bad

2018-12-15T00:19:17+00:00By Pat Carlson|

Two groups showed up at UN COP 24 in Katowice, Poland - one predicting a catastrophic disaster and the other with a message of hope and encouragement..........

 

COP 24: All aboard the UN climate gravy train

2018-12-14T14:12:32+00:00By David Wojick|

Many groups at the UN climate conference have no clear connection to what the UN calls "climate action," but who can say they shouldn't still get some of the money? Who can resist a slice of the trillion dollar climate finance pie?...........

The wild & weird world of COP24

2018-12-11T16:30:47+00:00By Adam Houser|

The UN climate conference in Poland is riddled with a mix of bizarre and eyebrow-raising incidents......

UN authorizes protesters to silence Americans at COP 24

2018-12-11T01:09:52+00:00By Craig Rucker|

The United Nations gave explicit permission to left-wing youth groups to disrupt a presentation by the American delegation on energy issues at COP 24, the UN conference on climate change in Katowice, Poland........

COP 24: CFACT with the gilets jaune

2018-12-14T22:19:38+00:00By Craig Rucker|

The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) represent a broad cross section of the French working and middle classes.  They are butchers, bakers and automobile makers.  They are the folks who drive the trucks, farm the food, build the buildings and fix what breaks.  They are France.  They have had enough..........

COP 24: Climate lunacy takes center stage in Poland

2018-12-10T03:48:32+00:00By Paul Driessen|

IPCC Poland conference presents fictional climate chaos and fake renewable energy salvation..............

COP 24: Radicalizing and indoctrinating youth

2018-12-08T03:05:29+00:00By Pat Carlson|

Every year the UN climate process features a large cadre of radical young people who are given free reign to misbehave.......
 
COP 24: UN’s gobbledygook focused on finance in Katowice

2018-12-07T23:11:13+00:00By David Wojick|

The UN has a big mess on its hands in Poland with sharp disagreements among the parties. Decipher the words and follow the money.
 
COP 24: Paris Agreement plans to reduce greenhouse gases miss the mark

2018-12-07T23:03:12+00:00By Ronald Stein|

By Ron Stein The problem with the Paris Climate Agreement, the National Climate Assessment report, and other forecasts, is that most of the nations of the world have bought into the “forecasted conclusions” regardless of the validity of the assumptions.

COP 24: As the UN holds climate talks “consensus” is crumbling

2018-12-05T16:29:28+00:00By Steve Goreham|

By Steve Goreham Global climate efforts are crumbling. If the United Nations has its way, we may get to see the 50th Conference of the Parties. But on the other hand, citizens may force governments to stop foolish efforts to try to control global temperatures.

COP 24: France surrenders

2018-12-05T05:02:20+00:00By Craig Rucker|

Faced with widespread carbon / fuel tax rioting, French President Emmanuel Macron surrendered. The French government suspended the wildly unpopular fuel tax, for six months at least. "The people are revolting!" Mel Brooks as Louis XIV: "You said it, they stink on ice."

COP 24: Climate summit language reveals hidden agenda

2018-12-04T17:15:33+00:00By David Wojick|

People complain about UN jargon but the technical language of the Katowice climate summit is very revealing. It is all about changing the world order... The language is deliberately deceptive, but once you understand it, things get pretty clear. Language is like that.
 
By law, California high speed rail may be doomed to fail

2018-12-04T17:13:06+00:00By Ronald Stein|

By Ronald Stein It has been 10 years since passage of California Proposition 1A the High-Speed Rail Act that approved the $9.95 billion bond, a down payment on a high-speed rail project that was optimistically estimated by proponents at that time to cost $40 billion. Today, the California high-speed rail cost may approach $100 billion. Public enthusiasm is obviously dwindling.
 
COP 24: The church of climate fear

2018-12-04T01:17:09+00:00By David Wojick|

Certainty is the essence of dogma as the climate scaremongers preach certainty that horror is nigh to the media choir.

UN COP 24: “Mankind to end,” women hardest hit

2018-12-03T06:54:31+00:00By Craig Rucker|

COP 24, the United Nations climate conference is underway. 

The National Climate Assessment’s simple hoax

2018-12-02T07:06:43+00:00By David Wojick|

The NCA warns of what "might" happen, while 84% of its Key Messages are based on highly speculative modeling of worst case future scenarios.

 

The snow job in Poland

IPCC climate confab seeks to stampede the world into adopting destructive energy policies

Craig Rucker                                                                                                                                     

Any blizzards that blanket Poland this winter can’t compare to the massive snow job climate campaigners are trying to pull off.

Some 30,000 politicians, activists, computer modelers, bureaucrats, lawyers, journalists, renewable energy sellers and a few scientists are in Katowice, Poland December 2-14, for another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conference. Four issues will dominate the agenda.

* Proclaim that humanity and planet face existential cataclysms, unless fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are slashed to zero by 2050 – to “prevent” average planetary temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) above what they were in 1820, when the Little Ice Age ended and the modern industrial era began.

* Finalize 300 pages of “guidelines,” to implement the Paris climate agreement – by driving the switch from coal, oil and natural gas to wind, solar and biofuel energy.

* Reach a binding agreement that wealthy countries (excluding China and other newly rich nations) must transfer at least $100 billion annually to poor countries.

* Ensure “transparency” on discussions, disclosures and treaty compliance.

This entire agenda deserves skepticism and ridicule.

Earth’s climate is always changing somewhere, due to powerful natural forces over which humans have no control. To say we can now perpetuate current conditions by controlling emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is sheer fantasy.

Average global temperatures have already (thankfully) risen nearly a degree since 1820. To suggest that another half degree would be catastrophic is absurd. Indeed, average temperatures were higher during the Medieval Warm Period – and except during recent El Niño events have barely risen since 1998, even as CO2 levels climbed significantly, spurring plant growth worldwide.

Constant references to the “hottest ever” day or month involve hundredths of a degree, less than the margin of measurement error, often by activist scientists who have a history of doctoring data. They also ignore record cold snaps, like this Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S. Northeast.

Human activities certainly affect climate and weather to some degree, at least locally. But there is no real-world evidence that they have major (much less cataclysmic) impacts. Computer models say otherwise, but their record for accuracy is abysmal to zero.

Regarding guidelines to implement Paris, they would put the United Nations and IPCC in charge of our energy use, economies, lives and living standards – which would be disastrous. Fossil fuels still provide 80% of all U.S. and global energy; wind and solar provide less than 5% and only intermittently.

Forcing us to convert to wind and solar would increase electricity prices ten times over – and blanket areas many times the size of California with turbines, panels, batteries, and huge mines to dig out the raw materials needed for these “eco-friendly, climate-safe, sustainable” replacements.

Expensive, unreliable “renewable” energy would destroy jobs and economies, depress living standards, keep poor nations impoverished – and cause conflicts, famines and refugee migrations, as countries fight over increasingly scarce energy, food and resources.

Developing countries say they were promised $100 billion a year, for starters, plus free energy technology transfers. That’s the primary reason they signed the Paris climate treaty.

They’re angry that barely $3.5 billion has been put on the table, and rich countries say they cannot afford to pay more, especially if they’re also supposed to slash their fossil fuel use and thus economic prosperity.

The biggest snow job is any claimed devotion to transparency. Secrecy and deception are fundamental to the IPCC process. Anyone who questions the “fossil fuels cause climate chaos” thesis is silenced. So is anyone who suggests that data and evidence should determine policy – instead of computer models.

Katowice organizers are furious that a Trump Administration exhibit will highlight the remarkable benefits of fossil fuels. They vilify scientists who emphasize the sun’s vital role in climate change, or point out the many ways that temperature, storm, drought and other climate data are cherrypicked, “homogenized,” manipulated or even fabricated to drive alarmist narratives. They ignore the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and 1970-1976 global cooling scare.

The real IPCC and Paris treaty agenda is simple. Blame humans and fossil fuels for virtually all climate and weather events. Control energy use, economic growth and living standards – lowering them in industrialized countries and limiting them in developing nations. Redistribute the world’s wealth and resources. And replace the capitalist economic model with a global green socialist system, controlled by the UN, IPCC and green activists.

Lack of energy, jobs, safe water and decent living standards is a far more pressing issue for poor countries than climate change. No wonder Asia alone already has some 2,000 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants operating or under construction. That’s nearly twice as much as total US summertime generating capacity.

Meanwhile, every Irish household faces new carbon taxes of $3,000 to $5,000 a year (!) unless their government imposes equally costly measures to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions and avoid paying punitive EU fines. To gauge likely Irish reaction to that, look to France – where tens of thousands have been rioting over President Macron’s plans to implement higher carbon taxes.

Climate insanity needs to be reined in. CFACT’s delegation to Katowice is working hard to get that process underway.

Craig Rucker is president of CFACT, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, a free market think tank devoted to sound science for both people and planet.