Green Enemies Of Freedom

Climate Change Lobby Wants To Kill Free Speech

The editor of this newspaper received a private letter last week from Lord Krebs and 12 other members of the House of Lords expressing unhappiness with two articles by its environment correspondent. Conceding that The Times’s reporting of the Paris climate conference had been balanced and comprehensive, it denounced the two articles about studies by mainstream academics in the scientific literature, which provided less than alarming assessments of climate change. Strangely, the letter was simultaneously leaked to The Guardian. The episode gives a rare glimpse into the world of “climate change communications”, a branch of heavily funded spin-doctoring that is keen to shut down debate about the science of climate change. --Matt Ridley, The Times, 25 April 2016

Then there’s the Climate Coalition, the Campaign against Climate Change, various publicly funded climate-communications groups inside universities, plus the green multinationals, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, with their nine-figure budgets. And so on. Against this Goliath, one little David stands alone: the Global Warming Policy Foundation, with its budget of about £300,000, all privately donated and none from the fossil fuel industry. --Matt Ridley, The Times, 25 April 2016

 

 

 

Some of the world's most eminent scientists have written to the editor of UK newspaper The Times to complain about its coverage of climate science. They suggest the newspaper may be unduly influenced by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which, despite its name, denies humans are causing climate change (sic). Baron John Krebs, a highly decorated biologist is behind the push, writing that the newspaper has become a "laughing stock" for publishing poor quality science. --Sara Phillips, ABC News, 21 April 2016

Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science. Progressivism is already enforced on campuses by restrictions on speech that might produce what progressives consider retrograde intellectual diversity. Now, from the so-called party of science, a.k.a. Democrats, comes a campaign to criminalize debate about science. --George F. Will, The Washington Post, 22 April 2016

As Americans observe Earth Day, Gallup finds 42% of Americans identifying themselves as environmentalists, down from an average of 76% in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1991, the same high percentage of Republicans and Democrats — 78% — considered themselves environmentalists. Today, 27% of Republicans think of themselves that way, compared with 56% of Democrats, a partisan gap of 29 percentage points. One reason for the decline is that the environment has become politicized as an issue, especially in terms of the debate over climate change and how to address it. --Gallup, 22 April 2016

The cost of Denmark’s renewable energy policy has been too high, according to Denmark’s climate and energy minister Lars Christian Lilleholt (Left-Liberal Party). The minister made the statement in response to a report by the climate and energy ministry to parliament which shows that subsidies for offshore windfarms – which are paid by businesses and citizens via their electricity bills – have increased dramatically compared to what was originally expected. In an interview with the newspaper Berlingske, the minister said that one had to accept that the price of the green energy transition is too high and that energy bills have to be cut as a result. --Jyllands-Posten, 22 April 2016

The US sided with emerging economies on Thursday against proposals to set a greenhouse gas emissions target for shipping. In contrast to President Barack Obama’s urgent rhetoric on climate action, the US envoy favoured an incremental approach at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London. There should be no discussion of an emissions goal until data from individual ships has been gathered and analysed, argued Jeffrey Lantz. China’s delegation agreed it would be “premature”. --Megan Darby, Climate Home, 21 April 2016

 

Brought to you by Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Forum