Climate News - September 2019

by Alan Moran A review and commentary on topical matters concerning the science, economics, and governance associated with climate change developments. Alan Moran 1 September 2019

CLIMATE SCIENCE A leaked draft of an upcoming IPCC report calls for urgent emission reductions or, it claims,  humanity will face rising seas, catastrophic superstorms and “misery on a global scale”. UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, warns that climate change will cause serious “harm to Human Rights” and produce “powerful conflicts” among peoples. But there is little data to corroborate these dismal prognoses.  The global warming deceit, depicted as unprecedented 20th-century warming, stemmed from Michael Mann’s confected data, which is now confirmed as false after Mann lost a Canadian lawsuit which he strung out for 8 years.  Australia was excoriated by mendicant Pacific Island micro-nations, New Zealand and the leftist media for refusing to dismantle its coal industry, said to be causing the islands’ oceanic inundation through global-warming.  UN representative Rachel Kyte described support for fossil fuels as "reckless and cruel".  Actually, the islands are growing.

There was much furore in the UK about a heatwave in July demonstrating global warming is upon us.  As usual, when the data is compiled there is nothing to see:

And the US is cooling!

California three years ago was in “permanent drought” according to the governor.  Now all the reservoirs are full and the alarmists have moved on to the next fabricated crisis. In spite of talk about the Greenland ice sheet disappearing, it is at a high level at the present time compared with that of the past 10,000 years.

Undeterred, the loudest ill-educated US politician, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (AOC) frets that melting glaciers, “are going to get into our water” – and mankind is going to be unprepared for resultant ancient, unknown diseases.  AOC says she is so frightened that she’ll have one less child. Since 2005 the US National Oceanic and Astronomic Administration has been recording temperatures from 114 highly stable stations across the 48 core states. This data proves unequivocally that there has been no warming over the past 14 years.

Brazil's President Bolsonaro, heavily criticised by President Macron over Amazonian fires, dismissed Western concern about rising C02 emissions as “environmental psychosis". Macron claimed there is more Amazon burning than ever before, using a 20 year old photo to prove himself an idiot!

Here is the recent data on Amazonian forest fires.

Michael Schellenberger explains  Why Everything They Say About The Amazon — Including That It’s The ‘Lungs Of The World’ — Is Wrong, while satellite observation reveals that global burning has been in a decline since 2003.

In fact, global forest coverage has increased 7 per cent over the past 30 years due to improved agricultural productivity reducing the need for rural land.  The Australian government, having stacked its Great Barrier Reef agency with alarmists, now finds they self-interestedly report it is in need of greater funding and regulation.  “Ten years of rising greenhouse emissions and ten years watching the Reef heading for a catastrophe," said director of strategy, Imogen Zethoven.  Peter Ridd, has courageously resisted the reef spin-doctors and demonstrated it remains undamaged by human induced interactions, paying the price in being unfairly dismissed from his university post.

CLIMATE POLICY The German Greens and Social Democrats propose a higher tax for meat to promote fewer methane emissions. The Christian Democrats are sympathetic as long as the funds go to help farmers to restructure out of meat. Bernie Sanders has joined the bandwagon.  In this address to Heartland, Benny Peiser implores Americans not to follow the EU path, noting that their increasing regulations on greenhouse gases are causing ever-increasing energy prices and ever-shrinking economies. With the Canadian federal election approaching Premier Trudeau laments that the issue of climate change could become partisan!  Trump skipped climate change G7 deliberations. “We are now the No.1 energy producer in the world.  I’m not going to lose that wealth, I’m not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren’t working too well.” This illustrates the disastrous trebling of Australian electricity prices over the past four years due to renewable energy subsidies forcing the closure of coal-fired power stations.  Activists and subsidy-seekers attribute the price rises to coal generators becoming unreliable!

BNEF reported a 14 per cent decline in spending on new installations of wind and solar, led by a collapse of China’s expenditure following lower subsidies. Even so, subsidies to this form of energy are still bringing annual expenditure levels of some $235 billion globally.

Lower subsidies by China offer sustenance to conspiracy theories - Politico sees the former Communist powers, Russia and China, taking advantage of global warming to further their economic and political agendas!  Then again, the US and EU are also spending less! Whimsy ...... Beware of the Black Widow: this research says climate change might make spiders angry. As Tony Thomas reports, the Australian taxpayer coughed up $2.5 million for a study that found alarmist climate scientists use emotional denial to suppress their despair over climate change.  Their sadness also extends to inadequate spending on alarmist research – at a “mere” $9 billion annually. Sceptics, by contrast, receive virtually no funding from either government or business.

Links to my recent articles on climate change developments :-  Subsidies, bureaucrats, blackouts and bills: inside our electricity disaster  - Spectator Australia, 26 August 2019  Another rope-seller to the hangman - Catallaxy Files, 13 August 2019 The hazards of synthetic valuations of environmental services - Catallaxy Files, 7 August 2019

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