Climate News - November 2019

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

Developments in the science While Greta Thunberg was haranguing the UN, 500 scientists presented an open letter saying: Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming. Warming is far slower than predicted. Climate policy relies on inadequate models. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a plant food that is essential to all life on Earth. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. And increased crop yields worldwide. Global warming has not increased natural disasters. Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities. There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic. Australia’s Drought Minister David Littleproud said he “totally” accepts climate change is leading to hotter days and droughts.  But the evidence shows erratic but increasing rainfall.

Meanwhile, there is considerable data tampering “rectification” by the climate authorities.  Andrew Boltshowed that Australian temperatures had been “amended” – actually re-homogenised -  by the BoM. As this graph shows, recent temperatures have been increased and older ones decreased.

The warming effect of CO2 is logarithmic, hence climatologist “edmh” shows 87 per cent of any possible warming effect has already happened and catastrophe-hyped 2°C heating cannot take place.

Duplicating the treatment of Professor Peter Ridd, who the courts have found was illegally sacked by James Cook University, adjunct professor Dr Susan Crockford was fired by Canada’s Victoria University, because she showed that polar bears are thriving, with populations reaching levels not seen for decades. Peter Ridd has been supported by the head of the Great Barrier Reef in his views about its general good health.   Mark Perry has assembled some quotations from Richard Lindzen, considered by many to be the world’s leading atmospheric physicist.  Among them is this gem, “What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin.” Political developments Ten mainly eastern European EU members rejected moves to intensify carbon emission proposals and the issue has been deferred for a year. Trump does what he says he would do – a rarity among conventional political wheeler-dealers who populate the leadership of almost every other country - by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, which he can formally commence on Nov. 4. Meanwhile, anti-Trump state governments are pursuing carbon emission lawsuits to tie up wealth producers like Exxon, while the swamp media seeks to vilifythe firm for allocating the 0.4 per cent of its gifting expenditure to think tanks.   California is facing fires and blackouts as a result of its environmental policies that prevent utilities from clearing vegetation under power lines. The already bankrupt electricity utilities get the blame and have to pay compensation. Former Governor Jerry Brown, of course, blames Trump because, like Politico, he sees the fires as evidence of global warming.  The facts are that acreage burns have been reduced over the past century.

Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, proposed a $454 billion plan with cash vouchers to shift a quarter of the US car fleet to electric. Small beer compared to Elizabeth Warren’s 100 per cent Clean Energy plan which she optimistically costs at a little over twice that. Fancy dress couturier, Justin Trudeau, lost the Canadian election but voters elected an even greater number of carbonistas and Trudeau promises that the new government will travel further along the path of carbon taxes and regulations against fossil fuels. Chileans are in open revolt against carbon tax-generated price rises.  The catalyst was Santiago Metro fares increases, introduced despite falling oil and gasoline prices, because its energy sources were largely switched from conventional power to wind and solar power. The Chilean government also hit the portion of conventional power that remains with new carbon dioxide taxes. It has now backed out of hosting the next international climate conference (called COP 25) that was scheduled for December. New Zealand’s government under green Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern has better survival instincts.  It has excused farmers, responsible for half of the nation’s emissions, from any cuts until at least 2025.   Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak remind us that eco-catastrophians are not new.  As agricultural economist Dennis Avery, said soil erosion ‘has been threatening since man scratched the first seedbed with a stick’ and in 1948, ecologist William Vogt published his Road to Survival, the biggest-selling environmentalist book until Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Vogt argued that, with rare exceptions, man had ‘taken the bounty of the earth and made little or no return’. Then came the Club of Rome and subsequent fixation on climate change, now the mainstream view, its proponents having marched through the government, educational and business institutions.

Developments in Economics Household electricity prices collected by Global Prices for March 2019 – Sept have Australian prices, propelled by government policies, in a leadership role at 25 US cents/kWh compared with India and China (8 cents), Canada (moving in Australia’s direction) on 11 cents, the US on 14 cents (much less in many parts). Nuclear powered France is 19 cents – though Germany’s Energiewende “transition” gives it prices at 36 cents.  Australia’s Chair of the Energy Security Board, Kerry Schott, has scolded the government for seeking to intervene in energy supply but has supported all such past interventions that subsidised the renewables which have undermined the formerly low cost, reliable system. China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined and is opening 17 new mines.

Britain is being chided for having the highest per capita net importer of CO2. That is what happens when countries de-industrialise but try to avoid reducing their living standards.  The warmist Paris-based IEA has, in the past, published books some of which give balanced views on climate change matters. IEA rejected the Guardian’s request to burn delete these.

Whimsy Booming global food production doesn’t deter serial alarmist and giant carbon footprint owner, Al Gore, from warning that climate change is creating imminent shortages.  Another celebrity fruitcake, Prince Charles, exhorts the City of London to invest trillions of pounds in green investments to promote sustainability – and impoverish his subjects! In an interesting twist, CO2 induced climate change, nee Global Warming, according to a University of Chicago study could start a new ice age by increasing Antarctica’s snow! Extinction Rebellion’s founder seeks flight bans after 11K-mile flight for narcotics fuelled luxury break. Is anyone, other than her child soldiers, surprised? Proving how inventive warmists can be in excusing the inadequacies of their favoured technology, wind/solar dependent Alice Springs blames a recent blackout on a cloud!

During the month I published articles In the Spectator on why we should be afraid of rising fuel costs, not climate claims In Quadrant on how regulatory measures have led Australia to fall in the global wealth and income league tables. Also in Quadrant the new interventions by the Australian Government to strengthen transmission capacity that attempt to reduce the adverse reliability outcomes of its subsidies to renewables.  In The Australian on how governments, blinded by false claims of climate-driven lower rainfall, have cut irrigators access to water bringing severe distress to the area responsible for over 40 per cent of the nation’s agricultural output.

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