Tag Archives: climate change

It’s like believing in fairy tales

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First there’s this from someone who thinks the planet may be warming and Australia is therefore in need of a massive expenditure program:

Most of the big investment houses are wilfully ignoring the risks that climate change will soon pose to their beneficiaries, and the Abbott government is making the same short-sighted mistake.

And then there’s this, called “Is a Big Chill on the Way?”, in which the number of sun spots in the latest cycle is shown to be falling.

sun activity

Here’s the text to go with the picture:

The monthly International Sunspot Number from the Solar Information Data Center (SIDC) of the Royal Observatory of Belgium was released December 1st. It fell to 77.6 spots/day.

Most newsworthy is that this is still the weakest solar max in over 200 years, well below NASA’s forecast. …

We may be witnessing the sun’s last dying gasps before entering into a long slumber. The impact of that slumber on Earth’s climate remains the subject of growing scientific speculation.

Global warming has never worried me but this does. You cannot take the global warming crowd seriously any more, but they will not go away until they are absolutely convinced that no more money will be placed in their begging bowls ever again.

The highest quality climate science

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At least they met but why the secrecy. This is by Nigel Lawson in the latest edition of The Spectator:

The long-discussed meeting between a group of climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society on the one side, and me and some colleagues from my think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation on the other, has now at last taken place. It was held behind closed doors in a committee room at the House of Lords, the secrecy — no press present — at the insistence of the Royal Society Fellows, an insistence I find puzzling given the clear public interest in the issue of climate change in general and climate change policy in particular.

The origins go back almost a year, to a lecture by the president of the Royal Society, the biologist Sir Paul Nurse. In it he chose to launch a gratuitous personal attack on me, making a number of palpably false allegations. I wrote to him, pointing out his errors, and he replied — somewhat changing his tune — conceding that ‘it is quite legitimate for both of us to talk about climate change policy, but before doing so we need to have access to the highest quality climate science. I am not sure you are receiving the best advice, and I would be very happy to put you in contact with distinguished active climate research scientists if you think that would be useful.’

So now the highest quality climate science has been provided but we don’t know what it was or how Nigel Lawson replied. All I do know is that Lawson has not changed his mind. But again, why the secrecy?

Obama grasps for climate legacy

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I should stop reading Drudge. The main story, “Obama grasps for climate legacy as second-term agenda crumbles”. The most momentous and most calamitous president is not actually seeing his agenda brought to a halt but the media like to pretend. Which part of his agenda is not going forward even in the teeth of massive opposition? But that’s the meme from which we find this:

But there’s one thing that’s going right for Obama: Executive action on climate change is moving full-speed ahead at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

‘He may be able to do more through climate change [rules] because the EPA has the authority,’ Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The Hill on Thursday.

The most far-reaching piece of Obama’s climate plan is carbon emission standards for the nation’s fleet of existing power plants, by far the largest single source of industrial carbon emissions. The EPA is also writing standards for new plants.

The story indicates there are still obstacles – such as common sense – but as his agenda moves forward on the Middle East, health care, unilateral arms reduction, the economy, here is one more area in which he can leave his lasting legacy.

It is bizarre

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In the Salem Witch trials as I recall – my memory is a little rusty here – there were a bunch of fanatics burning climate change deniers at the stake. To think there is anything needed at all to “fix” our carbon emissions is a kind of loopyness that I just see as part of the world today, something along the lines of wanting to spend your way out of recession. Which brings me to this:

FORMER Treasury secretary Ken Henry has described Tony Abbott’s direct action scheme for tackling climate change as ‘bizarre’ and predicted the Coalition will wind up implementing an emissions trading scheme.

Direct action, as I understand it, says that we will wait for the rest of the world to come up with some kind of carbon-limitation scheme but in the meantime we will try to lower carbon emissions in ways that actually do some good of some other kind even if there isn’t a carbon emissions problem in the first place, and we will spend far less money on it as well. Carbon taxes and carbon-emissions schemes are both 100% wasteful if there is no carbon problem to solve. Direct action actually takes some positive actions. It is bizarre that people who believe carbon taxes or an ETS will actually do some good can rise to such high places of authority over our lives.