Category Archives: Climate change

BBC still playing fast and loose with climate facts

New paper outlines corporation's "tall tales"

Via Net Zero Watch. (Press release:)

London, 2 August – A new paper from Net Zero Watch shows that the BBC is still misleading its viewers and listeners about the facts of climate change.

From sea-level rise to bird migration, from hurricanes to heatwaves, the corporation’s climate narrative is never knowingly bothered by facts, context or nuance. 

Author Paul Homewood says:

“No matter how often the BBC get caught playing fast and loose with the climate facts, they never change. They are incorrigible.”

Paul Homewood: Tall Climate Tales from the BBC (pdf)

They got away with it. Now what?

“Accept reality and educate the masses to stop the next big power grab”, says Jordan Schachtel here.

Excerpts:

One of the main lessons of the corona hysteria era is that we need to be much quicker on the draw in providing the counter narrative [the true signal] to the propaganda being deployed by the global ruling classes.

This is no easy task, but it’s so enormously important to the cause of preserving some semblance of human freedom, and pushing back against those who wish to transform the entire world into their own local versions of China’s Social Credit Score system.

Education is paramount. And through platforms like Substack, the promise held by the social media app formerly known as Twitter, Rumble, and elsewhere, the forces for humanity still have a shot to win the messaging battle. When the next big power grab arrives, we should hope for much more courage and bravery than last time around.

Global boiling? Don’t be ridiculous

It’s time to stand up to the eco-fearmongering of our medieval elites.

Article by Brendan O’Neill.

Excerpts:

As the Washington Post [see link in original] said in its coverage of the ‘global boiling’ edict, apocalyptic superlatives can be ‘useful in underlining the importance of [this] issue’. This is a familiar tactic of eco-propagandists. A few years ago, Extinction Rebellion protested outside the offices of the New York Times [see link in original] to put pressure on it to dump the passive phrase ‘climate change’ in preference for the panic-inducing ‘climate emergency’. ‘Linguistic experts’ have cheered the media’s embrace of catastrophic language [see link in original] because apparently fretful terminology can help to ‘convey to the public an increasingly urgent threat’. They’re trying to manipulate us. They are using the grammar of Armageddon to cajole us into compliance with the green narrative and its demands for sacrifice in everyday life. As I argue in my new book, A Heretic’s Manifesto, they want to ‘coerce us into the realm of doom by making us think less about “climate change” and more about climate chaos, climate disaster, even climate apocalypse’.

It is imperative that we resist this linguistic authoritarianism. ‘Global boiling’ isn’t only a ridiculous phrase – it is also an insult to truth, reason and us. That such a fact-lite, post-scientific, hysterical phrase has been used by the UN, the activist set and the media elites is a reminder that they see the rest of us, the little people, as malleable creatures to be marched this way and that by scary words and warnings of a hellish future. It’s boiling anger we should feel, for this arrogant crusade of emotional manipulation.

Creation Stewardship

From the book “The Mission of God” (2016 [2014]) by Joseph Boot, p.249-251:

Much is said today about nature or land and ‘environmentalism,’ and Christians (usually the younger evangelicals), often with good intentions, can get caught up in the ‘save the planet’ rhetoric and agenda.

[. . .]

A truly biblical picture of creation stewardship does not elevate nature to the status of God as the source and wellspring of life, nor does it give nature or land priority over man, but rather tells us that the land suffers because of man; and because God governs all things by his personal agency, the created order responds to our moral conduct.

[. . .]

But because most people today (even Christians) think in impersonal terms about the creation and the land and view ecological processes in purely naturalistic terms, they do not think about man’s sin in relationship to the fruitfulness of farming, husbandry, forest health and animal populations.

[. . .]

Biblical creation care however, means obedience to God’s law as it concerns God, man and the land. This means that the environmentalists of today, who claim to love Mother Nature and therefore want to sav the planet whilst worshiping idols, advocating the killing of the unborn to reduce carbon footprints, pursue the theft and re-distribution of land and resources, seek a radical equalization of all things, viewing the wealthy, the church, the family and Christian marriage as the primary obstacle to planetary salvation, are in fact destroying the environment; the land, cursed on their account, will vomit them out. IF we are concerned with responsible care for creation and want to see human flourishing in the land and blessing on our agriculture, cattle, wilderness and animal kingdoms, we must obey God’s law. If we are parched in these areas, we need look no further than our sins. Obedience is green! Thus the Puritan mind actually takes the totality of the law seriously in these matters rather than arbitrarily picking bits from the Torah or prophets that might fit with a given ideology, then setting the rest aside as hopelessly outdated and inconvenient.

My own thoughts on this: I have long considered our fundamentally flawed and fraudulent monetary system to be the main if not root cause for many of society’s ills, including environmental degradation. In the latter case, another ungodly cause can be identified: The denial by the courts of property rights, which happened in the course of the 19th century. To accelerate industrialisation, people were denied the possibility to sue companies polluting their land. When this eventually lead to such great environmental degradation that it could no longer be ignored, the property rights were not re-instated, as they should have. Instead, governments declared that they would henceforth be the protectors of the environment. As if. Only when we do the biblical thing, which is to re-instate property rights and thereby fully re-instate individuals and their families as the true stewards of creation, responsible and answerable to God, will we receive a truly sustainable improvement of the state of nature.

By the way, the author, Joseph Boot, is affiliated with the Ezra Institute.

The human cost of Net Zero

The war on fossil fuels is far more dangerous than climate change.

Article by Ralph Schoellhammer.

Excerpts:

The truth is that our societies are still massively dependent on fossil fuels. For all the talk of the advances made in renewable energy, the proportion of our electricity production reliant on fossil fuels has barely changed over the past 40 years. In that time, only nuclear power has declined as a source of electricity.

None of this is to say that an energy transition is impossible. A target of Net Zero by 2050 could well be met. But the rapid abandonment of fossil fuels that this demands would inflict misery and hardship on billions of people.

[. . .]

Canadian political scientist Vaclav Smil lists cement, steel, plastics and ammonia as the four ingredients that make the modern world possible. For example, modern healthcare systems need enormous amounts of plastic (for everything from flexible tubes to sterile packing), making it yet another crucial ingredient in the wellbeing of humanity. And without steel and cement, nothing could be built – no roads, no houses, no harbours, no airports. Plastics, steel and cement also require fossil fuels for their production.

[. . .]

Industrialisation transforms societies. The industrialisation of agriculture, for example, enables higher outputs with less labour, freeing humans for other endeavours. In the US, the labour needed to produce a kilogram of grain fell by 98 per cent between 1800 and 2020. The share of the population working in agriculture fell by a similar margin during that period. Not every country will have to follow this development path exactly – coal, for example, could be replaced by gas and nuclear. But what is certain is that no country will be able to industrialise and develop without fossil fuels.

[. . .]

The talk of leaving fossil fuels behind is not based in reality. It’s fuelled instead by a mixture of apocalypticism, hypocrisy and sheer wishful thinking. In the future, perhaps we will be able to power hospitals using kinetic energy. But right now, the costs of abandoning fossil fuels will likely do far more harm than climate change itself.

Remember that “record temperature” in July last year?

It was probably caused by three jets landing in quick succession at the airport where the temperature was measured

See article here.

Excerpts:

“In the light of our latest revelations, it’s time the Met Office made a statement about its claimed record at RAF Coningsby. It should either withdraw it, or provide convincing evidence as to why the record should be retained. If it does not take public action, it risks the ‘record’ becoming a national joke.”

“Last year was a warm year in the U.K. and July 19th was undoubtedly a very hot day, although the mini-heatwave had broken by 22:00, with rain in London and a 20°C drop in temperature. Five English places declared temperatures over 40°C, but all have problems with non-climatic heat corruptions.”

Solar Power Creates Waste and Pollution

Article by H. Sterling Burnett.

The article concentrates on the growing, and essentially disregarded problem of recycling of the panels. What the article doesn’t mention is the pollution due to the extraction of toxic metals from the ground which wouldn’t happen (certainly not to the current extent) without the artificially, government-induced boom in solar panels. Also, it doesn’t mention that solar panels get very hot in the sun and therefore increase the surrounding temperature and dryness in the atmosphere. That in turn draws moisture from the ground, and we get droughts.

The BBC’s position on Climate Change

Established in September 2018

Writes “carbonbrief.org”:

The move follows a ruling earlier this year by Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator, which found that BBC Radio 4’s flagship current-affairs programme Today had breached broadcasting rules by “not sufficiently challenging” Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor.

Here are the essentials of the ruling:

What’s the BBC’s position?

  • Man-made climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it. The BBC accepts that the best science on the issue is the IPCC’s position, set out above.
  • Be aware of ‘false balance’: As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate. Although there are those who disagree with the IPCC’s position, very few of them now go so far as to deny that climate change is happening. To achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken. However, the BBC does not exclude any shade of opinion from its output, and with appropriate challenge from a knowledgeable interviewer, there may be occasions to hear from a denier.
  • There are occasions where contrarians and sceptics should be included within climate change and sustainability debates. These may include, for instance, debating the speed and intensity of what will happen in the future, or what policies government should adopt. Again, journalists need to be aware of the guest’s viewpoint and how to challenge it effectively. As with all topics, we must make clear to the audience which organisation the speaker represents, potentially how that group is funded and whether they are speaking with authority from a scientific perspective – in short, making their affiliations and previously expressed opinions clear.