The Baroness in Beijing

The European Union informs the public about Baroness Ashton´s visit to Beijing:

The Baroness and Wen Jiabao enjoying a nice cup of tea 

EUROPEAN UNION
Beijing, 10 July 2012 
A 321/12 


High Representative Catherine Ashton met 
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China 


Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security 
Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, met the Prime Minister of People's Republic of 
China, Wen Jiabao, in Beijing today. In their discussion they expressed satisfaction with the 
positive momentum in the EU-China comprehensive strategic partnership and with the significant 
progress achieved in many areas of cooperation over the last decade. They looked forward to the 
15th EU-China Summit, scheduled to take place in the autumn; it will be the 10th Premier Wen will 
attend. The High Representative thanked Premier Wen for China's strong and consistent support for 
Europe and its economy. 


Maybe this was what the "High Representative" meant when she talked about the "positive momentum in the EU-China comprehensive strategic partnership"?:

Torture, organ harvesting from live prisoners of consience, long prison terms, harrassment, Internet censorship - these are just a few of the human rights violations discussed at a hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels last week. 

Overseas dissident Su Yutong, who now works as a journalist for Deutche Welle, was one of the guest speakers. She told an audience of over 100 people the story of her exile and described the suffering human rights lawyers, journalists, and petitioners undergo at the hands of the Chinese communist regime. 

Members of the European Parliament, EU officials, human rights activists and dissidents attended the hearing.

The day before the hearing, Su spoke with blind lawyer-activist Chen Guancheng on the phone. 

[Su Yutong, Human Rights Activist]:

"Because I talked to him after he (Chen Guangcheng) arrived in the U.S., he told me just this one thing: please believe me, even though I'm abroad, I will not be cut off from China, I will still do whatever I can from here."

Sakharov Prize winner Wei Jingsheng expressed his concerns about the worsening situation of human rights in China through a video message.

[Wei Jingsheng, Sakharov Prize winner]:

"Nowadays the human rights situation in China is in the most dangerous phase. Judicial authorities have been transformed into mafia, which will definitely make the whole society rapidly enter the time of Nazi Fascists or that of the Culture Revolution."

Gazprom and European football: When two kleptocracies meet

"Gazprom is acting as the extension of the Kremlin kleptocracy"

Jürgen Roth 
German investigative journalist, whose book, "Gazprom - Das unheimliche Imperium" (Gazprom - The sinister Empire) has recently been published


Why do the big clubs of Europe – Bayern, Manchester United, Barcelona, Internazionale, et al – need UEFA and FIFA when the two bodies have hitherto demonstrated they are opaque entities governed by self-interest, overseen by incompetent and oftentimes corrupt kleptocrats and almost completely oblivious to the desires of players, club owners, corporate sponsors and fans?


Karl Heinz Rummenigge
President, European Club Association


We are now told that Russian Gazprom will be Uefa´s official partner for the Champions League: 


Gazprom will be Uefa's sixth official partner for the upcoming three editions of the Champions League.

The Russian energy giants will promote its products via Europe's most elite club competition from 2012 to 2015 as well as the next three European Super Cups.

"Gazprom is a global energy company and the Champions League will benefit from Gazprom's presence in more than 20 European countries and many more around the world," David Taylor, CEO of Uefa Events SA commented to Soccerex Business Daily


"We expect that involvement with the Champions League will assist Gazprom to help build their brand awareness and identity on a global stage."



In a recent article, Jürgen Roth describes Gazprom´s kaleidoscope of blackmail for exercising influence in Europe: 

 In 2006, Elmar Brok, member of the European Parliament for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), raised the alarm about Gazprom’s expansionary efforts. Before that, Gazprom had announced that it would partly shut off its gas supplies to Europe if its plans for expansion in Europe were blocked. “Brok warned that the Russian energy company was pursuing a strategy not only to become the EU's biggest energy supplier, but also to gain control over the supplier networks and transit rights to ensure that “nothing happens without Gazprom.” 
-
Being dependent means being prone to blackmail. Consumer prices can be increased without really provoking resistance whenever it seems necessary – even if the reason is simply to exercise political pressure. 
-
Latvia’s oil supply was shut off in 2003; the same happened in Lithuania between 1992 and 2002 and once more in 2006. Poland was cut off from gas in 2004, and the Czech Republic from oil in 2008, not to mention the so-called ‘gas war’ between Russia and Ukraine in 2006.  In January 2006, the most important German oil refinery in Schwedt stopped receiving oil via the pipeline with the fitting name Druschba (friendship) and in Leuna, oil deliveries were also halted a year later for “business reasons". 


What should one then make of Uefa´s deal with Gazprom?


Well, maybe that´s what happens when two kleptocracies meet ...

PS
Maybe Gazprom´s brand new representative in Germany was the man who secured the deal for Putin´s energy outlet ?


Soon we will probably have to get used to this kind of images when FC Bayern Munich again tries to win the Champions League:

Great news: "Largest ever cereal harvest predicted this year"

Wasn´t global warming supposed to lead to greatly diminished harvests and global food scarcity? 


Well, tell this to Bill McKibben, Al Gore and the other scarmongers:


"Largest ever cereal harvest predicted this year"


The world is expected to harvest the largest ever crop of cereals in 2012-13 according to an estimate released by the UN affiliated Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recently. It is estimated that this year's world cereal production will be a record 2371 million tonnes, marking a 1 percent, or 27 million tonnes increase over 2011. 

India is forecast to produce a bumper harvest of 234.4 million tonnes of cereals, up from last year's 232.3 million tonnes. Wheat production is expected to grow marginally from 86.9 million tonnes last year to 88.3 million tonnes this year and rice from 103.4 million tonnes to 105 million tonnes. 


Read the entire article here

Cardiff University warmist desperate: "campaigners need to ditch the language of catastrophe and the images of polar bears"

Adam Corner, a warmist Cardiff University research associate, who´s "interests include the psychology of communicating climate change", reluctantly has to accept "that scepticism about the nature and seriousness of climate change has increased – rather than decreased – in recent years": 


Where public opinion about climate change could once be characterised as a state of mild concern, it has now become an amiable – or even disinterested – shrug. The more sophisticated analyses of trends in public opinion point to a clear link between the priority with which politicians and the media have treated climate change (linked to the economic crisis), and the weight it is assigned by members of the public. The issue has moved from centre stage to somewhere barely visible in the wings. Is it any surprise people have stopped paying attention?


In his research Corner has apparently found out that "this is a difficult time to communicate about climate change". Particularly the "clear and consistent links between conservative views and elevated levels of uncertainty about climate change" are worrying the research associate, who thinks that conservative climate sceptics could be brainwashed using this kind of tactics: 

Why are political conservatives more likely to downplay the risks of climate change? One possibility is that climate change has simply not been communicated in a way that resonates with conservative values and beliefs. Whereas those on the left can see obvious co-benefits in taking action to tackle climate change (initiatives to tax big polluters, for example, inevitably mean targeting the wealthy), there has so far been little for right-leaning folk to identify with.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There are policy solutions – and ways of framing the problem of climate change – that sit more comfortably with a conservative perspective. It is here that the business case for climate change – green jobs – is most likely to be effective. But there is also an urgent need to identify the conservative values – perhaps security and belonging, or an appreciation of the beauty of the natural world – that chime with arguments for tackling climate change.

Oh, yes, "green jobs" is a foolproof way to lure conservative climate sceptics!:

According to the report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Section 1503 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus), the part that covers green energy projects got some $9 billion in stimulus cash for 2009-11 and created a whopping 910 direct jobs — those involved in the ongoing operation of the wind and solar projects that were funded.

 For a $9 billion investment, the administration created just over 900 new, permanent jobs. We could have had 20,000 jobs building a pipeline with not a dollar of taxpayer money being wasted. 

And of course the "appreciation of the beauty of the natural world" is another safe bet for getting conservatives onboard the global warming train:

The Spanish Ornithological Society in Madrid estimates that Spain's 18,000 wind turbines may be killing 6 million to 18 million birds and bats annually. “A blade will cut a griffon vulture in half,” says Bechard. “I've seen them just decapitated."

“The troubling issue with wind development is that we're seeing a growing number of birds of conservation concern being killed by wind turbines,” says Albert Manville, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Arlington, Virginia.

“There are species of birds that are getting killed by wind turbines that do not get killed by autos, windows or buildings,” says Shawn Smallwood, an ecologist who has worked extensively in Altamont Pass, California, notorious for its expansive wind farms and raptor deaths. Smallwood has found that Altamont blades slay an average of 65 golden eagles a year². “We could lose eagles in this country if we keep on doing this,” he says. 

Other species at risk include the critically endangered California condors (Gymnogyps californicus) — which number only 226 in the wild — and the few hundred remaining whooping cranes (Grus americanus), concentrated in the central United States.

Good luck with "security" and "belonging", Mr. Corner! We are waiting for new creative suggestions! 

PS


Corner actually comes up with one excellent piece of advice, particularly addressed to the likes of WWF, Greenpeace and Al Gore:


 "campaigners need to ditch the language of catastrophe and the images of polar bears"

Megalomaniac global warming project in the Australian Bush

Global warming alarmists love to peddle false information about the "huge big oil funding" available for "climate deniers". Instead they should perhaps take a look at their own funding, which makes the modest resources available for "sceptics" pale. This brand new megalomaniac project in Australia is just one example:

Nine storey cranes and 28 metre high ring structures in native bushland that can produce the elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations predicted for later this century are among the state-of-the-art research facilities to be officially opened today (April 4, NNoN) by Senator Chris Evans at the University of Western Sydney’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment.

The unique research facilities, which are among the largest and most complex in the world, allow scientists to create future climatic conditions, including elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, higher temperatures and changed rainfall patterns.

The Institute’s research facilities were developed as a result of a $40 million grant from the Australian Government as part of its Education Investment Fund, together with funding from the University of Western Sydney.

PS 

While money is flowing to completely useless global warming projects, ordinary Australians are struggling to pay the new carbon tax, a unique Australian invention introduced by the Gillard goverment:

High cost and nil effect: that's our carbon tax

The Australian carbon tax is a species orphan, the Collins-class submarine of global environmental policy. It is environmentally inconsequential, economically costly, administratively nightmarish and unlike anything else in the world. Policy folly that it is, the Gillard government would still have a better chance of selling it if it occasionally told the truth about it.

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor, The Australian

EU aviation tax: Brussels busy planning face saving retreat

I have said it before - and I say it again: The European Union is going to be the big loser in a forthcoming trade war about the EU´s (incredibly stupid) carbon tax on foreign airlines. Now we hear that the Indian government is planning tough countermeasures: 


The trade battle with the European Union over the latter's unilateral decision to impose carbon tax on Indian airlines flying into or via the EU could turn into a full scale war with the Cabinet to soon consider a proposal for counter-measures against EU including reducing the number of flights and breaking existing bilateral agreements. 

The proposal, mooted by the civil aviation ministry, seeks the Cabinet's permission to impose various sanctions against EU airlines if the Indian aviation industry is either charged a carbon tax or penalized for not adhering to their taxation regime. The counter-measures recommended in the proposal include cancellning EU flights to India as well as cancelling "horizontal agreements". 

The move comes after the government told the Indian aviation sector not to provide data the EU had asked for as part of this new carbon tax regime. The tax itself is to be imposed from next year but the EU has sought data from all flights landing in or transiting via European airspace for calculating the taxes which some estimates suggest could add up to $1.5 billion per annum. 

The decision to go for a Cabinet clearance comes after a group of 26 countries including China, US, Russia, Brazil and India jointly agreed to a bouquet of retaliatory measures against EU in February 2012. It was decided that 'like-minded' countries would pick from the menu of options to counter EU's unilateral move if things came to a head.


Read the entire article here


It is quite obvious that the European Union - which is in the middle of a serious economic and political crisis - will have to abandon its unilateral carbon tax. In Brussels the behind-the-scenes search for a face saving retreat is now intensifying. The fact that EU´s previously so aggresive "climate queen" Connie Hedegaard has recently toned down her language considerably, is another sign of what is coming. 


Fabrice Brégier, CEO of Airbus has offered one possible solution:

“Solutions like applying the [EU emissions trading scheme] first to European [airspace], giving a fair chance to ICAO to come up with a negotiated international solution with­in the next 18 months and then extending it according to the recommendations of ICAO ... would be, for me, one possible good solution.”


Read the entire article here

China: Real pollution vs climate change

One of the tragic consequences of the almost total international fixation on fighting (bogus) human caused global warming is the fact that real and deadly pollution problems go almost unnoticed. Communist China, with its booming industry, is one of the countries worst affected. 
Fortunately ordinary Chinese people are now waking up to the dangers posed by dirty air and soil. Pollution problems have become a leading cause of civil unrest:

China has long been known as a place where the world’s dirtiest mines and factories can operate with impunity. Those days may not be over, but a growing environmental movement is beginning to make the most polluting projects much harder to build and operate.

Large and sometimes violent demonstrations against the planned construction of one of the largest copper smelting complexes on earth prompted local officials in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province to continue backpedaling furiously on Wednesday. The local government of Shifang, the planned site of the smelter, announced in a statement that the construction of the $1.6 billion complex had not only been suspended but also permanently canceled.

Thanks to the Internet — China has more Internet users than any other country — the protests appear to have resonated across the country. “Shifang” was the most-searched term on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service, on Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning, before abruptly disappearing entirely from the list of frequently searched terms in a possible sign of censorship.

Several posts praising the Shifang protests on Tuesday evening had been deleted by Wednesday morning, another sign of censorship. But more posts had replaced them.

Read the entire article here

The US Embassy in Beijing is also playing a role in focusing attention on China´s huge air pollution problems. The embassy measures the air quality in Beijing hourly and puts the findings on this Twitter page. (At least 90% of the time the records show either hazardous, very unhealthy or unhealthy air quality). 

Here are the tweets for the last couple of hours:

BeijingAir ‏@BeijingAir

07-08-2012 16:00; PM2.5; 139.0; 193; Unhealthy (at 24-hour exposure at this level)

BeijingAir ‏@BeijingAir

07-08-2012 15:00; PM2.5; 130.0; 188; Unhealthy (at 24-hour exposure at this level)

BeijingAir ‏@BeijingAir

07-08-2012 13:00; PM2.5; 135.0; 191; Unhealthy (at 24-hour exposure at this level)

No wonder then that the Chinese goverment wants to forbid the US embassy publishing the data: 

Last month, Chinese officials issued a general warning to foreign embassies, (but really aimed at the U.S.) to stop publishing reports about their country’s air quality.

The warning — in reference to a U.S. embassy Twitter account that, since 2008, has posted hourly readings of pollution levels of Beijing — illustrated how sensitive the government is about the country’s pollution problem.

And it's a problem that is becoming a growing concern among the public and considered a leading cause of civil unrest. The planned construction of industrial plants has sparked protests in some cities. Bowing to public pressure, officials shut down a planned copper plant for a southwestern China city on Wednesday after thousands protested the possible health impact from the facilty.

However, this is a fight the Chinese government is bound to lose. The corrupt communist party leaders will not be able to stop the growing protests of ordinary people who demand clean air and soil. 

PS

China Air Daily is another interesting and useful site for observing the air quality in a couple of Chinese cities: