UK professor in the alarmist Guardian: "We' re lucky to be enjoying a brief, balmy interglacial"

I could not believe my eyes when I first read it in the Guardian/Observer, the European flagship of global warming alarmism:  An article about climate change in which catastrophic human caused global warming is not  mentioned at all! 

But there it was, written by a renowned university professor: 

Radical temperature fluctuations are a fact of life on Earth, and we're lucky to be enjoying a brief, balmy interglacial. But look out when it stops…
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So here we are, in an interglacial. It's sobering to remember that this is just a brief interlude. Some time fairly soon, we'll probably begin the descent into a long glacial winter again. When that happens, all the temperate-adapted animals that currently range widely across the northern hemisphere will clear out of the far north. Ice sheets will grow down over North America and northern Europe again. Our civilisations have grown up in this unseasonably stable (and already overlong) warm interglacial. We've grown a huge global population in this favourable climate. It will be even more difficult to support such a massive number of people when the world becomes colder and drier again.

But for those cold-adapted animals that are currently hanging out in Arctic refugia, things will look up. If polar bears manage to cling on, there'll be much more room for them in the next glaciation.

Read the entire article here

PS

The Guardian's guardians of their "holy AGV grail" must have been on vacation when University of Birmingham professor Alice Roberts provided her excellent article. 

One thing is certain, however. We will not read anything written by professor Roberts in the Guardian anytime soon.

Greenpeace UK endorsing a bigger role for coal?

John Sauven, Executive Director, Greenpeace UK, has found a way to save the world:

"What man-made, man can undo. 

First stop exploring for unconventional fossil fuels in Canada’s tar sands or underneath the Arctic. When in a hole, stop digging. Second, copy Germany."

Sauven most certainly must know what it means to copy Germany: 

A funny thing is happening on the way to the clean energy future.  While the US government wages a regulatory war on coal fired generation, in Europe, the land of the oh so politically correct the drive for greenhouse gas emissions reduction is meeting a new competitor—-reality!

The EU emissions trading scheme had fallen on hard times as the number of permits issued was large and demand in a falling economy was weak so prices fell.  Some reforms were made and the freebie credits were reined in but the economy was still weak.  While progress was still made in emissions reduction it was not the transformation some had hoped to achieve.

Then the Japan earthquake and tsunami sends Europe into a frenzy over the safety of nuclear power and Germany announced major closures of its nuclear fleet.  The Greens hoped killing off nuclear would give them a two-fer—less nuke and more renewables.

The German government policy is to encourage construction of 10 gigawatts of coal fired generation to displace aging nuclear plants and provide baseload backup for wind and solar power.  Worldwide coal plant construction grew 5.4% over the past year according to BP and now represents about 30% of installed capacity. The trade-off is to reduce the number of free emissions allowances to drive up the carbon credits markets.  To the Greens this is like paying penance for your sins.

But markets are a fickle mistress.  The lust for profits is a basic human business animal spirit.  So a story recently in Bloomberg BusinessWeek caught my eye. It said that European power producers planned to open six times more coal fired generating plants than gas-fired generators by 2015.  The story said profits at coal plants were expected to double repeating an analysis released September 13 by Goldman Sachs.

Read the entire article here

Greenpeace's support for the German model, is a clear endorsement for increasing the role of coal in global and European energy production. Will we soon see Greenpeace campaigning for a renaissance of the British coal industry? 

Australia´s Queensland government shows how to deal with Greenpeace

The Queensland government in Australia shows how to deal with Greenpeace: 

"The Queensland government places no weight on any report that Greenpeace prepares.

''They are scaremongers of the first order and never let the facts get in the way of their predetermined views," Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development Jeff Seeney said.

He said the development of the Galilee Basin was vital to Queensland´s economic future, and it would be done in a balanced way.

He noted the government had already scaled back the Abbot Point coal port, and limited rail corridors from the basin to coal ports to two, and not six as Labor had proposed.

"Queenslanders can be assured that while providing for development we will require mining companies to pursue world´s best practice and ensure that the environment is protected," he said.

Also the Queensland Resources Council knows how to handle Greenpeace reports: 

The Queensland Resources Council also dismissed the report, calling it a "comic book".

QRC chief executive Michael Roche said the coal industry had only managed to grow exports by 71 million tonnes over the past 13 years.

"Greenpeace would have people believe that coal exports will grow by a further 891 million tonnes over the next decade," he said in a statement.

"Greenpeace has the industry growing more than six-fold."

Mr Roche said more credible forecasts came from the federal government¡¯s Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics, which reported the outlook for 2020 at 327 million tonnes.

"Who is the public to believe, the independent experts at BREE or the people from the scary monsters unit at Greenpeace, an organisation committed to shutting down the Australian coal industry," he asked.

Dr Nikki Williams, chief executive of the Australian Coal Association said: "Greenpeace is plunging its head in the sandpit, ignoring the reality of global energy demand.

"Their latest missive is an instalment in their agenda to cripple the coal export industry, exposed by Australian media in March this year."

Read the entire article here

Finally there are politicians who are prepared to stand up against the Greenpeace enviro-fundamentalists. Politicians elsewhere should learn from their colleagues in Queensland!

ABC New´s warmist climate change reporter: "I am not an advocate to try to stop global warming"

ABC New´s veteran climate change reporter, warmist Bill Blakemore: "I’m not an advocate to try to stop global warming"!

Judge yourself. 

Are these the views of a "fair and accurate" journalist?:

"It’s warming. It’s caused by a human activity, human emissions. It’s coming far faster than was expected even five years ago. It’s very dangerous. It’s causing enormous changes to agricultural prices, [and] to seasonal rhythms. And the fifth part of the basics which, as the science keeps showing, that if humanity were to somehow figure out how to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions on a global scale—if humanity were to do that, then it could prevent this rise in temperature, which is…going to continue for at least twenty or thirty years, from then shooting up even further after 2050."

How do you approach this issue, given its politicization? As a journalist, fair and accurate.

"Yes, yes. I discovered the gravity of the global warming story—as described by the world’s climate scientists—about 8 years ago, about 2004, 2005. And I quickly came to understand it as an event story, not a politics story. That is to say: It’s not a politics story; it’s not about politics. It’s a political issue, of course, but the core of the story is an event that is happening, according to all of the world’s climate scientists. Like when Mt. St. Helen’s suddenly blew up, we didn’t feel compelled to give the other side equal time or something like that that you hear in political reporting. So, by and large, there’s been—I consider it an event story that you just keep covering, and ignore the false politicization of it.

Now this gets complex because there’s been a lot of solid, investigative, and academic journalism and research that shows that there is a vigorous disinformation and intimidation campaign trying to confuse people, especially in America, about how solid the science is. You talk to any credible, established, professional climate scientists, and they will tell you that the basics of global warming are as solid as science ever gets. And that’s the way I cover it. And if I should find it different, I’d be immediately ready to change it. But I just keep covering it as an event.

I know that there’s all kinds of confusions about the story, partly because it’s so big. It’s unprecedented in its scale. It’s not the elephant in the room, it’s the elephant we’re all inside of. For example, conversations that I and a lot of my colleagues around the country have with our editors is—those of us in the field—are telling our editors, “Look, this isn’t, please don’t think of this as a weather story primarily, or an environment story primarily. It’s not. It’s primarily a security story and a finance story.” So there’s all kinds of new categories that the whole profession of journalism is having to come to understand."

What do you think is most missing from this dialogue about climate change?

"I’ve heard lately a number of colleagues and other academics say that, in America, what’s been missing is discussion of what the realities would be if we—what the economic realities would be—if the government and the society in general did try to tackle it and sort of plan it out. Now, in fact, there have been a number of studies done. Lord Nicholas Stern in Britain did a study about, ‘if the world did this, what percentage of GDP would have to be lost every year?’
Another thing that I personally feel is greatly missing in the United States from the discussion about what to do about global warming is a healthy, strong Republican and conservative voice in this. It seems—and I have no party identity myself; I make a point of not have any; I’m not an advocate to try to stop global warming, I’m just trying to report it—but my impression is that as long as one of the major political parties has a large faction trying to pretend that, or claim that, the problem isn’t significant or isn’t there, their voice is sorely missing from the real discussion that I would suspect we need in this country about what to do about it."

 Read the entire article here

The end of Gazprom - and the Putin era - is near

The demise of the Russian energy giant Gazprom - to be followed by the the fall of dictator Vladimir Putin - now appear almost certain, even if it will take a few years: 

Gazprom, the natural gas company controlled by the Russian state, is in crisis. It is likely to fall victim to the shale gas revolution that is under way across the US. The shale gas revolution will probably have telling consequences for Russian state capitalism and President Vladimir Putin’s power.

This crisis erupted suddenly. With its surge in shale gas production the US has become self-sufficient in natural gas. It has overtaken Russia as the biggest natural gas producer. Crucially, US natural gas is cheap. Domestic US natural gas prices are only a quarter of Gazprom’s oil-linked eastern European prices. Such large price differentials cannot possibly last for long.

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Curiously, in 2011 Gazprom was formally the most profitable company in the world with purported net profits of $46bn, but these profits were hardly real. Investment analysts opined that no less than $40bn disappeared through inefficiency or corruption. Gazprom’s cash flow was barely positive.

In their 2010 booklet Putin and Gazprom , Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, the opposition politicians, detailed how assets were being stripped from Gazprom through large kickbacks on pipeline construction and cheap sales of financial and media subsidiaries to Putin cronies. Since shareholders have realised that only their dividend yield is material, Gazprom’s market value has plummeted by two-thirds from $365bn in May 2008 to $120bn today.

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Gazprom’s demise looks likely. With its demise, Russia’s revenues would dwindle. Mr Putin‘s model of state capitalism would suffer a devastating blow from Gazprom’s fall. If not even Gazprom is viable, which Russian state company is? Such an insight could give market economic reforms new impetus. After all, Russia just privatised $5.2bn of shares in Sberbank, the state savings bank.

In his first comments on the European Commission case against Gazprom in Vladivostok on September 9, Mr Putin revealed the level of his incomprehension of market economics. He said the “EU subsidises the economies of eastern European countries. Now it seems that someone in the EU has decided to shift part of the burden, some of the subsidies, to us”.

Contrary to the evidence, he said Gazprom’s prices were market-oriented, adding that “we have had certain pricing principles for decades and they are written in long-term contracts. No one ever questioned these principles”.

Well, the European Commission does question them. The longer Mr Putin denies reality, the deeper Gazprom’s crisis will grow.

Read the entire article here

Of course Vladimir Putin will fight until the bitter end in order to stay in power. But there is no way he can save his failed money machine, Gazprom. And there will be no Putin without Gazprom. The day when Putin shares the fate of all other corrupted dictators could be beginning of Russia´s progress towards real democracy, for the benefit its long suffering people. 

As we have said before, this will be another huge benefit of the American led shale gas revolution. 

European media have lost interest in international climate change conferences

The European Union still pretends to be the global warming "superpower" at various UN sponsored climate change/global warming conferences, telling and, in the case of airlines, forcing other countries to conform with their "progressive" climate legislation. However, European media have lost interest in these mega meetings, and in global warming in general. Even alarmist environment journalists now doubt "that a difference in climate change will emerge from a global forum like a UN summit":

For the 16 years preceding Cancun, more than 80 percent of the journalists reporting these  conferences came mainly from Europe, the US, Japan and Canada. But Cancun—otherwise known as COP16—saw a reversal of that dynamic, with 55 percent of the reporters from the Global South. This increased to 66 percent in Durban, while those from developed countries dwindled to 34 percent.

The decline of European media attendance is astonishing. European journalists have passed from representing the largest group at all the summits held until Copenhagen, to almost an endangered species. They have dropped from representing 60 percent of the attendance at Copenhagen, to 22 percent in Cancun and 19 percent in Durban. While a number of large developing countries, such as China, India, or Bangladesh, maintained their media presence after Copenhagen—even when expectations for an international agreement were much lower—European countries that traditionally sent a cohort of climate correspondents, such as France, Germany, Spain or the UK, drastically reduced their numbers.

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I interviewed seven experienced reporters working for mainstream outlets in Western European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), all of whom used to attend climate summits until Copenhagen and now cover them from afar.

In addition to media organizations downsizing and making budget cuts, all their editors argued that as expectations were lower and there were fewer Heads of State attending Cancun or Durban, it was not worth spending money to send a correspondent abroad for at least a week.

In most of the outlets represented by these reporters, climate change coverage has seen a dramatic reduction in terms of copy and broadcast minutes, at least during the autumn period when these events take place. Additionally, the lack of interest by editors in climate negotiations has been accompanied by less interest in the subject of climate change in general during the rest of the year.
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None of the climate journalists I have talked to believe that a difference in climate change will emerge from a global forum like a UN summit, but more likely from action at the local level. 

Read the entire article here

The Spanish journalist, who wrote the article in the Columbia Journalism Review, is still a believer in the UN climate change/global warming propaganda, but her text gives a rather realistic view of the situation in European media. It is also apparent that also US media have lost interest in the UN global warming jamborees. Soon the only reporters attending will be those from "developing" countries, sponsored by governments hoping to cash in on the global warming hoax.

Alarmist "study": 1000 children a day are dying because of climate change

Alarmists still seem to think that scaremongering is a winning strategy: 

Nearly 1,000 children a day are now dying because of climate change, according to a path-breaking study published Wednesday (PDF), and the annual death toll stands at 400,000 people worldwide.

Climate change also is costing the world economy $1.2 trillion a year, the equivalent of 1.6 percent of economic output, reports the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by 20 of the world’s governments whose nations are most threatened by climate change and released on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.

Most of the 400,000 annual deaths are “due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children in developing countries,” concludes the study, written by 50 scientists and policy experts from around the world.

Read the entire article here

The enviro-fundamentalists behind the "study" do not seem to realize that this kind of lunatic scaremongering is counterproductive. But from a climate skeptic point of view it is not without its benefits; sane people understand how far from reality the alarmists are. However, it is sad if easily influenced individuals - and children - suffer after reading the horror stories.