Links - 8th June 2019 (2) (Climate Change/Environmentalism)

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'War footing' needed on climate change - "‘All those nasty old cynics out there who will say but come on this country produces less than 1% of total emissions, it'll make no difference at all, take the message to China’
‘Here’s my answer. Moral authority, you only get the moral authority to tell China and India that they need to change as well if we are changing’
‘You really think that China will listen to us because we stop going on holiday to the Costa Brava’...
‘I saw this as Climate and Energy Secretary. Actually in the negotiations that we were part of Britain did have some moral authority, because at that time, we were going ahead’"
Maybe Britain's moral authority will hurt the feelings of the Chinese people
Basically this is an admission that climate change hysteria is virtue signalling

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Extinction Rebellion's protests - "‘As you're escalating the disruption, we're on the fourth day, there's been talk of disrupting public transport, which is, after all, one of the most acceptable forms in terms of dealing with climate change. Aren’t people entitled to say it's an entirely insincere apology, you're disrupting lives for a political cause? Would you be happy if Nigel Farage was bringing the streets to a halt? *Something* in the name of democracy? Because the Brexit vote has not been delivered?’
‘I would actually. Yes, I think that's perfectly reasonable. If democracy is not being honored’...
‘If we were treating this as the emergency that it is, it would be on the news. Absolutely. Every single day, our children are at risk of not having food to eat in a few years time... This is unprecedented in our humanity, human extinction, our children's lifetime, it should be on, it should be your top news item every single day, what's happening, you need to be holding politicians to account?’
‘Well, let's talk about what you argue for. What you argue for is net zero emissions by 2025. That isn't currently the UN target... even after all those talks, the target is 2050. Do you accept the claim made by some that that’ll mean getting rid of all gas boilers in that time, and all petrol driven cars by 2025?’
‘I think we need a wartime type mobilization to make these changes. And we have to adopt the precautionary principle.’
‘Because in practical terms, that's why I give you practical examples. Would it mean that?’
‘And I don't know exactly. I think there's lots of different ways that you can go about this, which is why we're calling for a Citizens Assembly that comes up with the different mechanisms for implementing’
‘But if it did you be in favor of that? If that's what it says, that's totally fine. I mean, what you have to realize is, like in a war, you have to deal with the reality. We're not in a war. We're at war with ourselves. We're at war with life on Earth. We can't just do reality here, we have to do what's necessary.’...
‘We will be announcing that from the climate change committee based on the science. And that will be announced in the next couple of weeks. It will then be for the government to take that and I believe to commit itself to that. And to ignore the Daily Telegraph, which says that we're only a very small number of emissions. We, in Britain, are causing much of the climate change that is happening now. Because we were at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution'
Not caving to activists = not honouring democracy"
If it's a war they need to invade China and India to cut their emissions rather than effectively virtue signal uselessly
This is an admission that climate change hysteria is about self-flagellation for perceived historical wrongs rather than what will make a difference today

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Climate change protests - "The Home Secretary is asking the police to use the full force of the law. You know, what does that mean? If you remember the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, at that time, bought water cannon, after the inner city riots. And then the Home Office refused to give it a license and it had to be sold at a great loss. So there's no political appetite, really for more robust policing. And the police don't on the whole trust politicians who say that, is because when the investigations and the public inquiries happen, and they don't get the support"

Kid Climate Educators Open Adult Eyes - "This process of children teaching their parents, it really was most effective among those parents who were previously the least concerned about climate change. So that was conservatives and fathers. And then what was also really exciting was that the treatment was particularly effective if the child that was doing the teaching was a daughter"
No wonder they want to get the children

Popular Technology.net: 97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them - "The paper, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' searched the Web of Science for the phrases "global warming" and "global climate change" then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors."

Around the world, backlash against expensive climate change policies - "the Forum for Democracy (FvD), a fledgling political party just three years old, tied for the largest number of seats, 12, in the divided Dutch Senate in the 2019 elections. FvD takes a decidedly skeptical stance on climate change. On the campaign trail, Thierry Baudet, FvD’s leader, said the government should stop funding programs to meet the country’s commitments to international climate change agreements, saying such efforts are driven by “climate change hysteria.”In Finland, climate change policies became the dominant issue in the April 14 election, as support for climate skepticism suddenly surged"

Bjørn Lomborg - Posts - "Unbridled alarmism: Global warming worse than famine, plague and global nuclear war... according to one geography study book, officially endorsed by the Wales, England and Northern Ireland exam board (WJEC)."
Keywords: Climate Change hysteria

The only consistency about the climate change protesters is that they are completely wrong - "Police have arrested more than 100 climate change protestors who have brought parts of London to a halt and vandalised dozens of buildings. They are part of an allegedly global movement demanding more action from governments to tackle global warming. The activists have deliberately set out to cause maximum disruption and to get themselves arrested for wanton damage and obstruction.The campaigners belong to an outfit called Extinction Rebellion, some of whose members stripped off in the public gallery of the House of Commons earlier this month. They are in the anti-capitalist tradition of the Occupy movement which grew to prominence around the time of the 2008 financial crash... The sanctimonious climate change activists essentially want to put us back into the dark ages by ending economic growth. They are inflicting misery on commuters and businesses for no purpose whatsoever other than to claim a spurious moral high ground.The UK contributes less than one per cent of global CO2 emissions and they are falling fast. Countries like China are the major producers and emissions there are going up not down. Why don’t the protestors take their pink boat from Oxford Street and park it in the middle of Beijing and see if the authorities there are as indulgent as ours have been."

Bjørn Lomborg - Posts - "The linking of every catastrophe to climate is obviously very useful for alarmists. A 2019 survey showed that extreme weather makes more people change their minds on climate than anything else."

Domestic Livestock and Its Alleged Role in Climate Change | IntechOpen - "Our key conclusion is there is no need for anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and even less so for livestock-born emissions, to explain climate change. Climate has always been changing, and even the present warming is most likely driven by natural factors. The warming potential of anthropogenic GHG emissions has been exaggerated, and the beneficial impacts of manmade CO2 emissions for nature, agriculture, and global food security have been systematically suppressed, ignored, or at least downplayed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and other UN (United Nations) agencies. Furthermore, we expose important methodological deficiencies in IPCC and FAO (Food Agriculture Organization) instructions and applications for the quantification of the manmade part of non-CO2-GHG emissions from agro-ecosystems. However, so far, these fatal errors inexorably propagated through scientific literature. Finally, we could not find a clear domestic livestock fingerprint, neither in the geographical methane distribution nor in the historical evolution of mean atmospheric methane concentration"

(15) (PDF) Severe Methodological Deficiencies Associated with Claims of Domestic Livestock Driving Climate Change - "Reduction of global livestock numbers and meat consumption have been recommended for climate change mitigation. However, the basic assumptions made to come up with that kind of recommendations reveal severe methodological deficiencies: (1) Carbon footprint, emission intensity, and life-cycle assessments of domestic livestock products reported in scientific literature consistently overlooked the necessity of correcting non CO 2 GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions (nitrous oxide and methane) from managed ecosystems for baseline emission scenarios over time and space (pristine ecosystem and/or pre-climate change emissions); (2) Uncertainties associated with the climate sensitivity of anthropogenic GHG-emissions have been ignored; (3) Inconsistencies in the methodological treatment of land use change (deforestation) in emission intensity calculations (per unit of product) can be detected in the literature; (4) The virtual lack of a discernable livestock signal in global methane distribution and historical methane emission rates has not been acknowledged; theoretical bottom up calculations do not reflect the relative insignificance of livestock-born methane for the global methane budget; (5) Potential substrate induced enhancement of methane breakdown rates have not been taken into consideration"

Humans Did Not Cause the U.S. Cold Snap - "The cold snap that sent temperatures plunging last week and brought the most frigid new year in recorded history, in some places, had nothing to do with climate change, according to a new study... former Vice President Al Gore tweeted that the bitter cold is "exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis.""

Netflix is lying about those falling walruses. It’s another ‘tragedy porn’ climate hoax - "Now that polar bears have failed to die off in response to a sea-ice decline as promised, climate alarmists are looking hard for a new icon... a now-famous episode of Netflix’s “Our Planet” documentary series, released this month and narrated by veteran BBC broadcaster David Attenborough, features walruses falling from atop a high cliff and bouncing helplessly over rocks to their deaths. The incident occurs after what’s called a “land haulout,” which is when large herds of walrus females and calves emerge from the water to gather and rest on a beach. The show blames the land haulouts — and the deaths caused by falling from cliffs — squarely on lack of sea ice due to human-caused climate change. “They’d be on the ice if they could be, but there’s no option but to come to land,” the episode’s producer says. The claim isn’t true. In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined in October 2017 that Pacific walrus have not been harmed by recent sea-ice loss and are not expected to be harmed in the foreseeable future... The tactic is reminiscent of the infamous 2017 stunt when National Geographic magazine publicized a video of an emaciated polar bear, which it falsely blamed on global warming. This kind of disturbing nature film footage has become known as “tragedy porn.” It’s infused with a narrative that misrepresents or glosses over important facts for the sole purpose of manipulating emotionally immature viewers into feeling distressed and angry... Along the Russian coast of the Chukchi Sea, records show that walrus land haulouts are a natural phenomenon going back to the 19th century, and have nothing to do with climate change. Recent haulouts are enormous because the total population is enormous... Despite the climate change fears, the walrus population is actually booming once again. It may now be as large as 300,000 animals. And polar bear numbers are also up in the Chukchi Sea, according to a survey completed in 2016. Chukchi polar bears are fatter and reproducing better than they were in the 1980s. Ringed and bearded seals are doing better too, which has been attributed to more algae and plankton in the water since 2007. In other words, longer ice-free summers in the Chukchi Sea, along with restricted hunting, have allowed walrus, Arctic seals, and polar bears to thrive... What really made those walruses on Netflix fall to their death from a rocky cliff? Overhead shots in a “behind the scenes” trailer for the “Our Planet” series suggest a drone was used in filming, which could have spooked the walruses into stampeding. The crew also admitted there were polar bears in the area, another possible cause for the deadly stampede. The behind-the-scenes segment also, troublingly, shows how a cameraman on the beach may have potentially discouraged walruses at the top of the cliff from returning the way they had gone up — the safer way down."