BBC News, 8 June 2009
The UK Independence Party has finished second in the European elections, ahead of Labour, on an impressive night for the Eurosceptic party. It performed strongly in the East of England, where it won two seats and its total vote went up, and also picked up seats in Yorkshire and London.
It gained 17.4% of the vote and increased its number of MEPs to 13, one more than it achieved in 2004. Its leader Nigel Farage said the result showed its 2004 outcome was “no fluke”. And he claimed the party would have gained even more votes if it had been allowed to properly debate the European issue, rather than MPs expenses, which dominated the campaign. Read more here. Read also “Voters steer Europe to the right - Centre-right parties have done well in elections to the European Parliament at the expense of the left. Far-right and anti-immigrant parties also made gains” here.
The Price of Climate Hype: Labour’s Self-Destruction
By Sonja A Boehmer-Christiansen
Dear Benny (Benny Peiser, CCNet)
Re your argument (CCNet, 6 June 2009) that: “Green policies are gradually pricing the working and lower-middle classes out of their comfort zone. Labour parties may sincerely believe that their utopian low-carbon plans will save the planet. But in the process they are destroying the very foundations of their political support and movement.”
I agree, but this belief is surely equally held almost everywhere in EU, by all other main parties. They compete over ‘who is the greenest in the land’? Any sign that this is changing? I can’t see it in UK.
Sonja
Benny Peiser’s Response: Sonja - yes, most mainstream parties in the EU and the UK have been riding the climate bandwagon for years. But Labour and centre-left parties are particularly vulnerable to the current backlash as their voters suffer most from costly green policies. All over Europe, the centre-left has been haemorrhaging core voters. The fact that UKIP, an openly climate sceptical party, has beaten Labour into third place in the EU elections is a clear signal. It suggests that any party promoting unpopular climate policies and green taxes that will further increase the cost of energy, transport and travel for ordinary families risks being punished in future elections.
As far as Britain is concerned, the Labour government and its green agenda is finished. Let that be a warning to President Obama and other would-be salvationists. Britain’s next government will have to carefully reassess all green and climate policies that pose a heavy burden on millions of struggling families and businesses. Otherwise, it will face the same popular revolt that is now bringing down the Brown government. BJP
See in this Reuter’s story
a strong showing by pro-industry Conservatives in elections to the European Parliament could make it hard for Green parties to capitalise on their own gains.
A science-based answer by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Chu’s ‘Texas Longhorn’ (A point here, a point there, and a whole lotta bull in between.)
Steven Chu, entertainingly described as an “Energy Secretary”, says we can Save The Planet from “global warming” by painting our rooftops and roads white. He says making roofs and roads paler would have the same effect as taking every automobile in the world off the road for 11 years.
Secretary Chu’ madcap scheme to paint roads and rooftops white would cost $17 trillion this century, and would cut global temperature by just 0.2 Fahrenheit. At the open request of Rush Limbaugh, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has calculated that Energy Secretary Chu’s modest proposal to paint all the world’s roads and rooftops white would cost $17 trillion this century, and would cut global temperature by just 0.2 Fahrenheit degrees, reports the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) - a Washington, D.C. research organization.
Lord Monckton, in characteristically vigorous style, writes: “Steven Chu, like the Chattanooga locomotive whose name he proudly bears, is all steamed up about nothing, exists in a previous century, goes slowly and pointlessly backwards and forwards over the same ground, pulls a lot of fellow travellers and baggage along with him, makes scary hooting and howling noises from time to time, keeps on missing points, is invariably late, and needs massive Federal subsidies to keep the whole show on the rails.”
Monckton’s rather humorous written response, answering an on-air question from Rush Limbaugh, pokes gentle but scientifically-accurate fun at the Energy Secretary’s proposal. He says, “The Chu-Chu’s gravy-train will soon be tipping into the gulch.” And he’s done the calculations to prove it.
Monckton also costs out for Limbaugh the Waxman/Markey Climate Bill. To prevent a “global warming” of only 1 Fahrenheit degree, he says, we must forego the emission of 1 - 10 trillion tons of CO2. Waxman/Markey declares that CO2 emissions in the US in the year 2050 will be cut by five-sixths of today’s 5 billion tons. That would prevent just 0.0005-0.005 Fahrenheit degrees of warming a year - or 1 F in 200-2000 years - at a cost of $180 billion a year.
Says SPPI president, Robert Ferguson, “According to Monckton’s calculations, cutting ‘global warming’ by the 7-degrees F that the UN predicts will happen this century would cost $250-2,500 trillion. That is beyond expensive, particularly when you find that ‘global warming’ is not happening anyway.”
Monckton concludes: “Don’t expect a deal on emissions cuts at Copenhagen. That’s not the real objective. The real objective is “world government”. And world government won’t be democratic government. You heard it here first. It will be a bureaucratic-centralist dictatorship, elected by no one, accountable to no one, and sackable by no one, just like the dismal and corrupt European Union, but on a global scale. The world’s “leaders” will gladly cede their nations’ constitutional independence to the new global dictatorship, glibly reciting the pretext that “pooling” of sovereignty is necessary to save us from ourselves and to Save The Planet from destruction through our folly. Like the short-sighted statesmen of Carthage, who eagerly sold out their nation to Rome and were duly killed in the streets by their own justifiably-enraged citizenry as the walls of their citadel fell to the stamping legions, they will be willing to desert their own populations, and ignore their oaths to uphold their national constitutions, because, just as “leaders” of European nations now do, they hope that one day they will pass comfortably from the “leadership” of their nations to “world leadership” as front-line members of the new ruling junta of the entire globe.
In short, the “global warming” scare is not about climatology. It’s about freedom, as the President of the Czech Republic has rightly said. Will you let President Obama ignore the oath of office he never quite took, and sign away the US Constitution he is supposed to defend to the new, dark, global tyranny that will come into being at Copenhagen? Yes, you will, because you elected him, and now you’re powerless to stop him.
Farewell, America! Your love of freedom, your “athletic democracy”, your governments of the people, by the people and for the people, were beacons of hope to us all, before they perished from the Earth. Thank you, and goodnight. There will be no electricity tomorrow. But there will be lots and lots of shiny whitewash.
The paper can be read here.
Wall Street Journal
Global warming alarmists are fond of invoking the authority of experts against the skepticism of supposedly amateur detractors—a.k.a. “deniers.” So when one of those experts says that a recent report on the effects of climate change is “worse than fiction, it is a lie,” the alarmists should, well, be alarmed.
The latest contretemps pits former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, now president of the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, against Roger Pielke, Jr., an expert in disaster trends at the University of Colorado. Mr. Annan’s outfit issued a lengthy report late last month warning that climate change-induced disasters, such as droughts and floods, kill 315,000 each year and cost $125 billion, numbers it says will rise to 500,000 dead and $340 billion by 2030. Adding to the gloom, Mr. Annan predicts “mass starvation, mass migration, and mass sickness” unless countries agree to “the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated” at a meeting this year in Copenhagen.
Enter Mr. Pielke, who, we hasten to add, does not speak for us (nor we for him). But given the headlines the Annan report has garnered, his views deserve amplification. Writing in the Prometheus science policy blog, Mr. Pielke calls the report a “methodological embarrassment” and a “poster child for how to lie with statistics” that “does a disservice” to those who take climate change issues seriously. Read full editorial here.
In a letter to Dr. Benny Peiser of CCNet, Dr. Madhav Khandekar, former climatologist and meteorologist with Environment Canada, an IPCC reviewer and en expert and occasionnal poster commented:
Most of us sceptics fully agree with Pielke’s assessment, namely that this is such a shabbily performed report that in my opinion, it does not even deserve a response.
Allow me a different take on this report:
I presume you or Prof Henderson would have access to the number of people dying of malnutrition, malaria, etc during the period say 1950-1975 when the earth’s mean temp was declining and there was No hysteria about the GW issue then
Based on my experience of living in post-independent India from 1947 till 1962 (I left India for US for my higher education in Aug 1962) I recall large number of deaths due to cholera then which was very prevalent then, esp during the summer Monsoon season with open gutters ( they are still there in present India, but on the decline now) and large number of poor people living along such insanitary conditions thus leading to high number of deaths due to cholera , malaria and diarrhea. Also in India another terrible disease was leprosy which I recall caused large number of deaths and suffering. From my assessment, leprosy deaths are significantly down in India in the last 20 years.
In Africa, especially in Ethiopia and Sahel, there were large number of deaths due to malnutrition, famine etc during the 1960s.
What I am saying here is: I believe there were as many (or perhaps more) deaths during the period 1950-1975 due to what GHF refers to “climate change” deaths when in fact all these and many other deaths occurred simply due to many other factors like non-availability of simple medical facilities, poor hygiene etc plus mal-nutrition leading to more deaths in the 1950-1975 period, BUT no one blamed this on GW/climate change because the mean temperature was declining and the climate change issue was NOT fashionable as it is now.
Allow me one more example: In November 1970 a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal hit Bangladesh (which was then East Pakistan) and this resulted in the largest number of fatalities ever in one single natural disaster, about 200,000! Yet I do not recall any environmentalist then calling attention to climate change and reducing GHGs WHY? As I see it, the earth’s mean temp was declining then and the idea of “human-induced climate change” was simply non-existent then. When Hurricane Katrina caused over 1000 deaths, in August 2005, every one blamed it on global warming!
I would be interested if you or Prof Henderson could get some figures on deaths due to malnutrition, malaria, cholera etc during the period 1950-75 and compare them with the GHF numbers. I am almost certain deaths due to such causes were more then they are now.