(Friday blog)
So, the venerable national treasure Sir David Attenborough was back on our screens last night predicting total catastrophe if we humans fail to act on Climate Change. He gave us all the usual warnings – “right now we are facing our greatest threat in thousands of years – climate change” and “there isn’t much time left” and “the science is clear that urgent action is needed” and of course “we are facing a man-made disaster on a global scale”. But these predictions of total climate catastrophe have a long and not very honourable history.
The prophets of doom?
In 1982, the UN announced a two-decade tipping point for action on environmental issues. Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, that the “world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now.” According to Tolba, lack of action would bring “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.”
So, according to this (IMHO) useless parasitic buffoon, by 2002 we should have been deep in climate doodoo.
In 1989, the UN was still trying to sell “a coming climate catastrophe” to the public. In July 1989, Noel Brown, the then-director of the New York office of UNEP was warning of a “10-year window of opportunity to solve” global warming. According to the article: “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.”
So, we should have seen this disaster scenario by 2002, about 17 years ago. I’m still waiting.
By 2006 the situation was apparently becoming critical as Al Gore explained in his fantasy film “An Inconvenient Truth”. According to Gore we had just 10 years left to save the planet.
But in 2007, seven years after that supposed 2002 climate catastrophe hadn’t happened, Rajendra Pachauri, then the extremely well-paid chief of the UN IPPC, declared 2012 the climate deadline by which it was imperative to act: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
In 2009 our very own jet-setting multi-millionaire Prince Charles was apparently also an expert on climatology just like jet-setting multi-millionaire Al Gore. Jet-setting multi-millionaire Charles originally announced in March 2009 that we had “less than 100 months to alter our behavior before we risk catastrophic climate change.”
Later that year, at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Al Gore sought UN climate agreement immediately. “We have to do it this year. Not next year, this year,” he demanded. “And of course the clock is ticking because Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”
Sounds familiar?
In fact 2009 seems to have been a popular year for climate catastrophe predictions. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his own deadline in August 2009, when he warned of “incalculable” suffering without a UN climate deal in December 2009.
At the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Prince Charles jetted in with the usual retinue of flunkies to warn us: “The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control.”
In 2010, the Prince of Wales said, “Ladies and gentlemen we now have only 86 months left before we reach the tipping point.”
But in 2012, the UN gave Planet Earth another four-year reprieve. UN Foundation president and former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth called Obama’s re-election the “last window of opportunity” to get it right on climate change.
By 2014, a clearly frustrated Prince Charles seemed to abandon the countdown, announcing, “We are running out of time. How many times have I found myself saying this over recent years?”
In 2017, Prince Charles’s one-hundred-month deadline finally expired. What did Charles have to say? Was he giving up? Did he proclaim the end times for the planet? Far from it. Two years earlier, in 2015, Prince Charles abandoned his hundred-month countdown and generously gave the world a reprieve by extending his climate tipping point another thirty-five years, to the year 2050! In a July 2015 interview “His Royal Highness warns that we have just 35 years to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.” So, instead of facing the expiration of his climate catastrophe deadline head on, the sixty-nine-year-old Charles kicked the climate doomsday deadline down the road until 2050 when he would be turning the ripe age of 102 and thus probably wouldn’t be around to see that his prediction was total bollox
And we mustn’t forget top UK scientist Sir David King who warned in 2004 that that by 2100 Antarctica could be the only habitable continent. Like Charles, Sir David won’t be around in 2100 making his prediction extremely convenient for him and his career.
The above is just a small selection of warnings from Climate Change doom-mongers.
Sir David – will you dare tell the truth?
When I heard that the great Sir David would be doing his bit for Climate Change, I wondered if he would dare deal with the following issues:
- why were most scientists predicting a new Ice Age in the 1970s which would lead to crop failure, starvation and a mass movement of millions of people from the freezing North southwards?
- why have all the previous predictions of Climate Armageddon been total rubbish?
- why haven’t the Himalayan glaciers disappeared as was predicted by the IPCC?
- why was the Arctic not ice-free by the summer of 2013 as was predicted by the IPCC in 2007 – a claim parrotted by loads of politicians?
- why have the Warmies felt the need to fiddle the figures and falsify the data for decades?
- why does he appear to accept the “97% of scientists” claim when we now know it was based on massive manipulation of the data? (I have explained how this was done in a previous blog)
- will he face up to the fact that the main problem facing mankind is not from the West with its declining population and reducing use of fossil fuels, but from explosive population growth in Africa where the population doubles every 22 years?
But Sir David’s programme avoided mentioning any of the above issues. Instead it just produced the usual turgid pile of foul-smelling BBC Warmie propaganda with loads of fancy camera work to frighten the shallow snowflakes who apparently subscribe to the new Man-Made Global Warming religion. Even worse, the programme featured people whose work on climate has been totally and comprehensively discredited, but didn’t feature anyone who was critical of the Man-Made Global Warming group-think.
But perhaps the most disturbing part of Sir David’s programme was that the only temperature chart it used (if I remember correctly) was the one starting in 1850 which shows considerable warming. Had Sir David’s programme used the chart of the Earth’s temperature over the last 100,000 years or over the last 415,000 years, we would have seen that today’s warming is just part of a regular cycle and is nothing out of the ordinary. All very odd, don’t you think?
Sir David – I question your objectivity! And I question the BBC’s objectivity!
The UN is creating this hype to cover up the real looming catastrophe: over population in the third world. Civilised countries have it under control. Most other parts of the world are breeding like locusts/rabbits and the Chinese/Islamist dominated UN wants them pouring into Europe and the US…no prizes for guessing why.
Interesting to follow the investigations online into the TV crew that filmed the walrus falling over a cliff. Seems they are now implicated in causing the event by blocking the creatures path to the ocean and scaring them by flying drones overhead. These are creatures constantly in fear of polar bear attacks and known to be easily scared.
I’ve been around for more than 70 years. I’ve lived in the UK, Europe and the Far East but most of the time in Scotland. With my hand on my heart I can declare that I have never been aware that something strange was going on with the weather. The Scottish weather is as bad as ever and the midges are still biting. So what has changed? Nothing that I can see.
On the other hand, population explosion in Africa/Middle East is real, there’s no question of that. So anyone with half a brain would know that to provide for and sustain these people there will be additional activity which will result in more ground/river/atmospheric pollution. No doubt, the London protesters are not aware of or choose not to be aware of any of this. So, why are the facts not being revealed and why is the UN reluctant to tackle the African problem?
Julia, I wonder if what you say is completely correct ? Yes, the population of China is in crisis mode. But, that is only because many more unborn girl babies have been killed in the womb than unborn boy babies. The increasing ratio of boys : girls (ie men : women) passed the danger point some years ago. I’m sorry I don’t have the stats at hand, but they are easily discovered. There are just not enough women to go round in China, yet another demographical reality. The solution has not been found to this problem, which has led to instability and concern. A man cannot find a woman to marry. There are not enough.
It is quite likely something similar exists in India, another country where gender-selective abortion is permitted, just as it is in England (Thank you so much Keir Starmer).
When discussing “over-population”, we are all better informed when we consider all relevant circumstances and facts rather than feelings.
The problem we face here in Britian is the climate change crackpots are in charge of our energy policy and committed to cutting CO2 emissions to a level that brackets us with countries like Zimbabwe with their sort of living standards. We poor consumers have yet to feel the true cost of ‘green’ energy, the most expensive and unreliable form of energy supply known. Most of our industrial organisations will leave this country seeking cheap energy and they’ll find plenty as most countries in the world ignore the provisions of the Paris/Kyoto agreements. There are over 2400 new coal powered generating plants being built or in the planning stages worldwide, while we are closing ours to save the world!
And then we find item like this:
BANNED in all British new-builds from 2025 adding £5,000 to average house price
•Philip Hammond announced gas boilers will be banned from new build homes
•The change will kick in from 2025 as part of measures to limit climate change
•Chancellor’s announcement is seen as part of a Tory appeal to young voters
The installation of new gas boilers to provide heating and hot water is set to banned for new homes from 2025 in a move that could add £5,000 to the average price, Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed today.
The Government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change recommended ending the connection of new homes to the gas grid by 2025 in a report last month, with properties heated with low-carbon energy instead.
The Chancellor announced new standards ‘mandating the end of fossil fuel heating systems in new homes from 2025 delivering lower carbon, and lower fuel bills too’.
But the government have not specified exactly what will replace the traditional boiler – with concerns about how long high-tech low carbon heaters can take to warm a room and cost implications for taxpayers.
So adding £5000 to the cost of a new home and with no idea what to replace our gas boilers with is a rational way to tackle worldwide climate change?
Mad-Mad-Mad – the loonies are running the asylum!
WEATHER (as differentiated from climate) is changing in parts of the world where de-forestation is taking place on a massive scale to create the tons of paper wasted daily in the West and to cultivate crops to feed burgeoning populations. This land clearance inevitably has knock-on effects in terms of rainfall in other areas. This, however, is not CLIMATE change, the existence of which has yet to be proven, although it is sadly causing the extinction of species. In the UK local flooding is being caused by the relentless concreting over of flood plains. It is a no-brainer that population control in Africa and the Middle East should be a world priority, so why does no leading politician or public figure (other than the Duke of Edinburgh several years ago) have the guts to say so and propose a means of bringing it about? As for the London protestors, I doubt the majority have sufficient vision to see further than next week’s benefit payment (they can’t be in employment or they’d have been at work this week) or, if students on the Easter vacation from “uni”, further than the next disruptive “demo” on campus. I note many are happily sporting rucksacks and quaffing from plastic cups and bottles and taking nightly refuge in neat little tents, every item of which will have been made and imported from the Far East! As will the 4G phones most of them will have tucked into their back pockets or inside their bras! Practise what you Preach, Protestors, rather than disrupt the daily lives of hardworking, tax-paying citizens! Just where and how, by the way, are they all attending to their inevitable, more gross, demands of nature?
I would guess that no MP (or probably civil servant too) has even obtained an ‘O’ level in physics. Their grasp of any science is lamentable. The Government’s proposal for new homes is that heat pumps will be used. (i.e. fridges operating in reverse) These are relatively simple and at moderate outside temperatures can provide more heat than the electricity used. BUT they only work efficiently at moderate tempeatures. When the outside temperature is approaching 0 degress there is no worthwhile energy to be sucked from the air (or ground). So from this point, as temperatures reduce, electricity becomes the sole means of heating. Generating and distribution losses using gas to generate electricity for heating is grossly inefficient. Also, there is no solar generation at night and wind power is usually absent in very cold conditions. So, why does the Government propose a heating system which will cause more CO2 emission?
It’s mad even if you accept the global warming nonsense.
Gas is plentiful, already has a distribution network and is cleaner than log stoves (which I use). Unfortunately, this energy buffoonery is due to the ignoramuses who propsed the Climate Change Act and also politicians who virtue signal rather than seek sensible advice on real physics.
Also, by depriving new homes of a gas supply they will be unable to utilise the newest generation of electricity from steel fuel cells technology. CeresPower is worth a look. Such a system would eliminate distribution losses in the electicity grid and make electricity generation cheaper. It also could ‘fill in’ for solar and wind generation intermittancy without resorting to batteries. This would avoid depletion of lithium and other rare metals.
At one point Attenborough said something like “heat trapped in the atmosphere by carbon dioxide is warming the oceans”. It says everything about how dumb he and those who accept this really are. Chris above talks about the MPs and their grasp of science, but what about the physics taught in schools and universities? Human caused climate change is so fundamentally wrong that just rational thought is required. Returning to the above quote, if heat is trapped, then it is trapped and cannot move anywhere else. Heat cannot be trapped because there is always a temperature difference and temperatures tend to an equilibrium and the atmosphere cools to space. Everybody knows that heat only travels from hot to cold and the atmosphere is cooler than the surface, so the atmosphere cannot heat the oceans. It hardly needs any science to work this out. Add the science about mass and specific heat and it is apparent that the atmosphere does not contain enough energy to warm the oceans. Then use the real science of radiation which is that radiation is electromagnetic energy, not thermal energy, so whist the atmosphere is radiating to the earth it is from cold to hot and so the electromagnetic energy is not converted to heat when absorbed by the surface.
The question that needs to be asked, is not about MPs, but about the “scientists” who have created a pseudoscience of climate change. We had Mann and Hansen in the video still spouting their nonsense. Why has Brian Cox become a believer? What is in it for them except money. They give science a bad name and worse still are making known science irrelevant to the modern world.
There is mention of population control above. The abortions of girls in China was because of government policy. In Japan the birth rate has fallen dramatically and there will not be enough young to support the economy. The idea of limiting population growth in Africa will not work. This is one area where people will ignore government policy. The only way it will work is by sterilisation and it will never be accepted.
All our problems are caused by government policies no matter what area of our life we look at. It is time for small government and personal responsibility. But the snowflakes do not want that and so a decline in of living standards is inevitable with existing policies. The issue is at what rate will it happen.