Agenda 21: Alabama may have outfoxed it. Why you should care.

“Agenda 21″ sounds like a daft-but-harmless-idea you can ignore. I found it hard to get enthused, but I was wrong, and no one sums this up better than James Delingpole in “Watermelons” (aka “Killing the Earth to Save it). To paraphrase James’s brilliant work (forgive me James) from page 190:

Some of you still aren’t convinced that you need to worry about Agenda 21 because you are thinking:

a) Agenda 21 sounds way too much like Area 51, (you know Aliens and the Roswell incident). Nut job stuff.

b) It was signed in 1992. If it was that bad, we’d have heard by now. Surely?

c) What sovereign nation would be so insane as to sign itself up for a binding treaty?

James explains that it’s real, it’s important (like an anti-magna-carta), and its’ a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Governments could sign up because it was “voluntary”, but then those voluntary rules are scrupulously and doggedly enforced by the “labyrinthine, democratically unaccountable behemoth that is the United Nations.”

Furthermore, he points out that it’s not like they’ve bothered to hide their aims — they want to control your resources, your money, […]

300,000 dollars and three years to produce a paper that lasted three weeks: Gergis

The paper might have been scientifically invalid, but it was a box-office success.

The headlines were everywhere

“1000 years of climate data confirms Australia’s warming” said the press release from University of Melbourne. It was picked up by The Guardian: “Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find”; The Age and The Australian led with “Warming since 1950 ‘unprecedented’. The story was on ABC 24 and ABC news where Gergis proclaimed:” there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.” It was all over the ABC including ABC Radio National, and they were “95% certain“! On ABC AM, “the last five decades years in Australia have been the warmest. ” Plus there were pages in Science Alert, Campus Daily Eco news, The Conversation, Real Climate* and Think Progress.

Blog review is where the real science gets tested

Skeptics have been looking through the paper, and three weeks after it was published a team at Climate Audit (kudos to Jean S and Nick Stokes) uncovered a problem so significant that the authors announced that this paper is “on hold”. It has been withdrawn from the American Meteorological […]

The Thompsons fight on from the USA: a business ruined by green-tape and the Australian Carbon Tax

This is one of the star case-studies of the noxious cost of big-government. A pernicious soul-destroying wrecker of livelihoods. This tyranny in action.

Matt and Janet are skeptics who ran a Beef Feedlot from Narrogin, Western Australia (2 hours SE of Perth). When they spoke out against climate change policies, onerous license changes were added that drove them to bankruptcy. Readers here and at Watts Up raised over $30,000 dollars as they faced eviction in Sept 2010. (It was the first time skeptics around the world had been asked to help a cause like this, and the response was so overwhelming that Paypal still can’t list all the donations we received on Sept 18th, 2010. It breaks their site).

The Thompsons write today with an update: they’ve decided it’s unfeasible to try to run their business under these conditions and with the new carbon tax in Australia, and due to family reasons they’ve reluctantly left Australia, moved back to the USA with their four children (bad for Australia, but good for Uncle Sam). They’ve reached a settlement with the bank but fully intend to pursue their legal case against the Department of Environment in West Australia. I’m delighted to say […]

Site maintenance again today

The site will be down again for well, some hours, in order to restore those 100,000 comments that went AWOL. Here’s hoping it goes smoothly..

9 out of 10 based on 6 ratings

Global Carbon Market Hits $176 Billion in 2011

Global Carbon Market trading climbed to $176 billion in 2011 according to the The World Bank, which has just released it’s annual State and Trends of The Carbon Market in 2012. That makes it about the same value as total global wheat production — which supplies about 20% of the calories consumed by the 7 billion people on planet Earth.

The global carbon market disguises itself as an angel against the greedy corporates. Yet it is, itself, a giant corporate playing field. The mainstream media remains largely silent on the “vested interests” represented by this major industry that did not even exist 10 years ago.

Global Carbon Markets are worth billions

Was 2011 the peak of global carbon trading? Looks all downhill from here.

A record number of emissions products were traded in 2011, even though prices of EU carbon permits and international offsets fells well below $10 a tonne late in the year. The prices have fallen, but the volumes have increased. Look out, the average price in 2011 was $18.80US, but the prices in 2012 are less than half that. It will take a monster increase in volumes in 2012 to keep raising the total market […]

The forbidden history of unpopular people

Excellent video. This man is good. The message is spot on.

This is an edgy fast paced narrative about why we owe the most to some of the most unpopular people in history. It’s about free speech: why it matters, why we may lose it. About the threat that Finkelstein poses.

“It’s about arrogance, it’s about powerful people here in Australia who believe that they are smarter than you, that their opinion is worth more than your opinion, and that their thinking is better than your thinking, and if you think they’re wrong, you should just shut up.”

There have been nutters in history who were reviled, derided, hated, and spat on. A few of these held the answers that saved countless lives — including quite possibly, yours and mine.

The home site is The Forbidden History – it has a high resolution, larger screen display. This was a crowd sourced project costing $27k. Money well spent. He is raising money for part II and III. Topher has his own site and other video’s here.

Share it with your friends.

9.5 out of 10 based on 112 ratings […]

The Royal Society that serves The Government does not serve The People

Paul Homewood follows the money to find Royal Society funding.

(Figures are rounded)

Even if we acknowledge that most of the money goes straight to research, there is a slab of money that goes straight to the Society:

So government funding (Parliamentary Grant in Aid) amounts to 67% of total income. Similar amounts have been fixed for a 5 year period to allow the Society to plan ahead properly. It is also worth noting the income generated from commercial activities, such as investment income and publications.

Government money is channelled through the Dept of Business, who insist that it is allocated to specific projects and programmes. Most of this is therefore paid out by the Royal Society in the form of research grants etc. However in 2010/11 £2,265,000 was allocated to “Support and Central Expenses”, in other words overheads costs.

9.1 out of 10 based on 41 ratings […]

Canberra Skeptics can join the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics party

Reader Mike passed me a note that Canberra/ ACT residents may be interested in. The Climate Sceptics party has changed its name to the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics and is working to establish a branch for the ACT elections. The party needs another 70 members by June 30th, so it can register in time for the ACT Election in October. Perhaps you know someone who can help out?

The Climate Sceptics Blog is here, the Climate Sceptics Party is here.

8.6 out of 10 based on 38 ratings […]

Bonds set record on record, stocks down, gold leaps

The world is so poised on the edge. The jitters are sweeping through tonight.

Just suppose you have $100m in assets that you are nervous about. You cannot stick that amount in a bank, because government guarantees only cover the first $1m or whatever, and banks are all risky now. So you buy into the biggest, most liquid market in the world — US Treasury bonds, that is, the debt of the US Government. Sure, you risk losing a few percent as bond prices jostle up in the panic, but at least you preserve your wealth. So you sell your assets, convert the proceeds to US dollars, and buy US Treasuries.

So much money had run to US Treasury bonds that the yield — which was at a record low yesterday — just got a lot lower. People are happy to give their money to the US government for an historically low yield.

Yesterday things were more scary than any time since WWII:

On Thursday, benchmark 10-year Treasuries yields fell to a historic low of 1.5326 percent, according to Tradeweb. The previous low was in November 1945 when yields ended that month at 1.55 percent.

Tonight, things are […]

Spot the conflict: GE owns NBC, the Weather channel and lots and lots of wind turbine factories

 

+ … .. = “…news”?

 

Harold Ambler (Don’t Sell Your Coat) points to a conflict of interest that hadn’t hit my radar til now (golly):

“In the newspaper business, and other journalistic domains as well, fires are of note. Non-fires aren’t. Fair enough. But something very insidious has taken place. The selling of weather disasters as entertainment has led to a state in which big business stands to gain handsomely from the perception that the planet has gone meteorologically mad. Specifically, General Electric stands to profit. When in 2008 NBC (owned by General Electric) purchased The Weather Channel, an interesting thing took place: the largest domestic producer of wind turbines became the owner of the best-positioned purveyor of images of destructive weather. The same year, NBC’s Today Show continued its longstanding practice of “showing” the great destruction to the ocean-atmosphere system caused by manmade global warming, with story after story: fires, floods, melting Kilimanjaro, you name it. The rest of NBC News, and the Weather Channel, meanwhile, keep the same pieces of videotape on nearly infinite repeat.”

How “Green” is GE I wonder?

GE Australia explains that the company focus is so green they have […]