Thursday

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The Climate Wars ignited again in Australia and Labor’s best argument is just scorn and derision

Airship to nowhere. Dystopian Future fantasy.

By Jo Nova

Here we go again. It’s another round of the climate wars in Australia. It’s the issue that never dies, because global weather control is a stupid idea levitating on righteous indignation and a hundred billion dollars. As long as it floats, it’s the Hindenburg of National Energy Policy. It will only end when there’s nothing left to burn.

This time, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has  said what all the grown ups already know — that the 82% renewables target by 2030 that Labor legislated is doomed and we should delay it. Two years after ignition, everyone knows the NetZero rocket is impossible. Renewable investment has ground to a halt, people are not buying EV’s,  farmers don’t want the transmission lines, coastal towns don’t want the wind towers, project costs are doubling and tripling, and Florence the borer is still stuck in a short hole that is meant to be a long one. Worse, we’ve already got more solar power than the grid can handle and extra solar power is so useless we’re about to start charging people who carelessly add to the glut at lunchtime.

Peter Dutton is sadly still saying we should do “Net Zero by 2050” — which will stop him mocking the whole pagan religion of weather control, but he is offering a real alternative — we can stop banging our heads on the wall for a few years.

The government meanwhile is fighting back with their best missives of scorn and damnation. Apparently this will lead to the awful affliction called “pariah status”. The world won’t want to dance with Australia, or something. Or, more likely, Sydney Harbour might drop a few spots on the Green Backpacker Holiday Guide. Like we care.

The media leapt to declare hyperbolically that “Dutton is pulling out of the Paris Agreement” because, being globalist junkies themselves, they thought this would be an insult. But instead of being a shocking misstep those headlines may have earned him fans. The EcoWorriers seemed to have forgotten that at the drop of a hat, back in 2018 48% of Australians said they’d be happy to pull out of “Paris”. That was without any discussion at all. Half the country didn’t care less. Imagine if we had a debate now with the cost-of-living-dog chewing on voters ankles?

Paris is a sacred totem for believers to dance around. But its almost all theaterChina agreed to do nothing, and most nations will miss their targets. Now even the UN admits the world will crash through Paris Agreement goals by a factor of two for 2030.

The pimps for Paris can hardly threaten Australians with twice as many cyclones next year, or 20% more floods by 2025. They know, and we know, that the benefits of “Net Zero” are just social approval points on a Leftist dance card. There is no productivity growth, no cheaper electricity, no nicer weather coming our way — at least not for a hundred years (even in theory). So when someone pops the bubble, all they can fire back with are social credit costs not real ones. Dutton will make us “the Global Laughing Stock” they say, lamely. He will risk our membership of the Paris Agreement — the club which we pay for, and  which includes practically every nation on Earth —  (as if the UN would want to take its claws out of any wealthy donor).

As Graham Lloyd remarked:Peer pressure is the only tool at the UN’s disposal.

The non-binding compromise at the heart of the Paris Agreement that allowed US president Barack Obama to sign it without seeking the approval of congress makes the Paris Agreement a voluntary affair. .. Put bluntly, if countries were excised from the Paris Agreement for not meeting high expectations, it would be a gathering of none.

The Labor Party will find in the next election, like the last “climate election” in 2013, that they have very little material benefit to offer the voters. But no one will believe the “cheaper electricity bill” lie.

Labors target is a 43% emissions reduction of our 2005 emissions by 2030. Most of the reduction will come (in their dreams) from being 82% “renewable” for electricity (up from 32% renewable now).

Just to put that in perspective, here’s the graph of Australia’s total energy consumption which at the end of 2022 was 85% fossil fueled.

Energy Generation by source, Australia. Graph OWID.

To reach this frivolous quest, Australia is supposedly going to install 22,000 solar panels every day and a new wind tower every night, somehow we’ll install 10,000 kilometers of high voltage power lines, and we will find $1.5 trillion spare dollars to pay for it all.

The actual “Paris Agreement” Australia signed was to reduce 2005 emissions by 26 to 28% by 2030. It was Labor in 2022 that raised the stakes and legislated the 43% cut, just to impress their friends at Davos or something.

So many political careers have died on “climate change” and yet few political commentators seem to realize why.

Image by Roy Snyder from Pixabay

 

 

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 95 ratings

Wednesday

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Despite the hottest year in a hundred thousand years, Europeans voted for maligned, climate denying, far right parties

By Jo Nova

The spell is broken

Thirty years of crafting a fantasy narrative was fine while countries floated on a cloud of endless easy money, but those days are over.

Counting is still underway in the EU elections, but the Greens appear to have lost around 20 seats, shrinking from 74 seats to 53. In Germany, the Green-stranglehold of Europe, exit polls suggest the Green vote fell from 20.5% to 12%.

In a shock, Marine Le Pen’s party in France doubled Macron’s party vote achieving 30% of the vote to his 15%, whereupon Macron called an emergency election, hoping to save a few extra spots in France’s Parliament before the “Far Right” really wakes up.

The “Far-Right” of course, being any party which doubts that bicycles can stop storms:

Far Right bell curve.

Despite 242% of Nobel prize winning experts being certain that life on Earth will be destroyed by 2034*, climate action was not a priority for most Europeans.

 

 

Newspaper journalists though have different priorities to most voters. There go those climate ambitions…

The result comes amid a broader shift to the right and a green backlash — or “greenlash” — against policies designed to tackle the climate crisis and protect the environment.

Some newspapers don’t just have different priorities, they speak a different language:

Who are these parties that deny that we have a climate?

Five years ago The Guardian called it a “Quiet Revolution Sweeping Europe” as the Greens went from fringe idealists to “potential kingmakers”. Instead it was a five year reckless experiment that trashed historic industries and threatens a lifestyle that took a thousand years to create.

The real Kingmakers in the EU who were panicking about climate change last week, are now suddenly non-committal about inviting the Greens to talks. It was always about power for Ursula Von der Leyen and sadly she is still there. There is still much to do.

The wonderful Mark Steyn on the EU elections and the media massaging:

Indeed, between [Marine Le Pen’s] triumphant National Rally and M Zemour’s Reconquête (the Reconquest party), what the BBC and even the Telegraph insist on calling the “far right” got just shy of forty per cent of the vote. (M Zemour’s party is for those who think Mme Le Pen is no longer “far right” enough.) In Germany Olaf Scholz saw his party come third, behind the even more “far right” Alternative für Deutschland. Over a million of Scholz’s voters switched to the ooh-ever-so-far-right AfD.

So the “far right” are getting a lot nearer: maybe the Telegraph should try holding the telescope the right way round.

Instead, the media took consolation in finding the far-right rampage didn’t go quite as far as it might: in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party has gone from zero seats to six to emerge as the largest single Dutch party in the European Parliament – but all the experts are agreed that for some reason this is a wee bit of an under-performance.

UPDATE: Good news, the young voters are turning away:

[Google translated]

Greens with massive losses – especially young voters turn away

The AfD and CDU are particularly popular with young voters. Voting right is not a trend, but rather a matter of self-defence. The Greens are the main losers, as they have become the epitome of philistinism. They get the ridicule of the internet for free.

Both parties have lost their magic. Now things are getting even worse for the Greens. The new youth parties are called AfD and CDU. Of all things! Anyone who joins the Junge Union or the Workers’ Party for Germany today is a revolutionary. The middle class is green, or better said: the bourgeoisie. And who is alternative if they are on the side of the philistines?

For most young people, however, it is clear that they will not retire at 70, they will not buy a house, and they may not be able to support a family – and if they do, their children will grow up in problem areas, in rural wasteland or in an environment of left-wing indoctrination. Voting right is not a trend, not chic, not a whim. It is pure self-defense.

Read it all (in German)

 

h/t Willie Soon, Krishna Gans, Old Ozzie, David Wojick, Kim, Stephen Neil.

*How many climate experts said Antonio-Guterres Mr-Boiling-Planet was wrong?

Far-Right-Bell curve original author unknown. Seen on this tweet.

 

 

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VW takes €60 billion out of the EV budget and puts it back into combustion cars

EV Car crash AI art.By Jo Nova

EV manufacturers are backing away slowly from the Great EV Debacle

The government commanded the EV bubble, but even with billions in subsidies, schemes and advertising the chemistry didn’t obey. Somehow, even with legislation, the right discoveries didn’t discover themselves on cue.

VW has decided to use one third of its EV development money to develop a better fuel car instead.

Hey, it’s only 60,000 million Euro.

VW Will Spend Billions of Its EV Development Budget on Gas Engines

By: Adrian Padeanu, Motor1.com

Of the €180 billion ($196 billion) set aside in 2023 primarily for next-generation EVs, the German brand will now use one-third to continue the development of combustion engines. The announcement comes from Arno Antlitz, the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at the Volkswagen Group. The company intends to spend roughly €60 billion ($65 billion) to “keep our combustion cars competitive.”

It’s a stark departure from the previous plan announced in late 2022 to build and sell only electric cars in Europe from 2033.

Only a year ago Volkswagon was confident it could build a cheaper EV. But a month ago they reported a 20 percent fall in first quarter profits.

Meanwhile Australia joins the EU with footage of “EV Graveyards” collecting at Port Melbourne

Australia remains  far behind the rest of the developed world in EV sales but is obviously catching up on the latest trends quickly. Sales have fallen 44%:

And, apparently even those with money to waste don’t want to waste it on an “electric supercar”:

Lamborghini Doesn’t Think Electric Supercars will Catch On

By: Adrian Padeanu, Motor1.com

Speaking with Automotive News Europe, Lamborghini’s head honcho Stephan Winkelmann argued electric supercars are “not something that is selling so far.” He went on to mention this genre might never catch on

Supercars are for rich folk but Rimac CEO Mate Rimac recently admitted that high-end buyers don’t want electric supercars. It’s why the Nevera is still for sale, despite the hype around it and the limited production run of only 150 cars. The electric hypercar developed in Croatia set no fewer than 23 records last year, but it looks as though wealthy people weren’t impressed enough to sign their names on the dotted line.

There is talk now of all kinds of variations of sustainable fuel to run combustion engines on. The CEO of Bugatti has even floated the idea of selling their bespoke customers their very own fuel station as well, so they can generate and fill their sustainable cars at home. Possibly the brag-able-value of owning a sustainable biofuel car that “charges at home” using some wildly expensive combination of solar panels and batteries won’t seem so brag-worthy in a few years time. Who wants to look like the loser who got car advice from a teenage girl?

9.9 out of 10 based on 73 ratings

Global deaths and disasters down: UN shameless lies, up

By Jo Nova

To solve the increase in global disasters just axe the UN

Despite a galactic rise in Headlines of Doom, the world is a safer place than ever. The United Nations however is an absolute danger to our quality of life and our children’s mental health. They’ve shamelessly concocted the myth that disasters are increasing due to “climate change”.

NetZeroWatch report on a new paper on natural disasters and find that yearly deaths are down. Somehow satellites, phones, antibiotics, bulldozers and fire trucks are better at saving lives than horse drawn carts and hessian bags. Who would have guessed, apart from everyone?

From Alimonti and Mariani.:

Deaths due to global disasters. Graph.

Below the graph of natural disaster events shows a huge increase in the reporting of disasters, at least up until the turn of the century. But there is, if anything, a decline since then. There are three very different trends. But the giant bureaucratic sponge that is the United Nations can shamelessly draw a straight linear trend through this graph and tell the world that disasters are getting worse, even as they are obviously not.

In the last twenty years, humans have put out 40% of all the CO2 emissions they’ve ever put out since they lived in caves, but disasters have decreased 20%. It used to be that 20 year trends were enough to launch a new UN committee, but now the only trend-length that matters is the one that goes “up”.

Another pair of analysts  point out the CRED (Centre on the Epidemiology of Disasters) was only set up in 1973 and the EM-DAT database was only established in 1988. (Ritichie and Rosado).  Even the CRED team itself has warned people about reading too much into these trends, yet practically every separate wing of the UN has done exactly that. The FAO saiddisaster events have increased from 100 per year in the 1970s to around 400 events per year worldwide in the past 20 years.” The UN Chief said “natural disasters have quadrupled since 1970.” The the UNFCC took his misinformation and repeated it. A few years ago the WMO said “The number of disasters has increased by a factor of five over the 50-year period.” The  BBC and The Economist lapped it up. Too many mistakes is never enough.

In 2019, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) opined about the “‘staggering rise in climate-related disasters over the last twenty years’” proving only that lying UN agencies are a bigger threat to the science than the entire fossil fuel industry ever was.

Global disasters, Graphed.

 

The rise in all of these disasters is mostly because people got better at reporting disasters.  Back in 1901 if a cyclone landed in Ecuador, nobody rang up the UN, which didn’t exist, on phones that weren’t installed, to tell them about it. And when global population was five times smaller in 1900 tornados could wander the prairies and sometimes no one would notice. Droughts could strike rivers and unless the fish complained, who would know?

Suspiciously geophysical disasters (like earthquakes and volcanoes) have also increased “since 1900” and at about the same rate and with the same “break point” in the trend. Obviously our gas guzzling cars are not causing earthquakes and beef-steak doesn’t set off volcanoes. So the rapid increase in these sorts of disasters in the 1970s and 1980s supports the theory that the  rapid rise an artefact of data collection. There’s a lot more detail on that in the paper.

 

Natural disasters. 1900 - 2023. Graphed.

Meanwhile, the relentless good news on global crops continues.

If there really were more storms and frosts and devastating floods, you’d think the rice paddies and cornfields of the world would have noticed.

Yet here they go again, growing 2 to 4% more grain year after year.

Global crop yield, wheat, rice, soy, maize, corn. Graph

Alimonti and Mariani don’t mince their words — the increase is just “better reporting”:

We conclude that the patterns observed are largely attributable to progressively better reporting of natural disaster events, with the EM-DAT dataset now regarded as relatively complete since ∼2000. The above result sits in marked contradiction to earlier analyses by two UN bodies (FAO andUNDRR), which predicts an increasing number of natural disasters and impacts in concert with global warming. Our analyses strongly refute this assertion as well as extrapolations published by UNDRR based on this claim.

The claim that the increase in disasters registered in EM-DAT in the final part of the twentieth century is mostly, if not completely, caused by better reporting and not by a real events increase, is supported by three independent lines of evidence: (a) several CRED reports (Guha-Sapir et al., 2004; Scheuren et al., 2008; CRED, 2015); (b) best fit analysis that found an important breakpoint and even a change in the trend sign of natural disasters at the beginning of the 21th century, in agreement with what is written and justified in point a; (c) the same trend change and breakpoint for geophysical disasters that have very little, if anything, to do with human activities or global warming.

But it’s also “better blindness”. If the BBC, The Economist, and all the other sycophant agents of groupthink and power-mongers asked for “a graph” (with all the data) the facade would fall over in a week.

REFERENCES

Gianluca Alimonti & Luigi Mariani (2024) Is the number of global natural disasters increasing?, Environmental Hazards, vol 23: No 2, 186-202, DOI:
10.1080/17477891.2023.2239807

Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado (2024) – “Is the number of natural disasters increasing?” Published online at OurWorldInData.org.

The GWPF helpfully provides a list of references, including their work refuting these claims:

 

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 89 ratings

Friday (again)

Some weeks you need two Fridays.

9.5 out of 10 based on 19 ratings

Friday (but really Thursday)

Sorry I got ahead of myself.

9.2 out of 10 based on 17 ratings

UN Chief says ban Fossil Fuel Adverts to cool world (Whatever you do, don’t let the people see how useful fossil fuels are!)

UN Witchdoctor in charge of the Weather. Censorship. Free Speech.

By Jo Nova

Stop Storms with Censorship!

The UN Chief reminds us that we are babies who need an unelected tribal chieftain to protect us from seeing naughty persuasive words. Lord help us if grown up doctors, dentists, economists and people who keep planes-in-the-sky are accidentally exposed to The Word Of Exxon, or Shell, or BP. They might vote the wrong way, or buy the wrong car. They might influence their own children. (They might wonder why they pay money to The UN?)

What looks acts and smells like a global government in waiting? The United Nations wants your money and control over what you read and see. They also want control over the voices of the industry they are proposing to destroy.

The latest science decree from the Experts is that fossil fuel companies are the “Godfathers of climate chaos”. They’re probably sneaking around behind you like the mafia, dropping flood-bombs on your children’s school and raining on your Pride Parade.  Fossil fuels are just like tobacco now — apart from how they harvest the fields and feed the children and fly us to Barbados for beachy weekends. (Marlboro only did that in the adverts…)

The UN need an enemy to blame for everything, and the best kind of enemy is one that can’t speak:

Ban fossil fuel ads to save climate, says UN chief

BBC “News”

UN Secretary General António Guterres called coal, oil and gas corporations the “godfathers of climate chaos” who had distorted the truth and deceived the public for decades.

Just as tobacco advertising was banned because of the threat to health, the same should now apply to fossil fuels, he said.

His remarks were his most damning condemnation yet of the industries responsible for the bulk of global warming. They came as new studies showed the rate of warming is increasing and that global heat records have continued to tumble.

Oh Woe, if only the UN could persuade the people not to buy oil, gas and coal to avoid the oceans boiling off to space. That would end the power of the fossil fuel giants right then and there. But after 30 years of trying, the UN, the bankers, and the sycophant cowards in academia all failed to convince the average driver to ride a bike or catch a bus.

Let’s face it, they failed to even convince themselves to use Zoom instead of flying 100,000 planes to UN parties in Dubai or Azerbaijan.

So the tar-and-feathering must continue:

He said many in the oil, gas and coal industries had “shamelessly greenwashed” with lobbying, legal action and massive advertising campaigns.

“I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies,” he told an audience in New York.

“And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”

They must be afraid that one day the captive fossil fuels giants will wake up and fight back.

Not that there is much sign of that yet:

In response, representatives of fossil fuel groups said they were committed to reducing their emissions.

“Our industry is focused on continuing to produce affordable, reliable energy while tackling the climate challenge, and any allegations to the contrary are false,” said Megan Bloomgren, Senior Vice President of Communications at the American Petroleum Foundation.

Though the warning flares must be popping on the horizon. BP lost $1 billion trying to make wind power work, and changed policies from cutting oil to increasing it. Shareholders and investors like Bluebell Capital are openly knocking a few heads together on boards of sitting-duck gas and oil giants — explaining how their Net Zero targets are helping their competitors, and hurting their investors. Bluebell are buying the dips as it were –the dippy boards. They will reap (hopefully) the financial rewards of turning around suicidal companies.  As a money making strategy, that might light a fire under some old fossils.

The UN is a threat to democracy. Ban funds to the UN instead.

 

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2,000 kilometers of East Antarctic glaciers don’t look much different after 85 years and 1.6 trillion tons of carbon dioxide

By Jo Nova

It’s just another scientific study doomed to disappear

A Norwegian whaler paid for 2,200 aerial photos of East Antarctica in 1937. Since then humankind has emitted 91% of all the emissions we’ve ever produced and the world is facing an extinction level catastrophe and yet satellite photos show this 2,000 kilometer long section of East Antarctica hasn’t changed — or at least, not in any way related to our uptake of coal power or planes, trains, airconditioners and cars. Basically the human race emitted 1,600 billion tons of carbon dioxide which was supposed to warm the poles twice as fast as anywhere else, but there is still nothing to see here.

Belated Thanks to Tallbloke for the first article I saw on this.

2,000 km of Antarctic ice-covered coastline has been stable for 85 years

Using hundreds of old aerial photographs dating back to 1937, combined with modern computer technology, the researchers have tracked the evolution of glaciers in East Antarctica. The area covers approximately 2,000 kilometers of coastline and contains as much ice as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet.

Compared to modern data, the ice flow speeds are unchanged. While some glaciers have thinned over shorter intermediate periods of 10–20 years, they have remained stable or grown slightly in the long term, indicating a system in balance.

Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica

A Existing historical glacier reconstructions (Byrd11, Moider32 and Peninsula31) and glaciers included in this study (frontal reconstructions n = 21, elevation reconstructions n = 12, velocity reconstructions n = 4), overlaid on 2003–2021 Antarctic annual elevation change from Smith et al5., with MEaSUREs basin72

 

Imagine the fuss if these old photos showed a glacier melting?

Most of the images used in the study were captured during a 1937 expedition organized and paid for by Norwegian whaler Lars Christensen. The mission aimed to produce the first maps of this part of East Antarctica, but the maps were never published due to the German invasion of Norway. Since then, the images have been stored at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø and forgotten.

When the researchers from the University of Copenhagen read about the expedition, they realized that valuable images were likely hidden in an archive in Norway. They traveled to Tromsø and reviewed all 2,200 images taken during the expedition. They supplemented the Norwegian aerial images with images of the same glaciers from Australian surveys conducted between 1950 and 1974.

Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica

B Taylor glacier in 1937, 1956, and 1973 as captured in the aerial images. Close up shows the different types of fiducial marks used for standardizing the internal image geometry. C Produced digital elevation models (DEM) overlain on orthomosaics generated from interpolated DEMs. For the productions of the 1956 DEM and orthomosaic we included additional oblique images (not included here) as the glacier was photographed with a trimetrogon camera setup.

Abstract:

During the last few decades, several sectors in Antarctica have transitioned from glacial mass balance equilibrium to mass loss. In order to determine if recent trends exceed the scale of natural variability, long-term observations are vital. Here we explore the earliest, large-scale, aerial image archive of Antarctica to provide a unique record of 21 outlet glaciers along the coastline of East Antarctica since the 1930s. In Lützow-Holm Bay, our results reveal constant ice surface elevations since the 1930s, and indications of a weakening of local land-fast sea-ice conditions. Along the coastline of Kemp and Mac Robertson, and Ingrid Christensen Coast, we observe a long-term moderate thickening of the glaciers since 1937 and 1960 with periodic thinning and decadal variability. In all regions, the long-term changes in ice thickness correspond with the trends in snowfall since 1940. Our results demonstrate that the stability and growth in ice elevations observed in terrestrial basins over the past few decades are part of a trend spanning at least a century, and highlight the importance of understanding long-term changes when interpreting current dynamics.

 

And for those who want to see the ebb and flow here are the detailed graphs of those 21 glaciers. Click to enlarge. It’s obvious that without long term data and climate models that work (which can predict precipitation) we have no chance of predicting glacier growth or loss, and nor should we infer long term prophesies from 20 or 30 year short cycles. Even 85 years of somewhat minimal data shows there is a lot of variation, and none of it apparently related in any obvious way to man made CO2 emissions.

East Antarctica, Glacier gain loss, graphed.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48886-x

Thirty years of propaganda won’t die easily:

REFERENCE

Mads Dømgaard et al, Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48886-x

 

 

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

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NZ government accused of “war on the nature” as it cuts $100m environmental spending

New Zealand, Eagle Mountain, lake.

By Jo Nova

Just enjoy for the moment the small victory of what’s happening in democratic New Zealand. The Guardian is apoplectic, so we know it must be good:

Rightwing NZ government accused of ‘war on nature’ as it takes axe to climate policies

The Guardian

The New Zealand government has been accused of waging a “war on nature” after it announced sweeping cuts to climate action projects, while making no significant new investments in environmental protection or climate crisis-related policy.

But absent from the budget documents was any meaningful new spending on the climate crisis. Instead, dozens of climate-related initiatives, including programmes in the Emissions Reductions Plan and funding for data and evidence specialists were subject to sweeping cuts.

Notice how the critics are all so vague. Their big fear, and worst threat, is some unfashionable place called “backwards”:

The Labour opposition called the budget a “catastrophe” that was “taking us backwards”.

For some reason the opposition did not say “Lord help us, The NZ government will warm the world!” Mostly because it sounds too stupid to lay the point of all these policies right out there. I mean, as if they can say that cancelling the Māori knowledge-based approaches to agricultural emissions will cause more floods in 2070?

And in the end a warmer world isn’t exactly scary to New Zealanders like Ebola, poverty  or an armed invasion. Be afraid, you’ll get more beach weather!

The awful truth is that climate policies are just a fashion contest, so when they are taken away, the main downside is namecalling and a curse on your grandchildren. Like making witches angry or something?

Green party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick described the government as a “coalition of cowards” that was allowing the climate crisis to “rage on unchallenged” and whose attack on the climate would ripple through future generations. “The other day, government parties said, ‘drill, baby, drill,’ and today, they may as well have said, ‘burn, baby, burn’,” Swarbrick said…

Getting to the nitty gritty, this all sounds good. The new right leaning coalition has found good savings in troughing bureaucracies and flag waving green clubs. Amazing how fast these things breed:

Budget 2024: Lights flicker and dim on climate initiatives 

      • $10million of funding has been scaled back for the Accelerator Wood Processing Growth Fund which supports wood processing capacity.
      • MBIE’s Circular Economy and Bioeconomy Strategy work is being stopped ‘as it is considered a low-value programme when compared with other work on climate change.’
      • $38 million is being cut from MBIE’s Energy portfolio programmes, including scaling down the Community Renewable Energy fund, and the Support for Energy Education in Communities Programme. It also includes discontinuing work on the Energy Emissions Reporting Scheme and cutting funding for small-scale distributed renewable energy and demand response systems.
      • $10million is being cut from MBIE’s Just Transitions programme.
      • Funding for the Climate Change Commission is being decreased by $15 million, including axing funding for the Commission’s agricultural emissions policy advisory function.
      • The budget includes a $35million reduction in climate change programmes including reducing funding for:
      • the Climate Change Development Fund
      • Climate Resilience for Māori initiative
      • Climate Change Chief Executives Board
      • implementation of the Carbon Neutral Government Programme
      • Climate Data Infrastructure
      • Enabling a Scaled-up, High Quality Voluntary Carbon Market
      • Cuts are being made to evidence and data functions, with less spending on consultants, external agencies, and specialists that supply evidence and data services ‘including updates to environmental standards, monitoring, reporting, policy work and science assurance.’ 
      • Additionally, as was well signalled early by Government, the budget confirms the axing of the Clean vehicle discount, saving $10 million. 

The new government will instead toss more funds at “climate resilience” and “disaster response”, which means adapting to the climate they already have.

But there is so much further to go: $2.6 billion of climate initiatives will roll over from previous the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) set up by the previous government. So there will still be money wasted on EV chargers, electric buses, emissions measurement schemes, and foreign aid to dictators. It will take years to unwind the climate grift.

And when the Coalition are asked what they are doing for the climate, they point to the “climate resilience” funds instead of calling it pagan witchcraft and asking for hard observable evidence that CO2 causes any problem at all.  Have those UN committees ever been audited? Let’s set up a team to do that. I mean, if we care about the environment and the third world, we need climate models that work, right? No more of these unverified guesses.

Image by Ondřej Šponiar from Pixabay

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