Mark the moment. This is unusual.

Firstly, it’s not just anyone, but Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, personality, and potential Tory leader in the UK.  (He’s got so much potential several Tories in safe seats have offered to resign to let him run.) Secondly, he’s confident, brazen and unapologetic. There are not many of the usual duck-and-cover caveats (only lip-service ones), and no bowing to the bullies who will call him names rather than discuss the ideas.

It’s snowing, and it really feels like the start of a mini ice age

Something is up with our winter weather. Could it be the Sun is having a slow patch?

Telegraph Jan 20th 2013

As a species, we human beings have become so blind with conceit and self-love that we genuinely believe that the fate of the planet is in our hands — when the reality is that everything, or almost everything, depends on the behaviour and caprice of the gigantic thermonuclear fireball around which we revolve.

No doubt Johnson will be accused of “ignoring the longer trend” because he talks about the last five years of cold cold winters, but beneath his discussion of just how unusually heavy the snow is around London lies the awkward fact that the global warming fans didn’t predict it (not until after it happened) and the longer trend is not what the IPCC predicted in 1990 either.
His focus on the snow is not what I would have said. But then Johnson isn’t trying to make a big scientific case, merely to say that the story doesn’t fit, and it’s time to say the unthinkable — maybe the experts are wrong.

By my calculations, this is now the fifth year in a row that we have had an unusual amount of snow; and by unusual I mean snow of a kind that I don’t remember from my childhood: snow that comes one day, and then sticks around for a couple of days, followed by more.

Note the half caveat — the experts have “good intentions”. Translated, he’s saying they’re “nice people” and we all know what that means:

I am all for theories about climate change, and would not for a moment dispute the wisdom or good intentions of the vast majority of scientists.

Ooh, look. When did you last hear a pollie say the word “empiricist”?

But I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be up with our winter weather, and to call it “warming” is obviously to strain the language. I see from the BBC website that there are scientists who say that “global warming” is indeed the cause of the cold and snowy winters we seem to be having.

… I merely observe that there are at least some other reputable scientists who say that it is complete tosh, or at least that there is no evidence to support it.

He refers to himself as amateur, a layman, and acknowledges how little he knows, but he knows enough to speak of Piers Corbyn’s work, and he’s familiar with the basics of solar history.

Keep reading  →

PR is more important than anything else to the Greens. When Johnathon Moylan fraudulently tricked investors, costing some of them thousands of dollars, Green leaders praise him for “drawing attention” to something. It’s as if stupid punters are so dumb and Green’s brains so Omniscient, that any crime is forgiven in the quest to tell the world a green “fact”. Did Christine Milne think Australians don’t know the Greens blame coal miners for hot days? Did she think that people would hear for the first time that Greens really really don’t like the coal industry and they would suddenly awaken from their stupor and be converts to the cause? Did she think if Green chicanery raised the cost of capital formation in the coal industry, causing that industry to suffer, that everyone else would overlook Green illegality and applaud?

A delusional anti-coal mining activist, Jonathan Moylan, impersonated a bank spokesman and issued a fake media release,  falsely declaring that the bank had withdrawn a $1.2 billion loan facility from Whitehaven Coal because of ”unacceptable damage to the environment.” He created a dummy email inbox to push the deceit further to cause real damage. The story was picked up by some news outlets, and shares fell by 9% before people realized it was fake. Those who want to downplay the seriousness are calling it a “hoax”. The real world knows it is fraud.

Mum and Dad investors who may have sold too cheaply on the “news”, or even faced margin calls, could have lost thousands of hard earned dollars. The share transactions won’t be canceled. In response, two Greens leaders praised the liar.

On Tuesday, Senator Milne described Mr Moylan’s hoax as being ”part of a long and proud history of civil disobedience, potentially breaking the law, to highlight something wrong”. [SMH]

Senator Rhiannon, who wrote: ”Congrats to Jonathan Moylan, Frontline Action on Coal, for exposing ANZ investment in coalmines.”

Greens are crippled by this narcissistic sense of their own giftedness. They thought people would discuss the dangers of coal after this outrageous criminal act; instead people are discussing the danger of The Greens.

How much do the Greens care about the average voter? Not at all. Civil disobedience does not and has never meant doing something that hurts other citizens. (Isn’t it illegal to incite people to break the law?) And let’s remember the bigger picture (cough cough): the Greens are more gifted than the average voter, and the Green burden in life is to lead the proletariat.

Michael Smith says Milne must resign:

Christine Milne still doesn’t get it.   Forgery.   $300Million in financial disadvantage.   A blow to the integrity of our financial system.   But on the ABC’s 7.30 tonight, she’s still praising a prima facie felon.

Go and get some help Chris.   You’ve lost your sense of perspective.   This offender has caused actual, real harm to a financial market that is a fundamental element of our civil society.   No stock market means no investment, much fewer jobs, much more misery.   Moylan’s forgery and deception caused $300M in real damage and who knows how much damage to investment confidence.  And that confidence was further hammered when you as a leader of the Labor/Greens government endorsed his crime.

Milne and Rhiannnon don’t seem to realize that any halfwit with a computer could create a forged press release these days. If it were legal to do such a thing, activists could release fake documents about, say, solar companies, falsely saying that unaffordable government subsidies were being withdrawn, or that some “new” discovery made the whole production line of XXX-solar unviable. Since the renewable industry is utterly dependent on those subsidies, or the belief that it is a techno winner, this would trash the price, and once investors realized that “renewables” share were prone to regular spikes and “hoaxes” soon no one would want to invest in them. How well would this work out for Green investment — which is financial struggling and borderline even with subsidies — unlike the robust coal industry?

Keep reading  →

Goodbye to the Kyoto protocol.

How well did those ambitious plans work out?  The government solution that aimed to reduce CO2 emissions by 5% achieved a 58% increase instead. Welcome to Case-Study #224 in Government failure.

Kyoto climate change treaty sputters to a sorry end

“The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought.

From the beginning, the treaty that was adopted in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, was problematic.

To reduce Greenhouse emissions: ditch the Kyoto protocol

Without Kyoto the US reduced emissions | Graph: Forbes

The big success story in reducing emissions has nothing to do with nanny-state hope-n-change regulation. The US reduced its emissions by 4% in a single year largely because they shifted from coal to gas.

“As a result of increasing use of gas to make electricity, the market share of coal has declined from 48% in 2008 to 43% in 2011 and likely 37% in 2012.  Natural gas will capture approximately 30% of electric generation market share this year, sharply up from 12% in 1990 and 16% in 2000.”

[John Hanger]

  The U.S. achieved approximately 70% of the CO₂ emissions reductions targeted under Kyoto (as compared to the 1998 EIA CO₂ forecast).  [Forbes]

On a per capita basis, it’s been 50 years since the US produced such low emissions

Keep reading  →