Infinite Unknown

Low-income coal miners rest before starting their shift in a privately run coal mine close to You Fang Liang, Ningxia Province, north eastern China (EPA)

One of the great lies told us by our political leaders in order to persuade us to accept their swingeing and pointless green taxes and their economically suicidal, environmentally vandalistic wind-farm building programmes is that if we don’t do it China will. Apparently, just waiting to be grabbed out there are these glittering, golden prizes marked “Green jobs” and “Green technologies” - and if only we can get there before those scary, mysterious Chinese do, well, maybe the West will enjoy just a few more years of economic hegemony before the BRICs nations thwack us into the long grass.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The Chinese do not remotely believe in the myth of Man-Made Global Warming nor in the efficacy of “alternative energy”. Why should they? It’s not as if there is any evidence for it. The only reason the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming myth has penetrated so deeply into Western culture is… No. I’m going to save that stuff for my fairly imminent (Nov?) book on the subject which I hope you’re all going to buy.

What do the Chinese think about CAGW? Well, until now it was largely a question of educated guesswork, based on inferences like the fact that it was the Chinese who derailed the Copenhagen negotiations. But thanks to a new book called Low Carbon Plot by Gou Hongyang we know exactly what the official view is.

Ozboy - one of the finest commenters in this parish as well as proprietor of the Liberty Gibbet website - sets the scene nicely:

The argument [that China leads the world in renewable energy technology investment] rings a little hollow when you consider Beijing plans to build coal-fired power stations at the equivalent rate of one Australia, per year, for the next twenty-five years. The reputed Chinese fascination with renewable energy looks at best, a very long-term fallback position; at worst, a façade.

That’s what makes what you’re about to read even more startling. It’s a book called Low Carbon Plot, by Gou Hongyang and, as it’s freely available in China’s government-controlled bookstores, carries Beijing’s nihil obstat. No English translation is currently available, but our own China correspondent, Locusts, has translated the introduction from the original Mandarin, and (not entirely without risk to himself) has asked me to make it publicly available on this forum. At four thousand words, it’s a little long to insert onto a blog page, but you can navigate to it from the Rare Scribblings menu option at the top, or just click here.

It’s not so much an eye-opener as it is a bombshell. If true, it shows the Chinese government as rejecting CAGW in its entirety, believing it a conspiracy between Western governments and business to protect their own way of life, at the expense of the entire developing world-in other words, 80% of the world’s population.

Ozboy does not exaggerate.

Here, for example, is the author’s damning verdict on the Climate Change industry. Noting the irony of the spate of freezing cold weather that greeted the Copenhagen summit, the author wrily notes:

It was as if the freezing cold winter was having a laugh at all of these “Global Warming” theories. If the world was warming at an ever quickening pace, as all of these environmentalists say, then whence from such extreme cold? Whenever there are any doubts about Global Warming, it is almost as though environmentalists turn everything around and claim that this is too, a result of Global Warming. The Greenhouse Effect has turned in to a big basket, no matter what bad thing it is, just chuck it in.

He is even more damning about solar power in which, let it not be forgotten, China is supposed to be the world’s most shining example of just how well it can work. Continue reading »

Tags: China, Climate Change, CO2, Economy, Energy, Environment, Global News, Global Warming, Government, Politics

Car fuel could be created from thin air using an enzyme from a common soil bacterium, say scientists.

Cars could one day create their own fuel out of thin air, according to scientists. Photo: BLOOMBERG

It is hoped that this will lead to a cheap way of making environmentally friendly, carbon-neutral ‘green’ fuel that can be used without major redesigns of car engines.

Azotobacter vinelandii, a microbe found around the roots of various food plants, creates an enzyme - vanadium nitrogenase - which in nature produces ammonia from nitrogen gas. But now it has been shown that it can also create propane, the fuel commonly used in camping gas stoves, out of carbon monoxide - a common byproduct of industrial processes. Continue reading »

Tags: Cars, CO2, Environment, Science, Technology

Phytoplankton are the foundation of the oceanic food chain.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world’s oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world’s oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide.

And they are declining sharply.

Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40 percent since the 1950s, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The likely cause is global warming (Since 1998 the world is cooling.), which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say.

The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study and a top U.S. government scientist.

“It’s concerning because phytoplankton is the basic currency for everything going on in the ocean,” said Dalhousie University biology professor Boris Worm, a study co-author. “It’s almost like a recession … that has been going on for decades.”

Half a million datapoints dating to 1899 show that plant plankton levels in nearly all of the world’s oceans started to drop in the 1950s. The biggest changes are in the Arctic, southern and equatorial Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans. Only the Indian Ocean is not showing a decline. The study’s authors said it’s too early to say that plant plankton is on the verge of vanishing.

Virginia Burkett, the chief climate change scientist for U.S. Geological Survey, said the plankton numbers are worrisome and show problems that can’t be seen just by watching bigger more charismatic species like dolphins or whales.

“These tiny species are indicating that large-scale changes in the ocean are affecting the primary productivity of the planet,” said Burkett, who wasn’t involved in the study.

When plant plankton plummet — like they do during El Nino climate cycles— sea birds and marine mammals starve and die in huge numbers, experts said. Continue reading »

Tags: CO2, Environment, Global News, Phytoplankton, Science, Scientists

California welcomes the Poodle of Lurve

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Looking across at the US blogosphere, sometimes, I realise what a horrid, mean-spirited fellow I am. All I seem to want to do is say unpleasant things about green nutcases, libtards and pompous, preening, moustachioed Guardian assistant editors. In the US, on the other hand, they still observe the common courtesies. Look at this charming ad the boys at I Hate The Media took out to welcome their newest celebrity local.

They must have known how things difficult are at the moment for Al, what with those appalling allegations about an attempted drunken sexual assault on a Portland, Oregon massage therapist. (Not that you want to read all the lurid details, but if any of your servants do, you might direct them to this link to the police report). I’m sure their helpful advice will cheer him up no end. (Hat tip: Peter Murphy) Continue reading »

Tags: Al Gore, Climate Change, CO2, Environment, Global News, Global Warming

Bush, Gore, Obama etc. are all puppets of the elite.

More information:

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Climate Change, CO2, Environment, Global News, Global Warming, Government, Obama administration, Politics

YouTube has already almost completely removed the video ‘Hide The Decline’ (right now there is only one uploaded video left) and ‘Hide the Decline II’  has been removed completely.

Climategate: Hide The Decline - the video

Just in case that this last video will also be removed:

Climategate: Hide The Decline - the video

Climate Experts Square Off Over Video

Dr. Michael Mann

Experts on opposing sides of the global-warming debate are now squaring off against each other over a satirical Internet video.

On one side is Dr. Michael Mann, professor of Meteorology at Penn State University, who has been ensnared in the Climategate scandal. He is threatening to sue Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) after the group produced a satirical video called “Hide the Decline,” which features Mann’s face and makes fun of his scientific findings, and accuses him of covering up evidence of an apparent decline in temperatures over the past decade.

On the other side is Dr. Patrick Michaels, a contributing author and reviewer on the U.N.’s 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a well-known skeptic of global-warming alarmism. At a National Press Club press conference Tuesday, Michaels criticized Mann for having “very, very, very thin skin.”

The notion that a professor would file a lawsuit over a satirical video “is just quite shocking,” said Dr. Michaels.

Dr. Mann is perhaps most famous for his “hockey stick graph” which showed that mean global temperature changes, which had remained stable for the past millennium, spiked dramatically during the 20th Century. Mann was also involved in controversial e-mails between climate experts, which sat at the center of the Climategate scandal.

“Makin’ up data the old hard way, Fudgin’ the numbers day by day, Ignoring the snow and the cold and a downward line, Hide the decline (hide the decline),” reads the song in the video’s background, critical of Dr. Mann’s alleged manipulation of climate data.

The “Hide the Decline” video garnered more than 500,000 viewers and was featured on the CBS Evening News as well as on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Continue reading »

Tags: Climate Change, CO2, Environment, Global Warming, Internet, IPCC, Michael Mann, Science, U.N., YouTube

The biggest bill ever for NOTHING:

- Prof. Ian Clark: ‘Rises in C02 lag 800 years behind temperature rises!’ - You will pay taxes for nothing!

- Study: CO2 levels remained constant since 1850! (University of Bristol)

The elite is after your money and your freedom (and I told you so).

CO2 is not responsible for (non-existent) global warming. Global warming is a scam.

The world is cooling since 1998 (and even the BBC said so).

Ed Miliband’s legislation will cost us hundreds of billions over the next 40 years

The Energy Minister, Ed Miliband, at the opening of a wind farm Photo: PA

One of the best-kept secrets of British politics - although it is there for all to see on a Government website - is the cost of what is by far the most expensive piece of legislation ever put through Parliament. Every year between now and 2050, acccording to Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), the Climate Change Act is to cost us all up to £18.3 billion - £760 for every household in the country - as we reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent.

Last Thursday - with northern Britain again under piles of global warming - another tranche of regulations came into force, as this measure begins to take effect. New road tax rules mean that to put a larger, more CO2 -emitting car on the road will now cost £950. New “feed-in” subsidies for small-scale “renewables” mean that the installers of solar panels will be paid up to eight times the going rate for their miserable amount of electricity to be fed into the grid, with the overall bill for this scheme estimated eventually to be billions a year. Continue reading »

Tags: Climate Change, CO2, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Government, Law, Politics, Taxes, Taxpayers, U.K.

Added: 3. März 2010

Continue reading »

Tags: AIG, Bailout, Banks, Bill Clinton, Bubble, CO2, Commodities, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Financial Crisis, Global News, Goldman Sachs, Government, Henry Paulson, Internet, Larry Summers, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Oil, Oil Prices, Politics, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wall Street

‘Carbon Trading’ should not even exist:

- Prof. Ian Clark: ‘Rises in C02 lag 800 years behind temperature rises!’ - You will pay taxes for nothing!

- Study: CO2 levels remained constant since 1850! (University of Bristol)

This has nothing to do with saving the planet.

And you will be presented the bill in form of higher prices.

Forget CDOs and other inventions of the great credit bubble. That’s all old hat. Investment bankers are moving on to an area of securities trading that is potentially even more lucrative, and what’s more, even has a social value - saving the planet. Or supposedly so, anyway. I’ve long had my suspicions about the great carbon trading bubble, and I’ve had them pretty much confirmed by a brilliant article which has been drawn to my attention by one Mark Schapiro in Harper’s magazine.

According to Mr Schapiro, carbon trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth. Since Kyoto signatories bought in to the cap and trade concept in 2005, there have been more than $300bn carbon transactions, prompting several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to set up their own carbon trading desks. But that’s just the start. If President Obama and his supporters can institute a cap-and-trade system in the United States - and that’s a big if for this increasingly marooned presidency - demand could explode into a $2 to $3 trillion market.

And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon credits, or finding carbon reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible. Continue reading »

Tags: Barclays, Bubble, CO2, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Energy, Environment, Goldman Sachs

Professor Vladimir Paar

A leading scientist has revealed that Europe could be just five years away from the start of a new Ice Age.

While climate change campaigners say global warming is the planet’s biggest danger, renowned physicist Vladimir Paar says most of central Europe will soon be covered in ice.

The freeze will be so complete that people will be able to walk from England to Ireland or across the North Sea from Scotland to northern Europe.

Professor Paar, from Croatia’s Zagreb University, has spent decades analysing previous ice ages in Europe and what caused them.

“Most of Europe will be under ice, including Germany, Poland, France, Austria, Slovakia and a part of Slovenia,” said the professor in an interview with the Index.hr.

“Previous ice ages lasted about 70,000 years. That’s a fact and the new ice age can’t be avoided.

“The big question is what will happen to the people of the Central European countries which will be under ice?

“They might migrate to the south, or might stay, but with a huge increase in energy use,” he warned.

“This could happen in five, 10, 50 or 100 years, or even later. We can’t predict it precisely, but it will come,” he added.

And the professor said that scientists think global warming is simply a natural part of the planet.

“What I mean is that global warming is natural. Some 130,000 years ago the earth’s temperature was the same as now, the level of CO2 was almost the same and the level of the sea was four metres higher.

“They keep warning people about global warming, but half of America no longer believes it as they keep freezing,” he said.

And he added: “The reality is that mankind needs to start preparing for the ice age. We are at the end of the global warming period. The ice age is to follow. The global warming period should have ended a few thousands of years ago, we should have already been in the ice age. Therefore we do not know precisely when it could start – but soon.” Continue reading »

Tags: Climate Change, CO2, Environment, Europe, Global Warming, Ice Age, Science, Technology, Vladimir Paar