Tag: climategate

Majority Of Carbon Offset Projects Globally Are “Likely Junk”

The “vast majority” of environmental projects most commonly used within the voluntary carbon market (VCM) to offset greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions seem to have “fundamental failings” and cannot be relied upon to tackle global warming, according to a joint investigation from the Guardian and non-profit climate watchdog Corporate Accountability.

The investigation analysed the top 50 emission offset projects, selected because they have sold the most carbon credits within the global VCM, and found that most of them exaggerate climate benefits and underestimate the potential harm caused by the project’s activity.

The most popular projects traded globally include forestry schemes, hydroelectric dams, solar and wind farms, waste disposal and greener household appliance schemes across 20 countries, most of which have developing economies. The data comes from Allied Offsets, the world’s biggest and most comprehensive emissions trading database, which aggregates information about projects traded within the VCM from their inception.

The analysis found that 39, or 78%, of the 50 projects were categorised as “likely junk or worthless” due to one or more “fundamental failing” that undermines its alleged emissions offsetting power.

Eight others, or 16%, look “problematic”. There is evidence to suggest that they may have at least one fundamental failing and could therefore be “junk”.

The effectiveness of the remaining three projects could not be assessed properly or classified definitively, largely due to a lack of available public, independent information. The analysis also found that $1.16bn worth of carbon credits have been traded so far from those projects classified as “likely junk or worthless”.

The criteria for assessing whether a project is likely junk was based on whether there was “compelling evidence” or a high risk that the project could not guarantee additional GHG emission cuts. In some cases, there was evidence to suggest that projects were leaking further, additional emissions or simply shifting emissions elsewhere. In other cases, evidence was found to suggest that a project’s climate benefits had been exaggerated.

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JPMorgan CEO suggests government seize private property to quicken climate initiatives

In his annual letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon suggested that the U.S. government and climate conscious corporations may have to seize citizen’s private property to enact climate initiatives while there still time to stave off climate disasters.

Dimon declared Tuesday that “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” may need to invoke “eminent domain” in order to get the “adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”

“Eminent domain” is a legal term that describes the government using its power to expropriate private property for public use, provided the government provides private owners proper compensation.

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The climate change proposal which means you’d never see the Mediterranean again

Steve Coogan is not the first person you think of when considering the climate crisis.  And yet, earlier this week, I found myself recalling one of his greatest sitcom scenes as I read through a study on how to cut carbon emissions in some of the world’s largest cities.

You probably know it – the six minutes of excruciating comic perfection where Coogan’s greatest creation, the failing chat-show host Alan Partridge, meets a BBC commissioning editor to pitch suggestions for new TV programmes. The lunch goes badly, and growing ever more desperate, Partridge starts throwing increasingly random ideas across the table. “Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank”, he suggests. “Inner City Sumo! Monkey Tennis?”.

There is nothing about budget travel with retired middleweights in “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World” – a report from the environmental group C40 Cities that has found itself in the spotlight. But then, C40 Cities is a serious organisation, comprising 96 major urban centres, on six continents. It meets regularly to discuss how we can lessen our collective carbon footprint, and its dispatch contains some genuinely sensible ideas – reducing the amount of clothing we buy, the amount of electricity we use, the amount of meat we eat.

However, its suggestions on aviation are Full Partridge in their lack of connection to reality – seemingly muttered at random, in a bid to get something, anything on paper. The citizens of the C40 Cities (and with London, New York, Sydney, Madrid and Rome part of the club, as well as Mumbai, Dubai and Rio, that means a good many of us), it says, should rein in their use of aircraft to one return flight, of no more than 1,500km (932 miles) in total distance, every three years. Better still, they should do so by the year 2030.

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Environmentalists Are Destroying My Kitchen

My New York City apartment doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s 700 square feet. The master bedroom fits little more than a queen-sized bed. There’s no kitchen pantry. My baby son sleeps in a large closet. But I’m a cook, and it does have at least one thing that keeps me renewing the lease year after year: a four-burner gas stove. 

Gas ranges allow cooks a greater degree of control over heat, from which flavor and texture result. But for the next generation of New York cooks, that feature will be even more of a rarity.

Starting this year, gas stove hookups will be banned in newly constructed buildings under seven stories throughout the five boroughs. The 90-year-old brownstone I live in, which was renovated and divided into four units in 2019, will be grandfathered in. Starting in 2027, this regulation will also apply to taller buildings. Inspired by city regulators, state lawmakers passed a similar ban in May. Now, New Yorkers who like high-heat and precise temperature control will be out of luck regardless of whether they live in Buffalo or Bushwick.

Over on the Left Coast, Berkeley adopted a similar ban in 2019, which was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals this April. More than 50 other California cities, from Los Angeles to Sacramento, have adopted copycat regulations over the last five years which are now in legal limbo. Then in January, the feds got on board: Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr. called gas stoves “a hidden hazard” and made noises about possibly banning them, saying—ominously, to libertarian ears—”products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Under the guise of environmentalism, big government types keep coming for our kitchens—from gas stoves to dishwashers. Even our pizza ovens are under siege. 

It’s the same story every time, with endless permutations: Environmentalists pick a product to ban, use questionable evidence to justify their onslaught or misunderstand how people’s behavior will shift if their tools are made worse, and leave the rest of us to suffer the consequences—peppering our lives with additional low-grade annoyances. 

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The ‘Climate Emergency’ Is A Hoax

More than 1,600 scientists, including two Nobel laureates, have signed a declaration saying that “There is no climate emergency.”

The declaration is unlikely to get any attention from the mainstream media, unfortunately, but it is important for people to know about: the mass climate hysteria and the destruction of the US economy in the name of climate change need to stop.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” states the declaration signed by the 1,609 scientists, including Nobel laureates John F. Clauser from the US and Ivar Giaever from Norway/US.

The statement adds:

“Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures…

“The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

“Warming is far slower than predicted…

“The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

“Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial…

“Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2 mitigation measures are as damag­ing as they are costly.

“Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are.”

Professor Steven Koonin, former Undersecretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy under the Obama administration, current professor at New York University, and fellow at the Hoover Institution, authored the 2021 bestseller, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. In it, he states that what the largely unreadable (for laymen) and complicated science reports say on climate change is completely distorted by the time their contents are filtered through a long line of summary reports of the research by the media and the politicians.

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Cars That Don’t Meet London’s Emissions Standards Now Subject to Daily Fines

Drivers in London will now face financial penalties if their cars don’t meet emissions standards. While the proposal isn’t without merit, it’s unlikely to make a difference even as it penalizes motorists.

In April 2019, the British capital instituted an Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in central London. The rule required all vehicles to meet certain emissions standards. Certain vehicles, including taxis or certain historic vehicles, were exempt; for most noncompliant vehicles, drivers would face a fine of 12.50 pounds ($15.56 USD) per day. The rule is enforced by cameras that capture license plates.

Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office touted the rule as “the world’s toughest vehicle emissions standard.” Khan referred to the city’s air quality as an “invisible killer” that is “one of the biggest national health emergencies of our generation.” At the time, Silviya Barrett, research manager at the Centre for London think tank, told the BBC, “The ULEZ is really needed especially to help poorer Londoners who live in urban areas with high pollution,” though its effect was “limited at the moment due to its small area.” It was later expanded in 2021 to cover about one-fourth of the city.

Transport for London (TfL), the city’s transportation authority, expanded the ULEZ to the entire city on August 29, 2023. All noncompliant vehicles traveling within the city—including those not registered in the U.K.—will now have to pay the daily fine. Notably, the city already assesses a 15-pound ($18.69 USD) daily Congestion Charge to all motorists who drive in central London during peak hours.

The city is bullish on the proposal: In 2020, Khan’s office released a report showing that at the end of the ULEZ’s first 10 months, measured concentrations of nitrogen dioxide were 44 percent lower than was projected without the ULEZ, with an average compliance rate of 79 percent.

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Alarmists Predict ‘1 Billion’ Deaths from Climate Change This Century

Researchers from Canada and Australia have published a study predicting a remarkable one billion deaths from climate change over the next 100 years.

Citing a “scientific consensus,” the authors analyzed 180 studies on climate change and mortality, converging on a “1000-ton rule,” which means for every 1,000 tons of fossil fuel burned, a person dies.

The article, published in the journal Energies, contends that “a future person is killed every time humanity burns 1000 tons of fossil carbon,” based on a calculation that “burning a trillion tons of fossil carbon will cause 2°C of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), which in turn will cause roughly a billion future premature deaths spread over a period of very roughly one century.”

Estimates of world population growth suggest that by 2100 there will be just over 10 billion humans on the planet, meaning that 10 percent of humanity will die from climate change, if the study’s authors are to be believed.

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Prominent Scientist Admits To Pushing “Preapproved” Climate Change Narrative To Get Papers Published

A climate scientist has admitted that he pushed a “preapproved” narrative on climate change in order to get papers published in leading journals.

Patrick T. Brown told The Free Press “I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.”

He continued, “editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.”

Brown, who also lectures at Johns Hopkins, added that the biases of the editors and reviewers of journals are well known among aspiring scientists who will often omit inconvenient truths to please them, a process he says “distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”

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More than 1,600 scientists, including two Nobel laureates, declare climate ’emergency’ a myth

Acoalition of 1,609 scientists from around the world have signed a declaration stating “there is no climate emergency” and that they “strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy” being pushed across the globe. The declaration does not deny the harmful effect of greenhouse gasses, but instead challenges the hysteria brought about by the narrative of imminent doom.

The declaration, put together by the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL), was made public this month and urges that “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific.”

CLINTEL is an independent foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. 

“Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures,” the declaration says.

Of the 1,609 scientists who have signed the declaration, two signatories are Nobel Prize laureates. The most recent to sign is Nobel Prize winner Dr. John F. Clauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. In an announcement from CLINTEL, Clauser is quoted as saying “Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists.”

The underlying report that engendered the declaration lays out a series of statements challenging many of the common climate claims. For example, one of the most common claims – and repeated without question by many – is that the earth will soon pass “tipping points that will lead to catastrophic environmental damage, including dangerous sea level rise, entire species going extinct, and even greater suffering in many nations, especially the poorest.”

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Do not heat your homes in the evenings, net zero quango tells public

Millions of families will be urged by a green quango not to heat their homes in the evening to help the Government hit its net zero target.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) said people should turn off their radiators at peak times as part of a wider drive to deliver “emissions savings”.

In a document on “behaviour change” the body recommended Britons “pre-heat” their houses in the afternoon when electricity usage is lower.

It said the move would save families money, but critics suggested the real reason was that renewables will not be able to provide enough energy to cope with peak demand.

The advice is contained in the CCC’s sixth “carbon budget” paper, which sets out how the UK should reduce its emissions between 2033-37.

In it the quango suggests people with electrically powered heating systems, such as heat pumps, should switch off their radiators in the evening.

“There is significant potential to deliver emissions savings, just by changing the way we use our homes,” the dossier states.

“Where homes are sufficiently well insulated, it is possible to pre-heat ahead of peak times, enabling access to cheaper tariffs which reflect the reduced costs associated with running networks and producing power during off-peak times.”

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