Tag Archives: Extinction Rebellion

Monash, a Fresh Clown in the Climate Circus

From Climate Scepticism

By TONY THOMAS

Monash, a giant among Australian universities, has 103,000 students and faculty. Of course it’s endorsed the Yes case to hand power to an unelected federal chamber of hereditary Aborigines. But Monash now risks being distracted from its climate crusade. It lists “mitigating climate change” on its “Who We Are” web-page as its core focus: “Climate change threatens the fabric of our planet,” it says. I’ll explain here how Monash seeks to arrest global warming. This might give pointers to how Monash will “save” the referendum’s collapsing Yes case.

Let’s start with 2019, when eleven Monash professors and associate professors, along with eight employees with PhDs and 25 other staffers all endorsed a petition calling for civil disobedience under the aegis of Extinction Rebellion’s nutters. The petition began

The science is clear, the facts are incontrovertible. We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.

“Civilisational collapse” is coming, they say, and if we don’t get to zero emissions by 2029 (i.e. six years from now), “the future of our own species is bleak.”

It is unconscionable that we, our children and grandchildren should have to bear the terrifying brunt of this unprecedented disaster. When [the Morrison] government wilfully abrogates its responsibility to protect its citizens from harm and secure the future for generations to come, it has failed in its most essential duty of stewardship. The ‘social contract’ has been broken, and it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty, to rebel to defend life itself. (My emphases here and throughout the essay).

Extinction Rebellion UK, the inspiration for the petition, decided last December its extremist antics were alienating the public — just how alienated can be seen in the clip below. So stopped blocking trains and highways and gluing hands to Goyas. That decision leaves the Monash professors looking like stranded university assets, or some might claim stranded liabilities.

Monash per se has what it rightly calls a “unique” fiefdom to deliver the true climate story to us plebs. It’s called the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub (MCCCRH). Its vision is to “depoliticise” climate change (as if) and ensure we “trust and understand the science and the solutions.” Sure, trust is what science is all about. My count of the Hub’s local and international staff and “Academic Members” runs to 12 professors, 12 associate professors, four senior lecturers, four lecturers and five fellows, plus gaggles of project managers, “collaborators”, media flacks, consultants and hangers-on.

The Monash Hub on its website boasts a “select range” of leading institutional partners. These include not just Their ABC but as an “academic and scientific partner”, the China Center for Climate Change Communication. That august body was set up by Beijing’s “key public research university” Renmin, affiliated with the Ministry of Education and the Beijing Municipal People’s Government, or in lay terms, I assume, the Chinese Communist Party. (The China Center’s co-founder a decade ago was Oxfam Hong Kong). The Center is one of several such hubs, including at Yale and George Mason University, Virginia. At an inaugural meeting in Beijing, Yale and the China Center agreed to aim at ”not only the two nations’ domestic audiences but also targeted interests, such as policy makers, other academics, civic and business professionals, and nongovernmental organizations beyond their own borders.”

It’s great that our Monash climate communications crew have such eclectic taste in pals. I wonder how explicitly their Beijing associates are communicating that China’s CO2 emissions have been dwarfing the combined emissions of the entire developed world?

Talking of educating the masses, any day now Monash is scheduled to fire up its algorithm-powered truth machine, aka “Climate Genie Project”. As the world’s 44th-ranked university gushes,

Imagine a world void of climate change misinformation. Where media outlets report on climate change diligently, accurately and without bias. Where the general public is accurately informed, and through which [sic], can contribute to democratic decision-making. The Climate Genie Project is working towards this future by building societal resilience to climate change misinformation [which] acts as an impediment to effective climate action, resulting in a lower level of public climate literacy and reduced levels of trust in science.

So how does Big Brother’s truth machine work? Climate Genie is inspired by smiter of denialists Dr John Cook and his utterly bizarre colleagues. It’s “a web extension that offers an automated fact-check of online climate change misinformation.”

It scans articles, highlighting potential misinformation and providing a pop-up message with details regarding the ‘types’ of myths and ‘techniques’ being used to mislead. In this way, users … learn how to identify and counter any misinformation in the future.

To mitigate global warming, Monash’s other tools of choice are

♦ a “Pravda on Caulfield” media wholesaling crew led by ex-Age editor and Conversationfounder Andrew Jaspan, with support from the ABC’s ex-news director Gaven Morris. The unit is keyed to the corrupt and socialist-mindedUN’s mishmash of 17 “Sustainable Development Goals”

♦ inspirational climate poetry about Bat Piles

 ♦ tracts from top climate scientists about their nightmares, set to violin and percussion music and garnished with Styrofoam jetsam and pressed plants

♦  climate-oriented science-fiction agitprop

♦  software turning cyclone tracks into easy-listening soundscapes

I know you’re dying to know about Andrew Jaspan and Gaven Morris so I’ll tackle them first. Jaspo left The Age (or vice-versa) in 2008 and set up the uni-funded playground called The Conversation, now a global publishing and financial phenomenon for CV-challenged academics. You might also recall that Jaspan’s editor at the Conversation, Misha Ketchell, in 2019 banned and cancelled any comments or would-be contributor disputing the fiery-doom mantra based on IPCC models that the IPCC people now themselves reject. Ketchell wrote, “Climate change deniers and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet.” Concurrently, he published a piece by would-be prophet Tim Flannery branding climate sceptics as child “predators”.

Jaspan left The Conversation (or vice-versa) in 2018 after some disagreements and, in January last year at Monash, he launched its new global platform, 360info, with university cash and “invaluable funding and support” from lockdown-happy Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, whose government views 360info as “a public good service”. 360info is now also partnered with Sydney University and UNSWand part-funded and/or supported by the sinister data and AI giants Meta (Facebook) and Google. The team at 360info, including half a dozen ABC alumni who’ve drifted in, re-writes and edits academic research pieces – especially about climate activism. The pieces are then pushed to 1,300 publishers and broadcasters including AAP. At last month, 360info claimed to have commissioned and published 746 articles, written by close to 1,000 researchers from 400 universities in 55 countries. Nearly half wind up in the Indian media. Its impact report this month says (p12),

360info remains committed to countering the spread of poor quality information and fake news in the public sphere. In June 360info partnered with the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) Media Academy to produce a special report ‘Taming the Wild West of Misinformation’.

It said Jaspan provided backup “to highlight the extent of misinformation and provide media professionals with strategies for dealing with it” – it seems even media “professionals” can’t tell fact from fiction without 360info putting its bib in. Needless to say, ABU is yet another climate-shilling outfit, pretending that global warming is responsible for whatever weather disasters occur.
ABU media unit head Steve Ahern let the cat partly out of the bag by noting how the free stuff from 360info helps media companies offset their “tight budgets and time pressures”.

In other words, struggling media will happily grab free stories planted by outfits funded directly or indirectly by the state, buttressing narratives desired by the state.

Here’s some 360info output from last month. One story was by deputy editor Asia Pacific Chris Bartlett, an ABC alumnus who seems to have ingested The Guardian’s stylebook, demanding replacement of “climate change” with uber-sensational descriptors. The headline was “Record heat makes climate crisis very real”. Bartlett quoted WMO that “extreme heat was at least 30 times more like because of climate breakdowns caused [of course] by human activity.” Below his story were such reports as “Climate change’s dangerous new fires” and “Extreme heat will put more pressure on [Australian] workers.”
360info has been certified by Newsguard, the US leftist rating agency, “with its highest possible trust rating” of 100 out of 100. My jaw dropped to read that 360info’s rationale for top rating included “unbiased, explanatory and contextual information … removing opinion and advocacy and letting the facts speak for themselves.”

Also 100/100 rated by Newsguard were The New York Times, Washington Post and The Guardian. Well, that’s no surprise. I do recall NYT and WashPost secretly selling their pages and credibility for relative peanuts (NYT: $US100,000 a month) to the Chinese Communist Party from 2016 to 2021 for propaganda like “Diaoyu Islands Belong to China” plus the Wuhan COVID cover-ups, and then, when outed, scrambling to erase their tracks. Personally, I’d rate them 0/100.

Now to introduce Monash’s poetess laureate – climate, Ms Amanda Anastasi. Under the Hub’s header, “Climate Change Poetry”, Monash explains,

The language used by scientists and politicians is not always suited to overcoming the enormous psychological distance of climate change. The special ability of poetry to communicate compassion, vulnerability, utopia and dystopia can offer texts which engage audiences in ways not possible with mass media. With this project, we have commissioned the work of Amanda Anastasi for a range of poetry that captures the science, politics, impacts and ways of imagining climate change futures. The poems here include one line poems that anticipate a world changed by climate, as well as longer poems in which climate is infused with everyday life in confronting ways.

Ms Anastasi describes herself as “poet and climate change activist” and three-year “Resident Poet/research associate” at the Hub.

I recently (OK, it was 1963) spent a year majoring in poetry at UWA, so I’m licensed to critique verse. Here goes.

To get our sustainability pulses racing, the first Amanda climate poem cited by Monash is titled “Bat Piles”. I assumed that bats  sufferered from haemorrhoids but the 18-line text is actually about bat carcasses littering the ground around Boonah in 2014  after a bushfire. Ms Anastasi’s bats are “each reduced to lay at the level of a human heel” in a crunchy carpet. Call me pedant, but bat corpses don’t “lay” anything, let alone eggs chook-and-platypus style. Cooked bats just “lie” around.

Another quibble is that Monash’s poetess refers to bats as a “gothic emblem”. The bat connection she makes with Batman comics is actually to “Gotham City”, a nickname for Manhattan, which according to the New York Public Library, popped up in Batman Issue No 4 in 1940. Gotham isn’t “gothic”. In any event, I can’t see what a 2014 Queensland bushfire has to do with climate change. Maybe a driver just flipped out a butt.

Another of her poems is about polar bears starving because of climate change. She was inspired in 2019 by one of Monash’s activist lecturers who showed Amanda’s class “an image of a tired and emaciated polar bear balancing himself on a thin piece of ice. I found myself extremely moved by this direct, inarguable image and knew I would be writing about the plight of this creature.”

Images of starving polar bears cram activists’ albums. They include Al Gore’s photoshopped ones of sad bears on icebergs and that notorious National Geographic video in 2017 of a skeletal Canadian bear, which allegedly drew a shocked audience of 2.5 billion. National Geographic had to apologise for labelling the video as “This is what climate change looks like” when the ailing bear’s misfortune had nothing to do with climate. Moreover, the documentary maker was outed for prolonging the bear’s suffering for days while he organised its filming for climate-propaganda purposes. When the muse is next upon her, perhaps Ms Anastasi could versify some delightful stanzas about polar bear populations having jumped from 24,500 in 2005 to 32,000 last year.

Monash Hub “has a strategic preference for short, accessible messaging”, hence it dotes on her short poems – and by “short” I’m talking really short. I hope Monash doesn’t pay the poet per word — “Thanks for the five words, Amanda, here’s our cheque for $5.50, GST included”. The 23 poems can be savoured in the clip above. My favourite (a five worder) goes, “Another climate denier has conceded” (at 1min38secs). It comes with soppy music (literally) and a pic of a clothed climate denier up to her neck in rising-seas. Did she claim for dry-cleaning, pending her monthly cheque from Big Oil? Another one-liner is illustrated with beach benches overtaken by 30-metre surf. Picnickers must have made it to high ground.

Inspired by Amanda, over several days I myself crafted an eight-worder for the university:

Metamorphosis  (after Franz Kafka)
The Monash climate expert seeks a real job. (© TT)

THE HUB‘s multi-million budget focuses on more than climate poetry. On the music front – move over Herr Mozart — the Hub has run a multimedia installation and performance project with a lady violinist and lady percussionist performing a “musical letter” based on climate scientists’ misery memoirs. In 2014 an ANU Masters student, Joe Duggan, began collecting 50 handwritten letters from “leading international climate scientists” describing their “despair” about governments not rushing us over the cliff to net zero. Their scrawls were put on display in Melbourne for a National Science Week, rather like a cathedral’s relics of saints.
Here’s a sample from Sarah Perkins, UNSW, now Dr Perkins-Kilpatrick:

Perhaps I’m the odd one out, the anomaly of the human race. The one who cares enough, who has the compassion, to want to help make her [the planet] better… If we work together, we can cure this terrible illness and restore her to her old self before we exploited her…

Monash commissioned six Australian composers from five cities to set these lugubrious letters to music with added electronics, nature recordings and scary videos. Into the mix also went squashed plants from the Botanic Gardens collections and a collage of plastic flotsam and Styrofoam jetsam, all mashed together as a “Climate Notes — This Is How You Feel” public installation. Monash then “invite[d] people to consider their own emotions surrounding the threat of climate change by writing their own letter and sharing it in the installation.” The university explained

Understanding and withstanding a major challenge calls for emotional not just intellectual effort: feelings as well as facts, stories as well as statistics. Climate Notes propels us to consider what it feels like to live through a time when climate change affects every aspect of our lives.

Monash memes also extend to “sonification” of Queensland’s Cyclone Debbie of 2017, so that we can “hear extreme weather”. Listen to Debbie and its Monash music here. Debbie-decibels sound like a Ford Prefect with rusted muffler that I piloted as a teenager. Monash warns listeners of a loud “bang!” as Debbie drops in to Airlie Beach –like a brick going through a shop window. As Monash says,

This data is processed by algorithmic composition and audio synthesis within a platform called ‘supercollider’ to produce distinct sound sequences … the Hub is looking at the possibility of also sonifying other kinds of storms and heatwaves. [Why not also “sonify” a nice spring morning – Beethoven did it in his sixth symphony]. This research not only has the potential to effectively ‘hear’ climate change in an entirely new way, but could also be a novel way of bringing climate science to new audiences through sampling in music.

Could Monash get any more surprising? Yes, it can, like its scholars probing kids’ video games for climate angles. Four years ago Ph.D. candidate JR Burgmann (now Dr Burgmann) published an opinion piece, “Why it’s Time For Video Games to Address Climate Change.Video games can change the world.” He begins,

Earth has heated dramatically. Islands and coastlines have begun to sink into the rising seas. [Like, where?]. Extreme weather events … have drastically increased in frequency [no they haven’t, says the IPCC], displacing and taking the lives of thousands of people each year. [Extreme weather casualties in fact have declined 99-plus percent in the past century]. Ecosystems have begun to collapse… [blah blah]. The solution to our climate crisis will require immense social and political transformations. Rebellion and civil disobedience – what we demand as non-negotiable to governments – will also be key in shaping the future of our planet.

Burgmann likes art’s potential as climate propaganda. Specifically, the potential of the 2 billion kids and kid-adult users of video games — “the kind we drool over” (his phrase). He complains that video games shun climate politics: even the sciencey US National Aeronautical & Space Agency flunked with its Climate Kids game, he writes. On the other hand, a commercial game called Earth Atlantis, “a 2D side-scrolling shooter”, gets it right about oceans flooding 96% of land by 2100 (with added sea monsters), but lamentably fails to blame human CO2 emissions. Instead the designers merely bang on about plagues and zombie apocalypses.

IPCC reports are dull, so some Monash authors literally make up futuristic calamities as “cli-fi”. Their predictions all come true, unlike in the real world where not a single climate calamity forecast from 1980 to 2023 has ever eventuated. Dr Burgmann’s cli-fi is a novel titled Children of Tomorrow, “a love-song for a burning planet” one blurber calls it. In the “human race’s endgame”

the tension increases chapter by chapter much like the carbon dioxide in the air, preventing characters, and us, from breathing easily.(p1)

The novel’s actually well-written if you can identify with the plot’s characters struggling with their useless Ph.D dissertations.
Monash’s Hub of course cooks up school lessons. In March “with energy and excitement over engaging climate education”, the team spent a day workshopping new stuff. “We can’t wait for these resources to be used in the classroom!” they enthused.

It’s good to know our schoolkids are in safe Monash hands. With luck the Clayton swamp will turn the Yes case into the same farce as its climate caterwauling.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. For a copy ($35 including postage), email tthomas061@gmail.com

Extinction Rebellion Radicals Claim Responsibility for a Stage Invasion

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

06/09/2022. London, United Kingdom. Official Cabinet Portrait; Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP poses for a photograph in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street

Jacob Rees Mogg – free to hold “his national loonies convention next week and see how many people show up”.

Watch: Extinction Rebellion Activist Storms Stage at National Conservatism Conference

KURT ZINDULKA15 May 2023

A leftist agitator allegedly acting on behalf of the climate alarmist Extinction Rebellion activist group stormed the stage of the National Conservatism Conference in London on Monday during the keynote speech from former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg.

During an address from former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster, a man climbed up on the stage in order to disrupt the NatCon Conference on Monday.

Grabbing the microphone from Rees-Mogg, the leftist told the crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, you’re very nice people and I’m sure you are fantastic. I’d like to draw your attention to a few characteristics of fascism.”

…Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/05/15/watch-extinction-rebellion-activist-storms-stage-at-national-conservatism-conference/

A green radical seizing a microphone podium from a speaker by force, shoving the speaker bodily out of the way, then denouncing the speaker as a fascist, has a certain irony. Reminds me of descriptions of other speakers in another time, who got manhandled by fanatics who invaded their meetings. But self awareness has never been an Extinction Rebellion strength.

Entertaining as he is, Rees Mogg is a long way from being my favourite conservative. In 2022 Rees Mogg wrote a piece for The Guardian, urging people to get on board Net Zero. At the time Rees Mogg’s mum was reportedly trying to get approval for a large wind farm, though I don’t recall Rees Mogg publicly stating his views on his mum’s wind project.

The silliest part of this protest is, Rees Mogg probably would have been happy to accommodate the Extinction Rebellion gentleman in a staged debate if he had asked nicely, and might have even agreed with some of his points, given Rees Mogg’s support for green energy.

But Extinction Rebellion have had a few bad experiences with Rees Mogg. Back in March this year, Rees Mogg reduced Extinction Rebellion’s Phoebe Plummer to incoherent spluttering in a televised debate. Phoebe is one of those Extinction Rebellion radicals who goes around trying to deface priceless artworks, to force people to listen to her point of view.

Whatever my reservations about Rees Mogg’s claim to be a small government conservative who supports big green, I can’t fault Rees Mogg’s handling of this latest Extinction Rebellion outburst.

h/t Mr. David Guy-Jason – Jacob Rees-Mogg also said Britain “must get every cubic inch of gas out of the North Sea”

That’s Entertainment?

From Climate Scepticism

By MARK HODGSON

There was a time when going to the pictures was a treat. We went there to be entertained, to have fun, and to indulge in a bit of escapism. Not any more.

This week I received an email from my local small theatre and occasional cinema, inviting me to attend a couple of screenings. The first title didn’t exactly send my pulse racing: “Thriving – A Journey into Regenerative Farming”:

By visiting farmers who are adopting regenerative practices along the route Clare wanted to see firsthand how people are simultaneously producing food whilst boosting biodiversity and mitigating climate change.

I can’t wait. And the Q&A session afterwards sounds fun…

The second film, however, really plumbs the depths of misery. “Finite -The Climate of Change”. It’s about as interesting and escapist as one might expect from something which – as the email tells me – “…is organised by a group of local climate change activists and is sponsored by Friends of the Earth and Extinction Rebellion North Lakes.”

There is an extensive write-up to encourage us to attend, though it didn’t do it for me:

Inside the core of the climate movement, concerned citizens in Germany put their bodies on the line to save the ancient Hambach forest from one of Europe’s biggest coal mines. Every year since the 1970s, a section of the forest has been cut by Europe’s biggest CO2 emitter, energy giant RWE. Now just 10% remains. Robin, Indigo and Clumsy are part of a secretive community of dedicated activists who have spent years living in self-built treehouses to halt the chainsaws. They are heading for a final showdown with RWE and the police to decide whether the forest is wiped off the map forever, or if the all powerful fossil fuel industry can be stopped before we fall off the cliff of climate breakdown. The activists form an unlikely alliance with a frustrated but tight-knit community in rural northeast England who have spent 30 years fighting plans for a new coal mine next to their homes. Julia, June and their neighbours have exhausted all legal avenues to protect the beautiful valley where their children grew up. With mining about to begin, the community feel they have no choice but to occupy the valley to halt work commencing.

FINITE is a cinematic, timely insider’s view of the world of direct action and climate activism; a raw, shocking, intimate and emotional insight into the David and Goliath battle between ordinary people and fossil fuel corporations. A localised chapter of the story that will define humanity. FINITE lays bare what the green leaders of the world are really doing to our natural environment but also how collective action can turn the tide against all odds.

After the film there will be a Q&A panel and a social with local and national climate activists.

It sounds a barrel of laughs. What worries me is that the organisers at my local theatre-cum-cinema think this is likely to be of interest and to generate a decent attendance. Even more worrying is the thought that others might agree and that the place might be full for the evening.

What with my local building society urging me to check the carbon footprint of my finances, my professional body demanding that I save the planet and my local library pushing climate change indoctrination at me we do seem to have entered a new age of Puritanism. Where did all the fun go?

Pass me the popcorn.

The Conversation: “Can we justify … botanic gardens in an age of climate change … ?”

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

How much do greens hate green spaces? If they’re not hacking down forests for renewables, they’re trying to turn the water off?

The public history, climate change present, and possible future of Australia’s botanic gardens

Published: April 28, 2023 6.17am AEST
Susan K Martin
Emeritus Professor in English, La Trobe University

Can we justify maintaining water-hungry botanic gardens in an age of climate change and rising water prices?

Perhaps such gardens are no longer suited to Australia’s changing climate – if they ever were.

It is easy to argue Australian botanic gardens are imperial remnants full of European plants, an increasingly uncomfortable reminder of British colonisation. 

…

Facing the climate emergency

Water for trees and decorative plants drawn from very different climates were always an issue for these gardens. 

As early as 1885, Richard Schomburgk in his role of director of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens told Nature about the drought affecting that city and the drastic impact it was having “upon many of the trees and shrubs in the Botanic Garden, natives of cooler countries”.

…

Finally, we don’t need to rip out non-hardy introduced trees: climate change will progressively remove them for us.Read more: https://theconversation.com/the-public-history-climate-change-present-and-possible-future-of-australias-botanic-gardens-198864

What’s next? Extinction Rebellion Australia, or one of the alphabet soup of radical green groups which have sprung up like toadstools, invading our beautiful garden spaces and wrecking them in the name of saving the planet?

The funny part of this climate rant is you could make a similar argument about universities. I mean, other than a handful of laboratory facilities or studies which require in person training, like physical fitness, what is the point of maintaining large lecture halls and gardens, when people could simply learn online from home, or visit factories or hospitals to complete practical units of their work? An awful lot of water and energy is wasted maintaining the beautiful green spaces and large lecture halls and offices most universities host.

I’m not actually suggesting universities should be closed, I think the entire premise is nonsense. But if someone wants to class water and energy use as paramount considerations, logical consistency demands that universities with their heated halls and well maintained garden spaces should be high on the list of facilities which need to be reviewed.

Why aren’t students protesting and demanding their own universities practice what they preach, live by the green ideals they claim to uphold?

I doubt academics have even considered the possibility the rules they promote should be applied to them. I mean, look at the air miles academics clock up attending climate conferences, where one of the regular topics of conversation how to restrict ordinary people’s access to air travel.

XR Founder Moans About His Carrots

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t MrGrimNasty

Oh dear, how sad, never mind!

Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam has taken to Twitter to share his frustration in an 11-point thread after he was served carrots and a handful of potatoes for dinner as the ‘vegan option’ in hospital.

Mr Hallam posted a photo of an almost empty plate from his bed which had just a portion of carrots on it, writing 391 words on the environmental benefits of going vegan – but did admit he had already eaten the ‘six’ potatoes that were served on the side.

The controversial environmentalist, 56, who also helped form eco mobs Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, has been in hospital after ‘crushing’ his leg during an accident while riding his bike.

He was last Friday pictured with an external fixator on his right leg which is used to hold broken bones in place with metal pins or screws.

It comes after a week of ‘slow-marching’ protests by Just Stop Oil across central London, with expected action on Saturday at 12pm in Westminster. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12028137/Extinction-Rebellion-founders-Twitter-anger-hospital-served-carrots-vegan-option.html#newcomment

I’m not really sure what else a vegan can expect to eat in winter in our glorious fossil fuel free future. There will ne food imports, because they will need fossil fuels to ship them. So there will be little else  than potatoes and carrots for months at a time, unless you want something out of a tin.

By the way Roger, I wonder how much fossil fuels were used to manufacture that fixator around your leg, ferry you to the hospital in an ambulance or supply all of the other things needed in the hospital to keep you alive?

Julia Hartley Brewer’s Furious CLASH With Extinction Rebellion Activist

TalkTV

Extinction Rebellion has threatened a wave of “unprecedented” disobedience unless its climate change demands are met.

The group says that unless the Government ends licences for new fossil fuel projects and creates climate change citizens’ assemblies it will step up its disruptive campaign in “new and inventive ways”.

TalkTV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer is joined by Extinction Rebellion spokesman Etienne Stott MBE to discuss the threats. He tells Julia: “We have to end the fossil fuel era otherwise, we’re going to end our civilization.

These are not my words, they’re the words of the United Nations.” Julia countered: “This is where it’s irresponsible. People like you, Greta Thunberg; this is scaremongering and an absolute lie.”

Climate Crisis? What Climate Crisis? Part Two: Where We are in the UK Today

From Watts Up With That?

By Neil Lock

This is the second in a set of essays about the issue generally known as “climate change” or “global warming.” In the first, [[1]], I looked for evidence to support the claims of catastrophic climate change, caused by emissions of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) from human civilization, which have been and are being made so frequently and so stridently by green activists and alarmists. I found no such evidence.

When I embarked on the writing of this second essay, my target was to pull together, all in one place, the full back-story to these accusations. I started to document, in some detail, how the United Nations, governments, mainstream media and others have joined together in a project, whose objective appears to be no less than the destruction of our human industrial civilization. But the tale grew in the telling. After several weeks of work, I realized I had far too much material to be able to tell the story all in one go. I therefore determined to split the back-story into more digestible chunks. That in itself was quite a task!

I am presenting this back-story with a particular focus on climate policies in the UK. In my researches, I have made some amazing, and unsettling, discoveries about how dishonestly the UK government has treated us. But I’m sure that those in other countries will be able to find parallels from their own experiences.

I ended up with a revised plan, which required splitting the back-story into four parts. So, there will now be five essays in the set, not two as I originally planned. In this, the second, I’ll give you a feel for how badly the UK government has been treating us on this issue over the last few years. In the third, I will trace the back-story up to the Rio “Earth Summit” of 1992. The fourth will cover the back-story from 1992 onwards, with the exception of the thorny issue of cost-benefit analysis, which I will discuss in the fifth and final essay.

2019: a year of madness

To summarize the UK government’s handling of the “climate change” issue in recent years, I chose to pick a relevant date in the recent past, and to begin my account from that date.

The date I chose was April 30th, 2019. That day marked the start of a huge wave of UK government activity, all directed towards killing the mobility, freedoms and prosperity of ordinary people in the name of some claimed (but, in reality, non-existent) climate crisis.

Extinction Rebellion

On that day, April 30th, 2019, minister Michael Gove met with Extinction Rebellion (XR). There is a video of the meeting, here: [[2]]. I only watched a small part of it. But, particularly in the light of subsequent destructive actions by XR, the chumminess of this meeting is very concerning. And they got to see Labour politicians, and the mayor of London, on the same visit! The Guardian commented on the meeting here: [[3]].

Later in the year, south-east England’s anti-terrorist police included Extinction Rebellion in a list of “extremist” organizations. Though they were eventually forced to withdraw this.

“Climate emergency”

On May 1st, the day following that meeting, the parliament declared a “climate emergency.” Without any hard evidence that any such emergency existed, and without even taking a vote.

This is typical of how today’s political classes operate. They bring up some problem, which may or may not be real. They blow it up until they have made it look like a really big issue, that needs to be “fixed.” They then “fix” it by making bad laws, which seriously infringe on basic human rights. Climate is not the only case in point; just recently, the UK political class has done exactly the same thing on the issue of asylum seekers arriving by boat across the English Channel.

In any case, as I showed in the first essay of this set, there is no “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” in the real world. The “emergency” or “crisis” of May 1st, 2019 only existed in the minds of those seeking to use climate as an excuse to make bad laws and hurt people.

Interestingly, on May 2nd, Sky News published the results of a poll [[4]] of a random sample of their subscribers. 56% said they would be unwilling to drive significantly less to protect the environment. And 53% said they would be unwilling even in principle to significantly reduce the amount they fly. Clearly, the politicians had lost the plot, and were completely out of touch with the people they were supposed to be serving.

“Net zero”

In June 2019, the government put forward, and the parliament passed, a bill to set “a target for at least a 100% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (compared to 1990 levels) in the UK by 2050.” (At least 100%? Maybe more? Crazy).

This target, called “net zero,” replaced an earlier target of an 80% cut from 1990 levels. An official government web page describes this, indeed, all but crows about it: [[5]]. This was at least the fourth time since 1992 that the UK government had moved the emissions goalposts. Always in the direction of greater reductions, of course.

The CCC Net Zero report

The report which supposedly “justified” this, called “Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming,” came from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). This committee was chaired by John Selwyn Gummer, also known as Lord Deben. The CCC is supposed to be an independent and impartial advisory body. But in my view, it’s about as impartial as Extinction Rebellion.

You can find the report at [[6]]. But I don’t advise you to read it, unless you’re a masochist. I tried to read several different bits, and on each occasion had to give up in less than a page. It reads like nothing more than a gigantic exercise in virtue signalling, and I can’t understand why any sane person could believe anything in it.

All I gleaned from it is that they reckoned the cost of “net zero” measures might be 1-2% of UK GDP in 2050. But, as we know, government projects always cost more and take longer. So, I think one to two pinches of salt are in order.

UK Climate Assembly

Parliamentary select committees also initiated a scheme of “citizens’ climate assemblies,” one of the demands put forward by Extinction Rebellion. It’s amazing, and very concerning, that in a so-called “democracy,” those who are supposed to serve the people kow-towed to disruptive extremists, but never even bothered to ask us the people what we thought.

The result was a “UK Climate Assembly,” which eventually produced a report in 2020. I’ll discuss that report in the next section.

Absolute Zero

In November 2019, a joint report called “Absolute Zero” was published by five UK universities, using the collective moniker “UK FIRES.” For a summary, see [[7]]. The purpose of this report seems to have been to soften people up for the de-carbonization of Western economies, which national and international political élites want to force on us all.

After just a single pass through the diagram summarizing the proposals, I could see that the whole idea was a dystopian nightmare. The proposals read like the edicts of a crazed, ultra-conservative dictator. And they made Soviet five-year plans look like a cake-walk.

The general election of 2019

In a sense, the UK general election of December 2019 didn’t change anything, because it kept the Tories in power. One issue completely dominated that election: Brexit.

Myself, I was well aware that an awful lot was wrong with what the Tories had been doing to us. But I regarded Brexit, and in particular getting away from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), as a sine qua non for any kind of improvement. I had gone so far as to become a member of the Brexit party. I had been agitating as hard as I could for the party to commit to getting “net zero” and the rest of the green agenda reviewed by outside, independent auditors; but they weren’t yet ready to do that. Despite this, and despite having been a conscientious non-voter in UK elections for 32 years, I was ready to vote for my local Brexit candidate. But when Nigel Farage withdrew all the candidates in Tory held seats, he was one of them.

The Tory manifesto proposed “the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth.” “We will lead the global fight against climate change.” And a lot more crap like that. Even if their candidate had not been Jeremy Hunt, I could never have voted for the party. So, I returned to my conscientious non-voting. But many people, who just wanted Brexit done and didn’t care a damn about the green agenda, were fooled into voting for that agenda by the Tories’ promise to “get Brexit done.” The Tories had offered people a carrot with a huge turd on it. And far too many people took the bait.

2020-21: no let-up in the madness

You might have thought that, with COVID-19 exploding on to the world scene, and people being all but confined to their homes for weeks or months at a time, there might have been some let-up in the mad rush towards the green cliff. But not so.

Extinction Rebellion dig up a lawn

If anyone still needed to be reminded that Extinction Rebellion are destructive and extremist, an event in February 2020 provided such a reminder. XR dug up a famous lawn at Trinity College, Cambridge: [[8]]. The lawn is famous, because it backs on to the staircase where Isaac Newton used to live, and has an apple tree (but not the one that prompted him to think about gravity). Oh, and Trinity was my college.

The UK Climate Assembly report

The UK Climate Assembly produced a report in September 2020. A summary is here: [[9]].

The assembly “asked citizens to listen to advice from climate experts,” before setting them to make “a list of recommendations for how the country should reach net-zero emissions by 2050.” The first “expert lead” was Chris Stark, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, which has been driving the “climate change” agenda in the UK since 2008. A second was Professor Jim Watson, the chair of the “UK Net Zero Advisory Group.” And a third was the director of the “Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations”: [[10]]. Not exactly independent or unbiased experts, then.

The assembly’s final report “recommends changes across a broad range of sectors, from meat-and-dairy consumption and air travel through to zero-carbon heating and electricity generation. Measures receiving high levels of support from the assembly include: a levy for frequent fliers; a ban on the sale of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars by 2030-35; and a switch to a more biodiversity-focused farming system.”

What a travesty of “democracy” and “consulting the people!” Obviously, with such biased “experts,” there was no possibility of the assembly members ever being told the truth, or allowed to express their reservations. And anyone who thought “net zero” was unnecessary or counter-productive must surely have been purged from the assembly even before it began.

The Ten Point Plan

In November 2020, the government published their Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution [[11]]. The phrase “green industrial revolution” was lifted by the Tories straight out of Labour’s 2019 manifesto! I set out my own views on these matters here: [[12]].

I suppose this plan was a little less extreme than “Absolute Zero.” But of the ten points, only one (expansion of nuclear power) seems to me to be clearly a sensible path to take. Some parts of another (better flood defences, and planting more trees) would likely produce some benefits.

The rest, I find highly dubious. (Much) more off-shore wind power? It didn’t succeed last time it was tried, and the costs look to be far greater than has ever been admitted. Low carbon hydrogen? A costly and dangerous pipe-dream. Electric vehicles replacing fossil-fuelled ones? Impractical for many; unaffordable for most; and the scale of the electricity grid expansion needed was grossly under-estimated.

Public transport, cycling and walking? Impractical for very many journeys. In particular, you can’t use public transport that isn’t there at all, or doesn’t run when you need it. You can’t cycle easily in hilly areas. And you can’t walk on a journey if you have a big load to carry.

“Jet zero” and green ships? Another pipe-dream. Greener buildings? Very expensive, and extremely disruptive (though they have since walked back the proposal to ban new gas boilers in pre-existing homes). Carbon capture? Unproven, and horribly expensive. Green finance? The only beneficiaries will be politicians, financiers and big-company bosses.

In summary, these “net zero” proposals were and are, in no particular order: Not properly costed. Not properly thought through. The benefits are unsure. Pie in the sky. Very expensive. Seriously reducing, or even destroying, freedom and mobility for many ordinary people. Disruptive and potentially dangerous. Likely to raise the costs of travel and of trade. Requiring huge investments of money that people don’t have, in order to bring about a lower standard of living than we have now. Already been tried and failed in one country or another. Requiring huge tax rises. All but certain to tank.

And the costs will fall on, guess who? Ordinary people. What will we get in return? We will suffer unnecessary disruptions. We will lose freedom and convenience. We’ll be poorer. Our lives will be worse, not better. And we will get little, if anything, of any positive utility to us.

Besides which, where are the feasibility studies for each of these proposals? And where are the objective cost versus benefit analyses? I’m willing to bet they haven’t been done at all.

COP 26

Then there was the UN “Conference of the Parties” meeting in Glasgow in November 2021. Its stated purpose was: “to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.” And its theme statement was: “uniting the world to tackle climate change.”

As I wrote at the time: “Like bidders at an auction at which they are spending other people’s money, politicians fall over each other to make commitment after commitment on behalf of the people they are supposed to (but fail to) represent. These commitments, they must know, if carried out will cause severe pain and inconvenience to very many ordinary people. And those people have never even been consulted on the matter. But drunk with their sense of power, they plan to go on regardless; for it’s our money they are spending, not their own. And we are the ones who are and will be suffering the pain and inconvenience, not them.”

As an example of some of the crap spouted by the UK government in Glasgow, consider a commitment made by then education secretary Nadhim Zahawi. “Young people will be empowered to take action on the environment as part of new measures designed to put climate change at the heart of education.” This is on an official government web page: [[13]]. If that isn’t indoctrinating young children with propaganda, I don’t know what is.

But the results from Glasgow were not entirely catastrophic for those of us who are implacably opposed to the green agenda in all its forms. There were some high-profile non-appearances. Putin stayed at home in Russia. Xi, likewise, stayed home in China. Modi went home to India, having announced plans that will surely disappoint the extremist agitators. And remember, China and India between them account for 36% of the world’s population. There did seem to be a sense that the green leviathan had, at last, encountered a certain degree of resistance from a few countries that had worked out that it isn’t in their interests to stay on that bandwagon much longer. That’s encouraging, but not nearly enough yet.

The war on our cars

But the great bulk of the actions that UK governments, both national and local, have been taking on the green agenda in recent years, have been those directed towards their long-planned objective of forcing ordinary people out of our cars.

Sham “consultation”

In July 2021, the UK government held a “consultation” on “bringing forward the end to the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 to 2035, or earlier if a faster transition appears feasible.” I myself submitted a 58-page, detailed response. My response, and the responses of others like me, to that “consultation” were totally ignored. And the ban was moved forward to 2030. The whole “consultation” was a sham.

Recently, this subject has been in the news again, as the EU, pressured by the Germans, have started to back away from their own similar commitment, which was only due to come into force in 2035 anyway. I expect the pig-headed UK government to bury their snouts in the sand on this one, and stay on their course to civilizational suicide. Indeed, prime minister Rishi Sunak announced, just recently, that car makers will have to ensure that 22 per cent of the vehicles they sell in the UK are all-electric by 2024: [[14]]. That’s next year!

C40

One of the organizations which has been driving the green agenda, particularly in London, is C40: [[15]]. C40 is an international organization, which describes itself as “A global network of mayors taking urgent action to confront the climate crisis and create a future where everyone can thrive.” C40’s mission, so they say, “is to halve the emissions of its member cities within a decade, while improving equity, building resilience, and creating the conditions for everyone, everywhere to thrive.” Moreover: “C40 member cities earn their membership through action. C40’s most distinguishing feature is that it operates on performance-based requirements, not membership fees.”

And every year, they hold a world mayors’ summit, at which they gather and gab about forcing us to reduce our emissions, for example by making us walk or cycle instead of driving our cars. But not many of them actually walk or cycle from their homes to and from the mayors’ summit, do they? What a bunch of hypocrites.

C40 has, so its website says, been in existence since 2005. I retched when I found out the name of its founder: “Red Ken” Livingstone, former mayor of London. But in retrospect, I found it hardly surprising, since I already knew the identity of its chair, the current mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Put Boris Johnson in between them, and you have three extremist green stooges in a row as mayors of London.

The London ULEZ expansion

Which brings me to the London Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ). This was originally planned by Boris Johnson, but introduced by Sadiq Khan in April 2019. More proof that the two main UK political parties are both hives of green zealotry.

I can’t resist a bit of a plug for my own work, even in a different field (air pollution). In 2017, I published some social cost calculations on air pollution from cars in the UK, together with a lot of background and back-story on the issue. You can find that paper here: [[16]]. My conclusion was: “There is no case, on social cost grounds, for such charges on Euro 5 diesels (2010 to 2014) or on any petrol cars. For all these cars, the excess of the social cost of the pollution they emit, compared to a new (Euro 6) car of the same type, is £25 a year or less. Two entry fees to the London ULEZ would cover the social cost of this pollution for a whole year. To levy such outrageous charges on drivers of these cars is unreasonable.”

The ULEZ was, from the start, a money-grubber for Sadiq Khan and Transport for London. As well as being a way to impose what are in effect fines on car drivers. An independent 2021 study showed that any improvement it might have made in air quality was only marginal: [[17]]. More recently, even the “science” that, allegedly, shows that significant damage is caused to Londoners’ health by air pollution from cars, is being increasingly questioned. Yet, Sadiq Khan has planned to extend the ULEZ throughout all the London boroughs from August 2023. We hear he has already bought cameras to enforce it: [[18]]. And it looks as if the police will have access to those cameras, too: [[19]].

But this time, Khan isn’t having things all his own way. Four outer London local councils, together with Surrey County Council, are challenging the ULEZ expansion in court: [[20]]. We shall see what the High Court will have to say. Khan himself has started to get more than a little rattled and emotional, as this video shows: [[21]]. And Gareth Bacon, MP for Orpington in outer London, has highlighted that the ULEZ extension isn’t about improving air quality, but about raking in money. If Khan is not stopped, we will be seeing gilets jaunes, or worse, on the streets of outer London. In fact, the movement is already starting: [[22]].

 “Smart Road User Charging”

But harassed London drivers – and, in time, the rest of us – will soon be under further attack from a slightly different angle. There’s been a recent “consultation” on “smart road user charging” in London: [[23]]. According to the consultation document, this is meant to “address the triple challenges of toxic air pollution, the climate emergency and traffic congestion.” The consultation period in this case was remarkably short, only just over a month. Suspicious? This does appear to be still in the relatively early stages of discussion, and I won’t say more until I see the detailed proposals. But given how fast our enemies like to move, it could be with us sooner rather than later.

UK national road charging

Then there is the matter of a national road charging system. A report from 2022 is here: [[24]]. One proposed option, which seems to be favoured by many of those involved, is “a road pricing mechanism that uses telematic technology to charge drivers according to distance driven, factoring in vehicle type and congestion.” Does this mean, as the word “telematic” would seem to imply, tracking in detail every single car journey made anywhere in the UK? And does it mean charging so much for journeys made by petrol and diesel cars, that those who can’t afford to buy electric cars won’t be able to afford private mobility at all?

The latest I have been able to find on this is at [[25]]. It includes a copy of a letter from Jeremy Hunt, chancellor of the exchequer – “Chief Thief,” in my parlance. Hunt states “the government does not currently have plans to consider road pricing.” But I know Hunt. He is, after all, “my” MP, and far worse than useless as a “representative,” because he is hostile to virtually everything I stand for, including honesty. So, I read that statement as “we aren’t considering it, because we decided long ago to make it happen, and we’ve already started implementing it.” Expect this issue to rear its head again, sooner rather than later.

Oxford traffic filters and “15-minute cities”

But right now, “ground zero” in the fight for our rights and freedoms against draconian green policies is the city of Oxford. In November 2022, Oxfordshire County Council decided on a plan to install traffic filters in six key locations around Oxford. There is a description of the proposals here: [[26]]. The filters “are intended to reduce traffic levels in Oxford by targeting unnecessary journeys by cars.” Who are these arrogant sods, that they claim a right to decide that someone else’s journey is “unnecessary?” Or a right to “target” anyone?

Residents in Oxford will be able to get a permit to go through the filters on 100 days a year, and residents in Oxfordshire but outside Oxford city on 25 days a year. The web page says nothing at all about how much these permits will cost, or how the rules might be changed in the future. Those snapped going through the filters without a permit will be fined £70. Like Sadiq Khan, I think, those favouring the filters have their eyes on the money, as well as on hurting people they don’t approve of.

There was a “consultation” period in September and October 2022. Local people have told me that the vote was over 90 per cent against the introduction of the filters. But Oxfordshire County Council and Oxford City Council dispute this figure: [[27]]. What the councils say there suggests that there was no question in the questionnaire, to enable respondents to say how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the scheme! If so, that’s bad questionnaire design. Or, perhaps, the questionnaire was designed to avoid a result the councils didn’t want.

In any case, the data they give implies that, of the 6,190 comments they counted from 4,814 respondents, 4,213 (68%) were against the scheme, 656 (11%) were for it, and 1,321 (21%) were against it unless and until public transport was significantly improved. That looks like between 68% and 89% against the scheme. Still a very significant majority against.

Yet Oxford residents were told, just after the consultation ended, that the scheme will be going ahead anyway: [[28]]. So much for any pretence of “democracy!” Moreover, when a public debate was held on the issue in early March, the councillors responsible for the scheme were invited to attend and speak, but did not bother to do so. Only one Oxfordshire councillor turned up. And he was from Witney, 12 miles away from Oxford.

Closely related to the traffic filters is the “15-minute city” project, which seems to be a project of Oxford City Council rather than the county council. It’s hard to find an unbiased view of what this is all about – google “Oxford 15-minute city” and virtually all the links you get will be views from extreme greens, accusing those opposing the idea of being “right-wing conspiracy theorists,” “flat earthers” or spreaders of “fake news.”

The question this raises in my mind, though, is why the hell councils are making “local plans” for us, without us having ever had the chance to scrutinize them or object to them? I don’t want my life planned by some bunch of bureaucrats. The only person entitled to plan my life is me.

UK 100

“UK 100” is an organization, about which I only found out a few months ago. It describes itself as “a network of local leaders who have pledged to lead a rapid transition to Net Zero with Clean Air in their communities ahead of the government’s legal target.” This looks like the UK equivalent of the C40 global network of city mayors.

Their membership page [[29]] begins: “As local leaders across the UK, we recognize our responsibility to tackle the climate emergency and take bold action toward Net Zero.” The About page says: “UK100’s primary purpose is to support a local-led rapid transition to Net Zero and Clean Air. We do this through collaboration. To accelerate action, we believe in bringing together the most influential leaders across the country to learn together and agree on priorities for legislative and regulatory change while empowering them to engage with national decision-makers. We provide our network with the knowledge, tools and connections to make this happen.”

From the list of members (I counted 108), it seems that this is not an organization of mayors, or of individual politicians, but of councils. It includes councils at both the county and district levels, sometimes overlapping. Many of the expected suspects, that have been taken over by green extremists, are there: Bath and North East Somerset, Birmingham, Brighton, Cambridge (and Cambridgeshire, too), Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, 11 London boroughs plus Westminster, Oxford (and Oxfordshire).

That Oxford and Oxfordshire are both in the list, suggests that UK 100 may well be the force behind the goings-on over the proposed Oxford “15-minute city” and traffic filters.

There are 13 county councils in the list, including the county in which I live (Surrey). That there are this many, suggests that the extremists do not intend to stop when they have reduced all the UK’s cities to the status of unfit for human beings to live in. It looks as if they plan to carry on extending their mad, bad schemes to towns, to suburbs, to villages, and eventually out into the countryside.

Cebr report

Now, a small piece of good news. In October 2022, a report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) analysed the costs and benefits of the 2030 ban on sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles on the UK. You can down-load this report via [[30]]. As far as I am aware, it was the first attempt by professional economists in the UK to do an unbiased, objective cost-benefit analysis on any part of the green agenda.

The take-home message of the Cebr report is that “the benefits to UK households of implementing the fossil fuel vehicle sale bans are far outweighed by the costs.” The costs of the bans to ordinary people in the UK, as calculated using the government’s own cost-benefit methodology, will be more than five times the “benefits” from the savings in carbon dioxide emissions and pollution.

Beyond this, they revealed that the number the UK government uses to calculate the benefits of reducing CO2 emissions by a tonne (£255.40) is more than five times the sterling equivalent of the US government’s published value of the “social cost of carbon” per tonne (£48.54). I repeated Cebr’s calculation of the costs versus benefits, using the US government number rather than the UK. My conclusion was that the costs exceeded the “benefits” by a factor of more than 15.

To their credit, the Sun did report this at the time: [[31]]. But it made no difference whatsoever to the government’s position. The final report of their “review of net zero” [[32]] merely says: “It is not a cost-benefit analysis but a first step in understanding trade-offs over a 30-year economic transition.” In other words, they’re going to do the “net zero” crap to us anyway, and stuff how much it costs or hurts the plebs. How much more dishonest can you get?

Rampant hypocrisy

Throughout this saga, on top of their thinly veiled arrogance and pervasive dishonesty, you can see the astonishing hypocrisy of many “net zero” promoters. They want to force draconian and damaging restrictions on how ordinary people live, while themselves enjoying their jet-setting, limo-riding lifestyles, many of them at taxpayer expense!

In 2020, for example, the then Prince Charles, a major promoter of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset,” travelled to Cambridge to give a speech about cutting aircraft emissions. He made the journey by helicopter! [[33]]. He could be the king of bloody England for all I care. But this incident shows him up for what he is: a prat and a hypocrite, unable or unwilling to practise what he preaches. Charlie Chump, as I call him, should have walked or cycled on that journey, as he wants to force us to.

And the politicians are just as bad. In the middle of the CoP 26 gabfest in 2021, prime minister Boris Johnson flew from Glasgow to London by private plane, for no better reason than a dinner engagement: [[34]]. Alok Sharma, minister responsible for hosting the CoP 26 conference, at the time ran two diesel SUVs: [[35]]. And more recently, prime minister Rishi Sunak has made a habit of using Royal Air Force planes to get to his engagements: [[36]].

If you really want people to believe any of your “nett zero” nonsense, you wallies, you must live nett zero, and be seen to do so. Hypocrisy in government, or indeed any dishonesty towards the people government is supposed to be serving, ought to be a dismissal offence.

To sum up

In the last four years alone, the UK government has been, again and again, tyrannical and dishonest on the “climate change” issue towards the people it is supposed to serve.

It has fraternized with extremists like Extinction Rebellion. It has declared a “climate emergency,” without any hard evidence of such an emergency, and without the parliament even taking a vote. It has mandated emissions reductions that, if informed in advance of their likely consequences, we would have rebelled against. It has moved the emissions goalposts, always in the direction of greater reductions. It has erected a supposedly democratic “assembly,” and made it nothing more than a rubber stamp for a pre-determined agenda. It is seeking to make it all but impossible for those, who cannot afford to buy electric cars, to retain their personal mobility.

It has laid down, and is implementing, policies which go very seriously against the interests of the people it is supposed to be serving. The effects will be disruptive, and will severely and negatively impact our freedoms and our prosperity. And it is doing these things to us without proper feasibility study, or proper analysis of the costs and benefits or of the risks.

On the occasions where it has allowed us an apparent say in the matter, it has ignored our views. It has conspired – yes, I do mean that word – with international parties to develop and promote an agenda hostile to us, the human beings it is supposed to serve; something that no democracy should ever do. It has encouraged extremists to force that agenda on to us at the local level as well as the national. It is indoctrinating young children with lies and scares. And in all these things, it has behaved with arrogance, dishonesty and hypocrisy.

We, the people, want all this climate crap stopped. Now. And we want our money back!

[[1]] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-climate-crisis-part-one-the-evidence/

[[2]] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMGqP5rP8v8

[[3]] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/30/extinction-rebellion-tells-politicians-to-declare-emergency

[[4]] https://news.sky.com/story/majority-of-brits-unwilling-to-cut-back-to-fight-climate-change-poll-finds-11709486

[[5]] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-becomes-first-major-economy-to-pass-net-zero-emissions-law

[[6]] https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Net-Zero-The-UKs-contribution-to-stopping-global-warming.pdf

[[7]] https://ukfires.org/absolute-zero/

[[8]] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-51534446

[[9]] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-the-climate-assembly-says-the-uk-should-reach-net-zero/

[[10]] https://cast.ac.uk/

[[11]] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-ten-point-plan-for-a-green-industrial-revolution

[[12]] https://libertarianism.uk/2021/01/24/green-industrial-revolution-or-great-leap-backward/

[[13]] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/education-secretary-puts-climate-change-at-the-heart-of-education–2

[[14]] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-11923751/So-switch-electric-car-need-know.html

[[15]] https://www.c40.org/

[[16]] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/11/the-social-costs-of-air-pollution-from-cars-in-the-uk/

[[17]] https://news.sky.com/story/londons-ultra-low-emission-zone-resulting-in-only-marginal-air-quality-improvements-12469903

[[18]] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11849453/Sadiq-Khans-plans-London-cars-crackdown-blocked-legal-challenge.html

[[19]] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/19/sadiq-khans-new-ulez-cameras-could-used-met-police/

[[20]] https://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/article/10672/Councils-challenge-ULEZ-expansion-decision-in-the-courts

[[21]] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10GvN5VrTck

[[22]] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twGjux08IMg

[[23]] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2023-02/Road%20User%20Charging%20-%20Call%20for%20Evidence%20_0.pdf

[[24]] https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/8754/documents/88692/default/

[[25]] https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/34225/documents/188339/default/

[[26]] https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/residents/roads-and-transport/connecting-oxfordshire/traffic-filters

[[27]] https://news.oxfordshire.gov.uk/joint-statement-from-oxfordshire-county-council-and-oxford-city-council-on-oxfords-traffic-filters/

[[28]] https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23079671.anger-travel-chief-announces-traffic-filters-going-happen-definitely-ahead-decision/

[[29]] https://www.uk100.org/UK100membership

[[30]] https://fairfueluk.com/CEBR-2030-BAN/

[[31]] https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/20066387/banning-sale-petrol-diesel-cars-costs/

[[32]] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1026725/NZR_-_Final_Report_-_Published_version.pdf

[[33]] https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/prince-charles-flew-368-miles-17688702

[[34]] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/03/johnson-takes-private-jet-from-cop26-to-london-to-attend-dinner

[[35]] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10160271/COP26-president-Alok-Sharma-two-gas-guzzling-diesel-Volvo-SUVs-parked-outside-Berkshire-home.html

[[36]] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/19/rishi-sunak-criticised-third-domestic-raf-jet-flight-10-days

Climate change cult and the rhythm of life

 From Spectator AU

By Lindsay Brien

ST IVES, UNITED KINGDOM – JUNE 11: Extinction Rebellion (XR) ‘Red Rebels’ activists take part in the “Sound The Alarm” march during the G7 summit in Cornwall on June 11, 2021 in St Ives, Cornwall, England. Environmental Protest Groups gather in Cornwall as the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, hosts leaders from the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada at the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay. This year the UK has invited Australia, India, South Africa and South Korea to attend the Leaders’ Summit as guest countries as well as the EU. Protest groups hope to highlight their various causes to the G7 leaders and a global audience as the eyes of the world focus on Cornwall during the summit. (Phot by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

As a teenager, I was entranced with the song The Rhythm of Life from the movie Sweet Charity sung by Sammy Davis Jr. It was a fascinating and entertaining tale about how a talented but very poor musician made his fortune by inventing a new Cult Religion, ‘The Rhythm of Life’.

Speaking of new religions, it is rather unbelievable and entertaining to watch the rise of Global Warming, which later morphed into Climate Change, despite the inconvenient truth of satellite temperature records and failed predictions of disaster. Inconsistent with its former title of Global Warming are predictions such as the polar ice melting, polar bears becoming extinct, and rising seas. Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour demonstrates just how much the sea level has risen in 170 years… Quite aptly, Hanrahan cried: ‘We’ll be rooned!’

The lyrics of The Rhythm of Life now have a haunting relevance.

Daddy started out in San Francisco

Tootin’ on his trumpet loud and mean

Suddenly a voice said, ‘Go forth Daddy,

Spread the picture on a wider screen.’

And the voice said, ‘Daddy there’s a million pigeons,

Ready to get hooked on new religions,

Hit the road Daddy, leave your common-law wife.

Spread the religion of The Rhythm of Life.’

From Paganism to Judaism to Christianity to Islam, it’s apparent that human societies have a need and even an addiction to religion which, like a lot of behaviour, has its positives and negatives. The positives being the bringing together of people in a common cause. The negatives being the ostracism of those that question the beliefs and, not uncommonly, the persecution of them by the extreme adherents of the faith.

Western Civilisation has advanced so much on the positive values of Christianity, particularly the rights of the individual. Over the last few decades, with the secularisation of the West, a void appears to have emerged.

A new religion with a familiar theme of ‘evil mankind destroying the Paradise they were born into’ has started to fill the religious void. The new god Gaia needs the sinners, especially the deniers, to repent to mend their evil fossil fuelling ways to return humanity to the Paradise on Earth that was here before mankind destroyed it. Apocalyptic predictions have been issued by the High Priests, such as Gore flying around in his private jet, and palaeontologist Professor Flannery, ‘Even the rains that fall won’t fill the rivers or dams’. (circa 2007)

This religion has given the world expensive and highly inefficient and unsustainable solar farms and wind farms, as has been demonstrated in Britain and Europe in the last European Winter and continuing into the foreseeable future. Who would have thunk it? (Other than geologists, palaeontologists, and those other horrible evil ‘climate deniers’. It was predictable that a combination of a very cold winter and the deprivation of Russian gas and oil, would lead to renewable energy failing, causing blackouts and high energy bills.)

Cynics could only raise wry smiles at the news that not only were Britain and Germany restarting their coal-fired and nuclear power plants, but that Germany has started ripping down wind turbines to extract the coal underneath to burn in those power plants.

I remember, years ago, a ‘climate denier’ describing the wind turbines visually polluting the landscape around Lake George, just north of the ACT, fittingly as ‘bird slicing, bat chomping, eco crucifixes’. Perhaps a more accurate description than the faithful would ever admit. St Greta of Thunberg was years too late in sarcastically drawling ‘blah-blah-blah’. How very dare you? I seem to recall it was only in the last couple of years that our darling of the Greens, Bob Brown, attempted to have a wind farm in Tasmania banned because of the potential damage to the native bird life. Just recently I read that even Greta was protesting outside the Norwegian Embassy about them allowing bird-threatening windmills being built. I digress.

Meanwhile, back in the Land of Oz ‘the renewable superpower of the future’, according to our Energy Minister, after a very cool summer we have the national grid cutting services and rationing the flow of electricity while still relying heavily on coal-fired power from the eastern states. Fancy that, when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine, there ain’t much renewable power flowing into the grid…!

Now, we have our Climate Change obsessed government wanting to reintroduce a Carbon Tax, being held to ransom by the Greens unless they agree to the banning of all new coal and gas mines. I don’t know why the old saying ‘talk about the lunatics running the asylum’ resonates so much… I hope that doesn’t constitute hate speech. If it does, I defer to Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!’

Laughing all the way to the bank are China and India, who between them contribute more than 40 per cent of man-made emissions, and daily are building more coal-fired power stations because they are ‘developing nations’ exempt from the Climate Club’s agreement to reduce emissions in the future. Because of the cost advantages that gives their industries, they are producing and selling more products to the grateful declining West.

The old saying ‘follow the money’ reverberates as the renewable energy carpetbaggers, the High Priests of the new religion, and the political and media elites, line their pockets with money raised mainly from taxpayer subsidies and electricity consumers that have had to cop increased bills to fund their Rhythm of Life.

Look at the litany of renewables brainwaves in Australia that have received government subsidies to the benefit of their promoters but failed (or are soon to fail):

Geothermal Hot Rocks in South Australia, the Port Kembla Wave Machine, the Snowy 2.0 Hydro Scheme, and the Northern Territory Giant Solar Farm to be linked to Singapore by a 4,000 km undersea cable, which would have made it the longest ever.

Let’s not also forget that panicked Australian states that, convinced they were facing eternal drought, built desalination plants. The NSW one at Kurnell cost millions to build and maintain as it sits idle in mothballs each year.

Meanwhile, Warragamba Dam sits at 100 per cent capacity, while the plans are to raise the dam wall by 10 m to prevent flooding downstream.

At the same time we have our esteemed Energy Minister and the Greens poo-pooing nuclear energy as the most expensive in the world. Perhaps this is the modern version of tilting at windmills? They are obviously not cognisant with the latest technology of cheap portable modular reactors that can be transported in the back of a truck and can power a city. Not to mention the fact they are CO2 emissions free and that Australia sits on roughly one-third of the world’s Uranium deposits. We now have the hypocrisy of ‘it’s okay to have nuclear submarines and a nuclear waste dumping ground in Australia, but nuclear power is taboo’. Please explain?

The new religion has infiltrated the bureaucracy. In Senate Estimates recently we had the Head of the Department of Home Affairs, with a straight face, responding to Senator Antic’s probing that Climate Change is considered a very important part of administering the Department. When a bemused Senator Antic asked him to ‘please explain’, he very earnestly proselytised that Climate Change was evident because of the increase in the severity and number of extreme weather events.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good myth. One only has to tune into Outsiders at approximately 10:48 am on Sky News Australia on a Sunday morning to learn that the frequency and strength of hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere and cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere have declined in recent years and that Europe and America are experiencing one of their coldest winters on record.

There is also the inconvenient fact that a university study has shown that of the islands in the Pacific, 43 per cent have increased in size or not changed at all. Then there is the recent study that the corals on the Great Barrier Reef are flourishing and have increased in size. Even the ABC has reluctantly acknowledged these inconvenient truths.

It was Australia’s Chief Scientist (at the time) Dr. Alan Finkel, a Climate Change devotee, who a couple of years ago reluctantly conceded in Senate Estimates that the figures, that 97 per cent of CO2 emissions occur naturally and that 3 per cent are man-made of which Australia produces only 1.3 per cent. When pressed, Finkel agreed that if Australia cut all its man-made emissions the effect on the world’s atmosphere would be ‘virtually nothing’. The reality is that with its vast vegetation that absorbs and thrives on CO2, Australia is already a Net Zero emitter.

In the movie Sweet Charity, ‘Daddy’ made a fortune from pigeons who got hooked on his New Religion. The parallels with Climate Change, the religion formally known as Global Warming, is uncanny.