Former U.S. Forest Service Ecologist: UN species report ‘grossly’ exaggerated, used to promote UN agenda
May 21, 2019
To the United States Congress
I am an ecologist and was the director of San Francisco State University’ Sierra Nevada Field Campus for 25 years. My professional career was dedicated to promoting wise environmental stewardship. Despite my years of research to advance biodiversity, I’m gravely concerned about the recent Summary for Policymakers by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), where it suggests that 1± million species are now threatened with extinction. Based on my experience, that number is greatly exaggerated. It appears this organization grossly overstated species threats in order to promote their stated agenda that “goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors.”
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is considered the gold standard for identifying threatened species. As of 2019, they estimate that there are 1,733,200 described species (not total species) of which less than 10% (just 98,512) have been evaluated to some degree. Of those evaluated species 27,159 species appear threatened with extinction to some degree. That is a reason for concern, but the IUCN estimates of species loss are a far cry from a million.
The IPBES suggested that the total number of threatened species could be derived by calculating the proportion of yet-to-be-evaluated species, using the same proportion of evaluated species that are considered threatened. Still such speculative math would still only result in 461,621 threatened species — again quite a few less than a million.
To reach 1± million threatened species the ≈ stated, “The proportion of insect species threatened with extinction is a key uncertainty, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10 percent.” They then state that insects comprise 75% of the known 8± million animal and plant species. However, that results in an estimate of 6± million insect species which is 6 times greater than the scientific consensus. Such misleading exaggerations suggest this group has a hidden agenda.
A key understanding is that 75%± of all mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian extinctions have occurred on islands, and 86% of those extinctions were the result of introduced non-native species. Island species had not evolved the defenses needed to resist introduced rats, cats, and stoats. For example, in Hawaii, the introduction of mosquitos and avian malaria in the 1800s decimated Hawaii’s native birds.
Due to invasive species, 41%± of all highly threatened species (Endangered and Critically Endangered) now live on islands. The current threats to most island species are not the result of what humans are doing wrong today, but the result of introductions a century ago. Now aware of the problem, humans are trying to fix it.
Private conservation groups and public land managers are now working to eradicate invasive species, but those efforts require much more resources. If IPBES was truly concerned about protecting threatened species, they could simply fund these eradication efforts. There is no need for “transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors.”
Furthermore, the IUCN’s criteria for designating threatened species (the total of Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable species) allows for much subjectivity. That subjectivity allows for overstating a species condition which would inflate the threat. For example to classify a species as “Threatened,” all one needs is “an observed, estimated, inferred or suspected population size reduction” The magnitude of the reductions determines if a species is Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered. That criteria is accurate for well-studied species for which quantitative studies have been carried out. However many ICUN evaluations “have no quantitative data available on densities or abundance” from which to determine the threatened status. The population reduction is then just inferred or suspected.
An example of the problem with speculations is the Adelie Penguin. It was classified as a species of Least Concern in 2009, with a population of about 4± million individuals throughout Antarctica. They were up-listed to Near Threatened based on a 2010 climate modeling study that speculated global warming would reduce the sea ice they needed to rest on during the winter. However, after more intensive studies, researchers realized Adelie populations were actually increasing and had now doubled to 8± million individuals. Due to good quantitative studies, the IUCN reclassified Adelies as Least Concern again.
Speculation that a million species are threatened with extinction does not fully account for the conservation efforts that are improving species once they have been identified as Endangered. For example, our current hunting regulations have allowed many whale species to return from the brink of extinction. Humpback and Bowhead whales were listed as Endangered in the 1980s. They have now recovered and are listed as species of Least Concern. Quantitative studies allowed for wise hunting quotas that quickly reduced the threat to many species. Again, there is no need for a “transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors.”
Loss of habitat is a key factor that can result in species becoming endangered — and sometimes it is political decisions that can lead to these species threats.
For example, government attempts to promote biofuels based on speculations about climate change have disrupted ecosystems and threatened more species. The European Union-subsidized Palm Oil for years, resulting in the loss of tropical forest and threatening species like the Orangutans. Realizing their mistake, those subsidies will be withdrawn.
Another example is that subsidies for sugar cane as a biofuel has prevented the restoration of tropical forests in Brazil, and corn subsidies in the USA have encouraged corn plantation in the northern Great Plains disrupting prairie ecosystems and reducing aquifers.
Yet another situation is that subsidies for industrial wind energy have resulted in increased bird and bat mortalities, in addition to the well-documented eco-system disruption. These representative examples should make clear that “transformative economic and political changes” can cause more problems than they solve.
I urge Congress to carefully peruse the IPBES claims. Their assertion of a million threatened species does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Their gross exaggerations appear to be a political gambit to control “transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors,” while offering very little to improve current efforts to protect biodiversity.
Sincerely,
Jim Steele
Jim Steele was the director of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus from 1984 to 2010. He was Principal Investigator of the U. S. Forest Service Neotropical Migratory Bird monitoring in Riparian Habitats on the Tahoe National Forest, performed two USGS Breeding Bird Surveys in the area, and initiated the successful Carman Valley Watershed Restoration project. Contact jsteele@sfsu.edu
The mass extinction lie exposed: life is thriving
By Gregory Wrightstone | Inconvenient Blog | May 13, 2019
One million species will become extinct in the not-too-distant future and we are to blame. That is the conclusion of a new study by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) was issued on May 6th {the full report will be issued “later this year} and warns that “human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before” and that “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss.”
It also asserted that we have seen increasing dangers over the last several decades, stating “the threat of extinction is also accelerating: in the best-studied taxonomic groups, most of the total extinction risk to species is estimated to have arisen in the past 40 years.” The global rate of species extinction claimed “is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years.”
The release of the report spawned a media frenzy that uncritically accepted the study’s contention that we will see more than 20,000 species per year bite the dust in the not too distant future. PBS called it the “current mass extinction,” and the New Yorker’s headline read “Climate Change and the New Age of Extinction.”
The only chart in the SPM that supported the claim of increasing extinctions is shown here (bdlow). The graph covers 500-years and appears to present a frightening increase in extinctions and extinction rate.
This chart and the accompanying “analysis” are a case study of how those who promote the notion of man-made catastrophic warming manipulate data and facts to spread the most fear, alarm, and disinformation.
First, note that the title of the graph itself (Cumulative % of Species Driven Extinct) is confusing even to scientists used to interpreting such data. More importantly, the data were lumped together by century rather than shorter time frames, which, as we shall see accentuates the supposed increase in extinctions.
The base data were derived from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List, which catalogues every known species that has gone the way of the dodo and the carrier pigeon. Review of the full data set reveals a much different view of extinction and what has been happening recently.
Below, all 529 species available from the Red List with a known extinction date are shown below in Figure 2 by decade of extinction. This chart reveals quite a different story than that advanced by the new report. Instead of a steady increase in the number and rate of extinctions we find that extinctions peaked in the late 1800s and the early 20th century, followed by a significant decline that continues today. It is thought that this extinction peak coincides with introduction of non-native species, primarily on islands (including Australia).
A closer review of the most recent information dating back to 1870 reveals that, instead of a frightening increase, extinctions are actually in a significant decline.
What is apparent is that the trend of extinctions is declining rather than increasing, just the opposite of what the new report claims. Also, according to the IPBES report, we can expect 25,000 to 30,000 extinctions per year, yet the average over the last 40 years is about 2 species annually. That means the rate would have to multiply by 12,500 to 15,000 to reach the dizzying heights predicted. Nothing on the horizon is likely to achieve even a small fraction of that.
This new extinction study is just the latest example of misuse and abuse of the scientific process designed to sow fear of an impending climate apocalypse. The fear and alarm over purported man-made catastrophes are needed to frighten the population into gladly accepting harmful and economically crippling proposals such as the Green New Deal.
Rather than an Earth spiraling into a series of climate catastrophes that threaten the planet’s life, we find that our planet and its estimated 8 million species are doing just fine, thank you.
Postscript: In an incredibly ironic twist that poses a difficult conundrum for those who are intent on saving the planet from our carbon dioxide excesses, the new study reports that the number one cause of predicted extinctions is habitat loss. Yet their solution is to pave over vast stretches of land for industrial scale solar factories and to construct immense wind factories that will cover forests and grasslands, killing the endangered birds and other species they claim to want to save.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist with more than 35 years of experience researching and studying various aspects of the Earth’s processes. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Waynesburg University and a master’s from West Virginia University, both in the field of geology. He has written and presented extensively on many aspects of geology including how paleogeography and paleoclimate control geologic processes. His findings have allowed him to speak at many venues around the world including Ireland, England, China and most recently India.
Assange Accuser Ridiculed for Proclaiming Teenage Climate Activist New ‘Prophet’
Sputnik – May 27, 2019
According to Anna Ardin, the Swedish deacon who has accused Julian Assange of sexual misconduct, the world must listen to Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome who has risen to international fame and inspired thousands of followers with her “school strike” campaign, claiming that her message comes from God himself.
In her piece in the Christian newspaper Kyrkans Tidning, Anna Ardin, the Swedish woman who has accused Julian Assange of rape, proclaimed celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg a prophet of our time, just as the biblical characters Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah and Ezekiel once were.
Together with Joakim Kroksson, Equimenical Church deacon Anna Ardin has listed six traits they claim to elevate Greta Thunberg to prophet-like status. The traits include “daring to talk about harsh reality” and “preaching repentance”.
“The point is that we must listen to the message, because the message comes from God. It requires a radical conversion to a fossil (fuel) free life and society,” Ardin and Kroksson wrote, while stressing that the goal of the article was not to hail Greta Thunberg, but her message.
Theologian Stefan Gustavsson, the director of Apologia, a Centre for Christian Apologetics, is critical of his colleages’ reasoning. According to him, a prophet must explicitly claim to be sent by God and convey God’s message and fight sins against God. He also disagrees with the claim that Thunberg faces the same rejection as her biblical “counterparts”, who lived in stark exclusion, unlike Thunberg, who has received a plethora of awards and has even been nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Not a single prophet has received the same global tribute as Greta,” Gustavsson told the Christian newspaper Världen Idag, stressing that Thunberg has the entire establishment behind her.
On social media, Ardin’s stance on Thunberg has triggered even stronger reactions.
Artist, musical producer and former Army of Lovers start turned philosopher Alexander Bard wrote that the same woman accusing Assange of rape proclaiming Greta Thunberg a prophet sent by God was a token of “how utterly mad Sweden has become in 2019”.
“I just left the Swedish church because of that”, another user wrote.
“Insanity knows no borders. Neither does Sweden”, yet another user mused.
Others labelled Anna Ardin unbecoming epithets ranging from “complete nutcase” to “one of the most extreme leftists in Sweden”.
Anna Ardin, who is a self-attributed “radical reformist” and “fighter against ‘Churcharchy'”, is a feminist and an animal rights fighter. In 2010, she claimed that WikiLeaks owner Julian Assange had tampered with a condom during sex with her, essentially forcing her to have unprotected sex. While Assange denied the allegations, an court in England where he then lived, ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden for investigation. In response, Assange sought asylum at London’s Ecuadorian embassy, where he remained until earlier this year.
Greta Thunberg is a teenage Swedish climate activist who rose to international fame for her weekly “school strikes” held outside of the Swedish parliament, as well as doomsday rhetoric of imminent environmental catastrophe. In recent months, her movement has gathered hundreds of thousands of students in over a hundred countries across the globe to follow her example.
Despite her numerous psychological issues, such as Asperger’s and selective mutism and depression, to name a few, she remains a cultural icon in Sweden, where she is known as “Climate Greta” and has been named “woman of the year” by the country’s largest newspapers.
READ MORE:
Church of Sweden Shamed for Hailing Girl With Asperger’s as ‘Jesus’s Successor’
Government Accountability Project engages in projection
Anonymous allegations are republished by an allegedly respectable website.
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | May 20, 2019
A reader has alerted me to the fact that a Washington, D.C. organization called the Government Accountability Project is bad-mouthing me. It says I’m part of the “global warming denial machine.”
I almost never respond to accusations of this kind. It’s time-consuming, draining, and distracting. I prefer to make a positive contribution to the world through my writing, and to let my record speak for itself. In the end, one must trust in the ability of the public to sort sense from nonsense.
In this case, though, I’m making an exception. So let’s start with some basics.
WHO AM I?
1. I am not a US citizen.
2. I have never held a government job (unless one counts part-time clerical work in libraries and hospitals during my teens and early twenties).
3. My journalism career includes four years as a columnist with the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper. I’m a former columnist and member of the editorial board of the National Post. My investigative work has appeared in several newspapers and magazines, and I am the author of three books.
4. I’m a longtime proponent of free speech, having joined the board of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in 1993, and served as a vice president from 1998 to 2001.
WHO IS SMEARING ME?
The Government Accountability Project (henceforth I’ll call it The GAP), says it helps whistleblowers “hold the government and corporations accountable.” That’s marvellous and admirable.
I, however, am not a government. I’m not a corporation. Having worked with my share of whistleblowers over the years, I line up squarely on their side.
So why is this Washington-based organization trashing me – a journalist in a foreign country, who currently writes out of her home office and receives no regular pay cheque from anywhere?
Lamentably, the GAP has morphed into something rather different than what its name implies. The fine print on its website tells us:
As more attorneys joined the team, Government Accountability Project increased its litigation work, setting up its unique capacity to launch both political advocacy and legal campaigns. [bold added by me]
Political advocacy campaigns. Keep that phrase in mind.
The GAP now focuses its attention on six subject areas, including ding-ding-ding climate change. A section of its website therefore talks about sustainability and “the dangers posed by fossil fuel dependence.”
In other words, one arm of The GAP behaves like a politically-motivated, green advocacy group.
WHO REALLY AUTHORED THESE ACCUSATIONS?
In very large letters, the Government Accountability Project declares: Donna Laframboise recycles old attacks on IPCC. Holding a particular government to account is grand in The GAP universive. But blowing the whistle on a group of governments involved in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is villainous. Yeah, that’s coherent.
At the bottom of the page bearing that headline we see a September 2013 date. It turns out everything here was actually cut-and-pasted from a now defunct website called ClimateScienceWatch.org, which used to be run by The GAP.
Five-year-old content has simply been transferred from ClimateScienceWatch over to The GAP’s main website. In other words, The GAP’s remarks about me have been recycled – an activity its own headline suggests is contemptible. It’s all so confusing. Green activists vigorously promote recycling. Until they want to insult someone.
Unfortunately for me, The GAP’s main website exudes respectability. There’s an impressive logo, a muted palette, and a professional design. A reader in a hurry might well form the mistaken impression that I’m opposed to government accountability. In fact, I’ve spent my career striving to keep government institutions – including criminal and family courts – honest.
So what does The GAP actually say about me? Those first-published-in-2013 remarks consist of two parts. Here’s the introductory paragraph:
In a Wall Street Journal editorial on the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report, IPCC critic Donna Laframboise sinks to the lowest common denominator of overused attacks. Repeated and unfounded attempts to taint the IPCC’s credibility should be seen as what they are: a distraction from the real issue – the science.
This paragraph is immediately followed by a 600-word “guest post by Climate Nexus.” Who is Climate Nexus? It’s yet another green advocacy group, funded via the Rockefeller Foundation’s billions. Correcting “misinformation about climate change” is part of its mission.
So that’s what happened here. The WSJ published my opinion piece and Climate Nexus produced a response, which was published by ClimateScienceWatch back in 2013. Today, that material appears on The GAP’s main website.
This response, please note, is unsigned.
That’s because Climate Nexus is essentially a PR firm devoted to squelching non-conformist climate views. Its employees police the boundaries of what journalists are allowed to say. Anyone who colours outside the lines is targeted, accused of sinking “to the lowest common denominator of overused attacks.” Whatever that might mean.
Climate Nexus personnel don’t take responsibility for their own words. The people who are cavalierly smearing me – a real journalist, with a real reputation – aren’t identified.
Five years later, we still don’t know who they are. These are anonymous accusers. Anonymous cowards.
To be continued…
Netflix, Attenborough and cliff-falling walruses: the making of a false climate icon
GWPF | May 17, 2019
Dr. Susan Crockford, a Canadian wildlife expert, exposes the manipulation of fact behind the controversial walrus story promoted in the Netflix documentary film series, ‘Our Planet’, that was released early last month.
One episode in the series contained a highly disturbing piece of footage of walruses bouncing off rocks as they fell from a high cliff to their deaths. Narrator Sir David Attenborough blamed the tragedy on climate change, insisting if it weren’t for lack of sea ice the animals would never have been on land in the first place. World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) used the sequence to suggest the walrus was “the new symbol of climate change”.
However, much of what Sir David told viewers was a fabrication. Careful investigation has revealed that the producers, with help from WWF, created a story that had elements of truth but which blatantly misrepresented others and contained some outright falsehoods.
Dr. Crockford explains why it is especially incorrect to claim that large numbers of walruses resting on land constitutes a sure sign of climate change.
“Enormous herds of Pacific walrus mothers and calves spend time on beaches in late summer and fall only when the overall population size is very large. Recent estimates suggest there are many more walruses now than there were in the 1970s, which is the last time similarly massive haulouts were documented. Huge herds of walruses resting on beaches are a sign of walrus population health, not evidence of global warming. That’s largely why the US Fish and Wildlife Service concluded in 2017 – the year the Netflix scene was filmed – that walrus do not require Endangered Species Act protection.”
Is the Long Renewables Honeymoon Over?
Dr John Constable – GWPF – 11/05/19
The European renewables industry press, which is usually unequivocally upbeat in its assessments, is currently reporting a broad spectrum of substantial problems in the sector, ranging from bankruptcies and technical problems to tepid policy support and increasing public resistance.
In a fundamentally viable energy generation sector such stories could be regarded as minor perturbations, but in one that has been for decades all but completely insulated from risk by subsidy and other non-market support, it suggests deep-seated structuro-physical weakness.
The German wind turbine manufacturer Senvion S.A., formerly trading under the name of RePower, is currently in financial difficulties. This Hamburg-based firm, which has installed over 1,000 wind turbines in the UK alone, applied to commence self-administered insolvency proceedings in mid-April this year, and is at present sustained by a EUR 100m loan agreement with its lenders and main bond holders. Senvion has delayed both its AGM, which was due to take place on the 23 May, and also the publication of its recent financial results. At the time of writing the company had not yet announced a new timetable.
For nearly eight years, from 2007 to 2015, Senvion was owned by the Indian wind turbine manufacturer, Suzlon, and is now the property of the private equity firm, Centerbridge Partners. It is currently rumoured in the industry press that Centerbridge may now be compelled to cut its losses by making a distressed sale to Asian, probably Chinese, companies seeking a cheap way of acquiring a wind power market toehold in Europe. Western companies are thought to be unlikely to have the appetite for such a purchase, and their reluctance is entirely understandable: as Ed Hoskyns shows in a recent note for GWPF using EurObservER data, the annual installation rates for wind and solar have halved in the EU28 since 2010. Senvion may be the first major company to feel the effects of this downturn, and is certainly large enough for its difficulties to have wide ramifications, with two of its suppliers, FrancEole, which makes towers, and the US company TPI Composites, which makes blades, both being hurt by reduced revenues. Indeed, FrancEole was already in a poor way, and is now reported as being on the verge of liquidation.
Projects that were being supplied by Senvion are also affected, with the building of one, Borkum West 2.2, a 200 MW offshore wind farm, being suspended mid-construction since components due from Senvion have not been delivered on schedule. This delay, which has been front-page news in some circles, must be causing considerable headaches for Borkum West’s developer, Trianel GmbH, which is apparently now seeking to establish direct links with Senvion’s suppliers so that they can complete the project.
Elsewhere in the offshore wind universe, two large and relatively new projects are in the midst of what must be costly repairs involving significant downtime. Having received regulatory approval, the Danish mega-developer Orsted is about to start removing and renovating all 324 blades on the 108-turbine, 389 MW, Duddon Sands wind farm in the UK part of the Irish Sea, a year after problems first became apparent. The machines used, the Siemens 3.6–120, have suffered leading edge erosion, a problem that affects perhaps some 500 turbines in Europe (See “Type Failure or Wear and Tear in European Offshore Wind?”), and requiring the application of a remedial covering to each blade.
Less can be read in the public domain about the repairs about to restart at the gigantic, EU-funded Bard Offshore 1, which is owned by Ocean Breeze Energy GmbH & Co. KG. The project, which commissioned in 2013, has eighty 5 MW turbines, with a total capacity of 400 MW. Bard had already suffered a well-known series of cable failures, and it now transpires that both nacelles and rotors have been undergoing replacement for about two years, though Ocean Breeze is, according to industry press reports, apparently declining to confirm how many turbines are affected. The company’s website gives no information in either German or English that I could find.
There would, then, appear to be a great deal of work in servicing offshore wind installations, but this has not been enough to prevent Offshore Marine Management Ltd (OMM), a UK-based offshore wind contractor, entering into voluntary liquidation after several years of losses. Interestingly, OMM, a relatively small company though prominent in the UK, cited the increasingly “competitive nature” of the sector as a factor underlying its failure, and it seems likely that it was unable to survive the efforts of developers determined to reduce both capital and operational and maintenance costs to the bone (and judging from the failures reported, perhaps into the bone itself). With margins pared thin, costly local suppliers may quite simply be forced out of the market, and regardless of their other merits. Related evidence of this phenomenon, which is clearly global, can be found in the fact that the Danish mega-developer Orsted is now grumbling that the Taiwanese government’s insistence of a high level of local content for its projected 900 MW Changua 1 & 2a offshore wind farms will double the capital cost from approximately £1.6m/MW to about £3m/MW.
One wonders whether this underlying reality was discussed at the recent and apparently robust meeting between the Scottish Government and the offshore wind industry, convened because the Scottish metal manufacturing firm BiFab had not been commissioned to make equipment for the 950 MW Moray East wind farm, a wind farm that has one of the much over-hyped Contracts for Difference at £57.50/MWh. The supply deals had instead been awarded to Lamprell, which is based in the UAE. The Scottish Energy Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, MSP, used the meeting to express “significant frustration” that local firms had been involved to such a small degree hitherto, in spite of repeated promises. Did Benji Sykes of the Offshore Wind Industry Council, present at the meeting, cite the Taiwanese case and explain to Mr Wheelhouse that something very similar would apply in Scotland, and that if local content was insisted upon, then construction costs would increase substantially and subsidies would also have to be increased to pay for it? Did he explain that there is genuine doubt whether Moray East can be viable at £57.50/MWh, even with low-cost international suppliers, and that local content would certainly not improve that situation? It would seem not. However, he did promise to “work closely” with the Scottish government to “ensure that communities up and down the country reap the economic benefits offshore wind offers”. Mr Wheelhouse has probably heard that before. How much longer will he go on believing it?
So much for the action in the foreground. The backdrop is also sombre. The Crown Estate, which in effect controls offshore wind development in UK territorial waters, has delayed pre-qualification for Round 4 projects until after the summer of 2019, and the German maritime agency, the BSH, has disappointed developers by not assigning new development zones as had been requested. In delay is danger, and the offshore wind industry in general will be deeply concerned at the loss of momentum that may result from these decisions.
Onshore wind is doing no better. The most recent auction for wind contracts in Germany took place in February and was radically undersubscribed, with only 476 MW of a possible 700 MW being awarded, the underlying causes being, it is reported, less favourable planning consent regulations and less generous price support. Senvion itself is described in some reports as being one of the supply chain casualties, alongside the German tower and foundation maker, Ambau GmbH, which has already filed for bankruptcy.
One wonders why these companies were not better prepared. Reductions in subsidy in Germany were inevitable, and the tightening of planning regulations is long overdue and unsurprising. Indeed, it is remarkable that the German public has tolerated for so long such intense development in close proximity to domestic housing. However, some German states are now considering an exclusion zone of 1 km from the nearest turbine, which is still extremely close for structures in excess of 100m, and now heading, believe it or not, to over 200m in overall height. The German people have been patient, but the mood is clearly changing; indeed, the premier manufacturer and developer Enercon has recently been compelled by court order to suspend construction of its 30 MW Wulfershausen wind farm because it had, apparently, breached the local authorities’ requirement that no dwelling should be within a distance ten times tip height.
This less favourable atmosphere is contributing to a general sense that existing onshore wind farms in Germany will not be repowered in great numbers at the end of their lives. About 15 GW of Germany’s onshore wind is now over fifteen years old and the end of the economic lifetime is in sight. But industry sources quoted in the subscription only press suggest that less than a third of this will actually be repowered, much less than had been expected only a few years back. The reasons given for this sudden change in prospects include declining public acceptance, reflected in tougher planning conditions, and falling subsidies.
Meanwhile, in Norway and in its home territory Sweden, Statkraft, Europe’s largest generator of renewable energy, has suspended further onshore wind construction because it would be “very challenging” to develop profitable projects in these areas. They are concentrating on other less resistant markets, such as the United Kingdom, where it has acquired a 250 MW portfolio of projects from Element Power.
But as it happens, things in the UK may prove to be no more promising. It has just dawned on the wind industry that government is actually acting on Amber Rudd’s landmark energy reset speech when Secretary of State for the Department of Energy & Climate Change in November 2015. In that speech Rudd remarked that “we also want intermittent generators to be responsible for the pressures they add to the system”. That of course was only right, but perhaps the industry hoped the intention would never materialise. If that was their expectation they were gravely mistaken. Aurora Energy Research has now released analysis of the regulator, Ofgem’s proposal to reform network charges, the “Targeted Charging Review”, and believes that the proposed changes “could set back subsidy-free renewables by up to five years”. When “unspun” this actually means that if the regulator removes the hidden subsidy of avoided system costs, imposed by renewables but socialised over all generators, then more of the true cost of renewables will be revealed to the market, making it much less likely that even the most greenwash-thirsty corporate, NGO, or governmental body will sign an extravagant long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with a wind or solar farm. In other words, far from hindering the emergence of subsidy-free renewables, Ofgem’s reforms threaten to give the lie to the subsidy-free claim and show that it was never anything more than an empty PR gambit.
In spite of all this, it is doubtless too soon to say that the game is up for renewables. The industries concerned will fight back, and beg further direct and indirect public assistance while threatening politicians and civil servants with missed climate targets if that support is not forthcoming. In all likelihood they will be to some degree successful. But this will only delay the inevitable. As the depressing news stories summarised above suggest, after decades of public support and de-risking there are still fundamental weaknesses in the renewables industry that go well beyond teething troubles and localised management failure. One explanation, the sole necessary one in my view, is that the physics is against this industry, and that the physics is beginning to tell. It remains only to say that this blog is not licensed to give investment or financial advice.
IPCC Clone Predicts Doom
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | May 6, 2019
Here we ago again. For some time, I’ve warned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a template, that the United Nations is up to the same tricks elsewhere.
Today, in Paris, an IPCC clone known as the IPBES – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – will announce the completion of an 1,800-page report.
Jonathan Watts, the UK Guardian‘s global environment editor, has already told us everything we need to know about this ‘IPCC for Nature.’
Under the headline Biodiversity crisis is about to put humanity at risk, UN scientists to warn, he insists this report was written by “The world’s leading scientists.” Funny, that’s how compliant, gullible journalists described IPCC personnel. For years and years. Until I began to notice that some of those involved were graduate students in their 20s.
Watts further tells us that:
The final wording of the summary for policymakers is being finalised in Paris by a gathering of experts and government representatives before the launch on Monday, but the overall message is already clear… [bold added by me]
In other words, as happens at the IPCC, scientists are recruited to write a report. Afterward, they draft a summary known as the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). Then politicians and bureaucrats representing national governments attend a plenary meeting where the summary gets examined line-by-line and rewritten.
Fairy tales tell of turning straw into gold. The UN takes scientific summaries and transforms them into politically acceptable straw. The resulting document, which will be solemnly released today, is what a roomful of political operatives have all agreed to say out loud.
But it gets worse. Over the next few weeks, the text being summarized – the underlying, ostensibly scientific document – will also get changed.
That’s not how things normally work, of course. Summaries are supposed to be accurate reflections of longer documents. At the UN, they represent an opportunity to alter those documents, to make them fall into line.
No need to take my word for it. This is standard IPCC operating procedure, and is openly admitted in a 56-page guide to how the IPBES operates.
see page 39 of this guide to the IPBES’ internal workings
Imagine, for a moment, executives at a television station examining the script of an investigative news show line-by-line. Imagine them re-writing that text at the behest of major advertisers, and in accordance with various political sensitivities. Would the end result be trustworthy?
Robert Watson, who chaired the IPCC from 1997 to 2002, now leads the IPBES. His online biography, over at the University of East Anglia, tell us he is a ‘UN Champion of the World for Science and Innovation.’
When the IPBES was established in 2010, we were informed point blank that its purpose was “to spearhead the battle against the destruction of the natural world.”
In other words, there’s all sorts of deception here. This is no sober scientific body, which examines multiple perspectives, and considers alternative hypotheses. The job of the IPBES is to muster only one kind of evidence, the kind that promotes UN environmental treaties.
That’s how the United Nations works, folks. Machinations in the shadows. Camouflaging its political aspirations by dressing them up in 1,800 pages of scientific clothing.
Zero Carbon Proposals Slammed As Irresponsible & Arbitrary
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 2, 2019
The GWPF has issued this press release in response to the Committee on Climate Change’s new proposals to cutting CO2 emissions to zero by 2050:
Summary
The recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) for a Net Zero emissions target by 2050 is grounded in nothing stronger than irresponsible optimism and arbitrary assumptions about cost and technological feasibility. In point of fact, the technologies seen as necessary, including carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), further expansion of renewable generation, widespread adoption of hydrogen, and the very rapid electrification of the UK’s entire heating and transport systems, are either known failures or are unproven at these scales and would cost two to three times the amounts claimed by the CCC. Attempts to deliver these policies would ultimately fail, but in the attempt the UK would further harm its already declining productivity, and so erode the UK’s ability to compete internationally and thus deliver an acceptable standard of living for its people. This is not a sustainable low emissions strategy, and even if accepted by government is very likely to end only in humiliating and distressed policy correction. A wise government would reject this advice.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is advising the government of the UK to revise and increase the ambitions of the Climate Change Act. The Act already commits the country to an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 as compared to 1990 levels. The new proposal is that it should have ‘Net Zero’ emissions by that year. The UK has, the CCC claims, already reduced its inland consumption emissions by 40% against the 1990 baseline, and it presents the current proposal as a rational continuation of that success story. But this is a selective and misleading history. When the emissions associated with UK consumption through manufacturing in other countries are taken into account, the UK’s carbon footprint was actually still rising up until the 2008 downturn, when it fell because of economic difficulties, and is now showing some signs of returning to the upwards trend as the economy slowly recovers. In essence, the UK simply exported its emissions to other parts of the world, principally China, in substantial part through carbon leakage resulting from high energy costs in the UK, costs which in substantial part were the result of climate policies. This history gives no ground for optimism with regard to the Net Zero target now proposed. Far from being a success on which we can build, UK climate policy has been a failure, resulting only in domestic economic damage and the illusion of reduced emissions.
The overriding problem facing the UK is the comparatively slow growth in productivity. For much of the last century, the UK’s productivity has been below that of the major industrial economies, and the gap has grown in the first two decades of the 21st century. The consequence has been no growth in real wages and incomes, a fact that strains domestic budgets and exacerbates a general reluctance to make the investments required for future economic prosperity.
This deterioration in productivity growth closely follows and is substantially associated with the implementation of policies to reduce energy use and carbon emissions. There are three reasons for this link:
(a) Large amounts of investment and labour have been diverted to capital-intensive renewables, crowding out investment in other infrastructure and sectors with much higher levels of capital and labour productivity.
(b) The resulting increases in energy prices have prompted high-productivity manufacturing and other industries to conclude that they should look elsewhere for growth in both demand and production.
(c) More generally, the efforts and resources of businesses and innovators have been diverted away from improving productivity and towards efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Furthermore, the idea that there is a global opportunity for the UK to grow by exploiting low carbon technologies is demonstrably a myth.
There can be no doubt that these factors have had a major impact on the development of the UK economy in the last two decades. Low carbon growth may be the holy grail, but the reality is almost no growth and slower reductions in carbon emissions per unit of output than in, say, the United States. Yet the CCC is now recommending proposals that are explicitly designed to reinforce this disappointing performance.
If the government accepts the CCC’s proposals, which are marked by a persistent special pleading about the costs and feasibilities, it will immediately sabotage any plan to rectify the UK’s poor productivity performance and weaken international competitiveness. Its recommendations will ensure that the UK suffers from even lower productivity and be still poorer relative to the rest of the world in 2050 than in 2020. At the same time, the slower growth in productivity brought about by these proposals will increase the burden of meeting the CCC’s targets to a level that will not be bearable. The only doubt is how much pain the population will endure, and how much damage will be done, before these infeasible targets are abandoned.
The study that underlies the CCC’s proposals is marked by what can only be called ‘fantasy analysis’. Electricity demand is required to double on present levels, when in fact it is falling due to high prices. The CCC’s plans require that all of that additional electricity must come from low carbon sources, as opposed to under 50% today. The CCC itself admits that CCS is ‘essential’ to its vision for the 2050 target, and must be substantially deployed before 2030, with a significant level by 2026. At present it is non-existent in the UK, and non-viable at scale elsewhere. There must be 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030, and 75 GW by 2050; at present there is 8 GW, all heavily subsidised, with no sign that the industry is in fact able to build offshore wind at market competitive rates.
The CCC believes that petrol and diesel cars and vans must be phased out well before 2040, but admits that even the current eye-catching and over-ambitious plans to mandate electric vehicles by 2035 cannot deliver this transformation. It consequently suggests that new fossil-fuelled vehicles must be outlawed by 2030. Such a ban would in all probability destroy the existing market for domestic car manufacture, as Chinese and other Asian companies using cheap energy and cheap labour will make the UK uncompetitive.
The study notes that the UK’s provision of space and water heating must be converted to electricity and hydrogen, but admits that there is currently ‘no serious plan’ in existence for this revolution. That is correct, but unfortunately, the study does not itself provide one.
The CCC states that there must be very large afforestation schemes to act as carbon sinks, at a rate of 20,000 hectares per year up to 2025, and 27,000 hectares per year thereafter. The CCC itself admits that the current rate has been only about 10,000 hectares per year over the last five years. In any case, the use of forestry as a carbon sink only has a short-term impact unless CCS is applied to wood burning, which is not feasible on a small scale and is unaffordably expensive on a large scale.
Overall, the CCC’s reaction to these manifest failures and difficulties is to conclude that the ‘voluntary approach’ has failed hitherto and would not deliver the new proposals. Implicitly, therefore, the policies that it recommends must be mandatory and state-led. But nowhere does the CCC’s report consider whether the state actually has the administrative or technical competence to successfully deliver these remarkable objectives. Nor does it consider whether the cost of doing so is likely to be tolerable to the public. Indeed, strikingly, though the CCC makes assertions about the cost and benefits of increasing the Climate Change Act target to Net Zero, there is no attempt to actually quantify the marginal costs and benefits of each step necessary – the most fundamental requirement for such an exercise. Indeed, many of the costs actually cited in the report ignore the practical realities of installation, operation and maintenance of technologies that are well-understood and have failed to achieve widespread deployment without large subsidies. Experience tells us that, if adopted, the CCC’s programme will cost anything from three to five times the estimates in this report and will take up to twice as long to implement.
In summary, the Committee on Climate Change has not produced a serious assessment of the practical feasibility and costs of a Net Zero 2050 target. On the contrary, it has simply taken the Net Zero target as a given and made irrationally optimistic and arbitrary assumptions comprising a fictional narrative that magically delivers the emissions reduction goal as the Happy Ending. This is unrealistic, irresponsible, and misleading.
The government should obviously reject the Climate Change Committee’s poorly argued advice, which is economically hazardous and does not offer a sustainable emissions reductions trajectory.
https://www.thegwpf.com/gwpf-statement-on-the-proposed-net-zero-2050-emissions-target/
Terrifying predictions about the melting North Pole!
By Larry Kummer | Watts Up With That? | April 30, 2019
Summary: We have had 30 years of bold but false predictions by climate scientists, met by silence from their peers. These make skeptics, and are one reason why the public does not support radical public policy actions. Here are 20 years of predictions about the melting North Pole.
A stream of predictions about an ice-free arctic ocean
Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge, is famous for his predictions – and his amazing record of being wrong. Journalists report each prediction as if made by Einstein, not telling readers about Wadhams’ dismal record. That is how they report climate science and keep their readers misinformed.
“Within a decade we can expect regular summer trade there {across the arctic ocean}.” — “Arctic Meltdown,” a NASA press release on 27 February 2001.
Eighteen years later, no regular cargo crossing the arctic ocean. There are small numbers of specially built ships making the passage on the northern coasts (e.g., here, here, and here).
“By 2013, we will see a much smaller area in summertime than now; and certainly by about 2020, I can imagine that only one area will remain in summer.” — BBC, 13 May 2009.
Twice wrong. The 2013 average and minimum ice extent was roughly unchanged from that in 2009. In 2018, the minimum was 4.6 million square kilometers, only 12% down from 2009. I doubt 2020 will be much different.
“The entire ice cover is now on the point of collapse. …The extra open water already created by the retreating ice allows bigger waves to be generated by storms, which are sweeping away the surviving ice. It is truly the case that it will be all gone by 2015. The consequences are enormous and represent a huge boost to global warming.” — The Scotsman, 29 August 2012.
Not only was it not “all gone by 2015” but that quote appeared three weeks from the record low point on September 17.
“I have been predicting [the collapse of sea ice in summer months] for many years. The main cause is simply global warming …This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates.” — The Guardian, 17 September 2012.
Ditto. There was a great deal of excitement among alarmists about the 2012 low, and the usual linear extrapolation to a disaster coming really soon. Wadhams presented at the September 2014 Royal Society conference “Arctic sea ice reduction: the evidence, models, and global impacts.” A few climate scientists made mildly critical tweets about his presentation. Gavin Schmidt (Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies) was the most critical. He is, to the best of my knowledge, exceptional in his willingness to speak out about alarmist claims by his peers. See the tweets. But there is no evidence they called friendly journalists to protest journalists’ uncritical publication of Wadham’s predictions. But skeptical climate scientists often receive barrages of criticism from their peers, sometimes for repeating material in the IPCC’s reports and peer-review literature (e.g., Roger Pielke Jr. by scientists such as Gavin Schmidt – details here).
“Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover. Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free. You will be able to cross over the north pole by ship. …Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018. — The Guardian, 21 August 2016.
Twice wrong, again. The 2016 minimum was 23% above the 2012 minimum. The arctic was not ice-free in 2017 or 2018. Not even icebreakers cross over the North Pole.
“{T}he planet is swiftly heading toward a largely ice-free Arctic in the warmer months, possibly as early as 2020.” — Yale Environment 360, 26 September 2016.
The record minimum extent was in 2012. The previous minimum was 4.16 million km in 2007. The 2018 minimum was 4.95 million km. That is a 19% increase over 12 years. Wadhams had lots of headline-loving company among climate scientists. For example, Wieslaw Maslowsk – a research professor at the Navy Postgraduate School.
“Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. …Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. …’Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,’ the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. ‘So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.’” — BBC, 12 December 2007.
The “projection” of an ice-free summer in 2013 was not “too conservative.” It was too aggressive. 
That is an example of successful clickbait by Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic on 29 December 2015. This is the alarmists’ usual trick of describing weather as “extraordinary” based on our brief instrument record, when it probably is not.
“It’s really hard to predict when we could see ice-free summers in the Arctic, but it could be as soon as in 20 to 40 years, Francis says.” — Jennifer Francis was then a professor at Rutgers, now a senior scientist at Woods Hole. Quoted in The Verge, 10 May 2018.
Now that is a safe prediction. If accurate, it will become famous in 2040 or 2060. If wrong, it will go down the memory hole with all the other wrong predictions about climate.
The real story
See the three lines in color showing the sea ice extents of 2007 (blue, middle), 2012 (dotted, bottom), and 2018 (thin grey, top), and the thick grey line of the 1981 – 2010 mean. Sea ice extent has been flattish for twelve years. For another perspective, the PIOMAS model shows that Arctic sea ice volume has been flattish for nine years. Click graph to enlarge.
From the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Extinction Rebellion – The Facts
Windows on the World | April 21, 2019
The corporate backed “protest” group Extinction Rebellion fully explained. The main protagonists in this organisation and their links to Agenda 2030, the UN Global Action Plan and template NGO’S are all explained in this fact filled show.
Do listen and look at the information presented in in these two WOTW shows about the ER cult. Listen and check out the info here
The full spectrum dominance of controlled opposition is explained in the show:
Extinction Rebellion – The Facts
Below are the emails between a member of the public who asked the inner core of Extinction Rebellion a few questions and the sinister responses and threats from their “Dragons”
The Dragons of Extinction Rebellion
The same type of “Dragons” were used in the Occupy power structure once it was under the control of George Soros they can be seen in The Puppet Masters of Occupy
Our previous shows on the ER cult gave a lot of information and context to this show. They are linked above, “Fake Protest Extinction Rebellion” and “Globalist Fake Revolution”. The articles on the website contain internal ER documents and screenshots.
Here is an informative article From OYE News
The structure of ER mirrors the George Soros backed takeover of Occupy with its command structure including “Dragons”who threaten and intimidate anyone who asks questions.
We also have e mail threats from the sinister so called “Dragons” who protect the inner core of ER personnel. This all mirrors previous globalist backed protests.
We also look at the organizations linked to ER and how there are hundreds and globally thousands of these NGO template organizations all using the same narratives, all backed by the big financial interests which are pushing the climate change agenda for profit and ultimately control of the world population and all natural resources. The change agents, social entrepreneurs, psychological nudging, Saul Alinsky rules which all appeared as part of David Cameron’s Big Society.
Gail Bradbrook is one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion along with Roger Hallam and George Barda. Their Company is Compassionate Revolution Ltd and the ER protests came through Rising Up an organisation linked to other template type NGO’s which claim to be “grassroots”.
Gail Bradbrook is a consultant at Citizens Online, her profile was removed from the company’s website before the London “protests” Here it is before it was removed.
On the subject of fake protest groups: Demos the Think Tank which influences all media in the UK and is connected to the security services and MI5 stated:
“The New Democracy will work with a combination of government open infiltration and citizen groups taking Direct Action.”
The show looks at the template NGO’s linked to this “protest” and how they are in line with aims of the UN Agenda 2030, its taxation, restrictions and Smart Cities agenda and everything Globalist.
The use of the world “grassroots” has been hijacked to mean “state controlled and agents of the UN, IMF and World Bank.”
Unlike the Fake Protests we receive no funding!
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The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- IRAN WAR “ON PAUSE” – w/ Prof. Glenn Diesen
- Zelensky threatens to attack Belarus
- UK to send Ukraine 150,000 drones
- ‘Biased censorship’: Iran deputy FM slams X for stripping him of blue tick
- Hezbollah lawmaker says Israel has 60 days to withdraw from Lebanon
- Iran rules out IAEA inspections of war-damaged nuclear sites
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- How Multipolarity Forced Trump to Capitulate… For Now
- Switzerland confirms US-Iran talks planned for Friday are cancelled
- If Americans Knew
- 15 articles a day: The extent of the Israeli army’s media interference
- Greek Orthodox Patriarchate denounces Israeli seizure of church land in Jerusalem
- How Hillel International uses antisemitism training and ‘campus climate’ concerns to attack Palestine solidarity
- Old Iraq war architects rise up against Trump’s Iran deal
- Unmasking Axios, its Israeli ties and agenda
- Israel Is Bleeding Support in the U.S. – and Pouring Tens of Millions Into Trying to Change That
- Israeli army included on UN blacklist for 3rd year over ‘grave violations’ against children
- Trita Parsi on the Iran deal, Israel, and how Iran has been a ‘cash cow’ for AIPAC
- JD Vance speaks truth to Israel: “You can’t just kill your way out of every problem” – Daily Update
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
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