What climate change advocating economists don’t get

 The first thing to realise is that economists have no idea how the real economy works, particularly the rural economy.

The second thing to realise is that climate change activists understand even less about how the economy works.

So, when the two ignorant groups are combined, CO2 emission reduction advocating economists are plain clueless – and destructive.

Putting a price on carbon only works if there are emissions reductions which can be made.


… economists and climate advocates are often talking past each other. …

The goal is not to reduce current emissions a little but instead to reduce future emissions a lot.

… large-scale vehicle emissions reductions … requires getting Americans to switch from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric or other alternative-fuel vehicles.

In principle, a carbon price could drive that shift [ ] by raising gasoline and diesel prices so high that drivers switch to EVs [electric vehicles]. But, in addition to the political challenges of imposing high carbon prices, that approach is likely to cost more than other strategies...<<<Read More>>>....

Disappearing Hurricanes Leave Disappointed Scientists Without Fuel for Climate Alarm

 Emergency explanations have had to be rushed to the climate catastrophising front following the shocking news that hurricanes in the North Atlantic have largely disappeared this year.

Until recently the area was heading for a double bagel – zero hurricanes with zero major hurricanes, although a late storm has upset a score line never before seen in the historical record. As with all ‘extreme’ outlier weather events, humans must be responsible, at least that has been the mainstream reaction for around 30 years (we have the computer models to prove it). But wait, not on this occasion. Simon King from the BBC states that a natural occurring El Niño is the “biggest reason”.

Wot, no humans altering the climate? Surely a first for the BBC. In fact, lead weather presenter King is on the right track in that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a transporter of heat from the Pacific Ocean around the world, can reduce wind shear and supress storm activity. But activity is complex in the chaotic, non-linear, largely unmeasurable atmosphere. Such a simple explanation didn’t work well in 2023 when another strong El Niño occurred at a time when there was a long-term-average-busting hurricane season with seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes. Then the narrative-driven media was jammed packed with possible anthropogenic causes....<<<Read More>>>....

Ministers Turn on Ed Miliband Over Net Zero Block on AI Investment

 Senior Government sources told the Telegraph there was frustration with the former energy secretary, who has questioned whether AI expansion can support Labour’s Net Zero plans.

Ministers are pushing for greater central control of the national grid so that data centres, which are vital infrastructure for powering AI, can be prioritised.

However, Mr Miliband, who is now the Foreign Secretary, is understood to oppose the plans over the large amounts of electricity data centres require and the impact on the Government’s Net Zero agenda.

Investment in data centres is the latest point to divide the Cabinet. A previous rift was caused when John Healey, the Chancellor, insisted a third runway at Heathrow Airport would turbocharge the economy, despite the Prime Minister refusing to back the plan.

One Cabinet minister said that working class families were “falling out of love with Net Zero”, arguing that it was hard for them to support something which was costing them both “jobs and a summer holiday”. …

The UK has been criticised by AI firms for its high electricity prices and slow grid connections, which have led many data centre developers to go abroad or build their own gas turbines.

“You can’t have AI growth zones one minute, and Ed [Miliband] the next saying he wants Net Zero everywhere,” one industry source said. “The two don’t compute.” They added that Mr Miliband was not “remotely pro-data centres” and was not “remotely pro anything that does not drive towards Net Zero”....<<<Read More>>>....

“Implausible” Met Office UK Climate Projections Still Whipping up Unjustified Net Zero-Convenient Fear

 Five months after the IPCC ruled that the infamous RCP8.5 computer scenario responsible for most mainstream climate doomsday copy over the last 15 years was “implausible”, what news can I bring you of the Met Office’s UK Climate Projection 2018 report (UKCP18) that based its predictions on the now cancelled modelling nonsense? Good news: the Met Office immediately withdrew UKCP18 with a fulsome apology for all the harm caused. Everything from the compromised geography A level syllabus to numerous Net Zero rules and regulations that relied on its claims have been withdrawn pending future alteration. Sorry, I must have dropped off for a moment and started dreaming. Of course, the report has not been withdrawn; of course, no apology has been forthcoming, and of course, UKCP18 is still up to all its old tricks.

On June 23rd, the Met Office produced a weather forecast for 2055 showing how the summer temperature in England under a “plausible” computer model scenario could hit 45°C along with nine consecutive days where 40°C was recorded somewhere in the country. Not bad going in 30 years, given that the UK temperature ’record’ of 40.3°C produced on July 19th 2022 by the runway at RAF Coningsby was somewhat challenged in its veracity by the fact that Typhoon jets were attempting to land at the time. The claimed record was a 60-second 0.6°C spike and over a five-minute average – recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation to reduce ‘noise’ – the temperature fell below the magic, headline-grabbing 40°C....<<<Read More>>>>...

More Nonsense From the People’s Emergency Briefing

In the deluded world of the People's Emergency Briefing, power from "sun and wind" is "free", even though it needs endless subsidies! Paul Homewood continues his fact check of the latest nonsense from the climate brigade.

Audiences up and down the country have been watching the People’s Emergency Briefing, the film launched 10 months ago to great fanfare. The emergency, if you did not guess, is the so-called ‘climate crisis’.

The section on energy, for instance, was presented by Tessa Khan, Executive Director at Uplift, an advocacy organisation set up to “create a rapid and fair transition away from oil and gas production in the UK”. Uplift is funded by the usual Green Blob, notably the notorious European Climate Foundation.

Tessa is not an energy or economics expert. She has no qualifications or experience whatsoever in the subject. She is an environmental lawyer.

Her pitch was to blame high energy prices on the cost of gas and other fossil fuels. She points out that “the UN Fuel Poverty Coalition states there are now more than 12 million households across the UK who are struggling to pay their energy bills” and claims that the evidence is clear that an energy system powered by renewables will be more affordable.

She is wrong. Our energy, or more precisely our electricity, bills are some of the highest in the world not because of fossil fuels but because of the high cost of renewables...<<<Read More>>>...

No, Climate Change is Not ‘Squeezing’ the World’s Vineyards

 It has become one of the settled rituals of the climate-activist press: almost any hardship afflicting any agricultural sector, anywhere in the world, is now reflexively laid at the door of “climate change”. No mention of ordinary weather variability, market economics, pests or poor planning. The latest instalment arrived via the Conversation, under a headline declaring that climate change is putting the squeeze on the world’s grape-growers, dressed up as fresh research. It was duly amplified across social media as further proof that the planet’s vineyards are dying on the vine. This should be duly mocked by those weary of seeing every inconvenience – from frost and floods to a merely disappointing harvest – blamed on “climate change”. The truth, as usual, lies in the data – and the data on grape and wine production tell a rather different story from the one being sold to a public primed to expect climate catastrophe in every news cycle....<<<Read More>>>...

Hijacking the tragedy in Nepal for climate activism is utterly shameless

The tragedy in Nepal and Tibet is a natural disaster; it had nothing to do with “climate change.” Yet climate change alarmists are hijacking the tragedy to further their nefarious aims.

When natural disaster strikes, climate charlatans pounce.

Over 1,200 people are dead, and over 4,000 are missing after a glacier collapsed, sending flash floods into Nepal and Tibet.

Climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann (of Climategate fame) wrote in the UK Guardian that Nepal’s flood reveals “the apocalyptic future that lies in store if we fail to take dramatic climate action.”

The executive director of the UN Green Climate Fund, Mafalda Duarte, shamelessly turned the tragedy into a call for cash, saying, “We see when there is will, that finance is mobilised to respond to emergencies. For some reason, we don’t see the same type of response to climate.”

Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal wants China, India, the US and other industrialised nations to compensate Nepal financially, framing it as a matter of “moral liability.” He said Nepal “will turn this into an issue of justice in the international arena.” He added, “This is not about asking for aid; it is about the obligation of large nations.”

Nepal’s flash flood was not caused by your SUV or refrigerator....<<<Read More>>>...

ECB is intensifying its war on humanity using climate regulations, despite a global collapse in “green” finance

 Last weekend, as wildfires continued to scorch parts of southern Europe, Frank Elderson of the European Central Bank’s (“ECB’s”) Executive Board took to the pages of The Guardian to warn that the “climate and nature crises” now pose a direct threat to “core financial stability” and even “core price stability.” The destruction of ecosystem services, he insisted, is not some “flower-power, tree-hugging exercise” but “core economics.” The ECB, he added, is already deepening its scrutiny of banks’ exposures to nature-related risks, with further analysis due later this year.

This is the same institution that, only 10 days earlier, quietly expanded its “climate factor” in the “Eurosystem collateral framework” to cover non-financial corporate loans. From the end of 2027 at the earliest, loans to companies deemed exposed to “transition shocks” from climate change will face an additional haircut of up to 5%. The July decision and Elderson’s August rhetoric are of a piece: the ECB continues to weaponise climate (and now nature) policy even as the empirical, political and market ground shifts decisively under the alarmist camp....<<<Read More>>>...

Climate Change Catastrophism is a Leftist Weapon

What we drive, how we heat our homes, what we eat, how much water we use: every modern activity increases industrial CO2 emissions in a manner not dissimilar to air conditioning. Do all such intimate, local decisions therefore necessitate governmental oversight and regulation? And if so, what freedoms can possibly remain?

The roots of such worrisome totalising can be traced in the more academic realm to the 1960s and 1970s, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Paul Ehrlich’s the Population Bomb and the Club of Rome’s the Limits to Growth. More distal influences, such as Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848, also merit consideration, as we shall see.

There is another source, however, unmatched in its combination of scientific pretension, charged emotional tone, policy impact and mass appeal: former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which this year marks its 20th anniversary.

More than any other single work, this glossy, visually dramatic production translated the abstractions of climate modelling into a compelling, emotionally charged narrative – one that struck fear into the hearts of tens of millions. It did so by framing mankind’s industrial activity and consequent increase in CO2 production as the driver of a truly dangerous increase in global temperature. It did so by warning of severe and impending ecological devastation and economic disruption. It did so by arguing for the necessity of emergency response, while casting dissent as the most serious of modern sins....<<<Read More>>>...

Climate alarmism is key to the Globalists’ plan to install the agentic state

 Climate change catastrophe is a manufactured crisis used by powerful families, especially the Rockefellers, to push a global surveillance and digital‑control agenda, Jacob Nordangård says

“Elites” are funding and controlling environmental groups, think‑tanks and media which shape environmental narratives and drive policies to bring about an agentic state or “digital world brain,” where everyone in the world is ruled over using AI agents.

The lies about global warming go back a long way, largely to one family: the Rockefellers. Nordangård takes the view that the Rockefellers, as far as they’re concerned, aren’t doing it for evil reasons but instead view themselves as responsible for making the world a better place, to create a utopia as designed by them, “almost like they have this religious quest,” and they “think it’s okay to actually lie to achieve this.” ...<<<Read More>>>...

Met Office Claims Another Temperature Record – in an Overgrown Backyard

 Last Monday, the Daily Sceptic revealed how the Met Office claims of “record temperatures” during the recent heatwave were more likely the result of poor siting than climate change. The highest temperature occurred at one of its Class 5 junk stations, Santon Downham in Norfolk.

The same day, the Met Office belatedly discovered an even higher temperature during the hot spell three days earlier. A private back garden in Lingwood near Norwich had, we were assured, recorded a temperature of 37.7C.

Natural Abundance: Why Engineered Scarcity Is a Lie and How to Tap Into the Universe’s Unlimited Gifts

 Scarcity is not a natural condition. Rain falls freely, sunlight pours down without a bill, and the soil regenerates life year after year. Yet we are taught to believe that energy, food, and health are perpetually limited. I have spent decades exposing this deception, and I can say with certainty: scarcity is a manufactured hoax used to control us.

The universe actually operates on automatic abundance, and that abundance can be tapped by anyone, without permission and in many cases without cost. This matters because once you see through the illusion, you can break free from the cycle of fear and dependency. 

The falsehood of scarcity is rooted in a worldview that treats money as wealth and nature as worthless. But this is exactly the opposite of reality. As I have written before, the entire global economic system is built on artificial scarcity and control. But nature itself disproves this every day. A single seed can produce a plant that yields hundreds of seeds, each of which can sprout again. That is the law of abundance written into the fabric of life, and it can be accessed by everyone...<<<Read More>>>...

Climate change is big money: UN demands $1.3 trillion per year to fight “climate chaos”

If you were ever in doubt that the catastrophic climate change narrative was about money, masses of it, wonder no more.

António Guterres, the UN’s Secretary-General, has called for governments and financial institutions to massively increase their spending on climate change effects.

The obvious question is: Where do governments get the money to spend on climate change projects? From those in the developed world who are productive and pay their taxes. This fact seems to have escaped Guterres. Instead, he feels he can issue a diktat, governments will ignore the will of taxpayers whom they serve and simply hand over the money.

Where does Guterres want taxpayers’ money to be distributed to? Amounts that are left over after the UN has taken its slice (for expenses incurred, of course), should be distributed to undeveloped countries, such as in Africa, Gueterres said. Africa, where most governments and officials are so corrupt that little to no money will be used to the benefit of ordinary Africans.

Climate change is a money-making scam.....<<<Read More>>>...