Untouched by even a scintilla of doubt about global warming, the EU has abandoned all restraint and decided to table a proposal which will bind member states to cutting CO2 emissions by 30 percent on 1990 levels by 2020.Hitherto, the target has been 20 percent, with an offer made at Copenhagen to go for the higher figure "if an international agreement on emissions reductions is secured". But, according to The Times, that agreement is no longer a pre-condition. By contrast, the US is debating whether to cut emissions by 4 percent on 1990 levels by 2020 but is unlikely to make a decision this year.Needless to say, the British government is right in there, supporting the proposal, meanwhile refusing publish research it has commissioned on the cost of achieving this target. The EU commission...

Ayrshire Power starts planning process for power station which would be UK's first to use carbon capture and storageClimate activists are threatening a campaign of direct action against a new coal-fired power station that could be the UK's first to fit carbon-capture technology.Campaigners say that if the proposed 1.6GW station in Ayrshire is approved, it will be the "new Kingsnorth", a reference to E.ON's controversial coal-fired plant in Kent that sparked battles between protesters and police before E.ON finally shelved it.The warnings from Friends of the Earth Scotland, WWF Scotland and the World Development Movement came as Ayrshire Power today took the first formal step towards applying for planning permission for the new station, at Hunterston on the Firth of Clyde.The proposal has...

This is Kumi Naidoo, described as the head of Greenpeace. He – or so we are told – argues that it is justifiable to break the law in order to alert people to the threat of climate change.He is speaking in defence of his activists, 54 of whom have been charged with trespass after spending the night on the roof of the Houses of Parliament in October last year, and says his organisation has no intention of scaling back its tactics.Actually, I have no problem with the idea of breaking (mad-made) laws. The concept of civil disobedience is honourable and well-established. Much of the progress in what passes for civilisation has been made by men and women of principle refusing to be bound by outdated or unjust laws. And I have personally broken too many such laws in my time to be able to...

China, thirsty for oil, has turned to an entirely new land mass in an attempt to slake itself. Its new target is Argentina, specifically the Argentine company Bridas in which CNOOC, China’s nationally-owned oil and gas company, has just taken a 50% stake worth $3.1bn. CNOOC prez Yang Hua described the deal as being a “good beachhead for us to enter Latin America”, but it’s actually the second front in their Latin American adventures, having previously paired up with Venezuela on new exploration projects. This follows a year of exponential oil and gas exploration from China, who have recently headed into Canada, Nigeria, Iraq, their own territory, and Uganda just last week, while its interest in Ghana continues to stumble on. A few weeks back China announced that it...

Australia circa 2050, population 35 million, climate change induced rising sea levels have flooded the Gold Coast resort region, apartment blocks are now used to grow food and people commute in monorail pods above the sea. In another city, Australians live on floating island pods with apartments both below and above sea level, the population has shifted from land to the sea because of the sky-rocketing value of disappearing arable land. Climate change has also forced many Australians to move inland and create new cities in the outback, relying on solar power to exist in the inhospitable interior.   These are just a few urban scenarios by some of Australia’s leading architects shortlisted for “Ideas for Australian Cities 2050+” to be staged at this year’s Venice...

The disclosure that Britain’s primary schools are struggling to cope with a huge rise in demand for places is good news for Michael Gove. It means Britain will soon need hundreds of additional secondary schools and allowing parent groups and voluntary bodies to set them up — as the Tories are proposing — will be far more cost effective than relying on local authorities to plug the gap. More:...

A poster child of the warmist creed, the Amazon rainforest is back in the news today, with an article in a Sunday newspaper. It asserts that a new study, funded by NASA, "has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest's vegetation."This is a reference to the Samanta paper which we reviewed yesterday, on which basis we are told today that the findings appear to disprove claims by the IPCC that up to 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest could react drastically to even a small reduction in rainfall and could see the trees replaced by tropical grassland.Certainly, the IPCC claim is damaged by Samanta, but the findings cannot be taken to support assertions that the 2005 drought had little impact on the forest. Insofar as he can...

Wen Jiabao defends China's place on world stage, says his conscience is clear on climate deal and warns US on currencyThe Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, today launched a robust defence of his country's place on the world stage, including a sharp rebuttal of what he called "baffling" criticism of his country's role at the Copenhagen summit.Acknowledging "serious disruption" in ties with the United States and rising criticism of Chinese assertiveness on the climate, currency, trade and other issues, the premier said he wanted to set the record straight."Some say China has got more arrogant and tough. Some put forward the theory of China's so-called 'triumphalism'. You have given me an opportunity to explain how China sees itself," Wen said.In a press conference marking the close of the...

England was given an uncomfortable reminder last week of the impact of its swelling number of inhabitants. Over the past two millennia, hundreds of its native plants and animals have been rendered extinct because the human population has risen from about one million to more than 51 million. Victims have ranged from the great auk and the lynx to the humble blue stag beetle and Davall’s sedge. More to the point, 480 of the 492 species made extinct since Roman times have disappeared in the past two centuries. Rates of eradication are rising, a trend that bodes badly for the future of the countryside, a report states. Produced by Natural England, the government agency responsible for the countryside, “Lost Life: England’s Lost and Threatened Species” focuses only on...

It is a criminal offence to kill bats and golden eagles, writes Booker today in his column – unless of course you are a windmill owner.The main objection to these bird choppers is, of course, their outrageous expense – machines for producing derisory amounts of electricity at colossal cost. That is why the government wants us to spend £100 billion on building thousands more of them which, even were it technically possible, would do virtually nothing to fill the fast-looming 40 per cent gap in our electricity supply.But, in all the time spent railing against these useless machine, Booker has never mentioned their devastating effect on wildlife, notably on large birds of prey, such as eagles and red kites. And particularly disturbing, he says, is the extent to which the disaster has...

Leaked adjudication largely clears government over campaign that some thought 'scary, inaccurate and too political'Read the full text of the ASA adjudicationThe advertising watchdog has mildly rebuked the government over the phrasing of a claim in two advertisements on the danger of climate change, while dismissing the rest of the complaints against the controversial television and newspaper campaign.The campaign, run by the Department of Environment and Climate Change last winter, brought in 939 complaints. Various groups said the adverts were political, too scary, and factually misleading.The vast majority of these complaints have now been dismissed by the authority.The Advertising Standards Authority's only criticism was that a claim that "flooding, heat waves and storms will become...

When it was published in 2007, the paper in the journal Science by Saleska et al caused quite a stir. It suggested that, contrary to expectations, the Amazon rainforest had "greened-up" in response to a short, intense drought in 2005. These findings, wrote the authors, "suggest that Amazon forests, though threatened by human-caused deforestation, fire, and possibly by more severe long-term droughts, may be more resilient to climate changes than ecosystem models assume."The paper was widely reported, not least by Science Daily on 26 September 2007. Drought-stricken regions of the Amazon forest grew particularly vigorously during the 2005 drought, according to new research, this magazine announced. It told us that the counterintuitive finding contradicts a prominent global climate model...

Cold kills! These idle, dangerous morons can drawn their pretty graphs and make vacuous projections about what might be, but in the here and now, far more people die in cold weather than in hot – and the greenies want to increase the number as they price energy out of existence.Watts up with that? has an excellent post on the subject. Extreme cold, it says, rather than heat, is the deadliest form of extreme weather event. In fact, from 1979-2002, extreme cold was responsible for 53 percent of deaths due to all these categories of extreme weather, while extreme heat contributes slightly more than half that (28%).Repeat after me, you greenie morons ... cold kills, cold kills, cold kills ... greenies kill. You granny killers should be up for manslaughter.CLIMATE CHANGE – END...

By the time you’ve finished reading this sentence, the human population of Earth will have increased by approximately 12 people. As you continue reading, the average number of births will, every second, eclipse the average number of deaths. If we assume a typical reading speed of 250 words per minute, in the time it takes you to reach the end of this article, there will be around 1800 more people living on the planet than when you started. But is that something to worry about? Human numbers have been rising ever since the end of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. We currently pack in an extra 78 million people every year. The current population is 6.8 billion, and we’re expected to stampede through the 7 billion mark in 2012. According to the UN, the world population in 2050 will be...

It just gets better and better. CLIMATE CHANGE – END...

Nearly half of Americans – 48 percent – now believe the threat of global warming has been exaggerated. This is the highest level since polling began 13 years ago says a recent Gallup poll. That category does not seem comparable with a poll in February when 47 percent thought long-term planetary trends rather than human activity was the primary cause of global warming up from 34 percent in April 2008.However, both polls show the same downward trend in the willingness to accept climate alarmism, a significant factor in the US where climate measures are still live political issues and need popular assent for legislation to be enacted. Imperfect though the US system might be, there is at least some check on the madness, as opposed to the UK and most of the rest of Europe which is saddled...

Saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut emissions without reducing pollutionCompanies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future.Campaigners for tougher emissions reductions said the saved-up allowances discredited the...

For anyone with any residual doubts about the wave of madness about to engulf us the introduction of the feed-in tariff on 1 April, they need go no futher than read a recent report from the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, entitled: "Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience".Packed with detail and well-argued, its conclusions are unequivocal and coruscating. "Although Germany's promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a shining example in providing a harvest for the world," the authors write, "we would instead regard the country's experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits."You really...

US belief in climate science lowest since polling began 13 years ago, with 31% saying the threat is 'definitely' a realityPublic belief in climate science has seen a precipitous slide in the US, according to new polling that suggests fewer Americans are concerned about the threat posed by global warming.Nearly half of Americans – 48% – now believe the threat of global warming has been exaggerated, the highest level since polling began 13 years ago, the poll published today by Gallup said.It directly linked the decline in concern to the controversies about media coverage of stolen emails from the University of East Anglia climate research unit and a mistake about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 in the UN's authoritative report on global warming."These news reports may well have...

The short answer to this seemingly off-the-wall question is yes. British political and diplomatic efforts on the region are not focused on securing the political deal necessary to secure peace. Instead, they are being subsumed by the more important need to secure an international climate change agreement. To explore this in more detail, a good starting point is to following on from my piece yesterday on the "narrative", and to visit a commentary in The Guardian by Seumas Milne on the war in Afghanistan.His headline is: "Voters are far ahead of the elite – so they'll get no say", with a fairly descriptive strap line which declares: "Afghanistan should be at the heart of the election campaign. But it won't be because the main parties all support the war."Particularly intriguing, though...

More than two animals and plants a year are becoming extinct in England and hundreds more are severely threatened, a report published today reveals. Natural England, the government’s agency responsible for the countryside, said the biggest national study of threats to biodiversity found nearly 500 species that had died out in England, all but a dozen in the last two centuries. The losses recorded compare with a natural rate of about one extinction every 20 years before humans dominated the planet, but are almost certainly an underestimate because of poor records of any but the “biggest, scariest” creatures before the 1800s. The high rate at which species are being lost is set to continue. Almost 1,000 other species face “severe” threats from the same problems...

We have been enjoined to participate in another mad greenie scheme, asking us to reduce the "carbon footprint" of our blog by allowing a tree to be planted in our name.The aim is "to raise awareness of the carbon emissions resulting from the use of the internet - specifically of blogs. A blog with 15,000 visits a month has a yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 8lb." Thus, to neutralise these emissions the organisers have created "My blog is carbon neutral" buttons (pictured) so that happy little bloggers can demonstrate that they care about the environment and the carbon emissions of their blogs. This is a small but nontheless (sic) worthy solution to contribute to environmental issues. "Our idea is to show possibilities to make a contribution to protect the environment," say the scheme...

“As we …talk about the interconnections between climate change and migration we need to look at the interconnections in a way that understands what’s positive about the processes of migration and what’s problematic,” said Susan Martin, Herzberg Professor of International Migration at Georgetown University, during a recent event on climate and migration at the Center for American Progress. Susan Martin joined Cynthia Brady, senior conflict advisor for the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at USAID and David Waskow, director of the Climate Change Program at Oxfam America, to identify the catalysts for future population flows, offer pragmatic policy solutions, and discuss work to be done on the ground. While reminding the audience that climate-induced migration will...

The Policy Network has, very helpfully, partially updated the work we did on 18 July 2007 when we first discovered that the EU was paying environmental groups such as the Friends of the Earth Europe to lobby itself.To that effect, we are offered report which analyses one programme of funding, in which DG Environment distributed over €66 million to environmental NGOs between 1998-2009.Specifically, the report examines funds allocated to the so-called "Green 10" – a coalition of ten NGOs pushing for an "environmental" agenda in EU policy-making. It finds that nine out of the ten receive funds from the commission, eight receive one-third or more of their income from the commission, and five of those rely on the commission for more than half their funding. We also learn that, from 1998 to...

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown (pictured above) warned today that Britain’s economy is “still in choppy waters”  but he declared he had the character to lead the country to economic recovery. The PM stressed that the country was at a “crossroads” and faced “crucial decisions”, not least with regard to the impending general election, in the months ahead. He warned that “ideologically-driven” opposition Conservative party plans for spending cuts risked tipping the country back into recession. So presumably HIS spending cuts after the election wouldn’t be idealogically driven – though doubtless his tax rises after the election would be. And it also appears that New Labour doesn’t mind being idealogically driven...

As global warming and habitat degradation accelerates, people indigenous to the Arctic circle say they have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thriveElina Helander-Renvall comes from Utsjoki, a place so obscure that even many Finns have little idea where it is. Utsjoki, or Ochejohka, Uccjuuha, and Uccjokk, depending on which local language you are speaking, is Finland's northern-most municipality. Straddling the border with Norway, it shivers, unregarded, deep inside the Arctic circle, a few icy miles from the shores of the Arctic Ocean.Utsjoki, population 1,034, is home to Finland's largest concentration of Sami speakers, the indigenous people once loosely known as Lapps who have eked out an itinerant existence herding reindeer across the frozen wastes of northern...

Recognising a bargain when they see it, the investment firm Low Carbon Accelerator (LCA) has invested £500,000 in wind and solar power project developer Vigor Renewables in order to cash-in on UK feed-in tariffs (FITs).Vigor, we are told, is a new company formed to take advantage of changes to UK FITs, which aims to partner with land-owners, as well as commercial property owners and managers, to build and operate renewable power generating assets across the UK.Each of the solar and wind energy sites they build will be designed to qualify for the FITs which come into effect in the UK on 1 April 2010 and "guarantee an inflation linked income for sub-5MW renewable energy projects." For solar projects, the incentives are available for 25 years and for wind 20 years.In an unfortunate turn of...

Europe’s new climate chief sought to reinvigorate international climate talks on Tuesday, laying out a strategy for the EU to lead the world by example. With talks blocked by inaction in the United States, the global economic crisis and mounting skepticism over climate science, Connie Hedegaard said the EU would demonstrate how to meet its green goals while creating jobs and boosting economies. “The EU must continue to take leadership,” she told the European Parliament. “The most convincing way Europe can do so is by taking tangible and determined action domestically to become the most climate-friendly region in the world.”   The EU sought to take the lead in climate talks last year but was frustrated at the Copenhagen climate summit by mistrust among poor...

China and India wrote to the UN’s climate secretariat today agreeing to be “listed” as a parties to the Copenhagen accord, the last-minute agreement that emerged from the chaos of the UN’s summit in Copenhagen. The action falls short of full “association” and highlights the gulf between the US – the strongest backer of the accord – and the other key nations on how to deliver a global deal to combat climate change. Since Copenhagen, there has been confusion over how a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved. All observers, including the UN’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, are now clear that no such deal will be signed in 2010, with a meeting in South Africa in December 2011 now seen as the earliest date. At...

President Barack Obama inserted himself into Senate efforts to pass a climate change bill on Tuesday, gathering Republican and Democratic lawmakers at the White House to jumpstart efforts to overhaul U.S. energy policy. Obama called the meeting with influential senators and members of his cabinet to reinvigorate one of his top domestic and foreign policy priorities, which advisers admit has suffered from the president’s focus on healthcare reform.   The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would require the United States to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, roughly the same goal Washington has backed at international talks to combat global warming. But the Senate has not passed a similar measure, and a bipartisan...

Moonbat's spat over feed-in tariffs continues with a repost from his nemesis, Jeremy Leggett, defender of the solar industry.For once, though, we are completely on Moonbat's side. Only only now is the enormity of the government's proposal beginning to sink in, with its intention to have a full two percent of UK electrical production provided by micro-generation by 2020. This will largely be delivered by solar panels, the most profitable option for small installations.Actually, solar panels are one of the least cost-effective ways of producing electricity, costing £4,000-6,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity. Without massive government support, payback times (with interest) could be a hundred years or more to recoup the typical installation costs of between £3,000 and £20,000....

An article in the Western Mail gives a clue as to what is going on.Under the heading, "House cattle – or we will have to sharply cut herds", we learn of recommendations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming by permanently housing cattle, delivered to the Welsh rural affairs minister Elin Jones. They come from the Land Use Climate Change Group, established last year "to consider how agriculture and land use can reduce greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change."The Welsh Assembly Government has saddled itself a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2040 and, having virtually destroyed any productive industry in the province, the government is casting around for ways of making this madness happen.Up pops Professor Gareth Wyn Jones, who chaired...

Britain’s demand for imported goods is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions abroad than any other European country, according to a new study published today. The report shows that 253m tonnes of carbon dioxide are released overseas each year in the manufacture of products bound for UK shores, the equivalent of 4.3 tonnes per person. The average Briton’s carbon footprint is 9.7 tonnes, not including emissions from goods.  Only the US and Japan have higher emissions linked to their imports, at 699m tonnes and 284m tonnes of carbon dioxide per year respectively, the study found.   The majority of the emissions are released in rapidly industrialising parts of the developing world, such as China and India. The study, by scientists at the Carnegie Institute of Washington...

The head of the International Monetary Fund has proposed a plan for the world’s governments to pool together to raise money needed to adapt to climate change, a rare step for an organisation that normally does not develop environmental policies. The IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said the fund is concerned by the huge amount of money needed and the effect this will have on the global economy. He added that the proposal may help efforts to reach a binding agreement on climate change this year. Strauss-Kahn proposed that countries adopt a quota system similar to the one the fund uses to raise its own money, which could bring in money faster than proposals to increase carbon taxes or other fundraising methods. He only provided a broad outline of the plan, as the...

One baulks slightly at the dire Connie Hedegaard, EU commissioner on climate change, being called a "climate chief", although that rather puts her in the same league as Rajendra Pachauri – and that hasn't done him a great deal of good.Anyhow, said "chief", according to the Financial Times and sundry others, is playing down the prospects of it brokering a new, all embracing climate treaty at the global conference this December in Mexico. Given the general incompetence of the EU in everything it touches, it is comforting to see this institution recognising its own limitations, although the obduracy of India and China might have something to do with the pessimism.Hedegaard is being remarkably candid on this issue – not that she has much choice. "To get every detail set in the next nine...

Climate Change Coordinator. Location: Camden, London, £22,797 to £23,997. For over 70 years Plan has been working with the world's poorest children, families and communities. Today, child centred community development is at the heart of our programmes with 11 million children in 48 developing countries. We are currently recruiting for a Climate Change Coordinator (fixed term contract to 31 January 2013) whose role will be to coordinate the implementation of a three year EC-funded project on climate change involving schools, youth groups and partner organisations in six countries (UK, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal). This exciting new project is aimed at increasing public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights, and engaging ...Green jobs...

Jo Nova makes a good point in her recent piece about the hideously complex task of tracing funds spent on climate change research. It's a PhD size project, she writes, and there are no grants available to fund this kind of PhD.Actually, as I've hinted before, I'm not sure it's even doable. The tortuous flows of money, the multiple agencies involved, the extremely slack accounting in some instances, and the lack of any clear definition of "climate change", all conspire to make any calculations extremely tenuous.There may even be an element of exaggeration – not only for the reasons Jo suggests, that some agencies and governments want to be seen as "green" but also, many projects are deliberately falsely categorised, just to get the money. Knowing which way the wind is blowing, many...

"... the plain fact is that we surely need a prophet, not yet another committee. We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince – not because he preaches apocalypse in gory detail, but in simple, overwhelming terms. We need to be taught to believe by a true believer in a world where belief is the fatal, missing ingredient."Peter Preston in The Guardian, bemoaning the lack of public commitment to "climate change."CLIMATE CHANGE – END...

Connie Hedegaard, the newly appointed EU commissioner for climate change is waking up to the realities of the carbon trading scam set up under the Kyoto agreement, which could permit an overall increase in developed world emissions.According to a report from Reuters, the commission is about to announce that loopholes in the system mean that the world is awash with surplus carbon credits which can be bought up by manufacturers in developed countries who can then avoid having to make emission cats.The main problem, it seems, is the collapse of heavy industry in former communist countries during the transition to a free market economy, leading to sharp falls in carbon emissions and a huge surplus of emissions rights. Russia and Ukraine are the main problem, with Russia alone on track to...

"It may just be one of the most ominous bits of evidence yet that global warming could run out of control," writes Geoffrey Lean. "Scientists are beginning to find that methane frozen in permafrost under the Arctic Ocean is bubbling up to the surface and reaching the atmosphere, raising concerns that one of the most-feared potential self-reinforcing effects of climate change may be starting to get under way."You have to read right down to the end of the report, however, to find the great man writing: "It is far too early to draw firm conclusions from the findings." Then we learn that "Only a tiny amount of methane has been released so far compared to what is emitted elsewhere in the world and the Alaskan researchers are only beginning to track how the methane moves into the atmosphere."...