Grounded – France bans short-haul flights to cut ‘carbon’ emissions

CO2 is not pollution

France is scared of the vital trace gas carbon dioxide, or so its government leads us to believe.
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France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions, reports BBC News.

The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.

The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.

Critics have described the latest measures as “symbolic bans”.

Clintel Report Blows Lid Off Biased IPCC Report, Permeated With Errors, Bias

But not the end he was thinking of ? [credit: wizbangblog.com]

Each successive report is spun up for political purposes to look more alarming than the last one, with minimal change to any relevant data.
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The IPCC ignored crucial peer-reviewed literature showing that normalized disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and that human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920, say Marcel Crok and Andy May @ Climate Change Dispatch.

The IPCC, by cherry-picking from the literature, drew the opposite conclusions, claiming increases in damage and mortality due to anthropogenic climate change.

These are two important conclusions of the report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, published by the Clintel Foundation.

The 180-page report is – as far as we know – the first serious international ‘assessment’ of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.

BBC kicks off 2023 alarm season: Global warming set to break key 1.5C limit for first time

Credit: nationalreview.com

The 1.5C relates back to sometime in the 19th century, when global temperature data was minimal compared to today, one exception being the Central England data which shows nothing dramatic. After three years of La Niña, climate alarmists are relishing the prospect of an El Niño to revive their sagging crisis narrative a bit.
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Our overheating world [Talkshop comment – BBC climate hype] is likely to break a key temperature limit for the first time over the next few years, scientists predict.

Researchers say there’s now a 66% chance we will pass the 1.5C global warming threshold between now and 2027.

The chances are rising due to emissions from human activities and a change in weather patterns expected this summer, says BBC News.

If the world passes the limit, scientists stress the breach, while worrying, will likely be temporary.

The Coming Of The “Green” King

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The king of hot air?

PA Pundits International

By Adam Houser ~

Skyrocketing energy prices. A health care system in crisis. A growing budget deficit.

Where shall the people of Great Britain find answers to these existential threats? Never fear, here comes the “Green” King, coronated in all his environmental glory and bringing resolution to the real problems Britons should be worried about: climate change, pollution, and sustainability.

King Charles III was coronated this past Saturday, and to emphasize his passion for the environment and the planet, several Earth-friendly initiatives were pursued related to the ceremony.

As reported by inews.co.uk, “King Charles’s coronation is set to be the most sustainable ever, with cruelty-free holy oil and recycled ceremonial robes.” But it doesn’t stop there.

Let’s go through the “Green” King’s symbolic initiatives briefly.

First, the coronation invitation. Of particular note was the design of the art on the invitation, which is known as the “Green Man.” Some claim…

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It’s worse than we thought: there are only five years left

Old monkeyface emailed me to say: No, not five years of planetary existence! We have only five years left before the climate emergency unravels entirely.

How do I get to that prediction? We all know how hard predictions are, especially about the future. Well, I base it all on the fundamental observation that the planet has cycles and whether we understand them or not those cycles are going to carry on cycling, and we really should just get used to it.

Now radiative physics is pretty straightforward, but the whole climate emergency is based on a substantial amplification of the modest (and probably beneficial) warming that the recent increase in carbon dioxide concentrations has allegedly contributed to. And the climate klaxons are blaring full blast because people seem to believe that the earth (which has been around a while) is teetering on the edge of countless precipices. Should we cross this threshold, or that limit, they tell us, we will plunge over the edge into a hothouse world.

Personally, I’m a tad more concerned that we slip into another ice age, mini or major; that would be much more damaging to the human race and more difficult to adapt to than a warmer world. But let’s examine one of those precipices in a bit more detail.

King Charles III Has a Climate Record to Live Down

Image credit: BBC News

Climate alarmism with an end date is asking for trouble, to say the least. Gems such as this from 2008 — Prince Charles: Eighteen months to stop climate change disaster — spring to mind.
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This Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III marks a significant moment in Britain’s history, says Rupert Darwall.

No previous constitutional monarch has expressed his political views so openly.

Unlike his mother and grandfather, whose opinions, if they had any, remained unknown to the general public, the king’s record-setting seventy years as heir apparent to the British throne saw him define himself as a deeply committed environmentalist.

ULEZ Extension: Damning New Report Shatters ‘Scientific’ Claims Made By London Mayor Khan

The alarmist foundation for ULEZ expansion has disintegrated.

Read the new Together Declaration & Climate Debate UK report by Ben Pile demonstrating that neither the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) nor the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) find evidence of a causal link between air pollution and mortality.

Despite Khan claiming that 4,000 Londoners die each year, both UKHSA and COMEAP explicitly advise against framing the potential mortality risk associated with air pollution exposure in terms of deaths because it is untrue and unscientific.

Catastrophism update: UN to deliver diagnosis, prescription for its ‘climate crisis’

The world only has one temperature, which must somehow be restrained by human efforts — and lots of money. Or so the endless IPCC reports would have us believe. Keep paying up so the self-styled weather controllers can ‘save the planet’.
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The United Nations was poised to release a capstone report Monday distilling nearly a decade of published science on the impacts and trajectory of global warming, and the tools available to prevent climate catastrophe, says Phys.org.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 30-odd page “summary for policymakers”—compressing 10,500 pages authored by more than 1,000 scientists—is as dense as a black hole and will deliver a stark warning.

“We are nearing a point of no return,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said last week as diplomats from 195 nations gathered in Interlaken, Switzerland, to hammer out the final wording, finalized on Sunday night by exhausted and sleep-deprived delegates two days behind schedule.

“For decades, the IPCC has put forward evidence on how people and planet are being rocked by climate destruction.”

Multiple Choice Question re Green Energy

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As the climate alarm farce rumbles on, take a simple test…

Science Matters

Jack Hellner poses the issue in his American Thinker article. A single multiple choice question for the ‘green’ energy pushers.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Here is one burning question for scientists, entertainers, journalists, politicians,
bureaucrats, and others who claim they can control the climate:

Which of the following has caused the reservoirs to fill up rapidly in California and elsewhere in the West?

A. The Paris Climate accord.

B. The misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” in which the Democrats claimed they can control the climate by handing out huge amounts of money to “green” pushers.

C. All the United Nations gabfests where people fly in private jets to stump about the need to cut emissions.

D. Shuttering coal and natural gas utility plants.

E. Transitioning the peasants to cricket and mealworms as “food” to control cow flatulence.

F. Making people buy inefficient, expensive, impractical electric…

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Catastrophism update: Governments to vet ‘crucial’ UN climate science report

The ‘Pakistan one third underwater’ lie gets yet another airing here, while Arctic summer sea ice keeps confounding the doomsters. Pretending to know the future of global climate via modelling has only led to the failure of numerous over-the-top predictions so far.
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Diplomats from nearly 200 nations and top climate scientists begin a week-long huddle in Switzerland Monday to distill nearly a decade of published science into a 20-odd-page warning about the existential danger of global warming, and what to do about it, says Phys.org.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s synthesis report—to be released on March 20—will detail observed and projected changes in Earth’s climate system; past and future impacts such as devastating heatwaves, flooding and rising seas; and ways to halt the carbon pollution [sic] pushing Earth toward an unlivable state. [Talkshop comment – unverified claim].

“It’s a massive moment, seven years since the Paris Agreement and nine years since the last IPCC assessment report,” Greenpeace Nordic senior policy advisor Kaisa Kosonen, an official observer at IPCC meetings, told AFP.

Wikipedia’s Climate Change Bias: A Response

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More climate-sceptic links than you can shake a stick at here.

PA Pundits International

By Dr. John Happs ~

According to Wikipedia the scientific method involves careful observation, rigorous scepticism about what is observed … formulating hypothesis … testing and refinement etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

A number of entries in Wikipedia appear to display an absence of the above principles when it comes to reporting about climate change, with little criticism of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) narrative. Thus, we have excellent examples of why this online source should be closely examined for possible bias when providing information about climate change and influencing factors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_conspiracy_theory

Close inspection suggests that Wikipedia has deleted a list of the many well-qualified scientists who have rejected the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming meme:

http://joannenova.com.au/2020/03/wikipedia-deletes-the-list-of-scientists-who-are-skeptics-of-the-sacred-consensus/print/

William Connolley was noted for promoting Wikipedia’s climate alarmist views whilst suppressing any rational, skeptical information that he didn’t like. Lawrence Solomon noted how:

“He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect…

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Claim: Global food system emissions imperil Paris climate goals

Meat under attack [image credit: farminguk.com]

Phys.org pounces on another supposed climate alarm. Once again magical powers are assigned to trace gases with no evidence offered.
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The global food system’s greenhouse gas emissions will add nearly one degree Celsius to Earth’s surface temperatures by 2100 on current trends, obliterating Paris Agreement climate goals, scientists warned Monday.

A major overhaul of the sector—from production to distribution to consumption—could reduce those emissions by more than half even as global population increases, they reported in Nature Climate Change.

Earth’s surface has warmed 1.2 C since the late 1800s, leaving only a narrow margin for staying under the 2015 treaty’s core goal of capping warming at “well under” 2 C.

Antarctic Sea Ice: ‘The beginning of the end!’ – again – Net Zero Watch

Is it game over for the climate yet? Media over-excitement takes off again.
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The great sleeping giant that is Antarctica that — apart from the Antarctic Peninsula — refuses to respond to global warming may just have begun to stir, and the implications are, well, apocalyptic, jokes Dr David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

According to CNN “Antarctic sea ice hits record lows again. Scientists wonder if it’s “the beginning of the end.” CNN also reports that, “90% of ice around Antarctica has disappeared in less than a decade.”

CNN are not the only media outlets to report on this years’ record low sea ice around Antarctica in apocalyptic terms, other media extremists are available.

For Sky News it’s the accelerating melt of polar regions. For the BBC “There is now less sea-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent than at any time since we began using satellites to measure it in the late 1970s.” All this is technically true, but misleading. When it’s put into context one sees a different picture.

So let’s have a look at the actual satellite data of Antarctic sea ice collected monthly since 1979. The NSIDC gives two data sets for what it calls i) sea ice extent, and ii) sea ice area. So let’s examine both of them.

The first graph is sea ice area, the second sea ice extent [see here].

From the empirical data it is evident that there is hardly any change of sea ice over the 44-year time span. Since 2016 there is a dip with possibly more variability (of which more later), and the lowest month (February) does show a record low, but by hardly anything (and also look at the data for 1992).

Does this actual data look like the beginning of the end to you? Where is CNN’s 90% loss or Sky News acceleration?

Antarctic sea ice evolution has no significant trends along the whole period, but a volume drop is observed since 2016.

Full article here.

CNN’s ‘chief climate’ reporter flies more than 6,000 miles to warn about melting ice, climate change

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

Apart from spouting dodgy climate theories and proposing absurd ‘solutions’, he seems to have a problem telling the difference between land and sea ice. Antarctica is land surrounded by churning seas and high winds, making its summer sea ice seasons inherently variable.
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CNN’s chief climate correspondent purportedly flew more than 6,000 miles to report on climate change, says The Blaze.

On Wednesday, CNN correspondent Bill Weir appeared on “CNN This Morning,” reporting from the Tierra de Fuego region of Argentina, the southern tip of South America. In his report, Weir bemoaned the shrinking Antarctic ice cap.

“But while we’re here we got this news out of the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado that for the second year in a row the South Pole is shrinking. The ice down here is shrinking,” Weir reported. “What is troubling about this is the speed that it has declined. Just to give you some perspective, in the early 2000s, it looked like Antarctica was growing even as the Arctic was shrinking in alarming ways, and scientists weren’t sure why.

“In 2014, the sea ice around Antarctica: 7 million square miles. Now, less than a decade later, it’s under 700,000 square miles – so that’s a 90% drop,” he explained.

Show anchor Don Lemon followed up by asking Weir what, if anything, can be done to slow down the melting.

The answer? According to Weir, humanity must stop spewing carbon into the atmosphere.

“It’s the same answer has been for generations. The faster we can move away from fuels that burn, in the speediest and most equitable way possible, the less horrible this gets,” Weir told Lemon.

“That’s the only way right now. And not only stopping it at the source but pulling carbon out of the sea and sky,” he continued. “Carbon removal is going to be the biggest industry you’ve never heard of as people come to grips with the enormity of this.”

If not burning fuels or putting more carbon into the atmosphere is the anecdote to melting ice caps, Weir did not do his part to help.

Full article here.
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Update, 2nd March 2023:
NetZeroWatch — Antarctic Sea Ice: ‘The beginning of the end!’ – again
Quote: ‘When it’s put into context one sees a different picture.’

Phys.org Claims Atmospheric Rivers And Hurricanes Getting Worse. Data Says No

Credit: NOAA

Climate modellers claim to be able to prove weather is getting worse than ever before. They seem to have a method problem.
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A recent article at Phys.org, originally published by the Chicago Tribune, says that climate change is behind the recent atmospheric river events in California, as well as an alleged increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes.

This is false, says Linnea Lueken @ Climate Change Dispatch.

Atmospheric rivers are a natural part of the West coast’s climate, and neither historic data nor recent trend data indicate that the frequency or severity of those events is increasing.

Likewise, there has been no increase in major hurricanes over the past hundred years of global warming.

Climate obsessives target Tony Abbott for joining ‘climate sceptic group’ (the GWPF)

More evidence that petulant climate obsessives are a drag on society and the UK economy.
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The UK government is being urged to sack one of its trade advisers after he joined a thinktank that has denied the scale of the climate crisis and campaigned against net zero, says The Guardian.

Tony Abbott, a former Australian prime minister, announced this week that he had joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

Abbott has been a member of the UK government’s Board of Trade since 2020, advising on post-Brexit deals, with Australia now a key trading partner since the UK left the EU.

Science website cancels atmospheric water vapour

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

‘What is carbon dioxide, anyway? How does it cause global warming?’ – asks Phys.org. [Delete ‘how’ – says the Talkshop.] Anyway, the entire article they attach to their loaded-question headline never once mentions water vapour. It’s all about demonising CO2. Even climate worrier Wikipedia says: ‘Water vapour is the gaseous phase of water…Being a component of Earth’s hydrosphere and hydrologic cycle, it is particularly abundant in Earth’s atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas and warming feedback, contributing more to total greenhouse effect than non-condensable gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.’ So even for fans of greenhouse theories there’s no escaping the predominance of water vapour over carbon dioxide. Completely ignoring it makes the whole CO2-promoting article redundant.
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Chemically, carbon dioxide is incredibly simple—it is just one carbon atom linked with two oxygen atoms, says Phys.org.

Together they create a colorless gas that makes up just a tiny fraction of the Earth’s atmosphere, about 0.04%.

That gas is critical to life on earth because plants use sunlight and carbon dioxide to create energy through the process of photosynthesis.

But carbon dioxide is also the primary reason the climate is warming, a long-term shift in temperature that threatens the delicately balanced ecosystems humans depend upon.

So how is something so necessary to life also so harmful? Here’s what to know:

Continued here.
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A footnote to the article says:
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

N. Hemisphere Temps Set To Fall Over Next 25 Years, Say Top Intl. Scientists

Too much hot air

Predictions like this may or may not come true. Warmists may have to wheel out their standard ‘natural cooling masking human-caused warming’ excuse again.
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Whisper it quietly – and don’t tell Al ‘Boiling Oceans’ Gore – but the Northern Hemisphere may be entering a temperature cooling phase until the 2050s with a decline up to 0.3°C.

By extension, the rest of the globe will also be cooled, says Chris Morrison (via Climate Change Dispatch).

These sensational findings, ignored by the mainstream media, were released last year and are the work of six top international scientists led by Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

What uncertainties remain in climate science?

How long is a piece of string? The waffle about ‘climate deniers’ and ‘reputable scientists’ is a waste of time. There will always be known unknowns and unknown unknowns – that’s science.
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[Last paragraph of the article only]
The uncertainties in climate science that remain are not a justification for not acting to slow climate change, because uncertainty can work both ways: Climate change could prove to be less severe than current projections, but it could also be much worse, says State of the Planet @ Phys.org.

Full article here.
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Talkshop comments:
— ‘Climate change could prove to be less severe’ – or not related to human activity, or not severe at all
— ‘Could also be much worse’ – ‘could’ be this or that, i.e. they can only speculate about the future, but nevertheless demand ‘action’ now

Climate hysteria: Scottish Greens prefer imports to new Rosebank oil field?

North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Worldwide oil consumption is close to 100 million barrels per day, and rising (apart from a small Covid-related slowdown). Rosebank is the proverbial drop in the ocean, and would reduce the need for imported oil. Demand has to be met from somewhere for the modern world to function, and Russian supply is off the menu.
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H/T saighdear
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Plans to create an oil field more than twice the size of the controversial Cambo development risk “wrecking” Scotland’s climate and setting net-zero targets back.

Rosebank, located north-west of Shetland, could produce over 70,000 barrels of oil every day at its peak under proposals brought before Westminster by Norwegian state-controlled company Equinor, says STV News.

However The Scottish Greens have branded the blueprints “a climate disaster” and urged the UK government to turn the bid down.