By Kelvin Kemm

Dec 18, 2011

http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/12/19/thou-shalt-not-question-un-experts/

British Lord Christopher Monckton parachuting into Durban, South Africa, to challenge UN climate crisis claims, brought numerous journalists and onlookers to the beaches where he landed. A 20-foot banner across our press conference table gave the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow further opportunities to present realistic perspectives on the science and economics of climate change.

by Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa

DURBAN, South Africa -- “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention -- Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

Imagined risk

All available evidence indicates that man-made global warming is a physical impossibility, but if the predicted warming could be induced it would probably provide net benefits. However, there is a widespread imagined risk of the warming and politicians are responding to it. Responses to imagined risk are often extreme and dangerous. For example, somebody with a fear of mice may see a mouse and as a response try to jump on a chair causing damage to the chair and injury to himself. There is no point in telling the injured person that mice are harmless because fear is irrational so cannot be overcome by rational argument.

Commission's Energy Department Urges EU to Reconsider Energy Transition Absent a Broader Emissions Deal

By Alessandro Torello        Wall Street Journal  19. 10. 2011

by Michael Cox

Waikato Times

Those who witter on (to chatter or babble on pointlessly or at unnecessary length) about emissions of green-house gasses, usually come from the left side of the political spectrum. They make me mad.

Daily more scientific information shows that gases produced by us, humans and animals, are so infinitesimal in the scale of things, that to penalise ourselves is like cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

For goodness sake, we are all environmentalists, it is just that some people underpin their environmentalism with political and romantic idealism.

Over the next few weeks of the election campaign many earnest souls will berate us for ruining our world; frankly it is based on absolute unadulterated rubbish. Unfortunately we're mentally trapped into agreements made decades ago by tired politicians at eco conferences in places like Brazil.

By Matt Ridley

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/gas-against-wind

Here's an article I wrote for this week's Spectator about UK energy policy. Wind must give way to gas before it ruins us all, and our landscapes.

Which would you rather have in the view from your house? A thing about the size of a domestic garage, or eight towers twice the height of Nelson’s column with blades noisily thrumming the air. The energy they can produce over ten years is similar: eight wind turbines of 2.5-megawatts (working at roughly 25% capacity) roughly equal the output of an average Pennsylvania shale gas well (converted to electricity at 50% efficiency) in its first ten years.

by Tony Elliott

The National Party's introduction of an Emissions Trading Scheme aroused the ire of a considerable number of New Zealanders who know that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a fallacy.

Many people who have loyally supported the National Party for years have declared their intention of never voting for National again.

The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations in Honduras is forcing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) executive board to reconsider its stakeholder consultation processes.

In Brussels, the reported killings have triggered European policymakers into action, with Green MEP Bas Eickhout calling the alleged human rights abuses "a disgrace".

The Dutch member of the European Parliament told EurActiv he would be pushing the European Commission to bar carbon credits from the plantations from being used under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Several members of the CDM board have been "personally distressed" by the events in Bajo Aguán, northern Honduras, according to the board's chairman, Martin Hession, who said they had "caused us great difficulties."

The future of energy is not what you think it is

By Michael Lind

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?