From the GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser
Green Lobby Concerned
The UK Independence Party has overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the third party of British politics, Nigel Farage declared today as he made major gains in local elections. As senior Conservatives scrambled to justify haemorrhaging support to the anti-EU party, Mr Farage said he was at the head of a ‘wave of protest’ which would permanently change the political landscape. —Daily Mail, 3 May 2013
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has declared his party is on course to change the face of British politics in the wake of its strongest performance in local elections, making a series of gains across England. In the biggest surge by a fourth party in England since the second world war, Ukip averaged 26% of the vote in council wards where it stood, according to a BBC estimate. Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat president, said his party had been “obliterated” in the South Shields byelection, where it came seventh and lost its deposit. –Nicholas Watt, The Guardian, 3 May 2013
Concerns are mounting among green groups that the UKIP surge could have a knock-on impact on energy and environmental policy, given that David Cameron is now under mounting pressure to tack to the right. UKIP leader Nigel Farage has taken a vocally anti-green stance, slamming wind farm developments and questioning whether manmade climate change is happening. Westminster observers are convinced that the growing popularity of UKIP is one of the main reasons some Conservative MPs have become more openly hostile to environmental policies. –James Murray, Business Green, 3 May 2013
The UK Independence Party’s unique selling point – the policy it is best known for – is Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. But as the party has sought to broaden its appeal beyond that single issue, it has developed a full range of policies in all areas…. UKIP is sceptical about the existence of man-made climate change and would scrap all subsidies for renewable energy. It would also cancel all wind farm developments. Instead, it backs the expansion of shale gas extraction, or fracking, and a mass programme of nuclear power stations. —BBC News, 3 May 2013
Environmentalists, businesses and carbon market investors were watching last week’s conclave of environment and energy ministers in Dublin closely, hoping to see a plume of white smoke emerging to signal that the ministers had agreed to step in with bold support for the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). But no such signal of support came. […] Analysts as well as MEPs on the committee say that the proposal is unlikely to pass a second vote in the Parliament unless the Council comes out in favour. Even if the proposal were passed by the end of the year, that would probably be too late. –Dave Keating, European Voice, 2 May 2013
“For the first time in 10 years, Europe is no longer willing to pursue the green agenda,” said Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in a recent telephone interview with Friends of Science. Dr. Peiser was commenting on the continuing fallout from the April 16, 2013 vote in the EU parliament where a proposal to delay the issuance of carbon credits (or allowances) was voted down. “We face a new situation where the green lobby is being increasingly isolated and in a minority,” said Dr. Peiser. “They are still there but they no longer dominate the agenda nor do they have political majority in Europe.” —Environmental Expert, 2 May 2013
On April 16th the European Parliament voted against attempts to shore up Europe’s emissions trading system against collapse. The system is the EU’s flagship environmental policy and the world’s largest carbon market. Putting it at risk suggests that Europeans have lost their will to endure short-term pain for long-term environmental gain. Nor is this the only such sign. Several cash-strapped EU countries are cutting subsidies for renewable energy. And governments around the world have failed to make progress towards a new global climate-change treaty. Betting against tough climate policies seems almost prudent. –The Economist, 4 May 2013
“Shown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.” Sad but true, mock book burnings appear to be acceptable behavior of professors at San Jose State University. In this case, Dr. Alison Bridger is doing the honors. She is proudly assisted by SJSU assistant professor Dr. Craig Clements. They disagree with the text’s content. Lousy texts get tossed in the trash every day at universities around the world. But when you make a public statement of it, as San Jose State did, you cross a line. You tarnish any legitimate climate research that institution ever does. Unfortunately, all they proved is how politics has stained the pristine world of science. —Inform the Pundits, 2 May 2013
Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings. –Heinrich Heine, 1821
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See also Delingpole: The old order is dying. We are living in the age of Farage
He writes: And as to why this nearly wasn’t allowed to happen, I recommend this equally incisive analysis of the hard-Left propaganda techniques which have recently been deployed against Ukip. As Margaret Thatcher (not her real name, I suspect) notes in her article, the cheap shot smear techniques which have been used in this election campaign, are straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.
I have seen members of UKIP isolated this way on Twitter. The Attack Dogs cut off the support network by throwing standard accusations out, other members, frightened to be tarred with the non-existent brush remove themselves from debate. The attack dogs have then isolated their target.
The attackers go after people and not the party; people hurt faster than institutions. Direct, personalised criticism and ridicule works. It is cruel, but very effective.
The Big Three political parties are worried about UKIP. If they weren’t they wouldn’t set their attack dogs to savage the aspiring politicians and the yet to mature new boy on the party political scene.
I’ve seen it too. Experienced it as well. It’s horrible and frightening and can all too easily sap your will to go on.
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Sound familiar?
but the sad truth about the UK voting system is that the UKIP would have to get the majority of the votes cast in more than half of the constituencies ; to do that would be a monumental task indeed as the voting system is skewed in favour of the two major parties: the conservaties and the labourites.
Not relevant really. You need to win seats to win elections. But you don’t need to win elections to get your key policies in place.
To substantially influence the way the country is governed what the UKIP has to do is make sure it is popular enough to threaten the Conservative’s hold on a substantial number of seats. It doesn’t have to win any – just threaten to take enough Tory votes away that the Tories lose marginals so that Labour gets the overall victory.
When that threat looks real, the Tories will change their policies in order to regain the UKIP voters. They have to, or they know they will lose.
The Conservatives then might win the election in terms of forming a government, but only at the cost of taking the UKIP’s line on a number of issues. That then is a win for the UKIP, because realistically it cannot hope to govern anyway.
This is how the Greens get their policies into place after all. How many seats have they ever won? The political parties know that if they don’t put some Green policies in place that they will lose votes to those that do. That is why we have the pitiful sight of the Conservatives trying to look green.
First past the post makes it almost entirely impossible for the UKIP to win a share of power. But that doesn’t mean its efforts are useless. It merely needs to be credible, not victorious, and it will drag the Conservatives away from their green policies. Not hard, since those green policies are a poor fit anyway.
John Law makes a very good point, often overlooked. Let’s not let them win the name game, either! Good Show!:]
The Conservative party made a big mistake in opposing the recent proportional representation bill. Under that system, UKIP voters could have picked the Conservatives as their second choice. Now, instead, their first-past-the-post system will fatally split their votes and let in Labour. Can’t be helped anymore.
Every media outlet in the UK tried to taint UKIP during the week, but when it came to the election the people said a big fcuk you to the MSM and a big fcuk you to the climate cassandras at University of East Anglia.
UKIP will continue to grow because they have the courage to run on what people actually want instead of what they have been programmed to want.. This whole leftist ball of politically correct wax tends to numb the brain and dull the senses.. Zombies shuffling along in step, with the MSM banging on the drum.. Until you cant put food on the table or provide heat in your home (if you have one)..
Then you wake up to the fact that you have been fooled by a bunch of over educated idiots (yes such a thing exists).. What you have to understand is higher education involves political indoctrination into the leftist club.. It shouldn’t, but it does..
Add professional conduct to a political ghetto and you end up where we are today..
In deep trouble..
“Unfortunately, all they proved is how politics has stained the pristine world of science. –Inform the Pundits, 2 May 2013”
Could some one please tell me why proving this is unfortunate?
And jim…the North Pole pool I have is just seeing its first ice free status evah in 4.5 billion years!! I am so proud of its unprecedented showing.
“In other words, we Brits were sold a lie – the ‘common market’. In 1972 Britain was not given a choice to vote on it – the lies, deceit and democratic deficit since then has become a chasm – that’s how the Brussels machine works – there is no democracy in the European Union and the law makers reside far away and that is how our political masters in Britain like it.”
I’m fairly sure that the good people of the USA would gladly welcome the UK as the 51st state (or 51st, 52nd, and 53rd) if you’d like to submit yourself. 😉
Agreed. They didn’t see it coming. Now they can marinate in the irony of it all.
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I’ve got a sure-fire tactic winning for the UKIP. Maybe I’ll write it up and submit it as a story here by the end of the month.
A bunch of estate agents and car salesmen won some council seats on the basis of their stance on the EU……..got nothing to do with climate and makes absolutely zero difference to anything.
Mooloo:
“To substantially influence the way the country is governed what the UKIP has to do is make sure it is popular enough to threaten the Conservative’s hold on a substantial number of seats. It doesn’t have to win any – just threaten to take enough Tory votes away that the Tories lose marginals so that Labour gets the overall victory.”
You talk as though these are parliamentary seats. They are poxy council seats. It means absolutely squat.
Clearly Americans are utterly clueless about British politics.
Here we see Westminister tradition repeating.
The establishment attacks on the UKIP are almost word for word the insults and lies canadian media & talking heads, threw at the Reform Party of Canada.
Same conditions, 3 major parties, all corrupt and sleazy, same threats if you vote for these crazies you will split the conservative vote.
News flash, when they are not acting conservatively, they ain’t what they claim.
You can’t split zero.
Reform changed the nation and now, merged with the remnant of the Tories, is the majority Government.
“jim says:
May 3, 2013 at 11:39 am
regarless?!?!? The north pole is open water for the first time in 200 million years!
go figure!
jim”
Jim, here are pictures of arctic ice cover today http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/05/daily-image/
The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3 mya – 3 mya) was 2-3°C higher than today, global sea level 25 m higher and Northern hemisphere ice sheet ephemeral before the onset of extensive glaciation over Greenland that occurred in the late Pliocene around 3 Ma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene#Climate
This is less than 200 million years.
Also, this is rather huge … Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber had been officially blocked from heading any longer the German WBGU advisory council to the government. Shellnhuber, who is also director of the Potsdam Institute for the Climatically Insane is now officially out and so likely are several of his cronies of whom he had stacked that council.
Ding Dong!
http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/03/schellnhuber-rejected-why-the-german-government-is-moving-to-overhaul-its-climate-advisory-board/
Dear Mr. Richard Courtney,
There was no need to apologize. I appear to have written my note above to you based on my misunderstanding your 11:46 AM post today. I wasn’t offended at all. I thought that perhaps you thought the Tea Party grassroots organization (not an actual political party — the “party” in the name is simply the one that happened in Boston in 1773) was defunct (a “flash in the pan”). I’m so pleased that it lives that in my excitement, I miscommunicated.
All is well.
Your sister soldier in the Battle of AGW,
Janice
CHAD Wozniak [re: 12:58, 5/3/13]
@ur momisuglyJanice Moore:
And pass the ammunition!
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@ur momisugly Chad:
And we’ll aaaaallll staaaaaaay FREEEEEEEEE!
Re NZ Willy and Roger Knights: That Bill may have been called a Proportional Representation Bill, but it was not that. It was a bill concerning the replacement of “First Past The Post” by the “Alternative Vote”. Replace one bad system by another. We suffer from the latter system in Australia. It does not give proportional or even good results except by happenstance. The Liberals suffered from the “split vote” argument for years, and will probably do so for years to come. To get good representative parliaments you must ensure that constituencies do not give 100% of the seats to the candidate (aka party) with the largest number, however small, of votes. You must ensure that seats elect enough candidates so that any reasonable block of public opinion can be represented. This is probably around the nine-member mark, which enables any group with support of at least 10% of the voters in that seat to get at least one candidate elected. And for the last seat, anything more than 5% of the total vote will suffice.
Sorry – this is well away from Climate Change and its vagaries, but the point is, if there are seats with say 9 members to be elected, the electorate has the choice between the candidates within parties as well as candidates only of parties. So voters in addition to making a party choice can make a choice on other issues, such as “Climate Change”. There is less need to hew to the Party Line!
Au contraire, Dudley, the Australian preferential system is a great system, and the UK would have done well to adopt it. It’s true I said “proportional” in my previous post, that was my mistake, I meant “preferential”. If the UK had passed preferential, then UKIP voters could place Conservative as their 2nd choice, and vice-versa. Now, instead, Labour will get in. The Aussie preferential system is a great system for electing a government which can actually govern, and I wish we had it here in New Zealand.
OK, I accept you meant “preferential”. Fair enough. But as for “The Aussie preferential system is a great system for electing a government which can actually govern” – I fear you have not been noticing what has been happening in Australia over the last three years. We have the most incompetent government in the world – at least nobody has publicized one as being worse. And it does not govern! A minority government which decided to rely on the support of independents and Greens, with disastrous results, where the Prime Minister is normally known as “Juliar”, where the government put up a bill to rigidly control the press, which went for a massively expensive National Broadband system which costs about three or four times what it should. One that instituted a fixed price Carbon Tax, with risers every year from 1 July on, to a price about 8 times that of the European Carbon price! Govern perhaps, but certainly not well.
Re: Crosspatch @2031, 5/3/13 — … the witch is dead! Which old witch? The Carbon Fairy Witch!
Merkel: …. und I do not care if your name is JOHN JACOB JINGLE HEIMER SCHMIDT! You are aus!
Dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah!
Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber Schmidt, out — of — a — job!
And now that he is out,
We all can stand and shout,
There goes HANS-JOACHIM SCHELLNHUBER SCHMIDT!
Dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah!
Hmm. Do the children of any country other than the U.S. sing that little ditty? (Repeat with first 3 lines quieter on each repetition – always fortissimo on the last line and a half then, quieter….)?? …….. crickets…….
Sorry for the very WIERD musical post.
AND NOW! FOR SOMETHING COMPLEEEETELY DIFFERENT!
@Janice Moore –
Hope we can stay free without resorting to ammunition, but sometimes I wonder insofar as the alarmies and lefties seem to respond only to the same sorts of threats of force that they levy against skeptics. At age 65 I doubt that the armed revolt would occur in my own lifetime, but I can see those of us who value their liberty eventually being driven to that point, if the alarmist house of cards fails to collapse as we hope and may now expect it to do.
Agree 100%, Dudley, “Juliar” is all yours, and I presume the 3 independents who supported her will be smartly turfed out of their seats come the next election. Once Abbott is in charge I predict you will feel much better about your electoral system. I fear next year New Zealand will have a very uncertain next election, with an electoral system which only transfers the popular divisions into identical parliamentary divisions, with a hardcore set of party hacks in list seats that we can never get rid of. As for this year, Go Abbott!
Hi, Chad,
Say, did you ever hear someone’s CB radio transmission come in over a TV program you were watching. Ha, ha,h a, haaa. This thread is getting hilarious!
Yeah, our ammo is FACTS.
If this were a political blog, I’d discuss how our 2nd Amendment rights could be taken from us via a corrupt administration and a pseudo-martial law declaration, but, not the place. I’m with you, Chad!
(BTW, ever since you mentioned why you could not easily travel a long distance, I have been praying — hope all is well)
Take care.
Mister richardscourtney says: “the situation of UKIP in the UK is similar to that of the US Tea Party ”
And I say the Tea Party is alive and healthy.
One Tea Party Senitor from TEXAS has the Liberals in a dither!
When I looked last night, there were 4 x comments on this thread. I’ve just got up and there’s now 75. Some of the comments are purely political.
However, Guy Leech’s comment (May 3, 2013 at 2:06 pm) is one of the the few relevant replies that remain in keeping with WUWT ethos for debating the AGW scam. If you missed it, his link to UKIP’s Energy Policy makes for essential common sense reading.
http://ukip.org/media/policies/energy.pdf