UPDATE: A cartoon from Josh drawn about a year ago has been added. See below.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The United Kingdom Independence Party, the only climate-skeptical party in Britain, has scored a crushing victory in Sunday’s elections to the Duma of the European Union.
Britain’s most true-believing party, the Greens, won one or two new seats, but the second most true-believing party and junior partner in the Children’s Coalition that currently governs at Westminster, the “Liberal” “Democrats” (who are neither), were all but wiped off the map.
The European Duma, like that of Tsar Nicholas II in Russia, has no real power. It cannot even bring forward a Bill, for that vital probouleutic function is the sole right of the unelected Kommissars – the official German name for the tiny, secretive clique of cuisses-de-cuir who wield all real power in the EU behind closed doors.
The Kommissars also – bizarrely – have the power to set aside votes of the elected Duma, which doesn’t even get to vote in the first place without their permission. Democratic it isn’t.
The outgoing Hauptkommissar, Manuel Barroso, is a Maoist – and, like nearly all of the Kommissars, a naïve true-believer in the hard-Left climate-extremist Party Line that is turning Europe into a bankrupt, unconsidered economic backwater.
In the Duma recently (where the Kommissars, though unelected, may sit and speak but not vote), Barroso said there was a “99% consensus” among scientists about the climate. Actually 0.5%, Manuel, baby: read Legates et al., 2013.
Because the Duma is a parliament of eunuchs, UKIP’s couple of dozen members of the European Parliament won’t be able to make very much difference to anything except their bank balances – they all become instant multi-millionaires.
However, after opposition to the EU’s militantly anti-democratic structure and to the mass immigration that has been forced upon Britain as a direct result, UKIP’s third most popular policy with the voters is its opposition to the official EU global-warming story-line.
It was I, as deputy leader of the party in 2009/10, who had the honor of introducing UKIP’s climate policy to the Press. Their reports, as usual, were sneeringly contemptuous. Now the sneers are beginning to falter.
The leadership thought long and hard before adopting the policy. I said we could not lose by adopting a policy that had the twin merits of being true and being otherwise unrepresented in British politics. Private polling confirmed this, so the policy was adopted.
For interest, here – in full – is UKIP’s climate policy as I promulgated it in 2010:
“Global warming: is it just a scam?
“The IPCC’s 1990 First Assessment Report made wildly-exaggerated projections of how global temperature would rise. Yet for the past 15 years [now nigh on 18 years] there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” at all, as a leading IPCC scientist has now admitted. For nine years there has been a rapid cooling trend. None of the IPCC’s computer models predicted that.
“The 1995 Second Assessment Report, in the scientists’ final draft, said five times there was no discernible human influence on climate. Yet one man rewrote the report, replacing all five statements with a single statement saying precisely the opposite. He later said IPCC processes permitted this single-handed rewrite, which has been the official policy ever since.
“The 2001 Third Assessment Report contained a graph contradicting the First Report by falsely abolishing the medieval warm period, which, like the Roman, Minoan, and Holocene optima, and 7500 of the past 11,400 years, and each of the four previous interglacial warm periods, and most of the past 600 million years, was warmer than today. Some 800 scientists from more than 460 institutions in 42 countries over 25 years have written peer-reviewed, learned papers providing evidence that the Middle Ages were warmer than today.
“The 2007 Fourth Assessment Report’s key conclusion that, with 90% confidence, most of the warming since 1950 was manmade is disproven by measurements. A natural decline in global cloud cover from 1983-2001 (Pinker et al., 2005) caused most of that warming.
“The IPCC’s false “90% confidence” estimate was not reached by scientists: it was decided by a show of hands among political representatives who had few scientific qualifications.
“A lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report admits that, “to influence governments”, he knowingly inserted a falsehood to the effect that the Himalayas will be ice-free in 25 years.
“Many other false conclusions of the IPCC were authored not by scientists but by campaigning journalists, members of environmental propaganda groups or IPCC bureaucrats.
“The first table of figures in the IPCC’s 2007 Report did not add up. Bureaucrats had inserted it, overstating tenfold 40 years’ contributions of Greenland and Antarctic ice to sea-level rise.
“The IPCC’s conclusion that CO2 has a major warming effect is false. In the pre-Cambrian era 750 million years ago the Earth was an ice-planet, with glaciers at sea level at the Equator: yet atmospheric CO2 concentration was 300,000 ppmv – 700 times today’s 388 ppmv. If CO2 had the large warming effect the IPCC imagines, the glaciers could not have been there.
“In the Cambrian era 550 million years ago, CO2 concentration was 7000 ppmv (IPCC, 2001): yet that was when the first calcite corals achieved algal symbiosis. In the Jurassic era 175 million years ago, CO2 concentration was 6000 ppmv (IPCC, 2001): yet that was when the first aragonite corals came into existence. While the oceans continue to run over rocks, they must remain pronouncedly alkaline. Ocean “acidification” is a chemical impossibility.
“Many peer-reviewed papers (e.g. Douglass et al., 2004, 2008, 2009; Schwartz, 2007; Monckton, 2008; Lindzen & Choi, 2009) show that the IPCC has exaggerated the warming effect of greenhouse gases up to 7-fold. Without that exaggeration, there is no climate crisis.
“The economics of global warming
“Millions have died of starvation, or are menaced by it, because the world’s governments have unwisely trusted the UN’s climate panel (the IPCC) and the self-serving national scientific institutions that have profiteered by parroting its now-discredited findings.
“The World Bank has reported that three-quarters of the doubling of world food prices that occurred two years ago is directly attributable to the global dash for biofuels.
“Herr Ziegler, the UN’s Right-to-Food Rapporteur, has said that while millions are starving the diversion of farmland from food to biofuels is “a crime against humanity”.
“Lord Stern’s discredited report on climate economics unrealistically adopted a near-zero discount rate for appraisal of “investment” in carbon-dioxide mitigation and doubled the IPCC’s already-exaggerated high-end estimate of the warming to be expected from CO2. Without these grave economic and scientific errors, no case for spending any taxpayers’ money on mitigation of CO2 emissions can be made.
“A carbon-trading scheme that sets a low price for the right to emit a ton of carbon dioxide is merely a tax and does not affect the climate, while a high price drives our jobs and industries overseas to countries which emit more CO2 than us, raising mankind’s global CO2 footprint. The chief profiteers from carbon trading are banks.
“A steelworks at Redcar is closing with the loss of 1700 jobs, because the European carbon-trading scheme has made it uneconomic. Precisely the same steelworks will be re-erected in India. Net effect on the climate: nil. Net effect on British workers’ jobs: catastrophic.
“If we were to shut down the entire global carbon economy altogether, and go back to the Stone Age but without even the right to light a carbon-emitting fire in our caves, it would take 41 years to forestall just 1 C° of “global warming”. The cost is disproportionate.
“Even if the IPCC were right in imagining that a doubling of CO2 concentration will cause as much as 3.26 ± 0.69 C° of “global warming”, adaptation as and if necessary would be orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective than attempting to limit CO2 emissions.
“Global warming gurus humbled
“Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs IPCC’s climate science panel, is a railroad engineer. The Charity Commission is investigating TERI-Europe, a charity of which Pachauri and his predecessor as IPCC science chairman were trustees. The charity filed false accounts three years running, under-declaring its income by many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
“Dr. “Phil” Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, on which the IPCC has relied for its global temperature record, has stepped down after a whistleblower published emails between him and other leading IPCC scientists revealing manipulation, concealment and intended destruction of scientific results.
“Dr. Jones has admitted that his Unit has lost much of the data on which the IPCC relies. The “Climategate” files show his Unit received millions in increased taxpayer funding so that it could investigate “global warming”.
“Al Gore has made hundreds of millions from “global warming”, and may become the first climate-change billionaire. In 2007 a High Court judge found nine errors in his film serious enough to require 77 pages of corrective guidance to be sent to every school in England.
“On Gore’s notion that sea level would imminently rise by 20 feet (6.1 m), the judge ruled: “The Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view.” IPCC (2007) projects sea-level rise of 1-2 ft by 2100: Mörner (2004, 2010) projects just 4 ± 4 in.
“Gore said a scientific study had found polar bears dying as they swam to find ice. In fact, Monnett & Gleason (2006) had reported just four bears killed in a bad storm. For 30 years there has been no decline in sea-ice in the Beaufort Sea, where the bears died. There are many times more polar bears today than in 1940.
“Gore said Mount Kilimanjaro’s glacier had lost much of its ice because of “global warming”. In fact, the cause was desiccation of the atmosphere caused by regional cooling (Molg et al., 2003). Mean summit temperature has averaged –7 °C for 30 years and, in that time, summit temperature has never risen above –1.6 °C. The Fürtwängler glacier at the summit began receding in the 1880s, long before mankind could have had any influence over the climate. Half the glacier had gone before Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1936.
“What is to be done
“Royal Commission on global warming science and economics
“UKIP would appoint a Royal Commission on global warming science and economics, under a High Court Judge, with advocates on either side of the case, to examine and cross-examine the science and economics of global warming with all the evidential rigour of a court of law.
“The remit of the Royal Commission would be to decide –
Ø “Whether and to what degree the IPCC has exaggerated climate sensitivity to CO2 or other greenhouse gases;
Ø “Whether and under what conditions, if any, the IPCC’s imagined consequences of the present rate of atmospheric CO2 enrichment will be beneficial or harmful;
Ø “Whether and under what conditions, if any, mitigation of global warming by reducing carbon emissions will be cheaper and more cost-effective than adaptation as, and if, necessary;
Ø “Whether and under what conditions any emissions-trading scheme can make any appreciable difference to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, and whether and to what degree, if any, any such difference would affect global surface temperature.
“Other climate-change measures
“Pending the report of the Royal Commission, UKIP would immediately –
Ø “Repeal the Climate Change Act, and close the Climate Change Department;
Ø “Halt all UK contributions to the IPCC and to the UN Framework Convention;
Ø “Halt all UK contributions to any EU climate-change policy, including carbon trading;
Ø “Freeze all grant aid for scientific research into “global warming”.
“In any event, UKIP would immediately –
Ø “Commission enough fossil-fuelled and nuclear power stations to meet demand;
Ø “Cease to subsidize wind-farms, on environmental and economic grounds;
Ø “Cease to subsidize any environmental or “global-warming” pressure-groups;
Ø “Forbid public authorities to make any “global-warming”-related expenditure;
Ø “Relate Met Office funding to the accuracy of its forecasts;
Ø “Ban global warming propaganda, such as Gore’s movie, in schools;
Ø “Divert a proportion of the billions now wasted on the non-problem of global warming towards solving the world’s real environmental problems.
“UKIP has been calling for a rational, balanced approach to the climate debate since 2008, when extensive manipulation of scientific data first became clear. There must be an immediate halt to needless expenditure on the basis of a now-disproven hypothesis.
“Given our unprecedented national debt crisis, not a penny must be wasted, not a single job lost to satisfy vociferous but misguided campaigners, often led by ill-informed media celebrities, profiteering big businesses, insurance interests and banks. The correct policy approach to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing.”
If you know of any political party, anywhere, that has a climate policy more vigorously and healthily skeptical than UKIP, let me know in comments.
===============================================================
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What a load of bull. The UKIP don’t give a damn about anything except their popularity. If it became politically expedient to completely reverse their position on global warming, they’d do it in the blink of an eye. Allying yourself to people who will say anything, because right now they say what you want to hear, will come back to bite you on the arse.
Disappointing that Anthony would allow Christopher to use this blog for political propaganda like this.
Philip Schaeffer says: May 26, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Exactly. We’ve seen enough h. sapiensophobes who regard themselves so high that they are bullying the rest. Last thing we need promoting another bunch like that only with a different color hat.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
This is a brilliantly impressive post. So much important relevant information proving that the “climate change” alarmism is indeed a scam.
For a political party to gain power with this policy as part of its platform is the most encouraging thing I have seen in the quest for the truth to be absorbed by the public. There must be a turning point somewhere along this long difficult fight for true science and honest and responsible government, this is the closest so far, in my opinion.
no one in the uk under 57 has ever had a vote on europe membership and what it is now is not what was voted on then. To keep it honest and focus their minds there should be a vote on membership every 10 years. The political class do not want to give a vote because its a money spinner for them and they know the public will not vote to stay in a group where the books have been unaudited for decades and billions goes to organised crime and all the public sees is their wages slashed and contracts put on zero hours and forced into pay day lenders and food banks.
I wondered when apologists for the now-doomed EU tyranny-by-clerk would appear here. Messrs. Schaefer and Kateenkorva are too late. The EU is finished because it refused to be democratic. Its rapid and enthusiastic but self-serving adoption of the climate nonsense at hideous environmental and financial expense is one of many reasons why it has made itself unpopular.
Thanks to Lord Monckton for the AR4 reference. I missed the highlighted statement!
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html
O’Neill nails it:
21 May: SpikedOnline: Brendan O’Neill: Nigel Farage and the fury of the elites
There is a positive kernel to the public support for UKIP
Try as I might, I cannot remember a time when Britain’s various elites were as united in fury as they are now over UKIP leader Nigel Farage. In the run-up to this week’s Euro-elections, in which the Eurosceptic UKIP is expected to do well, leaders of every hue, from the true blue to the deep red, and hacks of every persuasion, from the right to the right-on, are as one on the issue of Farage. From Nick Clegg to the Twitterati that normally gets off on mocking Nick Clegg, from David Cameron to radical student leaders who normally hate David Cameron, fury with Farage has united all. It has brought together usually scrapping sections of the political and media classes into a centre-ground mush of contempt for UKIP. Not even Nick Griffin – who is a far nastier character than Farage – attracted such unstinting universal ire. What’s up with this Farage fury?…
The real motor to the anti-Farage outlook, the fuel to this unprecedented fury of the elites, is a powerful feeling that he has connected with the public, or a significant section of it, in a way that mainstream politicians and observers have utterly failed to. The elites see in Farage their own inability to understand the populace or to speak to it in a language it understands…
That Farage’s popularity in the polls has remained pretty high even as our elites have been attacking him on a daily basis fills them not only with fury but with fear: their arguments seem not to have much traction outside the Westminster bubble, outside of medialand, where despite their best efforts the awkward, annoying little people still remain fairly favourable towards a loudmouth politician who isn’t PC and drinks beer. The fury behind the attacks on Farage is really a fury with the throng, with the masses, whose brains have clearly been made so mushy by UKIP propaganda that even the supposedly enlightened arguments and policies of their betters can now make no impact. It isn’t Farage they hate – it’s ordinary people, and more importantly their own palpable inability to make inroads into those people’s hearts or minds.
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/nigel-farage-and-the-fury-of-the-elites/15045#.U4NW73JdXYR
Monckton said:
“I wondered when apologists for the now-doomed EU tyranny-by-clerk would appear here.”
Why not? You’ve showed up as an apologist for the UKIP, so why stop the madness there?
Zeke says:
May 26, 2014 at 9:08 am
Re your comment regarding fungicides It seems off topic but when (as you did) add it in with all the other food scams in the last 50 years regarding pesticides and fungicides , the bio fuel scam depriving millions of food and the sheer reluctance to get the third world out of poverty by providing them with local electricity (Geo thermal FI) you are spot on!
“jauntycyclist says:
May 26, 2014 at 11:34 pm”
From memory no-one had a vote on joinging the common market (CM), now EU. If I recall correctly it was Heath who took the UK into the CM without a madate from voters in 1973. Please correct me if my memeory of this event is wrong.
Lord Monckton,
While I find little to disagree on your assessment of climate change science and policy, I find it unfortunate that your support confuses politics with climate skepticism. Not all left leaning people are signed up hessian pant wearing swivelled eyed lunatics, but their intuition and epistemology would default to concern over global warming. Presented with the evidence as it currently stands, and the consequences of ill-thought through policy, they can and would shift their position. However, if it is associated with UKIP and policies that would take the UK out of Europe, it may only serve to entrench and polarise left v right positions much as it has been in the US.
Personally, I am one of those. I am extremely pro-Europe, and I generally favour the liberal democrats when I vote although I disagree entirely with their policy on climate. There is no way in a screaming fit I would vote for UKIP. My worry is that people with political inclinations such as myself but who have not investigated the climate issue as thoroughly, would dismiss reasoned arguments regarding climate change policy because it is associated with a political party they vehemently disagree with or even find unsavoury.
I respect your views on Europe, you, like everyone else are entitled to them. I don’t agree with them, but I would fight to the death your right to express them. But they are vastly different in nature than the scientific question of climate change and rational policy consequences, and I worry that your credibility with people who most need to hear what you have to say regarding the climate issue is undermined by your association with UKIP.
Your elequent and entertaining writing on matters of climate and Europe do also sound emotive and partisan, and it would be an extreme understatement to observe that you may not be entirely objective. I am aware of the attacks you have suffered in the course of your attempts to disseminate rational skepitcal arguments, so I sympathise, and you certainly can turn a phrase, but I do worry that in the world of imperfect emotive humans, it can alienate the undecided, especially if they disagree with you on matters of politics.
Philip Schaeffer says:
What a load of bull. The UKIP don’t give a damn about anything except their popularity.
And the UKIP is different from other parties how, exactly? They all want popularity. In this case, the UKIP gets it. That’s democracy, no?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:07 pm
… and talking of the Zomerzet Levels, did you hear of the man from Frome who longed to visit Holland because he’d heard they had a Zuider Zee?
Or this limerick, best delivered in a stage Zomerzet accent:
Thanks you Sir, I really really needed the laugh this late at night after reading some of the “contrary” comments!
dbstealy said:
“And the UKIP is different from other parties how, exactly? They all want popularity. In this case, the UKIP gets it. That’s democracy, no?”
What’s you point?
Monckton:
I scarcely know where to begin with your response. To criticize your post by making factual statements about its reasoning and its citations is not being a “troll”, it is to engage in a democratic debate. Democracy is hardly your strong suit, is it Viscount Monckton of Brenchley?
For those of us who weren’t born with inherited wealth and inherited titles that permitted membership of Westminster up until recently with voting rights and legislative powers without democratic consent, sticking one’s head above the parapet with full disclosure is to invite economic disaster upon not only myself but also my family.
Setting up and administering Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog was trial enough, but then I was possessed with practicalities of keeping the blog alive for the benefit of science and fighting trolls myself and not personal promotion.
The UKIP did not promote its climate scepticism in the 2014 election other than the very limited proposals on referenda on wind farms and the scrapping of subsidies for renewals. It did not fight the 2014 campaign on the 2010 manifesto, despite your efforts to conflate the two.
But here I shall be specific in response to a key claim. You say
Here is what Nigel Farage said about that 2010 manifesto:
So not “revised”, not “continue to pursue it” but binned as “drivel”. The entire 2010 manifesto was sent to the round file. Bleeding demised. Gone to meet its maker.
It is mendacious of you to describe the 2010 manifesto as anything other than a temporary policy. The author of the 2010 manifesto, David Campbell Bannerman returned to the Conservative Party afterwards after handbags were swung inside the UKIP.
I am intellectually interested as a democrat in the progress of UKIP or any political party or grouping which can make binding changes upon my life and the life of my family. But I am not a supporter of UKIP, for the party makes commitments and policy statements that I cannot, in all conscience, support.
Perhaps because you and I have very differing views on what constitutes “legitimate” and “reason”.
Philip Schaeffer:
Your post at May 27, 2014 at 1:23 am says in total
Please allow me to help because it is clear you have not been reading the thread and you have forgotten your own words posted in this thread.
dbstealey was replying to your statement that said
His reply to your statement asserted the truisms that it is self-evident that each political party – including UKIP – needs sufficient popularity to win elections. As dbstealey says, UKIP obtained sufficient popularity to win most UK seats in the recent EU Parliamentary election, and that is how democracy works.
You claim that “popularity” is the only care of UKIP. Perhaps you are right, but that is NOT what UKIP said during the election campaign. And if you are right then UKIP’s failure to fulfil what they said in the campaign will lose them popularity so they will not get re-elected.
You do not like UKIP. I don’t either.
And you are opposing UKIP here. I think that is a mistake: there is a time and place for everything and the place for pushing any brand of politics is not WUWT (although US ultra-right constantly try).
There is a difference between opposing and not supporting.
In my opinion WUWT makes a severe mistake by supporting or opposing any particular political grouping. Such politically partisan behaviour can only alienate climate sceptics who belong to all other political groups. I strongly commend that you read the post from Agnostic at May 27, 2014 at 1:08 am which is here.
Richard
i am not of the right (whatever that is), but i am thrilled that Ukip has shaken up the political establishment. and i am thrilled with a number of Ukip’s policies. the fact the MSM played the racism card to the exclusion of almost everything else in their attacks on Ukip and ignored what is generally known about the party, including their scepticism about CAGW, is merely more proof the MSM are simply gatekeepers of the left/right paradigm & the status quo:
Jan 2014: Index on Censorship: UKIP pledges to ban climate change lessons in schools
The UK Independence Party has promised it will ban the teaching of climate change in schools, if elected in May next year.
The party’s 2010 manifesto included a pledge to ban Al Gore’s Oscar-winning global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth from schools.
But this week UKIP Education spokesman MEP Derek Clark has said the party will go even further. Clark told Index on Censorship:
– We will still ban Al Gore’s video for use in schools if I’ve got anything to do with it. I will not have much opposition within the party. It is, of course, not just this video which needs banning; all teaching of global warming being caused in any way by carbon dioxide emissions must also be banned. It just is not happening.” –
Dr Nick Eyre, Jackson Senior Research Fellow in Energy at the ECI and Oriel College Oxford and Co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, said of the proposal: “It is anti-scientific nonsense – as well as a worryingly repressive approach to education. The very strong link between climate change and anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is overwhelmingly accepted by the global scientific community, and has been for at least 25 years.”…
COMMENT by Richard –
Good, I’m glad UKIP have announced this policy. If they are so unbelievably ignorant about climate change then it’s safe to assume they are equally ignorant about all their other policies. I assume that this chap can provide evidence to back up his opinion? What next? Shall we have an equally stupid policy announcement about evolution? Gravity? Flat earth?
I would like to suggest that all politicians must pass an exam about the scientific method before they ever get a sniff of power then perhaps they might stop making such galatically stupid comments.
COMMENT by Dave –
Nope, the 97% comes from many independent sources, one of which is here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm
Your 31,000 scientists is approximately 0.3 per cent of the group they were drawn from.
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2014/01/ukips-inconvenient-truth-platform/
name another political party in the West with the courage to state state so clearly & reasonably:
Ukip: Nigel Farage steps up his criticism of reckless EU foreign policy
Mr Farage said: “We are seeing vanity take the place of reason in foreign policy and the result is to destabilise a whole series of countries to no positive effect that I can discern. It is not just the Ukraine.
“The civil war in Syria was made worse by EU leaders stoking the expectation of western forces helping to topple the Assad dictatorship despite the increasing dominance of militant Islamists in the rebellion.
“In the case of the Ukraine, Brussels has for many years been feeding an entirely unrealistic dream of a future as an EU member state and large net recipient of funds.
“This has encouraged brave young men and women in western Ukraine to rebel to the point of toppling a legitimate president and led to the utterly predictable debacle whereby Vladimir Putin has annexed part of the country and now casts a long shadow over hopes of genuine democracy in the rest of it.
“I do not support what Putin has done – of course I don’t. But the approach of David Cameron, William Hague, Nick Clegg and other EU leaders has been disastrous. If you poke the Russian bear with a stick he will respond. And if you have neither the means nor the political will to face him down that is very obviously not a good idea.”
Mr Farage also called on the British media to take a look at the present situation in Libya, which Mr Cameron claims to have liberated. “It is ungovernable, unstable, divided and very, very dangerous. If that is a foreign policy success, I would hate to see what a terrible failure looks like,” said the UKIP leader.
“The British public were already fed up of being dragged into conflicts where no pressing national interest was at stake. I know many people are, like me, now deeply worried about weak and vain leaders allowing an expectation to grow up that European countries such as Britain will always side with uprisings in the naive belief that benevolent liberal democracy is bound to replace existing regimes, fundamentally imperfect as they are. That is not the way the world works. So I repeat the charge: the EU has blood on its hands.”
http://www.ukip.org/nigel_farage_steps_up_his_criticism_of_reckless_eu_foreign_policy
also, as Lord Monckton states, Ukip’s triumph was at the expense of all major parties, including Greens, all of whom claim to believe CAGW is real. now those parties will grovel to win over the Ukip voters they have insulted for years. nice.
+ Pat
UKIP ought not suppress other opinions, as wrong as they may be.
By doing so they’d just show that sort of intolerance they do not want to be done onto themselves. Teach the kids WHY these opinions are wrong, which mistakes are still being made in the government grants funded pseudo science.
Lord Monckton once succeeded in considerably slowing down the awkward ‘Inconvenient Truth’ being shown to british schoolkids without considerable corrections being made. It didn’t better the movie but made an ugly scratch on the face of Al-baby Gore.
May common sense be taught, not censorship.
why Farage’s foreign policy makes sense and US/EU policy doesn’t:
25 May: Bloomberg: Putin’s Energy Trumps U.S. Sanctions as Rosneft Extends
Reach
By Elena Mazneva and Ilya Arkhipov
One by one, executives from some of the world’s largest energy companies
climbed the dais to sign accords with OAO Rosneft (ROSN) chief Igor Sechin
as Vladimir Putin stood behind his blacklisted ally, nodding approvingly.
Executives from BP, India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp. and companies from
Norway, Abu Dhabi, Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba and Mongolia all signed deals at
Sechin’s table on the last day of the St. Petersburg International Economic
Forum…
“It’s pure foolishness for countries to talk about cutting their energy
dependency on Russia because that dependency can never be one-sided,” Putin
said. “It’s always a case of mutual dependency and that means it increases
reliability and stability in the global economy and in energy.”…
Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the largest U.S. oil company, went ahead with a
deal to deepen its ties with Rosneft yesterday, even after the Obama
administration urged American CEOs to skip Putin’s annual economic
showcase…
BP signed its first accord with Rosneft since the Moscow-based company’s $55
billion acquisition of BP’s TNK-BP venture with a group of billionaires last
year. BP, based in London, agreed to $300 million of financing for a joint
development of deposits near Kazakhstan…
The deals cap a week in which Russia’s other dominant state energy company,
OAO Gazprom (OGZD), struck a historic $400 billion accord with China to
supply natural gas for 30 years…
China agreed to pay $25 billion up front to help Gazprom finance the $75
billion it will cost to build a pipeline from eastern Siberia to the Chinese
border and develop the fields to fill it. Putin said the project will be a
boon for Russia’s entire Far East region.
“I want to stress that this will be the world’s biggest construction site,”
Putin said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-24/putin-s-energy-trumps-u-s-sanctions-as-rosneft-extends-reach.html
yet the CAGW crowd are willing to throw the developing world under the bus, insisting they adopt a renewables’ policy that even Germany can’t afford, and which mainly benefits the likes of Siemens, GE & Westinghouse!
26 May: Reuters: Pius Sawa: Oil exploitation contradicts Kenya’s climate
goals, legislator warns
(This story is part of a series of articles, funded by the COMplus Alliance
and the World Bank, looking at progress and challenges in developing nations’
efforts to legislate on climate change. The package runs ahead of the June
6-8 World Summit of Legislators 2014 in Mexico City, organised by the Global
Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International).)
Yet while Kenya’s climate policy focuses on promoting low-carbon
development, the current government is also prioritising mining and oil
exploration. Petroleum discoveries have been made in Turkana, the Nyanza
region around Lake Victoria and off the coast in the Indian Ocean. Coal has
been found in Kitui in the east, and iron ore in Taita on the coast. The
government has enacted a mining bill, and dedicated a new ministry to the
sector…
British company Tullow Oil, meanwhile, has sunk seven oil wells in the
semi-arid northwestern county of Turkana. In a January update, it said it
had discovered estimated reserves of over 600 million barrels, adding that
the overall potential for the basin could top 1 billion barrels. The company’s
exploration director, Angus McCoss, said results so far suggested the area
could become “a significant new hydrocarbon province”.
Kenya is hoping that resource exploitation will create jobs and wealth. But
Ottichilo believes it runs contrary to efforts to tackle climate change.
“Our policy and law is focusing on low-carbon strategy, meaning we want to
go more towards renewable energy rather than fossil fuels for our
development,” said the environmental scientist…
The draft bill identifies activities that have increased Kenya’s emissions,
including industrialisation, vehicle pollution, illegal charcoal burning and
uncontrolled logging for firewood.
Among the solutions it proposes are fines and jail sentences for polluters,
solar equipment and energy efficiency in new buildings, and community kiosks
that sell solar lamps and charge mobile phones using solar power.
Under the law, land owners would be required to plant trees on 10 percent of
their land, and farmers would be helped to adapt to climate change,
especially in dryland areas…
Martin Oulu, a climate change consultant in Nairobi and researcher in the
Human Ecology Division of Sweden’s Lund University, said Kenya’s oil
exploitation should be viewed from an equity perspective.
“Even though Kenya might be seen as becoming a ‘polluter’ by exploiting its
oil, the country’s emissions per capita will still be way lower than those
in the more developed northern countries,” he said.
Poverty levels remain high in Kenya, and it is off track to meet several of
the Millennium Development Goals. If oil exploitation generates state
revenue that is used to lift people out of poverty, and it is carried out
with the best technology causing minimal pollution and harm to other
economic sectors, then the potential rise in Kenya’s carbon emissions is
more than justified, Oulu argued…
http://www.trust.org/item/20140526131230-mdjnu/
Lord Monckton
While I agree with everything you write about in terms EU democracy, or rather the lack of it, I don’t think the UKIP success had anything to do with their stance on climate change. It never featured in the election. The Greens also managed to increase their vote in the same election.
One thing that did annoy me, and like many of his colleagues and someone you must know, Michael Heseltine seems to think that the rise of UKIP is just a protest vote. It doesn’t seemed to have occurred to him, and Heaven forbid, that the UK electorate actually like the UKIP arguments; but then we’re just a bunch of thickos who aren’t capable of understanding anything nuanced and therefore should just listen to the fine, better people that occupy the corridors of power. What I want to know is who gave him the right to express the views of the voter. This is why they’re losing support, and I think the Lib Dems seem to be the only one of the main parties that now gets it, with Nick Clegg admitting he lost the argument.
Please define common sense.
John A. That was an excellent post answering some of Moncktons obvious errors. I also salute the manner in which you challenge the posters here who label anything they disagree with as coming from a Troll. We need more like you to elevate the standard of debate.
I do apologize to all those who thought that by mentioning UKIP’s recent success here I was trying to promote UKIP. That was not the intention of the piece, whose focus was on pointing out what UKIP’s climate policy is, and on drawing the attention to the fact that a party with that uncompromising policy is now the largest UK party in the European duma.
In answer to “JohnA”, who appears to be every bit as testy as Steve McIntyre, whose blog he used to manage, the main points of UKIP’s policy – whether JohnA likes it or not – have not been repudiated by Nigel Farage: indeed, he has just won a spectacular election victory on the basis of them.
“JohnA” mistakenly assumes that the passage I cited as UKIP’s climate policy was from the 2010 manifesto. No: it was the policy as I drafted it and promulgated it at a UKIP press conference in London. I have no idea in what form the policy eventually appeared in the manifesto, which was far too long for anyone to read. The manifesto is, as I have already said, being redrafted under the direction of Tim Aker, now an MEP, and – on the economic side – Steven Woolfe, now an MEP.
And it continues to assert, in direct contradiction to what is explicitly stated in the piece, that I had intended to state or imply that it was UKIP’s climate policy that was dominant in the minds of those who voted for it. No: I say again that I said the climate policy ranked third behind EU membership and uncontrolled immigration. The climate policy was, of course, much mentioned in Scotland because our once-beautiful landscape is being carpeted in useless windmills.
There are also those who say I ought not to admit to any connection with UKIP because that would dilute the climate message. Well, sorry, but I have more than one bee in my bonnet. There is an old saying that those who have no bees in their bonnet are dead, those who have one bee in their bonnet are mad, and only those who have many bees in their bonnet are both alive and sane.
John A
Please define common sense.
As in common, such as “a spade being a spade and shovel being a shovel” and not putting your hand into a fire lest ye be burnt.
BTW there are plenty out there who would rather discuss the accuracy of such labels as shovel and spade. It comes from the insidious emergence of post-Enlightenment relativism which your question…
Please define common sense.
….stinks off!
cd says –
“The Greens also managed to increase their vote in the same election.”
no they didn’t. their share of the vote was down 1%, according to The Guardian, tho elsewhere i noted someone say they were down .75%. not sure which of the two was the final figure:
26 May: Guardian: George Arnett: Seven key points from the EU election
The Greens look set to have a good night: they’re set to increase their total number of MEPs to an expected total of three…
***Not a bad night at all for the party, but even better considering that the on a national level the Green’s share of the vote was actually a little bit down – by one percentage point…
COMMENT bythe harper:
How the hell do you manage to claim that the Greens vote actually being down nationally, makes it an ‘even better night’ for them.
If ever there was a night to prove they are actually going to be taken seriously as an alternative, this was it. If they can’t even attract the disaffected Lib vote, or grow from the general dissatisfaction with the rest, what is the point of them continuing in their current guise?
COMMENT by upmyonions:
Well, the Greens have been given next to no coverage by the media.
(LOL) Just imagine how well they’d have done if they had been given even 5% of the publicity completely gifted to Farage and cronies…
COMMENT by upmyonions:
(LOL) It’s actually pretty shameful of papers such as The Guardian and The Independent that they haven’t pushed The Green’s….
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/may/26/seven-key-points-from-the-eu-election