Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Former Irish President and UN Apparatchik Mary Robinson, President Trump’s refusal to hand over loads of money for clean energy research is hurting people’s feelings.
Mary Robinson on climate change: ‘Feeling “This is too big for me” is no use to anybody’
The former president of Ireland has a new raison d’être: saving the planet. Yet, despite the dire warnings of this week’s IPCC report, she is surprisingly upbeat.
by Rory Carroll
Sat 13 Oct 2018On the morning that the world’s leading climate scientists warn that the planet has until 2030 to avert a global warming catastrophe, Mary Robinson appears suitably sombre. She wears black shoes, black trousers and a black sweater and perches at the end of a long table at her climate justice foundation, headquartered in an austere, imposing Georgian building opposite Trinity College Dublin. The only dash of brightness is a multicoloured brooch on her lapel. “It symbolises the sustainable development goals,” she says. “It’s the one good emblem that the United Nations has produced, so I like to wear it.”
There seems little reason for cheer on this Monday. The landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just warned that urgent, unprecedented changes are needed to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C; even half a degree beyond this will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. Donald Trump, rejecter of the Paris climate agreement, is riding high on the back of Brett Kavanaugh’s elevation to the US supreme court. Britain and the EU are consumed by Brexit. Brazil is on course to elect a president who wants to open the Amazon to agribusiness. Closer to home, the Irish government is flunking its climate policy goals. Now, climate scientists warn that the clock ticks ever closer to midnight.
“Governments are not responding at all adequately to the stark reality that the IPCC is pointing to: that we have about 11 years to make really significant change,” says Robinson, sitting ramrod straight, all business. “This report is extraordinarily important, because it’s telling us that 2 degrees is not safe. It’s beyond safe. Therefore, we have to work much, much harder to stay at 1.5 degrees. I’ve seen what 1 degree is doing in more vulnerable countries … villages are having to move, there’s slippage, there’s seawater incursion.”
…
So, while the Trump administration withholds leadership and money from the global effort for clean energy – “That’s where it hurts” – the US may yet meet Paris emissions targets, thanks to efforts by We Are Still In, a coalition of mayors, governors, tribal leaders, colleges, businesses, faith groups and investors that is continuing to follow the terms of the agreement. The movement to divestment from fossil fuels is also making progress. “They’ve now moved to trillions being divested. That’s very significant.”
…
Just a few hundred billion per year would put a smile back on Mary Robinson’s face. Perhaps she would dress in happy colors, rather than “sustainable development goal” sombre black.
You do care, don’t you?
Remember Dr. Gobbles, “T ell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”.
At the moment it seems to be very one sided. Lots of properrganda from the Left side of politics and not all that much from the right.
So lets start with the basic fact on which the whole Climate scaa is based. The belief that the gas CO2 actiually retains heaat. Thus the more of the CO2, then it must follow that things will get hotter and hotter.
So what about governments telling the public by spending money on what is properganda about the other side. Keep telling people that CO2 is a good gas, its natures fertiliser and essential for all life on Earth. Tell people that Carbon, falsely labelled as a a Pollutant by the left, is in fact the number one chemical element in just about everything.
This message must be repeated again and again, and when a pollitician such as our Bill Shortrn of the ALP talks a about having a Carbonless society, laugh at him for saying such a crazy thing. Even the cavemen and women used fire.
But we must keep answering this nonsense, play the same game by using government properganda.
Convience the public that CO2 is a good gas, and the whole rotten strutcher of Climate change come Global wartming extreme weather with its industries of windmills , solar panelsd and mountains of published book will finally fall over. Its a giant sized “House of cards”.
Remembeer Dr. Gobbles convinced the German people right upto the very end of WW2, that somehow they could still win. That shows the reeal power of properganda.
MJE
The US federal government too deep in debt to be wasting money on stuff like this. The US federal government needs to pay its debts before it even considers such expenditures.
You shower of toxic baskets ”believe women” they don’t lie.
Good propganda does not need to cost all that much, far less than the cost of renewable energy is costing the economy. M<JE
Leftist payola isn’t “research” anymore then funding NPR is for “journalism”.
Climate is corruption for a central planning state.
Here in Europe we have something called Euratom, which is legally outside the EU but has the same members and same principles (bureaucracy, inefficiency, being proud of objective failure).
At some point Euratom was supposed to fund research in new nuclear technology: smaller reactors, hotter reactors… and also fusion (Tokamak), the huge distraction.
In fact Euratom is mostly a way to hurt nuclear fission, with the promotion of the radiophobia, isotopes-terrorism-phobia, uranium-terrorism-phobia… But terrorists just aren’t that interested in nuclear material. (OTOH, the risk of sabotage on a nuclear plant seems real: remove the lubrification of an essential device and the reactor must stop.)
HEU isn’t making a comeback anytime soon with that mindset!
Radioactive materials need specialized facilities and equipment to be handled and transported safely. Things you tend to not have just lying around a guerilla camp out in the rocky desert badlands.
HEU is extremely useful for people who are not trying to be able to kill other people. Iran has some HEU and a plausible peaceful use of HEU (whether their reserve of HEU is consistent with that use and whether they are telling the truth about their intent regarding HEU is another question).
Phasing out HEU may be seen as a way to be able to tell Iran that HEU isn’t extremely useful.
But it’s complete logic BS. Rockets are extremely useful and can be used to destroy Israel by a regime that doesn’t accept Israel existence. We aren’t going to get rid of rocket engine technology to “lead by example” and convince Iran to do the same.
So why are we moving to lower enrichment, again?
Higher enrichment has inherent safety properties: the “Tchernobyl catastrophe” (the accident in a nuclear power(*) plant that used to be called Lenin plant) occurred in a moderated reactor designed to optimize neutron efficiency, with a moderator that wasn’t wasting neutrons (unlike light water). I know the problem of “what if” games and alternative history, and of bogus “all else being equal” (**) narratives, but the moderator played a big role in the accident.
(*) the plant was generally classified as dual purpose, with the intent of making bomb material, but there is no evidence that was intended or used for that purpose and in the 80ties Soviet Union already had a lot of plutonium
(**) “all else” cannot be equal, “all else” isn’t even a well defined set, the real world isn’t a mathematical function of a number of primary factors where you can change one and not the others
After the “Tchernobyl catastrophe”, the safety upgrade of these reactors included the enrichment of uranium. THE event that traumatized people, esp. in Europe, and gave nuclear a really bad name convinced even soviet authorities to enrich uranium. Why isn’t enrichment seen as a good thing?
Typical bleedin heart socialist. Run off, stomping their feet when someone refuses to give them the goodies (Money). So she nicks off to the UN before finishing the job she was voted to do? What a wonderfully selfless person. Reminds me of Helen Clark, the New Zealand PM who, literally days after she lost her second election, nicked off to the UN.
We can’t go hurting peoples feelings can we how heartless do you think we are?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwKllFRKXzw
She doesn’t care about anything else apart from “feeling” the money flowing into her bank account.
James Bull
So, 11 Years to save the planet. That’s an unusual one. It more often seems to go in multiples of 5 once it is more than a very few. Perhaps it’s just a feeble attempt to say something original.
“… the world’s leading climate scientists warn that the planet has until 2030 to avert a global warming catastrophe…”
2030? Wait – I thought it was 2050? When did they shorten it? Man, I simply can NOT keep up with these changes any more!!!
We’re going to have snow some time this next week. I’m not giving up my gas-run furnace just because that silly woman can’t find a real job and wants me to pay for her existence. Someone please tell her to find something useful to do, like being a receptionist at a nail salon. I’m sure the tips are good.
Don’t worry, in 20 years time, they’ll have pushed it back to 2050 again. and 20 years later it’ll be pushed back to 2070 and so on. the apocalypse is always x years in the future, no matter how many years go by.
doom junkies have developed a tolerance to ‘alarming’
but scienticks are hard at work developing a more powerful phobia inducing ‘hyperalarming’
Aw Gee
They didn’t show an image of the “multi-coloured brooch”.
Winning!
“is riding high on the back of Brett Kavanaugh’s elevation to the US supreme court.”
Very strange remark!
Why even bring the courts into that? We were on the topic of climate and clean energy research.
The courts are in charge of research, now? Why would applying the texts as written be a problem for clean energy? You can’t do clean energy without twisting the laws?
Isn’t that what psychoanalysts call the … return of the repressed?
The courts are important because the actions the greens are demanding have tradionally been resisted at the ballot box (and thus they have trouble getting the laws for those actions passed through the legislature). Thus they turn to unelected beaurocrats and the courts to get their schemes in place. It has nothing to do with science or research, it never has.
How many predictions of doom do we have to see get recycled before the light finally turns on?
Ehrlich has been remarketing his falsified population bomb claims for about 50 years.
The old hack is still considered reputable.
Hansen, 30 years ago, started the climate apocalypse.
His predictions have utterly failed.
He is also now old and rich.
And thanks to his fear mongering claptrap, a worldwide industry of climate obsessed parasites are sucking billions a year out if the pockets of tax payers.
Both the population scam and climate scam have gotten away with recycling their predictions if doom with no loss of credibility in the public square.
Until that is corrected we will not have an honest discussion.
ikr? then we can finally move on to honest discussions about bigfoot.