Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The British Financial Times has admitted there is a grain of truth behind the idea that China is using climate ideology to exploit the West.
Political division makes the fight against climate change ever harder
Camilla Cavendish
Tackling extreme weather should be as obvious an imperative as Covid-19 — we must change the argument
The writer, a former head of the Downing Street policy unit, is a Harvard senior fellow
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Today, only 39 per cent of Republicans and independent voters who lean right think environmental issues should be a priority for the US president and Congress, compared to 85 per cent of Democrats and left-leaning independents. And intriguingly, if you’re a Democrat, knowledge and understanding of science is highly correlated with a belief that human activity contributes to climate change, but it makes almost no difference if you’re a Republican, according to Pew research.
It makes no sense that one group of voters should care less about conserving nature and protecting their homes than another. Yet in the UK, people who voted for Brexit are much less likely to agree that climate change is definitely happening than those who voted to remain in the EU. The painful irony for climate campaigners on the progressive left is that environmentalism has come to be seen as synonymous with being anti-business, playing into the hands of deniers.
US president Donald Trump was almost wholly wrong when he tweeted in 2012 that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”. But he was also just a tiny bit right: China has long used calls for climate justice to demand concessions to help it industrialise.
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Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/2e03b404-da4c-4c3b-81d1-d2c79915c56b
Twice in one week. First a mildly positive review of prominent climate skeptic books, now a grudging admission that President Trump might be a tiny bit right about climate change.
Still a long way to go though. The suggestion that people who are against climate action don’t care about nature is just intellectual laziness. The climate activist plan to sterilise millions of acres of pristine wilderness and cover the landscape in concrete, solar panels and bird killing wind turbines is not a convincing expression of love for nature.
Video: Bird vs Wind Turbine
“US president Donald Trump was ……”
Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry is an attorney and was United States federal judge. Apparently she is not great fan of his, so he should nominate her for the now vacant position of the US Supreme Court judge, just in case the November election result is inconclusive and a dispute eventually goes to the Supreme Court.
How does that relate to this item?
Secondly why do you think that makes sense?
So why would he want to put his sister he does not get along with in a position she can sabotage the election result? You lost me there.
He should already be contesting the three states which have authorised acceptance of late postal votes arriving upto 14 DAYS after the election date. That will prevent those states announcing a result and that will cause pandemonium in the country however this works out.
The Dems are going all out for a civil war in which they are likely come second.
Civil wars between right and left seem to be only a matter of time in some countries. The march of the self-righteous woke in the UK won’t be stopped at the ballot box as there is no alternative to left of centre that could form a government. The UK currently resembles a dictatorship led by the idiot Johnson as draconian laws are made with no scrutiny by Parliament.
Yuk-san:
There are no constitutional restrictions on when a president can replace a vacated SCOTUS seat so there isn’t a legal question for SCOTUS to address. He can nominate Barrett tomorrow and the senate can approve Barrett on Tuesday…
If Leftists are so concerned, they can try to pass a constitutional amendment with any SCOTUS appointment restrictions they like, but it would require 66% of both houses to pass and 66% of the states would have to approve…
Lots of luck on that one….
The Chinese Communist Party has been playing the world off a break since the 1980s.
They picked the weaknesses of our “progressive” politicians (aka ‘useful idiots’) for their self-flagellating climate and social policy guilt trips, and exploited them to the material advantage of CCP officials (NOT the Chinese populace).
The Chinese understand that in an economy where the bulk of the value added to raw materials is energy, whoever has the lowest energy costs wins, for example, solar cells. Levraging the climate scam to make the West pay more for green energy while they burn coal without any considerations for real pollution will only increase their competitive advantage. Plus they get to sell the green infrastructure to the West since their competitive advantage allows them to offer those products for the lowest price.
It’s like their when they embraced capitalism, it turned them into the robber barons of old. You would think that the left would see this given their preoccupation with finding evils in free market capitalism. Is this because China doesn’t believe in freedom either?
@ co2isnotevil
Once UK has gone all renewables and has had a year or so to preen. The politicians will realize that all heavy industry has left – as heavy industy and a lot of manufacturing requires stable base load power – not available through renewables. This also means that power from renewables cannot be used to make more renewables the heavy generators steel for transmission lines and pylons and even concrete making for bases of pylons. So as the renewables come to the end of their useful life (a lot faster than promised) the only way to replace the renewables is to go cap in hand to a country that has significant base load power and heavy engineering. If UK is really good to them the Chinese might supply new renewables. Alternatively, they may not and UK is stuck unable to replace out of useful life renewables nor to rebuild the base load power capability that it requires as to build that capacity base load power is required.
This is the California problem on steroids as at least California has 49 relatively friendly states with base load power and engineering capability.
Within 5 years of UK going renewables only the country will crash to an intermittent third world power system. This is why there is now a push in UK to put in ‘Smart Meters’ that allow the power companies to shut down loads in consumers’ homes, such as electric vehicle charging, refrigerators and heating.
“This is the California problem on steroids as at least California has 49 relatively friendly states with base load power and engineering capability. ”
The weakness & flaws in the California power & energy systems were on full display recently. When they had a heat wave in the middle of August California couldn’t produce enough electricity. And the neighboring states were at or close to full power and couldn’t sell any to California. It resulted in about 4 million people (about 1/10 the population) losing power at some point. I hope the people in California wake up to the renewable scam soon, or this will be the norm year round.
Hey, heavy industry left Britain a LONG time ago. Starting when Thatcher destroyed the steel and then the coal industries. I don’t think there is a single aluminium foundry left in the country either.
All that is left is a financial services based economy and a property debt bubble.
Not much enlightenment going on at the FT here. There is a huge difference between not caring about protecting your home/environment and not accepting computer model projections claiming there is a problem which presents a danger.
The suggestion that those who voted Brexit know their homes and the environment and in danger but don’t even care is a total straw man argument to the point of being openly stupid. But doubtless the elite at the FT probably think the proles are too stupid to catch on.
Of course the financial centres in London stand to lose out badly if they do not maintain the financial “passports” to access the EU market and they are going to look like a bird which was too dumb to avoid turbine blade if this does not go right.
The unions destroyed the British coal and steel industries by themselves. The miners union led by Scargill believed they should run the country not the elected government. They found that Baroness Thatcher was no Heath and the union tore itself apart and hastened the end of its own industry. Power generation became the ‘dash for gas’ to stop the miners ever being in a position to hold the country to ransom again. Not a good use of our gas but blame the unions for it being necessary. And as people here decry state subsidy of windmills why would you think the steel industry should be propped up with taxpayer cash?
There is the last UK aluminium smelter in Scotland that survives only because it has a hydro plant and diesel generators so if off the grid.
CO2
While is has been said for years without question that China doesn’t care about pollution from burning coal to generate power, I assure you that they care a good deal and have made huge strides to clean up their fleet. The rumours you hear about them opening a new power station every couple of weeks, are about replacement of old units with their state of the art ones.
It is very easy to describe China of 20 years ago and pretend that the same applies today. But 5 years ago they started an enormous plan to get rid of every form of pollution, and are making progress. There is no doubt they did it wrong before. It has been described to me this way: at first industrialization ignored efficiency and pollution. As they have approached cutting edge technology in each field they have concentrated on efficiency and the Chinese EPA made them clean up their act.
Whatever else they are up to, they have a plan to be a modern industrial state which includes being environmentally responsible. This is not surprising.
China cares about air pollution and particular matter. They don’t give a damn about CO2.
What about the trains they us to transport coal and that burn junk coal that they could not use elsewhere. China is one of the only countries in the world that still uses coal fired steam locomotives for commercial purposes other than tourism.
China is certainly under pressure to clean up the air around major cities, but they care a lot less about what happens in the boonies.
I am expecting China to ramp up their ecojuctice campaign for climate justice prior to the USA election to pressure a Democrat victory. After this years historic flooding in central China, and 3 typhoons that hit 3 provinces in NE China just since late August, (fairly rare) it is estimated that perhaps up to half of all their domestic grain production could be wiped out this year. Plus a big hit to their rice production all over central China during the summer when it also had severe flooding in their major river watersheds, threatening many of their dams including the Three Gorges with an extreme high spill. China isn’t transparent about much, so is hard to know the true extant of the crop damages, but it is no longer a secret that they are hurting very badly. They will have to blame climate change, and by extension the West for 200 years of emissions, since is the easiest cop out to explain weather.
If they play the climate change card, then they will have no one but themselves to blame as they have been the larges emitters the last decade so. Of course, they will blame the West for all the emissions from Colonialism to the present, and therefore their latest emissions have nothing to do with the present state of affairs. But they will undoubtedly try and stir up the climate meme pot, if only to screw with the West and the USA election. This issue is one of the main platform planks in the Democrat ticket. If they really believed it themselves, then they would be doing what they are advocating the rest of the planet do, which is to ‘tackle’ climate change. They will readily sell us all the solar panels and wind turbines they can. But they seem to prefer coal to renewables for firm energy, at least so far.
Drought, flooding, typhoons and starvation are nothing new to China. Adjusting for population, they are actually more resilient now due to improved infrastructure. Of course they are never objective, but if they were, they might tell the truth about it having been worse in the past.
Every now and again the Three Gorges Dam emerges from behind the cloud cover
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?v=110.7318389954504,30.369044268889247,111.35628733987659,31.19368950779093&t=2020-09-08-T18%3A43%3A27Z&l=Reference_Labels,Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines,VIIRS_NOAA20_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor
Same with crops: satellites can tell the story, particularly using IR imagery.
Ugh try the shortlink instead
https://go.nasa.gov/3kx3k3d
“… only 39 per cent of Republicans and independent voters who lean right think environmental issues should be a priority …”
They need to be able to separate being in favor of preserving the environment with accepting the IPCC’s false climate change narrative. The environment has survived just fine through billions of years of climate change. The conflation of preventing climate change with ‘protecting’ the environment is absurd, especially since the entire climate change narrative is based on junk analyses that don’t even deserve to be called science.
Yes, that is particularly moronic.
I’m not sure I share Eric’s optimistic reading of this.
I’ve now seen several articles today alone that admit the truth lies somewhere in the middle ( at least compared to the radical left( now Democratic mainstream) position).
Wow could it be that someday we can have an adult conversation about things without wild exaggerations, bad predictions and tortured science?
I’m not very optimistic but maybe there’s a crack in the door….
I have a hypothesis that the demo☭rats are allied with China, and they only wish to destroy it (USA) and burn it down to rule over its ashes.
https://twitter.com/rezaaslan/status/1307107507131875330?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1307163136731090948%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Faoc-democrats-should-radicalize-and-fight-following-ginsburgs-death
“British FT Admits China is Using .. ” Do you mean that the Financial Times admits on behalf of the Chinese Government?
The link says it all…..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/17/smart-meters-could-used-turn-heating-vehicle-chargers-plans/
Smart meters rely on wi-fi to point to point networking amongst a neighborhood of other smart meters to communicate back to a main office. If you want to avoid being cut off through the smart meter solution the Utilities may impose, build a portable Faraday Cage you can temporilay cover up your smart meter with, which won’t it allow to communicate with the next nearest smart meter and broadcast instructions to your smart meter/panel. Just be sure to remove it when they want to read your meter for billing purposes or then they will get suspicious.
Solution; install natural gas whole house generator.
I am just looking at purchasing a 1/2 kW propane fuel cell, that works on propane or natural gas, just for a dedicated 20 Amp (120 VAC-2400 Watt inverter) dedicated circuit I have for a 12V AGM lead acid battery UPS system in the house (off grid) that is run by a 1.5 k/W solar panel array. Winter gets not much solar, but a 500 watt fuel cell only uses .34 pound per hour propane (or 8.55 CF per hour nat gas) weighs just 42 pounds and the size of a small microwave oven, and gives another near 1000W of useful heat for space heating or heating water. Several can be stacked in parallel for a higher power output and plumbed into a hot water tank for the waste heat. A 20 pound propane tank is equal to a 55 gallon drum of diesel, run through a generator, so is about 3-4 times as efficient as a small diesel ICE. No oil changes…always on, very quiet. No power outages ever as long as you have propane/NG and comes in 12 or 24 volt. A great little back-up power supply that would work really well on a natural gas supply line.
https://www.wattfuelcell.com/portable-power/watt-imperium/
Bringing China out of USSR orbit in the 70’s and 80’s was just another Republican diplomatic breakthrough that was a success story for USA. In the nineties, the US wanted to ship manufacturing to China, for one thing environmental activists wanted it stopped here and didn’t give a damn about jobs (hey, those people will just spend their wages on being deplorable). Eventually, the Chinese got the idea that US resolve should be tested in any number of ways. As Mark Steyn has pointed out, we were supposed to keep the “knowledge” economy, but the Chinese are finding they can steal tech with no consequence.
Anyway, I was willing to take alot, but the wuhan virus breaks it. We should hit China very hard in the wallet, and I don’t think Hunter Biden’s dad is the man for this hour.
From the article: “It makes no sense that one group of voters should care less about conserving nature and protecting their homes than another.”
It’s not that skeptics don’t care about conserving nature. Skeptics just don’t believe the Human-caused Climate Change claims made about CO2.
That’s not a rejection of nature, it is an objection to alarmists offering unsubstantiated assertions about CO2 as facts.
Act Blue (who handles BLM donations) raised $46mm in just a few hours after RBG passed away.
https://www.npr.org/sections/death-of-ruth-bader-ginsburg/2020/09/19/914764789/democrats-raised-more-than-30-million-following-rbgs-death
Donations to Act Blue seem to come from unemployed people according to them.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/exclusive-data-shows-that-half-of-2019-donations-to-actblue-came-from-untraceable-unemployed-donors.amp
Something is very wrong with this picture.
“Something is very wrong with this picture”
Leftwing billionaires are conspiring to turn Western democracies to socialism.
What they are doing sounds a lot like rackateering..
Climate change is definitely happening = true. Everyone, Brexiteers and Remoaners, agree.
Man-made climate change is definitely happening = lie. There’s no good evidence for man-made climate change. 100% of the evidence comes from climate models which are self-fulfilling prophecies; reflecting the bias of the model author.
See what the do here.
They claim ‘all climate change’ = ‘man-made climate change’. When people refute man-made climate change they say those people deny “climate change”. It’s not accidental the same denigration argument is used everywhere. They follow directions from their commissars.
Man-made warming, greenhouse gas, IPCC-models are contradicted by reality. Models predict a clear hotspot in the atmosphere about 10 to 12 km up, over the tropics. Weather balloons have been measuring the atmosphere as far as 35 miles up, since CO2 was 315ppm. The data shows the hotspot is not there.
Really? The UK climate has changed: warmer winters, more storms, more summer flash flooding, more intense rain systems and winter flooding, more heatwaves.
And there is plenty of evidence of rising temperatures, melting sea ice, decreasing ice caps, more rapidly diminishing glaciers and so on. It is NOT ‘just models’. We have any amount of physical evidence, now going back decades.
Citations?
Griff,
You need to convince the Chinese and other developing world countries of your alarmist ideas. You know, the ones responsible for 2/3 of all emissions today, all of the increase in emissions since 1980, and the only countries that can increase emissions into the future because they are yet to reach peak development / peak emissions, which is a function of population.
btw – Why do you think China negotiated with Obama in 2014 to allow them to keep increasing emissions up to 2030, and why do you think Obama agreed ? Also, why do you think the UN added a clause to the climate agreement back in 1992 that allows developing countries to prioritise economic goals over climate targets, a clause which is not planned for removal , ever ?.
It’s therefore of no coincidence that emissions have risen faster since the climate agreements started back in 1992 and all with the full endorsement of the UN. If CC is indeed a real threat, why would the UN create framework agreements which are geared up to increase emissions in countries that are home to over 7 billion people and growing, but restrict emissions in countries home to only 1 billion people that have not increased since 1980 anyway ?
btw – Just to add some further food for your alarmist thoughts, China will likely achieve peak emissions by around 2030 at ~40GT (more than all the western countries collective emissions) and with the remaining developing countries there is sufficient population to drive up global emissions by 2-3 times to current level (ie: > 200 GTs). With no plans by the UN to subject developing countries to mandated targets and with all Paris targets being merely aspirational for this group of countries as they continue with their huge fossil fuel led development cycles. The reality of global emissions is that they are 100% linked to population numbers and peak emissions are the goal of every non-developed country, home to the vast majority of the world’s population.
The stupidity of people such as yourself is to believe (and preach) that the answer to a nonsensical CC belief is to force emissions reductions in the small group of developed nations so as to force the relocation of their emissions intensive industry to developing countries, speeding up their development and increasing global emissions even faster, which is exactly what transpired and will continue to transpire. If that isn’t the definition of crazy, what is ?
Griff is nuts.
This isn’t news.
The UK climate hasn’t changed one bit, between the time I was in primary school and today when I occasionally (and try my hardest not to…) visit the cursed island.
It was always cold, wet and miserable in many places, while warm and relatively dry in others, thanks to the Gulf stream which allows palm trees to grow in Fort William.
He obviously isn’t old enough to know, or was still in Pampers, but I remember extremely well the boiling hot heatwave summer of 1976, and the freezing wet summers of the early 80s.
What changes?
Kiddies on f-book with amnesia?
The UK is a nasty boil stuck on the edge of continental Europe which repeated invaders over the 2000yrs have repeatedly tried to lance.
The Romans grew grapes on the scottish border, Harry got an arrow in the eye from the Normans in 1066, when it was a no brainer to cross the channel/
Dickens Froze at the end of Dalton min, and the medieval warm perioders were writing Canterbury Tales in what seemed like a perfect time for pilgrimages.
Sometimes warm, sometimes cold, sometimes a horrible mix of both, Griff clearly hasn’t a clue what it’s like to live on the edge of a large patch of sea, continually invaded with atlantic depressions loaded with rain.
Right. So it is pure coincidence that the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer is Xinjiang Science & Technology Co. Limited, headquartered in Beijing, and listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange. No doubt they have nothing to do with Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party whatsoever. They just became number one because of their superior business management.
Correction: Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology Co. Limited. Because when that wind blows, it blows gold…
They are communists, the Chinese are communists and will use any dirty trick and disinformation to damage the US and anyone else they wish to dominate. And their best weapon are the useful idiots who see fear in almost anything.
They blame people for the natural course of the worlds weather demanding equality for all while setting themselves apart from it all because only the enlightened good who agree are worthy to be heard. It may feel good but no way to win an argument.
Ian w and Gerry you are both correct, I live in UK and I am not looking forward to our future. Realistically one of two parties will be in office and both support renewable subsidy powered nonsense so voting is futile.no ice cars in ten or so years and a grid that won’t be able to charge all the electric crap we’ll all be forced to drive. The only way to stop the grid failing is to switch us off via our smart meters. Madness