Farewell

I have not been able to post much here for what seems like a long time.  I had been hoping to change that, but I have not managed to.  Now I've decided to stop altogether for a long break.  I'll leave the blog up and available for readers, and I may update the reference Pages now and then.

CO2 Scaremongering Climate Junk Claims Antidote: just look at the data

The seemingly endless streams of junk science, junk assertions, and portentous pontifications about climate based on CO2 Scaremongering are generally best, and most readily, dealt with merely by looking at relevant data.

Photo: http://www.flowers-magzine.com/Reviving_Wilted_Roses

That UK National Treasure of a web site 'Not A Lot of People Know That' has seen a great many posts refuting the silly claims of both victims and perpetrators of the Scaremongering.  The most recent is in response to a report just published by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).  It turns out that that Society has burdened itself by employing someone as a 'climate scientist'.  Said 'scientist' naturally wants to be seen to earn her keep by producing something to justify her employment.  That 'something' has been generously hyped by the BBC.  That of course is not a good thing, since the BBC is little better than a cesspit of eco-junk  known to be severely and deliberately biased when it comes to environmental matters, not least climate.  This RHS report and the BBC reporting on it, as Paul Homewood deftly demonstrates, provide more exhibits for the prosecution on the these charges.

Parents, other family members, and teachers would do well to bookmark Homewood's site, and search it from time to time as and when climate spins pushed by victims, perpetrators, and collaborators in the CO2 Scaremongering come their way, or more importantly, in the way of their children.

Read his latest post to see his method at work:  https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/bbc-peddle-rhs-climate-lies/

BBC Peddle RHS Climate Lies

APRIL 30, 2017

US Science Teaching Union Responds to Reason on Climate with Three Lies

The Heartland organisation recently sent out to US schools 25,000 copies of its excellent booklet entitled 'Why Scientists Disagree About Climate Change' (follow my link to get your copy and see for yourself).

A leader of the National Science Teachers Association responded with three lies and no cogent criticism. Here are the lies:

"First, scientists don't disagree about climate change or its causes," David Evans, the executive director of NSTA, wrote in a letter to members earlier this week. "Second, labeling propaganda as science does not make it so. Third, science teachers are the critical bastion in the war against reason. And the special interests know it."

Why are they lies?

First, it is a platitude that scientists disagree about climate change and its causes.  The booklet gives chapter and verse on that.

Second the booklet is not 'propaganda labelled as science'.  In fact it is a reasoned counterstroke to exactly that phenomenon, a phenomenon which often proceeds by omission and by hyperbole to make the case for panic over CO2.  

Third, teachers have been docile vehicles for state propaganda for generations.  The socialists in Germany for example, regarded them as no obstacle at all in their promotion of the Third Reich, and they have been no less a pushover when it came to one eco-scare after another in recent decades. 

Jo Nova has more on this sorry rejoinder from the NSTA:  http://joannenova.com.au/2017/04/us-science-teachers-say-trash-books-and-watch-leo-instead/

In particular she notes that the NSTA report no errors in the Heartland booklet, and that is why they resorted to a squeeling distortion of reality as their response.

I hope most readers will download the booklet and pass it on to all the teachers they know.

Note added later. I see from the Heartland site that they plan to send

 out a total of 200,000 copies to schools and colleges. Good news:

'The summary below is taken from the book's concluding chapter. You can read it for free at the PDF link above, or buy a hard copy from the Heartland Store. A collection of reviews is here, and a page with even more information about the book has been created here.

In 2017, The Heartland Institute is mailing some 200,000 copies of the second edition of this book to K-12 and college science teachers across America. Read the cover letter of that mailing here.'

Help the Children of the CO2 Scaremongering Scam

A big effort is called for to help all the victims of the CO2 scaremongering of recent decades, scaremongering which has reached nursery, primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education and of course can be found embedded in much of the mass media - not least the BBC.

I am hoping to see more and more books, articles, videos, and maybe even tv programmes one day, that will help with this work.  Here is the most recent example I have come across:  It is an article in the online Quadrant magazine:

A Handy Primer for Deluded Warmists

We all have them, friends who believe the planet is on a CO2-fuelled collision course with a catastrophe that can only be averted by directing large sums to rent-seeking wind farmers and the like. If you know someone like that, here's a simple, handy guide to the climate scam

Well worth a read: http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2017/03/handy-primer-deluded-warmists/
Hat-tip: Greenie Watch
Note added 08 April 2017.  Here are some examples of folk who need help: http://grist.org/article/depressed-about-climate-change-theres-a-9-step-program-for-that/

Read this Classic Post before talking about Earth Hour with your family and friends

Earth Hour: A Dissent by Ross McKitrick 

In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour. Here is my response. 

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity. Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading. Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water. Many of the world's poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases. Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that's how the west developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonises electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity. People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

I don't want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in "nature" meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply. If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations. No thanks. I like visiting nature but I don't want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilisation with all its trade-offs is something to be ashamed of.


Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph

Source: http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/earthhour.pdf

This could become an annual post here:  http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/children-asking-about-earth-hour-give.html