A month before it began I wrote slamming the Glasgow climate conference as a show-ponies’ parade of parasites, epitomised by the NZ Green Party’s leader, Shaw, taking 10 no less delegates at readers expense. There is no way that can be explained other than as a taxpayer funded jaunt. It says heaps about our media that they’ve failed to grill Shaw as to who his ten fellow holiday-makers were.
I don’t make light of global warming but a conference of 30,000 is plainly farcical. That’s a full stadium of people.
In the event the sessions were noteworthy for their small audiences. Scott Morrison who has absolutely no intention of doing anything about coal-mining, now Australia’s major export, rose and in his customary fashion, bellowed vague future intentions, as noted by the Australian media, to an empty hall.
My Glasgow office reported a bonanza for the city’s restaurants, much needed after their lengthy covid lockdown.
God knows who invited her to represent New Zealand but a young part maori woman, one of a number of young females from different parts of the world, gave speeches before the formal opening, fortunately in the case of the New Zealand girl, to an empty hall.
Described as an activist which as we know is the noun for idlers forever protesting about everyones activities, she talked world-class tosh about colonialism. Had it not been for colonialism she would never have existed.
Once underway the major speakers garnered plenty of news-coverage world-wide but scarcely a peep thereafter has occurred in the print media anywhere as normal life has resumed.
As I’ve written before, this issue exposes the hard realities of the political divide.
The left constantly insult their fellow men and women as saboteurs destroying the globe.
The arrogance and stupidity is extraordinary. No human effort is capable of destroying the globe. In its billions of years of existence it’s had numerous ice-ages, hot periods, floods and droughts.
All human material progress has done is increase extreme weather events, primarily with floods, droughts and forest fires etc. The earth has always had floods, droughts and forest fires without any human input. But with 55% of humanity now living in cities, their impact is dramatic, not on the bloody globe as half-wit humanity hating lefties would have it, but on people, and specially with floods.
Take forest fires. They’ve been a perennial in Australia long before European occupation. Throughout my child-hood in the 1940s and 1950s and up until the 1970s my clear memory every summer was the Hutt Valley covered with smoke from Australian bush fires. Then the wind direction shifted slightly and I gather Hawkes Bay has since copped them occasionally.
The political right, positive by nature, take a diametrically opposite view than the left. Far from pumping out venom about humanity’s sins, they are excited about the challenge global warming poses.
It’s strictly a science issue and already there’s marvelous breakthroughs everywhere which will eventually see the end of fossil fuel usage. We’re not far off electric cars being the norm, while an American company has finally produced electricity via fusion power at an electricity consumption less than the output. Only fractionally mind you, but giving enormous hope for all the other nations beavering away on this. In the interim nations run by grown-ups are re-embracing nuclear power.
I will be a consumer of nuclear power in a few months time. Why? Because I’ll be in my Parisian home and will turn the lights on, etc, etc.
In Iceland a machine is now operating, sucking carbon from the air and converting it to solid boulders which have diverse uses. And so it goes.
For bright kids the future is exciting. Forget about nonsensical sociology and media studies or law degrees etc. Go for science and join in the challenge.
Meanwhile the worst thing the world can do is panic and start punishing the public with taxes on flying and driving and so on.
A good analogy how to handle this is the covid experience. Closing down everyday life has proven disastrous, including here in New Zealand. The Swedes showed the way, namely live with it with appropriate cautions and now they’re the envy of Europe, sufficient time having elapsed to assess the outcome, albeit still not over.
12 Comments
Well said Sir Bob.
CO2 does not drive climate, and at 0.04 percent of the atmosphere has minimal impact except on plant life. The large yellow orb in the sky is the principal culprit, assisted by the most powerful greenhouse gas on Earth which is water vapour – maybe we should ban it? The idea of paying additional taxes to governments or the UN to change the climate is so utterly mad it should be accepted as proof of a severe psychological disorder.
The nutty climate change hysteria must soon come to an end surely? From an economic point of view all we need is the cap and trade ETS, all the other lunacy does nothing but change the source of the emissions (read Matt Burgess at The NZ Initiative for full explanation). From a science point of view when you dig into the details of the climate models (yes I’m boring!) you find pretty much full agreement from scientists that CO2 has almost reached ‘saturation’ point whereby there is virtually no more greenhouse effect yet to come from CO2. Even if it doubled to 800ppm it creates less than 1degree temp raise (hardly an emergency). What the corrupt UN ICCP have done therefore is create the required hysteria by inventing ‘forcing’ from increased water vapour (clouds) to make a model show 2-5 degree warming in 50-100 yrs time. After 30 yrs of these models that forcing has yet to emerge (and never will).
Great essay Sir Robert – and I am pleased at least somebody in NZ has commented, albeit briefly, on the successful fusion energy experiment; it’s great news for mankind. Imagine being able to heat your home all winter for $1
Well said Grunter. We now have about 410ppm of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere, whereas some time ago it sank to a near-disastrous 200ppm and any further drop would have seen all life on earth extinguished. What we really now need, to give us a safety margin, is at least 1,000ppm. Yet we have these ignorant climate activists wanting to reduce it below our present 420ppm! In submarines, it is not unusual for the occupants to happily exist in 10,000ppm or more, proving that the activists knowledge about toxicity is nil! It really is time for the true honest scientists to step up and confirm the truth about the non-existent ‘climate emergency”!
Tax won’t solve anything. That is the avenue these clowns are going down. Pretending it will change ‘something’. Follow the money as they say. Check out Al Gore as a successful pretender.
Since sea level were first started recording from 1856 there has been ZERO signs of any acceleration in sea levels. Climate alarmists please take note.
Quite frankly nuclear power is the commonsense way to generate electricity. In New Zealand we are more at risk from a tsunami than a nuclear incident-if we had reactors here. I can see a time in the future, maybe not too distant, when the hysterical anti nuke wombats are overtaken by sensible and reasoned argument for nuclear. Wont happen while the communists are in power..but eventually it will.
Dear Mr Luxon, a good strategy to disarm the Greens (as labour ( and National) has no green policy) would be to make the following announcement….
“As of today National is going to stop funding all Climate change policies and re direct all the funding directly into the health emergency we have (namely hospital services, staff, equipment…)
This money will be prioritized on retaining and increasing our hospital staff, increasing beds, building dedicated MIQ facilities that will double as urgent Hospital facilities and getting the right drugs and healthcare to the right people based on need via a beefed up Pharmac.
Funding of climate issues will resume with pace once the 10 main polluters have reached their targets two years in a row, and our health crisis is sorted. Untill then National will be totally focussed on the health of our nation.
That one anouncement will end the Greens, expose the government, and be lapped up by every Kiwi!.
Humans emitted 36 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year. To give some relativity, our planet has a circumference of 40,000 kilometres – walking at a comfortable pace of 5km/hour for 12 hours a day it would take 667 days to walk right around it. Problems associated with the inevitable climate change are already upon us. The Indian delegate to the Glasgow conference remarked that promises were made to collect $185billion to mitigate actual losses from floods and rising sealevels – $185Bn of the $3 trillion needed. We are still looking for the answer to produce power without emitting carbon – I am not advocating for any of the proposed changes, as Bob says, at this stage the mitigation strategies are all insignificant.
Watch this and then you will see why we should be burning oil
https://www.google.com/search?q=unobtanium+vide+youtube&client=ms-android-oppo-rev1&ei=5dOuYavsD4vjsAfx2IyoBg&oq=unobtanium+vide+yiuo&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAEYADIGCCEQDRAVOgQIABBHOgQIABANOggIABANEAUQHjoICAAQCBANEB46BAghEBVQ8RJYqRtgzCRoAHABeACAAekBiAHcBpIBAzItNJgBAKABAcgBCMABAQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7e747dc2,vid:RwmPza_br9E,st:0
Thankyou. Media and left are perennial scab-pickers intent on maximizing and celebrating suffering and fomenting eeyorish.fretting over ridiculously unlikely threats. There is so much reason for optimism about the future, so many technological breakthroughs in the offing that will solve almost all human problems (other than our need for manufacturing problems to worry about). Really the only things we need worry about for the future are the existential threat posed by AI, whether in 20 years or 100 it’s real, and it’s coming,.and ambitions of China’s amoral leadership to control the world.