Category: Climate Change
There has been no global warming for the past 16 years. In spite of increasing levels of human emissions of carbon dioxide, world wide global temperatures stopped rising in 1998. Essentially, this means that the dire predictions that the world is headed for a climate catastrophe if mankind keeps on producing carbon dioxide, is not credible.
“Climate Change” has become an important international topic - one might almost say religion. It began life as “Global Warming”. So very many people, including politicians and “news people”, appear to have been overwhelmed by it, and have led others to believe, and follow the doctrine. However, the cost of “Combating Carbon” has been extremely high, and the debt and economic consequences are being passed on to present citizens, and, worse still, to future generations, including all our grandchildren.
We all know that in the media business, sensation sells. Advocacy groups like Greenpeace have long taken advantage of this by peddling scare stories - the world is running out of oil or food or trees, polar bears are dying out, the earth is becoming overpopulated, or melting glaciers are flooding the planet. Regrettably not enough people understand the need for scepticism over such reports.
Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this.
Last week the United Nations spin machine went into overdrive as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a summary of its latest assessment of the state of the climate. The Summary for Policy Makers was prepared by politicians and bureaucrats representing the governments of many countries that have invested vast amounts of taxpayers’ money into projects designed to stop man-made global warming.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces periodic reports on the science and policy relevant to dangerous anthropogenic global warming. These guide all UN members and the annual conferences of the parties which endlessly attempt to negotiate global binding treaties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Last week the World Economic Forum published its Global Competitiveness Report, ranking 148 countries on their productivity and prosperity. For the first time, New Zealand appeared in the top 20 at 18th place, compared with the 23rd last year and 25th the year before. Australia dropped out of the top 20, to 21st place.
State-owned energy company Meridian Energy is likely to list on the New Zealand stock exchange in October as the government takes the next step in the partial privatisation of state-owned assets. The company has now finalised a contract with the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter shareholders Rio Tinto and Sumitomo for lower priced power until January 2017 - the smelter uses 40 percent of the Meridian’s generating capacity.
Irresponsible sabotage or keeping the market fully informed? As anyone who has followed politics closely will know, there is no doubt that the coincidentally timed announcement by the Labour and Green parties to nationalise the wholesale electricity industry was designed to materially impact on the sale of Mighty River Power shares.
A lifetime of observation and work in the social sciences has convinced me of one thing. George Orwell was partly wrong in his classic novel 1984. The threats to the open society do not come from above. They come from all around us: from our peers. The oppression is rooted in economic interest and professional capture.
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