Friday 29th of March 2024

instant cooling...

instant cooling...

Less than a day after becoming the U.K.’s unelected leader, Prime Minister Theresa May closed the government’s climate change office, a move instantly condemned as “shocking” and “plain stupid.”

May shuttered the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on Thursday and moved responsibility for the environment to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. The decision comes the same week as the U.K. government’s own advisers warned in a report that the nation was not ready for the inevitable consequences of climate change, including deadly heat waves and food and water shortages.

“This is shocking news. Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new prime minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face,” said Craig Bennett, CEO of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “This week the government’s own advisors warned of ever growing risks to our businesses, homes and food if we don’t do more to cut fossil fuel pollution.”

Bennett wrote in an op-ed for the Independent:

Now, with Theresa May in power, we are looking for a clear commitment to policies that will put the country on track to meeting out Climate Change Act goals and to delivering the Paris climate change Agreement to keep global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees. But there is no department directly responsible for this.

[….] Time is running out to avert catastrophic climate change and to halt the decline of nature. This is about protecting people as well as the planet we live on. There is no time to lose for the new prime minister in changing path—and, thanks to David Cameron, so much time has already been lost.

Caroline Lucas, the Green Party’s sole Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons, tweeted that the move was “a serious backwards step” and told the Independent, “The decision to shut down DECC is a deeply worrying move from Theresa May. Climate change is the biggest challenge we face, and it must not be an afterthought for the government.”

May also made several controversial appointments to her new post-Brexit cabinet, including naming her one-time rival for prime minister, Andrea Leadsom, as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Leadsom in 2015 served as Minister for Energy at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, during which she reportedly asked officials whether climate change was real.

Environmental groups were distressed. Greenpeace executive director John Sauven saidThursday, “The voting record and affiliation with climate skeptics of key cabinet appointees are deeply worrying. They show a lack of understanding posed by climate change to the UK and the world.”

“If we are to continue to have a key global role in environmental action, we need urgent reassurance from the new government that the hard won progress on climate and renewables targets, air pollution, and the protection of wildlife will not be sidelined or abandoned in the Brexit negotiations,” Sauven said.

And it was not just the advocacy sector that slammed the decision.

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted, “DECC abolition just plain stupid. Climate not even mentioned in new [department] title. Matters because departments shape priorities, shape outcomes.”

Stephen Devlin, an environmental economist at the New Economics Foundation, released a press statement titled “We Can’t Afford to Scrap DECC” wherein he described May’s action as “a terrible move” and said it “signals a troubling de-prioritization of climate change by this government.”

“This reshuffle risks dropping climate change from the policy agenda altogether—a staggering act of negligence for which we will all pay the price,” Devlin said.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
This article was first published in CommonDreams.org

 

climate change and brexit...

Mapped: The Cosy Climate-Euro Sceptic Bubble Pushing for Brexit and Less Climate Action


By Kyla Mandel • Monday, June 13, 2016 - 00:00

There is a deep-rooted connection between UK climate science deniers and those campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union, new mapping by DeSmogUK can reveal.

Tying together this close-knit network reveals how organisations residing behind the doors of Westminter's 55 Tufton Street share many of the same members and donors.

And the reach of this small group of Brexit climate deniers extends beyond this Westminster building to include prominent politicians such as former London Mayor Boris Johnson, Justice Secretary Michael Gove, and Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom as well as traditional British media outlets.

Perhaps the epitome of this nexus between climate science deniers and Brexit campaigners came last week when former environment secretary Owen Paterson delivered a speech at this very same address.

Advertised by Grassroots Out and hosted by Paterson’s UK2020 think tank, Paterson argued “Why the UK environment would be improved by leaving the EU.”

His speech was quickly criticised for being out-of-touch by Green MP Caroline Lucas, who said: “I’m as likely to ask Donald Trump for advice on race relations as I am to trust Owen Paterson on protecting our environment.”

But it's hard to ignore the political movers and shakers working inside the walls of this four-storey, multi-million pound building located just steps from the Houses of Parliament.

This small, mostly male, contingent is a significant driving force behind the 'leave' side of the 23 June EU referendum and the same group that wants less, not more, done to tackle catastrophic climate change.

The overlap stems from a common neoliberal ideology that fears top-down state interventions and regulations which are perceived as threatening values of individual freedom, economic (market) freedom, or the sovereignty of national governments. Under this logic, we must reject both the European Union and most climate policy. 

It begs the question: If Britain leaves the EU, what will then happen to the country's climate change policy?

Mapping the Bubble

Delving into the web, you’ll quickly get a sense of the deep-rooted connection between these various organisations. 

DeSmog UK first reported on this relationship in January when a slew of climate science deniers published comment pieces blaming European bureaucracy, not climate change, for the December flooding.

Then, in February, the Independent revealed that these inter-related groups all share the 55 Tufton Street address.

So now, with the Brexit vote less than two weeks away, DeSmog UK has for the first time mapped, in-depth, the climate-euro sceptic bubble for you to explore. 

http://www.desmog.uk/2016/06/13/mapped-cosy-relationship-climate-euro-sceptic-bubble-55-tufton-street-brexit-less-climate-action

dancing with fire...

 

The world is on pace to set another high temperature benchmark, with 2016 becoming the third year in a row of record heat.

NASA scientists announced on Tuesday that global temperatures so far this year were much higher than in the first half of 2015.

Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, said that while the first six months of 2015 made it the hottest half-year ever recorded, “2016 really has blown that out of the water.”

He said calculations showed there was a 99 percent probability that the full year would be hotter than 2015.


Dr. Schmidt said the world was now “dancing” with the temperature targets set last year in the Paris climate treaty for nations to limit climate change.

He attributed part of the rise in temperatures this year to El Niño, in which warming waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean pump a lot of heat into the atmosphere.

 

 

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/science/nasa-global-temperatures-2016.html?_r=0

nick cohen is an idiot...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/07/russian-treachery-...

In this article Nick Cohen explains clearly why he is an idiot and why Trump got elected instead. Theresa May is not as bright as what he makes out her to be. Like many of the people she leads, she is a religious opportunist who never understood squat about reality... Politics is never about the management of reality but about conning as many people as one can.

See toon at top.

Here is Nick:

You should never lose your capacity for shock. Even connoisseurs of the grotesque have had to take a deep breath and count to 10 after watching the Republican president-elect of the United States preferring the word of Julian Assange to the word of his own intelligence agencies. That Assange is cowering from rape charges in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy, and maintaining that the same United States would persecute him if he emerged to face his accusers like an honourable man, only made the task of regaining your composure harder.

 

Yep, the same "intelligence Agencies" brought you the "Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction" hoax 13 years ago. Between them and Assange, One woud have to say the truth, how crazy, hurtful and damaging coming out of Assange's computer ON THE FIRST FLOOR of the Embassy is far more honest that the drivel from agencies.

And I am not the only one:

I consider Nick Cohen an unpleasant man. His columns are smug, rude, ill-informed, intellectually dishonest, hypocritical and self-righteous. A perfect example of the modern journalist, in his natural habitat. However, before today, I never considered him to be truly, literally insane.

Russian Treachery is extreme and it is everywhere!

This startlingly subtle sentiment is the headline to Cohen’s latest…offering. I haven’t changed it or exaggerated it, with the exception of adding an exclamation point that is, in the original, only heavily implied.

In the past I have written detailed, point by point refutations of pieces from the Guardian – similarly bizarre ramblings from Cohen and Natalie Nougayrede – but when the message is so rampantly hysterical…what is there to say? There’s nothing to refute here but the loud and incoherent repetitions of made up facts and establishment lies, already disproven a million different times by a thousand dedicated and honest alt-news sites. The work has been done. The truth is out there. To not see it, at this point, is an act of willful blindness.

Read more: 

https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/08/neo-liberal-paranoia-is-extreme-and-...


the doggy nazi salute...

Whilst Theresa May has been diverting our attention with the Pantomime she has created around the Salisbury nerve gas attack; her Government have also been suppressing free speech by detaining and then expelling at least four conservative commentators. Brittany Pettibone was detained for three days then expelled for the crime of wanting to interview Tommy Robinson, her boyfriend had the same treatment because he wanted to make a speech at Speakers Corner. In effect his crime was a thought crime. Then Canadian citizen Lauren Southern suffered the same pre-emptive punishment.

 

Robinson then organised a peaceful rally at Speakers corner which thousands attended to protest and show their revulsion at the expulsions and protest for free speech. Interestingly the Main Stream Media didn’t cover the protest or the expulsions however I am sure the story would have been different if trouble had flared at Robinson’s event. Then it would have fulfilled their liberal narrative of “Far right extremist” violence and the BBC would have loved that.

Similarly, the MSM have not really covered the Nazi Pug story until yesterday’s verdict. One has to wonder why?

Could it be due to the fact that they have been too busy pumping out the Government’s propaganda about Russia and their alleged involvement of the Kremlin in the Salisbury attack?

Just like Theresa May and Boris Johnson they haven’t bothered with the technicalities of British justice and the basic tenants of our country’s judicial system of innocent until proven guilty.

Instead the MSM led by the BBC have just parroted the Government line that the Kremlin is guilty.

Like a twitter mob they have acted as prosecutor, judge and jury and if anyone has had the temerity to question whether we should wait for more evidence to prove guilt they have been shouted down as Kremlin Shrills or Traitors.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201803221062808818-uk-scotland-mark-m...

 

Read from top.

 

Read also:  the deep shit state...

the denialists on donald's list...

It has been a heck of a few days in the spotlight for Cambridge Analytica — a ‘political consultancy’ that confesses it likes to operate in the shadows.

Revelations continue to emerge about its practices, including allegations of illegal use of Facebook data and corrupting foreign elections.

While the company denies any illegal behaviour, what we do know is that it has been behind seismic political shocks on both sides of the Atlantic: Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump.

Tied to those is a climate science denial agenda that seeks to slash regulation, and line the pockets of those with a vested interest in fossil fuels.

This map shows how Cambridge Analytica lies at the heart of a network of operatives pushing climate science denial in the name of Brexit and Trump:

 

View the full interactive map on LittleSis. For more information and profiles of all the organisations and individuals, see DeSmog UK’s Disinformation Database.

From Cambridge Analytica to Trump, via the Mercers and a web of climate science denial

On the US side, Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer are the key links. The Mercers invested approximately $5 million in Cambridge Analytica.

The Mercers are also well known funders of climate science denial, and its current global posterboy Donald Trump.

Robert Mercer emerged as the “single most influential donor to Trump” ahead of his election, according to the Center for Public Integrity (CIP).  Robert Mercer's super PAC, while not endorsing Donald Trump directly, would focus '”solely on attacking Clinton”, Bloomberg reported.

Mercer's strategists, super PACs, and other political organizations as well as his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, “emerged to play a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign”, according to The New York Times.

 

Read more:

https://www.desmog.uk/2018/03/21/web-power-how-cambridge-analytica-sits-...

Cambridge Analytica has NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA. RUSSIA DID NOT INTERFERE WITH THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.