What They Won't Talk About at COP#)

 

 

 

What Won’t be Talked About at COP30

 

Somewhere in the Amazon forest, there’s climate hand-wringing going on, which will continue long after the talkfest because against the tide, some politicians have plucked up the courage to take their foot off the net zero pedal. Gwynne Dyer (ODT 13.11.25) was still waxing lyrical about the old ‘1.5°C above pre-industrial revolution levels’ narrative. But the narrative lack wisdom, and is easily dispelled through simple logic, without involving complicated science. Let’s ask a simple question, ‘When exactly, is pre-industrial revolution?’ The industrial revolution is said to have occurred between 1750 and 1850, and for sure, since 1850 the planet has warmed somewhat. But blaming carbon dioxide is glossing over some important facts. 1750, was towards the tail end of the 1330 – 1850 little ice age. So, the start point of the ‘pre-industrial revolution’ myth must be somewhere in the middle of an ice age! Why would anyone think the planet’s best or safest temperature would be only 1.5°C above the middle of an ice age? Yes, some may say the little ice age wasn’t worldwide, but we do know that during that period the Thames river was frozen over, our two West Coast glaciers reached the sea, and Argentina’s glaciers were bigger back then. And there another key question, ‘How do ice ages end, if it isn’t with warming?’

 

The little ice age was caused by four known climate-related cycles reaching their minimum at roughly the same time; Wolf, Spöres. Maunder and Dalton. The cold was further compounded by more than usual volcanic activity which sometimes blocked the sun. When those events passed after 520 years, slow natural warming from the sun occurred, which reduced sea ice and snow cover, and therefore, the amount of reflected heat, which allowed further warming.  The climate change lobbyists, erroneously attribute atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as the sole cause. Carbon dioxide is a critical gas; around 1850, atmospheric carbon dioxide was at a historical low, barely enough to support plant growth, which is why poverty and disease reigned in the UK and elsewhere. The records are available. Food shortages, disease and superstition are symptoms of scant food production and cold. Without doubt, its cold that is the enemy of humanity. Since 1900, the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased the world’s green vegetation by 30%, the equivalent of three Amazon forests, and since 1900 nature herself, has released four times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than human activity. The litmus test of carbon dioxide’s usefulness, is that world life expectancy has doubled and crop yields are at historical highs. It’s also known that as the oceans warm, they release carbon dioxide, but not necessarily by the sun alone; ocean warming also comes from the ocean’s volcanic activity; fissures and volcanoes; there are about a million of them. Any human cause of warming is most likely from land use… cutting forest and scrubland, bared soils and the heat-island effect of towns and cities.

 

COP30 is bound to talk about sea level rise and how much compensation can be squeezed out of the west. Charles Darwin showed how coral atolls grow, and sure enough, Tuvalu, one nations seeking compensation, has grown 8% over the last forty years. Going back 12,000 years, there was a big block of ice over the northern hemisphere that was, in places, a mile thick. To understand this, think of a raw egg, without its shell, but with the thin membrane underneath the shell. This represents the planet; it’s crust and molten core. Push down on it and it will bulge somewhere else. Ok, back to the northern hemisphere; the weight of the ice pushed the crust down, causing some of the southern hemisphere to rise in sympathy. When the ice disappeared, there has been a slow rebound and still, parts of Canada and Europe are rising, which means some of the southern hemisphere is sinking in sympathy. Remember the one million fissures and volcanoes under the ocean? The Icelandic Laki fissure eruption of 1783/84 spewed up fourteen cubic kilometres of lava - its gas resulted in the death of 6 million. Nobody knows how many of the million undersea fissures and volcanoes are active at once but their eruptions will alter the sea level to some extent. And then there’s geological activity of erosion on the land. For example, our Southern Alps are made of greywacke; metamorphosed sandstone, which means it was once a mountain in Gondwanaland, the mountain eroded to sand, which lay on the ocean floor; the Pacific plate. For 25-30 million years the Pacific plate has been subducting under the Australasian plate, thus ‘cooking’ the sandstone and pushing it up to form the Alps… and they too are eroding about as fast as they are growing… which is how the Canterbury plains formed. The rivers carry the eroded material seaward. Gravity and extreme weather events are the forces that reduce mountains to peneplains; flat and featureless land. So where do the eroded mountains and other land features go? Either into the sea to eventually to be recycled by tectonic plate movement, or to add to the land; all of which alters the sea level. Sea ice melt cannot raise the sea level because it is already in the sea but ice and snow melt on land can. When someone suggests that sea levels are rising, it’s simplistic to say the cause is solely a minor greenhouse gas. But observationally and uncannily, there seems to be a sort of equilibrium. What must be understood about the geology of this planet, is that extreme weather events and geology go hand in hand and floodplains are often the result; they are fertile areas, ideal for growing food, but sooner or later they will flood again, which should raise a red flag for proposed infrastructure. But somehow, the COP30 lobbyists have forgotten that the geological processes of the planet, although slow, will continue relentlessly, as they always have.

 

When governments try to mitigate climate change with net zero policies, it’s important to know from what to what, and for what outcome … it’s far too complicated to be certain. Additionally, there are ‘unpredictable anomalies’ like the Laki eruption which changed the climate for two years; the Tongan undersea eruption, which loaded the stratosphere with moisture that caused flooding around the world; silt-makers like cyclone Gabriel with the aftermath of excellent crops, random heatwaves, cold spells, droughts, all of which may have widespread or local effects, but they do not necessarily signal climate change. Such anomalies have always been.  So, when the United Nations, COP30 and governments propose net zero policies, someone needs to ask the question.

 

 

Buraucracy

 

Bureaucracy

 A mate of mine is up before the court for disturbing a watercourse, which will likely end up costing him a barrel of money, and fair enough, some may think he deserves the penalty, but before jumping to conclusions, let me explain. The law was set when I was a forest ranger back in the ‘80’s… and I guess that working for the government, I too was a bureaucrat, and because we were a government department, we had to know, and tried to comply with the rules set down by office-bound bureaucrats who influenced the politicians but actually pushed paper with no real experience about the practical realities. And those of you who support the penalty, very likely have never owned or been responsible for a sizable parcel of land.

 The rule was, ‘water courses must not be disturbed, and a watercourse is where water flows regularly or infrequently.’ Think about the infrequently bit… when it rains, water flows down the slightest folds of land, where sometimes a mere trickle passes… which may be construed as a watercourse by nosey bureaucrats. Your footpath could be one. So, when we were logging, machinery couldn’t pass through those folds nor could we pull logs through them. Now I’m an environmentalist, and I understand that the world’s water is in peril… I also understand that it is ideal to keep silt out of water, but nevertheless, the rule makes ordinary operations unworkable.

 For instance, we totally ignored the rule when we were roading… of course we needed access so the roadline crossed many waterways, and in creeks and streams we built culverts where vertebrates and invertebrates would have been disturbed or even killed. We couldn’t avoid silt getting into the watercourse either, so we didn’t try. But because of the actions of geology, silt will always find its way into waterways sooner or later on its way to the sea… it’s a part of the natural process.

 We are under attack from bureaucrats, but we usually blame the politicians, who are culpable in that they don’t stand up for the general populace. The government taxes a fair whack out of our income, and they grab another handful from every service we use and everything purchase through a goods and services tax… another fifteen percent is creamed off. We call them ‘rates’, our council charges what amounts to be a property tax which pays for our town roads and street lighting, utilities as well as other services, but they have slowly become involved in non-core activities that are pet projects of the councillors… or the bureaucrats within, or through tules set down by governments. And then there’s the regional council who cover a much larger area, these people are responsible for ‘environmental’ matters but also have their dibs in compliance for many works, or allowing innovation. Our one didn’t really need a new office block, but they built a palace anyway, with the resultant inflation of the rate bill… twenty years ago, an hour’s pay was enough per annum to keep the council going, but nowadays, we’re paying a week’s wage every three months!

 Here's another earlier, encounter: One day I received a phone call from a bureaucrat attached to the old Lands and Survey Department, ‘because they wanted my expertise to gather evidence fit the prosecution of a sheep run for burning some snow tussock’. I was responsible for fires we used as a tool to prepare land for tree planting. It was quite a journey to the homestead, so I headed off at the appropriate time… I could have travelled with the Lands and Survey team, but they were a bit anti-forestry for my liking. Arriving earlier than them Frank’s missus made a cup of tea for us, and over the teacups, he told me the Lands and Survey were going to fine him $20,000, which was a heap of money in those days. Soon the Lands and Survey guys turned up in their flash vehicle, dressed in ‘farmer going-out-gear’ although they were straight-out townies. And straight away I could tell the young bucks had no farming or burning experience, which I supposed was why they called me in. They oozed friendship, while in the back of their minds, they wanted to rip $20,000 out of Frank’s pocket! I travelled with Frank out to the site in his vehicle to show them I wasn’t necessarily on their side… my message zipped over their heads.

 The site was a shady face of about 200 hectares and still black from the burn, which, was nice and clean; any farmer, or indeed forester, would have been pleased with it. Frank had done the right thing and applied of a burning permit from us because he was a neighbour to the forest, he also had to get one also from the Lands and Survey Department. Their permit stipulated that there had to be ten percent snow cover at the time of burning and that he wasn’t permitted to burn in a northwest wind. The danger, it said, was that the fire would kill the snow tussock. Now, first you have to figure out why he wanted to burn the snow tussock. The reason is that when mature, snow tussock is unpalatable for sheep, it grows to waist height and holds moisture which makes the sheep’s wool cotty because of the dampness… cotty wool is low-valued. However, after burning, the soft regrowth is very palatable to sheep and allows clovers to grow between. The other factor is that during summer, the dry tussock becomes a fire hazard from lightning strike and left unburnt, such fires are difficult to control.

 Frank had alerted me the he was going to burn, and I’d seen the smoke from the fire that day; it was blowing a bit from the  nor’west, but because it was back-burning down the hill, I knew it wasn’t dangerous to the forest, so I’d put it out of my mind. Frank tried to explain his position to the three but they were officious and didn’t really listen. Thinking I was on their side, they asked my opinion, and I gave it: ‘Do you guys seriously expect Danthonia to burn with ten percent snow cover?’ I asked, and they just looked at me. ‘That’s just nonsense, you are silly to demand it. Here on these hills with high humidity due to the coastal air, there are only a few days of the year that are suitable for burning and that is when a nor’west wind dries out the foliage properly. Frank is either allowed or not allowed to burn the tussock and if he is not, Lands and Survey should buy the land and retire it or pay Frank compensation for not farming it. I’m prepared to say that in court if it comes to it. Anyway, take a look! Every tussock clump is regrowing! Come on, show me one that isn’t.’ And we walked them over the area until they had seen enough. They were wearing cream moleskin trousers, which didn’t thrill them, because of the black ash that rose as we walked. And they were none too happy because they couldn’t find a single tussock that wasn’t regrowing. Frank phoned me a few days later to say he had heard from the ivory-tower Lands and Survey office, that they had dropped the case… which of course. was the right thing to do.

 While this sort of thing continues, and with consents and regulations on the increase, the bureaucrats too increase, making any money in your bank account flow out quickly. We are losing initiative and our rights, which threatens what democracy we have left. Liz Truss (ex-PM of Britian) said, ‘You’d expect a prime minister to be able to tell the navy to keep the boat people from invading our country. But the secretary of the Home Office, would not accept the order, saying, ‘It would be illegal to do so, because the nation has signed up to the United Nations’ Human Rights Convention.’ Governments have signed up all sort of United Nations declarations which are crippling nations, particularly the west. I’ll highlight one; the Paris climate accord and faux climate emergency. Since 1900… the aftermath of the little ice age, the global temperature has risen by 1.3°C. The following has been the effect on mankind: the population is five times greater; life expectancy has risen by 130%; literacy is up by 400%; GDP is 6.8% stronger; food production is up by 34%; extreme poverty is down by 700%; the weather death rate is down by 500%... all of which indicates the planet is doing quite well, so where’s the emergency?

 We have CEO’s welding more power than prime ministers, and CEO’s wielding more power than mayors. In my country, we have a centre-right government after a very leftist government… and while public or civil servants are supposed to be apolitical and work responsibly for any incoming democratically elected government… this time they have been actively working against our government. Worse, the previous government employed extra public servants just before the handover with long-term contracts and to pay them out is unaffordable in the current environment… an act that was undemocratic, uneconomic and corrupt. But they are not held to account because the mainstream media are with them.

 How does this come about? School teachers are among the public servants; universities, hallowed halls they may have been, but robust debate no longer exists on certain issues, but have they have staunch, even Marxist political ideologies where truths can’t be told and hard work is disincentivised. Logic and critical thinking can’t be tolerated so people use them are cancelled. For a couple (at least) of generations these people have entered the workforce infiltrating government departments, the judiciary, police and the media. This country isn’t alone in this… but can the ship be turned around?

 The iron fist of globalism is closing on the individual… who has heard of the UN’s 2015 Sendai Framework? It’s purported to make the world a safer place… preventing disasters by kicking people off their properties ‘for their own sake… and the sake of the environment’.

 

 

 

Keeping Quiet

 

Keeping Quiet

I’ve been quiet lately, busy in other ways but watching and listening what’s happening in the world and not happy with what I see and hear. For a start, I wonder where logic and critical thinking have gone. Alarmingly, in some places they appear to have been banned! During my years of writing, I have warned, and I’m not happy that I have been on the right track all along, but it’s good to see that others are seeing the light… and there is an awakening.

An urban myth I grew up with told me left-handed people have enhanced logic and critical thinking, which makes me puff my chest out because I’m left-handed, but sadly there is no empirical evidence to suggest it is so. Pursuing the idea, I compared my mate, who is left-handed too, and his brother who have two years’ experience separating them. I found their opinions and world-view are like chalk and cheese, which is fair enough, it is often the way with siblings. My mate, like me, followed a hands-on practical way life while his brother followed the university way of life ending in boardrooms, so I came to the conclusion that breeding doesn’t have as much influence as the people we associate with. The brother worked under a well-known politician who he credited with great intelligence, but from my mate’s and my point of view, she had those political-idealistic, even radical ideas, that the we rejected totally. Those radical views rubbed off to his brother, and because he had an influential government position, he exercised his authority in that way. The question is, does idealism fit well into the real world?

There’s a problem with idealism and Donald Trump is onto it when he wants to ‘drain the swamp’. But that’s not as easy as it sounds; basically, public or civil servants aren’t supposed to demonstrate their idealism (which equates to Marxism these days) or political feelings, they are supposed to be loyal to the democratically elected government of the day, but given the will, the bureaucrats are able to bring down a government; and that’s what we see happening before our eyes, and why government policy becomes blocked. Starting in schools, added to in universities, and then the public sector, police and judiciary… and of course, the media, a weird liberal ideology has crept in which leaves Joe public, the taxpayer behind and wondering. It takes a brave politician to pull them into line because a media-led smear campaign is difficult to counter… after all, politians need voter support for re-election and the media easily influence the mailable.  

 There’s a list of things creeping in to upset the status quo of western values.  One of them is the idea that carbon dioxide has the huge influence on the climate that it’s purported to have. Having relied on good weather information for all of my life, it’s plain there’s no logic the carbon narrative.  The mouthpiece of the climate narrative is the media, an impractical lot… after Al Gore’s fraudulent movie, I began to check on the claims of ‘unprecedented’ weather events and a simple look at Papers Past told me nothing is unprecedented, and then some worthy scientists began to debunk the whole climate narrative, which confirmed my thoughts. I was there at the start of carbon credit accounting of forests, which has been used to reducing farming for food, an act of environmental vandalism. The most potent of the greenhouse gases is water vapour, yet it isn’t mentioned because it can’t be attributed to anyone’s activities, whereas carbon dioxide can be measured and therefore can be taxed… and governments are always looking for ways to increase tax revenue. It all adds up.

When the United Nations was formed, its mandate was to prevent wars and to provide aid to developing nations… it hasn’t done very well. But they have grown like a puffball on a dewy night; they are a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, and when anyone remains in one authoritive position for a long time, their power intoxicates them. As an organisation they have evolved into a club of the like-minded, and have a memorandum of understanding with that other strange outfit, the World Economic Forum. Both have a goal of redistributing wealth from the west to poorer nations and a global government under the auspices of Agenda 30. Good luck with the global government, but of course it is possible by taking draconian, Marxist-type measures, some of which are taking shape as we speak. Taking down western economies is proven to be easy as demonstrated during the compliance during covid nineteen; simply by flooding the economies with people on welfare, can also bring down whole economies. Everything ties in, stirring up a resentment of colonisation has been profitable… but take the litmus test of life expectancy in my country; the first peoples’ life expectancy in 1840 when a treaty was signed was thirty-four years, and now it is seventy-two. And of course, there are the trappings on colonisation, which are conveniently overlooked. Nevertheless, western governments continue to sign up to United Nations agreements with wild abandon, and have developed a sense of self-loathing, which is unwarranted.

Three words have been weaponised against the west; racism, empathy, and tolerance. Racism is something that thrives in all cultures, admitted or not, there has always been suspicion of people who aren’t quite the same; it has always been an evolutionary survival mechanism with no shame. A fool is a fool; ethnicity doesn’t come into it… and it is correct to call out the fool. Point the finger of racism and three point back to the accuser. There have always been world leaders who have no empathy or tolerance for other cultures, such intolerance spreads to their countryfolk… empathy and tolerance are a pretence until someone turns up at your door wanting them.  The word colonisation has also become a weapon, but who among the colonised is prepared to totally forego the trappings of colonisation? The term is being used to diminish pride in western cultures for nothing more than a transfer wealth. The other quick way of bringing a country to its knees is diversity in employment superseding meritocracy… Darwin’s law is as accurate as it ever was.

Sometime during the fifties, I asked my father why the, very rich Rajas of India didn’t alleviate poverty by spreading their wealth. He told me that if the Rajas gave all their wealth to the poor, everyone would be poor and nothing would get done. Even then I found that to be sobering; and nowadays the ‘nothing would get done’ is even more sobering. At the time I asked the question, India had severe food insecurity, yet today, it exports food… this was achieved without the Rajas giving up their wealth, although the Rajas are no more, their families are. Education, investment in infrastructure, technology, and industry have been the drivers. This shows why diluting of the wealth of the west would be counterproductive.

Common sense is a lesser category than logic or critical thinking, yet even common sense hasn’t been applied to the net zero carbon policies proffered by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. It is an obvious way to bring nations to their knees. Compromising the electric grid and food production is only the start; why politicians bow to the United Nations’ wishes is another story, but they are doing it with gusto. One of the warnings about climate change was that climate refugees would flood the west because of lost territory due to risings sea levels… well the sea levels haven’t risen but the so-called refugees still flood the west. You see it was in their mind all the time, plainly it’s orchestrated again to bring down Europe. Let’s highlight Britian. Brexit was a dangerous phenomenon to the European Union, if Britian was successful after Brexit, other nations may opt to pull out; therefore, Britain had to fail… oh yes, politics is a dirty game. The so-called refugees are in such numbers that in many cities they dominate the indigenous people and want to take political power. The politicians, plead empathy and tolerance from the British population, but empathy and tolerance isn’t being reciprocated.

There’s the pressing issue of the conflict in the Middle East, which is as much a propaganda war as a war of bloodshed… and Israel isn’t winning the propaganda one. Wars are bloody, shocking encounters and we hear calls for a ceasefire… but what will that achieve? Horrific as they are, wars have to be won…  bull elephants fight for dominance, most usually one doesn’t die, but one knows he has lost and will walk away and not return… unless he grows in strength. The loser of a war has to know they have lost but sometimes, like Germany, they will try again. There have been widespread… no, not protests, but demonstrations of solidarity for the Palestinian cause, and such shows aren’t illegal unless the participants misbehave, but have no doubt, they are meant to intimidate. But there’s a couple of points of history worth noting. Post-World War Two when the European Jews wanted to settle in their homeland, the called it Palestine, which is an area of land, not a country. Wouldn’t this make them Palestinians? Then there was the war with the Arabs, when the Arabs lost, they called it Nakba, a catastrophe because Israel had won.  Later, Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip, including their dead, and left it to the Arabs, who promptly voted for Hamas to govern them. There have been many offers, but the Arabs aren’t interested in a two-state solution, they want Israel to disappear as in ‘from the river to the sea’, which is why they promised to carry out October seven atrocities over and over again!

The Palestinian supporters are accusing Israel of genocide, starvation and a number of other atrocities, but taking up arms, instigating war, despite the so-called conventions of war; the result is war. And war isn’t tiddlywinks! If the Palestinian supporters were genuinely concerned about babies, starvation or other atrocities, for years, they would have been protesting about other conflicts around the world where similar atrocities are happening daily. The Palestinian Arabs are driven by ideology, the righting of Nakba, the elimination of Jews, which amounts to carrying out the very same atrocities upon Israel as the supporters are accusing Israel committing.  When the mob gathers, logic and critical thinking are the casualties after truth. The October seven attack on Israel, the killing, kidnapping, raping, baby burning and body mutilation can’t be called war, it was something so barbaric, there’s no name for it… which is why Hamas don’t deserve support for their cause.

As a people, the Jews have survived despite their persecution over millennia; doubtless because of their religion and what it means to them. The western civilization sprung up in Britain based on principles taken from the Hebrew bible, and those principles became accepted because they were workable, which is why they slowly spread. Today we see those western/Judean values under attack, and whether or not the western civilization survives, depends largely on the people and what happens from here.