The global warming ‘pause’ never existed, say the headlines. Well, not quite. The 2015-16 El Nino has been one of the strongest on record, temporarily elevating global temperatures by a significant margin. This means that their case rests on the El Nino temperature increase and will be destroyed when the El Nino subsides, as it is currently doing. The ‘pause’ can be accommodated into global warming ‚Äì but not for very much longer. The world’s temperature has to increase outside the El Nino effect. If it doesn’t there will be some fascinating new science to work on, and many questions to be asked. –David Whitehouse, The Spectator, 6 January 2016
Damage from weather-related disasters is in sharp decline, according to data compiled by University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. The chart indicates that the cost of weather-related disasters as a proportion of the global economy is declining. –Andrew Follett, The Daily Caller, 4 January 2016
Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry told Fox News host Tucker Carlson she was so sick of politicization of global warming in academia she resigned from her tenured position at Georgia Tech. “I’ve been vilified by some of my colleagues who are activists and don’t like anybody challenging their big story,” Curry told Carlson Friday night. “I walk around with knives sticking out of my back,” she said. “In the university environment I felt like I was just beating my head against the wall.” –Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 7 January 2016
Friends of the Earth is corrupt in a noble cause. Which, unfortunately, means you cannot trust a word it says. Friends of the earth, but not of the truth. –Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times, 8 January 2016
In an unprecedented move, a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has agreed to investigate a complaint that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has funded human rights abuses in Cameroon, beginning a process which until now has only been used for multinational businesses. WWF funds anti-poaching squads in Cameroon and elsewhere in the Congo Basin. Baka and other rainforest tribes have reported systematic abuse at the hands of these squads, including arrest and beatings, torture and even death, for well over 20 years. —Survival International, 5 January 2016
Students of subsidy mechanisms will learn a great deal from the Northern Ireland’s collapsing version of the Renewable Heat Incentive, which is now collapsing in a storm of political controversy. What is particularly notable about the NIRHI scandal is that this budgetary overspend could become a prominent political issue at all. Consider the case in London. Not only is there no apparent concern about the RHI, but under the now disbanded Department of Energy and Climate Change spending on renewable electricity subsidies spun wildly out of control, and still threatens to be greatly in excess of the Levy Control Framework instituted by the Treasury. But there has been no explosion of anger in Westminster. Part of the explanation for that complacent silence is to be found in the cross-party near-consensus that green energy is beyond criticism. But that is far from being the whole explanation. –John Constable, Global Warming Policy Forum, 6 January 2016
They are said to be the founding fathers of Western philosophy, whose ideas underpin civilised society. But students at a prestigious London university are demanding that figures such as Plato, Descartes and Immanuel Kant should be largely dropped from the curriculum because they are white. The student union at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) insists that when studying philosophy “the majority of philosophers on our courses” should be from Africa and Asia. The union said it is part of wider campaign to “decolonise” the university, as it seeks to “address the structural and epistemological legacy of colonialism”. –Camilla Turner, The Daily Telegraph, 9 January 2016
