Articles Tagged "Richard North"

If Moonbat wants to trouble himself about undue influence, why isn't he worried about this? It cannot be right that an elected politicians – with a salary and expenses from the public purse - is so egregiously enriching himself.

But this is not any politician, but a senior Labour man - David Miliband MP. He earned, we are told, earned "a staggering £20,000 a day as an adviser for a company investing in green technology", and was paid £70,000 for just three-and-a-half days spent working for VantagePoint CleanTech in California.

Rather overshadowed by events at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last week was a line in George Osborne's speech which could mark the start of a long overdue political transformation in Britain.

The Chancellor acknowledged that a decade of environmental laws had been piling unnecessary costs on households and companies, adding that Britain was not going to save the planet by putting ourselves out of business.

He was referring in particular to the Climate Change Act, famously passed by the House of Commons in October 2008 by 463 votes to three, even as the snow was falling outside. By the Government's own estimate, it would cost £404 billion to implement – £760 per household every year for four decades.

The Act included a voluntary commitment to reduce Britain's carbon dioxide emissions to 80 per cent of their 1990 level by 2050 – a target generally acknowledged to be achievable only by shutting down most of the economy – in an effort to demonstrate 'global leadership'.

The lunacy of this commitment can be demonstrated by the fact that neither China nor the US – who together produce 40 per cent of global emissions compared with our two per cent – are committed to such draconian reductions.

To the colourful Daily Telegraph blogger James Delingpole, it was winner of the coveted award for the "Biggest front page non-story in history of journalism". What he was referring to was a tale published a week ago under the by-line of The Times's enviromment correspondent Ben Webster which led the paper, covering virtually the entire front-page and with a whole further page inside, beneath the huge headline "Oil giant gives £1 million to fund climate sceptics."

Everything about this story was bizarre. Its essence, based on information which as Webster told us was had been supplied by Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change, was that Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, last year gave "almost £1 million" to four US think-tanks.

These hired lackeys had then shamefully gone on to describe the various official inquiries into the Climategate emails scandal as "whitewashes", apparently citing them as evidence that the dangers of global warming had been "grossly exaggerated".

The story concluded by suggesting that Exxon Mobil had clearly corrupted these four venal think tanks into giving "the oil company at least another year of freedom to reap the profits of its high-carbon strategy".

Dear Mr Monbiot

Following the publication of your post here, I have written to your newspaper by e-mail, expressing my concerns about the piece, and inviting the newspaper to contact me to discuss it informally, to avoid the need to take expensive and (to you) potentially damaging action in order to protect my professional reputation.

Since your newspaper has not troubled itself to contact me, I am forced to take the step of contacting you and the newspaper more formally, which I am in the process of so doing.

In the meantime, however, I am writing here as the most direct means of contacting you, to ask you to remove from this post all references to myself, as being libellous and highly damaging - the precise details of which will be passed to your newspaper shortly.

You may, of course, leave this message visible or remove it, but you may wish to note that the addition of further comments arising as a result of references to me remaining in your post, and which are also of a libellous or denigratory nature, may form part of any subsequent action which I choose to take.

Commentators who choose to comment on this post may also wish to note that I would be happy to enjoin them in any legal action taken against Mr Monbiot or The Guardian newspaper if they too are of a libellous or denigratory nature. You have been warned.

Yours sincerely,

Richard North (Dr)

The decisions that led to the costly shambles of Europe's airspace being closed for so long go back years.

Examining the protocol followed, the agencies involved and the resources at their disposal, it seems it wasn't volcanic ash that brought the air industry to its knees but decades of neglect, underfunding, poor planning and layers of bureaucracy behind the Government and Europe-wide response.

This, despite the fact that the ink had barely dried on an international contingency plan drawn up by the ICAO in September 2009.

The disaster may have been natural, but the mishandling was wholly man-made. So what went wrong, and why?

As the ash began creeping from Iceland to the UK the first people in the hot seat were not the air traffic controllers but eight scientists in the Met Office's London Volcano Ash Advisory Centre (LVAAC).

These specialists, called in only on an emergency basis, provide the aviation industry with forecasts on the spread of the ash and warn pilots of where it is unsafe to fly.

Click source to read FULL report from Richard North

Click source to read FULL report by Richard North

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In the wake of the Prefero report, we now have Greenpeace weighing in with a report headed: "Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science. A Brief History of Attacks on Climate Science, Climate Scientists and the IPCC."

It would seem from the warmist obsession with such events that they are hurting grievously. They seem to be devoting far more attention to this issue than on the other side of the fence, where the debate is still largely on the science and related matters.

However, despite our criticisms of the Prefero report (what we know of it), it shines out as a paragon of virtue compared with the Greenpeace effort, which could best be described as a lengthy rant against the Machiavellian machinations of "Big Oil".

The news of the shipping trapped by ice in the Baltic could not have come at a worse time for the warmists.

They are desperately trying to mount a counter-attack, with Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre asserting that there is an "increasingly remote possibility" that human activity is not the main cause of climate change.

Needless to say, Stott brings nothing new to the table by way of research, relying merely on a review of 100 or so previous studies that purport to track changes in the earth's climatic system. The recycled material, however, is dressed up in new clothes, labelled "optimal detection", which we are told shows "clear fingerprints of human-induced global warming."

Unfortunately for Stott, he relies on the usual poster children, highlighting not least Arctic sea ice cover, his bleatings having to compete with reports of ice-bound ferries and cargo ships.

Sceptics can, of course, make hay with these reports - as indeed the warmists have exploited any number of transient weather phenomena – but it is germane to note that the Baltic incident is partly the result of gale-force winds which are compacting the ice and making it difficult to navigate.

Click source to read more from Richard North

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change is proudly touting its 40-page brochure on climate change in cities.

Cities, we are told, are concentrations of vulnerability to the harmful impacts of climate change. They are also, directly and indirectly, responsible for the majority of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gasses. 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, a number that is set to increase to 60% by 2030. For all of these reasons, cities are on the front line in responding to the threats of climate change.

For further details, you must contact Professor Jim Hall, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University. By some strange coincidence, that is exactly the same detail on a grant application to the Engineering and Physical Science Council (EPSRC), which just happens to have given him £124,385 for a project labelled SCORCHIO: "Sustainable Cities: Options for Responsing to Climate cHange Impacts and Outcomes".

SCORCHIO, it turns out, is a bit of a bun fight for academics. Not only is Newcastle University a beneficiary, Professor GJ Levermore of the University of Manchester has also done rather well out of it. He as scooped the jackpot of £319,234 for his part in the project.

Click source to read FULL report from Richard North