It could have been worse. King Charles could have ascended to his desert dais and pronounced that we had just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse”. But that was the Right Charlie back in 2009, giving us the benefit of his sandwich-board scientific wisdom. These days it is all fashionable bad weather and undefined “tipping points”. The man is now King, and at COP28 he threw away his irksome politically-neutral constitutional role, wrapped himself in Guardianista pseudoscience, and punched down hard on the poor who will be forced to pay for the collectivist madness that is the Net Zero project.
King Charles is no friend of general humanity. Speaking at COP28, he said: “The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.” As with many know-your-place elitists, he appears to abhor the impacts that humans have on the planet. He exhibits, sadly on a world stage, a snobbish distain for capitalism – what used to be dismissed in British aristocratic circles as ‘trade’. This capitalist trend over the last 200 years has harnessed the power of natural hydrocarbons to raise billions to a standard of living and health unimaginable to previous generations. In 2009, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and the “age of convenience” was over.
Not for the new British King, it need hardly be observed. He lives a life of pampered indulgence where no expense is spared to ensure his every comfort. On his accession to the throne, he added considerably to his Palace Portfolio. To spread his malevolent Net Zero fantasies, he has a fleet of cars, private planes and even a personal train at his command. He uses these to call for “transformational action” to be taken to save the planet. In his COP28 speech, he called for the restoration of nature, the need for sustainable agriculture, and co-operation between the public and private sectors.
Few calls could be more political in tone. The restoration of nature and sustainable agriculture is shorthand for largely meat-free diets and massive reductions in nitrogen fertiliser. The latter, in particular, will lead to worldwide famine. COP28 seems set to announce new food and agriculture restrictions using the tactic of demonising methane, a gas emitted by animals and humans that is barely measurable in the atmosphere due to a very short lifecycle. Whenever the subject of ‘co-operation’ between public and private sectors is raised, there is an immediate dash to count the spoons, since it can only signal a large transfer of cash from productive industries to unproductive and inferior green operations.
At one point in his COP speech, King Charles veered into sandwich-board territory claiming that “we are seeing alarming tipping points being reached”. There was no evidence presented to justify this claim, often made by climate extremists using modelled data. In fact, he didn’t even refer to any actual ‘tipping’ event that has been reached. Many scientists have concluded that bad, or extreme, weather events are no worse than in the immediate past. Many categories of natural disasters such as floods, droughts and ecosystem productivity “show no clear positive trend of extreme events”, note a group of four Italian scientists. They argue that the data shows there is no “climate emergency”.
None of these facts seem to matter to a political King, who, like a stuck Guardian record, keeps on pressing on with made-up emotional stories of impending climate Armageddon. At one point he referred to repeated cyclones battering vulnerable islands, something that cyclones have always done.
The King can always cherry-pick individual storms but there is plenty of evidence to show that hurricane and cyclone frequency, along with intensity, has changed little over the recent historical record, as the above graph shows.
Wildfires are a bit of a dud when it comes to whipping up climate hysteria, not least because the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that most conflagrations are started by humans. “Human activities have become the dominant driver,” it observes. But when there is political Net Zero work to be done, the King is only too happy to overlook the evidence. In common with many other countries this year, Canada experienced its worst wildfires for a century, he said.
Despite all the human involvement, the above graph shows the gradual decline of global emissions from wildfires over recent decades. In fact, wildfires are almost impossible to pin on any changes on climate since so many other factors, such as arson and land management, are in play.
Net Zero is rapidly becoming the dominant political issue of the age. Its obvious collectivist nature gathers support from mostly sectional interests in society. It has no significant grassroots support, since it aims to restrict human lifestyles and wealth on a scale never attempted before in history. It is awash with junk science, fake statistics and computer models.
The late Queen, in her infinite wisdom, never went anywhere near it.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Stop Press: David Cameron at COP28 has said the U.K. will pay £60 million in climate reparations to developing countries. The Epoch Times has more.
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