As any level-headed sceptic knows, a great deal of climate change activism is about posturing and virtue-signalling. No surprise then that part of an Amazonian rainforest has been obliterated to accommodate the upcoming COP30 summit. The BBC has the story (so it must be true):
A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.
It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.
The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.
The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.
Along the partially built road, lush rainforest towers on either side – a reminder of what was once there. Logs are piled high in the cleared land which stretches more than 13km (eight miles) through the rainforest into Belém.
Diggers and machines carve through the forest floor, paving over wetland to surface the road which will cut through a protected area.
Berry harvests have been destroyed with no compensation to the farmers. Wildlife has been disrupted too:
The road leaves two disconnected areas of protected forest. Scientists are concerned it will fragment the ecosystem and disrupt the movement of wildlife.
Prof Silvia Sardinha is a wildlife vet and researcher at a university animal hospital that overlooks the site of the new highway.
She and her team rehabilitate wild animals with injuries, predominantly caused by humans or vehicles.
Once healed, they release them back into the wild – something she says will be harder if there is a highway on their doorstep:
“From the moment of deforestation, there is a loss.
“We are going to lose an area to release these animals back into the wild, the natural environment of these species,” she said.
“Land animals will no longer be able to cross to the other side too, reducing the areas where they can live and breed.”
Needless to say, the underlying reason for this gratuitous destruction is political self-interest:
The Brazilian President and Environment Minister say this will be a historic summit because it is “a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon”.
The President says the meeting will provide an opportunity to focus on the needs of the Amazon, show the forest to the world, and present what the federal Government has done to protect it.
Worth reading in full.
Meanwhile back in Britain, Britain’s eco-warrior Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, the tireless advocate of Net Zero at any price, is putting his money where his mouth is with his own brand of virtue-signalling.
According to the Telegraph, Mr Miliband has installed a heat pump in his north London home.
In 2023 his house was awarded an Energy Performance Certificate of grade D. A year later, with a heat pump installed:
The green heating system lowered the home’s carbon emission from 12 tonnes to 4.5 tonnes, but the property’s energy rating only rose to a C grade as a result.
Chris Norris, of the National Residential Landlords Association, said he was unsurprised a heat pump had “little impact” on Mr Miliband’s EPC.
He said: “At present, the metrics used are focused on cost of heating, and gas is significantly cheaper per unit than electricity.
“It is perfectly possible, as things stand, for an EPC score to deteriorate if switching from gas to electricity as the primary heating fuel. Changing this is one of the policies being consulted on by the Government.”
It seems two companies were involved in assessing the properly. Bizarrely:
Furthermore, the recorded floorspace of Mr Miliband’s property was assessed as being 252 square metres – 30 square metres less than had been recorded in the previous assessment only a year before.
There’s an explanation:
The assessor responsible for the new grade is a former hypnotherapist who retrained to be an assessor five years ago. He told the Telegraph that the training took “only around a week” to complete.
He said: “A lot of the time it’s low-paid – estate agents just use you. We’re the lowest of the low, really. EPCs don’t have a very good reputation.”
Dr Toby Gledhill, who led a PhD study into the flaws in EPCs, said of the Energy Minister’s assessments: “The floor area has shrunk quite substantially, by more than 10% between these two EPCs which are only a year apart.
“The smaller floor area means a reduced volume of space to heat, which leads to greater economy and this is reflected in the improved energy rating of the more recent EPC.”
In other words, the new EPC achieved a (slightly) higher grade because of the reduced heating requirements, not because of the heat pump.
The solution would appear to be simple: shut off as many rooms as possible in your home and see your EPC skyrocket. Then you can open them up again after the inspector has gone and save yourself the cost of a heat pump.
Or perhaps the Government could employ more hypnotherapists to encourage people to install more heat pumps?
Also worth reading in full.
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Just recently got back from a trip to Gibraltar and there were no exceptional queues at Gatwick, very few facial hypochondriacs on the flight/ terminal/ Gib etc.
In a bid to solve this, it is removing the back row from 60 of its A319 jets, which will limit the plane to 150 passengers instead of 156. It means that three crew members can operate the cabin
I thought we had a climate emergency and we were all going to die? amazing what happens when it doesn’t suit.
It’s not new. It was done temporarily over a decade ago to cut costs.
The plan to ground the serfs is going well….
Yeah, whist I understand the urge to escape the country. I wouldn’t want to play Russian roulette with certain airlines’ pilots.
Maybe the lack of recruitment in staff by tptb is to limit vaxx plane crashes.
I can imagine it’ll be like that scene in the ‘Airplane‘ movie when the stewardesses are dragging the passed-out pilots out of the cockpit and down the aisle past all the seated passengers who are told everythings fine and to look out of the their windows and enjoy the views.
Perfect analogy for our country really!
On balance I would rather the pilot of my plane had a sniffly nose and sore throat with Covid than keel over with a heart attack. Too late now though as everyone has had these injections forced into them.
Bringing the excitement back to air travel.
It’s Security Theatre not Security.
Once they got the Kabuki of ritualised humiliation & abasement before uniformed apparatchiks they are very unwilling to let it go.
In a way, it was good practice for having to endure the ritual humiliation & abasement of masks.
It is long overdue that the queues were shortened by removing the security theatre; liquids cannot in practice be used to make a bomb. It requires a fume cupboard and about an hours’ hard work generating massive fumes to actually make TATP or anything similar. The so-called scientist who came up with this wheeze had his bluff called and then had to run off to his laboratory to actually make something that could go bang.
Like the COVID scare tactics, it was all boll0cks.
And where have all these former employees gone, along with all the other former employees of other businesses?
Is there a reservation somewhere where they all live at the taxpayers’ expense?
And what about all these immigrants we ‘need’ – who are indeed here – to provide labour.
Summat’s not right.
So what? Anyone who can see and/or hear will have worked out by now that Sweet FA “works” in the Disunited Kingdom any more. It’s an abysmal failure from the top (“working Royals”?) to the bottom.
COVID nonsense, Climate nonsense, both destroying the Western world
Renewable Energy Rip-Off: How Price Gougers Profit From Sunset & Calm Weather
https://stopthesethings.com/2022/05/09/renewable-energy-rip-off-how-price-gougers-profit-from-sunset-calm-weather/
by stopthesethings
Stand for freedom with our Yellow Boards By The Road
Monday 9th May 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Yellow Boards
Junction Long Hill Road,
New Forest Ride & A329 London Rd
(near Mercedes Benz)
Bracknell RG12 9FR
Thursday 12th May 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards By the Road
A329 junction London Road & Oak Avenue
Near Oakingham Belle pub
Wokingham RG40 1LH
Tuesday May 17th 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Yellow Boards
A322 Bagshot Rd
(by Bracknell Leisure Centre)
Bracknell RG12 9SE
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens
Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Under the new normal, air travel is a privilege accorded only to the elites.
Have they thought about paying a decent wage?
Just a suggestion
We don’t like to say that we told you so, BUT!!!!
had an email from my brother at Manchester Airport yesterday – took him 10 minutes to get through security. Looks like it’s all about when you travel
Discourages Air Travel- Carbon Zero Green Fascist agenda!
Simple!
Holy crap! I lived in the UK 25 years ago and used Heathrow almost every week. It was a fucking nightmare then. I can’t imagine how horrible it must be now.
Brussels Zaventem was also a 24/7 trainwreck, as I recall.
Must still all be working from home. I guess they didn’t realise that might add a minute or two to the queues.
Presumably baggage-handlers and check-in staff are working from home.
It would improve matters if the airports stopped all the unnecessary security checks for small bottles of liquids by the goons with no interpersonal skills and invested in some decent scanning technology. Machines don’t need to self isolate.
Absolutely. If you actually really want to keep passengers safe, you put a pair of Sky Marshals in the cabin. With ammunition that expands drastically.
Wake up everyone. This is all intentional. Just like food shortages. Either don’t travel right now, or if you do expect this intentional disturbance in your lives. By creating so much chaos you will “own nothing and be happy”. Guess what. The woke generation is already very happy with this concept. Once the oldies are gone, it will be a different world and one I will be glad to be out of.
Nail. Head. Hammer.
I flew from Manchester with EasyJet on Saturday afternoon – 10 mins through security was the quickest ever. The 1 hr hold up was lack of ground staff to get wheelchair users off the incoming flight. Also we set off early to get to the airport in good time because of the delays we’d been hearing about, everyone had done the same and there wasn’t a seat to be had in the restaurants and in the terminal people were sitting on the floor. Reminded me of the toilet paper panic. However, I do believe that one airline in particular is worse than most and that’s Tui.
They are deliberately trying to kill the airline industry.