By Dr. Benny Peiser
Man-made global warming theory has been propped up by studies that many scientists have dismissed as methodologically flawed, ideologically bent or even fraudulent. The problem of scientific integrity, however, goes far wider. Psychology, neuroscience, physics and other scientific areas have been convulsed by revelations of dodgy research. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, has written bleakly: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.”—Melanie Phillips, The Times, 4 March 2016
Whistleblowers within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) complained last year that a major study by agency researcher Thomas Karl, refuting evidence of a pause in global warming, had been rushed to publication. If documents were to emerge suggesting temperature data was doctored to reach an expedient conclusion in the NOAA study, and if White House officials were part of such a scheme, that would be proof that science had been recruited to serve politics. Trust in government would be further eroded. Science must be free from pressure to validate political goals. If findings and measurements are altered to serve a political agenda, the findings are flawed. It’s called fraud, and should be punished.—Editorial, The Washington Times, 3 March 2016
Families who fit solar panels on their roof to heat water will no longer receive subsidies under plans announced by the government. A decision to axe all future support under the Renewable Heat Incentive will remove government subsidies for thermal schemes from next year. The announcement follows cuts to a string of government green energy subsidies.—Robin Pagnamenta, The Times, 4 March 2016
A steel firm is threatening to move key equipment and jobs abroad – blaming Britain’s sky-high energy costs. The owners of Liberty Steel could shift production to India or the US – depriving the UK of up to 3,000 jobs, including a thousand highly-skilled posts in the struggling sector. The Gupta Family Group wants to move equipment from a former steelworks in Kent to its plant in South Wales. But the company warned the current cost of energy and insecurity of supply could delay the project and force it to move the factory overseas.—Ben Glaze, The Mirror, 2 March 2016
Households face paying hundreds of millions of pounds in extra levies on their energy bills, under new plans to ensure Britain has enough power plants to keep the lights on. Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, unveiled plans to overhaul a crucial subsidy scheme that is designed to maintain secure electricity supplies, amid fears it was failing and could leave the UK at risk of blackouts. The “capacity market” scheme is already due to run in winter 2018-19 and 2019-20, when energy firms will be paid almost £1 billion in subsidies each year to guarantee their coal, gas and nuclear power plants will be running.—Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2016
Chinese wind turbine and solar manufacturers are increasingly dominant in the world markets, something that the EU did not fully anticipate when drawing up its policies. Indeed, in 2008, in modeling the impact of the Renewables Directive of 2009 its consultants dismissed as unlikely the “pessimistic export” scenario for Europe’s wind and solar industries. This was questionable at the time, and now appears to be a serious mistake.—John Constable, Global Warning Policy Forum, 28 February 2016
So Osama bin Laden was an environmentalist. In between plotting the mass murder of kaffirs and the destruction of the West, he penned teary-eyed missives about the dangers of “catastrophic climate change.” Coming off like an earnest member of Greenpeace who had read one too many Naomi Klein tracts, he wrote a letter in 2009 calling on Americans to do everything within their power to “save humanity from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny.” There’s nothing mysterious about OBL’s longstanding attraction to the politics of environmentalism, from his 2002 plea to America to sign up to Kyoto to his 2009 call for a “revolution” in eco-attitudes. He seems simply to have recognized that his innate anti-Westernism, his violent agitation with what he viewed as the sins and crimes of modernity, could be expressed through green miserabilism as well as through his main pursuit of Islamo-terrorism.—Brendan O’Neill, National Review Online, 2 March 2016
