EnviroSpin Watch

Yaahoo! No 'global warming' rodeo for Alberta then.....

Now they don't go in much for 'global warming', nor other such wimpish notions, in southern Alberta (though northern Alberta could surely do with some - er, warming, that is).

Here is the front page of the Lethbridge Herald (September 30).

And here is the full story: 'Geologist suggests efforts to fight greenhouse gases a big waste of money'.

I find it extremely interesting to note how many geologists take a rather cool and balanced view of the 'global warming' hysteria. I wonder if it's that long sense of Earth history....?

Philip, off for a ginormous Calgary steak and beer. Hats in the air all round. Yaahoo! Let's lasso a few doomsayers. And if you really want to know about change, then visit Drumheller! I just love that dinosaur built of tyres.

Mr. Blair and the reality of globalisation.....

In his vigorous speech [full text here] presented yesterday afternoon to the annual Labour Party Conference at Brighton (6 minutes standing ovation), Mr. Blair demonstrated, yet again, that he is the only UK politician with a firm grasp of the modern world and of the choices that Britain needs to make to continue to prosper within it. By contrast, the Conservatives are a risible shambles, while the Lib-Dems are seriously split between the neo-liberals and the soggy-Green left and they cannot be taken as a serious party of government, being entirely unable to take difficult decisions.

Tony Blair knows that we have to be "an open, liberal economy, prepared constantly to change"; here are his forthright comments on globalisation (Guardianistas please listen and learn):

"I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer [my emphasis]. They're not debating it in China and India. They are seizing its possibilities, in a way that will transform their lives and ours. Yes, both nations still have millions living in poverty. But they are on the move. Or look at Vietnam or Thailand. Then wait for the South Americans, and in time, with our help, the Africans.

All these nations have labour costs a fraction of ours. All can import the technology. All of them will attract capital as it moves, trillions of dollars of it, double what was available even 10 years ago, to find the best return. The character of this changing world is indifferent to tradition. Unforgiving of frailty. No respecter of past reputations. It has no custom and practice.

It is replete with opportunities, but they only go to those swift to adapt, slow to complain, open, willing and able to change [my emphasis]. Unless we 'own' the future, unless our values are matched by a completely honest understanding of the reality now upon us and the next about to hit us, we will fail. And then the values we believe in become idle sentiments ripe for disillusion and disappointment.

In the era of rapid globalisation, there is no mystery about what works: an open, liberal economy, prepared constantly to change to remain competitive. The new world rewards those who are open to it. Foreign investment improves our economy...

But there is a lesson here, too. The temptation is to use government to try to protect ourselves against the onslaught of globalisation by shutting it out - to think we protect a workforce by regulation, a company by government subsidy, an industry by tariffs. It doesn't work today.

Because the dam holding back the global economy burst years ago. The competition can't be shut out; it can only be beaten. And the greatest error progressive politics can make is to think that somehow this more open and liberal world makes our values redundant, that the choice is either to cling onto the European social model of the past or be helpless, swept along by the flow."

Bravo, Tony. It really is time to slap down those who would like Britain to be an isolationist, purist, subsidy-ridden, heritage, badger-filled, organic backwater, as utopian as Rupert Bear's Nutwood.

And Blair bravely points to a future with civil nuclear power.

Philip, off to the Great Wen to say farewell to a fine colleague, one who has done much to stem the tide of twaddle written about the Indian sub-continent and 'global warming'.

UK media in denial over the politics of climate change.....

Now, I am no Instapundit, nor even a Daily Ablution, but I think I know a key story when I see one.

On Tuesday last week, I reported the distinct cooling of Tony Blair, the British PM, towards the Kyoto Protocol based on the answers he gave in mid-town Manhattan on September 15 at the Clinton Global Initiative [see: 'Mr. Blair quietly kills off the Kyoto Protocol.....', my September 20 blog]. I even sent a verbatim copy of the Blair quotations to various British media outlets that have often responded in the past to information I have provided them. You would thus think that our media might have jumped at such a story. Yet nothing appeared. I also aired Blair's change of attitude, en passant, while appearing on the excellent 'Daily Politics' show (BBC 2), mid-week.

At last, today, certain Sunday newspapers have started to pick up on the story, if only in short, inside-news pieces - and this, remember, is ten days after Mr. Blair made his carefully-worded remarks. The Sunday Times is one such newspaper (see: 'News', p. 5), while The Observer is another, with 'Blair is accused of Kyoto U-turn' (on 'News', p. 2). The sub-heading for the latter is particularly amusing: 'PM moves closer to Bush's solutions.' The best coverage is probably in The Sunday Telegraph with 'Why Kyoto will never succeed, by Blair'. And the most hysterical? Of course, what a surprise, The Independent on Sunday, with the inevitable headline, 'Blair falls into line with Bush view on global warming', and vocabulary like "outrage", "undermined", "endangered", and "sold out". Yep, you can rely on The Indy. How about, for a change, "sensible", "politically realistic", "practical", and "economically sound"? [See also this parallel comment on the interesting Clive Davis blog: 'Blair & Kyoto redux', (September 25)].

In addition to all this, the ever-redoubtable Professor S. Fred Singer has let me know that the section of a typically-clear interview he did for BBC-4, in which he quoted Tony Blair's ("whom we much admire") statements from the Clinton New York conference, "where he pulled the plug on Kyoto", was cut from the final broadcast. He adds tellingly: "The BBC guy didn't like this at all." Quite.

I think this is all extremely illuminating. Much of the British media has invested enormous amounts of uncritical, emotional, soggy 'left' capital in support of the Kyoto Protocol over the last ten or so years. They have too willingly failed to apply critical journalism to the politics of climate change, with far too many commentators and news broadcasters allowing their own prejudices (not to mention their innate anti-Americanism - Mr. Blair is right about this too!) show.

Now, to their horror, these soggy left 'Green' pundits are finding themselves abandoned by the world, and they are sounding more and more shrill (and extremely shallow). They are increasingly in denial, often failing to pick up on the plate tectonic shifts in climate-change politics that have been slowly accumulating around the globe - shifts which that ever-consummate politician, Tony Blair, has more astutely grasped.

Anyone with even a smattering of understanding concerning the international politics of climate change knows that the Kyoto Protocol has been moribund for some time. Moreover, the world has moved on, shifted to the Pacific Rim, to technological solutions, and away from the 'command-and-control', socialistic, Old European formulae. The issues now (correctly) focus on energy, and on world energy needs, for growing economies. As Mr. Blair himself admitted in Manhattan, no country is going to opt for reduced growth, especially China and India - and most certainly not a UK under Mr. Gordon Brown.

As I have said before, it is time for the British media to grow up over the politics of climate change. The infantile foot-stampings of newspapers like The Independent should be left in the nursery. And, once again, Mr. Blair has demonstrated that New Labour is the only serious party on the British political landscape. Yet, even he is failing to make vital decisions over issues like clean coal and nuclear power.

The British media must recognise that 'global warming' is neither simplistic science nor the politics of the kindergarten.

Philip, looking forward to a time when interviewers finally recognise that the UK is but a small player in the climate-change game and that putting a windmill on the top of your house will do sod all about climate change. Sunday lunch. Yum! Yum!