Source:  Scientific Alliance

The futility of emissions reduction targets

Denmark holds this half-year’s rotating EU Council presidency. As you might expect from a Nordic country which is a leader in wind turbine manufacture and deployment, it favours tough emissions controls. Currently, the bloc is committed to a 20% cut in carbon dioxide emissions (from a 1990 baseline) by 2020. On offer is a 30% cut if other countries follow suit. It will have surprised very few people that there have been no takers.

Now, however, it seems that the Danish presidency wants to get member states to agree a firm target of a 40% reduction by 2030 at the environment ministers’ meeting in early March (see Denmark puts 2030 emissions targets on the agenda, on the Euractiv website). This had always been pencilled in as the likely goal en route to an 80-95% decarbonisation by 2050, but the Danes now want to get an EU commitment to it. (more…)

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

• The Royal Society of Edinburgh, a science pressure-group largely funded by taxpayers, has decided to join the rent-seeking classes worldwide in trying to extract cash from you and me in the name of Saving The Planet from the non-threat posed by “global warming”. The lobby-group has set up an enquiry into the gap between the policies the governing classes would like to inflict upon us and the policies that we, the governed, might be willing to accept. Here is the joint submission from me, my lovely wife, the Carie Estate, and Monckton Enterprises Ltd. The bureaucrats won’t enjoy it, but perhaps our readers will. The Royal Society’s questions are in bold face: our replies are in Roman face.

TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH

Gentlemen, – In this joint submission, made in January 2010, two individuals and two organizations have the honour to answer the questions that you have posed about the State’s grandiose policy of attempting to intervene in the evolution of the complex, non-linear object that is the terrestrial climate. Our advice to you is that the policies you advocate would be unbearably costly, damaging and futile. You will not succeed where Canute failed.

• Do changing weather patterns affect you or your organization?

No. After 300 years’ largely natural warming, it is unsurprising that recent years have been warmer than average. In 50 years the weather is as likely to be cooler than the present as it is to be warmer, according to an eminent Professor of Meteorology whom we have consulted. (more…)