Eco-lefties often criticise the big reductions in CO2 emissions as being imaginary, as they are ‘offshored’ through importing carbon-intensive goods rather than producing them here. However, new data shows that view to be wildly out of date…
Research from the Global Carbon Project shows that whilst the ‘offshoring emissions’ claim was true under the last Labour Government, since 2010 consumption-based CO2 has fallen by double digits as well. Eco-socialist attack lines are only undermining their preferred party…
Hat-tip: Hannah Ritchie
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas flew in business class to Washington yesterday on a gasoline guzzling, CO2 spurting aeroplane which dumped almost a tonne of carbon into the atmosphere. A spokesman for Lucas confirmed to Guido that she flew on British Airways and said:
“Caroline is in Washington DC on a work visit with the Environmental Audit Committee. Travel was arranged by the [Environmental Audit] Committee.”
A popular carbon footprint calculator states an average flight from London to Washington pumps out 0.92 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent – equivalent to 4 months average C02 emissions by a household. In 2009 Lucas compared holidaymakers flying to Spain to thugs stabbing people in the street:
“When asked if flying to Spain was as bad as knifing a person in the street, Ms Lucas said: ‘Yes – because they are dying from climate change.’”
Killer!
The National Audit Office has ripped into the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for blowing £168 million on two carbon capture technology competitions which the Treasury deemed to be too expensive if there was to be any chance of getting plants built in the UK in the coming years.
A Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy spokesman said: “We haven’t closed the door to CCS technology in the UK, but decisions had to be taken to control government spending and protect consumer bills. This is why the government ended the funding for the CCS competition, and ensured taxpayers were protected from significant costs when the competition closed.” Translation “the Treasury didn’t want to burn any more taxpayers’ money”.
This is the department which is going to determine Mrs May’s interventionist industrial strategy – so expect the same civil servants to blow hundreds of millions more on the “white heat of technology” that the private sector won’t touch. Big business is rubbing its hands with glee…
Carbon dioxide emissions from industrial society have driven a huge growth in trees and other plants across planet earth. Gaia is greening!
A peer reviewed study by a team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries, published in Nature, says that if the extra green leaves prompted by rising CO2 levels were laid in a carpet, it would cover the continent of North America.
Gaia has long argued that extra CO2 benefits plants and trees. Data from NASA satellites over the past 33 years shows significant greening of between 25% and 50% of the Earth’s vegetated land, which in turn is slowing the pace of climate change as the plants are drawing CO2 from the atmosphere. Gaia is healing!
Private jet-setting Leonardo DiCaprio has finally won an Oscar, and used his speech to enlighten us once again about the perils of global warming:
“Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship with the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the Southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now… and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.”
Leo’s call for collective action must have been ignored by the makers of The Revenant. Shot 93% on location in Montana, Canada, and Argentina, the film required 438 members of its cast, crew, and production team to travel with them. An economy return flight from LAX to Edmonton, Alberta, leaves a carbon footprint of about 0.35 tonnes. When multiplied by the 438 on-set staff this equals 153 tonnes.
The carbon footprint for the Argentina leg comes in at a whopping 1.44 tonnes per return journey. Overall Guido’s stats bods estimate the Revenant’s total carbon footprint would be approximately 469.6 tonnes, or 426,000 kilograms. Oh, and the director also ordered an aerial bombardment of Canada’s Fortress Mountain to create an avalanche for one scene. Very environmentally friendly…
The Global Warming Policy Foundation have published a report by IPCC delegate Dr Indur Goklany today calling for a “reassessment” of carbon dioxide. It turns out CO2 is delicious plant food that is reducing world hunger…
“Carbon dioxide fertilises plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15%. This has not only been good for humankind but for the natural world too, because an acre of land that is not used for crops is an acre of land that is left for nature.”
You can read the good news here…
