Have you had a call from a personal travel adviser yet? In some parts of the country, they are knocking on doors and offering tips on responsible travel. It is a government initiative, financed by the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, and its aim is to encourage more of us to leave the car at home when we shop, or go to work.

I don’t know about you, but any government official coming round to visit me to “encourage” me to leave my car at home when I go to work is going to get a few choice words about the state of the railways before being unceremoniously shown the door.

Isn’t this just typical of the whole approach to global warming though? Rather than actually deal with the state of the roads and rail, the Government’s solution is to send out officials to lecture us (you don’t really believe that “advice” line do you?) on how we can be more “sustainable”. Like government initiatives on tobacco, alcohol, and food, it will start with “advice” and “tips” before the inevitable calls come for legislation to help people make the right choices. Already, at this early stage you can see the way it will go, as the Daily Mail notes, the “advisers” are already coming back to check on whether their “advice” is being followed or not:

In Hereford, the 74,282 homes in the city will be visited twice, once for advisers to give information on public transport and cycling, and three months later to check whether the advice is being followed.

The article quotes the Transport Minister as claiming that the program of government officials knocking on your door in the evening to offer advice, followed by a check-up on you a couple of months later will “support authorities in delivering local economic growth while cutting carbon emissions from transport”. Again, isn’t this just a perfect example of global warming double-speak? The only possible way that this program delivers real economic growth is in the wages of those employed to go around giving advice.

Therefore, the real reason is cutting carbon emissions. Let’s leave aside the pointlessness of this for one moment. This scheme is costing hundreds of millions of pounds, would that money not be better spent on new train carriages then? Or improved public transport? Or even (horrors!) improving road junctions to speed up the flow of traffic.

Of course it would be. But here’s the thing, I believe, to remember: this scheme is setting a precedent. Because of their commitments on reducing carbon emissions, the government has a right to ask you about your way of living and “advise” you on how you could live in a more sustainable way. As I say, this will inevitably follow other government initiatives on health and lifestyle – they will start by protesting its only advice and pooh-poohing any suggestion of coercion. Then, when the concept is generally accepted, think-tanks and supposedly grass-roots groups (funded by the government, natch) will start calling for changes in the law to “help people make the right choice”.

Well, not quite. As German newspapers have revealed this week, the German government is diverting hundreds of millions of Euros raised from the carbon tax to fund the construction of new coal-fired power plants to supply desperately needed electricity now that nuclear is being phased out. As a website quoting the Berliner Zeitung reported:

The German government wants to encourage the construction of new coal and gas power plants with millions of euros from a fund for promoting clean energy and combating climate change.

Annual funding for the new plants could total more than €160 million per year between 2013 and 2014 alone, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Over the next decade, then, hundreds and hundreds of millions of euros raised from the carbon trading scheme will be used to help Germany build new coal fired power plants, which is particularly ironic as coal is one of the cheapest sources of power, and doesn’t actually require any subsidies. This utter farce is being justified on the grounds that this will help make the new coal plants more efficient, now that nuclear power is being phased out, following the Fukishima scare in Japan.

Even better, Der Spiegel reports that the planned switch-off of nuclear is already running into problems with many of the reactors already shut down will be needed this winter as freezing cold weather is again predicted to strike. As the report notes:

. . . amid concerns that supply shortages this winter could result in temporary blackouts, Germany’s Federal Network Agency on Tuesday indicated that one of the seven reactors shut down in the immediate wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan could be restarted this winter to fill the gap.

So, let’s put this all in perspective: a tax designed to discourage using coal to generate electricity is being used to fund new coal-fired power stations. The nuclear plants which could provide electricity have been closed down for no good reason, but in light of global warming’s increasingly Arctic winters they’ll need to be started up again. Is this making sense to anyone out there? Anyone at all?

Monbiot starts his latest Jeremiad by observing that there used to be a lot more fish in the sea, citing two impeccable scientific sources: himself and old people who remember how many more mackerel there used to be. Apparently, you used to be able to just walk along the beach with a bucket and the fish would just about leap into it for you. Ah, the good old days!

Finding that there is no scientific explanation – or even data – on why things are no longer what they used to be in the world of mackerel, our hero jumps into a kayak and paddles three miles (!) out to sea. He doesn’t see any mackerel, but does spot something else. “Unimaginable numbers” of monster jellyfish!

But I could also see something else. Jellyfish. Unimaginable numbers of them. Not the transparent cocktail umbrellas I was used to, but solid, white rubbery creatures the size of footballs. They roiled in the surface or loomed, vast and pale, in the depths. There was scarcely a cubic metre of water without one.

Yikes! Could the arrival of these monster jellyfish spell a doom of Lovecraftian proportions and strangeness? Monbiot believes it could well do. This could be the end of vertebrate ecology itself we are witnessing:

Is this the moment? Have I just witnessed the beginning of the end of vertebrate ecology here? If so, the shift might not be confined to Cardigan Bay. In a perfect conjunction of two of my recent interests, last week a monstrous swarm of jellyfish succeeded where Greenpeace has failed, and shut down both reactors at the Torness nuclear power station in Scotland.

Damm those monster jellyfish! But why now? What is causing this terrifying invasion? Could it possibly be down to C02 and global warming? Why yes it could be:

A combination of overfishing and ocean acidification (caused by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) has created the perfect conditions for this shift from a system dominated by fish to a system dominated by jellyfish.

If this is indeed what we’re seeing, the end of vertebrate ecology is a direct result of the end of vertebrate politics: the utter spinelessness of the people charged with protecting the life of the seas.

The jellyfish are coming, thanks to C02, and they’re shutting down the power stations as they move inexorably to a “system dominated by jellyfish”. This, surely, is proof of the unprecedented effects of global warming? We’ve never had jellyfish breeding in such numbers as to shut down power stations before, after all. Have we?

Well, of course, it’s nothing new – this has all happened before. Like in the Phillipines in 1999, where an “enormous concentration” of jellyfish was blamed for crippling the new power station. In Miami in 1984, where a “huge crowd of jellyfish” shut down the nuclear reactor at the St Lucie power station and again in 1993. In Tampa Bay in 1971, where massive “swarms” of jellyfish shut down the power plant.  In Tokyo in 1972, where they closed a power plant, in the Persian gulf in 1958 where they shut down an oil refinery, in the North Atlantic in 1924, when “myriads” of jellyfish “have begun to invade important fishing grounds, where they are devouring the eggs of a valuable food fish” (could that be mackerel, perhaps?). The list goes on and on and on.

As a zoologist, you would have thought Monbiot would be unperturbed by the fact that certain species go through population boom/bust cycles. Whilst there has (of course) been speculation about a link between global warming and jellyfish numbers, marine biologists have rejected this idea, noting that such population surges are perfectly normal and “have been going on for hundreds of years”. But I guess “global warming jellyfish apocalypse” was just too good a theme to let it go to waste.

Having backtracked on his “2012 Meat Apocalypse” prediction, Monbiot’s latest is even better – the end of vertebrate life and the imposition of “a system dominated by jellyfish” who apparently are starting by shutting down power stations. Run for the hills!

 Nurse’s undergraduate socialist spirit is still alive and well: he wouldn’t be against scientists getting involved in activism. “We are citizens, and citizens should be involved in politics, and I think those that have a strong view should be involved in party politics,” he says. “I’m happy to see fellows of the Royal Society politically engaged, if that’s what they see as right.”

We can see what kind of shape this activism will be taking already. As The Guardian reports, activist climate scientists are “getting angry” and recording videos calling doubters of global warming “motherf**kers” and “bitches”. This was welcomed by New Scientist and Guardian writer, Michael Brooks, as a very good thing:

While most scientists have learned keep their heads down, a few are beginning to argue that what a scientist knows must inform his or her personal opinions and values. That’s why a group of young Australian climate scientists released an expletive-filled music video earlier this year. It was an angry rap aimed at those who question climate science while holding no qualifications in the field. They used the rather unscientific word “motherfucker” and poured scorn on “bitches” opposing a carbon tax.

Hearteningly, there may be more of this to come. Paul Nurse, the new president of the Royal Society, has said he would be happy to see scientists getting fully engaged with politics and involved with activism.

The farce of the great global warming scare will, sadly, continue for some time to come. What is now very clear for all to see, though, is that now it is no longer a question of disinterested scientists interpreting the data, but outright activism with a clearly political agenda. It is now out in the open.

The steel magnate and Britain’s richest citizen, Lakshmi Mittal, has been the recipient of billions in carbon credits. Much of this came from the shutting down of European steel manufacturing and relocating production in lower wage countries like India.

Now it emerges that Mittal is planning a “mega-mine” within the Arctic circle to supply iron ore to his steel plants around the world:

Britain’s richest man is planning a giant new opencast mine 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle in a bid to extract a potential $23bn (£14bn) worth of iron ore.

The “mega-mine” – which includes a 150km railway line and two new ports – is believed to be the largest mineral extraction project in the Arctic and highlights the huge commercial potential of the far north as global warming makes industrial development in the region easier.

So, in the name of tackling global warming, European taxpayers have paid literally billions whilst losing jobs and tax revenue, production has moved to a lower wage country with an awful lot of the product being shipped back to where it was made, and now the the recipient of this money is strip-mining the Arctic to get at the ore there and there’s nothing climate campaigners in the West can do about it, as the factories are all in India and other countries which have made it quite clear they have no intention of imposing any restrictions on their manufacturing base.

Does this make any sense to anyone? Anyone at all?

WASHINGTON – A group of scientists is offering a sober weather forecast for the year 2020: the planet’s average temperature hitting a 10,000 year high, and the world’s oceans surging an average of 83 feet inland.

The Hour, June 13th 1988. 

Actually, the prediction that the sea would soon be swallowing up a massive 83 feet of shoreline around the world came not from the WMO, but was an extrapolation of its findings by that sober and well-respected scientist and environmental campaigner, Michael Oppenheimer. “Things are going to change too fast” Oppenheimer is reported to have said, in a comment typical of the cautious, non-hysterical manner he is widely famed for.

Michael Oppenheimer is currently a lead author with the IPCC. It is not known whether he still expects the world to lose 83 feet of coast within the next nine years or not.

As Masters cautioned us in 2006, we should expect more “brown winters” characterised by a lack of snow. As he mournfully told his young nephew, snow is now pretty much a thing of the past, thanks to global warming:

Will it stay warm?
When my nephew Cody eagerly unwrapped his new snow board this Christmas and asked me when he might get a chance to use it, I told him, “What are you thinking? This is Michigan in the 21st century! There’s not going to be any more snow.” I exaggerate slightly, but I don’t recommend that anyone invest in the winter sports equipment industry this year. The latest 2-week forecast from the GFS model shows no end in sight for the warm conditions in North America. I’m guessing that our next outbreak of cold Arctic air in the U.S. won’t come until mid-January. According to theInternational Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University (IRI), January through March should be warmer than average across virtually the entire globe.

This lack of snow, Masters lectured us, could be attributed to the melting of the Arctic ice, which was leading to warmer winters and preventing snow from falling:

All this exposed water provides a huge source of heat and moisture in the Arctic that retards the formation of the usual cold air masses over the adjacent regions of Canada and Siberia. It’s impossible to know how much of an effect this has without doing some detailed model studies, but I think the record low sea ice in the Arctic is probably a significant contributor to this winter’s record warmth.

All quite clear, and explained with copious references to various graphs, data, and citations. Global warming means melting Arctic ice, means warmer winters and less snow. The science is settled.

Fast forward to 2011, and the series of record-breaking freezing winters and snowfalls across much of the world. Reporting on what he termed “snowmaggedon” Masters breathlessly detailed some of the freezing winter conditions the world had been experiencing:

A series of remarkable snow storms pounded the Eastern U.S., with the “Snowmageddon” blizzard dumping more than two feet of snow on Baltimore and Philadelphia. Western Europe also experienced unusually cold and snowy conditions, with the UK recording its 8th coldest January. A highly extreme negative phase of the NAO and AO returned again during November 2010, and lasted into January 2011. Exceptionally cold and snowy conditions hit much of Western Europe and the Eastern U.S. again in the winter of 2010 – 2011. During these two extreme winters, New York City recorded three of its top-ten snowstorms since 1869, and Philadelphia recorded four of its top-ten snowstorms since 1884. During December 2010, the extreme Arctic circulation over Greenland created the strongest ridge of high pressure ever recorded at middle levels of the atmosphere, anywhere on the globe (since accurate records began in 1948.)

What possible explanation could there be for these freezing conditions and record snowfall? Why, global warming of course. Master’s tentative explanation for all of this was that melting Arctic ice was affecting atmospheric circulation:

New research suggests that major losses of Arctic sea ice could cause the Arctic circulation to behave so strangely, but this work is still speculative.

Of course it is. Makes perfect sense when you subscribe to the notion of man-made global warming. It’s only skeptics that can’t see the logic in this. Global warming means no more snow, and lots more snow. As Orwell put it:

Case in point: cyclones. In 2009 Grist ran a piece telling us why global warming would mean more cyclones. Citing “our favorite meteorologist and hurricane blogger,” Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, it warned:

More intense storms will be seen earlier and later in the season. The 2005 hurricane season was the most striking example of that trend, with Emily “the earliest-forming Category 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic,” in July, and Zeta, the longest-lived tropical cyclone to form in December and cross over into the next year, where it became the longest-lived January tropical cyclone.

Quite unequivocally, the article stated that global warming would lead to more cyclones, and we could expect to see this trend continue, as Jeff Masters and others had forecast.

Fast forward to 2011 and The Guardian, which ran a picture article citing Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground which declared 2010 “the year of global weirding”. The effects of global warming could be seen in the strange weather phenomena illustrated in the photographs, among which was a satellite picture of a cyclone with the caption:

Each year, the globe has about 92 cyclones – called hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, typhoons in the western Pacific and tropical cyclones in the southern hemisphere. In 2010, we had just 68

That’s right, the process of “global weirding” could be seen in the dramatic fall in the number of cyclones. Global warming, you see, leads to more cyclones. And fewer cyclones. It depends on what’s happening at the time. All part of “global weirding”.

Almost forty years after it was published, The Limits to Growth remains a favourite with the “heading for a catastrophe” crowd. Those of an optimistic nature, who believe in humanity’s ingenuity to adapt and survive, are mocked and derided by the catastrophists who point to this study as “proof” that the modern world is heading for collapse. Take The Guardian of May 2011 -

Where a decade ago there was still optimism that things could be turned around on issues like climate change, deforestation and over-fishing, people are now openly saying that it is too late. Humankind will have to experience a profound crisis before it understands that the “doom and gloom” and “limits to growth” fraternity were right after all.

Limits to Growth, according to these people, proves that humanity is heading for a crisis. The computer models prove it. It may not have happened yet, but it will happen.

Except Limits to Growth was never even intended to prove anything of the sort. For the truth about the study, let’s turn to the co-founder and president of the Club of Rome that commissioned it, Alexander King.

In his memoirs, Let the Cat Turn Around: One Man’s Traverse of the Twentieth Century (London: CPTM, 2006), King discusses the genesis, reception, and history of the Limits to Growth study. He observes that – as we are always told by radicals who refer to it – that under various “runs” of the computer models there is always an overshoot and collapse, at latest by the middle of this century. But, in this book which was never destined to be read by many outside the academic community, King points out something crucial regarding this gloomy prognosis:

It has to be remembered however that this is a ‘passive’ model  in that it assumes no important economic, social, technological, or political changes will have taken place during the target years to sufficiently alter the interactions. Important changes that cannot be foreseen will, of course, take place (p. 335).

In other words, it merely extrapolated the current conditions and assumed only growth without adaptation, change, or advancement of any kind. As King says, “it is in no way a prophesy of coming doom” but a warning of what might happen if there were absolutely no changes whatsoever (p. 336).

His recollections then get particularly interesting. King recalls that environmental groups were already pushing the “limits to growth” line in newspapers, television series, and magazine articles six months before the report was published and before the research had even been completed! (A tactic now only too familiar.)

King notes that Sicco Mansholt, a socialist politician, soon to become President of the EEC, sent an open letter to the then President focusing on the “Malthusian population-food relation” and demanding new Europe-wide policies that aimed for zero growth and centralised economic planning (p. 336). All perfectly in accord with the conclusions of the study, right? Wrong:

One thing we agreed was that the Club of Rome must not be linked with zero growth, but it was difficult to dismiss the publicity that was putting the club on the map. In April 1972 Aurelio [the first president and co-founder] and I sent a letter to the EC, distancing ourselves from the Mansholt letter. We argued that the limits to growth as now being discussed would never be reached (p. 336).

It doesn’t get much clearer than that really, does it? But wait, there’s even more!

King stresses that the study was not by the Club of Rome, but for the Club of Rome who commissioned it. And what did they think of their own study?

When the Club had the opportunity to discuss Limits it was clear that many of the members were unconvinced by its conclusions on matters that they had never before discussed. Indeed, I felt that a majority did not accept it. Limits had a distinctly neo-Malthusian flavour clearly unpalatable to those amongst us who were technological optimists and we all regretted that the work had paid insufficient attention to the great human and social issues (p. 338).

That’s right – even the Club that commissioned the study did not accept its findings, in particular its gloomy, Malthusian tone. King happily agrees that “criticism concerning lack of appreciation of technological change, the power of the market and the degree of aggregation were, of course, valid” (p.339).

But don’t expect to hear the truth about Limits to Growth anytime soon. The fictional version of it is so much simpler and more useful than the reality behind it.

Imagine that you are one of those lucky people who have been born into immense wealth and privilege. The son of a ruthless tycoon, you have been privately and very expensively educated. You have a very substantial  (200 million sterling) trust fund, meaning you need never worry about money, and you own (directly and indirectly) many properties around the world which you fly between as need or fancy takes you. Leading newspapers have criticized you for your non-domiciled status in the country you claim to represent. You are known for your “love of gambling and partying“.

Now imagine that as part of this gilded life you serve as a Tory MP for one of the wealthiest parts of London and are also on a committee of MPs asked to review crucial aid for the poorest in the world. The aid money goes to the World Bank to help fund power stations to supply energy to those without reliable electricity for their homes, hospitals and schools. You’d have to support such a noble cause wouldn’t you?

Not if you are Zac Goldsmith, former editor of The Ecologist, and a leading “Green” campaigner. If you’re Zac, you’d recommend cutting stopping that aid money until the World Bank agreed to stop funding new power stations.

As The Guardian reports, Goldsmith is one of the MPs who are recommending that the UK withdraw funding from the World Bank until it stops building those nasty power stations in poor countries where they don’t need an electricity grid, but rather investment in “ecological systems”:

Zac Goldsmith, one of the 16 MPs on the committee, said: “Britain needs to be much more robust in its dealings with the lending agencies like the World Bank, as it often funds projects that directly contradict this government’s stated goals.

“There is an unavoidable link between poverty and environmental degradation, and I hope less DfID money will be delegated to the giant lending agencies, and more will be used to repair ecological systems with a view to alleviating the worst forms of poverty.”

Goldsmith certainly doesn’t have a problem recharging his Prius, thanks to the energy supply in his own country, but feels its important to keep “exerting pressure” on poorer countries to stop building the sort of electricity network that can provide constant, reliable power. The political party Goldsmith is a member of have promised to open a new nuclear power station every 18 months, so no worries at home – he can even campaign against it, safe in the knowledge that his outrage will be ignored by his own party. There will be “no limit” on these new power stations in England’s green and pleasant land, so plug in that Prius and motor down to your 300 acre organic farm to enjoy the good life.

But not for the people in desperately poor countries who lack basic necessities like electricity. The recommendation of the committee Goldsmith sits on? No more funding for power stations, instead it must be channeled to NGOs and “grassroots” organizations:

The committee called for more money to be channelled through civil society, or grassroots groups, as opposed to governments. At present only £600,000, or 15% of its bilateral aid programme is spent this way

For their own good, of course. And what of the “ecological systems” which Goldsmith and other MPs want to see the World Bank invest in? Even the left-wing Guardian’s own environment editor describes them as “sheer madness” – which really tells you how unworkable the idea is. As the Guardian points out, the only people it will really help are the “civil society” and “grassroots” groups beloved of Goldsmith et al:

The World Bank’s flagship Biocarbon Fund project is billed as a triple win for more food production, cash for the poor and climate resilience. Really? The reality is that Africa’s first “soil carbon” project – which will involve 60,000 Kenyan farmers planting trees, manuring the land, and farming in “sustainable” ways to save around 600,000 tonnes of carbon over 20 years – also exhibits the sheer madness of the carbon markets.

The excellent US-based Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy (IATP) has now analysed the fine print and found (PDF) that the project expects to earn $2.5m from the carbon markets. But to set it up, to employ advisers and consultants and to monitor it will cost $1.05m. The 60,000 farmers will then share the remaining $1.4m. This sounds good, but works out at a lowly $23.83 each over the 20 years, or just a little more that $1 per year. Moreover, they will only earn this if they change the way they farm and record precisely what they plant, burn and put on the land. Given that the poverty line in Kenya is around $1 a day, the chance for Africans to earn a tiny amount a year – while Swedish and other advisers earn massive amounts – is likely to end in tears.