Taylor Climate, Covid and Conspiracy

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-912992-78-2
Verlag: Clairview Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 242 Seiten

In recent years, growing national and international networks are challenging the two dominant 'emergency' narratives that relate to the Covid pandemic and Climate Change. It was the experience of Covid, and the co-ordinated global response that involved suppression of the virus's laboratory origins, fast-tracking of mRNA vaccines, lockdowns, and neglect of the most vulnerable - all of which contradicted scientific evidence and proven effective responses - that led to alarm over the consolidation of emergency powers within groups of unelected bureaucrats. Whilst this kind of subterfuge has characterized the climate issue for decades, the Covid-led awakening brought many to question the origins and reality of the 'climate emergency'. Peter Taylor - an independent advisor, consultant and scientific expert on environmental issues - has long been asked for updates on his ground-breaking book, Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory (2009). Here he responds with a series of challenging and revealing essays. His treatment is based on published and peer-reviewed science as well as first-hand research in the field - visiting research labs and asking direct questions. His startling conclusions reveal that the science is far from 'settled'. Perhaps worse, discussion is no longer possible - the branding of critics as 'deniers' has become commonplace. But now the fight-back has begun, and this book provides scientific ammunition for anyone who cares about societal freedoms.

PETER TAYLOR has two Oxford degrees but left academia in 1978 and - 'blessed with companions of a similar mind' - set up operations to clean the oceans and atmosphere. His organization - the Oxford-based Political Ecology Research Group (1976-1992) worked for citizens' initiatives against dangerous developments - some were stopped, like the Plutonium Economy, the dumping of nuclear waste at sea and Acid Rain. Other toxic policies were transformed through the instigation of Clean Production Strategies. He became an analyst of environmental science, and as an activist got to know the nodal points of influence of what he called 'a long game through many decades'. He is a strong believer in the power of small groups of committed people and is a long-standing member of the California-based Environmental Studies Institute, a founding member of Cambrian Wildwood, a founding member and Associate of the Wildland Research Institute at Leeds University, and founding member of the Institute for Life-based Architecture in Germany. He has children and grandchildren - they are his 'skin in the game' - and is the author of Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory, numerous scientific papers on pollution, several books on conservation including Beyond Conservation and The Spirit of Rewilding, and an autobiography, Shiva's Rainbow.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Taylor, Peter

Leseproben

Introduction

It is now some 15 years, as I write, since my book Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory was published. I observe an overall trend in the dominant narrative of human-induced warming, with the focus having shifted to ‘extreme’ weather and ‘record’ temperatures. This focus has drifted far from the science base. Certainly, we are experiencing ‘record’ daily temperatures—but the ‘record’ referred to is the last 150 years of instrumental readings. These temperatures are far from unprecedented considering warmer peaks in a past millennial cycle that has been consistent for thousands of years (as determined by proxies for temperature such as the ice-core record, tree-rings and constituents of ocean sediments). The weather does appear chaotic—but this is due to changes in the Jetstream that alter wind patterns and to be expected toward the peak of the cycle.

Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 6th report finds no long-term trends in droughts, wildfires and floods. The current alarm at ‘unprecedented’ changes is almost entirely a ‘media’ creation behind which powerful well-funded ‘coalitions’ of interest groups operate.

There is, however, strong evidence that the world is in a major ‘warm’ period (see Chill Revisited, 1.1). Temperatures of land and ocean have been rising since 1850, along with retreating glaciers and rising sea levels. However, the proxy records do not support any statement that current temperatures and their rates of change, nor the rate of sea-level rise, loss of ice and consequent movements of flora and fauna, are unprecedented—as often maintained by the mainstream media, and sadly abetted by some scientific papers upon which there is no consensus.

Proxies are used for past temperature patterns in the pre-instrumental record but they are inexact and caution is needed when they are compared to modern satellite-aided global coverage by advanced instruments. It is possible that current northern hemisphere temperatures are now higher than in the previous warm period about one thousand years ago (The Medieval Warm Period) when the Vikings colonised Greenland, but this is by no means an established fact. Whereas we have global coverage of land and ocean temperatures, both surface and atmospheric, from satellites as well as a network of surface stations, the 1,000-year records rely upon ‘proxies’ in the ice cores, ocean sediments and tree-rings, all of which are localised.

In the case of the Arctic, I reported in Chill that many station records up to the year 2000, only just matched the record of the 1940s—an Arctic Oscillation (a regular cycle) was involved (see 2.1, Fig.1). Although some Arctic station temperatures peaked later, the global average showed no trend for the next 15 years—known as the ‘hiatus’ or ‘pause’ in surface temperatures. As I predicted in some of the articles—temperature would likely drop unless there was a major El Niño. We had two—one in 2016, and one in 2023/24, both riding on top of the longer cycles.

The media and many scientists claimed ‘global warming’ had resumed—but we need to wait for the expected post-Niño drop, and it is disingenuous of scientists to include these Niño peaks as indicative of accuracy in their modelling, or continuation of a late 20th-century trend.

The pattern is clear—several decadal, centennial and millennial cycles were in their rising phase in the period 1900~2000 at the same time as carbon emissions began in earnest—but these cycles are neither represented nor predicted in the models that underlie the UN’s supposed consensus.

Since Chill (2009), there has been growing interest from the scientific community in my analysis of climate-change cycles. This is the fruit of 12 years of collaborative work with Professor Jackson Davis at the Environmental Studies Institute in California, in the 1980s. Jackson and I worked for 15 years on ocean-pollution issues (1980~1995) when he was an advisor to Pacific Island States at UN conventions. I acted as advocate and chief scientific advisor to Greenpeace International, also at the UN conventions (see Appendix 6). Working closely with a coalition of like-minded parties we successfully curtailed the ocean dumping of toxic and nuclear waste, incineration at sea of dangerous chemicals, and discharges from land-based sources of toxic and radioactive waste streams. This work led to the World Maritime Organisation, which hosted the UN conventions and provided the secretariat, to bring me in as consultant to revise the legal conventions and accommodate the newly drafted Precautionary Principle. I worked on the development of that Principle, engaging a research assistant—Tim Jackson, now Professor of Sustainable Development at Surrey University (see the link in Appendix 6).

It is seldom remarked upon by the media, or indeed by any of the modern-day environmental groups so keen to follow the UN lead on science, that the UN has a long history of being on the wrong side—in particular, a history of its agencies being captured by both commercial and scientific ‘interests’. At one time, the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) supported the x-raying of pregnant women despite mounting evidence of harm. This stance was shared by all the major science academies worldwide—with the exception of the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Biological Effects of Radiation, under Professor Edward Radford, with whom I also worked.

The fact is, a consensus of world scientists has been wrong in the past and gender issues were involved as pregnant women were ignored as a potentially vulnerable subgroup, despite many warnings. Gender issues may also be involved in the modelling of climate where cycles, irregular periods and spiral dynamics, all features of the paleo-climate data records, are missing from the computer models (see Appendix 3). The models are built by male-mind physicists and mathematicians who demand ‘exactness’ in cycles.

Likewise, the UN’s marine-science agency—the Group of Scientific Experts on Marine Pollution (GESAMP)—defended ‘dilute and disperse’ strategies for toxic-waste disposal despite mounting evidence of harm to marine life and human food chains. In each case, established policies were turned around by concerted, independent ‘dissident’ scientists having to fight the vested interests not only of industry but also regulators and laboratories specialising in monitoring and surveillance. One key element of our work was the analysis of computer models that created a virtual reality of oceans. Our opponents had a greater belief in their models than in mounting real-world data (see Appendix 6).

In those days, such initiatives were strongly supported by environmental campaigners and the media. Things have changed mightily. Now, environmental campaigners, the media and a large number of collaborators in science have co-created a UN-led ‘consensus’ to which all governments and their regulatory agencies have signed up. Further, dissident scientific analysis is ignored and marginalised, rather than welcomed as a necessary safeguard against ‘captured’ agencies. There is also a process of vilification of dissenters—often labelled ‘deniers’ or ‘sceptics’ supposedly all funded by fossil-fuel interests and established scientists are not immune to so labelling their critics.

This kind of behaviour was mirrored with ‘anti-vaxxer’ and ‘covidiot’ labels from the media and politicians at the outset of the Covid ‘emergency’—but in contrast to the climate emergency, dissident scientists gained a presence in alternative media, and in the USA, Congressional Hearings and subpoena of email traffic exposed the level of collusion between pharmaceutical (and broader financial) interests, scientists and government in a), a cover-up of the lab-origin of the virus; and b), the unscientific nature of the governmental response.

There is still much to unfold, for many people there is still a perceived ‘consensus’ among the world’s scientists that climate change is a global emergency demanding a radical restructuring of industrial society (see Net Zero Soul, 4.5). Critics are still labelled ‘deniers’ or presumed to be in the pay of ‘right-wing’ free-market forces, or Big Oil interests, and the de-platforming of speakers and personal vilification have been commonplace.

Recently, democratic institutions have awakened to this issue, with US Congressional Hearings (see Preface to Part 5) leading the way and the UK Parliament’s House of Commons beginning to question the narrative. Of particular note has been the uncovering of vested interests pervading the medical foundations, academic research institutes and scientific journals, such that regulatory agencies have been ‘captured’ and dissident views ignored or suppressed. In this, government health agencies as well as the UN’s World Health Organisation have been heavily implicated.

At the outset of the Covid epidemic, there were competent scientists arguing that evidence supported a laboratory escape of an engineered virus—in contrast to the favoured political and scientific narrative of a ‘zoonotic’ source (i.e. contamination of the food chain by a naturally occurring bat respiratory...