Environment
Trudeau gov’t admits goal to plant 2 billion trees in 10 years is unrealistic, way behind schedule
From LifeSiteNews
According to a memo from the Department of Natural Resources, the plan was a marketing ploy designed to inspire commitment and participation, but only about a fifth of the trees will be in the ground by 2031.
A 2019 environmentally ideologically charged scheme by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to plant two “billion trees” in a 10-year span was a scheme, according to a memo.
As noted by Blacklock’s Reporter, the memo from Canada’s Department of Natural Resources admitted that the Trudeau cabinet’s plan from 2019 for “two billion trees” was nothing more than a marketing slogan.
The memo, dated February 15, titled Two Billion Trees Questions and Answers, noted that the government “sought a name that would inspire that commitment and participation,” and that “so far that has worked.”
Trudeau’s tree planting scheme is well behind schedule, and the reality is by 2031 only about a fifth of two billion trees will even be planted.
The memo stated that as of today the government has “signed or is in the process of negotiating agreements that will result in 393 million trees planted by 2031.”
“We are actively engaged with all partners on how to move ahead,” it reads.
The department even acknowledged that when it comes to tree planting, it is an overly complex process, as trees cannot just be planted anywhere. “Different species and sizes of trees are required in different planting projects across the country,” it said.
While the government claims that it will plant two billion trees, there has been no timeline for when this will be achieved. The process of “planting a tree takes several years and includes steps like collecting seeds, increasing nursery capacity, growing seedlings until they are large enough to be planted in the ground and identifying available land.”
The Trudeau government had said that the tree-planting scheme would cost $3.16 billion overall. However, a 2021 report Financial Support for Planting Two Billion Trees noted that the actual costs are more than double, or $5.94 billion.
Many have pointed out that Canada already has 318 billion trees and the number is growing thanks to forestry companies who plant 600 million trees every year, which is well more than they cut down.
Environment
Climate Scientists declare the climate “emergency” is over
The Chamber of Deputies, Prague, Czechia
News release from the Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel)
Climate scientists have issued a shock declaration that the “climate emergency” is over.
A two-day climate conference in Prague, organized by the Czech division of the international Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel), which took place on November 12-13 in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic in Prague, “declares and affirms that the imagined and imaginary ‘climate emergency’ is at an end”.
The communiqué, drafted by the eminent scientists and researchers who spoke at the conference, makes clear that for several decades climate scientists have systematically exaggerated the influence of CO2 on global temperature.
The high-level scientific conference also declared:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which excludes participants and published papers disagreeing with its narrative, fails to comply with its own error-reporting protocol and draws conclusions some of which are dishonest, should be forthwith dismantled.”
The declaration supports the conclusions of the major Clintel report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC [presented to the Conference by Marcel Crok, Clintel’s co-founder].
Moreover, the scientists at the conference declared that even if all nations moved straight to net zero emissions, by the 2050 target date the world would be only about 0.1 C cooler than with no emissions reduction.
So far, the attempts to mitigate climate change by international agreements such as the Paris Agreement have made no difference to our influence on climate, since nations such as Russia and China, India and Pakistan continue greatly to expand their combustion of coal, oil and gas.
The cost of achieving that 0.1 C reduction in global warming would be $2 quadrillion, equivalent to 20 years’ worldwide gross domestic product.
Finally, the conference “calls upon the entire scientific community to cease and desist from its persecution of scientists and researchers who disagree with the current official narrative on climate change and instead to encourage once again the long and noble tradition of free, open and uncensored scientific research, investigation, publication and discussion”.
The full text of the communiqué follows:
The International Scientific Conference of the Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel), in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic in Prague assembled on the Twelfth and Thirteenth Days of November 2024, has resolved and now declares as follows, that is to say –
- The modest increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age has been net-beneficial to humanity.
- Foreseeable future increases in greenhouse gases in the air will probably also prove net-beneficial.
- The rate and amplitude of global warming have been and will continue to be appreciably less than climate scientists have long predicted.
- The Sun, and not greenhouse gases, has contributed and will continue to contribute the overwhelming majority of global temperature.
- Geological evidence compellingly suggests that the rate and amplitude of global warming during the industrial era are neither unprecedented nor unusual.
- Climate models are inherently incapable of telling us anything about how much global warming there will be or about whether or to what extent the warming has a natural or anthropogenic cause.
- Global warming will likely continue to be slow, small, harmless and net-beneficial.
- There is broad agreement among the scientific community that extreme weather events have not increased in frequency, intensity or duration and are in future unlikely to do so.
- Though global population has increased fourfold over the past century, annually averaged deaths attributable to any climate-related or weather-related event have declined by 99%.
- Global climate-related financial losses, expressed as a percentage of global annual gross domestic product, have declined and continue to decline notwithstanding the increase in built infrastructure in harm’s way.
- Despite trillions of dollars spent chiefly in Western countries on emissions abatement, global temperature has continued to rise since 1990.
- Even if all nations, rather than chiefly western nations, were to move directly and together from the current trajectory to net zero emissions by the official target year of 2050, the global warming prevented by that year would be no more than 0.05 to 0.1 Celsius.
- If the Czech Republic, the host of this conference, were to move directly to net zero emissions by 2050, it would prevent only 1/4000 of a degree of warming by that target date.
- Based pro rata on the estimate by the UK national grid authority that preparing the grid for net zero would cost $3.8 trillion (the only such estimate that is properly-costed), and on the fact that the grid accounts for 25% of UK emissions, and that UK emissions account for 0.8% of global emissions, the global cost of attaining net zero would approach $2 quadrillion, equivalent to 20 years’ global annual GDP.
- On any grid where the installed nameplate capacity of wind and solar power exceeds the mean demand on that grid, adding any further wind or solar power will barely reduce grid CO2 emissions but will greatly increase the cost of electricity and yet will reduce the revenues earned by both new and existing wind and solar generators.
- The resources of techno-metals required to achieve global net zero emissions are entirely insufficient even for one 15-year generation of net zero infrastructure, so that net zero is in practice unattainable.
- Since wind and solar power are costly, intermittent and more environmentally destructive per TWh generated than any other energy source, governments should cease to subsidize or to prioritize them, and should instead expand coal, gas and, above, all nuclear generation.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which excludes participants and published papers disagreeing with its narrative, fails to comply with its own error-reporting protocol and draws conclusions some of which are dishonest, should be forthwith dismantled.
Therefore, this conference hereby declares and affirms that the imagined and imaginary “climate emergency” is at an end.
This conference calls upon the entire scientific community to cease and desist from its persecution of scientists and researchers who disagree with the current official narrative on climate change and instead to encourage once again the long and noble tradition of free, open and uncensored scientific research, investigation, publication and discussion.
Given under our signs manual this Thirteenth Day of November in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-Four.
Pavel Kalenda, Czech Republic [Conference Chairman]
Guus Berkhout, The Netherlands [Co-founder, Clintel]
Marcel Crok, The Netherlands [Co-founder, Clintel]
Lord Monckton, United Kingdom
Valentina Zharkova, United Kingdom
Milan Šálek, Czech Republic
Václav Procházka, Czech Republic
Gregory Wrightstone, United States (see below)
Jan Pokorný, Czech Republic
Szarka László, Hungary
James Croll, United Kingdom
Tomas Furst, Czech Republic
Gerald Ratzer, Canada
Douglas Pollock, Chile
Henri Masson, Belgium
Miroslav Žáček, Czech Republic
Jan-Erik Solheim, Norway
Video below from interview with Gregory Wrightstone.
Better to turn around halfway, than to get lost completely
Not climate change but climate policy is the main threat for the prosperity of western societies at this moment. The Clintel Foundation has stated, with a global network of 2000 scientists and experts, that there is no climate emergency. Western leaders, however, have all voted in favour of Net Zero targets for 2050, which will have a disastrous effect on our economy and therefore our prosperity. Meanwhile, the UN is increasing its effort to fight ‘disinformation’, which in practice means less open debate and more censoring of alternative views.
Climate policies are a threat for entrepreneurs and it enters deeper and deeper into the private life of citizens. Wind turbines of close to 300 meters in height industrialise our countrysides, harming the environment,, biodiversity and public health. House owners are forced to replace their gas heaters by costly heat pumps, leading to rising energy bills. More and more cities reduce speed limits to 30 kms per hour.
There is no support base among the population for all these costly measures but our political leaders so far ignore these objections. Sooner or later the tide will turn, because these policies are unfeasible and unaffordable. Clintel wants to speed up this process by making both citizens and political leaders aware of all the pitfalls. Clintel receives no funding from the government nor from the Postcode Lottery or the industry. We therefore ask citizens and small businesses to support us in our mission.
Your support will be used to:
* Explain in all details there is no climate emergency. No one should be afraid of climate change. We use our websites and social media channels to spread this information and also give interviews in the media.
* Analyse and criticize IPCC reports. We check them for alarmism and one-sidedness. In 2023 we published the book The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC. We confront the IPCC with our results and will force them to respond to our criticism.
* Raise awareness for the negative side-effects of the current climate policies, both in terms of cost and impact on humans and the environment.
* Intervene in high profile climate court cases such as the one between Friends of the Earth and Shell in The Netherlands. Climate policy should be discussed in Parliaments, not in the courts.
If you share our views, please consider to support us through a (monthly) donation or by becoming Friend of Clintel.
Business
Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds
News release from Oxfam International
Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance —nearly 40 percent of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years— is unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping practices, reveals a new Oxfam report.
An Oxfam audit of the World Bank’s 2017-2023 climate finance portfolio found that between $24 billion and $41 billion in climate finance went unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed.
There is no clear public record showing where this money went or how it was used, which makes any assessment of its impacts impossible. It also remains unclear whether these funds were even spent on climate-related initiatives intended to help low- and middle-income countries protect people from the impacts of the climate crisis and invest in clean energy.
“The Bank is quick to brag about its climate finance billions —but these numbers are based on what it plans to spend, not on what it actually spends once a project gets rolling,” said Kate Donald, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington D.C. Office. “This is like asking your doctor to assess your diet only by looking at your grocery list, without ever checking what actually ends up in your fridge.”
The Bank is the largest multilateral provider of climate finance, accounting for 52 percent of the total flow from all multilateral development banks combined.
The issue of climate finance will take center stage at this year’s COP in Azerbaijan, where countries are set to negotiate a new global climate finance goal, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). Climate activists are demanding the Global North provide at least $5 trillion a year in public finance to the Global South “as a down payment towards their climate debt” to the countries, people and communities of the Global South who are the least responsible for climate breakdown but are the most affected. Oxfam warns that the lack of traceable spending could undermine trust in global climate finance efforts at this critical juncture.
“Climate finance is scarce, and yes, we know it’s hard to deliver. But not tracking how or where the money actually gets spent? That’s not just some bureaucratic oversight —it’s a fundamental breach of trust that risks derailing the progress we need to make at COP this year. The Bank needs to act like our future depends on tackling the climate crisis, because it does,” said Donald.
Oxfam’s investigation revealed that obtaining even basic information on how the World Bank is using climate finance was painstaking and difficult.
“We had to sift through layers of complex and incomplete reports, and even then, the data was full of gaps and inconsistencies. The fact that this information is so hard to access and understand is alarming —it shouldn’t take a team of professional researchers to figure out how billions of dollars meant for climate action are being spent. This should be transparent and accessible to everyone, most importantly communities who are meant to benefit from climate finance,” said Donald.
Notes to editors
Download Oxfam’s new report “Climate Finance Unchecked.”
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