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German Railway Suffers Partial Blackout

German Railway Suffers Partial Blackout

Mar. 23 (EIRNS)–Early Wednesday morning (Mar 23) all rail freight traffic in Germany was brought to a standstill because of an ‘under supply’ of electricity according to a statement by German network operator DB Netz. The Deutsche Bahn had to pull the plug on rail freight in order not to interrupt the passenger network in the middle of the rush hour. The extra power was restored by the afternoon according to an article in railfreight.com.

No reason was given for the power shortage. Deutsche Bahn has its own energy provider, DB Energie which produces and purchases all the energy requirements for the railway. DB makes a big deal in its advertising that its high speed passenger ne​t​work runs on 100% green energy – whatever that means. The problem is DB Energie plans by 2038 to be totally green by phasing out all the other sources including, nuclear, coal and gas. The nearly 40% which now comes from non green sources is planned to be sourced from new wind​ ​farms in the North Sea, some of which have yet to be built, and from Norwegian hydro-power plants. The Deutsche Bahn consumes as much electricity as Berlin, a city of four million people.


IMF Meeting Gets Underway, Under the Gathering Clouds of Growing World Famine

IMF Meeting Gets Underway, Under the Gathering Clouds of Growing World Famine

April 20 (EIRNS) — IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned in her opening remarks at the IMF/World Bank spring meetings that began today in Washington, D.C., that the world is facing a “double crisis”: the pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine and related economic destruction. She stated that “rising food and fuel prices are straining the budgets of ordinary families to the breaking point,” and that this is particularly concerning in poor countries where there is a growing risk of a food crisis. She of course blamed Russia for most of the problem.

Georgieva also expressed concern as to what will happen as central banks tighten their monetary policies by ending QE and raising interest rates, and urged them to be “mindful of spillover risks to vulnerable emerging and developing economies.” Given their already high level of indebtedness, rising interest rates will place 60 percent of low-income countries at or near debt distress, she reported.

That is true enough. So, what does the IMF recommend be done? “To address debt, countries need domestic policies that can help bring their budgets back on track” – in other words, the neoliberal “structural reform” austerity policies that created the problem in the first place.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s approach is to throw oil on the fire. According to comments by a Treasury Department official on April 18, Yellen is going to tell her colleagues at the IMF meeting that they should help “ramp up the economic pain on Moscow… The secretary will also underscore our shared resolve to hold Russia accountable.” She’s also planning to boycott any meetings that the Russians attend.

While Yellen was bashing Russia, her Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo attacked China. “China has in the past — and we expect them to continue to follow — the sanctions regimes that have been introduced by us and the coalition” of sanctioning countries, Adeyemo said at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “China’s business with the rest of the world is greater than its business with Russia,” he threatened.


Climate Scientist Asserts ‘Climate Emergency’ Is All About Finance

Nicola Scafetta, an Italian scientist and world leader in climate models based on astronomic oscillations, has exposed climate policies as a pretext to build a financial business in an earlier interview with Italian media.  Speaking to the Italian daily Il Libero Quotidiano for Jan. 21, 2020, Scafetta said he suspects “that there is an effort to exploit climate fears to generate a catastrophism aimed at allowing a changed economic and social model in a direction promoted by big finance and multinationals. They created a demand to make money: They must have people accept costly and disadvantageous policies, which are profitable for some investors. Catastrophism is more for business rather than for the environment.”

Read the article in Italien.


Italian Scientists Praise Russian and Chinese Climate Models, Blast Coming IPCC Report

May 28 (EIRNS) — At the first “Climate Dialogues” webinar on May 26, organized by the Padua Association of Engineers and by Galileo magazine, Italian climate scientists have exposed the biased climate models used by the IPCC to justify a so-called “climate emergency” and have praised more balanced Russian and Chinese climate models. They have also warned against the new IPCC report, expected to be issued soon, which is based on questionable 2019 charts. There will be seven more webinars between now and October.

Prof. Nicola Scafetta, a world expert on climate models based on Sun activity, counterposed climate models based on CO2 to models based on astronomical oscillations. The former are used by the IPCC and are regularly refuted by real data. When applied to the past, they are not able to reproduce past temperatures. Astronomical oscillations (Sun, Earth and other planets) can explain climate cycles much better.

Whereas polls show that 97% of scientists agree that we are in a warming phase, only 26% of them are convinced that it is due to human activity to some extent. Therefore, the famous “consensus” reported by the media is fake news. Professor Scafetta does not exclude human participation in climate change, but it considers it secondary to astronomical causes.

The next IPCC report, coming soon, is based on a 2019 chart which is very problematic, Scafetta said, because it puts together a series of inconsistent data for the purpose of demonstrating their hypothesis. There is a 1,000-year cycle determined by solar activity, which IPCC simply ignores, which is unacceptable.

What is interesting, in his view, are the indices of climate sensitivity that measure climate variations when CO2 doubles. Here, Chinese and Russian models show much lower indices than the Western ones (in particular Canadian models.) The Chinese and Russian results are converging on real historical data, and they have a higher rate of forecasting actual temperatures.

Professor Scafetta was preceded by Massimo Coccato, chairman of the Padua Association of Engineers, Galileo editor Enzo Siviero and by Prof. Alberto Prestininzi, founder and chief editor of the Journal of Engineering Geology and Environment. Both Scafetta and Prestininzi are among the initiators of the 2019 “There Is No Climate Emergency” manifesto of 200 Italian scientists, which became an international group of over 500 scientists by October 2019. Since then, at least another 300 scientists have signed the manifesto.

Siviero, who moderated the event, announced the cycle of “climate dialogues,” which is open to all opinions based on scientific data. In order to be a good engineer you need to be a great humanist, Siviero said.

Professor Prestinizi regretted that supporters of man-made climate change won’t undertake a scientific debate with critics. The debate occurs in the media instead of within scientific forums, while hundreds of millions of people in the world, whose primary fuel source is coal, have no adequate access to electricity. He gave a short historical review of climate hysteria, highlighting the example of the “hockey stick” curve, which was ruled to be false even by a court. In 1977, the IPCC forecast a sea level increase of 6 meters by 2030. Eventually, they revised their forecast and the most recent ones say the increase will be between a half and 1 meter.


Mark Carney: Africa Will Get Rich with Carbon Offsets by Rejecting Development

Mark Carney: Africa Will Get Rich with Carbon Offsets by Rejecting Development

May 18, 2021 (EIRNS)–Speaking at “The Road to COP26: Opportunities, Challenges and the African Transition to Net-Zero” on April 22, Mark Carney spelled out his plan for mass death in Africa and the occupation of Africa by Green police — the modern version of colonial occupiers.

From Carney’s answers to a question about Africa getting funds from “carbon offsets,” he said that the “carbon offset market” will be set up by the end of the year. Africa will get rich, he said, by providing these offsets to western companies who want to buy “offsets” for their carbon emissions. Carney said he was impressed by the “incredible service that is provided by the existing national capital in Africa, and the opportunity from emissions reduction, and to grow that through reforestation.”

What does the madman mean? By not developing its resources, and by not cutting down any trees — in fact, reforesting existing agricultural lands — Africa will be paid huge sums in “carbon offsets.” So, by not developing, they will get money for “development,” remaining forever without modern infrastructure, industry, or agriculture.

Carney: “90% of demand from carbon offsets will come from advanced economies, and 90% of supply will come from the developing economies, including Africa. This is a market which could scale rapidly to $100 billion per annum.”

Of course, the “advanced economies” could not trust the ‘wogs’ to live up to their promises, so a new kind of colonial overlords will be required. Says Carney: “Of course, there must be integrity around the offsets, and a degree of permanence of these offsets, with verification and monitoring of that permanence. This is a private market, so the offsets will be bought by private companies, like Microsoft. They are not going to make these commitments unless they know that in Rwanda or other places in Africa these offsets are permanent.”

Who, one may ask, will have the responsibility to “verify and monitor” that no African country breaks it’s business-contract to not develop its resources or clear forests to build factories, farms, or new cities? The Green colonial masters will be more than willing to perform that important task.


“Depriving the Poor of Energy Is Bad Climate Policy,” China Daily Op-Ed Warns

“Depriving the Poor of Energy Is Bad Climate Policy,” China Daily Warns in Lomborg Op-Ed

April 20, 2021 (EIRNS) – The President of the Copenhagen Consensus, Bjorn Lomborg, penned an op-ed published by China Daily yesterday, which contains a strong argument along the lines we have been hearing recently from Indian officials and others: They pay lip-service to the green paradigm, and then insist that those policies cannot possibly be imposed on the developing sector. Some quotes from Lomborg:

“To tackle climate change, rich countries are promising to end fossil fuel use in 29 years. As this becomes excruciatingly costly, the G7 is now thinking about making the world’s poor pay for it. That will go badly… Despite green protestations, rich people still get 79 percent of their energy from fossil fuels. Ending that will be hard, socially destabilizing and surprisingly ineffective. Besides, it will also destabilize rich countries… As climate policies reduce growth further, this will threaten long-term social coherence as people realize their children won’t be better off and pensions will wither. Moreover, the cuts will matter little for the environment.”

Lomborg continued: “Six billion not-rich people also want access to plentiful and cheap energy, lifting them out of hunger, sickness and poverty. They are more concerned about economic growth that will create welfare and resilience against disease and even climate change… The main effect of carbon tariffs is to shift the economic burden of developed-world climate policies to the developing world… [provoking] profound resentment with a rich world that claims to implement climate policies to help, but in reality shifts the costs onto the world’s poor… Depriving the world’s poor of the twin drivers of development, abundant energy and free trade, is unacceptable.”


Like Father, Like Son: Prince Charles Demands Environmental War Drive at COP26

Like Father, Like Son: Prince Charles Demands Environmental War Drive at COP26

Nov. 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—While the Queen ensured that Prince Phillip’s virus hovered visibly over the proceedings, recording her video for the Royal Family’s reception for the world leaders gathered to open COP 26 with the late His Royal Virus’s picture prominently next to her, Prince Charles well saluted his father’s Nazi-like approach to depopulation, demanding that this be accomplished by replacing governments by a global system of private interests imposed through “a vast military-style campaign.” 

Twice he insisted that “a war-like footing” be adopted. “Climate change and biodiversity loss … pose an even greater existential threat than the COVID-19 pandemic, to the extent that we have to put ourselves on a war-like footing,” Prince Charles asserted from the outset. “We know what we must do. With a growing global population creating ever increasing demand on the planet’s finite resources, we have to reduce emissions urgently, and take action to tackle the carbon already in the atmosphere, including from coal powered power systems….” 

“Our efforts cannot be a series of independent initiatives running in parallel; the scale and scope of the threat we face, call for a global systems-level solution, based on radically transforming our current fossil fuel-based economy to one that is genuinely renewable and sustainable…. 

“We know this will take trillions, not billions of dollars. We also know that countries, many of whom are burdened by growing levels of debt, simply cannot afford to go green. Here what is needed is a vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector. With trillions at its disposal, far beyond global GDP, and with the greatest respect, beyond even the governments of the world’s leaders, it offers the only real prospect of achieving fundamental economic transition,” he concluded. His ghoulish speech can be found here,

HRH’s reference to a military approach is not mere metaphor. As EIR reported in its Oct. 1, 2021, Daily Alert, the British Crown’s premier policymaking think tank, the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA)—known as Chatham House—had just published a paper, “Building Global Climate Security,” arguing that since climate change poses such a serious threat to global security, it will now be necessary to rethink “traditional security concepts,” because climate change is “the most serious threat to global security we face,” and the “security community” is going to play a major role in enforcing green fascism and depopulation. For example: the RIIA paper enthusiastically noted that since there are growing calls to legally define “ecocide” as a crime under the International Criminal Court (ICC), the chance of the armed forces being called on to defend against ecocide “looks increasingly likely.” 


Nigerian VP Osinbajo: “Banning Fossil Fuel Investments Would Crush Africa”

Nigerian VP Osinbajo: “Banning Fossil Fuel Investments Would Crush Africa”

Nov 8 (EIRNS)–Adding another voice to the African chorus denouncing the Green Reset– Mark Carney’s drive to “red-line” the developing world, by refusing credit for projects and even proffering pay-offs to never develop your nation– is Nigeria’s Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo. He wrote an article this Summer, that was re-posted last week during the COP26 Summit. He states that “wealthy nations” cutting investment avenues for carbon-based energy sources in Africa– especially after having profited from them for decades– “will do little to limit carbon emissions globally but much to hurt the continent’s economic prospects.”

Nigeria, a country rich in petroleum and natural gas, is being forced to deny itself the benefit of {its own} resources, Osinbajo says, because the only investments which can be financed are for (interruptible) solar and wind. “For countries such as my own, Nigeria, which is rich in natural resources but still energy poor, {the transition must not come at the expense of affordable and reliable energy} for people, cities, and industry. To the contrary, it must be inclusive, equitable, and just – which means preserving the right to sustainable development and poverty eradication, as enshrined in global treaties such as the 2015 Paris climate accord.”

The Vice President writes, “Africa’s progress could be undone by the rich world’s efforts to curb investments in all fossil fuels,” pointing out with bitter irony that, “Institutions such as the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation {were specifically created to help spur high-impact projects},” the very kind of which they are now refusing to let go forward. [emphasis added]

The fact that Osinbajo wrote this piece, titled, “The divestment delusion: Why banning fossil fuel investments would crush Africa,” over two months ago –about the time that the multinationals were beating a retreat from one of the world’s largest natural gas developments, in Mozambique– should not reduce the power of his statement, in fact just the opposite. Originally published in the August 31 issue of the Foreign Affairs, the magazine of the imperial Council on Foreign Relations, Osinbajo’s piece was republished last week by the Habari Network a publication focusing on Africa and the Caribbean. While the post therefore may not reflect the latest developments in Glasgow, the sentiment and the validity of the charges made against the “climate mafia” in the U.K., the U.S. and Western Europe continue to ring true. The Habari Network article appears here. The original article in Foreign Affairs is here.


Experts Speak Out Against Suicide in the Name of Climate

Experts Speak Out Against Suicide in the Name of Climate

Oct. 31 (EIRNS) – Quite a number of seasoned experts on power, carbon, and weather are challenging the premises of the Suicide on the Clyde in Glasgow. Among those who have not yet participated in Schiller Institute and LaRouche Organization events, are Bjorn Lomborg, Robert Bryce, and Richard Lindzen.

Swedish economist Lomborg was quoted in Manila Times: “You’ve probably seen the latest alarming headlines: Rising sea levels from climate change could flood 187 million people out of their homes. Don’t believe it. That figure is unrealistic — and it isn’t even new. It appears in a new scholarly paper, whose authors plucked it from a paper published in 2011. And what the earlier paper actually found was that 187 million could be forced to move in the unlikely event that no one does anything, in the next 80 years, to adapt to dramatic rises in sea level.

“In real life, the 2011 paper explained, humans ‘adapt proactively,’ and ‘such adaptation can greatly reduce the possible impacts.’ That means ‘the problem of environmental refugees almost disappears.’ Realistic assumptions reduce the number to between 41,000 and 305,000 — at most, less than 1/600th of the figure in those headlines.

“Sober scientific findings get less attention than alarming and far-fetched scenarios…. We have more knowhow and technology than ever to build dikes, surge barriers and dams, expand beaches and construct dunes, make ecosystem-based barriers like mangrove buffers, improve building codes and construction techniques, and use land planning and hazard mapping to minimize flooding….”

Bryce, a regular Forbes contributor on energy and power, spent two days with no power in Texas in February. He testified Oct. 27 at the House Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on the American power grid. Whereas from 2000-2007 there were fewer than 100 blackouts in any year around the country, in the past three years there have been 220, 278, and 383 blackouts as interruptible sources have been pushed out and onto the grid. “These policies are not just wrongheaded, they are deeply dangerous,” Bryce told the Committee. “Banning the use of liquid and gaseous fuels will reduce America’s energy security because it will concentrate our energy risks on a single energy network, the electric grid. Furthermore, they would require an electric grid with more than two times the capacity of today’s grid. That’s a largely fanciful notion given that the electric grid is faltering under existing demand.” His Forbes piece is here.

Richard Lindzen is emeritus Professor of Meteorology at MIT. He is quoted, also in Manila Times by author Yen Makabenta. After explaining that the demanded “climate mitigation” measures will have no effect on climate, Lindzen says: “Consider what the climate system actually is. This system consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid, and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and re-emission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2 percent perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds, ocean circulations, and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multi-factor system, what is the likelihood that the climate (which itself consists of many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomalies) is controlled by a 2 percent perturbation in the energy budget due to just one of the numerous variables, namely CO2?

“Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic…. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.”


Global Times Editorial Defends Developing Nations’ `Industrialization’ vs. Climate Geopolitics

Global Times Editorial Defends Developing Nations’ `Industrialization’ against Climate Geopolitics 

April 19 (EIRNS) — The unsigned editorial in the April 19 Global Times, “To deal with climate change, China-US cooperation is important and sensitive,” takes the global anti-Malthusian resistance shown by India and others to another level. The developing nations’ 2009 resistance to population reduction and genocide, effective in Copenhagen then, is revived.

The unsigned editorial (indicating a Politburo statement) begins with reserve, pointing out that it is “fair to say that China and the U.S. have communicated quite effectively and achieved some results. China has not yet announced plans for its top leader to attend the climate summit; analysts are waiting for things to become clearer.” The editorial likewise points out that “the general environment among the big powers is not good. The U.S. wants to show leadership by working with China and Russia to address the climate challenge, while it is also obstructing China and Russia in other spheres. That is not what normal relations among great powers should be like.”

But then the principles of economic development against environmental extremism become very clear indeed. “UN climate action involves the fundamental interests of humanity, and the specific arrangement for reducing emissions concerning all countries’ major development interests,” says Global Times. “The developed countries have completed industrialization, while developing countries are still in the process of industrialization, and some have just started this process…. People’s living standards are still low in these countries, and it is particularly important to create more resources to improve people’s livelihoods through further industrialization.” The article states that the U.S. has used its power to force more obligations on countries, while taking benefits.

“In an extreme scenario, if the world is about to promote carbon neutrality today, then the world’s economic development pattern will be perpetuated as it is today. The development gap between the developed and underdeveloped countries will become permanent.” The newspaper reminds that while the American elite fight over many issues, they agree on U.S. hegemony. “The current U.S. administration is trying to play the role of a leader and thus squeeze developing countries’ room for growth, as the previous U.S. administration desired.

“China and the U.S. are both the largest emitters; the two countries have huge differences in population and economic development, but the U.S. wants China to take more responsibilities in reducing emissions. It is worth observing the relation between such [environmentalist] pressure from the U.S., and the U.S.’ geopolitical move to pressure China.”

It concludes: “We should promote that the common interests of humanity are jointly defined by the interests of people from all countries, rather than by a handful of countries that want to monopolize this definition.”

Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche suggested today that the editorial has a clarity that would not have come without the LaRouche movement’s organizing and reports exposing the Green New Deal. She called it the strongest statement since the 2009 announcement of the G77 nations that they would not sign the Copenhagen “suicide pact” of population reduction.


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