The definition of climate is the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period. The definition of an emergency is a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action.

The synergy produced from putting climate and emergency together creates a whole new beast, rather like breeding a domestic cat with a wild cat to produce a lion – it’s nonsense.

The BBC fails to define climate emergency saying, “there is no single definition, but many areas say they want to be carbon-neutral by 2030”.

Scientists computer-modelled future man-made carbon dioxide levels and predicted life would be unsustainable in 2, 10, 12 or 20 years. Because they keep changing the drop-dead date you can take your pick, but the damage was done and worldwide panic and hysteria ensued. 

But are the global warming scientists right?  Or, to steal a phrase from Uncle Joe Biden, did climate change zealots “choose truth over facts” when scientists disagree over man-made global warming? 

“Most people were taken in by the false story of human-caused global warming. We can include all the students participating in the classroom walkout to demand governments stop climate change, organized by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. Her goal is to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Apparently, she has no idea that the temperature was near or above that level for most of the last 10,000-years in a period known as the Holocene Optimum.  

They are taken in by the false claim that a minute amount of human-produced CO2 is effectively controlling the entire atmospheric system since 1950 and causing environmental collapse through global warming. 

They don’t know that there is an upper limit to the amount that CO2 can increase temperature. They don’t know that the average level of CO2 over the last 250 million years is 1200 ppm. They don’t know that every projection of temperature by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1990 was wrong. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, how did so few, fool so many, to such an extent, for so long?”

WattsUpWithThat

Our virtue-signalling government went one better than Greta Thunberg by setting our goal to keep temperatures no more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and it didn’t take long for local bodies to jump on board. The Otago Regional Council is the latest.

“The Otago Regional Council will today decide whether to declare a climate emergency.

However, the decision was unlikely to affect its work programme, staff said.

Councillors will vote on the declaration at a meeting in Dunedin, after members of the public asked it to at a public forum last month.

If it did declare an emergency, it would follow the examples of other councils including the DUNEDIN City Council, Auckland Council, Wellington City Council, Whangarei District Council, Nelson City Council and Environment Canterbury.

Otago Daily Times

But how can this be a climate emergency if there is no urgent need for the council to change their work programmes?

We get one shot every four years to get rid of virtue-signalling councillors and instead vote in sensible people who want to work for their community. We need to use these elections to weed out the troughers and bring in new blood who will stand up to this nonsense. 

I am happily a New Zealander whose heritage shaped but does not define. Four generations ago my forebears left overcrowded, poverty ridden England, Ireland and Germany for better prospects here. They were...