I’ve never meet Benny Peiser. He’s the CEO of the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). He will be speaking at The Brisbane Club on Wednesday 27th April 2022 at an event hosted by Graham Young from the Australian Institute for Progress. He will be in Sydney the day before (26th April) at the Roseville Golf Club, and Melbourne the day after (28th April). The Melbourne event is hosted by the Australian Environment Foundation and Benny will deliver the Bob Carter Commemorative Lecture for 2022.
Benny is a former member of the German Greens and holds a PhD in Cultural Studies for a thesis examining the problems of ancient Greece. He will be talking about renewable energy, the UK experience in Brisbane and extend this to also discuss the war in the Ukraine when in Melbourne.
The GWPF was founded by Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer – and father of cooking goddess Nigella Lawson.
I did once get to have lunch with Nigel Lawson; that was in Sydney many years ago. We had a view of the Opera House and he confirmed for me that the theory of catastrophic human-caused global warming really was the brainchild of Margaret Thatcher. She detested coal miners and wanted that industry closed. She succeeded in the UK, and the idea was since gone global.
A little before that lunch with Nigel Lawson, I had dinner in New York with Vladimir Putin’s Environment advisor Andrei Illarionov. We were at a conference in New York. Andrei was puzzled as to why The West was so enamoured with the idea of catastrophic human-caused global warming and pondered Margaret Thatcher’s involvement. We discussed Nigel Lawson and both admitted to being big fans of Nigella. Andrei’s own theory went that the Kyoto Protocol gave Germany and Britain an economic advantage because of the timing of their transition away from coal. He thought Thatcher a clever politician, who had outsmarted the Russians of her vintage.
As far as I know Andrei Illarionov is still advising Vladimir Putin on energy and environment issues. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia one day cut the gas to the UK and Germany.
If that happened much of Europe might be left freezing in the dark and wishing for some coal.
I’m not sure if these are topics that will be discussed at the lunches in Melbourne, Sydney, or Brisbane? But they might be.
*****
Update 7th April. I’ve changed the cover image. Nigel Lawson is sitting four to the right of Margaret Thatcher in the new cover/feature photograph/banner.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Thatcher did not hate coal miners per se, so much as the then Miners Union under Cargill’s leadership. She had those mines closed (quite forcefully) that had demonstrated the greatest militancy, while those which had shown a more nuanced voting pattern survived.
I had cause to examine this directly in-situ in the early 90’s and discussed it at some length with the then Chief Geologist of the National Coal Board (which in itself was then in the process of being disbanded).
Nonetheless, it is accurate to comment that under the NCB, union feather bedding was beyond rational belief. I saw it first-hand.
That’s Arthur Scargill, then President of the National Union Mineworkers (NUM).
Sorry for the typo …
The UK closed down their own coal mines and then turned to Russia for the stuff to make steel; what a clever idea that was (not).
Any exports from Russia, which fund Putin & Russia’s murderous, barbaric war machine
Must be declined or boycotted.
That’s the simple moral issue of these times. Just as Nazi Germany was in the 1930-40’s
And Australia will be fine. We are a major coal & natural gas exporter after all. And maybe some our coal & gas exports can be redirected towards the UK & Europe to assist them not freezing while maintaining the boycott on Russian exports. And as the value of our coal & gas exports rise there will be lots of incentive to explore and develop new coal & gas fields.
The USA will also be fine. During the depth of the global shut down due to the pandemic in 2020 prices dropped hugely. Many US based oil & gas fields were closed or restricted their production. Now that oil & gas have increased in value again, those fields will resume production. And the USA will resume exports of oil & gas.
And then the Middle East oil & gas producers who have so far refused to increase their production to cover the Russian unexported ‘shortfall’ will see that they are refusing sale opportunities. And change their strategy.
I see also that Japan, the UK, France & Germany are all now again thinking nuclear as a stable, longterm, home grown electrical power solution.
Think over that big picture for a minute.
The Greenists are being ignored and dismissed as the bunch of loony crazies they really are !
Well there is nothing like a cold winter or the lights not coming on to on to make people realise that this green dream is nothing more than that. I wish no ill to the Germans but I hope Putin turns off the Gas it will make the average German realise that being dependent on Wind a Solar does not work and being dependent on a foreign country like Russia is not very clever at all. The German Politicians have cleverly hidden from their voters the fact that the Wind and Solar does not work by replacing their Nuclear power stations with Gas fired ones. If there is not a change of direction all round the world Gas will become the fuel of choice for power generation in the West but China and India will have cheap Coal as none of the Western Nations will be using it. Very clever on the part of China and the West.
Margaret Thatcher met the loony Swedish man who was paid to demonise coal and promote Nuclear Power in Sweden. It was a perfect fit with her plan to destroy the Coal Miners Union and Arthur Scargill whom she hated. After retirement she admitted the fraud.
The energy price and supply emergency has done more to wreck support for the Green agenda than any reputable scientific analysis of the climate debate and even Greg Hands, the UK Minister for climate change confirmed on 25th November 2021 that the data that the IPCC presented to COP26 is based on altered temperature data and not actual measured data. This ministerial confirmation is strongly backed by Jennifer Marohasy’s own highly valued non-partisan assessment of the BOM’s data fiddling.
I thought Margaret thatcher was motivated by energy security. Back then the Middle East oil barons held the west to ransom. Coal mines were unionised. Renewable energy offered some degree of independence.
I suspect Thatcher later had a lower estimation of renewables but i don’t have corroborated proof
Mike
Margaret Thatcher did more than any other person to establish the IPCC, push for the Kyoto Protocol, establish the fanciful notion of carbon dioxide as a pollutant by reinventing the work of Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius etcetera.
She wanted to end of communism and to replace the fear of it with something else.
An incredibly astute politician she saw political advantage in it all, including the Kyoto Protocol as a way to continue to secure an economic advantage for Britain.
She also oversaw the corporatisation of our universities, replacing the leadership which had been focused on scholarship with those more inclined to business management.
Jennifer, irrespective of that list you iterated, her dislike of the NUM was absolutely visceral, beyond any possibility of compromise. I was told it had its’ animus in the earlier destruction of Heath as PM through campaigns run by the NUM, although that is hearsay (to me) from the then NCB Senior Geologist.
She did forcibly close mines with militant history by the simple expedient of dozing in the portals, drifts and shafts, planting grass over them and watching the surrounding villages and small towns wither from lack of jobs. Less militant operations (including some that have still survived so far) were permitted to keep operating. This information is first-hand. I examined it in detail.
Her determination in continuing the war in international venues such as the IPCC was still motivated by this animus. And she knew this, clever as she was, as a political sledgehammer to make sure that particular enemy never got up off the floor again.
Worked too … now spread throughout Western countries.
Jennifer,
You write:-
“Margaret Thatcher did more than any other person to establish the IPCC, push for the Kyoto Protocol, establish the fanciful notion of carbon dioxide as a pollutant by reinventing the work of Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius etcetera. ”
While I am aware that Thatcher used Arrhenius to drive her anti-mining ambitions her major role in establishing the IPCC is new to me.
Have you any references to a Thatcher – Maurice Strong association, the latter being the one I understand as the driver of the formation of the IPCC?
Interestinger and interestinger:
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-sun-is-way-more-active-than-official-solar-weather-predictions