The Little Old Ladies of Switzerland

I have been reading the judgment of the European Court of human rights in Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland. It is grim reading. You might be shocked by it – unless of course you already know just how incompetent and dangerous that Court is.

The background may be briefly stated. In 2021 the Swiss government adopted some proposed legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but that proposal was rejected by the Swiss people in a referendum. The first applicant in this case (whose name may roughly be translated as “Old Swiss Women Bothered by the Climate”) evidently did not like the way the referendum vote went, and brought this case to force the Swiss Government to override it. They lost at first instance, and then again in the Federal Administrative Court, but have now won on the 3^rd and final appeal to the Grand Chamber.

The decision is based on junk science, is bad in law and is even worse as a matter of politics. It will add a good deal of fuel to the fire of those who think the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) pretty sharpish, ideally before its court (the ECtHR) purports to prevent the UK from dealing effectively with its illegal immigration problem.

As to the science, the judgment collects together the most alarmist pronouncements from all the doomsayers that they could find, particularly from the IPCC, and uncritically treated it all as established fact, saying:

Supreme Idiocy in the Guardian

My attention was drawn today to a news piece in the Guardian a couple of days ago, by Robin McKie who is apparently their Science editor, of which the headline is:

‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe – An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem

Let us unpack that a shade. The first thing to note is that it is not news. This unusual spike in temperatures was 2 years ago. To be fair, the Guardian did acknowledge that date for those of its readers who are capable of any analysis. Which might not be many of them.

Second up, more recent news is that data from that same research station in Antarctica – Concordia – set a new record some 9 months ago the world’s lowest recorded temperature since 2017, at a decidedly chilly -83.2 centigrade. That was reported in weatherzone, but the Guardian might have

Wasting time

This morning, I wasted 18 minutes and 25 seconds trying to change all the clocks in the house to accommodate the undoing of what they ironically call “daylight saving”.

There is now quite a bit of evidence, I think, that messing around with the clocks does do measurable damage to people’s health. There is a modest increase in the number of heart attacks etc following these time changes.[1]

For sure, I find it utterly infuriating. In this household, the most irritating of these clocks is the Miele oven.[2] I failed to identify the peculiar sequence which is necessary to change the time. Darling tut-tutted at me, and purported to do it. In fact, what she had done was set the oven timer. And so, in addition to the 18 minutes and 25 seconds, I had to look it up on the Internet. That took me another ten minutes or so. I did not attempt to delve into the programmes for the irrigation timers, or the weather station. That would have been another 20 minutes or so. They will just have to be wrong throughout the winter. Furthermore, it is not possible to move the hands back in an hour on my grandfather clock, which was built in the 18th century. You either have to painstakingly advance it by eleven hours, listening to the chimes eleven times, or to stop the clock, and remember to start it again an hour later (which is what I did).