A place for you to point to climate and related news, introduce yourself to other Cliscep contributors, and suggest topics for new posts.

395 Comments

  2. We need a proper grown-up debate about this sort of thing:

    “How retrofitting the UK’s old buildings can generate an extra £35bn in new money
    Heritage and property groups outline plan to boost energy efficiency at historical sites to create jobs, cut emissions and meet net-zero targets”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/06/retrofitting-old-buildings-uk-energy-efficiency

    Retrofitting the UK’s historical buildings, from Georgian townhouses to the mills and factories that kickstarted the Industrial Revolution, could generate £35bn of economic output a year, create jobs and play a crucial role in achieving climate targets, research has found.

    Improving the energy efficiency of historical properties – those built before 1919 – could reduce carbon emissions from the UK’s buildings by 5% each year and make older homes warmer and cheaper to run, according to a report commissioned by the National Trust, Historic England and leading property organisations.

    Nearly a quarter of all UK homes, 6.2m properties, were built before 1919 and almost a third of commercial properties, about 600,000, are also historical sites. They are responsible for about a fifth of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, with old buildings accounting for a significant proportion…

    …Bob Kerslake, chair of Peabody, said: “Making these buildings energy efficient will stimulate spending in the construction industry, support about 290,000 jobs in supply chains and boost heritage-related tourism and hospitality.

    “And where needed, making older homes more energy efficient will transform the lives of the people who live and work in them, reducing household energy bills and improving health and wellbeing.”..

    Will it generate £35bn of economic output a year, or will it cost the taxpayer £35bn a year? Do we want to create jobs for the sake of it, at the public expense, or do we want jobs to be meaningful? If net zero creates jobs, is that a benefit, or an on-cost? Will that make things better for everyone, or worse?

    Arguments about government spending having the effect of “pump-priming” the economy are nothing new; ditto arguments that in bad times, government spending can be beneficial to the economy, whereas cuts drive a downwards spiral. But please, let’s discuss this in rational terms, and stop pretending that throwing money at net zero is an unadulterated good thing, with no potential down-side.

    Like

  3. “The Guardian view on Dutch farmer protests: a European test case
    Editorial
    Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock is vital. But the politics is fraught”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/05/the-guardian-view-on-dutch-farmer-protests-a-european-test-case

    Until relatively recently, Dutch farming prowess was hailed as one of the wonders of the global economy. In 2017, a National Geographic article headlined “This tiny country feeds the world” encapsulated a sense of national pride at the Netherlands’ status as the second-biggest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States.

    These days, Dutch farmers are in the headlines for less upbeat reasons. As the climate emergency and a related biodiversity crisis belatedly take centre stage in policymaking, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, has committed to halving the country’s overall nitrogen emissions by 2030. A large proportion of these are generated by the manure and urine produced by more than 100m cattle, pigs and chickens. To reach the target, and protect biodiversity in the polluted countryside, the government has announced plans to reduce livestock numbers by a third. Reluctant farmers have been warned they could be subject to compulsory buyouts.

    That, at least, is the policy. Turning it into a reality is proving a challenge. As other European countries also look to overhaul their agriculture sectors, Dutch farms have become a test case in navigating the vital politics of the green transition. Last week, protesting farmers confronted the finance minister, Sigrid Kaag, with burning torches. Tractors have blockaded roads, and slurry has been dumped at the home of the minister for nature, Christianne van der Wal. Meanwhile, the far right has successfully co-opted the farmers’ cause, and promoted a toxic conspiracy theory that targeted farmland is being sequestrated in order to build homes for asylum seekers.

    The intimidation tactics used by elements of the farmers’ protest movement have been rightly condemned….

    Oh, Guardian, oh double standards. You would never use such language about the behaviour and tactics of XR, JSO etc. But it’s all there – “toxic” conspiracy theories, allegations of “far right” involvement. It couldn’t simply be that the policy protested against is barking mad, illiberal and authoritarian, could it?

    Liked by 1 person

  4. A lesson in irony:

    Yesterday I was browsing my bookcase and I came across a book that I had completely forgotten I had bought and was still sitting there unread. Its title:

    ‘The organised mind: thinking straight in the age of information overload’

    Time to stop buying so many books, perhaps.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. “Climate change: Warming could raise UK flood damage bill by 20%”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64866058

    Actually, the headline on the clickbait front page of the BBC website is “UK costs from flood damage could rise by 20%”, with a small narrative of “Cutting greenhouse gas emissions could save millions of pounds in flood damage costs”. Of course, the causal surfer of the BBC website, who doesn’t read beyond the headlines and associated narrative, might assume this means that the UK’s cutting of greenhouse gas emissions will do good for the citizens of the UK by warding off climate change, thereby avoiding flooding, thereby saving money. Which isn’t true, since unless the rest of the world follows suit the UK’s GHG emissions reduction plan will make absolutely no difference to the climate.

    And perfectly reasonably the BBC article doesn’t say that UK emissions cuts will avoid increased flooding in the UK, but then it doesn’t need to, since the initial soundbite leaves the causal reader with impression – job done. And even if one reads on, one might still draw the incorrect inference. If money spent on reducing GHG emissions in the UK doesn’t save money by reducing flooding, why quote something like this:

    “And every pound we spend on flood risk mitigation is a pound that could be spent on teachers, nurses, hospitals, schools, so it’s really important that it’s grounded in accurate science.”

    Note, although the article is largely about modelling to assist with adaptation, that quote is about mitigation, with the implication that cutting GHG emissions in the UK is worthwhile, despite the fact that every pound we spend on it is a pound that isn’t available to be “spent on teachers, nurses, hospitals, schools”. It’s just wrong.

    Like

  7. Oh, that pesky climate crisis:

    “Australia: Crop exports set for record high after heavy rains”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64871164

    Heavy rains, which were blamed for some food shortages in Australia, have also given crop exports a boost.

    The country’s farmers are predicted to see their most valuable year ever.

    Agricultural exports are forecast to hit a record $75bn (£62.3bn) in the year to the end of June, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARES).

    The Ukraine war has pushed up the price of goods including wheat, Australia’s biggest agricultural export.

    “We have been incredibly lucky. That high level of production is certainly due to rains, but also having rains at the right time,” Tony Bacic, director of the La Trobe Institute for Agriculture and Food in Melbourne, told the BBC.

    “The stars were aligned. If the rains had come a bit later or hadn’t dried out in time, we could have lost a major crop,” he added.

    “Once again, we’re seeing record levels of production, driven by exceptional growing conditions and high commodity prices,” ABARES’ Jared Greenville said in a statement on Tuesday.

    “National winter crop production has driven much of these results, with the winter crop estimated at a new record of 67.3 million tonnes in 2022-23,” he added….

    Like

  8. “Non-native plants outnumber British flora, major report finds”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64842402

    It seems fairly clear that this is due to lots of reasons, and it seems likely that climate change is well down the list in terms of responsibility for the changes. It doesn’t stop climate change being given a prominent role in the BBC article, and indeed the World At One piece on it on Radio 4 today mentioned climate change several times, as though it was obviously the main factor.

    Like

  10. “More snow to sweep across UK as Arctic blast hits”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64875441

    …To prepare for the cold spell, two old coal-fired power plants have begun generating again to help prevent potential shortfalls.

    The plants in West Burton in Lincolnshire were due to close last September, but the government requested they stay open for an extra six months because of fears of possible power shortages….

    Like

  11. “Stoke-on-Trent residents to sue council over ‘mis-sold’ solar power contracts
    More than 230 people are to launch a class action lawsuit after some say they feel ‘lied to’”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/08/stoke-on-trent-residents-class-action-lawsuit-council-mis-sold-solar-power-contracts

    More than 230 residents in Stoke-on-Trent are to launch a class action lawsuit against the city council after they claim they were “mis-sold” 25-year solar power contracts which have left some with faulty panels and unexpected bills.

    Council house tenants in the city said they feel “lied to” after being signed up to the contracts without realising, and facing years of what they believe is poor quality customer service and installation.

    Community Energy Scheme (CES) was launched in 2018 by the city council in conjunction with Solarplicity Energy, which sent staff door to door to encourage residents to sign up to the solar panel scheme. It now has 4,800 customers in the city.

    Tenants signed up to contracts on the spot with a signature on an iPad, but many residents said they thought they were only agreeing to have their home assessed for its suitability for solar panel installation…

    …The Conservative-run Stoke-on-Trent city council gave Solarplicity Energy exclusive rights to install the panels on its housing stock, initially handing over the details of more than 1,000 homes it thought would be suitable, in return for £100 for each installation.

    Solar panels were also installed on empty council house properties, meaning prospective tenants had to sign up to the solar energy scheme as a condition of tenancy…

    …The Stoke-on-Trent Labour councillor Desiree Elliott said the scheme had been “a failure and a scandal from the beginning”. She said: “The company involved has demonstrated time and again that it is not up to delivering a project of this size with any semblance of professionalism.”

    Residents said they were promised the solar panels would come with batteries, allowing them to store surplus solar energy to use in the evenings and on darker days, but these have only recently started being rolled out…

    …In 2019 Solarplicity Energy ceased trading after criticism from Ofgem and the Energy Ombudsman, who received 3,324 complaints about the company, and tenants have been switched to a different supplier, while still remaining part of the 25-year CES contracts.

    A Stoke-on-Trent city council spokesperson said the scheme was designed to support tenants “in lowering their energy bills and reducing carbon emissions”…

    Like

  12. “National Grid pays high price for gas-generated power during UK cold snap
    Electricity system operator struggled to keep lights on during one of the coldest weeks”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/09/national-grid-pays-high-price-for-gas-generated-power-during-uk-cold-snap

    National Grid paid some of the highest prices this winter for gas-generated power on Tuesday night as it scrambled to keep the lights on during one of the coldest weeks of the year.

    Data from the electricity system’s administrator, Elexon, showed the Coryton power station in Essex had bids accepted to produce power at £1,950 per megawatt hour (MWh) on Tuesday evening.

    The sums are well above average prices of between £200 and £400 per megawatt hour, although they remain below those paid on 12 December, when National Grid paid £27m in a single day to get power stations to crank up supply. In December, Rye House power station in Hertfordshire received a record £6,000 a MWh.

    In total, the cost of balancing the system on Tuesday this week was estimated at between £5m and £10m.

    One industry source said the price of sourcing power from gas peaking plants had “raised eyebrows”.

    The cold, still weather reduced wind power and pushed up demand this week, while strikes at EDF’s nuclear plants in France also put a strain on the grid.

    To counter this, National Grid called on coal plants that were put on standby for the winter into action for the first time…

    Like

  13. What’s going on with rainfall observations ?
    During the summer hot period the TV would tell me there was zero rain
    yet my eyes and the waterbutt showed it had rained
    Then I could use the Met Office WOW website to grab tables/graphs
    also showing rainfall
    I used the Scunthorpe and Scampton sites
    but now as I check a BBC story about “East of England drought”
    and when I went to Wow the Norwich sites either first told you “no observations”
    or even if you went to another by the time I jumped through steps.. it too held no rainfall data
    Then I check the Scunthorpe and Scampton sites and they too are withholding it.

    So I went to meteoBlue it does immediately gives graphs
    https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/historyclimate/weatherarchive/cambridge_united-kingdom_2653941
    but the local stats for Scunthorpe seem undercounted
    With the rain butt here all full I keep draining then a bit, but they still top up.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. “Renewable sources produced half of NI electricity in 2022”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-64894566

    I’m glad that they acknowledged this:

    2021 was a relatively poor year for renewable generation across Europe due to lower-than-average wind speeds.

    On the other hand, it’s a pity that they don’t balance the reporting on the highs and lows associated with the average figure of 51% over the year. We are told the best month (February, “accounting for 76.5% of electricity consumption”) but we are left in the dark as to the worst month, which I’m guessing would be in the 20s per cent. Perhaps they hope that we just won’t stop and ask the obvious questions about unreliability and unpredictability.

    Like

  16. What with coal power stations being kept running, and now this:

    “Extended life for two UK nuclear power stations”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64906179

    it looks as though reality might just be dawning – somewhere a penny has dropped.

    Energy giant EDF has announced plans to extend the lives of two of the UK’s five remaining nuclear power stations.

    Heysham 1 and Hartlepool had been due to close in March next year, but they will now be kept open until early 2026.

    The company says the move will support energy security, reduce demand for imported gas, and reduce carbon emissions.

    About 1,400 people work at the two sites, with hundreds more in the supply chain.

    Heysham 1 and Hartlepool began operating in 1983. Each has two Advanced Gas Cooled reactors, which were originally scheduled for closure in 2014. Two previous lifetime extensions had taken the closure date to March 2024.

    The two power stations currently account for about 5% of the country’s electricity.

    The announcement comes at a time when the country’s energy security has been coming under intense scrutiny…

    …Renewable generation, from wind and solar power for example, has been growing rapidly in recent years. But the amount available to the grid can vary according to the time of day and the weather…

    You don’t say?

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  17. As for wind turbines:

    And this:

    “Wind turbine failure rates are rising – has the industry gone too big, too fast?”

    https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-turbine-failure-rates-are-rising-has-the-industry-gone-too-big-too-fast/

    Unexpected and increasing wind turbine failure rates, largely in newer and bigger models, are savaging the profits of some of the world’s biggest manufacturers, as Siemens Gamesa, GE and Vestas report heavy repair and maintenance losses.

    Faulty components created a €472 million ($A28 million) hole in Siemens Gamesa’s December quarter result, making up more than half of the nearly billion-euro loss for the period. Of that total, €187 million was due to a reduction in revenue with the remainder due to warranty provisioning.

    The wind turbine maker said a “negative trend” of failure rates from turbines are causing higher than expected maintenance costs and warranty call-outs. It did not specify which components are affected.

    Siemens Gamesa ended the year with a quarterly loss of €884 million ($A1.4 billion), more than double that of the same period the prior year, and net debt of €1.9 billion.

    Write-downs in goodwill and the inclusion of integration and restructuring costs come as the company prepares to delist and integrate with Siemens Energy.

    “The group’s financial performance in Q1 23 was materially impacted by the outcome of the company’s periodic monitoring and technical failure assessment of its installed fleet,” the company said in its quarterly results.

    “The expected cash impact during FY23 amounts to a mid-double-digit euro million figure.”

    Vestas has added €210 million in warranty provisions for repairs in the December quarter, as rising call outs and higher upgrade costs bite at the Danish company, too….

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Mark; That report also says:
    “Vestas also said its lost production factor is rising towards 4 per cent due to the number of “extraordinary” repairs and upgrades.”
    I take that to mean a reduction in the capacity factor. As they were around 40%, that reduction represents a 10% shortfall in output which will really hurt the bottom line.

    Like

  19. Given how difficult it is for owners of listed buildings to persuade the authorities to grant permission for any changes at all, this all seems a little too easy – obviously net zero is a key card to play:

    “York Minster solar panels plan approved by council”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-64905283

    Solar panels are to be fitted to the roof of York Minster in a bid to tackle rising energy bills.

    Plans to install 199 solar panels on the roof of the South Quire Aisle were approved by City of York Council and the Cathedrals Fabric Commission.

    The project is part of plans for York Minster to become carbon net zero…

    There must be an argument that this is completely inappropriate development of an iconic building in an iconic ancient city. But what do we get?

    …The Dean said the Minster had consulted key stakeholders such as Historic England and the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England to ensure the panels were “sensitive to the area’s historic architecture”.

    Alex McCallion, Director of Works and Precinct at York Minster, said the “exceptional architectural and cultural value” of the Minster underpinned the international reputation of York as a city.

    Mr McCallion said that was why the Minster was “so committed to delivering important decarbonisation projects such as this one, in turn setting a leading example for other heritage institutions to follow”.

    Where the new religion meets the old, I suppose.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. Lozza Fox ..there was only one death in London from pollution
    .. That’s true just one recent person had it on their death certificate in recent years

    Jim Dale “No air pollution kills millions around the world and 50K per year in London”
    The first part is true (from cooking indoors over wood fires etc)
    The London one is false and is a zombie stat
    9 millions Londoners lives are shortened by air pollution but by days

    Like

  25. R4 FooC “South Africa Rolling Blackouts, load shedding is getting ever more common”
    “Eskom people shout”
    “as a result the private solar power sector is booming”

    “Country’s economy is shrinking even more than predicted”

    Like

  26. It seems that CO2 emissions are now “pollution”, despite being harmless to health (at current atmospheric levels), and beneficial to plants:

    “Climate change: Big polluters set out £30bn plan to cut emissions”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64929468

    Some of Wales’ biggest greenhouse gas-emitting firms have set out a £30bn plan to effectively cut their carbon emissions completely.

    About 40 bodies in south Wales want to reach net zero by 2040 and lower Wales’ CO2 emissions by 40%.

    The South Wales Industrial Cluster (Swic) claims the plan will safeguard more than 100,000 jobs, but will require £30bn of investment.

    It is the result of a two-year, £40m collaborative project.

    South Wales is currently the second-biggest polluting region in the UK due to its heavy industry.

    The group, made up of steelworks, oil refineries, chemical plants, ports, universities and local authorities in the region, said a greener electricity grid and hydrogen and carbon capture infrastructure was urgently needed….

    Note that although these industries may well emit real pollution, the article is referring to – and seems to be concerned about – only CO2.

    Like

  27. It’s bizarre at how much charity grants are available
    I’ve just been sent a list it includes
    eg Energy Redress Scheme – Energy Saving Trust
    https://energyredress.org.uk/apply-funding

    Climate Action Fund – The National Lottery Community Fund
    This funding aims to help communities across the UK to address climate change.
    They’re looking for projects that focus on the link between nature and climate
    tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

    Like

  28. A blue tick tweeted this about @horton_official the Guardian Climate journo
    “The journalist has been named in a scientific paper about misinformation.”

    If you search twitter for : @horton_official misinformation a few things come up but not that thing

    Like

  30. That URL on the BBC Live Budget page works but the text is now fuller:

    Nuclear power will be classed as “environmentally sustainable” which will give it access to the same investment incentives as renewable energy.

    He also launches “Great British Nuclear” aimed at bringing down the costs of producing nuclear power.

    He says he is launching a competition for small modular reactors – and says the government will co-fund the technology if it is found to be viable.

    Hopefully a real sea-change underway. He said this is the only way for the UK to realise Net Zero, because “even under the Conservatives” the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Rather worrying letters at the Guardian website today:

    “Climate activists must target power structures, not the public
    Dr Laura Thomas-Walters, Tim Williamson and Paul Chandler respond to Jack Shenker’s article that asked if the disruptive tactics of groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are working”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/15/climate-activists-must-target-power-structures-not-the-public

    I am an environmental social scientist and climate activist. As Jack Shenker describes in his article (The existential question for climate activists: have disruption tactics stopped working?, 6 March), Extinction Rebellion’s recent decision to stop disrupting the public caused quite a fuss. Some people applauded the move as they thought it would favourably shift public opinion, while others insisted public disruption needs to remain a primary tactic to garner wider attention.

    Unfortunately, both camps are missing the point – once you have enough dedicated activists, the public is largely irrelevant to achieving political change. It is not the opinion, or even attention, of the public that matters, it is whether or not you are disrupting structures of power. Historical social movements have shown this repeatedly.

    Despite what we may like to believe in a democracy, public opinion is only one small influence on the government. It may theoretically give governments a mandate to act, but real change must first overcome powerful opposition from the structures that support governments, such as business and the legal and financial systems. The role of activists is to change the cost-benefit equation for these structures until it is more beneficial for them to accept change than to carry on with the status quo.

    For climate activists, the real question is not about the efficacy of disruptive tactics, it needs to be about targets. And the answer is power, not the public.

    Am I wrong in thinking that is arguing that climate activists can ignore the views of the public and get what they (a very small minority of the electorate) want by targeting “the structures that support governments, such as business and the legal and financial systems”?

    The second letter concludes:

    A democracy should allow voters to choose how their country is governed. There should be a constitutional requirement for those of us seriously concerned about the climate crisis to have our views expressed in government. This obviously doesn’t happen. Our government consists only of Tory MPs representing a minority of voters. Yes, we have offshore wind generation, but otherwise their response is desperately inadequate.

    As a result, we have to resort to any kind of protest we feel might make a difference. If our civilisation truly wants a route to survival, we need a representative democracy with proportional voting.

    To which I would answer, when was the electorate given any say about adopting net zero, with the many, many problems and great expense that it entails?

    Like

  32. And read this and weep:

    “Jeremy Hunt accused of ‘£20bn gamble’ on nuclear energy and carbon capture
    Campaigners say chancellor is in the grip of the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies and is ‘squandering taxpayers’ money’”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/15/jeremy-hunt-accused-of-taking-a-20bn-gamble-on-nuclear-energy-and-carbon-capture

    £20Bn of our money (on top of all the rest of it) committed to yet more net zero policies, and it’s lambasted by the climate alarmists. They got one thing right, however – net zero is certainly squandering taxpayers’ money.

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  33. Keir Starmer accuses Tories of turning Britain back into ‘sick man of Europe’
    bit sexist, but I can take it if backed up with any facts.
    my guess is he will never mention what net zero policy will do to cripple/bring this country to it’s knee’s.

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  35. I suppose it depends on your point of view whether you think the following article which appeared out of the blue 3 hours ago is part of its obligation to “educate and inform” or whether it’s part of its ongoing climate propaganda programme:

    “What is climate change? A really simple guide”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24021772

    The self-same article first appeared on 2nd November 2022. They seem to have decided to regurgitate it
    just now for no obviously apparent reason.

    Like

  36. Vinny – thanks for the above link, liked this partial smear quote –
    “Commentator Ben Coates described the result as “something of an earthquake in Dutch politics”.
    Although their policies are very much focused on opposing the government’s environmental policies, he told the BBC most people would characterise them as a right-wing, populist party that was quite anti-EU, anti-immigration and in favour of banning burkas for Muslims.”

    Like

  38. Yet again it’s like rainfall observations are being hidden

    I start with the Met Office last 24 hours observation page
    https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/observations/gcxdqnhwn
    Yet their table doesn’t give rainfall
    Yet the rainfall radar map accessed through the same page shows there was rain.

    Then I use the same location name in WOW
    private users observations
    https://wow.metoffice.gov.uk/sites/search
    Yet when I go through the click almost every site won’t give me a rainfall graph

    Like

  39. BTW I’m looking at water levels in Roadford Lake which is 60%
    but is it actually only filled up by rain
    It seems that rain is ending up in rivers like the Lydd
    and southwest Water are making a choice not to pump it into the lake

    Like

  40. A hopeful tweet:

    Liked by 1 person

  41. dfhunter: Quite a smear. It’s full of terms that woke authoritariansthe righteous use as insults.

    Some of the views that Coates claims ‘most people’ have about BBB are half-true (eg, ‘anti-EU’: BBB wants to bring back the EEC) but when your summary of something is full of wokely authoritarianrighteous buzzphrases, it’s intended as a smear. Naughty Auntie Beeb.

    *

    Here’s a less partial Beeb in 2018 discussing how ‘populist’ had become an insult in recent decades:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43301423

    It included a short video by Lionel Shriver.

    *

    And here’s a map of recent nitrogen pollution in the EU plus an excellent explanation of what has been going on in The Netherlands:

    https://landgeist.com/2023/03/13/livestock-density/

    NL definitely has a big nitrogen problem.

    How to fix it?

    Dunno. But democracy shouldn’t be excluded.

    Liked by 1 person

  43. 15 Mar 2023 · The LABOUR mayor of Bristol has defended his plans to build an underground railway network expected to cost between £7 billion and £18 billion.

    That’s a lot of CO2

    Like

  45. Ah, Jeff Sparrow. He is supposed to be one of Austalia’s leading intellectuals, don’t you know. I was sorely tempted to write an article challenging this view after I came across this:

    https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/the–kettle-logic–of-climate-denial-cultists

    I’d even thought of a possible title: “Pot logic calling kettle logic black”

    The point is that Sparrow is a particularly scornful writer who lacks self awareness.

    Liked by 1 person

  46. This Labour Green Policy tweet is ratioed
    and gets a right kicking in the quote comments

    BTW saying “One country will” is natural English
    saying “Some country will” is what a non-native speaker might say

    Saying “why not ? ” or “it’s a no brainer” for a complicated policy usually just shows you haven’t thought properly
    cos there are negatives to most policies.
    She has form ..she forgot to factor Winter into her Energy Bills plan
    .. https://twitter.com/MeganWi90287242/status/1576558541263208448

    full video tweet https://twitter.com/RachelReevesMP/status/1636691350702923777

    Liked by 2 people

  47. Why not Britain? Because Britain’s electricity is going to be too expensive to cost-effectively manufacture anything that could instead be imported from China.

    Liked by 1 person

  48. My money’s on this one not being acted upon, just like all the others. Then, a little way down the road, there’ll be another final warning:

    “Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late
    IPCC report says only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to world”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c

    Although it’s always going to be too late if we don’t act now it seems it’s never too late for another warning and another chance.

    Liked by 1 person

  55. Mike,

    T’was always going to go this way. Firstly, the scientists were always going to say that the actions already taken are the reason why the apocalyptic projections no longer apply — despite the fact that co2 emissions are not actually falling yet.

    Secondly, they were always going to claim higher impact for a given temperature rise once they twigged that the rises were not going to be so great. There is a basic problem with all of this, however. The scientific ‘breakthrough’ would be lot more convincing if it had not coincided with the point when an apocalyptic narrative needed rescuing. Breakthroughs are not usually so obliging.

    Liked by 2 people

  56. I need to qualify the above. It isn’t actually ‘the scientists’ that are playing funny buggers. I am not claiming a scientific hoax. It’s just that we are now politically anchored to a given risk calculation and we no longer have the wherewithal to free ourselves from it.

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  57. “IPCC’s Increasingly Shrill Climate Armageddon Fantasies Gain Little Traction in Media”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/03/23/ipccs-increasingly-shrill-climate-armageddon-fantasies-gain-little-traction-in-media/

    I particularly liked this paragraph:

    IPCC reports are funded by national governments and every line is signed off by the funding parties. At times, the obvious compromises made to satisfy all the parties are almost comical. For instance, climate change is said to have reduced food security. But it is noted that “although overall agricultural productivity has increased, climate change has slowed this growth over the past 50 years”. The problem here, of course, is that useful scare stories about diminishing food supplies are easily debunked by graphs showing often near vertical production rises in many grains, fruits and vegetables over the last 70 years. The IPCC gets around this by accepting an obvious scientific fact, but opines without evidence that climate change has slowed the increase.

    Liked by 1 person

  58. Robert Bryce does an interview with Jeff Gibbs, the producer and narrator of Planet of the Humans. He has a lot of great insights as well as a bit of infuriating Malthusianism:

    Liked by 1 person

  60. SouthWest Water are still claiming drought and a hosepipe ban in Cornwall
    Since they have had days or rain I’m waiting for stats to be updated
    They clearly have LIVE stats but the ones they publish are now 5 days delayed
    That sounds like the Climate loving PR dept are driving policy
    The graphs were tending to show reservoir levels 20% below 2022’s but the gap seemed to be narrowing every week

    Like

  61. ITV local NewsPR had a “Remember Beeching” item
    then in the middle they suddenly shoehorned this in
    as if the climate activist is the producers girlfried
    “Environmental concerns weren’t a factor for Beeching
    but this Climate Charity say they must be today”
    Cue Apaar Mangat of Hope For The Future “blah blah cars air pollution”

    BTW air pollution is a different issue to Climate Change CO2
    Generally the activists are MORE anti car than they are pro low-CO2

    Then she continued “To fight Climate change we need a rail network ..tickbox, tickbox, tickbox”
    .. em rail system have so much infrastructure and concrete they are inherently high CO2 even if electric,
    and inherently high cost.

    Like

  62. stewgreen,

    I can’t speak for Cornwall, but after a dry and very pleasant February, it’s been a wet March in Cumbria, and almost every day in the 14 day weather forecast (taking us well into April) is wet. The drought that they’re pushing doesn’t look on the cards to me – it’s all part of the relentless climate change propaganda.

    Liked by 1 person

  63. As a regular critic of the BBC, may I give it credit for the Radio 4 programme “AntiSocial”. To date I have heard only a couple of episodes, but it is well and calmly chaired, and it allows a debate to take place, with both sides being allowed plenty of space to make their case without being shouted down or excluded. It’s a shining example of what the BBC can be when it tries, and should be a model for the rest of its output, IMO. Yesterday included Brendan O’Neill, who was as good as ever, and he (and the person he disagreed with) both performed well. There was also good input from David Spiegelhalter. A grown-up programme, at last!

    Liked by 1 person

  64. Lawyers pledge not to prosecute Climate Activists
    Mad solicitor Monika Sobiecki 💚@CyberSobiecki of @BindmansLLP is on TalkTV
    she is leading a campaign for two tier justice
    Saying that
    #1 lawyers should represent all kinds of baddies like bullies
    #2 lawyers should NOT represent fossil fuel guys, cos they are such baddies
    #3 Climate protesters should NOT be prosecuted even if they BREAK the law, cos they are peaceful.

    “When we first started gathering signatories for Lawyers Are Responsible (@LawyersAreResp) did we expect to rile ppl up so much we’d be front page Daily Mail news”

    She’s not actually a criminal lawyer
    keeps shouting “please read the IPCC report”
    just said lawyers have made £1.1 trillion from new fossil fuel work (made up number

    An opposing barrister Andrew Eborn is pushing back

    presenter asks shouldn’t anti-war protesters
    have the same special treatment
    “If Mr X goes o a Climate protest on Monday and spraypaints the bank walls, you won’t prosecute him (for criminal damage)
    If Mr X goes on a stop the war protest on Tuesday and spraypaints the bank walls, you WILL prosecute him”
    Principle : Rule breaking “It’s OK when we lefties do it”

    Like

  67. Mike,

    I gather that Willard has also got himself banned from Judith Curry’s blog. I suspect it was as a result of a particularly exhausting trollathon he recently engaged in. He is, of course, still welcome to post here if he is willing to engage in an adult debate on the nature and impact of uncertainty. It’s just an offer. No expectation is implied.

    Liked by 1 person

  68. Headline:

    “Weather tracker: Spain edges towards record March heat”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/27/weather-tracker-spain-edges-towards-record-march-heat

    Fair enough, so far as it goes:

    It has been hot across south-eastern parts of Spain this weekend with temperatures reaching the high-20s Celsius. Murcia reached 31.9C and Alicante 30.8C on Sunday. This was close to the March record: 33.3C for Murcia and 32.6C for Alicante.

    The heat is expected to build through the week with temperatures more widely reaching close to or just over 30C. If these temperatures are achieved, the March temperature record could be exceeded. Highs of 28C are forecast for Madrid this Wednesday, threatening the March temperature record of 27.1C. The equivalent record for Málaga is 31.4C with weather models forecasting 31C on Thursday and Friday….

    But the tendency is always to emphasise heat, while not headlining cold, thus building a false narrative. The article continues:

    …However, the high temperatures are only expected to last until Friday, with temperatures falling back towards average over the weekend.

    At the other side of the Mediterranean, the opposite is the case, with warm temperatures over the weekend plummeting through the course of this week. Weekend temperatures reached 15C to 25C across Turkey but in Ankara are forecast to reach just 4C on Wednesday. This is nearly 10C colder than expected for this time of year. Parts of Scandinavia, especially Norway and Finland, are also expected to be widely 5C to 10C below the seasonal norm, as colder air moves in from the north….

    Like

  70. calm JRM vs the hysterical Phoebe Plummer
    She made some over the top claims about wheat/potato crop loss for 2022, then
    “People will be fighting over the loaves at Lidl”

    Like

  71. The comments went way against her
    and actually there was a first tweet with more comments
    but after 10 mins GBnews deleted it and put up the 100% identical one above

    Like

  72. “UK ‘strikingly unprepared’ for impacts of climate crisis
    Government’s official advisers point to ‘lost decade’ in efforts to protect lives and livelihoods”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/29/uk-strikingly-unprepared-impacts-climate-crisis

    Two observations from me:

    1. The UK is probably one the countries least at risk from climate change.

    2. If (as sceptics have long urged) we had spent more time and money on adaptation, and less on the fool’s errand of net zero, whereby we spend a fortune and disrupt everyone’s lives, while making no net difference to the climate, we would be much better placed. The CCC is in many ways the villain of the piece in this regard, since it has spent so long agitating for mitigation ahead of adaptation.

    Like

  73. Mark, as friend of the channel Steven Mosher says, and I paraphrase slightly because I can’t remember exactly what he said: “Of course we don’t plan for tomorrow. We don’t plan for today.”

    The BBC version of the story at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65099546/ notes that last year temperatures hit 40C for the first time and 25,000 wildfires “broke out”. I didn’t know that fires spontaneously start at 40C. “Celsius 40” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Fahrenheit 451”. The entire article is hysterical blather.

    Liked by 1 person

  75. @Mark Hodgson: 27 MAR 23 AT 6:50 PM
    “However, the high temperatures are only expected to last until Friday, with temperatures falling back towards average over the weekend.”
    I sometimes wonder if they know what “average” means. we seem to get this with rainfall in the UK over the last few years as well.

    Like

  77. March has been cold, wet, grey, miserable and oft times quite windy. Basically, an extension of winter. I expect the Met Office will no doubt be telling us in a day or two that it has been the ‘nth warmest March on record’.

    Liked by 1 person

  78. Mark, re. Moonbat’s Guardian commentary:

    Repeats ‘the science is clear’ Holy Mantra:

    “Yet the science is clear: if we are not to push global heating past 1.5°C, there can be no new fossil fuel development.”

    How do we counter religious converts citing science in defence of their ideological belief system?

    Liked by 1 person

  79. Have the Isle of Man authorities gone mad?

    “Views sought on proposals to phase out fossil fuel boilers”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-65113084

    Permission to install fossil fuel heating systems in new planning applications for homes could be refused from August on the Isle of Man.

    The proposal aims to cut the number of gas and oil boilers put in during 2024 by refusing building control approval for new plans that include them.

    Under the plans, a complete ban on the heating systems would not be brought forward to next year as planned.

    Instead, only plans approved before 1 August could include the systems.

    A total ban on installing the fossil fuel heating systems would come into force on 1 January 2025.

    Developers with any previously approved planning applications for homes that had not yet installed the systems would need to re-apply for permission to put in an alternative…

    Like

  81. Mark – re – Have the Isle of Man authorities gone mad?
    “Views sought on proposals to phase out fossil fuel boilers”

    the short answer is yes, as a IOM resident I was not aware they were planning to do this on new builds so soon. quote from the Consultation –
    “Please note the 2025 ban and the proposed changes set out in this consultation do not affect replacements of fossil fuel heating systems within existing buildings – they affect new buildings only.”

    so, only “new buildings” will be affected, looks like existing houses may get a price boost from this madness.
    ps – filling in the Consultation as I type.

    Liked by 1 person

  83. Mark I’m surprised to see you claim that the U.K. is a country least at risk from climate change. I would argue the opposite. It all relates to our confusion about “weather” and “climate”. It is weather that can harm us, not climate. Since British weather is one of the most changeable on Earth, any change in one of several major chaotic influences over our climate and weather systems could cause changes in the frequency or severity of weather events, which over time would be properly identified as climate change.

    Like

  84. Alan,

    Thank you, as always, for reminding me of the need to express myself clearly and with greater thought and effort.

    I said what I did because even a quick trawl through the history books offers a reminder that – as you point out – the UK is at risk from the weather, and always has been.

    We have suffered terrible floods, terrible droughts, coastal habitations have been lost to coastal erosion and storms. We have suffered greatly from storms and from storm surges, and have done so since time immemorial. Is it getting worse? I don’t think so. Do we stand to suffer from it if it gets worse (i.e., if the climate changes detrimentally)? I suppose it’s possible, but the problems strike me as being low-grade compared to the problems likely to be faced by developing countries with lower resilience if a flood or a drought hits. That’s the advantage of being a wealthy developed country (and, of course, is why developing countries seek to develop – to make themselves better able to cope with…everything).

    It seems to me that the biggest problem facing this country, climate-wise, is an ever-expanding population, resulting in more and more development taking place in inappropriate locations (such as those at risk of flooding, whether or not flooding becomes more extreme and more common). The next biggest problem is the failure of the authorities to plan adequately for the growing population. For example, I am sure that I have read that since the 1976 drought (and nothing has yet come close, certainly not last year’s, whatever the climate worriers would have us believe) the UK’s population has increased by around 20% but that virtually no provision has been made for extra reservoir capacity, and precious little has been done to solve the problem of leaking pipes.

    And so on.

    Like

  88. I learned of death of Nigel Lawson from a tweet by Net Zero Watch. Nothing on the sites of the Guardian or BBC. A search revealed an obituary at the Guardian that spoke of his “political career spanning 18 years.” That was the period he was a minister. He was of course active in politics for more like 50 years. There’s no mention of the Global Warming Policy Foundation at all. The Guardian simply wipes it from history.

    Liked by 2 people

  89. Correction. He was MP for 18 years. The BBC’s obituary also fails to mention the GWPF, merely saying: “Lawson used his platform in the Lords to express scepticism of man-made climate change.”

    Like

  90. That is extraordinary Geoff. This ‘Trusted News Initiative’ stuff means they no longer trust anyone with any history that doesn’t comply with the narrative.

    Like

  91. There is a paradox here that I have tried to draw attention to from way back.

    Like Osborne, anyone who’s anyone in the Conservatives has been paying their tributes to Lawson – almost all choosing not to mention that final two decades where staying radical meant something entirely unexpected and anti-Establishment. But Lord Frost to his credit at least mentioned this vast contribution to British public life last night

    So that’s the one I retweeted after Ian Woolley told me Lawson had died. (In the pub. Watching Spurs. But the less said about that the better!)

    Like

  92. The BBC must have amended its obituary for Nigel Lawson since Geoff commented earlier today, as it now includes this:

    In 2004, he re-emerged as a fierce critic of the concept of man-made climate change. He was one of six signatories to a letter condemning the Kyoto Protocol, which committed countries to reduce carbon emissions.

    He followed this up in 2008 with a book entitled, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, a work which one critic described as “largely one of misleading messages”.

    “There is a lot in this debate that is about playing the man not the ball,” he complained.

    He went on to form a think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, to continue to challenge the widely accepted scientific consensus on the issue.

    “The policy of this government,” he said in 2010, “is crazy and damaging. It is complete nonsense to say that carbon dioxide is a pollutant – it is not.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32725176

    Liked by 1 person

  93. The Guardian must have updated its obituary too. It includes this:

    His main interest, however, was a campaign to counter the case for global heating. He set up a thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, designed to challenge international attempts to mitigate the impacts of global heating. Lawson claimed that economic growth should not be slowed down to prevent a possible eventuality, but that policy should be made pragmatically in response to what had already happened.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/04/lord-lawson-of-blaby-nigel-lawson-obituary

    They even manage to avoid snide comments about the GWPF (for once). I suppose certain niceties are necessary when it comes to obituaries.

    Liked by 1 person

  95. Watch out for utter confusion at upcoming COP (with its host UAE) if interest in Climategate and its host university (UEA) is renewed and the miss-spellers thrive.

    Liked by 1 person

  96. BBCnews just now “Climate change brings encephalitis infected ticks to the UK”

    Definitely NOT coming in with tourists who’ve been in foreign countries
    or animals or agricultural products brought in from foreign countries.
    …/sarc

    I was bitten by an *infected tick* whilst at Baikal in Siberia
    (tested at a Russian lab)
    Back in the UK the NHS lab couldn’t find any encephalitis in my blood

    Like

  97. “Ice sheets can collapse at 600 metres a day, far faster than feared, study finds
    Sediments from last ice age provide ‘warning from the past’ for Antarctica and sea level rise today, say scientists”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/05/ice-sheets-collapse-far-faster-than-feared-study-climate-crisis

    What’s interesting is the alarmist narrative here. A sober analysis might draw the conclusion that ice sheets have retreated much more rapidly in the past 20,000 years (a blink of an eye in terms of the life of the planet) than is occurring now. The corollary is that perhaps temperatures increased more rapidly then than now, and all the claims that what is going on now is unprecedented are not justified.

    Liked by 1 person

  98. And on that sort of subject:

    “BBC Goes into Antarctica Climate Meltdown – But Ignores Data Showing No Loss of Ice”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/04/05/bbc-goes-into-antarctica-climate-meltdown-but-ignores-data-showing-no-loss-of-ice/

    …The latest scare arises from a paper published in Nature. It is the product of climate models – the BBC noting that the scientists spent 35 million computer hours over two years collecting their results. However, this story is also of considerable interest since it shows that the BBC and most mainstream media are seemingly incapable of questioning any statement that promotes human-caused climate change and the proposed command-and-control Net Zero political solution. This endemic lack of curiosity means that vast areas of science, including atmospheric physics and chemistry, together with weather, geology and geography, are simply off limits in case any doubt should be cast on the suggestion that humans control the CO2 climate thermostat.

    The study lead author, Professor Matthew England from Sydney’s University of New South Wales, is able to state, without any inquiring question or contradiction, that “our modelling shows that if global carbon emissions continue at the current rate, then the Antarctica overturning will slow by more than 40% in the next 30 years”. The BBC repeats emissions continuing at the current rate, but England’s paper states that his model has been loaded with a “high emissions” scenario. The paper is behind a paywall, but the abstract in which this admission occurs is freely available.

    These “high emission” scenarios are almost certainly RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 that forecast global rises in temperatures of 4-5°C within less than 80 years. As Dr. Judith Curry has recently pointed out, these have been dropped in many science circles on the grounds they are recognised as implausible. Global warming of barely 0.1°C over the last 20 years is almost certainly a factor in this reassessment. Nevertheless, Curry notes that many of the extreme events based on the scenarios are still quoted in IPCC documents. “Rejecting these extreme scenarios has rendered obsolete much of the climate literature and assessments of the last decade,” she states.

    Not at the BBC, of course. Settled science – the Science – cannot move on because it suffers from the anti-science proposition that it is somehow settled…

    Like

  100. His main interest, however, was a campaign to counter the case for global heating.

    Guess that’s why they called it the Global Heating Policy Foundation. By the way, the Desmog entry on the GWPF is as good evidence as any regarding where the power lies in the climate “debate.” It’s not David vs. Goliath. It’s David vs. an armoured brigade of Goliaths.

    Like

  101. Thanks Mark.

    I trust Geoff that the Beeb and Grauniad were slow in getting their ducks in a row. “How do we spin this? Can we call him denier in the headline?” The likes of Marianna Spring would have been well out of their depth – well, even more than normal.

    Like Jit I also ended up on Desmog – pointed there by Lawson critics on Twitter. But somehow I still felt encouragement.

    I love Matt Ridley’s testimony of how Lawson was going to write “You are wrong and Matt is right” in reply to Prince Philip and Matt got him to tone down that message. He didn’t suffer even royal fools gladly, leading to a fascinating top-secret lunch for four in the Palace of Westminster:

    Some people still believed in debate in 2017 and in the top-tier of UK politicians Lawson was foremost among them. His quick wits were also fun to see during the Brexit debates:

    H/t to Ian Woolley for that one. We are going to miss him.

    Like

  103. Mikehig – thanks for that link – liked the quote towards the end –

    “So where, as Mr Kerr asked, is that baseload going to come from if we eliminate nuclear and gas generation? The answer, I suspect, is that we will still be relying on both, well beyond 2030. Just so long as they are imported!
    The more I read of the evidence – which I thoroughly recommend – the more I was struck by the hypothetical nature of it all. Knowledgeable people spoke frankly about both the possibilities and the doubts but nowhere did anyone put forward the kind of firm agenda which would give confidence in keeping the economy going, if the current sources of generation are lost.
    To be fair, that is not the job of academics or engineers. It’s the polticians who are supposed to have a plan”

    but where were the engineers involved?

    Liked by 1 person

  104. dfh: if there were any engineers involved I expect they kept their heads down because none of these numpties would be interested in – or able to understand – the realities.

    Like

  106. In the first two and a half minutes of this video, caffeine abusing automotive YouTuber Scotty Kilmer mocks Ford’s discontinuing production of their electric F-150 Lightning pickup:

    Like

  107. Just heard flood warning in the radio news
    I checked other media
    Yahoo news “Met Office issues flood warning amid yellow alert for much of Scotland tonight”

    Guardian “Heavy rain and gales forecast for western parts of UK
    Met Office issues yellow warnings for wind and Environment Agency issues seven flood alerts in south”

    Oxford Mail : “Met Office issues flood alerts for Oxfordshire this week
    The Met Office has issued flood alerts for Oxfordshire this week, with strong rainfall expected from Tuesday afternoon.”

    Drought Porn : On March 14th there had already been hours of rain
    but the Guardian had prepared their UK drought story and ran with it anyway

    [img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrN7LyXXoAIH7Au?format=jpg&name=small[/img]

    (One of the drought river photos
    turned out to be a low tide photo
    so the Guardian later stealth edited it out of the article)

    Liked by 1 person

  108. .No drought in Britain
    The Guardian simply cherrypicks another country
    on April 5 “Water ban in drought-stricken Tunisia adds to growing crisis”

    Was that story too out of date at time of publishing ?

    Well some people tweeted that day they had had the 4 days of heavy rain

    Liked by 1 person

  109. Obviously, the ghost of Dennis Howell* is haunting the Grauniad offices.

    * for those with shorter memories than mine, our Dennis was made Minister for Drought during the long hot summer of 1976. Shortly after his appointment, the weather broke, and it started raining.

    Liked by 2 people

  111. I’m rather busy just now, but if I can find the time, there might be an article in this. It’s front-page news on the BBC website:

    “Climate change: Fossil fuel emissions from electricity set to fall – report”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65240094

    The article is full of hype, but the reality is that it talking about only fossil fuel use associated with electricity generation, not fossil fuel use generally. Given that (iirc) electricity represents only around 1/6 of the world’s energy use, this is hardly the turning-point that the article claims. The report, by Ember (not exactly a disinterested organisation, IMO) can be found here:

    https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electricity-review-2023/

    It starts by confusing electricity and power (this is so common that I can’t help wondering if it’s deliberate). A headline tells us:

    Electricity at its cleanest, as wind and solar generate 12% of global power

    It’s followed immediately by a statement that:

    The carbon intensity of global electricity generation fell to a record low of 436 gCO2/kWh in 2022, the cleanest-ever electricity. This was due to record growth in wind and solar, which reached a 12% share in the global electricity mix, up from 10% in 2021.

    12% of electricity generation, then, not12% of global power. If I am correct that electricity represents around 1/6 of global power, then wind and solar have achieved….drum roll….2% of the world’s energy use.

    Liked by 1 person

  112. The BBC (Matt McGrath) observes that

    ‘The authors attribute the expected change to a boom in renewable energy led mainly by China.’

    And, as Ember says:

    ‘China’s electricity sector has been in the throes of a clean revolution over the past few years, with an almost ten-fold growth in wind, solar and hydro generation. This has resulted in a roughly 18% reduction in the share of coal generation, from 78% in 2000 to 64% in 2021.’

    A curious ‘revolution’ given that China’s CO2 emissions have increased by 237% over the same period, substantially because of a massive increase in coal-fired electricity generation.

    Liked by 3 people

  114. “Ross McKitrick: The important climate study you won’t hear about
    Challenges trends in climate simulations”

    https://financialpost.com/opinion/ross-mckitrick-the-important-climate-study-you-wont-hear-about

    An important new study on climate change came out recently. I’m not talking about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report with its nonsensical headline “Urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all.” No, that’s just meaningless sloganeering proving yet again how far the IPCC has departed from its original mission of providing objective scientific assessments.

    I’m referring instead to a new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres by a group of scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headed by Cheng-Zhi Zou, which presents a new satellite-derived temperature record for the global troposphere (the atmospheric layer from one kilometre up to about 10 km altitude)…

    … In their new paper Zou and his co-authors rebuilt the STAR series based on a new empirical method for removing time-of-day observation drift and a more stable method of merging satellite records. Now STAR agrees with the UAH series very closely — in fact it has a slightly smaller warming trend. The old STAR series had a mid-troposphere warming trend of 0.16 degrees Celsius per decade, but it’s now 0.09 degrees per decade, compared to 0.1 in UAH and 0.14 in RSS. For the troposphere as a whole they estimate a warming trend of 0.14 C/decade.

    Zou’s team notes that their findings “have strong implications for trends in climate model simulations and other observations” because the atmosphere has warmed at half the average rate predicted by climate models over the same period. They also note that their findings are “consistent with conclusions in McKitrick and Christy (2020),” namely that climate models have a pervasive global warming bias. In other research, Christy and mathematician Richard McNider have shown that the satellite warming rate implies the climate system can only be half as sensitive to GHGs as the average model used by the IPCC for projecting future warming…

    The paper referred to can be found here:

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD037472

    Liked by 2 people

  115. Robin; Those Ember statistics for China are rather selective which is no surprise.
    A quick websearch took me to the EIA website (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=53959) which says:
    “China has steadily increased its electricity generation over the past 20 years, reaching 7,600 terawatthours (TWh) in 2020 from 1,280 TWh in 2000, according to our recently updated Country Analysis Brief.
    China has been increasing the share of non-fossil fuels in its electricity generation, but coal remains a predominant source. In 2020, China generated 4,775 TWh from coal-fired power plants, a 63% share of China’s electricity generation. In 2000, coal accounted for 77% of China’s electricity generation (992 TWh). In the intervening 20 years, non-fossil fuels, including hydroelectric, wind, and solar generation, grew to 27% (2,058 TWh) of China’s generation mix, from 17% (221 TWh) in 2000.”
    It is very clear that coal has met the lion’s share of the rise in output. The non-FF sources are not even keeping up with the increase, let alone displacing coal in the way inferred by Ember.
    There is an excellent graphic on the webpage but I don’t know how to post it on here.

    Like

  116. Mark, that is a good example of why I think the science is still important. Accelerated warming in the tropical mid troposphere was was supposed to be THE irrefutable signal of anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming. They never could find it, but STAR offered them some hope that they would eventually – it was just a case of doing the measurements correctly; now the STAR data agrees closely with UAH – no accelerated warming. Science and data wins.

    Like

  118. ITV local newsPR
    “Oh look not-dig farming is magic and good for the planet ..low CO2”
    … https://twitter.com/NickSmithITV/status/1646544674092359681

    .. Political greens love magical thinking
    there are reasons why the real world is different, and that big farming corps don’t use these methods
    Dreams are not the same as reality.

    In another item their Climate champion the weather woman Laura Tobin had FLOWN to French Guiana to do a live report from the Jupiter satellite launch
    There was no actual news, cos rain had stopped the launch.

    Like

  119. Followup the presenter @NickSmithITV on Apr 11 (after Easter, but still half term)
    £180 to go from Bristol to Newcastle (booked well over a month in advance)
    For the privilege of standing most of the way because the train is overbooked
    … welcome to modern rail travel in the UK
    I could have flown much quicker and cheaper
    – and quite easily could have driven at under half the cost (even with fuel prices as they are)
    – but trying to do the right thing environmentally… quite frustrating really.

    I tested megabus booking 6 weeks in advance
    Basically Bristol to London is 3 hours (£4 or £5),
    London to Newcastle is 9 hours (£13)
    So possible in one day, but since the nightbus is the same price I’d use that

    Direct leave Bristol at 5pm arrive Newcastle at midnight £23

    Seems to me he’s taking a direct train from Bristol Central to NewC
    Takes 5 hours
    Even on the train the trick is to go Bristol Parkway via London – NewC is 5 hours and some trains after 9am cost £70
    (even if you connect from Bristol central first)
    (In London you have to use the tube to get to the Newcastle train)

    Like

  121. OK you can have gast urbines on a truck/lorry but what’s the biggest power you can get ?
    cos greeny RCH with the help of PR agency Carbon Pants has won an IPSO judgement against Telegraph’s Robert Tombs
    .. https://twitter.com/RaveCozensHardy/status/1646559233817575447

    Her words “Tombs wrote a statement that said “a gas – turbine generator small enough to go on the back of a lorry
    will produce the same electricity, faster and more reliably,
    than 10 off shore wind turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower”.
    The generator was a Trent SGT-A65TR:”

    I found this article about the SGT-A45 MOBILE power station says
    “Siemens also introduced its other units in portfolio, the bigger SGT-A65TR aeroderivative”
    (55MW Trent 60)
    https://techcabal.com/2017/11/01/siemens-launches-fast-power-solutions/

    “The Siemens SGT-A65 (formerly Industrial Trent 60)
    is a 50-55 MW three-shaft, axial flow, aeroderivative industrial 50/60 Hz gas turbine based on the Rolls-Royce Trent 800 high-bypass turbofan aircraft engine developed for the Boeing 777”
    http://fi-powerweb.com/Engine/Industrial/Trent-60-MT30.html

    Another article : a FT8 MOBILEPAC gas power station 30MW fits in an Antonov aircraft
    One trailers contains the gas turbine, electric generator, exhaust collector, diffuser, and engine lube oil systems, and start package
    Second trailer carries switchgear etc.
    https://www.power-eng.com/gas/mobile-gas-turbines-quick-and-reliable-emergency-power-for-those-in-need/

    Here’s an article about the now operational Keadby2
    A rather large trailer takes the 840MW turbine 2 miles
    https://www.sse.com/news-and-views/2020/05/world-leading-keadby-2-turbine-arrives-in-north-lincolnshire/

    What do 10 turbines generate ? Anyone ?
    8.5MW turbines are in use. so that’s 85MW
    at a typical 40% capacity factor that’s 34MW average generation

    Like

  123. Given that Northern Ireland’s GHG emissions barely register on a global scale, I should have thought that the failure to have a government in Stormont represents so many more problems than this:

    “Lack of NI government puts net zero targets at risk, UK climate adviser warns
    Climate Change Committee says little hope of getting on track if Stormont power sharing not restored soon”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/15/northern-ireland-government-net-zero-climate-change-committee

    Still, priorities, eh? Apparently, “realism” involves devastating its farming economy:

    The CCC recently published a report detailing its proposals to government on how Northern Ireland could meet its incoming carbon budgets – the first deadline for which is 2027. The advisory report contains a suggested pathway to 2050 net zero that includes measures such as cutting livestock numbers by a third, alongside rapid afforestation, carbon capture and a range of renewable energy initiatives.

    Northern Ireland’s farming sector, which accounts for 28% of its overall greenhouse gas emissions, is facing “very dramatic” changes, so there needs to be as much government engagement and supportive policy in place as possible, Stark said.

    “What we’ve recommended in this report is a very dramatic shift in the way that agriculture happens in Northern Ireland.

    “I hope it flushes out a more realistic appraisal of what needs to happen in Northern Ireland now, because I’m afraid I’m not of the view that these targets can just be presented as just high-ambition ‘stretch’ targets, and that it doesn’t matter if we don’t meet them – because they’re legal obligations. And I don’t want to see the law undermined in that way.

    “So, if net zero [by 2050] is the goal, this is the path you’ve got to follow. And it has very deep implications for society, and particularly for agricultural production.”

    Like

  124. Jaime:

    Mark, that is a good example of why I think the science is still important. Accelerated warming in the tropical mid troposphere was was supposed to be THE irrefutable signal of anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming.

    Well, it is and it isn’t important.

    Doing science the Feynman way, which the response to this lack of predicted tropical mid troposphere signal just isn’t, is always important, in and of itself. Even if the result had absolute zero political significance. Even if no human lives were going to be affected, one way or the other, by policies that purported to be based on the falsified-and-thus-bogus science in question. The purity of science matters, in and of itself.

    But with Net Zero we’re headed for policy-caused catastrophe that will cost many thousands of millions of lives, as Jordan Peterson, among many others who are not climate science specialists, has been pointing to, with great passion. (And with higher YouTube viewing figures than most, bless him.)

    How do we derail that train? That is is the single most important question. Compared to which …

    You get the rest.

    Liked by 1 person

  125. Do we want to derail that train?

    Wouldn’t it be better to encourage the elites in their self-destruction, which would leave those of us who survived to build our own New Jerusalem?

    Like

  126. “Climate sceptics sneak unsound research into peer-reviewed journals, scientists warn”

    The main article discussed is one by the Die Kalte Sonne guys. I haven’t read it, so can’t comment on the criticisms. But the rather slapdash one by the Italian physicists last year also gets a dishonourable mention:

    The paper was “published by people not working in climatology and obviously unfamiliar with the topic and relevant data,” Stefan Rahmstorf, Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told AFP.

    “It is not published in a climate journal — this is a common avenue taken by ‘climate sceptics’ in order to avoid peer review by real experts in the field.”

    https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.33CU2GB

    Like

  127. Bill: Too Marxist-Leninist for me. Out of such destruction, especially of the poor, comes yet more destruction and tyranny. It’s been tried. No thanks.

    Like

  128. “High costs and uncertainties cast a chill over Britain’s heat pump market
    Jillian Ambrose
    Energy correspondent
    What can be done to boost sales of the green alternative to gas boilers?”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/15/high-costs-and-uncertainties-cast-a-chill-over-britains-heat-pump-market

    … their benefits have been overshadowed by concerns about cost, and uptake has been low.

    The government’s aim is to have 600,000 heat pumps a year being installed by 2028. But only 55,000 were fitted in 2021, while 1.5m gas boilers were installed.

    A £450m scheme offering grants of £5,000 towards the cost of a heat pump was launched last May to a tepid response. Figures released last week by Ofgem show that by the end of March the scheme had only managed to give out slightly more than a third of the grants available for the financial year. It issued just 11,996 vouchers out of the 30,000 available, of which 9,981 were redeemed – equivalent to £50.16m of the £150m of grants on offer annually for the next three years.

    So why has the UK’s home decarbonisation strategy gone cold and what can be done to restart it?…

    They’ll never accept that the UK population isn’t stupid and is well aware that heat pumps are expensive and often leave homes cold. The reason that the great British public isn’t rushing to adopt heat pumps is because they know that their existing gas boilers work.

    Like

  129. Mark – thanks for the link, liked this quote –
    “Yet although heat pumps can transform 1 kilowatt of green electricity into 3kW-worth of heat, their benefits have been overshadowed by concerns about cost”

    well that sells heat pumps for me, I want mine now, but wonder why they say “1 kilowatt = 3kW-worth of heat” ? why not use kilowatt to kilowatt, or am I missing something?

    plus, as you say my gas boilers works in the cold IOM, when it’s cold in winter it warms the house in 30mts.
    I have a idea, divide the UK in 2, bottom half get heat pumps (heat wave every year it seems) & top half watch.

    Like

  133. His last tweet doesn’t pull its punches

    The ISD is the org the BBC guy tried citing to Musk about increased hate speech last week.

    A severe lack of examples hindered his case!

    Liked by 2 people

  135. Richard, re. your comment on 15th April. As I’ve said. I’m not sure we can derail that train. It will derail itself eventually, but at huge cost to society and the economy. But exposing the fraud any way we can, be it revealing the absurdity of the Net Zero sums which don’t add up, or revealing the extremely poor science upon which the supposed ‘climate crisis’ is predicated can do no harm and may hasten the derailment. A few years ago, sceptics pointing to UAH as evidence that the troposphere wasn’t warming nearly as fast as climate models predicted were sneeringly informed that it was an outlier. Now that STAR has been recalibrated and falls in line with UAH v 6.0, it seems that RSS is the outlier and the evidence for the lack of stratospheric warming is even stronger. The problem is conveying this information to the wider public.

    Liked by 1 person

  136. Ed Hoskins has been busy – always worth a look to see what he’s up to:

    https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/3-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/

    https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/the-minor-greenhouse-gasses-co2-ch4-n2o/

    https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/progress-and-costs-of-uk-weather-dependent-renewables-2002-2022/

    https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2022-weather-dependent-renewables-in-germany-uk-and-france/

    https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/comparing-power-generation-technologies/

    Like

  137. Thanks Richard. It was definitely down for a while. It was probably just squirrels that had to be chased out of Twitter’s gears. There seems to be lots of new quirks popping up there.

    Liked by 1 person

  138. Mike: Twitter wobbles I call them. I had an interesting taste of that on my second tweet after breaking my two year ‘fast’ from tweeting on 1st February. Somebody tried to take it down. There are indeed quirks – both in algorithms and the actions of personnel. At least that’s the way I interpret them.

    Liked by 1 person

  139. Jaime:

    As I’ve said. I’m not sure we can derail that train.

    When Net Zero is finally derailed there will be, as always, historians who emphasize the impersonal forces that put paid to it and others who point to the agency of key individuals. (It can easily be the wrong individuals too!) But this is where I opt for pessimism of the intellect yet optimism of the will. I agree with Churchill in 1941 (or was it really 1940?) that you have to fight as if victory is possible and depends on you, otherwise you ensure the most pessimistic outcome will prevail. See the quote over on John’s thread two days ago.

    Liked by 1 person

  140. Windfarm comapny Orsted are destroying much of the ocean wildlifewith their windfarms
    ..that’s not much reported
    but them sponsoring a few people to plant seagrass seaweed was given the full PRasNews treatment today by BBC Radio Humberside, ITV local newsPR Show, BBC local News PR Show,
    The local eviroment reporter/green-activist gave it the full hyperbole
    “Industry has destroyed nature in the sea, planting seagrass is a huge absorber of CO2”
    is it ?
    Well as long as they plants are alive and gri[[ing the seabed
    If the sea rips them up and washes them ashore they will decay and put CO2 back into the atmosphere.

    Like

  141. ITV local newsPR have the Lincolnshire girl on who has just got back from being a post mistress in Antarctica.
    They were hoping to air some Global Warming scareporn
    Sadly for them she reported that
    “the penguin babies were one month late going into the water. this year, due to too much snow”

    Liked by 1 person

  142. John Cadogan compares a vehicle with a V6 to a similar EV and finds it emits 222 grams of CO2 per KM while the EV emits 240 per KM by charging on Australia’s grid. The EV’s battery also starts out with a seven and a half ton CO2 deficit. He gives sources for all his data:

    Like

  144. John Cadogan Just did another video where he corrects a major factor of two error in the above video. He mixed up a numerator with a denominator. the EV only emits120 grams per km rather than 240:

    Like

  145. I only just realised Twitter has been slapping a warning over my tweets due to
    me using the hashtag#ClimatePorn
    Instead of showing them directly Twitter stuck a warning over them saying
    “May contain sensitive content”

    For gods sake I thought the hashtag #ClimatePorn sums it up
    but seems like Twitter just takes the sub-word “porn” and starts suppressing me
    Cockup rather than conspiracy

    The thing was that warning doesn’t show up for me
    so I didn’t even know.

    Liked by 1 person

  146. I suspect his maths is still flawed
    cos you really have to compare the full elements end to end
    The actual grid vs a zero renewables grid
    that’s cos the latter can have much LESS infrastructure and run flat out

    The actual grid has got a bigger Carbon footprint than expected
    cos you
    #1 mine and process all the resources for the additional infrastructure
    #2 Run the conventional plant on standby a lot so run less efficiently
    Then you need to factor the additional materials for the heavier EV
    and consider that weight imposes more wear on the road.

    Liked by 1 person

  147. Hurrah! The two foreign prannets who want the UK to stop producing oil and gas and thought that camping on Dartford Bridge would force the UK government to obey them have been given proper jail terms.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/21/just-stop-oil-protesters-jailed-for-dartford-crossing-protest

    Three years for Morgan Trowland (a Kiwi) and two years and seven months for Marcus Decker/Carambola/De/Gurmasix/Hylobates (German). Trowland got a longer sentence because he has six previous convictions whereas Decker only has one.

    More later, perhaps, but right now I’m off to Poland. I want Poland to stop factory-farming pheasants so I am going to climb up a bridge in Warsaw, poo in a bag and sing songs about Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Who wants to bet that the Polish government bans factory-farmed pheasants before the bag is full? (I’m betting against.)

    ===
    PS: In less happy news, one of XR’s and IB’s many vicars was sentenced to only five weeks for blocking a road in Bishopsgate.

    https://insulatebritain.com/2023/04/20/breaking-courts-prove-themselves-to-be-morally-bankrupt-as-five-people-are-jailed-in-one-week-for-vowing-to-continue-in-civil-resistance/

    Like

  149. R4TODAY tomorrow Thought For The Day will feature a sceptic calling out the mad Global Warming cult
    .. /sarc Well it would in a fair world.

    Today TfD was someone laying it on thick about Climate Change and need to act now and that we have done nothing so far
    then in the last 4 seconds he tacked on a mention of the nun Julian of Norwich and hazelnuts, so he could claim his Climate Propaganda is Christian.

    Liked by 1 person

  150. Shock horror probe! The main founder of Eschatonanist Revelry (XR) shops at Waitrose!

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22109854/extinction-rebellion-leader-gail-bradbrook-exposed-eco-hypocrite/

    Here is Bradbrook’s response:

    Pompous, angry and unconvincing regurgitations of things XR has said many times before about its hypocrisy – and no mention at all of why Bradbrook uses Waitrose, Britain’s poshest and usually most expensive supermarket. There are plenty of others in Stroud, yet her supporters (elsewhere on Twitter) say that she is short of money.

    Like

  153. dfhunter: Thanks for the link to the JHB/JSO interview. I was not impressed. JHB has the right instincts and I think she understands the issues. The problem is that she cannot stay calm when faced with absurdity or a failure to answer the question. The result is that, to the neutral observer, her shouting at and talking over him probably makes her appear as unreasonable as him. In fact, at times he seemed to be the one trying to be reasonable. Better surely to stay calm, let him make his case and then calmly demolish it?

    Like

  154. “Earth Day: How to talk to your parents about climate change”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65339214

    You want to go vegan to help the planet, but you’re not paying for the shopping. You think trains are better than planes, but your dad books the summer holiday.

    Young people are some of the world’s most powerful climate leaders and want rapid action to tackle the problem.

    It makes a lot of sense. Higher temperatures and rising sea levels will impact the youngest alive today far more than older generations. But the power to act is often still in the hands of older people, including parents.

    Big changes are difficult, especially when they involve other people. Where do you begin? For this year’s Earth Day, we spoke to people who have successfully had tricky climate chats at home. Here are their top tips:…

    Alternatively, perhaps parents should talk to their children about climate change, and teach them some home truths.

    Like

  155. Robin, you’d have to be a saint to remain calm talking to that blustering moron. JHB challenges him about his lie that ‘the end of civilisation’ will be caused by climate change. His response: ‘It’s not me saying that, it’s the chief diplomat of the world, Antonio Guterres’. Then he talks about ‘hard science’ from David King! He’s a total idiot and a fixated, brainwashed climate change cult member. No amount of calm debate (or exasperated shouting) is going to deter him from his views. JHB should have calmly stated as such and shut down the interview early. That would have been far more effective. Patience is not always a virtue.

    Like

  156. Just Stop Oil has announced that it will continue its traffic-blocking slow-marches on London’s streets ‘until our genocidal government ends new oil and gas’ (‘genocidal government’ is an old Hallam catchphrase):

    https://juststopoil.org/2023/04/24/just-stop-oil-we-wont-stop-until-our-genocidal-government-ends-new-oil-and-gas/

    That press release includes quotes from two JSO slow-marchers. Here they are in full:

    #1

    I feel that civil resistance is my moral duty. I was brought up to know the difference between right and wrong, and what this murderous, corrupted government is doing is plain wrong.

    Putting my freedom on the line is the least I can do to ensure my loved ones and I have a liveable future. We need to stand up to a government that does not have our best interests at heart and that is determined to sell our futures, one new oil licence at a time.

    #2

    I work in construction and I am here because the British government is messing with laws of physics. New oil and gas is genocide and they know it! I was 10 years old when I first heard of climate change. That was 30 years ago. I won’t be sitting around and waiting for another three decades.

    I’m back to work in two weeks’ time and I will get stuck in this traffic myself. And it’s worth it. And I would tell these people: This is bigger than World War 2, the Miners’ strike, and the Berlin Wall, bigger than the Poll Tax Riots. We need a human tipping point. It’s time to pick a side. We can win this. Join Just Stop Oil on a slow march, every Saturday at midday from Parliament Square.

    Is it xenophobic to point out that #1 is French and #2 is Polish?

    Both have been here for a while but I don’t think either is a British citizen.

    It’s daft and undemocratic for anyone to say that they’ll block roads until the government obeys them but for foreigners to do it…

    Well, it’s a bit ill-mannered, no?

    And I doubt that Brits would get away with it in France or Poland. (Especially France.)

    ===
    PS: I agree with Robin G’s comment about the JHB vid.

    PPS: Bigger than the Berlin Wall? That was 96 miles long.

    Liked by 1 person

  159. Mike,

    Definitions of humanism abound, and they are complex and multifarious. I’m far from convinced that Dr Mann’s work fits in with my views regarding humanism (a concept which I broadly favour).

    Liked by 1 person

  161. “BP faces rebel shareholders over new climate goals”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65385834

    Some of the UK’s biggest pension funds are to vote against reappointing BP’s chairman over a decision to weaken its climate plans.

    It comes after the energy giant cut back its target to reduce emissions by the end of the decade.

    Ahead of the firm’s annual meeting on Thursday, the five pension schemes, all shareholders in BP, criticised a “failure of governance” .

    BP said it valued “constructive challenge and engagement”.

    The original target to reduce emissions was agreed by shareholders in 2022 and included a promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 35-40% by the end of this decade.

    But in February, BP announced it was now aiming for a 20-30% cut in order to produce more oil and gas and extend the life of existing fossil fuel projects. BP chief executive Bernard Looney said this was in response to increased concerns about energy security following the invasion of Ukraine.

    The five pension funds told the BBC that their vote against the company’s chairman, Helge Lund, was a protest against the company’s actions. The pension funds have £440m invested in BP, which represents less than 1% of the company’s total shares. But they manage the pensions of more than a third of the UK’s workers so are an influential voice.

    Katharina Lindmeier, senior responsible investment manager at Nest, the government-backed pension fund, told the BBC: “Not only were we disappointed to see the company going back on the targets, but we were also really surprised not to have had any consultation.”

    The five pension funds – Nest, the Universities Pension Scheme, LGPS Central, Brunel Pension Partnership and Border to Coast – are concerned that the new targets put BP financially at risk as the company’s fossil fuel projects are likely to lose value as the world moves towards net zero emissions….

    For all my occasional optimism that net zero is about to crash and burn, this sort of thing demonstrates that we have a long road ahead. Climate alarmism is deeply entrenched within the establishment. The final sentence quoted above demonstrates an ongoing disconnect with reality, IMO. I’m glad my pension isn’t under the control of any of those people…

    Like

  163. Mark – another BBC non story – never heard/or will put money in any they quoted.
    “The pension funds have £440m invested in BP, which represents less than 1% of the company’s total shares. But they manage the pensions of more than a third of the UK’s workers so are an influential voice.”

    I would worry if 1% have “an influential voice.” tell them to invest elsewhere (aka bugger off then)

    Like

  164. Jaime – thanks for the link, the gravy train keeps rolling.

    with h/t to Mike’s comment above –
    “Excuse me while I puke.” Michael E Mann wins Humanist of the Year award:”

    Like

  165. Good to see a GBnews breakfast producer strongly calling out Chris Skidmore’s CONFLICT of INTEREST
    Thread

    Like

  166. see the Guardian is pushing another donation push – “The free press is under attack from multiple forces. Media outlets are closing their doors, victims to a broken business model. In much of the world, journalism is morphing into propaganda, as governments dictate what can and can’t be printed. In the last year alone, hundreds of reporters have been killed or imprisoned for doing their jobs. The UN reports that 85% of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in their country in recent years. bla bla”

    Like

  167. An admission that April has been cold, we seem to be witnessing the end of the claim that spring is arriving ever earlier (after all, it isn’t), and the narrative has now morphed seamlessly into one of extreme cold and heat:

    “April’s cold weather shows its time to fill our gardens with hardier plants, say experts
    Top gardeners advise use of tougher varieties that can cope with extremes of heat and cold as conditions disappoint growers”

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/30/april-cold-weather-gardens-hardier-plants-extremes-heat-cold

    Gardeners are being urged to grow plants that can cope with extreme heat and cold after the Royal Horticultural Society was bombarded with letters from members asking why species they had cultivated successfully for years were now dying.

    “It seems to be because of the temperature fluctuations,” said Nikki Barker, a senior horticultural adviser at the RHS. “We’ve gone from severe drought with an initially very mild autumn that turned cold. It’s the combination of weather patterns rather than one single event. And plants find it hard to deal with that fluctuation.”

    This year has seen the driest February in England for 30 years, according to the Met Office, while March was the wettest for 40 years. April so far has had conditions ranging from lower than average temperatures to severe wind warnings. But late last week forecasters were finally predicting an improvement, with the temperature tipped to reach 21C in the capital over the bank holiday weekend.

    Concerns about the fast-changing conditions have led experts at the Chelsea flower show to change some blooms for hardier varieties.

    Amusingly, that wet March arrived shortly after claims that we were heading into a prolonged drought (due to climate change, naturally). Incidentally, make an internet search using search terms like “Guardian [or BBC] spring arriving earlier”, and the unfolding narrative is interesting to observe.

    Liked by 1 person

  170. Quelle surprise:

    “Many Europeans want climate action – but less so if it changes their lifestyle, shows poll”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/02/many-europeans-want-climate-action-but-less-so-if-it-changes-their-lifestyle-shows-poll

    Many Europeans are alarmed by the climate crisis and would willingly take personal steps and back government policies to help combat it, a survey suggests – but the more a measure would change their lifestyle, the less they support it.

    The seven-country YouGov survey tested backing for state-level climate action, such as banning single-use plastics and scrapping fossil-fuel cars, and individual initiatives including buying only secondhand clothes and giving up meat and dairy products.

    The responses, from the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Italy, suggested many people were happy with measures that would not greatly affect the way they lead their lives, but bigger steps that may be necessary were unpopular…

    …Unsurprisingly, government subsidies to make homes more energy efficient were wildly popular, with support ranging from 86% in Spain to 67% in Germany, while covering the costs personally was rather less so (19% in Germany to 40% in Spain).

    There was broad support, too, for frequent flyer levies (from 39% in Italy to 59% in Germany, with a majority in five out of the seven countries in favour), but much less for buying only secondhand clothes (from 17% in Germany to 27% in the UK).

    Even more radical proposals, such as voluntarily eating no more meat and dairy and having fewer children than you would like, were supported by between barely 10% (Germany) and 19% (Italy), and 9% (Germany) and 17% (Italy) respectively.

    Changes in car use, a major contributor to carbon emissions and an area in which many European governments are already legislating, also drew responses that showed a close correlation to the impact they might have on people’s lives.

    Asked whether they would be willing to switch to an electric car, an average of just under a third of respondents across the seven countries surveyed – ranging from 19% in Germany through 32% in Denmark to 40% in Italy – answered positively…

    And this is where net zero will unravel, eventually, but not before a lot of money has been wasted and a lot of harm has been caused.

    Like

  171. Meanwhile, as always, it’s all about the money:

    “Green investment funds pushing money into fossil fuel firms, research finds
    BlackRock and L&G among asset managers using funds with ESG label to invest in coal, oil and gas”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/02/green-investment-funds-pushing-money-into-fossil-fuel-firms-research-finds

    nvestment funds branded as green or socially responsible are being used by some of the world’s largest asset managers to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuel companies, according to a report.

    The research by the Common Wealth thinktank showed that the US fund managers BlackRock and State Street and the UK-based Legal & General were among asset managers to use funds with an “environment, social and governance” (ESG) label to invest in fossil fuel firms.

    The leftwing thinktank said that despite claims that ESG funds offer a green and socially responsible option for investors, “the research shows these funds are significantly exposed to fossil fuel companies”.

    Between February and April this year, BlackRock, State Street and Legal & General alone were found to hold $1bn (£800m) in bonds issued by fossil fuel companies in their ESG funds…

    So much for all that talk by Mark Carney and others of “stranded assets”. Fossil fuel assets are anything but stranded, and investors know it.

    Liked by 1 person

  172. MikeHig and dfhunter, the Daily Sceptic has more:

    “U.K. Could Lose 75% of its Energy Supply by 2050”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/05/02/u-k-could-lose-75-of-its-energy-supply-by-2050/

    The United Kingdom is likely to have barely a quarter of the energy in 2050 promised by the Government and its Climate Change Committee if all the legal obligations of Net Zero are followed. This shocking news is forecast by the latest energy review recently published by U.K. FIRES. Government-funded U.K FIRES writes that the “whole excitement” of its project has been to recognise that such a shortfall is close to a certain reality. Excitement is not perhaps a word that comes immediately to mind when contemplating Britain’s almost certain economic and societal collapse.

    As we have noted before in the Daily Sceptic, UK FIRES bases its recommendations on the brutal, and many would argue, honest reality of Net Zero. It does not assume that technological processes still to be perfected, or even invented, will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles. Speaking to architects in 2021 at a RIBA climate conference, UK FIRES leader, Cambridge-based Professor Julian Allwood, said the UK Net Zero strategy is as unrealistic as “magic beans fertilised by unicorn’s blood”.

    It can be argued that the £5 million of taxpayer funding to UK FIRES is money well spent since its honest Net Zero appraisals contrast with the fanciful stories and deceit that surround many other claims by Net Zero promoters.

    Robin is of the view that FIRES are sceptics. If they’re not, they certainly do a lot to promote the sceptical cause.

    Like

  173. dfhunter: yes, that graph is more than a little concerning, especially since the CCC “benchmark” is itself a big cut in output. It’s a shame the graph doesn’t also show total oil and gas consumption which would highlight our increasing dependence on foreign supplies.

    Mark H: I’m not sure where the “one quarter” figure comes from since, from the bar plots, the FIRES outlook is for nearly 600 TWh versus the highest of the other forecasts of 1600 TWh? The article also starts by talking with “The United Kingdom is likely to have barely a quarter of the energy in 2050” whereas the graph and later text makes clear that it is referring to electricity only.
    Whatever, it’s not a pretty picture!

    Liked by 1 person

  174. Mark – from your Guardian link –
    “And asked what they thought of a ban on fossil fuel cars, only in Spain and Italy were more people happy with the idea than opposed to it – with the level of opposition in countries such as France and Germany, at more than 60%, almost double the support.”

    wonder what the UK % was?

    notice the Germans can’t decide on 9 or 10 % on –
    “Even more radical proposals, such as voluntarily eating no more meat and dairy and having fewer children than you would like, were supported by between barely 10% (Germany) and 19% (Italy), and 9% (Germany) and 17% (Italy) respectively.”

    as to “individual initiatives including buying only secondhand clothes”
    as it happens I have some Budgie Smugglers in a drawer that are up for auction – antbody interested?

    Like

  176. Mark – another thing from your link.
    I had thought YOUGOV was a government quango/org set up to inform us. silly me.

    partial quote from the “about” page (the rest is worth a read as well)
    “YouGov is an international online research data and analytics technology group.
    Our mission is to supply a continuous stream of accurate data and insight into what the world thinks, so that companies, governments and institutions can make informed decisions.”

    Like

  178. April mean temperature in the UK turned out to be almost exactly the average for the period 1991-2020. After peaking in 2011, April months are becoming cooler. The signal of natural climate variability superimposed upon a more general warming since 1890 is very clear for the month of April in the UK, but Spring in general shows the same pattern. With the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation now in negative phase, I think we have probably seen the last of a strong warming trend in spring. May 2023 is not looking too promising. I’m still having to light the woodburner!

    https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/climate-crisis-update-april-in-the

    Liked by 1 person

  179. “Central banks raising interest rates makes it harder to fight the climate crisis
    Thomas Ferguson and Servaas Storm
    Higher rates slow the renewable energy transition and shield oil and gas producers from competition by low-carbon producers”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/06/central-banks-interest-rate-hike-climate-crisis

    Much to disagree with or ponder in the article, but for me this was the important bit:

    …newly applied renewable energy technologies, which have relatively large front-loaded costs, are more competitive (relative to the already installed fossil fuel technologies) only when interest rates are low.

    Engineering studies show that the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind onshore will increase by 11% and 25%, respectively, if interest rates are 4-4.5% (rather than around zero). Investments in new renewable energy capacity are thus only viable if market prices allow them to earn their full LCOE.

    Estimates by the International Energy Agency suggest that the LCOE of a gas-fired power plant would increase by about 4% if interest rates were to increase from 3% to 7%, whereas that of offshore wind and solar PV (utility scale) could rise by more than 30%….

    Like

  180. The Daily Sceptic has posted an article from the Telegraph which explains how the energy suppliers are “greenwashing” their tariffs via the use of REGOs (Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin):
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/dirty-secret-premium-green-energy-deals/

    This allows them to charge a premium for “100% renewable” tariffs while actually supplying FF-sourced electricity at times when renewable output is low. Apparently REGOs are cheap – about £5 per MWh today, having risen from 22p 5 years ago. Even so, £2bn has been spent on them in that time. Assuming an average cost of £2 (to keep the maths simple), that works out at one million GWh which must cover a good proportion of domestic power consumption.

    Apparently there is rising pressure to stop the practice. Now, if only they would start offering renewable-only tariffs where supply would be cut off when there is insufficient renewable/zero CO2 output. My guess is the EdF with their nuclear fleet, fast-shrinking though it is, would be the only player.

    PS. If there is a thread which would be a better home for this comment, please re-post it: I couldn’t find one.

    Liked by 1 person

  181. “BBC unveils Bike Bureau for green broadcasting”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-65511794

    Two BBC journalists, Kate Vandy and Anna Holligan, have spent the last few years working on building a mobile broadcast studio and office on two wheels.

    The Bike Bureau is an electric cargo bike, kitted out to offer solo-operated and solar-powered TV and radio lives. It’s also used for newsgathering tasks.

    I suppose that will nicely offset the BBC’s carbon footprint from worldwide sporting events such as the football world cup (sarc).

    Like

  182. “Climate scientists first laughed at a ‘bizarre’ campaign against the BoM – then came the harassment
    Former Bureau of Meteorology staff say claims they deliberately manipulated data to make warming seem worse are being fed by a ‘fever swamp’ of climate denial”

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/climate-scientists-first-laughed-at-a-bizarre-campaign-against-the-bom-then-came-the-harassment

    The article does, near the end, provide a link to Jennifer Marohasy’s response, from which it seems that she was given very little time to respond:

    “The Guardian, Temperatures, Misinformation (Part 1)”

    https://jennifermarohasy.com/2023/05/the-guardian-temperatures-misinformation-part-1/

    I would like to think that all Guardian readers would read both with an open mind, then draw their own conclusions. But will they?

    Liked by 1 person

  183. “The dirty secret behind premium ‘green’ energy deals
    Millions of households are being ‘duped’ into believing their electricity is clean, experts say”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/dirty-secret-premium-green-energy-deals/

    Britain’s biggest energy suppliers are refusing to stop buying controversial certificates that allow them to sell tariffs as “100pc green” when they are not.

    “Green” energy tariffs have typically come at a premium and have been up to £60 more expensive than a standard deal. About 9m households had “green” energy deals in 2021.

    But industry experts say that households are being “duped” into thinking their electricity is clean because suppliers can buy certificates that allow them to market tariffs as sustainable.

    Energy suppliers can buy certificates, known as Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin or “Regos”, from green energy generators – and still provide their own customers with power generated from fossil fuels.
    If a Government review does come to light, Mr Lasseter reckons it could have big repercussions for suppliers and the regulator. “It will rewind the industry by 10 years and expose the fact there is no such thing as a 100pc renewable tariff.”

    Like

  184. ‘Fever swamps’ are becoming more common and more extensive because of the climate crisis. Especially denialist fever swamps. But typical of reporting by the Guardian, when you examine the facts, it appears that the alleged fever swamps are just assemblies of cool heads. Jennifer Marohasy has the coolest of heads (I never knew that Gandhi nicked one of his most famous sayings from a trade union activist!):

    https://jennifermarohasy.com/2023/05/the-coronation-the-guardian-temperatures-misinformation-part-2/

    Like

  185. Jaime – beat me to the above link.
    and snippet from the “Guardian” link.

    “Plummer says when the bureau was accused of conspiring to make warming seem worse, he thought it was initially “bizarre and laughable”.
    “But then we heard climate scientists in Australia and overseas were receiving death threats or getting hate messages and there were personal attacks on our own people. Then it gets serious and raised a big concern about where this was all going. Would we end up in some politicised inquiry that was potentially career-ending?
    “My biggest concern was for the health of the climate scientists. They did that work admirably and stuck with it but for a significant number it affected their health and wellbeing and their professional standing. They were concerned it was going to damage their careers.”

    not a nice place to be it seems.

    Liked by 1 person

  186. “Renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels: The UK’s changing energy mix”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63976805

    I’m not sure why the BBC chose to put this article up now, but I hope that people read it. Some of those who are more gullible regarding net zero might learn something, such as the fact that in 2022 wind produced only 4.1% of the UK’s energy requirements, and solar came in at a measly 0.7%, while oil and gas between them accounted for 76%. Energy, not electricity, of course, but if have to go 100% electric then those figures are very relevant indeed.

    Like

  187. Thoughts, anyone? It occurs to me that this might be the start of an attempt to downplay sceptics’ claims about unusual weather related to La Nina or El Nino by suggesting that they might not after all be purely natural phenomena. If they can say that we are causing them, or contributing to them, then the alarmist case is bolstered:

    “Black summer bushfires may have caused rare ‘triple dip’ La Niña, study suggests
    Smoke aerosols from the fires interacted with clouds to cool the south-eastern Pacific, helping the wet weather pattern to form”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/11/black-summer-bushfires-may-have-caused-rare-triple-dip-la-nina-study-suggests

    Smoke from Australia’s 2019-20 black summer fires may have resulted in the rare “triple dip” La Niña that lasted from 2020 to 2022, research suggests.

    Modelling from scientists at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research has found that smoke aerosols from the bushfires interacted with clouds to cool surface waters over the south-eastern subtropical Pacific Ocean.

    This created favourable conditions for a La Niña to form, the researchers believe.

    The research, published in the journal Science Advances, could be used to improve climate cycle predictions in future.

    The study’s first author, Dr John Fasullo of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said although the bushfire smoke only persisted in the atmosphere for several months, it triggered a long-lasting feedback loop. “We did not expect such a strong planetary-scale signature with these fires,” he said….

    It’s here if anyone wishes to take a look:

    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg1213

    Liked by 1 person

  188. Mark, they’ve been trying for a while to demonstrate a link between increased frequency/more extreme El Nino/La Ninas and climate change (TM). Unsuccessfully. This looks like a particularly laughable attempt to blame aerosols from bushfires (presumed to have been caused by climate change).

    Meanwhile, back in Blighty, Betts of the Met blames the heavy rain in Exeter on climate change.

    https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/betts-of-the-met-office-on-twitter

    Like

  189. First full-size driverless bus trials to begin in Scotland.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-61216302
    quote – “Until legislation changes, there will always be a safety driver, but Ms Simpson hopes the law will “eventually be signed off” so drivers don’t need to be in the cab and can focus on a secondary role interacting with passengers.”

    sounds like a plan, so we still pay for a driver, but he now comes for a chat!!!

    Liked by 1 person

  191. Jaime – not sure, read your link & liked this at the end –

    “6. Ironclad protection of human rights and civil liberties. A Left-Right coalition can hopefully agree on the crucial importance of individual rights and freedoms, such as the First Amendment right to free speech, as an indispensable bulwark against the authoritarian overreach of governments that too often answer to moneyed interests rather than the people.
    A population stripped of civil liberties in the name of an “emergency,” whether a pandemic or climate change, is a sitting duck for abuse by the powerful.
    It is the giant multinational corporations, their captured government agencies and their crony politicians who must have their freedom to impose their will on the population taken away, not the other way around.”

    sounds a bit “Conspiracy” at the end!!!

    Like

  192. update on – https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/world-s-first-driverless-bus-service-doesn-t-quite-live-up-to-the-hype/ar-AA1b3QST?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=14da96fd43a64403a6c30a4e4be7a214&ei=45

    snippet – “It can do 50mph, but the media minders were nervous for anything going wrong during their “big moment”.
    The reality is this is a pilot and requires double the manpower of a standard bus. There is also a ticket operator on board helping.”

    you have to shake your head & wonder why.

    Liked by 1 person

  193. That was then:

    “Wild garlic, nettles and berries … how foraging went mainstream
    This article is more than 2 years old
    Once it was the domain of upmarket chefs. Now thousands are collecting ingredients when out for a walk”

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/14/wild-garlic-nettles-and-berries-how-foraging-went-mainstream

    Liz Knight once stopped short of sending her daughter to primary school with nettle omelette in her lunchbox, for fear of the reaction of the other children. Her husband told her: “Don’t you dare.” But Knight, who has been teaching courses on foraging in the wilds around her home in rural Herefordshire for the past 10 years, would not be so reticent today.

    Attitudes towards foraging – heading out into nearby countryside or parks and collecting edible plants, mushrooms and fruits – have changed, and, she says, “there’s been a real shift with the pandemic”.

    “There’s definitely been a rise in interest,” agrees Marlow Renton, a director and foraging instructor at Wild Food UK, which runs courses in England, Wales and Scotland. Not only was it a bumper year for sales of its 2019 foraging pocket guide, but the organisation’s website has “had over a million [visitors] last year – an upturn of about 25%”.

    During the pandemic many more people have been connecting with nature on daily walks – and noticing local, possibly edible, plants has been a part of that. But Knight, who also runs courses in wild food cooking at the TV presenter Kate Humble’s farm in Monmouth, thinks a longer-term shift has been happening, with restaurants embracing the trend…

    This is now:

    “Excessive foraging for wild garlic and mushrooms in UK ‘a risk to wildlife’
    Experts say foragers taking too much, selling the goods commercially and harming fragile ecosystems”

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/13/excessive-foraging-for-wild-garlic-and-mushrooms-in-uk-a-risk-to-wildlife

    Foragers for wild garlic and mushrooms have been picking ingredients in protected sites, taking too much and putting wildlife at risk, experts have warned….

    …Ben McCarthy, head of nature conservation and restoration at the National Trust said: “If undertaken carefully and only for personal use, foraging can be good fun and help people connect with nature. However, excessive foraging, or foraging on protected sites, such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), can be detrimental to our precious wildlife and negatively impact delicate ecosystems. We want everyone to enjoy the places we care for, but excessive foraging removes nature and beauty from places so others cannot appreciate them. Sadly, we have seen some examples of commercial and unsustainable foraging in recent years.”…

    Like

  194. Just Stop Oil gave a lecture in Exeter last night. It was called ‘Student Welcome Talk’, so presumably it attempted to recruit students from the University of Exeter.

    URL:www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/student-welcome-talk-how-to-just-stop-oil-exeter-tickets-630292721497

    Its blurb included nonsensical doomwankery that JSO has been repeating for more than a year. For example:

    Allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is obscene, a genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion.

    And yet here is a message that Richard Betts tweeted to the JSO youngsters who were giving the lecture:

    Sorry I can’t make it, I’d have loved to come along! Hope it goes well

    URL:twitter.com/richardabetts/status/1657044913295433728

    Betts is the Professor of Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter. It’s extremely unlikely that he agrees with JSO’s interpretation of the science of climate change impacts, so perhaps he wanted to go so that he could set them straight (let’s hope so, anyway), but telling them that he hoped their talk went well is not a good look. Using misrepresented science (and insane guff about the UK’s ‘genocidal government’) to recruit students to any group is surely not something that a professor should encourage in any way at all, and when the group is a disruptive political cult whose young members often get arrested and sometimes drop out of uni shortly after joining…

    (Mark, I love wild garlic. Luckily, it grows in my thoroughly re-wilded garden, so I don’t have to pillage it from SSSIs. I’ll be heading out to pick some after I’ve posted this. I hope that doesn’t make me a trendy Grauniadista.)

    Liked by 2 people

  195. The Guardian article associated with this tweet rather lets the cat out of the bag (perhaps unintentionally).

    Liked by 1 person

  196. “good and bad actors”? It’s almost as if the facts don’t matter any more: unqualified support is good, whereas disagreement with any part of the project is bad.

    Like

  197. Betts and Maslin are birds of a feather. Betts just made a rather good show of being Captain Sensible on climate change for quite a while, but he’s shown his true colours as a climate activist again and again. He’s defended climate activists in court, arguing that their breaking of the law is justified by the urgency of the situation, which is backed up by ‘the science’. I can’t think of any ‘climate scientist’ now who I don’t regard as a fraud.

    https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/climate-scientists-on-twitter-oh

    Like

  198. ITV local newsPR show
    Long drought porn item from the Met Office
    it rained 10 mins after

    3 Likes and no replies.
    So who is the reporter serving ?

    5 days ago the @itvwestcountry weather presenter tweeted a FLOOD video
    .. https://twitter.com/ITVCharlieP/status/1655980360008597520

    Liked by 1 person

  199. No, it’s not the first of April, whatever I think of the following:

    “Sheep methane emissions testing ‘a UK first'”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cekd4y0dp1jo

    …The scientist said there were an estimated 1.2 billion sheep in the world producing about seven million tonnes of methane into the atmosphere.

    Edinburgh-based SRUC’s research could help find solutions to reducing the animals’ carbon footprint.

    Dr Lambe said: “Despite the fact resource efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions are global priorities, there are few examples around the world of research to implement breeding strategies to directly tackle these issues in sheep.

    “This is largely due to the difficulty in recording feed consumption and greenhouse gas emissions on an individual animal basis, especially in grass-based systems.”

    Rob Hodgkins, who farms 2,500 in Hertfordshire, was involved in the first use of the trailer-mounted Pacs.

    He said: “It will only be a matter of time before consumers will be able to look at labels on packets of meat that shows what they’re buying has come from, for example, a carbon-zero sheep.”…

    Like

  200. The spikies (remember them?) weren’t impressed by last month’s fluffy Big One:

    Blurb:

    A look at the mess we make with our #mainstreaming.

    This will likely swing back to the spiky from this. What we need to do is slow the swing to keep the “debate” in place for healthy and affective activism that is need to do useful things about #climatechaos

    An interesting use of ‘mainstreaming’ there. When the term first arrived in NGO toolkits in the noughties it meant stealthily incorporating activist ideas into every corner of every bit of legislation. Perhaps the VisionOnTV narrator/creator meant that he and his chums had made ideas available to others who are less capable of getting those ideas passed into law.

    Or perhaps he doesn’t know what mainstreaming means.

    Anyway….

    The video ends with stuff about millions dying and billions being displaced. Not implausible numbers but climate change wouldn’t be the only cause, as spikies would never tire of telling you if given the chance to speak plainly without the Murdoch-owned press getting in their way. Capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, the Newbury bypass… They’d all be to blame.

    Basically, we’re all doomed unless we all move to off-grid communes in Gloucestershire.

    (I like the bit at the start of the video where the climate-concerned XR bloke kept wagging wings that were both fluffy and, in a very real sense, spiky.)

    Like

  201. Trust the Guardian to bring us the most pressing climate chaos news. This morning it concerns the plight (and flight) of the humble bumblebee, or at least an American variety. A study by North Carolina State University revealed that a bumblebee with its back legs fully laden with pollen when flying is 2oC hotter than one carrying no pollen. You know where the story goes from there. With climate chaos, bumblebees will be unable to carry as much pollen (no evidence given) so fewer plants will be pollinated which is of concern to agriculture (again no evidence presented whatsoever). Obvious strategies to firm up conclusions not even thought about let alone conducted – such as observing if bumblebees carry lighter loads or curtail their pollinating routes on hotter days.

    A near perfect example of poor research seized upon by climate worriers (and the Guardian) and used to push scary climate porn. The technological skill behind the temperature measurements goes unmentioned and is lost within totally unwarranted climate bilge.

    Liked by 2 people

  202. Alan; from the little I know, the bumblebees’ carrying capacity is unlikely to have much influence on pollination. They are resilient, adaptable little buggers so will just make more trips back to the nest if they can’t carry as much. They usually forage within a few minutes’ flying time of their nests so any impact will be utterly negligible.
    Also they are somewhat weather-dependent, especially early and late in the season. So a bit of warmth will likely extend their flying season and/or increase their active days and the hours within those days.
    Total tosh, as you say.

    Liked by 1 person

  203. Mike I know very little about our native bumblebee species other than that, when I was a boy, bumblebee aerodynamics was a largely unknown subject and comments like “the buggers shouldn’t be able to fly” were commonly made. From there to harbingers of climate doom, bumblebees have their roles to play.

    Like

  204. I think the saying was that scientists said bumblebees cannot fly – fortunately no one told the bumblebees so they went on flying anyway. So much for scientists.

    Liked by 1 person

  205. Robin, be kind. Scientists said they didn’t understand how bumblebees flew (in other words the little buggers apparently broke the rules of aerodynamics as they were currently understood). An acknowledgment by scientists that they were ignorant was (and is) no bad thing.

    Like

  206. Hurrah! Another XRer has got a proper prison term. This time it’s for XR-related anti-Israel stuff rather than camping on a bridge for godnose why.

    Mike Lynch-White, a co-founder of Scientist Rebellion* and very active in Burning Pink (aka Beyond Politics; another Hallam thing) and Heathrow Pause (drones near the airport; Hallam again), has got 27 months for criminal damage committed during a protest with yet another XR-related group he’s involved with, Palestine Action.

    URL:twitter.com/ScientistRebel1/status/1658805435216850947

    Lynch-White faces trials related to Burning Pink and Heathrow Pause protests in the next few months. Good luck, Mike! (Not.)

    In other XR-related news…

    Yesterday, an Australian was arrested in Westminster while shouting this: ‘I am 21 years old and I know that I do not stand a chance of having a future if our government continues to license new oil and gas.’

    Our government?

    That was at a JSO protest. JSO tweeted this today: ‘Who are the real criminals – the people wearing campaign T-shirts or the people licensing over a hundred new oil and gas licences, which are guaranteed to kill us all?’

    Guaranteed to kill us all?

    I used to keep a log of all the daft things said by climate change activists. I gave up because the daftness became increasingly widespread and extreme and I just couldn’t keep up.

    If I still kept the that log, that quote from JSO would probably get a special mention. Human extinction guaranteed by the UK granting 100+ new oil and gas licences.

    They really don’t care about truth, do they?

    ===
    *Is Lynch-White a scientist? Sort of. He abandoned a Physics PhD so that he could devote more time to XR.

    Like

  208. “Beyoncé Cardiff: Weighing up the climate cost of worldwide tours”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65635285

    …Beyoncé’s Formation tour in 2016 took seven air freighters and 70 trucks to get her stage set and other gear to the venues across the UK.

    And that didn’t include the backstage staff, musicians, performers – or even Beyoncé herself.

    On Wednesday about 60,000 fans descended on Cardiff, with some having travelled there from across the globe.

    The superstar herself arrived by private jet at Cardiff Airport just after 15:00 BST and was flown back to London at 23:00.

    Meanwhile about 60 production trucks and 18 coaches lined up outside Cardiff City Stadium.

    One onlooker tweeted: “I worry about my recycling and here are all of #Beyoncé set trucks parked up in Cardiff… For one night! #ClimateEmergency #Carbon”….

    Which is all a bit upsetting if you’re bothered about that kind of thing. And yet….

    …With many young people feeling deep anxiety about climate change, does any of this matter to Beyoncé’s fans?

    “She will have an audience that is expecting her productions to be as green as possible but then you’re also talking about one of the biggest artists in the world, and she can just kind of do whenever she wants in the sense that the demand will be there,” Eamonn said.

    “Lots of fans will on one hand say ‘I hope the show is as environmentally friendly as possible’, but they will also perhaps be a bit more flexible when they realise this might be their only chance to see Beyoncé for the next five, 10 or however long years.

    “They might kind of put their ethics and their morals to the side.”…

    Which is where the net zero project comes unstuck – people will, when asked, say they support it, but they’ll always find an excuse to justify their own pleasures and activities, even when that undercuts the net zero agenda.

    And I wonder when the BBC is going to ask the same questions about its own activities? For instance, was it really necessary to send as many people as they did to the football World Cup last summer? Carbon footprints don’t seem to matter when it’s something the BBC is keen on.

    Like

  209. “Build houses out of used nappies, scientists urge
    Up to 8% of sand in concrete and mortar could be replaced without significantly diminishing strength, study says”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/18/build-houses-out-of-used-nappies-scientists-urge

    Used nappies should be used in housebuilding to save sand, scientists have said.

    Up to 8% of the sand in the concrete and mortar used to make a single-storey house could be replaced with shredded used nappies without significantly diminishing their strength, scientists from the University of Kitakyushu, Japan, have found.

    The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, said building regulations could be changed to allow this material to be used, and it would reduce the carbon footprint of the homes as well as finding a use for the otherwise non-recyclable waste.

    Disposable nappies are usually composed of wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon and plastics such as polyester, polyethylene and polypropylene. Because they cannot usually be recycled, the majority are disposed of in landfill or by incineration.

    The lead author, Siswanti Zuraida, and colleagues prepared concrete and mortar samples by combining washed, dried, and shredded disposable nappy waste with cement, sand, gravel, and water, curing the samples for 28 days. They then tested six samples containing different proportions of waste to measure how much pressure they could withstand without breaking. They then calculated the maximum proportion of sand that could be replaced with disposable nappies in a range of building materials….

    I leave this here with no comment. If interested, you can access the study here:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-32981-y

    Like

  210. Another reason not to live in the UK
    As well as having terrible cold wet weather
    it’s full of mad greenSupremacists like this Met Office sciency guy
    “Media Advisor & Senior Operational Meteorologist with UK Met Office.”

    See how the word “ONLY is doing a huge amount of lifting in his tweet

    Summer is June July August
    Of course it will make it through when reservoirs are 82% now

    Like

  211. “UK households with communal heating facing 350% rise in energy costs
    Surge in energy costs filtering through to low-income households on shared heat networks”

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/19/uk-households-with-communal-heating-facing-350-rise-in-energy-costs

    Residents in council homes and private flats with communal heating systems are experiencing a “nightmare” rise in their energy bills, with households scrambling to fund increases of up to 350%.

    An estimated 480,000 households nationwide are affected, according to government data, as the impact of last autumn’s surge in energy prices filters through to bills for this financial year. Many live in council-owned tower blocks, which house some of the lowest-income families in the country.

    MPs and local councillors said they were being contacted by distressed residents, and called on the energy watchdog, Ofgem, to intervene.

    Apsana Begum, the Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, said: “The cost of living scandal is having a devastating effect on our communities. I have constituents whose gas bills are being increased by 100% or more because they are on a heat network. This is clearly not acceptable.”..

    Haven’t the Guardian and other climate worriers pushed heat networks as a solution for quite some time now? E.g.

    “In the pipeline: networks to warm UK homes using surplus heat
    Government plans to spend £45m on citywide systems and other technologies to reduce carbon output”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/28/in-the-pipeline-networks-to-warm-uk-homes-using-surplus-heat

    Tens of thousands of homes, offices and hospitals could soon be warmed with surplus heat from factories, incinerator plants and even disused mine shafts under plans by the government to fund low-carbon heating.

    The government will spend £30m to help set up heat networks across cities including London, Glasgow and Manchester and a further £14.6m to develop other low-carbon technologies that can heat and cool buildings without fossil fuels…

    Like

  212. The Guardian strikes again! Reports that ‘scientists’, from Japan, say houses could be built with used baby nappies!
    Up to 8% of the sand within concrete and mortar could be replaced with shredded used nappies. This would have ecological benefits (not specified), reduce the carbon footprint of housing (didn’t know sand had carbon within it) and find a use for otherwise non-recyclable material (no argument here).

    Like

  213. Looks like I was pipped by Mark earlier this morning. Both of us intrigued by the Japanese baby nappy story. Mark’s piece certainly wasn’t there when I submitted mine an hour later. What gives?

    Like

  214. Local radio news Green PR today is that Grimsby firm Myenergi is sacking 100 workers
    context is missed

    Oh lost a home charger subsidy grant scheme
    Most Green Energy projects are unsustainable
    cos they rely on subsidies, grants and PRtrickery.

    The BBC failed to context that 100 jobs is a quarter of the workforce.

    Liked by 1 person

  215. I liked stewgreen’s comment because it provides the background and context the media ignore, not because “green” jobs have been lost. Every job loss is a personal tragedy.

    Like

  217. 7 months ago the founded tweeted hyperbolically about their growth
    “This is what rapid growth looks like 💪🏼 ”
    … https://twitter.com/JordeeBrompton/status/1576894810216022016

    Jordan Brompton is the Co-Found of myenergi, which she launched in 2016 alongside her business partner Lee Sutton.

    Local newspaper adds context
    “orders of its staple Zappi electric vehicle charger and allied devices haven’t been maintained at anticipated levels, with the removal of consumer incentives also cited.”

    Like

  218. Lee Sutton employed her since 2014 in his 4Eco business
    which went bankrupt in 2016
    making people redundant
    They blamed the government cutting the solar Feed In Tariff from 13p KWh to 4.5p
    which at that time was still 50% higher then proper on demand power cost

    Like

  222. As Willard might say – “Oh Guardian”:

    “Why I stopped arguing about the climate emergency and tried the silent treatment instead
    Helena Echlin
    The sensible methods didn’t work, so I became a member of the Red Rebel Brigade. Now I feel I’m doing something useful”

    Something useful!!!!

    …as a Red, I can see the effect I’m having on people’s faces. Talking to people about the climate crisis made me feel hopeless. Striking a mute pose of despair? Remarkably uplifting.

    Well, it made me smile, more in disbelief than anything else.

    Liked by 1 person

  223. Mark, the “science” behind “enhanced (basalt) rock weathering” would appear to be O.K. The only factor I might question is the rate of weathering – whether it would occur fast enough ( but surely this would have been checked experimentally). And it might be quite effective as a fertiliser – reducing soil acidity and providing calcium and magnesium (but provide no nitrate, phosphate or other other nutrients), recall your O-level Geography where you learned that some of the most fertile areas were in volcanic terrains.

    What is questionable is the effectiveness of this procedure to reduce atmospheric CO2. I cannot see how enhanced rock weathering can even dent the 37 billion tons of CO2 released each year. [Data from BBC]. The BBC suggest it would take 4 tons of weathered basalt to remove 1ton of CO2.

    It looks to me like the featured win-win story of waste rock from a quarry being used as a fertiliser on local farm fields being commandeered by a CO2 removal story. The quarry wins by having waste fines removed, clearing the quarry floor allowing quarrying operations to proceed more effectively.

    Liked by 1 person

  225. Thanks for the Echlin article, Mark. She’s an interesting and entertaining writer. She probably is sincerely worried about climate change but that doesn’t stop her making fun of herself and other climactivists.

    The article made me do a bit of digging. Here are some other entertaining articles by Helena Echlin.

    In 2000, she poked fun at academic bafflegab:

    URL://web.archive.org/web/20001214205900/http://www.aretemagazine.com/2000/issuethree/helenaechlin.html

    People who talk nonsense are now looked upon not as sloppy thinkers, but as sages.

    (The Sunday Times reprinted that article under the headline ‘How the Ivy League strangled literature’ and subhead ‘When Helena Echlin, an Oxford graduate, went to Yale to study English literature she learnt a whole new language – gibberish’.)

    In 2001, when short of money a few months after the publication of her first novel she became a phone-sex worker called Jade:

    URL://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jun/03/gender.uk

    His voice was very small. I wanted to ask him to speak up but feared it would destroy the mood.

    “Would you like to know what I look like?” I ventured.

    “Uh-uh.” I couldn’t tell if that was a yes. Jade talked dirty for a few minutes, then he made a distant little croak, and was gone. Her second lover might as well have been a frog at the bottom of a well.

    In 2005, she became a secret agent for a brand of sausages:

    URL://web.archive.org/web/20160706192459/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3638501/You-invited-me-just-so-you-could-buzz-me.html

    She was paid to talk loudly in supermarkets about how marvellous the sausages were. But then she decided to do the same when she was with friends:

    “I’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately,” I told Damien and Ina. “My husband and I have discovered these delicious sausages – we just can’t stop eating them.” I felt a pang of guilt. I didn’t see Ina and Damien that often. Why was I wasting this precious time on sausages? But they didn’t appear to notice anything was wrong.

    “I’m German, I love sausage,” said Damien. Perfect!

    “What kind of sausage?” asked Ina.

    “Al Fresco Chicken Sausages,” I said. “You can only get them in Berkeley though.”

    “You go all the way to Berkeley to get them?” Ina said.

    “It’s worth it for these sausages!” I insisted. But they were already backing away. Never mind. I turned to my friend Chris.

    “I have discovered the greatest sausages,” I said.

    “What kind?”

    “Al Fresco.”

    “I’ll check them out,” he promised. Ha! A direct BzzHit! I was good at this. Maybe I could even get in the top 100! Inspired by my success, I found myself gabbling away about Al Fresco to everyone I met.

    “I think it’s time to leave,” said my husband Jordan, who was the only one who knew about my secret Bzz identity.

    “But I’m having fun,” I protested. He shook his head.

    “People think you’re weird.”

    (I’m off down the epub to look for free Echlins.)

    Like

  227. I have no problem with this, save to the extent that if verges near road junctions aren’t cut back, it may create dangerous blind spots. Other than that, why not?

    “Grass cutting reduced to support wildlife”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0xnw7pn0vo

    But as for the way the article ends, oh dear oh dear…

    …The council said grass cutting would also need to adapt to a changing climate, with wetter winters and hotter and drier summers.

    This means mowing may be delayed following extreme weather.

    Deputy city mayor Adam Clarke said: “We want people to realise that if they see longer grass on our parks and verges, this is an intentional change that will support wildlife and pollinators as well as helping the city achieve its net zero carbon goal.”

    Like

  229. The PJW video : police fail to enforce the law so workmen steps him and does the actual policing
    so the GreenSupremacist police arrest him
    to protect their green toff mates

    Like

  230. Half knowledge cultists
    I met a guy the other day who spoke well and at first seemed to have good knowledge of history
    Then he went of course “of course hydrogen is coming up as a great fuel”
    What do you mean it’s not a proper fuel with great force like petrol or methane”
    Him “but it’s a non polluting fuel”
    Me “CO2 isn’t a pollutant and anyway hydrogen comes from treating methane with steam”
    Him “No steam is used to extract hydrogen from the air” (utter crap)
    And you can use wind farm electricity to split water”
    Me “No it’s not economic, so no one does it”
    Him “The tech is getting better so fast” (utter crap)

    I mentioned Myenergi and its job losses and past bankruptcy.
    “Oh what a great company, they did a great presentation at the Fully Charged sho” (That Robert Llewellyn EV PR operation)
    I realised I was dealing with a green cultist.
    Sad

    Like

  232. Jaime,

    As you know, here in west Cumbria, today is dull, mild (barely warm, certainly not hot), with a stiff cool breeze. I think I have seen 20C briefly on two days so far this year.

    Gardens suffered last winter with two intense cold snaps and little mild weather. We lost quite a few longstanding plants. It wasn’t simply a northern phenomenon, as I have spoken to people from much further south who have said the same thing.

    Still, some warm sunny days would be nice. It’s called summer.

    Liked by 1 person

  233. Rees Mogg ended his show having a cosy chat with a Green Future PR leader Marketing Humber MD, Diana Taylor
    (Now rebranded as Dr Diana Taylor of Future Humber @DianaTaylor23)

    She kept making hyperbolic claims
    and instead of challenging JRM lapped it up “good to hear good news”

    FFS Humber green corp Myenergi just fired quarter of it’s workforce
    and media refuse to say it went bankrupt before.

    Dr Diana had one line “97% of the local public support this green industry”

    FFS a green PR person using a “97%” claim just like the infamous claim about “97% of scientists”

    Like

  235. It was sunny today, I wore shorts
    However the north wind meant I needed a coat when I was on the bicycle , wore it when walked around town, not sweating.

    Like

  238. It looks as though the campaign against gas cookers is ramping up:

    “Action urged to cut gas cooker health risks”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65722603

    The health line is being pushed, but the real reason seems to be GHG emissions:

    A study found that children in homes with gas stoves, rather than electric, were 42% more likely to have asthma.

    Gas hobs also use fossil fuels which produce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to global warming.

    This is a problem because the UK is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

    The problem is that although the cited study does make the health link, it also offers a very simple solution that doesn’t involve swapping your gas cooker for an electric one. The study can be found here:

    https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/42/6/1724/737113

    Among other things, these two statements caught my eye:

    …Studies on gas heating often lacked information on whether the heater was directly vented to the outside, in which case it would not be a source of indoor air pollution….

    and:

    …gas cooking fumes can be removed by using ventilation hoods.

    In short, the eminently sensible option of external venting (whether of gas heating or of a gas cooker) eliminates the problem.

    Like

  239. Scotland : There’s a report just out which says in the 4 cities to implement LEZs, the emissions levels are now within legal limits probably due to the introduction of electric buses.
    There’s no need for anyone else to change their vehicle.
    Hmm the legal limits are arbitrary anyway

    video https://youtu.be/AXbdDdL7kqs

    Like

  240. Similar arguments apply to London, actual road pollution measurements are often very low
    Always ask Is It about what they say, it’s about ?

    Like

  243. stewgreen,

    I’m not aware that anything came of it. FWIW, I try to treat Cliscep as a bit of a mini-Wiki, posting links to articles in the MSM and elsewhere as a comment under articles here, sometimes years after the Cliscep article was written. In that way, recent developments can be tracked to some extent.

    Liked by 1 person

  244. Looks like I shan’t be voting Labour in future. Starmer’s plans to stop future investments in new North Sea oil and gas but supporting ‘green’ ventures to transform Britain into a ‘green powerhouse’ have finally stripped any lingering allegiance I might have had. But who to support now?

    Like

  245. Alan,

    You and I share this conundrum. This morning I was perusing the SDP website, and was disappointed to find that even they support phasing out ICE vehicles and replacing them with EVs, spending billions on CCS etc. As things stand I cannot vote for any political party.

    In the absence of Jaime’s NOTA option, I will spoil my ballot paper, since I refuse to allow useless politicians to label me as apathetic.

    Like

  246. Tim Worsall doesn’t think Starmer has thought this through. What he said this morning was:

    Decommissioning costs. That’s what’ll kill this.

    Back when the oil companies all knew that they should save some money to pay for decommissioning fields at their end of life. Tearing down the rigs etc.

    Government said bollocks, we want the cash now. So, oil companies paid their taxes and didn’t save. Because the government deal was that you can have the tax repaid when you do have to decommission. The tax paid instead of saving for decommissioning, that is.

    OK, so a lot of that decommissioning is now happening or is about to. The burden on the Treasury is substantial. And the new oil fields only just starting to pay tax are what pays those taxes back in those decommissioning costs.

    Don’t have the new fields starting up and there’s going to be an awful hole in the Treasury accounts. Because, of course, they’ve already spent that oil tax money that now needs to be repaid.

    I would bet good money that there’s someone in the Treasury, right now, trying to alert Starmer and Reeves to this little problemette. Whether they’ll even understand it when it’s explained is another thing.

    Liked by 1 person

  247. Bravery or Rank Stupidity? Two Just Stop Protesters throwing orange paint powder on the rugby pitch during the Gallagher Premiership Rugby Union final on Saturday and interrupting the game. Would you risk being at the bottom of a scrum of irate rugby players incensed by a stupid interruption to their game? Not to mention literally thousands of fans who had paid good money to watch the final.

    Like

  248. Bill B; that Worsall article makes a good point.
    However it would not surprise me if the Govt will just changed the rules and refused to return the money while threatening fines, etc on any company that tried to walk away. Indeed, I would almost expect it.

    Like

  249. Alan – similar JSO protest at snooker in April –
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/just-stop-oil-edred-whittingham-b2321693.html

    sub heading for above – “Climate activism groups said they would step up protests in ‘new and inventive’ ways after throwing orange powder at the Crucible”

    partial quote – “Wearing a “Just Stop Oil” T-shirt, Edred Whittingham interrupted the match on Monday between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry at the Crucible Theatre by jumping onto one of the tables and tipping out orange powder.
    The 25 year-old is a philosophy, politics and economics student at Exeter University who has been involved in a number of previous Just Stop Oil protests.”

    At least Barry Hearn is sticking up for the paying snooker fans – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/snooker/2023/04/20/just-stop-oil-snooker-protests-barry-hearn-legal-action/

    Like

  250. It seems we can never get enough of leading experts warning us of extinction:

    “Artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity, experts – including the heads of OpenAI and Google Deepmind – have warned. Dozens have supported a statement published on the webpage of the Centre for AI Safety.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65746524

    But wait, this is something new:

    “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”.

    What? No global warming? How queer!

    But then we have:

    “But others say the fears are overblown.”

    Which paves the way for the BBC to warn us of the UK Conspiracy Movement of AI Deniers.

    Liked by 1 person

  251. Utter nonsense:

    “Climate change to blame for up to 17 deaths on Mount Everest, experts say
    Nepal’s head of tourism says variable weather on the mountain has led to one of the deadliest years on record”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/30/climate-change-to-blame-for-up-to-17-deaths-on-mount-everest-experts-say

    Experts say this is likely to be one of the deadliest years on record on Mount Everest, with variable weather caused by climate change being blamed as one of the main reasons for the deaths of up to 17 people.

    Mount Everest “enjoys” variable weather constantly, and always has. This year’s deaths, though tragic, don’t exceed those in other tragic years. One reason why there are so many deaths is the massive number of amateur climbers paying professional climbers to get them to the top with the help of the valiant Sherpas. Nepal is issuing permits to control the numbers, but it’s big business.

    Liked by 1 person

  252. The article admits as much, by the way! Still, it got the headline, so job done.

    Like

  253. Here in Lincolnshire we have rain not rain.
    Midday fine rain mist that doesn’t dampen the concrete.
    Same now after 9pm.
    Sure ostensibly we are in a 10 day no rain spell
    but its the same as last year, in that it’s not actually dry cos every day there’s dew and mist rolling off the fields.

    Like

  255. It’s dry here in NW Cumbria and it’s going to get even drier as the high pressure cell to the west intensifies over the coming one or two weeks and solar insolation really gets going near mid summer. Quite a dramatic change from most of spring. The east of the country may benefit slightly from some foggy, foggy dew coming off the North Sea. We lived in a rain corridor in Lincolnshire just south of Boston. It was quite amazing just how localised the rain was. Areas to the east and west were much drier. I think it was caused by rain-bearing clouds being funnelled across the low-lying marshes by the hills just to the west. But then we moved to Cumbria and I realised what real rain was! It’s quite amazing just how variable the weather is across this tiny corner of the world we call the British Isles. Which makes it all the more annoying when climate change fanatics jump on every notable weather event to claim that it was caused by ‘climate breakdown’.

    Like

  256. Now more of this fine mist rain
    the neighbours are doing the garden, wearing big overcoats
    One is wearing one of those Russian hats

    Like

  257. Funny that this was never reported on UK Media, or did I miss it –
    “https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/27/more-than-1500-arrested-at-extinction-rebellion-protest-in-the-hague?ref=upstract.com”
    “Several Dutch celebrities among protesters, including Game of Thrones actor Carice van Houten”

    well, if van Houten is involved I will sit up and not listen to celeb bullsh*t.

    Like

  258. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/31/labours-oil-and-gas-ban-shows-its-ready-to-fight-the-next-election-on-climate-issues

    Somehow the comment below has made it through the moderators at the Guardian and has the highest number of recommendations!

    “If anything is more likely to lose Labour a majority at the next election its promising to implement more ULEZ schemes, to make houses colder, to make blackouts more of a certainty. As the rest of Europe starts to back away from net zero commitments recognising that they negatively impact the working class the most and that people won’t vote to make themselves poorer Labour in the UK will, as Starmer always does, U turn on these policies.”

    Liked by 1 person

  259. It’s hard not to laugh:

    “We’re a climate action hub in need of an electricity meter
    Bulb hasn’t sent a form to the National Grid, and we can’t sign up with any other energy company”

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jun/01/were-a-climate-action-hub-in-need-of-an-electricity-meter

    I run a community support charity which has spent two years raising £150,000 for a climate action hub. The idea is to run events, workshops and performances on the site, which includes an amphitheatre and field kitchen.

    Over a year on, planned events and activities are badly affected because we are still waiting for the installation of an electricity meter.

    We signed a contract with Bulb in November 2021. A week later, it went into administration.

    We were assured that the installation would still go ahead, but after 20 emails, approximately 30 telephone calls, and two failed installation appointments, we finally lost faith and terminated our contract with Bulb in November 2022. We attempted to sign up with British Gas, but it was discovered that Bulb had not de-registered itself as our supplier. This apparently prevents us signing up with any supplier. All Bulb needs to do is send a form to the National Grid.

    We’re tearing our hair out….

    [Reply from Anna Tims]:

    It’s ironic that a climate action hub has to rely on the National Grid, but you say a reliable electricity supply is vital for lighting, sound equipment and cooking. Just as you terminated your contract, Bulb was being acquired by Octopus, which may explain, if not excuse, the neglect….

    …Good luck with your endeavours to help turn Bristol carbon neutral.

    Like

  260. “It’s ironic that a climate action hub has to rely on the National Grid, but you say a reliable electricity supply is vital for lighting, sound equipment and cooking.”
    It’s also ironic that they recognise the need for reliability of supply but are pushing us towards a less reliable future….

    Liked by 1 person

  261. I just stumbled across this video about a massive project in Yorkshire to mine “Polyhalite”, a form of potash:

    It’s a real good news story which should have earned banner headlines across the media – quite cheered me up!

    Liked by 1 person

  262. :Mike That mine is quite an old one. I and a colleague, both working as geologists in Saskatchewan which has its own potash mines managed a visit down the Boulby Mine in the first year of its operation in the late 1970s. Then it was extracting potassium chlorides (sylvite) rather than potassium sulphates (polyhalite). I wonder if ICI have now largely exhausted the chloride layers and are now forced to extract the polyhalite or close. I forgot why polyhalite was once deliberately ignored, but it is much less soluble so converting it into a usable fertiliser would be that more difficult.

    I recall that my colleague and I were treated with much suspicion. I thought at the time that the mine owners or operators thought we might be spies for Saskatchewan but we were just there to see the geology. We noted quite a bit of faulting near the mine shaft and when we commented upon it was told that this was a deliberate siting of the shaft because as they mined further and further away from the shaft conditions would get progressively better and better. Total BS.

    Like

  263. Alan, Aiui this is a new project quite a long way from the Boulby mine (according to wiki maps).

    Like

  264. Mike Since you didn’t name the mine I consulted Google who failed me. It identified the deepest European mine as the Boulby Mine.
    One can see from the photograph that the mine is not cut within sylvite or other coarsely crystalline ore deposit. Those do not have smooth walls and are of smaller diameter, they also begin to close as soon as they are cut. The opening seems to be more than 12 ft in diameter, much larger than in openings cut in crystalline ores.
    I would very much like to visit this mine, but I know I never will.

    Like

  265. Alan; this is a new project called the Woodsmith mine – named after 2 geologists called Wood and Smith who identified the prospect, located near Sneaton, SE of Whitby.
    It’s worth watching the YouTube video even though the presenter is rather gung-ho.

    Like

  266. I’m currently reading “The Fringes of Power” – John Colville’s Downing Street Diaries, mostly about the second world war, but covering in varying amounts of detail, the whole period from 1939 to 1955. I have noticed various references to the weather, often exclaiming that it has never been so hot, so wet, so dry etc (I paraphrase, having moved past the references in question). However, some entries from April 1945 caught my eye just now:

    Saturday, April 14th: …sauntered through country lanes ablaze with blossom and wild flowers. It is a very early year, owing to weeks of sunshine, and the primroses are Brobdingnagian….The oak is coming out before the ash…

    Saturday, April 15th:…Surely there has never been such a spring. Its earliness and its beauty have made me quite botanically minded. The cherries are weighed down with blossom. The chestnuts and the lilac are already out, as is the wistaria…before the daffodils have faded…there is a fantasia of blossom, tulips, daffodils, lilac (mauve and white) and berberis, while the tall avenue of elms wears its early coat of distinctive pale green. And all beneath a china blue sky…

    Monday, April 16th: Returned to London, which is unnaturally sweltering in mid-summer heat…

    Of course, if it happened now, it would be man-made climate change. Then it was weather.

    Like

  267. More from Colville’s diaries:

    …and so the first royal visit to France for nine years took place in May (1948) during probably the hottest Whitsun weekend ever known…

    Like

  268. “Network of geothermal power stations ‘could help level up UK’
    Many of Britain’s poorest towns are in areas with greatest potential for renewable energy, says report”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/02/network-of-geothermal-power-stations-could-help-level-up-uk

    A network of underground geothermal plants is being touted as a way to help level up the UK after a report discovered many areas with the greatest geothermal potential lie beneath the towns and cities most in need of investment.

    Areas that have been earmarked by the government as part of its levelling up agenda are about three times as likely to be rich in untapped energy from the earth, according to an academic study commissioned by No 10.

    The University of Durham found these include Redcar and Cleveland, Middlesbrough, East Lindsey, Hartlepool, Northumberland and Bassetlaw, which all appear in the top 10 of the index used by government to identify local authority areas in need of levelling up….

    As I know nothing about this, a few thoughts/queries occur. Maybe Alan K can offer insights?

    1. Is this much/any different from fracking?

    2. To what extent is geology a factor? Does it make sense to prioritise disadvantaged areas, or does geology mean that geologically appropriate areas should be selected?

    3. Is this reliable and capable of being cheap? If so, it looks like a much better option than solar and wind power, especially as it won’t intrude on the landscape and wildlife.

    Like

  269. Of course, it’s climate change, not weather. Anyone would think this sort of thing had never happened before (dry, followed by wet, followed by dry weather):

    “Northern Ireland potato crops being hit by changing weather”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-65778102

    Baked, boiled, roasted or chipped, the humble spud is a dinner staple.

    But producers have warned that changing weather conditions are hitting growth.

    A dry February allowed farmers to plant their early crops but then the rain came. And now there is not enough of it….

    …He [farmer, Angus Wilson] is in no doubt that climate change is playing a part….

    Like

  270. Yet more from Colville’s diaries. 1952 this time..

    “Saturday, May 17th: A heatwave…

    Sunday, May 18th: Heatwave intensified…

    Monday, May 19th: Drove to London in shimmering heat…

    Monday, August 11th: …I have been particularly slothful about this diary of late, partly because it has been such a hot summer…”

    Like

  271. Mikehig – Thanks for the vid link, cheered me up as well to see an engineering project in the UK going ahead without some activists objecting (or is to early to say that?)

    Like

  272. Dougie, yes we need more such projects! I suspect the article was a bit under-researched as it makes no mention of the Boulby mine which Alan K found via the web – already producing polyhalite.
    Wrt activists, it looks as if the designers have done all they can to anticipate and counter objections: sinking the headgear into the ground; the epic conveyor-in-a-tunnel; etc..
    However there will still be protests by the usual bunch of “bananas” – Block Anything New Anywhere Near Anything.

    Like

  273. Next town over JUN 10 AT 10 AM – JUN 18 AT 4 PM
    Barton Great Big Green Week 2022
    “1 going” 5 clicked the “interested” button

    Hardly huge support, They’ve got the year label wrong it’s 2023

    Like

  276. Bob Ward gets shouty. At least he does come on against 2 skeptics, but he just shouts over them.
    And doesn’t gain support on Twitter.

    Like

  277. Not much wind in western Scotland today, but wall to wall sunshine. SNP: “Oh no! We ‘invested’ in the wrong kind of ‘renewables’! The ‘climate crisis’ has resulted in a sunnier, less windy and much drier Scotland.”

    Spokesman for the Water Scarcity team at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Stephen McGuire, said: “Spring and Summer are crucial times of year for water demand and SEPA started regularly reporting on water scarcity at the end of April. Initially, there were early warnings of water scarcity in the north and west of the Scotland with rainfall and river flows low for the time of year. But in recent weeks we have experienced more rapidly drying conditions and river levels are now very low across much of the Scotland.

    “We have already issued alerts for water scarcity in the northwest and south central areas, and with little rain in the immediate forecast we expect the situation to escalate quickly and extend across a much wider area in the coming weeks. SEPA will continue to report weekly on the emerging situation.”

    Relative lack of Spring rainfall triggers water scarcity alert

    Liked by 1 person

  278. There’s a minor point here
    Yes at minute 5:50 Dr Renee mispoke
    She meant to say “temperatures were higher hundred years ago in the Medieval Warm Period yet CO2 was not as high as today so you can’t just assert temps are proportionate”
    .. instead she totally misspoke “world temperatures were higher 400 years ago and CO2 was higher than today”

    Then this debunker guy turns up goes to make a complicated tweet which does cite sources quoting #1 old temperatures #2 historic CO2
    yet his tweet wording is screwed up

    Like

  279. @TalkTV keeps doing a trick where they have one XR or compassion In World Farming (AKA Stop all Animal farming) and they other guest doesn’t oppose thm, they support them.

    Now it’s Philip Lymbery @philip_ciwf vs Peter Egan (actor against animal farming )

    Like

  280. Mikehig – thanks for your above comment, made me chuckle & think “fruitcakes” for some reason –
    “However there will still be protests by the usual bunch of “bananas” – Block Anything New Anywhere Near Anything”

    Like

  282. Mark
    Re geothermal energy

    You asked three questions:

    1. Is this much/any different from fracking?

    No usually two wells are used and a connection between them is established by the same mechanism as is used in a fracked well.

    2. To what extent is geology a factor? Does it make sense to prioritise disadvantaged areas, or does geology mean that geologically appropriate areas should be selected?

    Geology is definitely a factor. Heat is extracted from rocks in the well used to transmit water downwards and in the newly formed fractures between the two wells. Rocks capable of easily transmitting heat are required. Rocks composed of clays are to be avoided. So far rocks that are suitable are granites.

    3. Is this reliable and capable of being cheap? If so, it looks like a much better option than solar and wind power, especially as it won’t intrude on the landscape and wildlife.

    I don’t know but I doubt it will be cheap. Also remember this is not a renewable heat resource. From day one the subsurface looses heat until it becomes uneconomic. Rates of heat flow into the region being drained of its heat will be substantially lower, so the heat reservoir cools. You also will need additional energy to boil water

    Liked by 1 person

  284. Mark, Alan: there are a few other aspects to consider, aiui from a bit of reading, web posts, etc.
    There can be challenges with the circulating water as it is prone to flushing minerals from the source rocks which can cause scaling and the like. In some cases radionuclides can be present, as may be the case at the scheme close to the Eden project.
    The heat source may be renewable, or at least not likely to diminish, if it is driven by volcanic-type action, as in Iceland. I am not sure whether that may also be the case where radioactive decay is involved.
    Seismicity can be a problem. A geothermal project near Bern in Switzerland was abandoned when it caused tremors greater than 4 on whatever the scale is these days.

    Like

  285. MikeHig, you are of course correct in that there are many other factors affecting geothermal energy but I only answered Mark’s questions. Also in the absence of any more recent volcanism in the British Isles than about 40 million years ago, I thought it possible to conclude that all British geothermal sites will not be renewable.

    Like

  286. Alan K: thanks for the clarification.

    Out of curiosity I had a look at the website for the Eden geothermal project which threw up a few interesting points.
    They are using a single, very deep bore with a special heat exchanger at the bottom linked to the surface by a closed-circuit water system. I was expecting two holes with water being pumped through fractures between them. Then I read:
    “The project is determining the budget of heat-producing elements (U, Th, K), their mineralogical hosts and evidence for high-temperature alteration, and leaching of these elements. Radiogenic heat production is being compared with measured heat flow data (downhole logs) and discrepancies are being evaluated in terms of the potential role(s) of upper crustal convective fluid flow and/or mid/lower crustal and mantle heat contributions.” That may explain the design approach, keeping the circulating water separate from the “hot” rocks.
    Interestingly they had a lot of microseismic events and two of magnitude 1.5 and 1.7. If it had been a gas well we can all imagine the fuss….

    Here’s the website if anyone’s interested: https://www.edengeothermal.com/

    Like

  287. https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-olaf-scholz-europe-eurozone-slipped-into-recession-and-everyone-should-be-worried/

    snippet from above post –
    “Sense of reality
    “The optimism at the start of the year seems to have given way to more of a sense of reality,” ING Bank economist Carsten Brzeski said, pointing to declining purchasing power, thinned-out industrial order books, as well as expected drags of tighter monetary and weaker U.S. growth. “On top of these cyclical factors, the ongoing war in Ukraine, demographic change and the current energy transition will structurally weigh on the German economy in the coming years.”

    and found this old post from Aug 31, 2022 –
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germanys-energy-crisis-dispels-several-myths/?sh=6bfd8bd725e9

    snippet – Replacing Germany’s remaining nuclear power with renewables is technically achievable, given that in 2021, German nuclear power was only as large as 25% of renewable energy supply. However, it took more than 5 years to add that much renewable energy and it required a significant reliance on, ta-da!, backup power plants fueled by natural gas. Which brings us back to your friendly neighborhood gas supplier, Vladmir Putin!”

    Like

  288. “The hydrogen fuel is being produced and supplied by green hydrogen developer Protium, from its recently commissioned installation at the University of South Wales Hydrogen Centre in the Baglan Energy Park. ”
    So is the leccy coming from the grid and crazy accounting used to say it’s green ?

    Hydrogen buses are being trialled in Neath Port Talbot and Swansea

    Their pages don’t mention anything directly about them owning a solar farm or wind onsite
    If they did they would mention surely

    Like

  289. The anti-hydrogen activists tweet to me and the Swansea Councillor asks her to testify that the hydrogen is 100% from renewable electricity
    … She’s declined to reply

    Liked by 1 person

  290. An art historian who flits between his homes in London and Suffolk and whose latest book was the product of four years of globetrotting ‘from Japan to Mexico, Cairo to Madrid. China to Moscow, writing the book as he went’ – well, he has now joined Just Stop Oil, obvz, and is blocking traffic in London.

    https://juststopoil.org/2023/06/07/just-stop-oil-supporters-arrested-for-demanding-uk-government-take-basic-steps-to-protect-the-public/

    Dr John-Paul Stonard:

    “If your house is on fire, do you sit down to watch TV, or do you try and do something about it? Those who are funding and supporting new oil and gas are fanning the flames. It is greed for money over human lives, and it is deeply wrong.”

    (You’ve got at least two houses, mate, so you’ll be alright.)

    Ten years ago, when Stonard was still just a Mr, he wrote this in a letter to The Times:

    From Mr John-Paul Stonard.

    Sir, Street art might well be “by its very nature public” (“Banksy’s art attack”, editorial, February 23), but this does not make it a work of public art. Public art is placed by general consensus, often after long debate and consideration, with the intention to generally benefit the community.

    Whether or not you consider that Banksy’s images possess “thought-provoking power”, surely the public places in which they can be found – where it is easiest to spray a stencil at a convenient moment – are the most likely, most expected locations. And the answer to the “important” question of why the Haringey mural was detached and placed on the market is surely the most expected, and so least interesting, of all.

    So unsanctioned street art is wrong but unsanctioned street blocking is OK.

    I see.

    No, I don’t. I’ll need to buy a house in Suffolk and spend four years travelling the world pontificating about crumbling ruins before I can understand the logic behind that.

    Laterz…

    Liked by 1 person

  292. Rain forecast sudden change
    This morning it’s gone from local rain starting on Sunday and then most days
    to zero rain next week

    Like

  293. Sadly, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again:

    “No Mow May blamed for rise in hedgehog injuries”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-65854562

    A hedgehog hospital owner has said No Mow May contributed to a “heartbreaking” rise in injuries.

    During No Mow May gardeners and councils were urged to let grass grow to promote wildlife.

    But Sue Stubley, founder of Suffolk Hedgehog Hospital, said animals nestled in longer grass, only to get badly injured when it was finally strimmed…

    …Ms Stubley, 61, said the total was “way, way in excess of anything we’ve had before”.

    “It’s double what we saw the previous year. Quite a lot of it has been due to No Mow May,” she said.

    “The hedgehogs are having a nice time in the long grass – then they get chopped to bits.”…

    Liked by 1 person

  294. There is a very easy solution to this, which is to cut the grass over two days, the first with a high blade. No Mow May is a stupid idea; there should be no mowing until August!

    Liked by 1 person

  296. Mark,

    “The Green Party of England and Wales is a doomsday cult that advocates for turning the UK into a third world country.”

    It’s much, much worse than that. The Green Party doesn’t have a hope in hell of gaining power. However, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, and the LibDems are all fully paid up members of the doomsday cult. Virtually all 650 MPs elected to Parliament are members of the ‘climate crisis’ doomsday cult. All our public institutions are captured by the delusion as well. We can’t vote our way out of this madness. We are way past the point of irreversible harms to our economy, environment and way of life. They are ‘baked in’, to coin a term favoured by the climate alarmists. ‘Managed decline’ looks more like ‘controlled demolition’ – and the explosives set in the foundations have already been detonated.

    Liked by 1 person

  297. Panorama : It’s either a hate-a-thon or a love-in advert
    Tonight It’s electric cars
    Guess which one it is ?

    “The Electric Vehicle revolution”
    .. no loaded words there …/sarc

    Liked by 2 people

  298. Paul Homewood has this story:

    National Grid Warm Up Coal Plant

    The irony is stunning. Here’s the Guardian’s take on it:

    “UK heatwave prompts National Grid to fire up coal plant to meet aircon demand
    National Grid asks for two units at Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant to be brought into action after temperature tops 30C”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/12/uk-heatwave-prompts-order-to-fire-up-coal-plant-to-meet-aircon-demand

    National Grid has broken a 46-day run in which coal has not been used to generate electricity in Britain in order to meet extra demand for air conditioning as the country swelters in hot weather.

    The grid’s electricity system operator (ESO) asked Uniper, the owner of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire, to start producing power from the coal-fired plant, prompting criticism from green campaigners….

    As I type, according to the iamkate website, the National Grid is seeing renewables supply just 19.1% of our electricity (her definition accords with mine, and excludes the 2.4% biomass that is sometimes described as renewable energy). In other words, renewables, at a pretty optimum time of the year, are supplying only slightly more than we are having to import (17%). And yes, we are using coal. It’s currently supplying 2.2% of our electricity.

    Like

  299. London’s ULEZ zone is going well….

    “London high pollution alert triggered for Tuesday”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckvzldzegnyo

    A “high” air pollution alert for London on Tuesday has been triggered by City Hall, after it said local emissions had combined with warm weather and winds blowing pollutants from the continent towards the capital….

    Like

  300. It took me a 9 tweet thread to show the Cheltenham SCIENCE festival
    is really a Guardianland Agenda Pushing Festival
    for Green Protest and LGBTQA+ (The Alphabet People) activism

    Like

  301. Can a photograph constitute misinformation or disinformation?

    “River in ‘wettest place in England’ in Lake District almost completely dry
    Experts are warning of disastrous conditions for wildlife at upper River Derwent in Borrowdale

    “https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/14/wettest-place-in-england-lake-district-almost-completely-dry-river-derwent-borrowdale

    I’m not denying that it’s been very dry for quite a while, and that rivers are low, even here in Cumbria. And I can’t say with certainty that the River Derwent in Borrowdale hasn’t dried up, though the photos later in the article suggest that it hasn’t. The photo leading the article appears to show a completely dry river bed at Grange in Borrowdale. The point, however, is that the bridge at Grange has two arches, and my money is on the river flowing (albeit slowly and at a low level) under the other arch, which has been conveniently omitted from the photograph. In fact, if you look very carefully, there does appear to be water flowing beyond the stones and pebbles, at the far side (it will have flowed under the second arch).

    Liked by 1 person

  302. I can’t speak for the upper River Derwent, but with 3 or 4 weeks without rain and strong sunshine, of course it’s going to be pretty sluggish or even ‘dry’, the water having disappeared below the surface. But I can speak for the lower River Derwent and although it’s quite low, it is still very much a healthy, quite fast flowing river and in parts is still at least 15 feet deep. Ask my dogs. They’ve been happily swimming in it in this glorious summer weather! A few days rain and it will start to rise again.

    Liked by 1 person

  303. The BBC is at it with its bee eater climate change propaganda again:

    “Bee-eaters make historic return to breeding site in Norfolk”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65910074

    The RSPB said a trio of the colourful birds, including a nesting pair, had been spotted again in a sand quarry near Cromer.

    It said it was the first time the summer visitors had returned to the same breeding site in the UK in consecutive years.

    A public viewing area, managed by the RSPB, has been opened nearby for people wanting to see the birds.

    Mark Thomas, from the charity, said it was a “real possibility” they were the same birds as last year, suggesting it could be the start of bee-eaters “properly colonising the UK”.

    But, he added: “Their return is a vivid reminder of the changes being wrought by our overheating planet.

    “Bee-eaters are a species found commonly in the southern Mediterranean and northern Africa and as our planet warms they – along with other species – are being pushed further north.”

    There’s just one problem with that. Bee eaters have been regular visitors to our shores for the best part of a quarter of millennium, according to written records. As I have opined here and at Paul Homewood’s place in the past, I saw one here in Cumbria some 30 years or so ago, in the low hills above Kendal.

    It’s worth re-visiting Paul’s two articles de-bunking this relentless propaganda from the RSPB and the BBC:

    Bee-eaters in Norfolk ‘worrying sign of climate change’

    BBC Double Down On Bee-Eater Disinformation.

    Like

  304. It’s confirmed: Musk’s ‘free speech Twitter’ is actively censoring climate change sceptics. Willis has been suspended for tweeting facts. I am certain that this was the real reason why my first account was suspended and why they refuse to reinstate my second account, unjustifiably suspended also. The censorship industrial complex is coming for climate science deniers and probably Net Zero deniers too.

    In The Slam Again

    Liked by 1 person

  305. Jaime; from his post, it looks as if Willis’ suspension was not for posting climate facts but for a satirical comment he made which was deemed to be inciting violence.
    Someone asked what should be done about the FBI and he replied that it should be burnt down and the ground salted. Obviously it was not a serious comment: we might say something similar about parliament, for example, with references to Guy Fawkes.
    Clearly the Twitter moderators/bots lack a sense of humour. Of course he may well be a marked man because of his climate views so this quip was all the excuse they needed.

    Liked by 2 people

  306. Not so neutral language from the supposedly objective and balanced BBC:

    “Climate change: UN to unmask fossil fuel lobbyists at climate talks”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65917660

    Unmask, indeed! It all seems a bit OTT, especially given that the venue selected by the BBC for COP28 is, as the BBC’s report says, “one of the world’s top oil producers.”

    Like

  307. > Jaime; from his post, it looks as if Willis’ suspension was not for posting climate facts but for a satirical comment he made which was deemed to be inciting violence.

    But not so surprisingly, Willis just asks the question of whether it’s all REALLY explainable by the vast climate change conspiracy.

    Which of course is inextricably linked to the vast censorship industrial complex conspiracy.

    But of course, mentioning conspiracy theories triggers snowflakes so I won’t mention conspiracy theories.

    Liked by 1 person

  308. “Owners of the most polluting cars to pay double for parking across England
    Lambeth council in London is latest to introduce emissions-based fees, with similar charges expected to be widely introduced”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/18/owners-of-most-polluting-cars-to-pay-double-for-parking-england

    Owners of the most polluting cars may soon have to pay more to park as councils across England are expected to roll out new charges based on a vehicle’s CO2 emissions.

    Lambeth is the latest council in London to introduce emissions-based parking fees, with similar charges now expected elsewhere in England. Owners of the most polluting cars can expect to pay more than twice as much as cleaner cars. There are now 26 different charges to park for an hour in Lambeth, depending on a car’s tax band and whether there is a diesel surcharge. The cost of a parking bay near Waterloo station in south London now ranges between £6.30 and £13.23 an hour, with payment made by an app.

    The consultation on the charges introduced on 30 May included a new pricing structure for residents’ parking permits, which are already based on CO2 emissions. The annual cost of the highest band has risen from £340.73 to £500, with an additional annual surcharge of £140 for a diesel vehicle that does not comply with Euro 6 emission standards.

    Of more than 2,900 responses in the consultation, 59% objected to the proposals. Lambeth has implemented the changes despite opposition…

    Like

  311. It was a glorious summer wasn’t it? A bit hot at the end, necessitating flashing amber warnings from the UK Health Security Agency and then a direction from the unofficial UK ‘Energy Security Agency’ to power up the last remaining coal-fired power stations because too many people were using air conditioning and it was too hot for solar panels! Now we’re back to the bog standard British summer for the rest of June and into July. Never mind, I’m sure some airport will come up with the goods to convince us that we’re all going to die horribly from heat exhaustion unless we fit a smart meter.

    Liked by 1 person

  312. “Scotland misses greenhouse gas emissions target”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65960717

    Scotland’s target for cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions has been missed after a bounce back following the pandemic.

    Total emissions were 49.9% lower in 2021 than in 1990 but the target for the year was a 51.1% cut.

    It is the eighth time in 12 years that the legally binding target has been missed.

    The Scottish government said it was disappointed but that it was “not far behind” where it should be.

    Domestic transport was still the biggest source of emissions and was responsible for 26.2% of the total….

    Reality never seems to bite:

    …Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllan added: “As the real life impacts of climate change become increasingly clear, we must go further and faster, and we will be introducing a draft of our new climate change plan later this year, which will contain even greater ambition while steering our emissions reduction pathway out to 2040.”…

    Speaking of reality, comments below the line aren’t going well for the BBC or for the Scottish government. This is the top comment:

    We need to get a grip of reality in this country

    A single power station in Poland (Belcahotow) spews out more pollution that the whole of Scotland

    The UK could stop producing pollution today, and it wouldn’t register in global pollution

    Until ROW start changing, we are wasting our time and trashing our economy throwing money at the environment

    China/ India / USA are all laughing at us.

    I agree with that, save for the use of the word “pollution” in connection with GHGs. Whatever problems they might or might not cause, I struggle to define something essential to life (CO2) as pollution, even if the EPA in the USA does so.

    As for Northern Ireland, well perhaps it’s due to starting to come out of the worst of lockdown, but it’s not going well there either:

    “NI Greenhouse gas emissions increased by 5% in 2021, report finds”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-65964230

    …While agriculture remained the highest contributor at 27.6%, emissions from most sectors rose.

    The largest increases were in transport, agriculture and energy supply.

    Waste management and public sector buildings were the only two sectors which did not have an emissions increase.

    Northern Ireland has a target of reducing emissions by at least 48% by 2030.

    Director of RenewableNI Steven Agnew described the report’s findings were disappointing.

    “With the impact of climate change already being felt in Northern Ireland, we cannot afford to go backwards,” he said….

    Thereby demonstrating a failure to understand that nothing Northern Ireland does can make any measurable difference to climate change.

    Liked by 1 person

  313. Mark – thanks for the BBC Scotland link with comments.

    as usual, I tried to “like” it, but to no avail 😦

    Like

  314. Next Monday U3A lecture
    Join us for another talk from Ian Hawker, leader of East Suffolk u3a’s Climate Change group.
    UK average temperatures are predicted to rise by 1.6-2.0C by 2050 and 2.6C – 2.9C by 2100 compared with pre-industrial levels.
    This rise will impact food & water supply, sea levels, weather, infestation & disease and mass immigration from abroad. What adaptation actions should the UK governments take now and in the future?
    Based on Feedback, this talk will be 60 minutes, with 30 minutes for questions.
    https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/adapting-to-climate-change-tickets-638618724797

    Like

  317. He tweeted “2) Burn the FBI building to the ground.
    3) Salt the earth.”
    My guess is someone reported that as incitement to violence

    You really can’t go around giving people the opportunity to false report you

    Cos when you do get banned all your historic tweets disappear
    Maybe switch to a new account every 18 months

    Like

  319. stewgreen,

    At least he’s talking about adaptation, not mitigation, which is a start, even if the metaphorical plague of locusts forecast for the UK does seem to OTT.

    Liked by 1 person

  320. There seem to have been quite a few bus fires lately. Take this one reported by the BBC:

    “Passengers evacuated as bus destroyed by fire in Dundee”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-65916688

    Passengers have escaped without injury after a double-decker bus was destroyed by fire in Dundee.

    Emergency services were called to the blaze on a Stagecoach bus on Strathearn Road at about 14:30….

    I don’t know what type of bus it was, and I concede that I may be adding 2 + 2 and making 5, but I can’t help wondering if it was electric, especially in view of this other BBC report from 5 years ago:

    “Stagecoach launches £2.1m Dundee and Angus bus fleet

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-39655709

    Stagecoach has launched its new £2.1m fleet of buses in Dundee and Angus.

    The seven electric-hybrid double decker vehicles will cover the Kirriemuir, Forfar and Brechin 20 and 21 routes to and from Dundee.

    The Scottish government’s Scottish Green Bus Fund has contributed £300,000 towards the cost of the vehicles, which include free wi-fi access.

    Stagecoach introduced 18 electric hybrid buses in 2015, which run on the 73 route between Dundee and Arbroath.

    Jon Oakey, Stagecoach East Scotland acting general manager said: “We’re committed to improving public transport in Angus and Dundee so I’m delighted to be introducing our latest investment for the area.

    “These new vehicles will complement our existing 18 electric-hybrid buses already in the area, helping reduce our environmental impact and hopefully encourage more customers to opt for our greener, smarter travel.”

    Like

  321. Just Stop Oil asks this question: ”When the climate crisis means that we will have to fight for loaves of bread, who do you think will suffer first? ‘

    Answer: LGBTQ+ers, obvz.

    https://juststopoil.org/2023/06/20/an-open-letter-to-the-british-lgbt-awards/

    Murder, genocide, ‘billionaires who are forcing us to choose between resistance or death’, ‘business model includes knowingly killing LGBTQ+ people’, bla bla bla.

    Alas, such blablablalarmism does actually work. BLGTBA quickly cancelled sponsorships by the well-known genocidalists BP and Shell (though it kept those from the infamous water-polluter Macquarie and the infamous planning bully Tesco) and will be interrogating its key core strategizing toolkits going forwards:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20230622170259/https://britishlgbtawards.com/

    Liked by 1 person

  322. “Loss of fossil fuel assets would not impoverish general public, study finds
    Research allays fears that rapid scaling back of production would hit people’s savings and pensions hard”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/22/fossil-fuel-assets-loss-study

    Extraordinary conclusions:

    A rapid reduction in fossil fuels, essential to avoid devastating climate breakdown, would have minimal financial impact on the vast majority of people, new research has shown.

    Urgently cutting back on fossil fuel production is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown and the economic and social turmoil that would ensue. However, some opponents of climate action claim it is too expensive. They argue that rapidly scaling back fossil fuel production would leave billions of pounds of “stranded assets”, leading to an economic slump that would impoverish the public through a fall in the value of savings and pension funds.

    Research published on Thursday finds that the loss of fossil fuel assets would have a minimal impact on the general public….

    No bias in its findings:

    …“We find that the bulk of financial losses associated with rotten, polluting assets is borne by the wealthy,” said the co-author Lucas Chancel, a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris. “Only a small share of financial losses is borne by the working and middle class because they have no or relatively little financial wealth.”…

    It goes on:

    …The study, published in the journal Joule, found that in high-income countries two-thirds of the financial losses would be borne by the most affluent 10%. In contrast, governments could easily compensate for the minimal impact on those on middle and lower levels of wealth….

    No mention of pension funds and the like who are heavily dependent on dividend income – and in most developed countries, many of the poorest in society are dependent on their pension. No mention of the fact that the richest 10% in society pay most of the tax that funds the governments who can supposedly “easily compensate” the poorer losers. Fantasy economics, to my mind. The Guardian doesn’t actually provide a link to the article, only to the website that published it, but I haven’t been able to find it, after (an admittedly cursory) search.

    Like

  323. Mark – think I found the article – https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00220-9

    titled – “Potential pension fund losses should not deter high-income countries from bold climate action”
    long read, and not sure I can be bothered, but a snippet –

    “Second, less affluent groups, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom, could be tipped (deeper) into net negative wealth, increasing risks of personal bankruptcy, and suffer pay-out reductions from defined contribution pension schemes. Because adults are unequally exposed, e.g., 9% of British pension funds have completely divested from fossil fuels,12 the losses for those who do sustain them exceed the averages in Figure 2. In continental European countries, current high inflation rates arguably pose a bigger threat to the value of financial assets. Still, those groups who are most exposed to stranded assets and have little capital could experience economic hardship.”

    Liked by 1 person

  324. This is what happens when I check data
    On the day the guy was shouting drought in Collingford reservoir, the rain gauge registered huge amount
    It’s not his fault the water company suppresses the reservoir level data for days

    Like

  328. Stewgreen,

    Here’s Andrew Montford on GB News re wind costs:

    Like

  330. They’re really hyping the ’40C temperatures’ thing again and guess what, Coningsby is once again in the frame for giving us ‘the hottest day of the year so far’. This is not science or even weather forecasting, it is a psyop.

    “It comes after the UK experienced the joint hottest day of the year so far, recorded at 32.2C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, on Sunday. The Met Office has also warned that Brits could expect sweltering temperatures of up to 40C next month and as many as five more heatwaves this summer.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12237223/From-sizzle-drizzle-Brits-battered-rain-Met-Office-predicts-heatwave-July.html

    Like

  331. Stew – thanks for the Monbiot article link
    “round the cycle turns. As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach. As the extreme right gains power, climate programmes are shut down, heating accelerates and more people are driven from their homes. If we don’t break this cycle soon, it will become the dominant story of our times.”

    He gets this from this peer reviewed paper –
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6

    snippet from the Abstract – “These results highlight the need for more decisive policy action to limit the human costs and inequities of climate change.”
    the paper is a joke, but only read a few pages before giving up.

    Like

  332. only thing I would add to above comment – “the human climate niche” seems a new scare term, with no mention of “ice age”.

    Like

  333. Who is this Alarmist guy who just followed me on Twitter ?
    Is he a real person ?
    cos last week he retweeted a Climate Poll which has just 34 votes

    Like

  334. Lord Deben is tweeted by his mates
    but there are very few likes
    Sceptical tweets get more traction
    This is the official announcement tweet got just 30 likes

    Like

  335. How long before Staffordshire earthquake is claimed to be a forerunner of climate catastrophe?

    Like

  336. Here’s an abridged extract from Mike Hulme’s new book, Climate Change Isn’t Everything:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12230739/Brilliant-new-book-Cambridge-professor-warns-Stop-blaming-climate-change.html

    The fact is that there is an anti-democratic impulse within climatism that brooks no public dissent.

    As it happens, Jem Bendell also has a new book out (Breaking Together) in which he too takes a pop at eco-authoritarianism. I think this is a new target for Bendell. He has long predicted that the societal collapse that will inevitably be triggered by climate change will probably lead to nationalist, xenophobic authoritarianism but in his recent writings he has criticised the authoritarianism of eco-activists who are trying to limit climate change and the consequent inevitable societal collapse.

    An exchange between Bendell and a green campaigner whom he’d said was authoritarian (and perhaps even an ecofascist, but I can’t refind that) can be downloaded from here:

    https://www.greenhousethinktank.org/democratic-or-authoritarian-action/

    Doomer vs. Doomer.

    (Does anyone know what they mean by ‘gas’?)

    Incidentally, it seems that Bendell is retiring from academia and possibly from activism too. He’s going to move back to Bali to concentrate on gardening and song-writing as the doom closes in.

    (Incidentally Part Deux: My money’s on Bill McGuire, Alan. If he knows where Staffordshire is. Otherwise it’s Veli Albert Kallio.)

    Like

  337. “London Pride: Seven arrests as Just Stop Oil protest delays parade”

    Before the parade started, LGBTQ+ members of Just Stop Oil called on organisers to condemn new oil, gas and coal licences.

    “These partnerships embarrass the LGBTQ+ community at a time when much of the cultural world is rejecting ties to these toxic industries,” they said in a statement.

    LGBTQ+ people are “suffering first” in the “accelerating social breakdown” caused by climate change, they added.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66074939

    Like

  338. I listened briefly, while driving in the car late this afternoon, to an interview on Radio 4 with a JSO spokesperson. When asked what gave them the right to dictate who organisations can accept funding from, she declared that it was a very good question, and proceeded not to answer it, instead launching into the usual pre-prepared spiel about a climate emergency etc. I persevered for a couple of minutes, then switched it off, as I couldn’t take any more of her uninterrupted monologue full of unchallenged misinformation.

    Like

  339. Mark, the JSO spokesperson who sounded like a woman was in fact a man, James Skeet.

    But you’re not the only one guilty of misgendering. (Missexing?) I thought the presenter was a man, so was a bit surprised when Skeet called him Caroline. But that’s who it was: Caroline Wyatt, a cis woman.

    R4 PM recording here:

    Skeet deserves some credit for not ranting about genocide and calling his opponents liars and murderers, as he did in several earlier interviews. Here he is shouting and jabbing his finger at Ed Balls when Balls challenged him to define ‘genocide’:

    Like

  340. Vinny, thank for putting me right. My sincere apologies to James Skeet for mis-gendering him (but only for that; I still think he talked complete tosh).

    Like

  342. Many tweets are complaing about the obvious Climate Change propaganda and product placement

    but green activist tweets
    @MarkBinnersley
    Great to see a peak time item on heat pumps in the media without the grubby climate delayers in the gas boiler industry wading in with misinformation about electrification of heating.
    Well done #Countryfile.

    counterview thread

    Like

  343. The heatpump company highlighted the BBC free PR
    in 2 tweets during the show and 2 before

    In March they bragged they were on BBC & ITV
    In Feb bragged they were on the BBC website

    Nov 25, 2022
    Our Managing Director, David Broom chatted to @Skentelbery earlier today on @BBCCornwall

    Nov 25, 2022 Kensa’s solution for the decarbonisation of heat: networked ground source heat pumps, was discussed by @RHarrabin on @BBCRadio4 earlier today.

    Oct 27, 2021
    Regarding insulation, our Managing Director, James Standley actually spoke about insulation on BBC Radio Cornwall last week.

    Jul 13, 2021
    Our very own Iain Carr starred on BBC News North West last night! He talked about how we’re using natural heat from the ground to deliver #LowCarbon heating to 183 flats in Blackburn

    Nov 19, 2020
    “The future is heat pumps,” said Kensa’s Stuart Gadsden on BBC News last night.
    Did you tune in?

    Nov 18, 2020
    Tonight on @BBCNews 📺 Watch out for Kensa’s own Stuart Gadsden, who will be at the site of @ESOxford!

    They did about 10 promo tweets about that item

    Aug 30, 2019
    Catch the full Kensa #HeatPumps story & interview with @RichardCochrane of @UniofExeter on @BBCSpotlight

    The heatpump company makes big use of BBC climate doom stories, and BBC GreenDream stories
    One firm tweeted they use a PR agency to get onto BBC

    Liked by 1 person

  344. Sunday BBC local news show
    Most items are filmed like adverts with background music etc.
    This was the environment correspondent promoting a local greenhouse plant gowing biz Premier Plants who are going to use geothermal to heat their greenhouses.

    So they want warmer temperatures to grow their plants
    and want to do not cause Global Warming.
    That’s like the Eden Project

    Isn’t there some irony there
    thst they claim the world is getting hot hot hot
    yet the UK is too cold for the plants they want to grow ?

    Liked by 1 person

  345. OK we got something
    People pointed out that Justin Rowlatt did his “Hottest Evah June, all the fish are dying” report wearing a thick sweater by the canal (Knowles Lock system near Solihull )
    and when I check for a picture
    I find that he has a PR woman working with him
    Bio : “Feet on the ground,head in the stars with BBC Climate & Science.Promoting & empowering all .. ”

    Like

  347. Jit, 01 Jul:

    “LGBTQ+ people are “suffering first” in the “accelerating social breakdown” caused by climate change, they added.”

    Translation: In a very competitive field, LGBTQ+ people are determined to be the first ‘oppressed minority’ to claim victim status in an accelerating social breakdown allegedly caused by ‘climate breakdown’.

    Liked by 2 people

  348. I found this quote on a philosophical-type substack which I thought was could be applied to much of the discussions on CliScep:

    Ironically, critics of the war and similar adventures fall into the same errors, through desperate attempts to impose a rational, left-brain interpretation on something which is an incoherent mess brought about by a political system that has gone mad. Once you give up the attempt to interpret the behaviour of western leaders as if it were rationally-based, it is no longer necessary to construct elaborate and complex master plans pursued over decades, in an attempt to force on events a unity that they do not possess. Nor do we need to mimic the behaviour of schizophrenics, for whom there are hidden meanings and menaces everywhere.

    The substack in question is this one:

    https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/will-the-west-eat-itself

    Liked by 2 people

  349. Bill, the political system itself is quite mad but the people operating within that system are still applying rational, left brain thinking within that system, hence they are not violating the rules of logic and rationality from their own perspective; also they are still motivated primarily by what the author describes as an ‘extractive mindset’. But that extractive mindset has not emerged spontaneously, opportunistically, it has evolved over many years, hence the understandable perception of a ‘master plan’. Are those seeking to interpret the behaviour of western leaders also guilty of applying rational, left brain thinking? Yes, very probably, but they do so from outside the insane system, therefore come to very different conclusions.

    Like

  350. In the final minutes of the Moral Maze philosopher and theologian
    and XR (Just Slag Oil) supporter Carmody Grey said
    “I am talking of obviously about the Climate Emergency (PR word)
    where a *small number of  companies* have stitched up the entire private sector
    so that green choices are in reality not available to most consumers to their own benefit.”

    That’s a huge conspiracy theory, with no evidence

    Lefties can get away with saying bunk on the BBC

    Like

  351. There was not much Twitter discussion about the prog
    just a few left extremists hurling bile at a guy from the Adam Smith Institute

    I saw a few lefties disinform
    by using a graph https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9644789/UK-ranked-Europe-bathing-water-quality.html

    The fact was it the research was a farce
    It was a Covid year
    And the reason why the UK seemed to have a low number of its river swims marked as high quality
    is that 80% were not sampled, so were given zero

    The text says of 640 monitored bathing sites, 457 were not sampled that year

    Like

  354. Sander van der Linden is on GBnews plugging his book Foolproof how to spot misinformation
    The presenter seems unaware that Linden is one of the bad guys along with his mate Lew
    using PR tricks to close down debate opponents instead of addressing their actual arguments.

    GBnews just put their Linden video up

    Like

  356. Jim Dale often appears on GBnews billed as “senior meteorologist”
    actually that’s only to differentiate him from the couple of interns that help him in his one man band company BRITISH WEATHER SVS @BritWeatherSvs
    Either his children write his tweets
    or he is childlike

    #1 He uses terms like “97% of climate experts say” and “climate deniers”

    #2 Tweets the wacky conspiracy theory that most skeptics are funded by Big Oil
    Replying to @HavelockRoadBtn @LoisPerry26 and 3 others
    The massive & ongoing climate induced events of late are a solid line in the baking sand.
    It won’t be too long before *climate deniers* are totally banned from mainstream media
    for being the fossil fuelled funded conspiracy theorists that they are.
    It is coming! 👀
    Folks PAY for green policies ,so they should have a SAY
    not be banned

    #3 Uses a wacky graph made by various splicings , including splicing IPCC extreme future forecasts
    .. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0nMWclXwAANK6T?format=jpg&name=orig
    Maybe someone some could take a look at his killer graph

    Like

  358. ITV local news PR prog
    “Here we are in Matlock where a pub flooded in a flash storm
    that’s the fifth flood in 4 years”
    Global Warming was no blamed
    Instead the Flood Warden blamed new housing in the hills above.

    The town centre is valley.

    Like

  359. In one of the next item Nick Smith is with NFU leader Minetter Batters and other climate activists shouting “drought”
    lot of hyperbole in this nationally syndicated item.

    Like

  362. “The firms will invest up to €7bn ($7.7bn; £6bn) to develop low-emission petrol, diesel and hybrid engines”
    BBC story about French and Chinese putting project HQ in UK
    note it’s not called an electric
    At first it seems a conflict with the UK 2030 petrol car ban
    It does make sense to think about better diesel engines for trucks , rather than making them electric

    Liked by 1 person

  364. https://savebritain.org/deadly-heatwave-hits-europe-as-tourists-warned-of-record-breaking-48c-highs/

    partial quote – “However, the Met Office has stated that the UK would be spared the high temperatures. It is expected the extreme hot weather will last for two weeks.
    Met Office spokesperson Grahame Madge said: ‘The heatwave conditions which are affecting parts of south west Europe and north west Africa are expected to extend eastward.
    ‘Much higher than average temperatures are also likely at times further north across Europe, but these will be shorter lived and less impactful.
    ‘Communities in the affected regions should expect health impacts and the potential for wildfires.’”

    cancel your hols now, the Jet Stream has went wonky, again!!!

    Like

  365. “‘Definitely unprecedented’: Vermont wildlife also affected by historic flooding
    Fish, beavers and skunks all suffered from the deluge this week. But good news: populations are healthy and they will rebound”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/13/vermont-wildlife-historic-flooding

    The Guardian doesn’t “do” history, then? Try 1927 for size:

    ““The Troubled Roar of the Waters”: Vermont in Flood and Recovery, 1927–1931. By Deborah Pickman Clifford and Nicholas R. Clifford.”

    https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/95/1/255/780770

    In November 1927, New England, Vermont in particular, was struck by a natural disaster that turned out to be even more devastating in some respects than the infamous Mississippi flood of the same year. According to Congressman Ernest Gibson, per capita flood damage in Vermont was $86.35 as compared to $25.85 in Mississippi. In less than forty-eight hours, vast quantities of water rushed down the Lamoille, White, Winooski, and many other Vermont rivers, killing more than a hundred people and drowning farm animals in droves. While rumors of widespread hunger proved to be unfounded, food shortages did occur and rationing was imposed in several places. Nearly five thousand Vermont families registered for aid at local Red Cross offices. The greatest burden, however, was the destruction of much of the state’s transport infrastructure. “From western Massachusetts to Quebec, trains were halted if they were fortunate, wrecked if they were not, their cargoes lost or their passengers stranded” (p. 9). A report by the Public Service Commission counted 1,258 damaged and destroyed bridges.

    Like

  366. The Guardian and the BBC are plugging every extreme weather event – particularly floods and heatwaves – as ‘climate breakdown’. The propaganda and misinformation is relentless.

    “Health alerts issued as blistering heat scorches southern Europe
    Tourists collapse in Greece and Italy and worker killed near Milan amid heatwave worsened by carbon pollution”

    They did an instant attribution! They’ve got the ‘science’ all worked out too:

    “Warm air, which holds more moisture than cold air, can lead to hot and dry conditions in some areas, and heavy rains and flash floods in others.”

    Take that deniers!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/14/health-alerts-blistering-heat-scorches-southern-europe

    Liked by 1 person

  367. A very interesting read, with some choice quotes:

    “The deindustrialization of Germany:
    If Europe’s economic motor stalls, the Continent’s already polarized political landscape will shudder.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/rust-belt-on-the-rhine-the-deindustrialization-of-germany/

    Germany’s biggest companies are ditching the fatherland.

    Chemical giant BASF has been a pillar of German business for more than 150 years, underpinning the country’s industrial rise with a steady stream of innovation that helped make “Made in Germany” the envy of the world.

    But its latest moonshot — a $10 billion investment in a state-of-the-art complex the company claims will be the gold standard for sustainable production — isn’t going up in Germany. Instead, it’s being erected 9,000 kilometers away in China.

    Even as it chases the future in Asia, BASF, founded on the banks of the Rhine in 1865 as the Badische Anilin- & Sodafabrik, is scaling back in Germany. In February, the company announced the shutdown of a fertilizer plant in its hometown of Ludwigshafen and other facilities, which led to about 2,600 job cuts.

    “We are increasingly worried about our home market,” BASF Chief Executive Martin Brudermüller told shareholders in April, noting that the company lost €130 million in Germany last year. “Profitability is no longer anywhere near where it should be.”

    Such malaise now pervades the whole of the German economy, which slipped into a recession in the first quarter amid a flurry of surveys showing that both companies and consumers are deeply skeptical about the future…

    …Confronted by a toxic cocktail of high energy costs, worker shortages and reams of red tape, many of Germany’s biggest companies — from giants like Volkswagen and Siemens to a host of lesser-known, smaller ones — are experiencing a rude awakening and scrambling for greener pastures in North America and Asia.

    Absent an unexpected turnaround, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Germany is headed for a much deeper economic decline.

    The reports from the front lines are only getting worse. Unemployment rose year-on-year by about 200,000 in June, a month when companies normally add jobs. Though the overall unemployment rate remains low at 5.7 percent and the number of job vacancies high at nearly 800,000, German officials are bracing for more bad news…

    …New orders at the country’s engineering companies, long a bellwether for the health of Germany Inc., have been dropping like a stone, falling 10 percent in May alone, the eighth consecutive decline. Similar weakness is apparent across the German economy, from construction to chemicals.

    Foreign interest in Germany as a place to invest is also receding. The number of new foreign investments in Germany fell in 2022 for the fifth year in a row, hitting the lowest point since 2013.

    “One sometimes hears about ‘creeping deindustrialization — well, it’s not just creeping anymore,” said Hans-Jürgen Völz, chief economist at BVMW, an association that lobbies for Germany’s Mittelstand, the thousands of small- and medium-sized firms that form the backbone of the country’s economy…

    …Take metals. In March, the company that owns Germany’s largest aluminum smelter, Uedesheimer Rheinwerk, said it would shutter the plant by the end of the year due to the high cost of energy.

    Such reports would be less worrying if Germany had a strong history of economic diversification. Unfortunately, its track record on that front is patchy at best.

    Germany pioneered modern solar panel technology, for example, to become the world’s largest producer in the early 2000s. After the Chinese copied the German designs and flooded the market with cheap alternatives, however, Germany’s solar-panel makers collapsed. ..

    …While EU officials have blamed the region’s looming deindustrialization on what they see as unfair policies in the U.S. and China that place European companies at a disadvantage, the problems in Germany run much deeper and are largely homemade. And they don’t have easy fixes.

    Put simply, the formula that made Germany Europe’s industrial powerhouse — a highly skilled workforce and innovative companies powered by cheap energy — has come undone…

    …Compounding those demographic challenges are skyrocketing energy costs in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Germany’s own efforts to combat climate change.

    By halting deliveries of natural gas to Germany, the Kremlin effectively removed the linchpin of the country’s business model, which relied on easy access to cheap energy. Though wholesale gas prices have recently stabilized, they’re still roughly triple where they were before the crisis. That has left companies like BASF, whose main German operation alone consumed as much natural gas in 2021 as all of Switzerland, with no choice but to look for alternatives.

    The country’s Green transformation, the so-called Energiewende, has only made matters worse. Just as it was losing access to Russian gas, the country switched off all nuclear power. And even after nearly a quarter century of subsidizing the expansion of renewable energy, Germany still doesn’t have nearly enough wind turbines and solar panels to sate demand — leaving Germans paying three times the international average for electricity…

    …Volkswagen, which has dominated the Chinese auto market for decades, lost its crown as the country’s largest automaker in the first quarter to BYD, a local competitor, amid a surge in EV sales. China is the world’s largest car market, accounting for nearly 40 percent of Volkswagen’s revenue.

    A recent study by insurer Allianz projected that if current trends hold with Chinese manufacturers increasing their market share in both China and Europe, European carmakers and suppliers could see their profits fall by tens of billions of euros by 2030, with German companies bearing the brunt…

    …In Germany, by contrast, Volkswagen has abandoned plans to build a new factory for the “Trinity,” a new electric SUV, opting instead to retool existing facilities. The carmaker, which has a stable of brands that also includes Audi and Porsche, decided not to build a second battery plant in its home state of Lower Saxony due to the high cost of electricity. In April, however, the company announced it would invest roughly €1 billion in an electric vehicle center near Shanghai.

    A recent survey of 128 German auto suppliers by the VDA, an industry group, found that not a single one planned to increase their investment in their home market. More than a quarter were planning to shift operations abroad…

    Like

  369. 1000 lorries filled green paint have arrived in Scunthorpe
    to make Starmer’s green steel
    As usual the taxpayer will pay for the extra costs of “green steel”

    As I scan Twitter for info I am confronted by hundreds of spiteful hatey tweets from antifa to the people of Scunthorpe
    Why is that ? Cos a few top antifa accounts took video of 60 Stop The Boat demonstrators in Scarborough and falsely labelled it as “Fascists in Scunthorpe”

    In 1650 iron was made by cutting down the forests of England
    2028 Steel is going to be made by chopping down the forests of America to fuel Drax Power station to make the electricity to power the furnaces in Scunthorpe
    cos wind/solar are too flip floppy

    Is that progress ?

    Liked by 1 person

  370. York Green Party transport spokesman @AndyDAgorne tweeted

    could @SelbyGreenParty candidate get surprise @TheGreenParty
    boost from Global heat wave awareness?
    #ClimateEmergency will be ignored by major parties until forced to take seriously at ballot box

    Like

  372. ITV local newsPR
    “Despite the rain a hosepipe ban could be imminent”
    .. Are these media people on drugs ??

    Ah they have “drought porn” to push as part of their Climate CAMPAIGNING

    syndicated through ITV regions

    Like

  373. I have wondered about an almost complete absence recently of any mention of El Niño as a contributor/cause of recent heatwaves. No longer. Channel 4 News had a climate expert on who attributed the heatwaves to climate change (nothing new there then) but then said that the weather had been made even hotter by the imposition of El Niño. No thought whatsoever that the heat might primarily be the result of El Niño, perhaps increased slightly by climate changes. First things first Kendall!!

    Like

  375. Just Stop Oil activist who was carried off the pitch at Lord’s by Jonny Bairstow is punched and kicked to the floor by boyfriend of pregnant woman as eco-mob are accused of causing their car to crash
    I wonder if he is breaking bail conditions ?

    Accented guy apparently named Daniel Knorr, of “Oxford”, wearing a french kite festival T-shirt with EU flag logo
    Mail says “grew up in £5.2m house in upmarket north London suburb (and his banker father invests in climate change ‘opportunities’)
    His father is the boss of a private equity company with a $5.3billion investment fund. It invests in climate change ‘opportunities’ and ‘supporting portfolio companies to reduce their carbon emissions’.
    Knorr’s parents arrived at their villa-style property in a new hybrid BMW today. They then threatened to call the police on reporters who asked them about the arrest of their son 24 hours earlier.
    Daniel Knorr was charged with aggravated trespass this afternoon along with co-conspirators Judit Murray, 69, and Jacob Bourne, 26, after the Lord’s pitch invasion. They have been bailed and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on July 31.”
    So I I wonder if he is breaking bail conditions ?

    Like

  376. Stew, IANAL but, yes, I’d think so.

    Incidentally, reporting restrictions have been applied to the latest Gail Bradbrook trial. This one was about vandalism at a government ministry in October 2019. Yesterday, Isleworth Crown Court discharged the jury (am I allowed to say that?) and a new trial has been scheduled for 30th October.*

    Reporting restrictions are sometimes applied when juries have been discharged because of jury-tampering fears.

    In this case? Bradbrook perhaps refused to shut up about you-know-what.

    ===
    *That’ll be more than four years after the druggie narcissist broke a window to save us from ourselves. Why do such trials take so long? Answer: activist lawyers like the kimono-clad fox-beater.

    Liked by 1 person

  377. Crowd pleaser Dale Vince is getting a lot of stick
    “Forest Green are famously the first club ever to appoint their academy manager as interim first team manager whilst they find their permanent replacement, ”
    so that was a woman manager so he got lots of PR for that
    She’s been there all the month of the off season
    She got a couple of games
    and now he’s found a permanent manager A MAN
    “Dave Horseman has left @SouthamptonFC to become manager of Forest Green Rovers.”
    Now people are cruelly saying Vince just appointing the female was a publicity stunt

    Not so fast She was always interim ..so she’s not being ditched

    Like

  378. Geoff Buys Cars is the main anti EV youtube channel

    He already knew about the huge Tata subsidy
    “Indian company takes a load of money from UK gov
    who in return get good PR
    Tata blackmailed the gov for £600m or they would build the factory in Spain
    It’s Delorean again”
    .. This is the dark Ages ”

    Liked by 1 person

  380. Jit,

    I tried hard, while reading that piece, to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt. By the end, however, it was impossible. It was like reading an article in the Guardian. I was left in no doubt by the end where the author’s sympathies lie and who the BBC regards as the real villains.

    Like

  381. Farage show last night had Gareth Stace on from UK Steel lobby group
    Unfortunately he spouted about Green Steel and weak Farage failed to challenge him
    No one mentioned the talk on Twitter
    Stace has been on the sow before

    Strangely David Lammy previously praised him for saying this
    UK Steel director Gareth Stace: “Let us be clear, there are no benefits to be had from Brexit for the steel industry.
    This merely an exercise in damage limitation with the various different shades of Brexit … representing various degrees of harm.”

    Stace appears to live in London and commutes by electric scooter

    Like

  382. “Climate change lures rare bird to Kent marshland”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5138mvyv51o

    One of the UK’s rarest birds is raising a family in Kent after escaping record temperatures further south, nature experts say.

    Four black-winged stilt chicks have recently fledged in Worth Marshes, near Sandwich, after a pair of the birds arrived from Africa in the spring.

    It is believed the species is flying further north as climate change causes its natural habitat in countries like Spain to become too hot….

    Maybe, maybe not…

    “THE BREEDING OF BLACK-WINGED STILTS IN NOTTINGHAMSHIRE IN 1945”

    Click to access V38_N17_P322_328_A079.pdf

    Like

  385. Mark – only read the first part & already we get this –
    “United States of America: population ~330m, (4.2%)- ~14.4% of global CO2 emissions.
    President Biden has negated Trump’s climate initiatives, including the USA re-joining support for the Paris Climate accord. The Trump presidency had rejoiced in establishing USA energy independence for the first time in several decades. The USA, simply by exploiting shale gas as opposed to Coal for an increasing share of its electricity generation, has already reduced its annual CO2 emissions by some by ~1,000,000,000 tonnes. USA CO2 emissions were reduced by one third, since 2005. That market driven initiative has already had a greater CO2 emission reduction effect than both the entire Kyoto protocol and the Paris Climate Accord.”

    love how they say “The Trump presidency had rejoiced”, does that mean President Biden will put an an end to any joy?

    Like

  386. Mark – from your BP? link above – “in 2023 the European peoples will come to understand the substantial changes to their lifestyles, personal economies and freedoms that are demanded by their governments’ in pursuing the Net Zero / Green agenda”

    but evil big oil would say that.
    ps – as you say, well worth a read & many comments I could make.

    Like

  387. last comment from that link –
    “As long ago as 2010 Professor Richard Muller made the dilemma for all those who hope to control global warming by reducing the CO2 emissions of Western Nations, very clear. In essence he said:
    the Developing World is not joining-in with CO2 emission reductions nor should it have any intention of doing so. The failure of worldwide action negates the unilateral action of any / all individual Western Nations and the West will become more marginal to the CO2 emissions problem and increasingly irrelevant”.

    Like

  390. The awful Brian Cox prog was on yesterday ( Infinite Monkey Cage)
    topic was sharks
    then suddenly the expert released a strange fact
    that nature is NOT in balance
    That cos orcas are bastards they can moves into an area where sharks have lived in for hundreds of years and completely wipe them out
    “We found deep down a new graveyard of intact sharks except the orcas had ripped out the livers out of all of them”

    I wonder about other “natural” huge changes say tree diseases , they could have huge impacts too.

    Like

  391. Leading UK climate change thought-leader Roger Hallam has had a cracking week on Twitter.

    Lots of his usual thought-leadership tropes about genocide, gas chambers, Nuremburg (sic) etc, but they were spiced up with:

    * a suggestion that Grants Shapps deserves a jolly good hanging (last week it was Keir Starmer);

    * an attack on Michael Mann, whom Hallam said was a privileged and cowardly fake (‘supposed’) thought leader who had ‘refused to entered [sic] into resistance to the point of jail’ because the ‘body parts were[n’t] on your campus lawn’ and because Mann was ‘fixated on the self serving delusion that information creates change'[1];

    * ‘repressed f*ckery’ from The Guardian;

    * f*cked b*llocks s*cking murderers’ d*cks (?);

    * and how the rich can only be brought down by ‘glorious prophetic leaders’.[2]

    Hallam has ended his glorious week with this tweet:

    Please share this communication with others.

    It is the most important communication in the history of humanity.

    That’s at the end of a thread about the elites being mass murderers and rapists (50 million climate change-related rapes by the 2040s and perhaps even by the 2030s) and how [1] facts are facts.

    ===
    [1] Later in the week, Hallam banged on about facts being facts.

    [2] Hallam has long made it clear that he thinks he’s pretty close to being the Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Hartley Shawcross and Gandalf of our time. Deny this and thou shalt probably be hanged – although, to be fair to Hallam, he says he doesn’t want people who disagree with him to be hanged. He says that he’s just using a sociological prediction that we will be hanged. (Or, as he puts it, ‘hung’.)

    Like

  392. What’s going on with James Delingpole ?
    A few tweeters say they have dropped him cos he defaults to Conspiracy Theory about everything .
    Today I listened to his podcast with Toby Young, and Toby was squiring as Dellers started to say crazy things
    First he said the bright weather maps and Toby’s flight problems were part of a grand conspiracy to stop us from ever flying
    em Toby was direct “no the flights were cockup not conspiracy”
    Dellers insisted no BA are secretly in a campaign to give people problems to put them off flying
    (He really said that)

    Detail – Yes they were all cockups
    #1 Iberian had sudden;y cancelled Toby’s Majorca flight the day before
    so he flew another airline
    #2 The refund of their ticket was surprisingly easy
    #3 Only when they were waiting to board the return flight did they learn Iberian had wrongly cancelled that one too
    #4 At UK pp control they found Toby’s child had dropped his passport on the plane.. after 20 mins it was found

    Then Dellers goes into the saga of his hacked Twitter account (July 12th)
    “One of my staffers said everyone is saying that there is great Russian hacker who could help
    FFS Dellers doesn’t even know that as soon as you tweeted the words “account hacked”
    bots send you “we know someone who will get it back” tweets
    They are scammers too
    So James then got scammed out of a £60 deposit by the scammer
    ..and only realised when the guy played tricks for more

    Crazy thing #3 Dellers in the podcast says he doesn’t believe dinosaurs ever existed but dragons did
    Says they want the Earth to appear older than it is
    He also says Paul McCartney was replaced by an impersonator since 1966
    “see the before and after photos”
    Old fans later realised it was a different person

    Toby made it an advertising break and changed the topic to TV
    Crazy 5 : Dellers said he has been watching a BBC gameshow called The Traitors
    he mistakenly thinks the BBC made it up
    unaware it’s an old Russian game Mafia, also known as Werewolf that is very popular in Europe .. I’ve played it a lot
    James said “It’s characteristic of the way that popular entertainment is DESIGNED to subvert our culture and make us weaker”
    “Here is a series DESIGNED to promote lying, deception, promote conspiracy, to promote division, we are encouraged to root for the baddies.. it’s extraordinary how weak and gullible those on the sides of the faithful (normal villagers) are”

    It’s not artificially *designed* by a TV company, it is the way the actual game traditionally is
    .. it teaches critical thinking as you learn how to lie and how to detect them.

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  393. Dellers Twitter account suddenly started blocking me 2 years ago
    (After he falsely accused TVKev of cutting a caller off
    when I pointed that out the Dellers account and a fellow cultist just threw ad homs at me)

    What’s happened to his account has a number of stages

    The account got passed to a bitcoin merchant who used it to advertise to Dellers 112K followers
    #2 The account name was changed to @shibtoken_bot
    I can tell that cos it shows up as blocking me
    #3 Ideally Dellers would get his account back and change the name back
    but someone took advantage they created a new account with the old name @JamesDelingpole So when people try to tweet Dellers this new guy gets the tweets
    and although searches show people’s old tweets TO @jamesdelingpole
    Old tweets FROM @jamesdelingpole don;t now show up in searches

    Like

  394. Dellers should as other people who got their account back from a hack
    Ruth Davidson MP in two days
    but @HowardCCox still hasn’t got back his 172K account @FairFuelUK after 9 months

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