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

387 Comments

  2. Gosh, the earthquake has passed – moving posts up and down Willy-hilly before settling down, but where have all the people gone?

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  3. Liked by 1 person

  5. Mark – If that chart on the left was really in the Lancet, then I agree with – “This is disgraceful for a supposedly scientific journal.”
    another example of going for visual effect over presenting the data without bias it seems,
    can’t find a link to the Lancet article !!!!!

    ps – I gave your comment a heads up over on the “The Summer’s Gonna Get You 2” thread, as it seems relevant.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Jit – thanks for the link – liked the end quote –

    “Meanwhile, Steve Smith, an “expert witness” consulted by the Committee, argued that “traditional broadcasters” such as the BBC “must play an important role as trusted sources in a landscape of disinformation online.” Elsewhere, he suggested the British Government should repurpose communications techniques deployed during the Covid-19 pandemic for the fight against climate change:

    Very effective messaging came from Covid and there are lessons that we can learn from it — the sense that, when we really think something is a crisis, the government can change overnight. But with climate change, we are still not doing that, are we?

    Smith is a senior staffer at Picture Zero, a film and TV production company specialising in “human climate change stories”. He was one of several “experts” with no environmental science background — including marketing specialists, green activists, and pollsters — whose testimony heavily informed the report’s findings and recommendations. One after another, they urged the committee to “apply lessons of the Covid pandemic for bringing about widespread behaviour change.”

    It seems that governments deploying information warfare against their own citizens did not end with the Covid-19 reopening: influencing the public on the climate agenda is the next area of focus.”

    the https://www.picturezero.com/ is worth a view

    Like

  7. Issuing modest fines to wealthy middle class protestors won’t work:

    “Greta Thunberg carried away by police hours after fine”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-66295035

    Climate activist Greta Thunberg has been removed from a protest blocking a road in Malmo, just hours after a Swedish court fined her over a similar action in June.

    Thunberg, 20, had denied the charge of disobeying a police order, but was found guilty and ordered to pay 2,500 Swedish krona ($240; £187).

    On both occasions, she was part of a group of protesters that blocked the road for oil trucks in Malmo harbour.

    Outside court she said there was “no option but to continue to take action”.

    Rather than fine Greta and her ilk, I have a better idea. Make her do community service in a form that is environmentally useful, such as picking litter.

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  11. 9:30pm ITV+1 Prog about activists
    (I meant to mention it before original broadcast at 8:30pm, but someone had me doing a job)

    @ITVTonight tweeted
    “58% of UK adults believe the government are doing too little to limit disruption caused by Just Stop Oil, according to an exclusive poll for ITV Tonight.
    Don’t miss: “Direct Action: Should It Be Stopped?”
    at 8.30pm tonight. @ITV @ITVTonight @AnushkaAsthana

    Earlier I mentioned
    Itv local newsPR prog
    long item about JSO and policing by Katie Ridley ITV
    with an activist child called Emma* , Rupert Reed, Braverman
    (* Emma https://twitter.com/emmadesaram/status/1684524631963701248 )

    It’s a trailer for their 8:30pm prog
    “More than 60% of the public believe the government is not doing enough to stop Climate Change to stop Just Stop Oil” (yes they said that)

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  12. 8 mins in Lord Deben givesn opportunity to make his big speech, uncontested

    10 mins in Peter Tatchell and his history of 3,000 direct action please protests

    Now they have him saying “at first people are against the activists. but eventually they come over”

    Liked by 1 person

  13. 13 mins JSO funder Dale Vince
    “20 million will be made homeless this year”

    mention “Sunak allowing Rosebank a huge new oilfield being opened”

    Now mention of laws banning slow walking obstruction technique

    Now back to Tatchell

    Like

  15. 22 mins in ex-XR protester Rupert Reed doing a speech
    ostensibly cos he has differen

    back little Emna

    24 min End of prog

    26 Advert falsely saying smart meters save energy.

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  16. Checking the tweets 30% for JSO
    which is low considering they cultists and tweet a lot
    70% against

    eg “Nazi brown shirts went around taking direct action attacking the shops of Jewish traders to make Germany a better country for German people.
    It wasn’t approved of straight away but gradually the whole country got behind the movement.
    They always act for good”

    Tweters also complain
    “why have you pixelated protesters faces
    surely they don’t want to hide themselves”
    that is a point
    but some reporting may be suppressed due to ongoing court cases.

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  20. John – from your link – partial quote –
    “The Government Major Projects Portfolio
    The Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP)
    ensures robust oversight of the government’s most
    complex and strategically significant projects and
    programmes. The GMPP comprises the largest, most
    innovative and highest risk projects and programmes
    delivered by government. GMPP projects are typically
    those where approval is required from HMT, either
    because the budget exceeds a department’s delegated
    authority level and/or because the project is novel,
    complex, contentious, or requires primary legislation.
    While the GMPP spans many of the government’s most
    high profile projects, it represents only a portion of the
    projects delivered across government.
    Projects on the GMPP receive independent scrutiny
    and assurance from the IPA. Expert teams in the
    IPA also give specialist project delivery, commercial
    and financial advice, deploy practical tools and make
    specific recommendations to help improve the
    chance of successful delivery.”

    so the answer to your question is No, thanks for asking.

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  21. And you thought that the problem with Artificial Intelligence might be something to do with its implications for humankind, perhaps taking on a mind of its own, etc etc? Think again:

    “Turns out there’s another problem with AI – its environmental toll
    AI uses huge amounts of electricity and water to work, and the problem is only going to get worse – what can be done?”

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/01/techscape-environment-cost-ai-artificial-intelligence

    Like

  22. Thanks to a recent comment by Jit* on an old thread about how SkS created its own Wiki article, I found that SkS’s Baerbel Winkler recently gave a speech at an Erasmus**-funded online conference. It was organised by the Jean Monnet Centre for Excellence on Climate Justice (top tip: nothing with ‘Excellence’ in its name is ever excellent) and called ‘Beyond the Emergency: V [fifth?] International Conference on Climate Justice’.

    Winkler’s speech was, frankly, a bit dull (a straightforward if somewhat boastful history of SkS), as were other speeches, but the event itself is worth a look.

    For example, the conference’s second day explored ‘Pathways of political ecologies and agroecologies between Europe and Amefrica*** Latina’. How did it do that?

    The session aims to address the issue related to socio-environmental conflicts and climate injustice in multidimensional contexts where extractivist practices of accumulation by dispossession that intertwine bodies, land, territories, human and non-human living beings, and abiotic collectives continue to operate. The triple emergency of climate, environmental, and food combined with the emergence of authoritarian populism can be read within the framework of the coloniality of power in its five dimensions : the control of the economy and the construction of impoverishment processes; the control of authority and the erosion of democratization processes; the control of nature and natural resources and the advance of the metabolic divide; the control of gender and sexuality in the coloniality of patriarchy and the exploitation of bodies; and the control of subjectivity and knowledge, the devaluation of ancestral knowledge and contemporary data grabbing. Political ecology and political agroecology emerge as variants of Latin American critical thinking where in the “dialogue of knowledge” academic research, activism, indigenous knowledge, communitarian feminism, indigenous struggles of urban movements of peasant organizations for food sovereignty, climate justice environmental racism converge.

    As usual, there’s isn’t a succinct definition of ‘climate justice’. And what’s an ‘abiotic collective’? A cluster of sea shells? Oil itself? ‘Metabolic divide’ probably has something to do with Karl Marx but what does ‘the control of gender and sexuality in the coloniality of patriarchy and the exploitation of bodies’ mean and what is its relevance to climate justice?

    Perhaps the speeches themselves will make things clearer. Here’s the first one:

    It’s about ‘plural bottom-up paths of Phasing Out’, also described as ‘Plural paths from the bottom of Phasing Out’.

    Nope. Couldn’t be arsed.

    ===
    *Jit, Shub’s still out there. See: https://nitter.net/arajand/with_replies

    **Erasmus is ‘the EU’s programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe’. Annual budget: >€4 billion. The ‘support’ usually means funding students to have a sort of gap year. I’m a bit surprised to find that it also funds guff like this.

    ***Not a typo. Amefrica Latina (or Amefrica Ladina) is a term applied to Latin American cultures that are strongly influenced by the descendants of black slaves.

    Liked by 2 people

  23. Monday 7:45pm Farage has Tom Burke shouting green dogma at him
    as if that is a technique of forcing people to believe.
    In reply Farage he says “we can’t believe energy forecasts”

    … Well hang on how can we believe Global Warming forecasts ?

    8pm Panorama was a green issue too
    about Thurrock councils overpriced solar/wind investments that bankrupted the council/

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  24. Wednesday local news
    “warmer we weather this last decade is causing the green algae that is choking our waterways”
    sure the algae is real
    but the cause ?
    could be cos of less boats and less pollution

    #2 “The daily flights from Denmark to Humberside that serve the in industry
    have been suspended due to lack of demand”

    Like

  25. On Monday I made bigger notes about Panorama on bBBC
    but I hadn’t copied them over to here cos got waylaid with a barrage of Green being on TV

    Panorama ‘Thurrock council is having to cut everything to the bone
    It went bankrupt due to investing in solar farms that were way way over valued’

    .. now disability support worker is crying”
    Prog is now doing emotional blackmail using Down Syndrome people speaking
    ..that counts as child exploitation in my book.

    It’s Tory Council, concealed losses etc.
    All blamed on one person Sean Clark who was told in 2018 but carried on
    investing £1bn public money with one person Liam Kavanaugh
    Evidence suggests he cheated council
    Panorama has evidence that one solar farm was significantly overvalued ..so overpaid by £130m

    solar farm money ended up funding a private jet and a yacht

    CO2 policy is not about CO2 is it ?

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  26. Orcas, like girls, just want to have fun?

    The official BBC headline is Atlantic orcas 'learning from adults' to target boats but I thought there was welcome and legitimate contempt for the normal climate doom creep from this scientist:

    “It’s only a game. It isn’t revenge [against boats], it isn’t climate change, it’s just a game and that’s it,” said Dr Renaud de Stephanis, a scientist based on the south coast of Spain.

    Quite a dangerous game for the small boats concerned but, other than that, what fun.

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  27. Richard – watched a doc recently on why sharks attack boat engines.
    just google “sharks attack boat engines”

    quote from 1st search – “Sharks will attack a motorized boat. Boat motors give off electrical impulses that attract sharks. Sharks use electrical impulses to track their prey’s muscle movements, and the pulses of a motor resemble the pulses of muscular contractions. Sharks can detect these electrical impulses thanks to jelly-filled pores at the end of their noses.”

    wonder if that applies to Orcas as well?

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  28. EV car ship fire “Feeemantle Highway”
    They successfully towed the ship into a port

    3:30pm Holland
    The freighter Fremantle Highway is now moored at the quay in Eemshaven.
    The tug trip to the harbor went without any problems.
    The owner of the ship remains responsible for the further handling of the cargo and everything that goes with it. The government dept no longer has a role in the further handling of the incident.
    Of course we remain responsible for the water quality.

    If necessary, we place an oil-conducting screen around the ship to limit any contamination”

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  29. 10:15pm GBnews
    left panelist Nigel Nelson
    ”
    shouting “Poll after polly shows Climate Change is one the public’s main priorities.

    Like

  30. Dougie. I don’t believe sharks play with boats as orcas appear to do. Also orcas appear to be taught how to play boat snooker.

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  31. BBC Climate Reporter and Data Team report that “The oceans have hit their hottest ever recorded temperature as they soak up warmth from climate change, with dire implications for our planet’s health.” The BBC desperately need access to a “Geology Reporter and Data Team” who would inform them about the last interglacial. Then temperatures must have been even higher than those today because sea-levels were higher signifying more ice had melted. Marine life, including tropical reefs, flourished then, so why are we worrying about present-day temperatures?

    Liked by 1 person

  33. Thousands at Scout camp move into hotels after S Korea heatwave
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66407392?at_medium=RSS

    But read on and you get this statement –
    “One of the UK team told BBC’s Seoul correspondent Jean Mackenzie the decision to pull out was not based just on the extreme heat but was also down to the facilities and food.
    They described the campsite toilets as a “health risk” and said children’s dietary needs were not being met.
    The UK team monitored conditions for a number of days, they said, giving the organisers the opportunity to improve them, but had lost confidence they could keep everyone safe.”

    tried to get a balanced news article on what really happened/caused this.
    but all I get is the repeated headline – this from AP “South Korea Presses on With World Scout Jamboree as Heat Forces Thousands to Leave Early”

    Liked by 1 person

  34. The way MSM news headlines are almost always the same
    makes it look like they are organised by a government Nudge Unit

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  35. Item #2 on Countryfile, long windfarm item
    It was PRasNews for Argyll’s Renewable Parts Ltd
    https://ashden.org/awards/winners/renewable-parts

    On Twitter 97% mocked it

    “Just tuned in… within three seconds heard “transition to net zero…” just turned off.. #Countryfile #DefundTheBBC”

    item #1 was PRasNews for The King’s business
    and some kind of therapy woo

    #2 PRasNews for the Scottish windfarm industry
    “oh aren’t they cool they are trying to throw away less components”
    Things prog failed to mention is a long list
    Forests cut down for windfarms
    – Windfarms lubricating oil etc.
    – Most carbon fibre blades don’t get recycled
    etc.

    #4 Adam “Modern farming methods evil, CHEMICALS, must go regenerativ

    Liked by 1 person

  36. Massive thread of people calling out nudgeUnit stuff in Gardener’s World… quotes a letter to the Telegraph
    see the QuoteTweets too
    there people often cited Countryfile too

    @AlineDobbie tweeted
    Unintended humour was provided last night when Monty Don portentously revealed: ‘We are told not to refer to global warming anymore but to climate change instead

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  37. The creator and, for its first year or so, sole editor of the Wikipedia article about misinformation expert Sander van der Linden was eventually blocked by Wiki for his/her activity on that article. He/she was reckoned to have been a dishonest multi-handed sock puppeteer:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Maasuni/Archive

    Irony? Synchronicity? Conspiracy? Conspiracy theory?*

    It can’t be fake news because it did actually happen, even if the blocking was unfair. Which it probably wasn’t.

    ===
    *He/she did a lot of the edits from computers at Cambridge University, where van der Linden was and is a professor. So did van der Linden write his own Wiki? It seems extremely unlikely. And I say that without ever having been inoculated against believing that people create and edit their own Wiki articles. (They do.) I just don’t think he did it. Too busy puffing inoculation theories.

    Liked by 1 person

  38. 9am R4 Jim Al-Kalili show is pushing Wave Power dream
    “On an island nation like Britain, that power could well be harnessed to produce clean energy; so why have we barely begun to tap this bountiful resource?

    Deborah Greaves is trying to change that. As Professor of Ocean Engineering at the University of Plymouth, she combines physical wave tanks with sophisticated computer modelling to test how well wave power devices respond to stormy seas. And as Director of the Supergen ORE Hub, she brings together researchers in offshore renewable energy to imagine a future of widespread, eco-friendly ocean power

    In the real world the sea smashes up the machines
    In 1984 my uni showed me the lab with the Salter Ducks
    It was some kind of deception cos after that they never allowed us back in the lab, they were probably grant farming.

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  40. More GreenPRasNews on the way
    “ITV News Calendar is looking to film with someone in Yorkshire or Lincolnshire who wants to buy an electric car but only has on-street parking at home.
    If you can help please leave us a comment, send us a message or email calendar@itv.com”

    I guess they have a magic solution to promote

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  44. “Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5C, says UN expert”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/12/global-heating-likely-to-hit-world-food-supply-faster-than-expected-says-united-nations-desertification-expert

    Who is this expert?

    “Alain-Richard Donwahi, a former Ivory Coast defence minister…”.

    I stress that I know not whether there is anything in this article:

    https://www.theafricareport.com/218379/timber-trafficking-in-cote-divoire-the-case-that-led-to-the-fall-of-alain-richard-donwahi/

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  45. Words fail me:

    “Climate change: Lecturer’s day lying in ditch ‘gives soil a voice'”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66484655

    A university lecturer plans to live stream from a mountain ditch for 24 hours to highlight soil issues and raise climate change awareness.

    Miranda Whall will be in a self-dug ditch about 600m (1,960ft) up in the Cambrian Mountains in Ceredigion from Saturday afternoon.

    The Aberystwyth University academic dressed as a sheep for a previous project, and likes to “bring some humour” to grab attention.

    She aims to “give a voice to the soil”.

    Ms Whall will attempt to vocalise a live numerical data stream from sensors in the ground around her, which measure soil moisture and temperature.

    Beginning at 15:00 BST on Saturday, she intends to lie in the ditch for 24 hours, reciting the numbers on the hour, every hour….

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  47. Mark on Friday – I presume he is referring to the effect of deer on regeneration in woodlands. There is a known remedy – exclosures. Wolves aren’t going to work, simply because there is not enough wilderness to establish them in – their effect on deer only viable in such areas. It’s a non-starter, just because humans and wolves have to be kept well apart.

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  48. “Mock COP27: Oxford student among education delegates”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66502740

    Young people called for improvements to climate education in the first-ever Mock Education Ministers Summit.

    Over the weekend, hundreds of youth leaders attended a two-day virtual summit to discuss, negotiate and hear from environmental activists.

    The delegates created the first unified definition for climate education and called on education ministers to make five key changes.

    An Oxford University student was one of the three UK representatives.

    The summit was organised by youth-led organisation Mock COP, which calls for world leaders to take meaningful climate actions.

    n total it was attended by 227 young people between the ages of 18 and 30 from 89 countries.

    They said climate education should be “solutions and action-oriented”, “inclusive, adaptable and localised”, and “tailored to the modern era”.

    Among the changes called for by the delegates were better training for teachers, including young people in improving climate change education, and collaborating with various communities and organisations.

    Oxford University student Molly Scrase-Kings, 20, was one of three young delegates from the UK at the summit.

    She studies biochemistry and said she had felt “climate education is not a focus and was not mandatory for all students, including me”.

    “I feel like it was maybe taught to my generation through word-of-mouth and through the media rather than a holistic approach,” Miss Scrase-Kings said.

    “When looking at policy documents it’s very hard to understand to what extent they’re being implemented and whether they’re including youths in the conversation.”

    The summit’s statement will be presented to world leaders at COP28 later this year in the United Arab Emirates.

    The BBC doesn’t elaborate on who/what Mock Cop is/are. They’re easy enough to find, but not so easy to find out about. Here’s a link to the “about” section of their website, which tells us nothing much about who is behind them, who funds them, and why etc:

    https://www.mockcop.org/about-us/

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  49. Might I strongly recommend the recent BBC series “Earth” hosted by Chris Packham. Never would I have thought I would be doing this, Chris Packham was anathema to me. But I was very pleasantly surprised. There are I think some glaring errors in his understanding of some elements of the past – not least his view that in the Permian (or parts of it) CO2 in the atmosphere must have been low (to allow glaciation) when much of the coal in southern continents was formed at this time (implying high CO2).
    I think that Packham could well be the new Attenborough. Some of his commentary was IMHO truly outstanding particularly in the last episode of the series which dealt with the human influence on the planet. I was expecting much upon global warming, but this was covered in only the last ten minutes. On this last programme I was particularly impressed by the emotive way in which he described his own feelings about ancient cave paintings of animals. Also in this episode was information about the very small percentage of wild animals (<5%) compared with the number of humans, our pets and food animals- something I had not heard of before.
    Anyway a series with some questionable content (not sure that past glaciations are caused by low atmospheric CO2)but well presented and full of interest. It should appeal to many a Clisceper.

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  51. 12pm R4 Call You & Yours: What impact are low emission zones having on you?
    BBC phonelines have gatekeeping systems. Your past calls automatically flash up, so you may be listed as a baddie

    On our phone in today we’re asking: What impact are low emission zones having on you?

    These zones are being rolled out in many cities and towns now help to lower air pollution.

    But the expansion of the ULEZ scheme in London has been particularly controversial – and the one in Manchester has been postponed.

    So has a low emission zone improved the air quality where you live? Are you a motorist who’s considering changing your car using a scrappage scheme?

    What impact are low emission zones having on you?
    Our phone lines open at 11am and you can call 03700 100 444.
    Or email youandyours@bbc.co.uk

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  52. Alan, I understand that Packham is just reading an autocue
    Just the same as Attenborough does these days.

    Likewise Lineker also reads a script written by clever backroom boys.
    Scripts are probably customised to the presenter.

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  53. Stew. Oh I’m certain Chris Packham had a script but nevertheless this had new material within it and his reaction to the cave paintings seemed genuine. He seemed impressed and moved by the animal figures, as was I the first time I saw them so many years ago.

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  54. An interesting read, with the BBC for once not shying away from the problems associated with “going green”:

    “Can narrowboat owners break up with fossil fuels?”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66370302

    …Fully electric canal boats remain rare and expensive, and probably have to depend on backup diesel generators to power the engines. A fully electric boat could cost £200,000, whereas a more traditional boat might be £50,000.

    And orders at one electric boatbuilder are backed up for almost three years.

    Heat pumps for narrowboats are also uncommon.

    On weekdays in winter, when their boat is stationary, the Boat Time YouTubers idle their diesel engine for about an hour a day to supply enough electricity.

    “By the time I finish work it’s dark, we can’t really move anywhere,” Mr Arthur explains. “So that’s why we have to rely on idling the engine.”

    Engine idling is one of the activities that’s restricted in an increasing number of eco-mooring zones in London.

    The capital’s councils are also considering extending smoke control areas to canals, to safeguard the health of boaters as well as other canal users.

    These areas permit the burning of only smokeless fuel, or fuel in certain energy-efficient stoves. Traditional wood and coal, the main heating sources for many boaters, are not allowed.

    Such limits have caused controversy among London’s narrowboaters. A common argument is that life on a narrowboat is already more environmentally conscious than a land-based lifestyle.

    Another is that the costs and space requirements of upgrading energy systems put this out of reach of the average narrowboater….

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  56. Huge fire at Bridlington RECYCLING CENTRE

    “RECYCLING CENTRE” = pile of rubbish on piece of land owned by a person who is PAID £££s by councils and corps to take away waste and RECYCLE it,
    but who just leaves it there
    until the rubbish is processed by an “accidental” fire

    #EcoScam

    Like

  57. “Ministers accused of ‘environmental crime’ over South Downs oil drilling
    UK Oil and Gas says work is to resume at Avington site in national park after decision from Planning Inspectorate”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/23/ministers-accused-of-environmental-crime-over-south-downs-oil-drilling

    The Liberal Democrats and green groups have accused the government of “an environmental crime” after it emerged that potentially large-scale oil drilling is to take place inside the South Downs national park, despite widespread local opposition.

    In a statement, UK Oil and Gas, which is part of the consortium wishing to drill at the Avington site near Winchester, said work was to resume in the hope of extracting “potentially significant” amounts of the estimated 59m barrels there, lasting up to 2025.

    Drilling had taken place previously at the site, but was shut down in 2017, with the South Downs park authority subsequently refusing permission for it to resume.

    However, this was reversed on appeal by the Planning Inspectorate, an agency of the Levelling Up Department, meaning the oil extraction can resume. The plan is also opposed by Winchester council, and by the local Conservative MP, Steve Brine.

    UK Oil and Gas is also involved in a separate scheme to drill for oil and gas near an area of outstanding natural beauty in the Surrey Hills, which is likely to go ahead after campaigners lost a judicial review….

    …Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, said: “Selling off national park land to rich oil barons is an environmental crime and must be stopped. Yet this Conservative government is making a habit of it. The government risks destroying wildlife habitat and ruining a popular walking route just to let this firm make a quick buck.

    “It is scandalous that Conservative ministers have ignored the concerns of local people and environmental impacts when making this decision.”

    Greenpeace UK’s policy director, Doug Parr, said: “This government is so hell-bent on fossil fuels that it’s now willing to trash many of the things it is said to hold dear, like our cherished national parks and community consent.

    “Despite being the cheapest, cleanest energy source there is, onshore renewable projects are blocked if so much as one person objects. It beggars belief then that the government can overrule the very sensible decision of a council to reject an application for more oil drilling in a national beauty spot, during a climate crisis.”…

    Lots of hypocrisy on delay here. Lib Dem’s and Greenpeace are perfectly happy to destroy wildlife habitat and ruin popular walking routes just to let foreign wind farm companies make a quick buck. The concerns of local people are often ignored when planning decisions for wind farms are made. Community consent counts for nothing then.

    For the record, although oil and gas drilling have a much smaller footprint and are much less intrusive than wind farms and solar farms, I don’t think they should go ahead in National Parks or AONBs. Unlike many people who claim to be “green”, I hope I’m not such a hypocrite.

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  59. I regard this as misinformation:

    “Early blackberries sign of ‘climate breakdown'”

    When you click on the link, the headline becomes:

    “Expert forager says early blackberries sign of wider problem”

    A forager and author says plants, including blackberries, have fruited early this year because of “climate breakdown”.

    Robin Harford, of Eat Weeds UK, said he had been asked by people why the fruit was seen a month earlier than usual this year.

    Mr Harford said it was because plants, such as blackberries, are entering a survival mode where they seed early in order to try to “mitigate any threat they may be experiencing”.

    He said he was observing a “three-season” year in Devon with spring arriving much later than anticipated.

    Where I live, spring was late, very late, and certainly not early this year. It’s been a rubbish summer, with July and August being cool and wet after a good June. Blackberries here have not fruited early. In good years in the past I have started picking them in July. This year (when the weather permitted) we have been picking them from mid-August. We were out just yesterday, and returned with 4lbs of blackberries, thank you very much. But this is later than last year.

    There seems to be a symbiotic relationship between Mr Harford’s business and the BBC – he pushes climate breakdown, and the BBC pushes his business:

    https://www.eatweeds.co.uk/

    hey there, i’m robin harford. i established eatweeds and my wild food foraging school in 2008.

    bbc countryfile lists my foraging courses at the top of their best foraging courses in the uk.

    (Yes, the lack of capital letters does seem to be intentional).

    Like

  60. Ironically, on the same day as that BBC piece of nonsense about an early blackberry season and “climate breakdown”, the Guardian has this:

    “‘They’re huge this year’: UK fruit pickers hail bumper blackberry crop
    ‘Just about perfect’ weather conditions mean berries are abundant – ideal for bank holiday weekend foraging”

    https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/aug/25/theyre-huge-this-year-uk-fruit-bumper-blackberry-crop

    The sun shone at the right time but not too harshly, and the rain provided just about the perfect amount of watering. As a result, gardeners, foragers and fans of fruity puddings in many parts of the UK are relishing one of the most abundant, juiciest blackberry crops for years.

    “It’s a really good year,” said John Myers, the head gardener at the National Trust’s Ham House in London. “Conditions have been just about perfect. We had a nice May and June when the temperatures were good. June was warm but not too hot, allowing the flowers to take up enough nutrients and the pollinators to do their thing. Then after June we had quite a lot of rain, which did the berries a world of good, plumping them up. In the last few weeks it’s been warm, meaning they’ve ripened really well.”

    At Ham House, the team cultivate thornless blackberries. “They’re bigger than wild ones and more tasty,” Myers said. The berries grown in the kitchen garden are shared between the site’s cafe, local food support groups, and staff and volunteers. “We have to try them, too,” Myers added.

    This bank holiday weekend could be the perfect time for people to forage for berries in the wild….

    …Sarah-Jane Cobley, a herbalist and forager from Long Ashton near Bristol, said her freezer was already full of apple and blackberry crumbles.

    “I train blackberries along a fence in the garden as well as hunting for them in the hedgerows and they have been abundant since early August,” she said. “The berries are huge this year. There’s still enough warmth in the year, and probably enough rain, for them to keep coming for weeks yet.”

    Oops, that doesn’t sound like climate breakdown, and if anyone thought it did, it would be the Guardian!

    Like

  61. I’ve only been in Cumbria for two summers, but this year’s blackberry crop seems to be far more abundant than last year. That’s the main thing. I can’t say for sure whether they’re ‘early’ or ‘late’ but I seem to remember picking them a few weeks earlier last summer. However, wild raspberries are not doing so well this year. I’ve noticed sloes ripening too. Soon be time to make sloe gin ready for Christmas. Sascha and Isla would have welcomed climate breakdown 2023 with waggy tails. They both loved apples and blackberries. We used to call Sascha the Fruit Bat.

    Liked by 1 person

  62. “South-east Australia marine heatwave forecast to be literally off the scale
    Patch of Tasman sea expected to warm over spring and summer to temperatures that risk significant losses to sea life”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/27/south-east-australia-marine-heatwave-forecast-to-be-literally-off-the-scale

    All very interesting. Read to the end to find this:

    …One of the big questions scientists are hoping to answer is how much of any documented change can be attributed to climate change.

    It is not a simple question given how much else is going on in south-eastern waters, from oil and gas exploration including seismic blasting to foundational work for a promised offshore windfarming industry.

    “Our original test is to see whether the change in the ecosystem that we’ve now observed is the result of climate or other factors, or a combination of those,” he said.

    “We really can’t make a definitive conclusion at this stage, but I think it’s most likely to be a combination of both.”

    Like

  63. Mark, the Guardian wasn’t happy with this speculation about wind farms and seismic blasting, so they’ve now edited the article:

    Little said scientists were examining the extent to which observed changes in in the ecosystem were due to the climate crisis caused mostly by burning fossil fuels and other local factors

    “We really can’t make a definitive conclusion at this stage, but I think it’s most likely to be a combination of both,” he said.

    “This story was edited on 27 August 2023 to remove speculation about offshore wind farms and seismic blasting.”

    More to the point, these are modelled temperatures, forecast 5 or 6 months in advance. What are the assumptions which go into those models? They don’t tell us. El Nino for sure, local weather patterns certainly, but I wonder if they’re factoring in radiative forcing from Hunga Tonga and not telling us about it?

    Liked by 1 person

  64. Jaime – Good catch. So they have decided that “Little” said something earlier, but has changed his mind & now says something else!!!

    I notice the article also says –
    “Oceanographer Grant Smith said the colour-coded scale the bureau uses to map forecast sea surface temperature anomalies stops at 2.5C.
    We didn’t account for anomalies that high when we developed this … it could be 3C, it could be 3.5C, but we can’t see how high it goes,” he said.

    Smith said he could be sure that it was the first time forecast temperatures had gone beyond the scale’s upper limit, but it was the first time he had seen it.”

    I guess last sentence should read “Smith said he could NOT be sure”

    Like

  66. Vinny – thanks for the link, it shows we now have 3 versions of that Graun article shown side by side 🙂

    Like

  67. We have extensive blackberries and they were quite early this year
    Start of August (instead of typical start of September)
    and very large fruit
    They are still going strong and have some more weeks
    The fruit is almost too soft and drops off
    Although they appear to be wild, my mother says the land had special cultivated ones brought to it in the 1950s
    Local wild ones tend to come later
    We always call them brambles though that may really be the name of the year round bushes rather than the actual blackberry fruit
    The “bramble patch” is the land with dense spikey shoots that will fruit in Summer

    I have important news for people who claim blackberries are getting ever earlier
    eg this fella
    “Since at least the 1930s the half-term school holiday early in October in NE England was referred to as “Blackberry Week.”
    The season has been getting earlier and earlier.
    Climate change related.

    This picture appeared in The Northern Echo on September 5, 1939,
    when it was captioned: “Boys gathering blackberries near Ferryhill yesterday with their gas masks slung on their shoulders.”
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F4jkq16XwAA-IfM.jpg:small

    https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/opinion/letters/13616738.blackberry-debate-starts-crumble/

    These days as with daffodils nursery cultivated plants have been bred to be much earlier
    and such plants escape to the wild.

    Like

  69. The updated version introduced a new error
    Smith said he could *** be sure that it was the first time forecast temperatures had gone beyond the scale’s upper limit, but it was the first time he had seen it.

    *** they missed the “NOT” so had to re-edit

    Like

  70. Readers, my work was published in Saturday’s Daily Mail on page 5
    We here are very much concerned with media and PR trickery although here I stick to climate
    This was the BBCWalesNews Blacked-up voting hand photoshop story that i broke on 6th May 2022 .. yeh 15 months ago
    I spotted they’d missed photoshopping part of it
    and I tracked down the original photolibrary image and it had only white hands

    on Aug 15th this year I retweeted the same expose
    10 days later the Mail version appears , padded out by the way the Mail took the pics to 2 politicians and the BBC and got statements

    I don’t think it’s credible that someone in the Mail just randomly decided to do from scratch the research I had retweeted
    i first posted my scoop on BiasedBBC here https://biasedbbc.tv/blog/2022/05/01/start-the-week-2-may-2022/comment-page-5/#comment-1180203

    Here’s the Aug 15th tweet where I retweeted my old scoops from 15 months earlier
    … https://twitter.com/No2BS/status/1691565664555729058

    Like

  71. Now there is something interesting happening this weekend over on the Biased BBC page
    People keep turning up and posting the Saturday Daily Mail story as if it is new news
    #1 That shows a habit there of people getting excited and coming to post newspaper stories, without bothering to check if someone else has already posted it

    #2 They are obviously more excited about it cos their source is a newspaper
    than my multiple posts on May 6th 2022 ..which got very few Likes
    It’s the same bloody facts !
    This is all very weird to me

    And to me it shows how our own debunks of dodgy media stories
    often get silo-ed by Twitter and don’t cut through to wider public view

    Like

  73. The National Museum of Scotland has put a totem pole into a sleeping state so that it can be safely rematriated (sic) to British Columbia:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/28/totem-pole-begins-rematriation-from-edinburgh-to-nisgaa-nation-in-canada

    The totem pole was created by the Nisga’a/Nishga/Niska nation in 1860 to honour a high-status warrior who had died in battle.

    Fine.

    But the Nisga’a used to be slave-owners and their warriors gained status not just through warfare but through the collection of slaves. Did Ts’awit – the totem’s honoree – die while slave-raiding? Dunno. But he almost certainly owned slaves and took part in slave-raiding, so why doesn’t The National Museum of Scotland just throw his totem pole in the sea? Isn’t that what we do with slaver’s monuments these days?

    (Climate change? The CO2e emissions from flying one tonne of bulky cargo 4,200 miles in a military plane is… Dunno. A lot.)

    Liked by 2 people

  74. “Children have right to clean environment – report”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-66637499

    Children have the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and governments must urgently act to ensure this, the United Nations says.

    In a new report, the UN Child Rights Committee says that climate change is affecting children’s rights to life, survival and development.

    It says young children are among the most vulnerable, yet their voices are rarely heard in climate change debates.

    Tuesday’s report outlines new guidance for governments to follow.

    Drawn up with the help of young people, it includes phasing out fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy.

    UN countries will also be required to take measures to protect children from the harmful effects of climate change, such as monitoring air quality, regulating food safety and tackling emissions and toxic lead exposure.

    Countries should also address the “clear emerging link” between climate change and children’s mental health, identifying eco-anxiety and depression as conditions that are on the rise.

    And the UN says that young people must be included when drawing up new guidance….

    …The committee received 16,331 contributions from children in 121 nations, who shared the effects of environmental degradation and climate change on their lives and communities….

    And with all due respect, the BBC’s summary does make it sound as though children had a significant input.

    Like

  75. “Hurricane Idalia: Florida hunkers down for ‘unprecedented’ storm”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66641091

    …Idalia is projected to hit an area that Mr DeSantis said has not seen such a major hurricane since the 1800s….

    …According to the NHC, no major hurricane has tracked into Apalachee Bay in north-western Florida since 1851….

    In other words this is unusual, but it’s not unprecedented.

    Like

  76. “Cause of Kenya’s longest power outage in memory remains unclear as grid suppliers exchange blame”

    https://uk.news.yahoo.com/cause-kenyas-longest-power-outage-060017221.html

    The longest nationwide power outage in Kenyans’ memory remained a mystery Sunday as the government-owned power company blamed a failure at Africa’s largest wind farm, which laid the responsibility on the power grid instead.

    Some of Kenya’s more than 50 million people, including in the capital, Nairobi, saw power return almost 24 hours after the massive outage occurred late Friday. It was an embarrassment to the East African economic hub that has sought to promote itself as a tech center on the continent but remains challenged by alleged mismanagement and poor infrastructure.

    Hundreds of people were stranded in darkness for hours at Kenya’s main international airport in Nairobi, leading to a rare public apology from a government minister in a country where tourism is a key part of the economy. “This situation WILL NOT happen again,” transport minister, Kipchumba Murkomen, said.

    The head of the Kenya Airports Authority was fired after a generator serving the main international terminal had failed to start.

    Shortly before midnight Saturday, Kenya Power offered the first detailed explanation of the outage, blaming it on a loss of power generation from the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant, Africa’s largest wind farm, causing an imbalance that “tripped all other main generation units and stations, leading to a total outage on the grid.”

    But Lake Turkana Wind Power in a statement denied it was to blame. Instead, it said it had been forced to go offline by an “overvoltage situation in the national grid system which, to avoid extreme damage, causes the wind power plant to automatically switch off.” The plant had been producing nearly 15% of the national output at the time.

    Such an interruption should be immediately compensated by other power generators in the system, the company said, but the continuing outages in the national grid were preventing the wind plant from being brought back online….

    Like

  78. Here’s an excellent article about privileged climate worriers:

    https://astra-mag.com/articles/climate-raves-downtown-plays/

    It’s from August 2022 and much of it is about a protest held a month earlier at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon. This was the first protest by Rave Revolution, one of the groups involved in blocking the road to Burning Man on Sunday.

    RR is a globetrotting druggie dance and activism club founded by Tommy Diacono and Emily Collins, anti-capitalist capitalists (or perhaps ex-capitalists) who flew from Italy to Nevada to take part in Sunday’s climate protest.

    RR’s first protest involved a rave and a big jellyfish and was paid for by crowdfunding, a grant from the (Big Oil-funded) Climate Emergency Fund and a large donation from a wealthy Italian family (not named). It didn’t really achieve anything but, unlike Sunday’s protest, it didn’t annoy anyone and the ravers had fun.

    The Astra article’s author, Ruby Sutton, found out about the Lisbon protest via Roc Sandford, the non-binary millionaire XRer with a small private island and a big look of lostness. She’s quite nice about him; less so about other posh activists. E.g.:

    At this point, I’m weary of the self-satisfied atmosphere the spliffs are creating, or maybe I’m just envious of this scene I’ve peered into, of well-dressed strangers floating around the world confident they are carrying love in their heart for all living beings, without an inner monologue to keep them company, tallying up all their hypocrisies.

    Diacono and Collins can be seen in this video of Sunday’s blockade, Diacona strutting around acting all macho and Collins being a noisy stoner.

    (I thought someone had already linked to that vid at CliScep but I couldn’t find it.)

    Liked by 1 person

  79. Vinny – thanks for the vid link at the end.
    if only UK police acted as the Rangers in US did at this protest.

    ps – may be wrong, but sure I heard Collins coin a new term (to me) for those she protests against – “your a burner” as she metal (or was it hemp) link chained herself to the flatbed.

    Like

  80. Dougie, there are burners and Burners. Collins was calling someone a Burner, which is what she herself is – she’s definitely not a burner, no siree. She may have flown 6,000 miles to block a road for 35 minutes but that was a Burner’s act of radical honesty, not a burner’s ‘engage[ment] in economic activities and consumerist lifestyles that will lead to the annihilation of the entire Earth, with the poor, BIPOC and Indigenous Peoples of the Global South suffering first and worst’.

    Clearer now?

    Liked by 1 person

  81. “UK could quit ‘climate-wrecking’ treaty, minister announces
    Graham Stuart says if reforms to energy charter treaty not passed by November, UK would consider exit”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/01/uk-could-quit-energy-charter-treaty-minister-announces

    Net zero enthusiasts often complain about the treaty in question, not least as it has been used by fossil fuel companies to obtain what they claim to be their rights. Thus:

    The energy charter treaty (ECT) is a system of secret courts that enables companies to sue governments over policies that would cut their future profits. Companies have sued over phasing out coal-fired power stations, ending offshore oil drilling and banning fracking, with some receiving large taxpayer-funded payouts.

    So the final sentence in the Guardian article was a bit of a surprise:

    Some renewable energy companies have also used the ECT to sue for compensation after subsidy changes.

    Like

  82. Well I know we’re in the business here of climate scepticism, but one would have to be obtuse not to notice that there are other wholesale shifts in language and meaning that promote a seamless simulacrum of reality that is not actual reality. Climate ideology is but one of a variety of fields where this shift has rapidly occurred.

    There’s plenty written on such things. Spiked , Unherd, and Daily Sceptic are great places to keep updated. But I want to give special mention to an article I believe is well above the run of the mill, by Matt Taibbi. It’s a kind of entomological history of a couple of language shifts where once-leftist concepts have become portrayed as stigmata of the “far right”. Who doesn’t like entomology, and this is a great piece:
    https://www.racket.news/p/tracking-orwellian-change-new-meanings

    Liked by 1 person

  83. Mark – from your Guardian partial quote above –

    “Companies have sued over phasing out coal-fired power stations, ending offshore oil drilling and banning fracking, with some receiving large taxpayer-funded payouts.”
    had no link to follow for this statement, which I found odd!!!

    so I did a quick search & found –
    https://www.dw.com/en/energy-charter-treaty-ect-coal-fossil-fuels-climate-environment-uniper-rwe/a-57221166

    which includes this – “Though some 60% of cases have related to renewable energy investments, the most high profile lawsuits have been responses to recent fossil fuel phaseouts — Germany, for instance, agreed to pay Swedish energy giant Vattenfall and several minor claimants 2.6 billion euros in February as compensation for a nuclear power phaseout following ECT arbitration.”

    they go on to list “fossil fuel” cases, but no mention of “renewable energy investments” cases, wonder why?

    Liked by 2 people

  84. This one’s for Jaime:

    “The Giant Science Lie that Underpins the Entire Collectivist Net Zero Political Project”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/09/03/the-giant-science-lie-that-underpins-the-entire-collectivist-net-zero-political-project/

    The false notion that the climate is collapsing due to human activity lies at the heart of the drive to collectivise human populations under a Net Zero global agenda. Everything about it is a lie. The science is not ‘settled’, it is an unproven hypothesis, and stating otherwise is giving credence to an obvious political construct. There is no way that scientists can calculate how much of the gentle rise in temperature seen over the last 200 years is caused by humans burning fossil fuel rather than natural influences. The idea that there is a 97% ‘consensus’ among scientists that humans cause the majority of warming is a whopper as big as they come, not least because holding that view is beyond current scientific knowledge….

    Liked by 2 people

  86. In response to Mr Monbiot’s plan to reintroduce wolves to deal with a surging deer population: beware the law of unintended consequences (though I should have thought it was pretty obvious in this case):

    “EU to rethink conservation status of wolves after numbers surge
    Ursula Von der Leyen calls for action as attacks on livestock prompt rise in complaints from farmers”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/eu-to-rethink-conservation-status-of-wolves-after-numbers-surge

    …“The concentration of wolf packs in some European regions has become a real danger for livestock and potentially also for humans,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said. “I urge local and national authorities to take action where necessary. Indeed, current EU legislation already enables them to do so.”

    It is a subject close to Von der Leyen’s heart after her pony, Dolly, was killed last September by a wolf that broke into a well-guarded compound in north-west Germany.

    Complaints about wolves have been growing, with some farmers’ organisations calling for the right to shoot them.

    A consultation process is designed to balance the interests of rewilding with commercial agriculture and public health concerns.

    The commission is inviting all interested parties to submit data on the experiences of member states, and is seeking to update data on the wolf population as well as how the conservation status works in practice.

    “The return of the wolf to EU regions where it has been absent for a long time is increasingly leading to conflicts with local farming and hunting communities, especially where measures to prevent attacks on livestock are not widely implemented,” the commission said….

    Liked by 1 person

  87. Last winter I was in a bar in a ski resort in the French Alps. Chatting to the owner, he had a regular customer who was a full-time shepherd. He had lost 27 sheep to wolves that year. His main complaint was the difficulty of claiming compensation which was a morass of forms and red tape.

    Like

  88. Chickens coming home to roost……
    Headline from Energy Voice (article paywalled):
    “£100bn of North Sea projects held up as production hits 30-year low”

    Liked by 1 person

  89. If it’s GreenPR BBC will promote it

    @MacRebur CEO and co-founder @TobyMcCartney
    spoke to @BBCRadio4’s Gap Finders all about his groundbreaking business and his motivation to create a greener planet through waste plastic roads 🚗♻️

    BTW plastic roads = plastic dust

    Like

  91. Vinny you guys are overthinking it
    A Burner = someone who attends the Burning Man festival
    .. that’s what the protesters were blocking the road against

    Like

  93. Standard PR tick
    Putting out PR
    that #1 uses children for emotional blackmail
    #2 uses children as shields to protect it from proper criticism

    Like

  94. I think this is potentially very interesting:

    “How hole in ozone layer affected summer rainfall in Tibet
    Study shows increase and decrease in rain linked to changes in ozone levels in upper atmosphere”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/07/how-hole-ozone-layer-affected-summer-rainfall-tibet

    Repairing the ozone hole didn’t just help reduce the risk of skin cancer; it also reversed unwelcome effects of the climate crisis. Every summer heavy rains bubble up along the southern edge of the Tibetan plateau, but during the 1980s and 1990s the amount of rain increased significantly, raising the risk of flooding and landslides in Nepal and northern India.

    Thankfully, since the mid-1990s the trend has reversed. A study shows that the increase and subsequent decrease in Tibetan summer rainfall were linked to changes in ozone levels in the upper atmosphere.

    Using long-term measurements of rainfall and stratospheric ozone, researchers were able to model the interactions between ozone and climate and demonstrate that falling ozone levels in the upper atmosphere brought about a cooling effect in the lower stratosphere, which helped to accelerate convection and generate more rain. Their results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, show that the effect was particularly pronounced along the southern edge of the Tibetan plateau.

    Rainfall patterns in this region have far-reaching consequences, with 200 million people in Nepal and northern India directly depending on the summer rains. The new model will help improve seasonal forecasts, and better management of water resources for agriculture, hydroelectric power, industry and everyday water needs.

    Like

  95. Mark, So much causation linked to rank association (ozone levels and decreased flooding around Tibetan margins).

    Soon we’ll be told that decreased ozone levels caused by so much vaping at the Burning Man festival has caused “unprecedented” rainfall and flooding in Nevada. Those weird Palaeozoic-like shrimps that hatched after the rains, however, testify to the precidented nature of the flooding.

    Like

  96. Alan – thanks for the “shrimp” ref “& prompt to find out more” above.

    From – https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12479407/Hundreds-three-eyed-dinosaur-shrimp-emerge-mud-pits-Burning-Man-70-000-revelers-escaped-flooded-Nevada-festival.html

    partial quote – “Burning Man is set on the prehistoric Lake Lahontan, a dry lakebed – known colloquially as the playa. The ground is made up of alkaline dust, which normally leaves people coughing with ‘playa lung.'”

    makes you wonder how long (Million yrs?) these little critter have been able to survive in this “dry lakebed”.

    https://www.sciencetimes.com/environ-climate also covers this, with a bit more info.
    “Also known as Triops, these shrimps awakened by rainwater like at the recent Burning Man festival possess a futuristic appearance with shield-like bodies and a third eye for detecting light changes and infrared waves, despite being one of Earth’s oldest creatures, originating around 550 million years ago during the Gondwana supercontinent era.”

    fascinating, thanks for the prompt Alan 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  97. over on NALOPKT – https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/stonehaven-crash-network-rail-fined-6-7m-over-fatal-derailment/
    I found this comment interesting –

    “dennisambler
    September 9, 2023 4:38 pm
    Has to appear in everything they do. Look for the innocuous “albert sustainable production” icon at the end of most programmes, not just BBC. Dramas, quiz shows, you name it, it’s very often there.
    “Telling Climate Stories – A practical pocket guide for including sustainability in any genre”
    Click to access Albert-Pres-Doc-Pocket-Guide_V4-MSW.pdf
    https://wearealbert.org/event/15th-september-pm-news-training/
    “Before booking, please note that this training has been developed for journalists and those who work in news production. If you work in other genres please book onto our sustainable production or editorial trainings.

    BAFTA’s albert project is supporting the industry in eliminating waste and carbon emissions. Our bespoke news training distils key knowledge, tools and skills required to tell the climate angle of this most pressing issue whilst at the same time covering the story in a sustainable way.”

    well worth a look at above websites to see how deeply embedded this is.

    no chance this can be reversed/stopped, AC/DC had the right tune for this madness back in the 70s.

    Like

  98. Mark Jacobson is crowing about a legal document that he claims shows that his lawsuit against Christopher Clack has invalidated part of DC’s anti-SLAPP law.

    Liked by 1 person

  99. Thanks for the reference. It sounds like the attorneys will be busy next week.

    Dr. Jacobson’s work was referenced here last week-
    https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CNRA/bulletins/36f5443

    Docket Number: 23-SB-100
    Project Title: SB 100 Joint Agency Report
    TN Number: 252204
    Title: 350 Bay Area comments on SB 100 2025 Joint Agency Report Kickoff Workshop
    Description:
    Filer: System
    Organization: 350 Bay Area

    The afternoon ramp, duck curve, in the CASIO grid and the role of natural gas plants was discussed here-

    https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CNRA/bulletins/36f5421

    The following 1 Comment(s) submitted to Docket Number 23-SB-100 have been published:
    Docket Number: 23-SB-100
    Project Title: SB 100 Joint Agency Report
    TN Number: 252202
    Title: SoCalGas Comments on the CEC SB 100 Kickoff Workshop
    Description:
    Filer: System
    Organization: Southern California Gas Company

    Mark

    Liked by 1 person

  100. SkyNews Oz have always not complied with rest of media who give Greens a free pass

    They have put up two different cuts of the same video
    – Greens have ‘washed their hands’ of the environmental damage by renewable projects
    – Renewable energy projects are ‘destroying’ the environment whilst trying to protect it

    The Australian Liberal politician
    argues that Their own 2050 Net Zero policy is sensible and pragmatic cos it includes CCS and nuclear

    and that Labour governments Net Zero policy is crazy.

    Like

  101. Libya floods: Derna city looks like a tsunami hit it – minister – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66785466

    This disaster was 1st reported on the BBC as “climate change related” because of storm Daniel on the 1pm news, with a small mention about dams failing in the news report.
    But as the 24hr BBC news rolls on, we get –

    “Water engineering experts have told the BBC it is likely that the upper dam, around 12km (eight miles) from the city, failed first – its water sweeping down the river valley towards the second dam, which is estimated to be about one kilometre from the low-lying part of Derna, where neighbourhoods were inundated.

    Raja Sassi, who survived along with his wife and small daughter, told the Reuters news agency: “At first we just thought it was heavy rain but at midnight we heard a huge explosion and it was the dam bursting.”

    Like

  103. Thank goodness for that:

    “Experts call for global moratorium on efforts to geoengineer climate
    Techniques such as solar radiation management may have unintended consequences, scientists say”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/14/experts-call-for-global-moratorium-on-efforts-to-geoengineer-climate

    Governments should place a moratorium on efforts to geoengineer the planet’s climate, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate crisis takes hold, a panel of global experts has urged.

    Geoengineering is highly controversial, but discussions of its feasibility are gathering pace as the impacts of extreme weather, driven by climate breakdown, grip the planet. There is no global agreement on geoengineering, and no rules on what countries, or businesses, can do.

    In a report published on Thursday, the Climate Overshoot Commission called on governments to phase out fossil fuels, put more resources into adapting to the impacts of extreme weather, and start using technologies to remove carbon dioxide, such as carbon capture and storage and the capture of carbon directly from the air.

    Governments should also allow academics to investigate the possibilities of geoengineering, chiefly in the form of solar radiation management, which involves attempting to reduce the amount of sunlight striking the Earth’s surface, for instance through whitening clouds to be more reflective, or setting up mirrors in space.

    But governments should not embark on any such activities, the panel warned, because of the dangers involved in tinkering with the global climate in ways that are not yet well understood….

    Like

  105. @EdmundGemmell leader of the Climate Party is on GBnews
    He comes across as a rightly slimey slick salesman
    He made me want to eat more meat
    and recycle less
    and never BUY green gimmicks

    The intro mentioned he organised the Millennium Bridge.
    “Queue for Climate” protest #Q4ClimateNature
    fronted by Chris Packham and Deborah Meaden

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6E6WkkWMAAbVuP.jpg:small

    Like

  107. “People who work from home all the time ‘cut emissions by 54%’ against those in office
    Study in US shows one day a week of remote working cuts emissions by just 2% but two or four days lowers them by up to 29%”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/18/people-who-work-from-home-all-the-time-cut-emissions-by-54-against-those-in-office

    Another non-justified Guardian headline, even if they do put the “cut emissions by 54% claim in inverted commas. The detail is this:

    Employees in the US who worked from home all the time were predicted to reduce their emissions by 54%, compared with workers in an office, the study found. But hybrid workers did not reduce their emissions so dramatically, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    As is common in the world of climate change and net zero reporting, predictions are now elevated to statements of fact. Also, note this:

    …One day of remote work a week reduced emissions by just 2% because energy savings from not being in the office were offset by factors such as an increase in non-commuting travel when working from home. Working remotely two or four days a week reduced an individual’s emissions by up to 29% compared with on-site workers….

    And this:

    …“People say: ‘I work from home, I’m net zero.’ That’s not true,” said the co-author Fengqi You of Cornell University. “The net benefit for working remotely is positive but a key question is how positive. When people work remotely, they tend to spend more emissions on social activities.”

    The study found that remote workers’ non-work travel increased, with more driving and more flying. You said that homes were not always optimised for decarbonisation, in terms of using renewable energy and the efficiency of appliances, and there were some scale-related energy savings. For instance, a small home printer is likely to be less energy efficient than an office printer….

    Like

  108. You don’t say!

    “Revealed: top carbon offset projects may not cut planet-heating emissions”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases

    Majority of offset projects that have sold the most carbon credits are ‘likely junk’, according to analysis by Corporate Accountability and the Guardian

    The vast majority of the environmental projects most frequently used to offset greenhouse gas emissions appear to have fundamental failings suggesting they cannot be relied upon to cut planet-heating emissions, according to a new analysis.

    The global, multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry has been embraced by governments, organisations and corporations including oil and gas companies, airlines, fast-food brands, fashion houses, tech firms, art galleries and universities as a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint.

    It works by carbon offset credits being tradable “allowances” or certificates that allows the purchaser to compensate for 1 ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in greenhouse gases by investing in environmental projects that claim to reduce carbon emissions.

    But there is mounting evidence suggesting that many of these offset schemes exaggerate climate benefits and underestimate potential harms….

    Like

  111. Oh, for goodness’ sake:

    “‘Imagine Westminster under water’: stricter tests needed to see how City copes with climate disasters
    Sam Woods, head of the Bank’s financial stability watchdog, says lenders have only shown they can survive ‘slow burn’ changes to temperatures”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/24/stricter-tests-city-copes-climate-disasters

    The climate crisis has pushed the Bank of England to consider stringent new tests for lenders to see how they would cope in an “extreme” catastrophe that plunges “Westminster under water” and sparks a rapid change in government policies.

    Sam Woods, the boss of the UK’s financial stability watchdog, suggested that the City needed to be put through a more rigorous scenario, having so far only proven that banks and insurers could survive “slow burn” changes over a span of 30 years….

    …“Imagine Westminster under water – a really extreme thing that made policy shift in a very dramatic way,” said Woods. “I know there’s terrible climate events happening around the world all the time, but I’m talking about one that will lead to a dramatic change in policy from government, and governments … [and have a] very sudden effect in financial markets….

    …However, it is unclear whether fresh – or ramped-up – tests would lead to the kind of substantial changes in climate finance rules that campaigners have been calling for.

    The Bank of England has been criticised for refusing to reveal the test results of individual lenders – including HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest and Barclays – in a move that has limited investors’ and campaigners’ ability to scrutinise their climate preparedness.

    It has also been under fire for failing to introduce climate capital requirements that would force lenders to put aside funds to counterbalance climate-exposed assets including some mortgages and loans to heavy polluters.

    Introducing those rules would make it more expensive for banks to offer loans and services to fossil fuel companies and carbon-intensive projects. Woods said current capital requirements already reflected the climate-related risks on banks’ balance sheets. However, he admitted that those calculations would “need to evolve through time”….

    Like

  112. Mike D: that presenter needs to brush up on some simple physics. Aiui, drag is a function of speed and it’s a square function. If you square 80/70 you get about 30% – close to the 27% he quoted.
    That applies irrespective of the power source.
    Didn’t bother with the rest of the rant.

    Like

  114. The BBC has caught up with the Lego story now:

    “Lego axes plan to make bricks from recycled bottles”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66910573

    Toy giant Lego has scrapped plans to make its bricks from recycled bottles, in a blow to its efforts to cut carbon emissions.

    The company said in 2021 that it aimed to produce bricks not containing crude oil within two years.

    But on Monday, it said it had found that using the new material didn’t reduce carbon emissions.

    Lego said it remains “fully committed” to making bricks from sustainable materials.

    Lego makes about 4,400 different bricks. Currently, many of them are made using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a virgin plastic made from crude oil.

    The move, which was first reported in the the Financial Times, will be seen as a setback after a high-profile push by Lego to improve its green credentials.

    Like many other companies, Lego has been exploring alternative materials to plastic as sustainability becomes more important to customers.

    One of the challenges has been finding a material that is durable enough to last for generations.

    In 2021, it said it had developed prototype bricks made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, with some other chemicals added.

    The hope was that material could have offered an alternative to oil-based bricks.

    But Lego has now revealed that after more than two years of testing, it had found that using recycled PET didn’t reduce carbon emissions.

    It said the reason for that was because extra steps were required in the production process, which meant it needed to use more energy.

    As a result, it said it has “decided not to progress” with making bricks from the material….

    Like

  115. Here we go again…

    “Brown bear cubs in Japan die of starvation amid salmon shortage
    Experts blame rising sea temperatures caused by climate crisis for cub deaths at Unesco heritage site”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/26/brown-bear-cubs-in-japan-die-of-starvation-amid-salmon-shortage

    As many as eight in 10 brown bear cubs born this year in a remote part of northern Japan have died amid a shortage of salmon, with experts blaming rising sea temperatures caused by the climate crisis….

    …Masami Yamanaka, a researcher at the Shiretoko Nature Foundation, told the Asahi that the lack of salmon, combined with a poor acorn harvest, was having a devastating effect on brown bear cubs. “An estimated 70% to 80% of the cubs born this year are dead,” Yamanaka said. “It’s a really serious situation.”…

    Maybe climate change, maybe not. Read on:

    Fishers caught 482,775 pink salmon in rivers in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island, between 25 July and 5 September in 2020, but only 23,298 last year, according to the Hokkaido Salmon Propagation Association. Given statistical evidence showing that good catches occur every other year, the 2022 haul was surprisingly small.

    Just a thought – could over-fishing have led to a salmon shortage?

    …The scarcity of acorns has been blamed for a rise in the number of bear attacks on humans in Hokkaido and other parts of northern Japan, as they venture into populated areas in search of food.

    A total of 1,056 brown bears were caught and killed in Hokkaido in the year up to April 2022 – the highest figure on record and the first time the number has exceeded 1,000, according to the prefecture’s government. Of the total, 999 brown bears were exterminated to prevent damage to crops or because they were considered a danger to local people.

    The number of people injured or killed in incidents involving bears totaled 14 in the same period, with crop damage estimated at ¥262m (£1.44m) – both the highest figures on record.</blockquote?

    Could it be that bear numbers have grown too high for the food available?

    I don't know. But the lack of curiosity in the article and the determination to blame climate change are all-too usual these days.

    Like

  117. Various NGOs have collaborated to produce the latest State of Nature report, which is a somewhat hard to evaluate (cos v little supporting data is supplied) evaluation of the state of the UK’s wildlife. It’s got lots of press coverage. Here’s the Telegraph’s:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/28/extinction-uk-small-mammals-birds-state-of-nature/

    (That might be paywalled. It’s not for me. For some reason – a Firefox UBlock plug-in? – the Telegraph paywall disappeared a few months ago. If it’s paywalled for you, try archive.ph. That has a pirate of it.)

    That article is headed by a cute pic of a field vole, which the Telegraph says is one of the species most threatened with extinction in the UK.

    Among those at greatest risk are harvest mice and field voles, which are particularly threatened by intensive agriculture, said authors of the latest State of Nature report.

    Except the authors said no such thing. The report doesn’t mention field voles. Not surprising. They are probably the UK’s most common wild mammal. It does say that water voles are in trouble, but that’s hardly news. (Caged minks freed by animal activists in the 1990s are mostly to blame for the water vole’s decline.)

    As far as I can tell, the environmental biologist who gave the Telegraph the quote about field voles had nothing to do with the latest State of Nature report, which does make one wonder why she was interviewed about it.

    The report itself? Apparently climate change is the second biggest threat to the UK’s wildlife. The biggest is agriculture, obvz.

    Liked by 1 person

  120. I note that Michael Mann has extended his view of the overarching climate control of carbon dioxide back into geological time making it, and volcanicity (which supplies CO2 and apparently very little else). All this appears in a new book “Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis” 

    I shan’t read it but I should like to know where he got some of his past atmospheric values from and why he is not concerned about estimated past very high CO2 concentrations, many, many times present day values.

    Liked by 1 person

  122. Local event.. green propaganda pushed in geology
    “SAT, OCT 14 AT 1:30 PM
    Role of Geology in Achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
    3 people going · University of Hull in Kingston upon Hull”

    Like

  124. Climate change is causing an increase in French marmot parricide and revolution.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/they-kill-their-own-parents-children-and-neighbours-now-life-is-even-worse-for-the-vicious-alpine-marmot-aoe

    This is because less snow means less insulation for marmots’ burrows, so it’s colder down there when they hibernate. This coldness kills young pups and reduces female fertility, meaning that family groups are smaller.

    Now, marmot family groups are very undemocratic. They are led by despotic couples who bully the other group members into submission and celibacy. When the groups are smaller, this weakens the despots’ authority (not sure why) and younger group members are more likely to revolt and either kill their parents and siblings or leave the group to try to start their own, which process is itself somewhat violent.

    So you have a smaller population because of colder hibernacula and more mass murder because of this smaller population, meaning an even smaller population. Overall, global heating is apparently shrinking the marmot population in that area by 4% per annum.

    Interestingly, the 2013 study that I assume provided most of the info in that recent Graun article said that an earlier study had found that less snow *increased* the size of marmot family groups in North America. I can’t remember the mechanism for that or how the French project explained the difference.

    Interestingly, part deux: the French project also found that climate change both increases and decreases the occurrence of (often incestuous) marmot adultery. Adultery is more common when there are a lot of sexually mature males in the family group. Colder hibernation produces smaller family groups, so there are fewer candidates for adulterous liaisons with the matriarch. Earlier springs, however, mean that hibernation ends earlier and this makes more time available for adultery.

    Liked by 1 person

  125. In non-marmot population shrinkage news, a retired psychological consultant wants the world’s agriculture output to be capped so that the human population can shrink. Here he is at MAHB, a Paul Ehrlich outfit:

    https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/a-case-for-limiting-total-food-production-for-human-consumption/

    …limiting total global food production that humans consume would, in the course of space-time, return H. sapiens to balance within the natural world.

    Far out, man. How are you going to do that?

    One of the worst mistakes of the second half of the 20th Century has been and continues to be generated by the United Nations. A delusion in the form of a meme, or unquestioned cultural transmission, has been viewed as real and spread virally by misusing the imprimatur of science upon which the meme is not actually based. Large-scale human organizations have held tightly to versions of the same meme prior to this time period. Most experts became captives of a satisfying false cultural transmission: humans must continuously increase food production to feed a growing population. This misperception/misconception of reality cloaks our view of the way the world really works with regard to the population dynamics of all species within the evolutionary ‘tree of life’, including H. sapiens.

    OK. But how?

    I do not have answers to the thorny questions or solutions to difficult problems the heretofore uncontested science raises. Please allow me to add the belief that any program of action to rein in the size of the human population by limiting the human food supply must begin by taking simultaneous steps to feed the human community as well as to save the flourishing of life (i.e., biodiversity) as we know it.

    Mr Salmony, have you thought about making humans live like marmots? That might shrink our population. Though only by 4% per annum. And only in France.

    Like

  126. Aug 6th :

    Hello Richard Tice!
    Your recent interview with Brian Catt was so good that YouTube have *banned it*.
    Would it be possible for you to use another site so that we could see all 21 minutes again and share it?

    It was on TalkTV

    That lead me to an extraordinary TalkTV Facebook post
    from a year earlier

    Talk TV would like to state Prof Catt’s theories have been debunked by AFP Fact Check USA.
    Here is a link to their report on this interview. https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32GX2YQ

    That sounds like utter guff to me written a TalkTV junior

    The text continues “Gerald Kutney Phd, author of Climate Brawl: The Politics of the Climate Crisis, has reacted strongly”

    Like

  127. “Your luxury beliefs are a threat to our living standards
    The anti-fossil-fuel hysteria of the gold-collared superclass threatens to impoverish mankind.”

    Your luxury beliefs are a threat to our living standards

    …Consider the United Nations’ proposal that humanity halt all new fossil-fuel exploration by 2030. This, to be blunt, is batshit insane. Ahead of COP28, the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, the UN has published a report with suggestions for how we might save ourselves from eco-catastrophe. One is that we have a ‘phaseout of all fossil fuels’. We should cease ‘all new oil, gas and coal exploration’ and ‘fossil-fuel production’ by 2030, it proposes. So they warn of catastrophe in one breath, then campaign for it in the next. Make no mistake: if we were to stop all new fossil-fuel production, the suffering caused to humanity would be incalculable. It would be the worst act of conscious impoverishment in history.

    Picture the scene. COP28 kicks off in Dubai next month. In unimaginably luxurious surrounds, hilariously paid for by UAE petrodollars, world leaders, Davos Man, self-important NGOs and other members of what Samuel P Huntington memorably called the ‘gold-collar superclass’ will gather to discuss policy ideas that would plunge the rest of us into poverty. In air-conditioned rooms, over glasses of likely alcohol-free wine, they’ll breezily gab about putting every coalminer and oil-driller on Earth out of work and putting an end to the fuels that provide 80 per cent of the world’s energy. They’ll fly in on private jets, recuperate in five-star hotel rooms, and then get ready to tell you and me that if we don’t replace our gas boilers and recycle our rubbish the planet will be consumed by fire and floods. Are you feeling conned yet?…

    Perhaps it’s time for a COP28 thread? It will soon be upon us and the media will be ramming it down our throats as usual, I daresay.

    Like

  130. Have any of you been following the “Causality and Climate” thread on Judith Curry’s “Climate Etc.” blog? The comments have pretty much boiled down to a debate between “Agnostic” and a bunch of challengers. It’s beyond my ability to evaluate who is right, but if Agnostic is correct, then it’s all over for Climate Science. But it really does come down to hard physics. I’d be keen to know what the scientific minds here at Cliscep think.

    Like

  131. Oh you poor sods. I have just read that climate change is changing both the quantity and quality of hops, so predictably the quality of the amber nectar will decline. I never was much of a bitter soul, preferring lagers or “shorts” but I will sympathise.

    Like

  132. Ianalexs,

    I have only given the Climate etc. post on causality a quick glance. I have also noted that the ATTP folk have taken a keen interest in it and, unsurprisingly, are unimpressed. Before passing my own judgement I should, of course, at least read the paper carefully but I can’t say I am terribly inclined to do so. I noted that the authors are dismissive of the Pearl approach to causality and are offering instead a ‘statistical’ approach that seems to be basing its causal judgments on examination of data alone. But if I learnt anything from the writings of Judea Pearl it is that such an approach is doomed to fail. No amount of data mining can discern causal relationships on its own. I cannot therefore think that the time invested in reading the paper is likely to be rewarded.

    Liked by 1 person

  133. Alan,

    Thank you – sympathy appreciated. I can’t say I’ve noticed a deterioration in my favoured real ales yet, but the Guardian has me deeply worried (sarc).

    Like

  134. A very early member of Extinction Rebellion (Tiana Jacout; she says she was a co-founder) is currently trying to raise £33k so that Colombian shamans can fly to a conference in Iceland and tackle climate change with authentic pre-Columbian Colombian woo-woo. Time is getting short – the shamans will have to fly up north pretty soon – so please donate ASAP:

    https://thefountain.earth/2023/10/mamos-of-the-kogi-kaggaba-nation-pagamentos-pilgrimage-to-the-north/

    The Mamos of La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, representatives of the Kaggaba Nation in Colombia, have requested to travel to the Arctic North starting with Iceland and Greenland this year as part of a long-term commitment to offering Earth Payments (Pagamentos) to the Northern natural sites, to support the balancing of the elements which currently are strongly impacting Climate Change events. … This request that has been received from the highest instruction and in accordance with Original protocol.

    The Kogi (Kogui/Kaggaba etc) seem to have usurped their fellow slash-and-burners the Yanomami as the eco-activist’s Noble Savage of choice. Two long films about the Kogi and their woo-woo are available on YouTube. I streamed one of them last night, expecting to hate it, switch it off and go to bed, but it was too enjoyable to switch off, partly because of the beautiful scenery but mostly because it often seemed more like a piss-take than a celebration of Noble Savage wisdom. For example, the Kogi mamos (male shamans; also known as mamas) are always very obviously off their heads (they continuously plunge sticks up and down into their coca-enabling lime gourds in a very wankish manner that is never explained); and the Kogi women don’t ever get to speak or even smile and are sometimes pushed out of sight. Then there’s the supposed 400 kilometres of supposedly gold thread that the mamos/mamas collect on a trip to London. Very obvious claptrap right from the start when the film-maker records himself supposedly buying it from a pal. But overall the documentary did eventually turn out to be an endorsement of Kogi woo-woo. Still worth a watch, though:

    I might stream the 1990 version later tonight:

    Like

  135. Here’s something that might appeal: a take-down of truly appalling “science” about polar bears dressed up as “experts say” Settled Science, to be used for far-reaching political purposes. The site is a US academic affairs blog.

    “The Science paper is an exemplar of a common problem with “climate science”: it presents its conclusions as well-established scientific facts, when they are actually chains of statistical inferences, each carrying a burden of uncertainty.”

    https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2023/10/05/minding-the-sciences-smarter-than-your-average-bears/

    Like

  136. Woke up to Fake News on the TalkTV newsticker
    Now see that all UK MSM are like Pravda as they parrot the same false green PR line
    “Up to 1.5 million UK properties face an increased risk of flooding by 2080 because of rising seas triggered by melting Arctic sea ice, MPs have found”

    Archimedes debunk is about 2,500 years old

    Liked by 2 people

  138. Hi Mark,
    I put a comment on the Green Jobs thread a few hours ago….hasn’t surfaced yet….

    Like

  141. Apologies to Mike for being AWOL up a hill today, so I missed this, and thanks to Jit for fishing the missing comment out of spam.

    Like

  142. I’m at a loss to know where to put this bizarre piece, so Open Mic it will have to be:

    “Drifting crustaceans could slow climate change”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-67135233

    An army of drifting crustaceans could slow climate change, scientists at the University of Exeter have said.

    Zooplankton (drifting animals), includes copepods – tiny crustaceans thought to be the most numerous multi-celled organisms on Earth.

    It is the copepods that scientists believe “may help to store enormous amounts of carbon in the ocean”.

    They believe that copepods keep carbon out of the atmosphere and could slow climate change.

    As a result, three new projects have been funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) BIO-Carbon programme to investigate it.

    “The global ocean is absolutely teeming with living organisms, many of which are difficult or impossible to see with the naked eye,” said Prof Daniel Mayor

    “But don’t be fooled by their size – these tiny but mighty life forms play a crucial role in regulating Earth’s climate by moving carbon out of the atmosphere and shunting it down into the deep ocean where it says for hundreds of years or more.”

    The scientists will examine how the animals influence the ways in which the ocean absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide.

    Recent evidence suggested climate models are not fully accounting for the impact of marine organisms – and this could hinder predictions of the ocean’s role in future carbon storage…

    Climate models are wrong, shock horror!

    Like

  143. Bizarre indeed!
    Strange that this process is only now being recognised. Isn’t it this that, over the ages, forms limestone? Perhaps Alan K could shed some light>

    Like

  144. Ah copepods! A fascinating group with a huge variety of lifestyles. Most are marine but they can be planktonic or benthic. Others are freshwater (you can buy them as aquarium food, there’s even an establishment in my hometown advertising some for sale), live in soils and some even live in trees! Others are parasitic (the largest feed on whales).

    However it’s the marine planktic varieties that concern us. Some of these are voracious, eating a million phytoplankton every three days (one each and every second). I have seen it claimed that they are the most abundant multicellular organisms but I believe nematodes are. Nevertheless, copepods must, as they consume phytoplankton and die, their bodies sinking to the depths, be major agents for transferring carbon. I don’t believe their chitinous skeletons contain carbonate, so their remains will have nothing to do with the formation of limestones.

    So important and abundant are planktonic copepods that I cannot believe they have been ignored or underestimated in carbon transfer models. So I cannot help you with regard to the new models.

    Liked by 2 people

  145. Thanks Alan – very informative. I went down a bit of a rabbit-hole when I looked up “chitin”!

    Like

  148. JIT I don’t believe Calanus (= krill) are copepods. They are super abundant marine planktonic crustaceans that constitute a major component of Antarctic food chains. Didn’t know they are the basis of an oil consumed by humans and dogs. Will consider buying some for my elderly Scottie.

    Like

  149. Alan, crustacean taxonomy is confusing. But Calanus are definitely copepods, and that goop in the video was definitely Calanus. ?Did it say Calanus finmarchicus? Can’t quite recall.

    Krill are in Class Malacostraca, which I always think of as “the shrimps,” but it includes a lot of non-shrimpy things, and shrimps are in a separate order to krill. You can buy krill supplements as well.

    Like

  150. JIT. You are telling me about the complexity of crustacean taxonomy?!!! Consulting my good friend Wiki, I have found all sorts of names that are completely new to me and many that have seemingly changed their meaning since I took zoology so many moons ago. Classifications seem different if relationships are based upon form or biochemistry. I also assumed (illogically and wrongly) that that ship was a krill catcher and therefore Calanus was a variety of this group which I knew weren’t copepods.
    Henceforth I’ll leave such matters in your capable hands. In fact when I was replying to Mikehig about copepods I was thinking it might be better if you had been writing it.

    Like

  151. Just watching Planet Earth III. Chris Packham has so far to go to even think of competing with David Attenborough.

    Like

  152. “Billions of snow crabs in Alaska likely vanished due to warm ocean, study says
    The crabs starved to death en masse because the change in water temperature increased their caloric needs, according to the NOAA”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/alaska-snow-crabs-dead-ocean-temperatures-climate-change

    But:

    “‘Crabs everywhere’: off Canada’s Pacific coast, Indigenous Haida fight a host of invasive species”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/crabs-everywhere-haida-gwaii-canada-wilderness-indigenous-haida-fight-invasive-species

    Like

  153. Not sure where to post this, so Open Mic it is:

    “Chris Packham: Glen Coe is broken and needs fixing”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-67204307

    Chris Packham has described one of Scotland’s best-known landscapes as “sad” and “broken”.

    The naturalist and broadcaster said Glen Coe should not be a “barren moorland”, but feature patches of native woodlands.

    Much of Scotland was covered by trees 5,000 years ago, but only fragments of the ancient Caledonian Forest survive today.

    Mr Packham said Glen Coe could be “fixed” by rewilding parts of it.

    National Trust for Scotland (NTS), which manages a 14,000-acre national nature reserve in Glen Coe, said it was committed to helping natural habitats flourish.

    Rewilding is the restoration of large areas of habitat for the benefit of native plants and animals.

    Mr Packham said Glen Coe was a historically important landscape.

    He told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “I remember going through (Glen Coe) as a kid and going ‘wow, Scottish wilderness, fantastic’.

    “But that was in the late 1960s and early 70s. We’ve all learned now that landscape is broken and it needs fixing – and we can fix it.”…

    Not a word about the industrialisation of Scotland’s landscape via the march of the wind turbines and pylons, and the massive damage this is causing to the environment.

    Like

  154. Now that we are just days away from the clocks going back, and the long cold dark days of winter lie ahead, how are renewables doing in generating electricity? Right now:

    Coal: 2.9%
    Gas: 46.9%
    Solar: 0% (obviously, it’s dark, and will increasingly be so over the next few months)
    Wind: 15.8%
    Hydro: 1.5%
    Nuclear: 12.7%
    Biomass: 7.3%
    Interconnectors: 11.5%
    Pumped Storage: 1.3%
    Battery storage: 0%.

    Like

  155. 8:58am BBC local radio..
    #GreenSupremacist #BlackSupremacist #WokeSupremacist propaganda

    The BBC is already very tick box
    They engineered to have a black presenter, cos of course all the presenters have always been white.
    Then this morning he is interviewing another black guy
    about other tick box issues.
    I thought there was supposed to be integration, not ghetto-isation

    Like

  157. The claim regarding the video in that tweet is that the license plate on the back of that Range Rover is registered to a pre hybrid diesel. Whether the numbers are visible is being hotly debated.

    Like

  158. According to the DVLA website, that reg number belongs to a red, 2014 “Land Rover”, model unspecified.
    However it has a 3 litre diesel engine which, afaik, has never been fitted to an Evoque, nor the Discovery Sport for that matter. It was/is used in the bigger cars of which the Range Rover Sport may be the closest fit to the pics.
    If it is a 2014 car, that probably does rule out a hybrid but it’s a personal plate so the car may be newer and the records are muddled.

    Liked by 1 person

  161. The item in the back is a fire extinguisher. Given the context, the one in front probably is too – albeit a non-standard type for carrying in a car. [Non-standard because they’re all red these days, and that one isn’t.]

    Liked by 1 person

  162. UK licence plates for fancy cars are often personalised
    Therefore are not connected to production year

    On story going around is that a fancy man parked his smoking car and rushed to get his flight

    Liked by 1 person

  165. Even visiting Argentinian titanosaurs are painted orange by climate activists in London’s Natural History Museum. Strange that, Mesozoic dinosaurs probably inhabited much warmer climes than today.

    Liked by 2 people

  167. Some rather conflicted marketing from British Gas…..one radio ad promotes heat pumps with the promise of “up to £375 savings per year”. Another pushes replacement boilers which can save “up to 22% of your gas bill”.
    I haven’t done the maths but I suspect the boiler is a much better deal, especially as it would not require any additional work.
    Also the claimed saving seems low, given the relative efficiency of a new, condensing boiler compared to an old unit. I replaced my old Potterton earlier this year. When new it claimed an efficiency of 72%: it was probably more like 65% by the time I binned it. The new machine is rated at 95% which is an improvement of more like 45%.

    Liked by 1 person

  168. The YouTube Challenge result has just been uploaded
    John O Groats to Lands End : with @MacMasterThe in his Porche Taycan EV vs GeoffBuysCars in hi crappy diesel BMW he just bought off Facebook, 3 days ago
    Salient Part

    See after all the turmoil Mac got the EV and the hassle she had the woman was still shouuting “EV’s are effing great !”
    “EV folk are CULTISTS” was the conclusion.

    The thing was Mac had the real world this of charge stations not working , or being jammed up with people , or too many people so the voltage dropped etc.
    So he lost day one by 90 minutes
    and lost day 2 by 4 hours

    Geoff took Day 1 : 9h15m.. Day 2 6h48m .. call it 16 hours

    Liked by 1 person

  169. There is a video from last year of an EV man doing the 874m in 15 hours 24 mins
    but he only had 4% charge left ..and that is a bit risky
    but there was a charger in the LE carpark

    That’s 57mph average including charging

    Like

  171. Climate alarmists have great trouble in calibrating their messages of doom. One moment billions are going to die, the next, panic buying has caused Waitrose in Godalming to run out of bottled water.

    Like

  172. Geoff, I suppose it’s a valiant effort to blame that incident on climate change. Even the BBC, which makes the link to Storm Ciaran (or, in fairness, which reports on the water company seeking to get off the hook by making that link) doesn’t blame climate change in its article:

    “‘Major incident’ in Surrey as thousands lose water supply”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4n80lr4gxro

    …Thames Water has apologised, saying Shalford treatment works in Guildford had technical issues “caused by Storm Ciarán” and water would “only gradually return” throughout Monday….

    Still, when was JSO ever concerned with facts and reality?

    Like

  173. “Ulez scrappage scheme leaving hard-up households out of pocket
    Scores of applicants claim administrative failings have left them facing crippling daily charges”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/05/ulez-scrappage-scheme-leaving-hard-up-households-out-of-pocket

    A grant scheme launched by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, for scrapping polluting vehicles is leaving hard-up households out of pocket as they wait for payouts to be processed, according to applicants.

    Older vehicles that do not meet emissions standards incur a £12.50-a-day charge if they are driven in London’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez).

    The £160m scrappage scheme offers eligible owners payments of £2,000 to replace non-compliant cars and avoid the charge. It was opened to all qualifying owners in August shortly before the Ulez was extended, but scores of applicants claim that administrative failings have left them facing crippling daily charges.

    Applicants who have contacted the Guardian report multiple rejections for invalid reasons that have left them waiting weeks for the grant….

    That’s going well, then.

    Like

  174. “UK museums agree to collective action to tackle the climate crisis
    UK Museum Cop held at Tate Modern says the sector has a ‘responsibility to speak out about climate and biodiversity crisis’”

    https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/nov/06/uk-museums-agree-to-collective-action-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis

    What a great headline! Museums can tackle (sic) the climate crisis (sic). If only we’d known. No need for all those COPs after all!

    National and regional museums across the UK have agreed to take collective action on the climate crisis, including managing collections more sustainably and using their position to engage audiences with the issues.

    Representatives of museums, organisations in the sector and funders took part in the first UK Museum Cop at Tate Modern in London last week. Among those attending were museums and organisations from Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Brighton, Leeds, Derby, Liverpool, York, Sheffield and London, as well as national bodies from England, Wales and Scotland.

    Leading museums and galleries, including Tate, have ended sponsorship deals with fossil fuel companies over recent years under pressure from environment campaigners. The British Museum, which did not take part in the Museum Cop, announced this year it had ended its sponsorship deal with BP after 27 years.

    In a statement described as a “first ever joint commitment for collective action”, museum leaders said they felt a “responsibility to speak out about the climate and biodiversity crisis”.

    Museums are “institutions with a long-term view. Many have collections relating to the Earth’s five previous mass extinction events, and we are now in the midst of the sixth, the Anthropocene. UK museum leaders feel they have an ethical obligation to take action to alleviate that damage,” the statement said.

    They pledged to use their “collections, programmes and exhibitions to engage audiences with the climate crisis and inspire them to take positive action”; to manage collections sustainably; to develop and implement decarbonisation plans; and to increase biodiversity in museums’ green spaces….

    Like

  175. This morning two youngsters from Just Stop Oil smashed the glass covering the Rokeby Venus in London’s National Gallery. One of them (who was out on bail pending a trial for aggravated trespass during a performance of Les Miserables last month*) compared herself to Mary ‘Slasher’ Richardson, who in 1914 slashed the same painting seven times with a meat cleaver in a somewhat hard to understand protest about Emmeline Pankhurst having been arrested in Glasgow a few days earlier.**

    The modern ‘Slasher’ Richardson’s somewhat hard to understand statement:

    Over 100 years ago, the suffragette Mary Richardson attacked the Rokeby venus portrait for the unjust imprisonment of Emmeline Pankhurst. Today I have used similar methods in the fight for climate justice. As a kid I saw myself growing up to be an astronaut or a singer. I saw a future, however ridiculous it was. Now, those day-dreams have ended. The future we are heading for doesn’t allow space for them anymore. It’s always been down to ordinary people to tell their governments when they’ve crossed a line. Civil resistance worked for the suffragettes and it will work for us.

    JSO often compares itself to the militant suffragettes (WSPU), whom it believes won women the vote. (I don’t think they did, but never mind.) At its recruitment meetings it tells youngsters that they should join JSO because it is the modern embodiment of ‘the courage, the action, the loyalty, the gift of service and the ability to serve’ exhibited by the militant suffragettes.

    Oh, my mistake. Sorry. That was what ‘Slasher’ Richardson said about the British Union of Fascists, of which she was a leading member. She said she had joined the BUF because of its similarities to the suffragette movement.***

    Now, just because JSO thinks it’s the new WSPU and several leading suffragettes became fascists doesn’t mean that JSO is a fascist organisation. Despite all its blather about citizens’ assemblies, JSO is a bit authoritarian but that’s a long way from fascism.

    There are, however, some undeniable similarities between JSO and the BUF. For example, JSO’s recruitment processes are mostly aimed at youngsters. Here’s an interesting article about why and how the BUF did the same:

    https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/who-were-the-young-people-drawn-to-oswald-mosleys-british-union-of-fascists/

    The final paragraph:

    Would I have joined [the BUF]? No. My mother couldn’t even make me go to Brownies, and I don’t believe I would ever have been attracted to fascism, even in 1933. And yet there is a final twist. The venue for our UCL Festival of Culture reading on 10 June (for more details on this, see below) is on the corridor where – as a 19-year-old student at UCL – I slept for two nights in a protest occupation. Visiting again I recalled the excitement and camaraderie of the occupation, the arguments, singing and jokes, the buzz of young people taking action together. But, while I remembered being in that corridor among my friends I could not remember what the occupation was about. As research following the 7/7 attacks on London discovered, what motivates extremists operating in a cell is less loyalty to ideology, but loyalty to the group. So, while I cannot imagine joining a fascist party, I can understand that young people take part in political actions for complex personal reasons. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but as Robert McKee says, at the end of every completed story, a writer finds themselves.

    I reckon that explains a lot of the JSO phenomenon too.

    (Nicola Baldwin is a playwright. At least two of her plays have included bits about Extinction Rebellion.****)

    ===
    *She was the only Les Mis protester whose bail conditions didn’t include a ban on entering the City of Westminster, which is where the National Gallery is. The judge let her off the hook for that because she works at a restaurant in Westminster – although seemingly not on Mondays.

    **The Rokeby Venus’s relevance to Emmeline Pankhurst isn’t the only thing that’s a bit hard to understand. Pankhurst had been smuggled into the Glasgow meeting in a laundry hamper because she was then under the constraints of the 1913 Cat & Mouse Act.

    ***What JSO actually tells youngsters at its recruitment meetings is that our corrupt government and the selfish elites that control it are plotting to murder billions of children by 2025 and you’ll have no future as an astronaut if you don’t drop out of uni, join JSO and vandalize artworks.

    ****This is my favourite:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v8wp

    The plot gets increasingly implausible but it’s still a goodun.

    Liked by 1 person

  177. New Green PR trickster was just on GBnews

    ‘Oh Britain doesn’t need to mine more oil and gas, it will all go abroad anyway”
    And see how the tweeter copied Simon Evans into the tweet

    See how no one Liked or Responded to their tweet
    and basically I couldn’t find anyone else tweeting about the item

    Like

  178. I wonder what is the succinct answer to the fallacious line
    “UK new oil and gas is no good for the consumer , it will all go for export so won’t lower UK prices” ?

    Steve Milloy says
    ” claims more UK oil production won’t lower prices for years.

    I promise you increased UK drilling will lower energy prices
    … way before not drilling changes UK weather. “

    Like

  179. Ben Pile points out that there isn’t a magic global gas price that people pay.
    Local suppliers purchase at different local prices
    eg heap in Texas, high in UK in Winter when our supplies are tight etc.

    Like

  182. Thermal runaway in the battery of a handheld radio causes $3m damage on the bridge of a tanker:
    https://gcaptain.com/thermal-runaway-of-lithium-ion-battery-destroys-tankers-bridge/?subscriber=true&goal=0_f50174ef03-6bdd51c476-170410014&mc_cid=6bdd51c476&mc_eid=9275323244
    If a small battery can do this, it puts an EV battery fire into perspective.
    Fortunately this happened in dock. The consequences could have been much more severe at sea.

    Liked by 2 people

  183. Reach plc to cut 450 jobs
    That’s the local newspaper operation
    by centralised offices which cutNpaste material into 50 newspapers at a time
    a lot of PRasNews stuff often GreenDream PR.

    Like

  184. Yesterday XR did an illegal Palestinian protest in Trafalgar Square

    Who are XR, Just Stop Oil really and what are their real aims ?
    Is it no the same Marxist anti-Capitalists wearing a different T-Shirt ?
    I immediately see them as progressed from Occupy London

    First JSO turned up in Portland to block migrants from being put on the accommodation barge

    Then yesterday video showed Football Lads walking home from their own gathering spotting a guy with a huge Palestinian flag standing on things in Trafalgar Square. They thought that was out of order cos the Palestinian march was supposed to be miles away. And the who of middle London was an official DISPERSAL area where all protesters were forbidden from gathering. Yet this guy was protected by blue-tabard women
    As I checked and found a tweet from BBC PaulLewisMoney promoting the event

    #1 Why is a BBC journo promoting it ?
    #2 Why is XR doing Palestinian politics ?

    #3 XR don’t care about Middle East children much, they haven’t had tweets mentioning the kidnapped Israeli children and despite their article mentioning they would read the names of 26 Israeli children killed by Hamas, they did not mention kidnapped Israeli children either.
    #4 Videos showed no men chasing the guy, but no actual fisticuffs

    #5 It’s a bit much of XR to hijack the 11am 2 minute silence which is supposed to be for the fallen servicemen
    and make it about the dead Gaza children instead

    Empty shoes for lost lives: Extinction Rebellion’s heartbreak plea for a ceasefire in Gaza

    Like

  185. while looking for some other info I came across this National Grid web page –
    “4th August 2022 – Journey to net zero
    While most of us know that it’s a critical time for us to work on tackling climate change, we still get lots of questions about the real threat that it poses to our world. Here we debunk some of the most common incorrect, yet oft-repeated, climate change myths – to separate fact from fiction.”

    “https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero-stories/6-myths-about-climate-change-busted”

    Like

  186. Radio 4 aired a surprisingly balanced drama about a JSO-type protester last week. _Sticking Points_ by Mark Lawson.* Still streamable:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001s5fk

    I quite like this bit:

    Jessica Phoebe Leasden-Glean (or summat like that), AKA ‘Skippy’ (an English privately educated non-binary climate protester who affects an Australian accent): ‘No! No! Opinion polls show that most people get what needs to be done.’

    Dominic ‘Nic’ Thornditch (the Secretary of State for Education, whose hand is glued to the protester’s hand): ‘A point I have made in Cabinet.’

    Snick (Thornditch’s genuinely Ozzie spad): ‘But the numbers are soft. There’s a conviction gap. Asking folk if they favour cutting CO2 levels is like running a focus group on drowning kittens. They know there’s only one acceptable answer but, in the secret darkness of their hearts, they may not give a sprat about cats.’

    ===
    *Yes, that Mark Lawson. I think his radio dramas are always about politics and current affairs these days and I don’t think they are always as balanced as _Sticking Points_, but I can’t find an example, so could be wrong.

    His radio adaptations of Zygmunt Miloszewski’s crime thrillers are worth a listen.

    Like

  187. Occasionally I check out the source of our electricity, and I sometimes do so on a late autumn/early winter’s evening, at a time when demand is likely to be high, but it’s after dark. Right now, our electricity is being supplied as follows:

    https://grid.iamkate.com/

    Gas: 58.8%
    Coal: 3.9%
    Solar: 0%
    Wind: 5.7%
    Hydro: 2.1%
    Biomass:
    8.3%
    Nuclear: 8.4%
    Interconnectors: 12.8%

    Not a great advert for a would-be “renewable energy superpower”. True renewable energy (assuming that energy generated by technology manufactured and installed on site using fossil fuels can be so described), excluding the dubious “biomass”, is currently supplying just 7.8% of our electricity, less than 5/8 of the amount we are importing through interconnectors.

    Like

  191. Local community volunteers do a lot of good
    Then they become ecocultists and use their positions and power to push crap

    One local one used the history forum to push this
    “Giraffes could go extinct
    The five biggest threats to giraffes are habitat loss, insufficient law enforcement, ecological changes, climate change, and lack of awareness. ”

    Climate seems to have been tacked on cos it’s against Green religion not to
    Climate change from human-caused carbon dioxide pollution is forecast to increase temperatures and rainfall in many African savanna areas. Giraffes are unaffected by the higher temperatures observed so far, but increased seasonal rainfall is associated with lower giraffe survival due to disease and lower food quality.

    Over the longer term, more rainfall will create conditions favourable to increased woody plant cover in savannas. This could help giraffes by increasing their food supply, but only if enough natural savanna is preserved from human exploitation.

    Like

  192. Channel4 Alice Roberts show now
    just appeared have an anti-nuclear activist as an expert on
    She was allowed to make grand sweeping statements about the first Windscale accident
    “a huge disaster, a fire they couldn’t put out, only succeeded on fourth attempt, when the manager Tuohy climbed to the top of the reactor
    milk was banned for 200 miles , local cancers increased a lot”

    No milk was not banned for 200 miles .. it was almost 200 SQUARE MILEs ie a 4.5 mile by 4.5 mile box
    .. Did cancer really increase that much ?

    Wiki “It is estimated that the radiation leak may have caused 240 additional cancer cases, with 100 to 240 of these being fatal”
    “Cancer cases” is a BS metric cos it fails to differentiate between harmless and super harmfull cancer
    Deaths is a BS metric cos how many days early did the people die ?

    Wiki : ” Later studies on the release of radioactive material due to the Windscale fire revealed that much of the contamination had resulted from such radiation leaks before the fire.

    “A 2010 study of workers involved in the cleanup of the accident found no significant long-term health effects from their involvement.
    Tuohy lived to the age of 90, despite his exposure
    The pile is not scheduled for final decommissioning until 2037.”
    The chimney had special scrubbers so although radiation leaks were significant, they were far less that the world’s other 3 big accidents

    Like

  193. stewgreen,

    This is indeed quite an old thread, which is burning slowly. Mostly we all seem to be finding articles germane to the subjects we want to comment about and post there, rather than on Open Mic. However, I think Open Mic was nevertheless a valuable innovation and is a useful forum for off-topic comments that don’t have an obvious home anywhere else.

    Like

  195. 200 sq miles is 20 miles by 10 miles.
    That would explain why the area where milk was being poured down the drain stretched as far as Wigton where I lived at the time.
    I also remember men in white coats with geiger counters coming to the Nelson Thomlinson Grammar school to test us for radiation.

    Like

  197. Mikehig – can’t read that link, or this other link –

    “2024 Is Looking Bleak for Europe’s Petrochemicals Sector
    Plastics consumption isn’t going down. Companies are just importing what they need to make stuff.
    25 November 2023 at 13:00 GMT”

    but can tell from the headline that things don’t look good.

    Like

  198. Here’s an open letter from globetrotting luvvies, climate activists and a few scientists that celebrates nine members of XR and Burning Pink being found not guilty of criminal damage when they smashed windows at HSBC’s HQ, causing £500k of (non-criminal, obvz) damage*:

    https://hardart.metalabel.com/

    The first signatory is Dr Rowan Williams, which gives me an excuse to link to this fine analysis by – and also, in a very real sense, of – the now former Archbishop of Canterbury:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20201030060322/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/craigbrown/3555063/Dr-Rowan-Williams-Cat-Sat-On-The-Mat.html

    Much more interesting – and, at the same time, uninteresting – than the open letter, I reckon.

    ===
    *Radio 4’s Law in Action on law inaction and the legality of perverse jury verdicts (plus satellites and treasure):

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001sd55

    Downloadable.

    Like

  200. Alan Partridge on his veganism (Graun, 23/11/23):

    I’m already about 70% vegan and have to say I don’t find it that hard. My last Sunday roast? Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower and beef. So, almost entirely vegan.

    Roger Hallam, The Great Oracle of Doom, has received a message* about that (somewhat anaemic) joke:

    In a decade’s time, when the next generation comes of age, overwhelmed with the stinking mass death of climate collapse, knowingly created by the bystanders of our generation, they will feel the same disgust about comments like this as we do about Jimmy Saville’s [sic] jokes in the 1980’s about liking young girls. And we will sit there crippled with guilt.

    I think Hallam should have his own sitcom. ‘I’m Alan PartridgeRoger Hallam’? Or ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’re All Going To Be Murdered By Our Genocidal Government’?

    Or how about ‘Hallam-Hallam-A-Ding-Dong’? A crazy bearded prophet in a small English town (Totnes? Stroud?) can’t be kept away from the bells in the local church, which he frequently rings to signal the end of all life on Earth. Paul Kaye to play Hallam. The vicar? Dunno. Dawn French again?

    ===
    *Hallam prefaced a recent pronouncement with these words: ‘This what has come to me:’

    Hallamelujah!

    Liked by 2 people

  201. Correction: Hallam’s preface was ‘This is what has come to me:’

    Like

  202. Mikehig – found a link https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/11/24/europes-petrochemical-industry-is-heading-for-death-row/

    partial quote –
    “Petrochemicals are intrinsically energy intensive. In Europe, natural gas is about five times more expensive than in the US. Right now, it’s cheaper to buy ethylene, a building block for plastics, in Texas, and ship it across the Atlantic for further processing in Europe than producing it at home. And that’s precisely what petrochemical companies tell me they’re doing. The net result is loss of economic activity in Europe, an erosion of the bloc’s trade balance in chemical products and, ultimately, the loss of jobs and energy security.”

    Liked by 1 person

  204. Geoff, I suspect our theme is clashing with a word press update. If it’s working click on the + and you can paste the url.

    Like

  206. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has announced, in English & in French, that she’s leaving Twitter. Not a big deal you may think, but she’s a bit of a bellwether in the coalmine. 6 years ago, France had a socialist president. Hidalgo stood as the socialist candidate last time & scored 3%. She’s symptomatic of everything that’s wrong with the left in western democracies.

    She gives the usual reasons: Twitter “has in recent years become an impressive tool for destroying our democracies.” And she goes on to mention “vicious attacks on scientists, climatologists, women, environmentalists, liberals and all those of good will who wish to engage in peaceful political debate in an increasingly complex world.”

    The main criticism of Hidalgo has been for her obsession with cycle paths in a city that’s already clogged with slow moving traffic. And she’s just announced that, to celebrate the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the price of a Metro ticket is going up 100%. As for the “vicious attacks,” I doubt whether 1% of French people could even name a climatologist, let alone launch an attack on one.

    Liked by 2 people

  208. From Hidalgo’s Twitter-quitter announcement: ‘This medium has become a gigantic global sewer, and we should continue to wade into it?’

    Hidalgo should know quite a lot about sewers. She has long been blamed for not getting Paris’s sewers sorted out and for failing to tackle the proliferation of rats* that inhabit them and sometimes climb out en masse onto Paris’s streets and alarm people with their scurrying, hunch-backed, long-tailed, sniffy-sniffy behaviour.**

    ===
    *It looks like she’s given up. From June 2023:

    PARIS: Mayor Anne Hidalgo plans to form a committee to explore whether citizens in the French capital should learn to live alongside rats in peaceful coexistence rather than attempt to exterminate the vermin, a city official said.

    “With guidance from the mayor, we have decided to form a committee on the question of cohabitation,” Anne Souyris, Paris’ deputy mayor for public health, said at a meeting of the Council of Paris, foreign media reported.

    https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1080154-parisians-must-live-with-rats-mayor

    **Why do we hate rats so much? It’s surely not only because they spread human diseases and chew cables. Squirrels do that too, as do some mouse species. Is it something in our DNA?

    ***Orphaned footnote 1:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/15/the-ratpocalypse-why-paris-is-awash-with-vermin-and-the-mayor-isnt-stepping-in

    ****Orphaned footnote 2: This is from Roger Hallam’s most recent tweet:

    DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH

    Is sixty is a magic number in the Hallam death cults? Or did he just run out of doom-space?

    Like

  210. Professor Jo Brand is on that silly ITV morning show doing PRasNews for Global Warming PR machine

    one reply “Her face is melting so it must be true”

    Like

  211. “Dia Mirza: The biggest climate issue is egotistical men”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-india-67565393

    Campaigner and Bollywood star Dia Mirza is clear about who is to blame for climate change.

    “The biggest climate issue is egotistical men.”

    Mirza, a goodwill ambassador for the UN’s Environment Programme and one of this year’s BBC 100 Women, talks about the threat of the climate crisis and how she got involved in environmental activism, as well as her own rise to stardom.

    That’s cleared that up, then.

    Like

  212. “Gas network already at maximum capacity as cold snap hits
    Growing reliance on renewables means power supplies are increasingly weather dependent”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/30/gas-network-maximum-capacity-cold-snap-hits/

    Britain’s gas network has already hit full capacity as renewable energy fails to generate the power needed to heat the UK’s homes.

    Freezing temperatures mean energy demands have soared in recent days, but low winds mean output at wind farms has plunged, according to data from National Gas and National Grid, making the UK reliant on gas for up to two-thirds of its electricity this weekend.

    However, Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas, said demand from gas-fired power stations would be “maxed out” from today through much of the weekend. He said the weather event should be a reminder of the importance of fossil fuels as to global policymakers attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

    Mr Butterworth said: “It’s really important they recognise that although we’ve got to decarbonize, energy security is also vital. And when you’re in a world of interruptible renewable energy, our security is massively important.

    The more we build up our reliance on wind and solar power, which can be disrupted by the weather, the worse the risk becomes.”

    Like

  213. @Mikehig – thanks for that “Grangemouth closure” link.

    A sobering read & interesting comments below the article from “It doesn’t add up”
    partial quote –
    “The Grangemouth complex had long been a target of Lord Deben who had written publicly to the Scottish government to tell them it should shut to achieve Net Zero.
    https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/letter-lord-deben-climate-change-committee-to-roseanna-cunningham-msp/
    Power station demolition expert Nicola Sturgeon agreed. Now it’s Humzat? A lot of the pressure on UK refineries really comes from net zero impositions limiting fuel choices and tightening regulatory standards at great cost and little benefit, destroying potential competitiveness.”

    Like

  214. ps – just read the Lord Deben link in above comment.

    partial quote –
    “On the basis of this new analysis, we find that the legislated 2030 target of a 75% reduction in Scottish emissions goes beyond the level of any of our five scenarios on the way to Net Zero in 2045 in Scotland.
    We cannot yet calculate the precise shortfall between our scenarios and the 2030 target that was legislated by the Scottish Parliament. Forthcoming decisions will change how emissions are estimated under the Scottish emissions inventory in future.
    The 2030 target is a statutory target and must be met. As such, the Committee has identified ways that Scotland could potentially reduce emissions beyond the abatement identified in the five new scenarios in our latest report, which the Scottish Government may wish to consider:
    Earlier start to engineered greenhouse gas removals
    Early decarbonisation of the Grangemouth cluster
    Accelerated scrappage of high-carbon assets
    Additional retrofit of hybrid heat pumps
    Our analysis indicates that meeting the legislated 2030 target will be extremely challenging but the Committee does not recommend that the target is changed in law.”

    I have often thought a target is something you aim for, but may fall short or miss.
    so how can “the Committee does not recommend that the target is changed in law.” hold any water?

    Liked by 1 person

  215. dfhunter: Yes, she has produced a string of good articles recently. It’s worth subscribing to her (free) emails. Good stuff from idau as well.

    Like

  216. Mark – but it’s the hottest year ever for humans, maybe we can all wear beaver skin hats now they are back in the UK.

    Like

  217. “Climate change: Saving Uganda’s mountain gorillas”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-africa-67469712

    Uganda’s first wildlife vet Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka works to save the country’s endangered mountain gorillas, whose habitat is being eroded by climate change.

    She is the founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health, an NGO that promotes biodiversity conservation by enabling people, gorillas and other wildlife to co-exist, while improving their health.

    After three decades of fieldwork, she has helped increase the number of mountain gorillas from 300 to about 500, which was enough to downgrade them from critically endangered to endangered.

    Absolutely no attempt in the brief piece to justify the claim that mountain gorillas are at risk from climate change. As I understand it, they have lots of human-caused problems that will be significantly more problematic than climate change. Needless to say:

    Dr Kalema-Zikusoka is on the BBC 100 Women list this year.

    So far all of the women I have noticed on this list seem to be bemoaning climate change. Funny that.

    Like

  218. Looks like squeaky bum time for the grid….
    Demand over 45 GW; nukes and CCGT almost maxed out; likewise the interconnectors; wind contributing all of 1.0 GW.
    No wonder they are paying folk to cut consumption!

    Liked by 1 person

  219. I received an email from my gas and electricity supplier this morning, reminding me that ( as I already knew) the price cap will go up next month, and therefore so will my bills. Of interest is the fact that I am also told that my tariff “will no longer come with 100% renewable electricity as standard and your terms and conditions will be updated.”

    Of course, my electricity never was 100% renewable – they lied about that, as did so many of the suppliers. I wonder if Ofcom has finally forced them to tell the truth?

    Like

  220. Perhaps the UN and African climate campaigners might think about this sort of thing, which I believe is hugely more problematic for the environment than climate change. Thank you, Guardian, for drawing attention to it, but no thanks to you for failing to draw some obvious conclusions:

    “Hann Bay, Senegal: from coastal idyll to industrial dumping ground – in pictures
    Dakar’s nine-mile-long Hann Bay used to be known as one of West Africa’s most beautiful, lined with traditional fishing villages, villas and tourist attractions. But for the last 20 years it has been at the centre of the city’s industrialisation, with 80% of the city’s industry nearby. Today it is one of Dakar’s most polluted areas, with canals spilling raw sewage and chemicals on to the beach and into the sea”

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/dec/04/hann-bay-senegal-from-coastal-idyll-to-industrial-dumping-ground-in-pictures

    Like

  221. “Londoners say being green is too expensive – poll”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67623116

    Almost three-quarters of Londoners have said the cost of living crisis is making it difficult to buy greener heating or energy options for the home.

    A poll commissioned by London Councils revealed that residents in the capital want to help prevent climate change, but say cost is a barrier.

    Some surveyed said heat pumps, solar panels and home insulation were too expensive.

    London Councils said insulating homes saved money for owners in the long run.

    Labour councillor Kieron Williams, London Councils’ executive member for climate change, transport and environment, said: “It is sobering to see that the ongoing cost of living crisis prevents Londoners from taking action on issues that are important to them, such an investing in climate action.”

    While the poll showed 73% of Londoners said the cost of living crisis had made it more difficult for them to go green, 68% had grown more concerned about climate change over the past 12 months….

    Interesting that Londoners said (in effect) that net zero is unaffordable, while still making the necessary obeisance to climate change.

    If interested, the poll results can be down-loaded here:

    https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/climate-change-poll

    How’s this for a non-sequitur?

    When asked about why they wouldn’t give up flying or only fly once a year, cost
    and time were the least cited barriers. Instead, people cited their preference and interest. This suggests that people might be happy to take more expensive train journeys for holiday, if this is promoted more as an option.

    Like

  222. Mark – thanks for that London poll results link.
    Interesting reading with many bits that I could quote which are not as rosy as the headline “Top findings” would have you swallow.

    Only poll point for me was it was only 1001 people for inner & outer London, seems small to me?

    as for your above “How’s this for a non-sequitur”.
    If you look at the poll page “Transport barriers – 2” just look at the 3 bar charts at the right & end one titled “Staycation or domestic holiday instead of foreign holiday”.
    Can you guess what the highest answer was at 33% – “Preference – I don’t think I would like this/I don’t want to do this”

    Liked by 1 person

  223. “Call for action after dip in renewable energy generated in NI”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-67650005

    There has been a call for a taskforce to be established after figures showed a slight dip in the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources in Northern Ireland.

    Figures show renewable sources provided 47.4% of electricity consumption in the year to September 2023.

    That was down 1.6 percentage points on the same period last year.

    And the amount of electricity generated from wind also fell slightly to 84.8%, compared to 84.9% to September 2022….

    I love the “Analysis”:

    Analysis: ‘The sun doesn’t always shine in Northern Ireland’
    Small fluctuations like this are to be expected when dealing with Mother Nature – the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun certainly doesn’t always shine in Northern Ireland….

    Like

  224. Today’s Times article about Drax Subsidies being extended past 2027 being snuck in under the end of parliament session.
    “According to estimates by the think tank Ember, if the subsidies continue to 2035,
    Drax’s shareholders will have received in total almost £23 billion since the boondoggle began in 2012.”
    unpaywalled https://archive.is/amRmW

    Liked by 2 people

  227. Couple of tweets incoming. This I didn’t know about and is great news.

    And this oldie from Dilbert is always worth a repeat

    Cummins showing the tendency for sceptics in the Covid area to have become so for climate by now. (And thanks to Peter North for a retweet there.)

    Liked by 1 person

  229. Jit – thanks for that interesting LIA link above.

    As Per it ends with –
    “Fortunately, we did get a few flakes this winter,” wrote the Netherlands-based art historian Gary Schwartz on his blog as early as 2007. “But if the warming keeps up and it stops snowing altogether, the country is going to be cut off from its metaphorical identity.” He wonders what the future Dutchman, “sitting in a beach chair,” will think of Bruegel’s and Avercamp’s winter scenes, those “defining images of what Dutchness still means but will mean no longer.”

    Wonder how many Dutchmen/women are sitting on the local beach this winter 16yrs later?

    Like

  230. “HotSat-1: UK climate satellite suffers failure in orbit”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67723524

    An innovative UK climate satellite has failed in orbit just six months after launch.

    HotSat-1 was put up to map heat loss from buildings and was doing so successfully until its camera stopped working earlier this week.

    SatVu, the London company behind the mission, does not expect to restore operations even though engineers are still in contact with the spacecraft….

    …SatVu hopes ultimately to fly eight sensors in a constellation.

    “Eight gives us a clear path to profitability,” Mr Baker said.

    “The unit economics are fantastic – if you look at the addressable market and what a satellites costs and what you can sell the data for. And it’s what the customers want because more satellites mean they don’t have to wait too long for their data.”…

    …Company executives have just returned from the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai where they were showcasing the technology.

    Given that they’re basically a “for profit” business, I have to ask why this is the case:

    …HotSat-1’s sensor technology was developed with money from the European and UK space agencies. …

    Like

  231. After what seems many weeks of not being able to comment at all on Cliscep, suddenly I am now able to. My first successful attempt was very odd. WordPress informed me, as it had been doing repeatedly that my name was not linked to the password I was currently using (even though only a few minutes previously I had received the same message and as a consequence had changed my password to a new one). My comment had, as previously disappeared into the ether and once again I gave up. Strangely that comment appeared several hours later. But when I tried again later the same message about passwords reappeared and, once again I gave up.
    Trying again, I found WordPress most accommodative. It initially disappeared my comment but once again it suddenly appeared. A new comment was immediately accepted and appeared there and then. As did later attempts.

    I have no idea what has happened nor any idea what I did differently that caused WordPress to relent. But for any other commenter who might be currently being blocked my advice is to continue trying. With luck and persistence the present WordPress guardian dogs grow tired and give access.

    Liked by 3 people

  232. Thanks for the report Alan. The cumulative impression from many reports is of multiple oddnesses, with some variation between them. My guess is that there was a major upgrade to the WordPress.com software that has begun to ‘settle down’. Great to have you back, anyway.

    Liked by 2 people

  234. We just had the rear brakes of 1999 LX 470 R&R’d so reading about improving air quality hit home for me as back in 1999 MTBE was a “solution” that CA pushed big time.

    It seems folks in CA are paying a few cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in the state to deal with the unintended consequences of leaking tanks/gaskets. 1) and 2).

    REF-
    1) Does Station Competition Drive Gas Prices? – Energy Institute Blog (wordpress.com)
    2) https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/mtbe.52615/post-661225

    Mark

    Like

  235. “Junk Science Alert: Met Office Set to Ditch Actual Temperature Data in Favour of Model Predictions”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/23/junk-science-alert-met-office-set-to-ditch-actual-temperature-data-in-favour-of-model-predictions/

    I wondered at first if Chris Morrison’s piece in the Daily Sceptic might have exaggerated the situation, based on some selective quotes. I should have known him better and trusted him more. The report on which his article is based can be found here:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03775-z

    It certainly includes these jaw-dropping sentences:

    We propose a new indicator — the 20-year average temperature rise centred around the current year. This is estimated by blending observations for the past 10 years with climate model projections or forecasts for the next 10 years, and taking an average over the combined 20-year period.

    Like

  236. Mark – thanks for that link.

    partial quote from the usual suspects paper –

    “researchers and the policy community need to agree urgently on a metric for determining the current level of global warming for policy purposes. Once defined, the metric should be formally adopted for use in the context of the Paris agreement. It should be consistent with established IPCC practices, and should allow the crossing of 1.5 °C to be recognized without delay. Here, we propose a starting point for such a metric.”

    then –
    “Nonetheless, there is broad agreement on some things, such as that warming in 2022 was about 1.24 °C (with an uncertainty range between 1.0 °C and 1.6 °C), and that 1.0 °C warming was exceeded around 2011 or 2012.”

    and to end –
    “Other technical details remain to be discussed. These include whether the projection of the next ten years should include a specific forecast of natural variability (as in the WMO’s decadal forecasts), or whether the possible outcomes of variability should just be treated statistically.
    We recommend that work commence urgently to develop a system to put this definition into use. Researchers must ensure that it is ready well before the controversy begins over whether global warming has exceeded 1.5 °C.”

    then go back to the start – partial quote
    “That matters because this target is written into the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Breaching it will trigger questions on what needs to be done to meet the agreement’s goal — to curb human-induced climate change. For example, its aim of “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C” would then mean taking action to reverse global warming, not just stopping it — a much greater demand. A breach will also inevitably prompt assessments of the observed impacts of exceeding 1.5 °C.”

    probably not the best quote choice, but note “the policy community need to agree urgently on a metric for determining the current level of global warming for policy purposes”

    Take it they mean the developed West again.

    Like

  237. Please help.

    My memory is failing (I am 81 in March) and I have forgotten the arguments I used to use regarding climate change. So it seems to me that much of climate science makes a sense. After all, few dispute that 1. carbon dioxide causes temperatures to be higher (without it we would freeze) 2. Humans, by burning fossil fuels, have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and 3. Temperatures have risen (proven by measurement and changes in biota).
    Why then do we sceptics not link these facts? What exactly do we dispute? This is what I have forgotten. I have long since given away my sceptical books so I cannot reconstruct my own scepticism.

    Like

  238. Alan,

    Sceptics come in all shapes and sizes. Mostly we accept the science behind global man-made warming, but mostly we recognise that natural factors play a considerable part, as they always have done. We understand that a warming world brings benefits as well as down-sides. Thus we don’t accept the climate crisis narrative.

    Some of us (me especially) rail against the stupidity of arrogant virtue -signallers in the developed world who believe in energy policies that are not practicable, that are damaging to the environment, that will make life much worse, and which most of the world (especially the developing world, responsible for most ongoing emissions) is ignoring. We despair at people who believe they can hold back the tide, with no realistic plan, only endless earnest self-assurance and arrogance.

    There is plenty about which to be sceptical, including absurd claims to the effect that the world is warmer now than at any time in the last X hundred thousand years.

    Like

  240. Alan, the missing link is the final step to “therefore the world is on course for destruction.”
    Carbon dioxide causing warming is not the same as carbon dioxide causing the apocalypse.

    Like

  241. Jit, Mark. thank you both for trying to reinstall my climate-change scepticism. Unfortunately I wasn’t clear enough regarding my need. The three main planks of climate change are I believe unchallengable. It undoubtedly is happening and we are causing it. As you note JIT the bone of contention between us sceptics and climate change worriers is whether or not the amount of change caused by our emissions is serious or not. The arguments I require, and which I seem to have forgotten, are those that demonstrate that any changes will not cause serious harms. I must have had them in my armoury once, in order to win my arguments with a proportion of undergraduates in the past, but recently I seem not to remember them. I strongly suspect that I used my geological knowledge that high atmospheric CO2 was not a cause of unusual events, but today I now wonder if it is the RAPID change in CO2, and therefore of changing climates that are to be feared.

    At my stage in life I recognise that I personally have very little to worry about (apart from unjustifiable changes caused by phobias resulting from fossil fuel use).

    Like

  242. Alan,

    Sometimes we go round in a circle and end up back at the hockey stick. Much depends on the view one takes of its validity. That is why alarmists always circle the wagons when it comes under attack.

    If temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate to unprecedented levels, then maybe that should be a cause for concern. But if the increase in temperature is less dramatic than the alarmists claim (e.g. because the urban heat island effect is distorting the figures) and current temperatures are not higher than they were during the MWP or the Roman Climate Optimum (both periods when humanity flourished), then it’s difficult to see why we should be alarmed.

    Like

  243. Almost all the harms allegedly to be caused by CO2 are in the human domain. Only where humans have laid down roots does sea level rise matter. The corollary is that any civilisation worthy of the name can deal with such things – and far more easily than reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

    The key is of course the far higher levels in the past, which were rich in life. That makes the very notion of a climate apocalypse a ludicrous one. We also note that the many advantages of climate change are not to be spoken of (a good example being the higher productivity of plants under elevated CO2).

    If the rapidity of change was so important, then humans could translocate species to higher latitudes, and do so very easily.

    You know my theory about this: that we have life so easy now that we begin to worry about the most banal problems and magnify them out of all proportion.

    Liked by 1 person

  244. Alan – Only other point I would add. some seem to think they know what the ideal/optimal global temperature should be for our planet in today’s world.

    yes carbon dioxide causes temperatures to be higher & has warmed the planet, but is it really boiling the planet!!!

    anyway Merry Xmas & Happy New Year to all.

    Like

  245. I briefly thought about writing an article on this, but quickly decided against, as it seems highly distasteful to make political points regarding climate change based on death and suffering. No such qualms affect the BBC, however:

    “Bangladesh sees dramatic rise in lightning deaths linked to climate change”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67779223

    …Bangladesh, which is blighted by extreme weather and heavy storms, suffers an average of 300 deaths by lightning every year, according to the UN.

    That’s compared with fewer than 20 annually in the United States, which has almost double the population….

    …Lightning is a big killer in Bangladesh, claiming more lives annually than floods.

    The number of reported deaths due to lightning has also risen steeply, from just dozens per year in the 1990s.

    Nasa, the UN and the government of Bangladesh cite increased storminess due to climate change as a reason for the increase in deadly strikes.

    “Global warming, environmental changes, living patterns are all factors for the increasing death toll due to lightning,” Md Mijanur Rahman, the director general of Bangladesh’s disaster management division, told the BBC.

    Such is the seriousness, that the government has added lightning strikes to the official list of natural disasters the country faces which includes floods, cyclones, earthquakes and droughts.

    The majority of victims of lightning are farmers, who are vulnerable to the elements as they work the fields through the rainy monsoon months in the spring and summer….

    Because I find this distasteful, I confine myself to a few simple observations:

    1. Living patterns are also listed as a factor. I imagine massive population growth inevitably means that more people die from every possible cause, lightning included. Per capita figures don’t seem to form part of the equation for the BBC.

    2. The article also says this:

    …Activists say more tall trees need to be planted in remote rural areas to absorb the impact of the strikes, especially in places which have borne the brunt of deforestation….

    I suppose deforestation might be said to be one of the factors other than climate change that the BBC mentions so causally and so briefly.

    3. Wikipedia says this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning

    Lightning and climate change
    Due to the low resolution of global climate models, accurately representing lightning in these climate models is difficult, largely due to their inability to simulate the convection and cloud ice imperative which are fundamental to lightning formation. Research from the Future Climate for Africa programme demonstrates that using a convection-permitting model over Africa can more accurately capture convective thunderstorms and the distribution of ice particles. This research indicates climate change may increase the total amount of lightning only slightly: the total number of lightning days per year decreases, while more cloud ice and stronger convection leads to more lightning strikes occurring on days when lightning does occur.

    Which is rather different from the impression the BBC seeks to create.

    Also from Wikipedia is an effective debunk of the attempt by the BBC to create a false comparison between numbers of deaths from lightning in Bangladesh and in the USA:

    …About 70% of lightning occurs over land in the tropics[ where atmospheric convection is the greatest.

    This occurs from both the mixture of warmer and colder air masses, as well as differences in moisture concentrations, and it generally happens at the boundaries between them. The flow of warm ocean currents past drier land masses, such as the Gulf Stream, partially explains the elevated frequency of lightning in the Southeast United States. Because large bodies of water lack the topographic variation that would result in atmospheric mixing, lightning is notably less frequent over the world’s oceans than over land. The North and South Poles are limited in their coverage of thunderstorms and therefore result in areas with the least lightning….

    Once again, shame on you BBC.

    Liked by 1 person

  246. More propaganda from the BBC:

    “Climate change: How Christmas tree growers are responding”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-67649989

    I can’t be bothered to debunk it, but I notice two things:

    …The changes to our climate have only just begun….

    That claim is randomly thrown in without justification.

    Also, the article was written by two people, one of whom provided “analysis”- “Analysis by Paul Hudson, BBC Look North’s climate correspondent”.

    Think about that for a moment. A single BBC programme covering a small regional news area has its own climate change correspondent. How many of these people are embedded in the BBC? I suppose they all have to write something to justify their salaries. No wonder the propaganda is so relentless.

    Liked by 1 person

  247. Mark,

    I too was highly annoyed to read the BBC article on lightning deaths in Bangladesh. I am getting sick and tired of reading headlines from the BBC linking climate change to an increase in whatever, only to read in the bowels of the article a throwaway reference to a number of other factors that failed to gain headline attention. No attempt is made to quantify the relative strengths of causation to determine which factors are the more significant. All that matters to the BBC is that climate change is amongst them and so they have the glorious opportunity to push the climate doom narrative one more time. This is how NASA reports upon the increase in the article cited by the BBC:

    “Lightning experts cite a variety of reasons for the apparent increases in deadly strikes, including population growth, better reporting, and increasing storminess due to climate change. Though the cause is not clear, the timing is quite clear.”

    So the BBC headline should have been: “Bangladesh sees dramatic rise in lightning deaths although cause is unclear”.

    As you say, and for the umpteenth time, shame on you BBC.

    Like

  248. Bangladeshi lightning. I read the BBC report and found it informative. It gives information that a significant number of people are killed from these events and a significantly higher proportion than in the USA. It informs me that there has been a marked increase in people killed and the number of lightning strikes. It is authored by a number of people all with potentially Bangladeshi names so I presume that these claims are likely to be well informed.

    The BBC report also states that an increasing number of lightning strikes is a consequence of climate change is reported by NASA, The U.N, and the Bangladeshi Government. So the BBC is acting as a reporter of other people’s opinions. To criticise we would need to demonstrate that there are alternative opinions. If there has indeed been an increase in lightning strikes, surely this in itself constitutes some form of climate change?

    As I have written many times before, I believe the climate has changed and is changing, even that our introduction of more CO2 into the atmosphere has some effect upon this. What I don’t necessarily accept is that these changes will be catastrophic (but for families affected directly by increased lightning activity this might be hard to accept).

    Like

  249. Alan,

    With all due respect, I believe you are completely missing the point here. No one is denying that the article was interesting, nor that the BBC was reporting what reliable authorities had said. The problem is the editorial choices taken in order to maintain a narrative. As always, the BBC chose to promote the causative role of climate change, particularly by mentioning it in the title. There is nothing in its source material that justifies this – this was purely an editorial decision. They could just as easily have presented it as an article highlighting one of the unexpected side-effects of deforestation. After all, there is nothing in the statements they quote that would have precluded such an editorial decision. For all we know, there isn’t actually any increase in fatal strikes, only an increase in the reporting of them — even NASA was keen to maintain such open-mindedness by referring to an ‘apparent increase’. So why didn’t the BBC lead with that angle, i.e. that there is just a growing awareness of the risk of lightning strike mortality in Bangladesh?

    The bottom line is that NASA says ‘cause unknown’ but the BBC prefers to go with ‘linked to climate change’. It has an agenda and it is reflected in its editorialising.

    Like

  250. John. Also with respect, perhaps you are seeing what you want to see in BBC reporting. What I see is that without the BBC and its presumed Bangladeshi authors I would not have known anything about increased lightning strikes (and it is increased strikes not just fatal ones). I repeat my question – if lightning strikes are increasing noticeably, is that not itself a form of changed climate?

    Yes you can accuse the BBC of biased reporting by slanting the message, but so long as the basic message remains, I can discount that and do what you and Mark have done, extract the essentials and discount the slant.

    The BBC might also suggest that their slant is appropriate. They might argue that the majority of their readers want to be informed about how Bangladeshi weather changes might lodge within an overall climate story – something of more direct interest to them.

    Like

  251. Alan,

    The point I’m making is not dissimilar to that made by Patrick Brown when he complained about the simplified narrative in science journals. In his case, the simplifications related to the causation of wildfires, in which non-climatic factors are downplayed. The same thing happens in other subject areas and within other genres of journalism. And that is what the BBC is doing here.

    Like

  253. It was down to nine items at 12:35am, going to ten as this comment hit. I will report further in Tech Notes in due course. Sorry for the interrupt. Normal service will be better understood shortly. (Mark and Jit, I’m expecting to prove you right. But not quite yet.)

    Liked by 1 person

  254. There was a short time in December when there were no items – the only time I recall this happening. Large number of items usually signify a controversy is occurring ( or in the case of December , two controversies).

    Liked by 1 person

  255. Alan, thanks, I didn’t know about (or spot) that no item phase. My hunch is that WordPress isn’t able to measure controversy and use that in determining how many items to show us! Something simpler and deterministic. I hope.

    Like

  257. i had a number of recent points to make but instead of making them here I made them on NotAlot hoping he would open up a new post on them
    One was the Bangladesh lightening story
    It’s fishy .. there is huge scope for observation bias, and sample bias,
    Before farmer died in storm ..not much detail logged
    Now everyone has a mobile phone and government is super interested in logging as many lightening deaths
    There may well be LESS than there used to be, but more reach official tallies

    Liked by 1 person

  258. On Notalot some people seem interested in exposing that Jim Dale has no academic qualifications despite him closing down other people by questioning theirs
    However I find that on GBnews he comes across as so raving, that he is a huge asset to skeptics
    Just like Dr Shola is on race

    Like

  259. Stew – I find it infuriating that Jim Dale never shows any charts/evidence for his claims, yet the other guy always has them (IPPC & others) to hand, but they are not shown on screen.

    Liked by 1 person

  260. It never ceases to amaze me how ready the Guardian is to print letters from consumers ripped off by “green cr*p”, yet nothing dents their enthusiasm for it. Here’s the latest:

    “E.ON is too dim to get our promised solar panels to work
    We’ve been struggling for 21 months after paying £3,000 deposit”

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/jan/04/eon-is-too-dim-to-get-our-promised-solar-panels-to-work

    I’ve been struggling for 21 months to get functioning solar panels and a battery installed by E.ON. I paid the £3,000 deposit in March 2022. After the initial survey in April, it disappeared without giving me an installation date. In November, it finally installed the scaffolding, damaging my satellite dish in the process, then failed to show up for the installation appointment. A second appointment was missed because E.ON sent the parts to the wrong warehouse.

    The panels and the battery were finally fitted, poorly, last December, but, because of missing parts, the system could not be commissioned and therefore exported electricity to the grid for free. This took a further two months to resolve.

    The battery stopped working within four months and, so far, E.ON has failed to fix it. We have therefore lost more than £400 because we’re unable to store electricity. I have never once been able to speak a manager, despite impressing on them that, in the midst of this, I was diagnosed with stage four cancer and enduring the most difficult time in my life.

    It’s an appalling story, and an appalling indictment of much that is wrong with the UK at the moment. The irony in the first two lines of the Guardian’s response is almost off the scale:

    This is the sort of service you’d expect from one of the many fly-by-night outfits that jumped on the eco-energy bandwagon.

    A shortage of solar installers across the UK and Europe is hampering green energy targets….

    Liked by 1 person

  261. Earlier this week, on this Open Mic thread, we discussed the BBC’s arguably dishonest reporting of lightning strikes and deaths in Bangladesh. The Daily Sceptic is on the case, and IMO it’s well worth a read:

    “BBC Claims Climate Change is Behind Increased Lightning Deaths in Bangladesh – But It’s Utter Nonsense”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2024/01/04/bbc-claims-climate-change-is-behind-increased-lightning-deaths-in-bangladesh-but-its-utter-nonsense/

    Like

  262. Mark – as usual you seem to find relevant & interesting links.

    after reading the above link, I found this comment below the post interesting –

    “varmint 11 hours ago
    Mike Hulme in a new book called “Climate Change Isn’t Everything” calls out what he refers to as “Climatism”. —-This is the ideology that the explanation for all social. economic and ecological phenomena is human changes to the climate. The only way to solve all the political social and ethical problems of the world is by addressing “climate change”. It is an ideology that sees everything through the prism of climate change and is how the “climate left” frame their political agenda. ——The “Climate left” includes ofcourse the BBC. If their is a storm, flood, or drought anywhere in the world, the climatists at the BBC will by default assume those to be caused by humans and no other explanation will be sought. ——–The dangers of assuming everything that happens is due to humans is that we will end up with very bad policies eg Net Zero, and that is what is happening all over the western world where governments insist that if we only get rid of fossil fuels none of those weather events will happen.”

    not sure if this book has already been covered here, but partial quote from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Climate-Change-isnt-Everything-Liberating/dp/150955615X

    “In this far-sighted analysis, Mike Hulme reveals how climatism has taken hold in recent years, becoming so pervasive and embedded in public life that it is increasingly hard to resist it without being written off as a climate denier. He confronts this dangerously myopic view that reduces the condition of the world to the fate of global temperature or the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to the detriment of tackling serious issues as varied as poverty, liberty, biodiversity loss, inequality and international diplomacy. We must not live as though climate alone determines our present and our future.”

    Liked by 1 person

  263. As usual, after reading above links, found this link – https://iai.tv/articles/the-dangerous-obsession-with-net-zero-matt-hulme-auid-2693

    partial quote from Mike Hulme – “I believe collapsing global policymaking for the future around this singular goal is both misguided and dangerous: misguided because ‘net-zero’ obscures many important welfare and ecological goals; and dangerous because such a narrow policy focus creates unwelcome secondary consequences.”

    maybe move this to a Net Zero thread if deemed relevant.

    Like

  264. I met Mike Hume when I joined the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA, a rather quiet man who, eventually I recognised, did not exactly fit with his social science colleagues. Now I wish I had made more effort to discuss matter’s climatique with him. Eventually he left UEA for pastures new. Good to learn he still ploughs deeply and straight.

    Liked by 2 people

  266. “Refunds after delays on UK’s first battery-powered trains”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-67917719

    Passengers on the UK’s first battery-powered trains are to get refunds over delays, the Liverpool City Region mayor has said.

    Steve Rotheram said the money would be returned for weekly, monthly, term-time or annual tickets for the Kirkby line in Merseyside last year.

    He said it was a “gesture of goodwill” for the “teething issues”.

    The line became the UK’s first £500m battery-powered trains last year but has been plagued by delays.

    Mr Rotherham said: “We anticipated that we would encounter some teething issues and disruption during the delivery of our new station and trains, but I’ll be the first to say that services on the Kirkby line have fallen short of the standards that our passengers deserve….”…

    …In October, the new £80m Headbolt Lane station was opened to serve the battery-powered trains.

    Like

  267. Some positive news on the UK nuclear front for a change:
    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgzGwJchvfdnrgjBNJFTmHtbjmNvd?projector=1

    EdF do seem justified in blowing their own trumpet.
    If they can extend the lives of the last couple of AGRs, it will improve the dispatchable resource situation a bit and help with issues like inertia.

    The last line of this para caught my eye:
    “Sizewell B power station in Suffolk has so far generated over 250TWh in its 29 years of operation and has the potential to generate for at least a further 20 years beyond its current end of generation date of 2035. EDF is investing in the station to allow a final investment decision to be taken on this during 2025; securing a sustainable commercial model is necessary to enable such a decision.”
    That sounds like they are pressuring the govt, following the lead set by the wind merchants.

    They also mention achieving an “average realised price at £90 per MWh”. That seems high for plants which must be fully amortised by now but I haven’t got a clue how the power market works.

    Liked by 1 person

  268. Essential viewing tonight? Billed as “Murder meets climate change!” Goodness me. the programme is “After the flood.” Geeze!!!!

    Liked by 1 person

  269. A very sad story. Pity the Guardian doesn’t get the irony:

    “‘It’s so cold’: leaseholders left without central heating in London block
    Man in 80s and mother of baby among residents hit by cold conditions amid dispute over who is responsible for repair”

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/11/its-so-cold-leaseholders-left-without-central-heating-in-london-block

    Dozens of leaseholders, including a man in his 80s, the mother of an eight-week-old baby and a woman in remission from cancer, have been left without central heating since October in a block for which the freehold is owned by a company that has made nearly £12m.

    With temperatures already dropping below zero and Arctic winds forecast to blow in colder weather next week, the oldest residents have been huddling in hats and blankets to keep warm at Lee Court, an art deco block of 48 apartments in Lewisham, London. Some walls are mouldy and residents complain they are covered in condensation.

    This week the UK Health and Security Agency issued amber cold health alerts for much of the country, warning of an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, and chest infections and a potential “serious impact on health, particularly for older people and those with pre-existing health conditions”….

    …“It’s so cold,” said George Martin, a leaseholder in his mid-80s who has been wrapping himself in blankets. “It has brought on a bit of sciatica. It’s disgusting it hasn’t been [fixed]. We have had freezing cold weather and it’s going to get worse.”…

    …The heating for the whole block is usually switched on in October but for this winter a leak was discovered and it has not yet been fixed. The managing agent provided electric heaters to each of the flats but that has not resolved the problem….

    Like

  270. Anyone in Barrow ?
    IET does a lot of free talks these days
    Thu 18th : Tidal energy and Morecambe Bay (Barrow in Furness)
    We welcome George Aggidis back to speak to us on an untapped Green energy resource.
    https://events.theiet.org/events/tidal-energy-and-morecambe-bay-barrow-in-furness/
    LIST : https://events.theiet.org/search/

    ================

    25 Jan 2024 / 5:00pm – 9:00pm
    Wings over Windermere The Only Replica Seaplane
    @Castle Green Hotel, Kendal, United Kingdom

    Like

  271. Cheshire 30 Jan 2024 / 6:00pm – 8:30pm
    Towards Net Zero – Domestic Heating Now and in the Future
    Most buildings will have to become zero carbon.
    … Professor Counsell will review what are the approaches needed in the domestic heating area to achieve Net Zero by 2050 and present a case for the immediate need for accurate temperature controlled heat pump systems and battery storage assisted Heat Pumps in the longer term.”

    FFS !

    Leatherhead : 07 Feb 2024 / 10:00am – 12:00pm
    Towards Net Zero
    “Peter Carson will describe a number of scenarios leading to “Net Zero” Greenhouse Gas emissions by 2050.”

    Falmer 2oth Feb
    Is Hydrogen THE energy vector for Net Zero?
    Hydrogen is being hyped as THE energy vector for the transition to net zero. However, whilst it will be essential for the decarbonisation …

    5th March Online event
    Revolutionising Steel: The Future of Hydrogen-Based Steel and Its Applications
    by the guy from the Swedish firm aiming set up a project

    Like

  272. Our self-esteemed global leader* Roger Hallam thinks that if 40% of experts think that something is possible in the next ten years then that means that the experts think that there is a 40% chance of it happening in the next ten years:

    Also, he implies that the alleged 40% chance of the thing happening is due to climate change even though more than 80% of the experts who think that the thing is possible think that it would most likely be caused by distribution problems. Some of the experts think that such problems could be caused by extreme weather but that’s a long way from saying that they would be due to climate change.

    Eight hours after that tweet, Hallam tweeted something about ‘the horrific collapse of analytical intelligence of the political and administrative classes’. Perhaps his subconscious had been trying to tell him something. (In the same tweet, he said that ‘Climate is not the #climate – it is to everything being fucked up forever’. My analytical intelligence isn’t capable of working out what he might have meant by that.)

    The misrepresented paper** is open-access:

    https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/20/14783

    ===
    *Hallam is holding a ‘global leadership formation’ event tomorrow on Zoom.

    **I think the paper misrepresented by Hallam misrepresents itself. Its abstract says something that’s not mentioned in the Results section – that some of the experts reckon that there is a >80% chance of UK food supply disruption causing social unrest that will see 30k people injured in one of the next ten years. The Results section says only that 38% of the 58 experts reckon that there is a 20-50% chance of that and 3% reckon that there is a 50-80% chance. (Note the overlap. Surely that’s dodgy too. Should it not have been 51-80%? And aren’t those groups rather large? There’s a big difference between a 20% chance and a 50% chance. I haven’t looked at the spreadsheet linked from the SI section but given the tinyness of the 50-80% support – 3%, or only two of the 58 experts – it seems likely that most of the 20-50% supporters support the low end of that range.)

    Liked by 1 person

  274. Oh dear. Really?

    “‘Her waters break and the flood comes’: author behind new Jodie Comer film on motherhood in an apocalyptic London”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/14/the-end-we-start-from-megan-hunter-jodie-comer-film-flooded-london-climate-crisis

    At an unknown point in the near future, a woman is giving birth. As her contractions start, her home in London is flooded and, as her baby is born, it becomes clear that a climate catastrophe of biblical proportions has begun. A sea of water invades the city as the woman takes her first postpartum, post-apocalyptic pee, then flees for higher ground with her newborn in a car seat….

    Like

  275. Is Azerbaijani climate science sexist? The Guardian reports an all male organising committee (28 men) for COP 29. This compares with 63% of the COP 28 committee who were women

    Like

  276. More from universities keen to establish that climate change is always bad, but without really explaining how it works:

    “Global heating pushes mountain goats into more nocturnal lifestyle
    University of Sassari research suggests change in habits might expose animals to more predators”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/17/global-heating-pushes-mountain-goats-into-more-nocturnal-lifestyle

    Global heating is pushing mountain goats into a more nocturnal lifestyle that could expose them to more predators, scientists have found….

    …They found that on hotter days, the normally diurnal species was more likely to be active during the night….

    Well, knock me down with a feather. Yet they also say this, which doesn’t really give me much confidence in their findings:

    …“We expected higher levels of nocturnal activity in Switzerland where wolves [one of the animal’s main predators] were not present, but we found the opposite. We found that activity is higher in the areas with wolves.”…

    …Although we did not collect data on this, we can conjecture that their capacity to acquire food will be lower [during the night] and this will have consequences on fitness and population dynamics….

    Like

  277. A week or two back there was some discussion of a study which looked at the impact of offshore wind farm structures causing disturbances in the water which could affect marine species (can’t remember the thread).
    At the time I thought “poppycock”, to put it politely.
    However tonight’s Springwatch had a feature on seals which explained the extraordinary sensitivity of their whiskers to underwater turbulence. The claim was that they can detect the disturbance caused by a fish at up to 180 metres! That may be an exaggeration but, even if it only 10% of that, the turbulence around windfarm stuctures must drown out all other signals over a huge area – like trying to hear a bird’s song while standing next to a jet engine.

    Liked by 1 person

  279. COUNTRYFILE Minute 9 to past minute 21 was a anti-local ONSHORE oil/gas extraction CAMPAIGN by Tom Heap
    Most of it was activist talk with pro oil getting 3 mins
    1 min each from Egdon exec, villagers happy with oil site, government statement
    The anti Biscathorpe oil people got a chunk near the beginning then the final say too
    The CPRE guy was on then court protesters, then CPRE guy

    One of the oilfields featured is tucked away in quiet corner of a village in my region
    and at 663 barrels per day probably generates more than £1m every 2 weeks before costs/taxes
    from a site which is about 2 bungalow plots

    Like

  280. Interesting they claim here
    Heap “All of these plans to drill for fossil fuels are in England ONLY
    cos the govs of WSNi don’t want any new onshore” (see map)

    Surely truth is , that there is no easy ONSHORE oil/gas to extract in WSNi

    Like

  282. This portrait of Roger ‘Che’ Hallam was used in a recent opinion piece in de Volkskrant, the third-largest Dutch daily newspaper:

    To balance things a bit*, here is Hallam himself in April 2018** declaring that he is a ‘numbers man’***:

    ===
    *OK, not really.

    **Hallam’s KCL lecture was effectively the foundation of XR, IB, JSO and many other similar cultsgroups around the world. So it had a huge impact. Well done, Roger. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t wrong in many, many ways. (A trivial example: Hallam got his Mitfords in a twist.)

    ***He really, really isn’t. Is there a way of making that YouTube snippet play in a loop on YouTube or must you resample it and upload it elsewhere?

    Like

  284. Remarkable, thanks Mike. As Roger says in the first footnote:

    I am the answer to the trivia question: Who is the only person to be mentioned in both the Climategate emails and Wikileaks emails? In both cases I was mentioned in conversations about how to suppress my work.

    This one goes back to 2007 and neither Steve nor Roger knew about Mann’s baleful intervention.

    Like

  285. Jeff Bezos talking about the benefit to humanity of increasing energy usage per capita indefinitely.

    Published by Lex Fridman a month ago but I was only just pointed to it. I don’t know the moment we need to go and live in space but he seems bang on in his attitude to energy and human flourishing. (Just going on the first 12 minutes.)

    Like

  287. Michel Forst, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, is extremely worried about recent British legislation that restricts the right to peaceful protest.

    Click to access Aarhus_SR_Env_Defenders_statement_following_visit_to_UK_10-12_Jan_2024.pdf

    He is also…

    …distressed to see how environmental defenders are derided by some of the mainstream UK media and in the political sphere. By deriding environmental defenders, the media and political figures put them at risk of threats, abuse and even physical attacks from unscrupulous persons who rely on the toxic discourse to justify their own aggression. The toxic discourse may also be used by the State as justification for adopting increasingly severe and draconian measures against environmental defenders.

    I see. Don’t deride people who think that Britain can get to Net Zero by 2025 and that that would be a good idea; who think that drilling for oil and gas is genocide; who think that unless Britain is run by citizens’ assemblies it will be taken over by fascists; who think that in a decade or so (presumably when Britain is run by citizens’ assemblies) many of today’s Tory and Labour politicians will be convicted of treason and hanged; who sit in the middle of a major road to protest against the mass death of plankton that’ll mean that we’ll run out of oxygen soon; who think that the correct spelling of ‘consistency’ is ‘consistence’, with the second E pronounced like the Y in the first spelling, and that ‘jurisprudence’ should sound like ‘juropedence’; who think that when scientists use the word ‘could’ rather than ‘will’ they are exhibiting signs of bourgeois repression; who say that Labour winning the next election would certainly lead to mass murder on a scale unknown in human history; who say that climate change will make boys gang-rape your mother on the kitchen table then burn your eyes out with a cigarette; who fly halfway around the world for some jolly holibobs then fly back to Britain to block a road and stop people getting to work, thereby highlighting the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions; who compare themselves to Gandhi and their political opponents to Hitler; who call themselves conscientious protectors; who get their tits out in the middle of a London bridge to stop coal-mining in South America; who march in a circle in someone’s cosy living room badly singing ‘people gonna rise like the water, climate justice now’; et cetera ad infinitum.

    Please don’t do that or you’ll distress the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.

    Thanks, Michel. I’ll bear that in mind.

    Liked by 2 people

  290. Have just learned that the “Doomsday Clock” (for as long as I can remember being a few minutes to midnight) has a component relating to climate change. Gosh!!

    Like

  291. Alan,

    The problem with the doomsday clock is that it takes many existential threats into account and some are bound to be much more relevant than others. For example, the German military’s current working assumption that World War III will start no later than 2025, renders thoughts of climate Armageddon somewhat irrelevant to the clock’s mechanism.

    To stay focused, however, you always have the option of the Climate Clock, and its countdown to the point when the depletion of the so-called carbon budget will lead to the breach of the 1.5 deg C warming limit:

    https://climateclock.world

    And the best thing is that you can buy one to put on your own desk:

    “Perfect for schools, universities and offices, this clock is portable and built for action.”

    Built for action, indeed! And not only that, it is the perfect gift:

    “Want to put a clock on the desk of your favorite climate-champion? Know a climate denier who needs to get ‘clocked’?”

    Ha ha! I see what they did there. It’s funny because it implies violence.

    Liked by 1 person

  292. There’s a climate clock Global Ambassador too. Just one of the many green jobs, I suppose.

    Like

  294. I was going to ask who on earth funds these people (and more to the point, why?). Then I looked at the list of their “organizational (sic) partners” and found the answer – it’s the usual list of the usual suspects.

    Like

  295. So Hinckley Point C is going to be late into service and cost (even) more than previously forecast.
    There’s a surprise – not!!
    Gory details here:
    https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-announces-Hinkley-Point-C-delay-and-big-rise-i

    One particularly disappointing para:
    “He said that 70% of equipment had now been delivered for unit 1, and “many risks are behind us, like the unique British instrument and control system which has been designed and manufactured, with testing under way”. He added: “We had to substantially adapt the EPR design to satisfy British regulations, requiring 7000 changes, adding 35% more steel and 25% more concrete. This adaptation and approval process is the same for other developers bringing new designs into Britain. Now the design of our UK plant is complete in detail meaning contractors have certainty over exactly what is needed to build the plant.”
    What on earth are they doing designing a “unique British I&C system”? That reeks of not-invented-here conceit/arrogance.
    Then why were so many changes required? Do the French really know so little about designing and building nuclear power plants? The nuclear industry really needs to get a grip on this insularity and learn to accept other countries’ standards.
    This looks so woeful when contrasted with Kepco building nearly twice the capacity (4 x 1400 MW) for significantly less money.

    Like

  296. Mark, I’m a bit iffy about some of the same legal stuff that alarms Forst but I’m also a bit iffy about Forst himself. Take this bit:

    It is very difficult to understand what could justify denying the jury the opportunity to hear the reason for the defendant’s action, and how a jury could reach a properly informed decision without hearing it, …

    That almost makes sense* but he continues with this:

    … in particular at the time of environmental defenders’ peaceful but ever more urgent calls for the government to take pressing action for the climate.

    Which seems to say that defendants have a greater right to explain their motives if their pals are making a lot of legal noise about something, which is surely bollocks, law-wise.

    ===
    *It is sometimes not very difficult at all to understand why judges might put restrictions on what protesters are allowed to say. For example, last year a jury trial had to be abandoned because the defendant (Gail Bradbrook) kept insisting that she should be allowed to read out 75 pages of waffle about, amongst many other things, billionaire media moguls deciding who gets elected; a new law she wants to introduce; Pacha Mama, Rosa Parks, Oscar Wilde, Alan Turing, Jolyon Maugham, David Attenborough, Rupert Murdoch, Hannah Arendt, Gandhi, MLK Jr, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Emmeline Pankhurst (including a ‘noble art of window smashing’ Pankhurst quote that’s prolly fake); Ecuador, France, Poland, Hungary, South Africa, Ghana, Portugal, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, the Cayman Islands, Holland, Slovenia, Colombia, Russia, Iran, Egypt, El Salvador, Liberia, Jamaica, Suriname, Namibia, Latvia and Liechtenstein; her unfolding sacred battle; how the Vatican enabled the colonisation of the Americas; slavery; rolling a large ball up a hill; how jet streams are actually ocean currents; breadbasket failures; how our current mass extinction is the sixth because there were actually five earlier ones and people only know about one of them; a pathway to human extinction; plastic in breast milk; the UK’s Climate Change Committee, which was established in 2021; cognitive misers; how new licences for coal mines and North Sea oil and gas are genocide; Heathrow’s CO2 emissions; tax havens; the Nuremberg Trials; police protecting the killers who drive climate breakdown; GB News; a journalist not photographing the defendant’s solar panels; air pollution; the super-rich building bunkers; cargo bikes and shared EVs; HS2; voles and bats; the defendant’s humility; the defendant’s achievements; more humility (plus peace, love and respect); solastalgia, eco-grief and biophilia; how the defendant is legally a trustee of the entire planet; and anger, grief and despair.

    Bradbrook wasn’t allowed to read all 75 pages in her second trial for breaking the bank’s window but she was allowed to read some of it. She was found guilty but spared jail.

    Godnose why.

    Like

  297. Just read a news headline indicating the heatwave currently affecting the Costa coasts of Spain is a result of climate heating (or the climate crisis). Can we have some in deepest, darkest Norfolk?

    Like

  298. Does anyone know why Ian Fry, the first and so far only Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’s Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change, has resigned? I think he resigned on 8th December last year and was only halfway through his mandate. I’ve found a colleague saying that the resignation was unexpected but can’t find an explanation anywhere.

    Fry is the Australian (and Tuvaluan) bloke who wrote to the British government last August saying that he was gravely concerned about the length of the prison terms handed to the two Just Stop Oil protesters who climbed the QEII Bridge (where one of them, a German, ranted about ‘our genocidal government). He gave a lecture at KCL on Wednesday via a video-link, presumably from Oz, and didn’t look unwell. He said that he is no longer a Special Rapporteur but didn’t say why.

    Incidentally, the deadline for applying to be the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’s second Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change was 19th Jan. Oh well.

    Liked by 1 person

  300. after been directed to the Guardian website by Mark on another post, I noticed on left side of articles they have this link “Supported by theguardian.org” – About this content – links to partial quote –

    “The only restriction to the Guardian’s coverage on this site is where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is prohibited under US law from directly funding or earmarking funds to: (a) influence the outcome of any domestic or foreign election for public office; or (b) support lobbying or other attempts to influence legislation (local, state, federal, or foreign). This means any communications to the public in which a view is expressed about a specific legislative proposal, and the recipients of the communications are urged through a ‘call to action’ to contact government officials, must provide a reasoned, objective consideration of facts and issues in a full and fair manner that enables third parties to develop their own positions on any legislation that may be discussed.

    Unless otherwise stated, all statements and materials posted on the website, including any statements regarding specific legislation, reflect the views of the individual contributors and not those of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, theguardian.org, or the Guardian.

    Liked by 2 people

  302. I think someone mentioned Bill McGuire in a recent post or comment at CliScep or perhaps they linked to an article that did mention him. I can’t refind what I’m thinking of but here he is with Charlie Gardner (who certainly was mentioned here recently: he’s the probably formerly bigly globetrotting climate activist who prompted Jit’s opinion piece in EDP*), Vicki Hird and Rupert Read calling for people to ‘walk the talk’ (Read) when it comes to GHG emissions:

    The walls behind McGuire looked almost as bad as my own, climate-wise, so I did a bit of googling… And indeed his house has (or had – its EPC has expired) an energy rating of F, which is the second worst band and is prolly where my house belongs. (His house is apparently worth £1.4 million. Mine? You can have it for half that if you promise not to come and look at it first. That deal ends in six days. OK, 600 days. OK, six years. Look, it’s yours for fourpence halfpenny as long as you pay me in advance.)

    A random quote from the ever-doomy Professor Emeritus McGuire in that video:

    The thing is, the future is looking grim but if we want to prevent it becoming cataclysmic then we all have to do our bit.

    Right. But ‘our bit’ doesn’t include insulating our houses, obvz.

    Oops! My mistake. McGuire is a supporter of Insulate Britain.

    So of course he does think that we should insulate our houses.

    Or some of us.

    ===
    *See my comment in that thread for info about a v recent response to Jit’s piece.

    Liked by 1 person

  303. “Bats have a unique superpower. Climate change is turning it into a liability.”

    That ability being flying. Clicking on this story in Vox I was prepared to be disappointed. And I was. But I was also surprised.

    But as scientists are starting to learn, it also comes with some serious drawbacks. Especially as climate change continues warming the planet. Bats’ flight-adapted physiologies make them highly susceptible to severe droughts and heat waves. Plus, the proliferation of wind turbines — a climate solution that provides energy without harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and one we’ll need more of to combat warming — is killing them in droves.

    They were half-way there with the comment about the bat kills – and then let themselves down by not realising that wind turbines are far from necessary.

    https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/24048465/bats-endangered-climate-change

    Like

  304. The other mistake was the claim that wind turbines don’t involve “carbon” emissions.

    Like

  305. “EU mulls emergency aid for collapsing solar producers
    The European Commission will make a statement Monday as state-backed Chinese competition fuels a wave of bankruptcies in Europe.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-mulls-emergency-aid-for-collapsing-solar-producers/

    The European Commission is in early-stage talks on emergency measures to buoy drowning EU solar manufacturers who say Chinese subsidies are suffocating the industry, according to two people familiar with the matter.

    On Monday, the Commission will make a statement on the teetering sector at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, while MEPs are also expected to debate ideas to prop up the industry….

    …The talks come as the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC), the body representing photovoltaic producers, this week sent a letter to Brussels appealing for “urgent” measures including a swift, EU-led buyout of their inventories.

    The group argues that subsidized Chinese mass production of solar modules — which currently sell for half the price of their EU equivalents — paired with an oversupply of panels in the bloc makes it impossible for the bloc’s manufacturers to shift their stocks.

    “We’re really seeing a wave of bankruptcies” in Europe, said ESMC Secretary General Johan Lindahl, citing recent insolvencies including Dutch panel producer Exasun and Austrian module manufacturer Energetic. Germany is also currently in 11th-hour talks with Meyer Burger after the Swiss solar firm said it would halt production of modules in the country as early as April.

    “Everything points to the fact that Chinese manufacturers are selling below their production cost,” Lindahl said, and now the result is “very, very worrying … We’re about to lose the industry in Europe.”

    The EU is hoping to bring 30 gigawatts of solar production capacity back to the bloc by 2030 as part of its proposed Net-Zero Industry Act, after losing much of its industry to Beijing a decade ago. EU countries produced just 1.5 GW of their own solar panels last year….

    Nothing to do with expensive electricity in the EU, thanks to a high penetration of renewables? Nothing to do with the fact that China can make then cheap, partly because they rely on slave labour, and partly because they generate electricity using cheap coal? Oversupply of panels doesn’t imply low demand for their product? I thought the EU was supposed to be all about market competition and the banning of state subsidies.

    Like

  306. A question : Burning coal is evil, cos coal is made from hundreds of years of dead trees
    so you are releasing all that carbon at once.
    but was there a balance at the start ?
    If fossil fuels contain trillions of tonnes of carbon that is no longer in the soil ,surely the soil and surface biology are deprived of lots of carbon that they used to have .

    Am I missing something

    Like

  307. Stew, plants evolved under much higher levels of CO2 than they have recently had to live with. This was stripped out of the atmosphere in a variety of ways, including the formation of the coal measures. Plants have been half-starved for a long time, leading to the evolution of C4 photosynthesis, which is more competitive at low CO2 levels.

    There is no question that plants would thrive at higher levels of CO2.

    Liked by 1 person

  308. Plants thriving at higher concentrations of CO2 is amply demonstrated by its use in greenhouses to improve growth rates and yields.

    Liked by 1 person

  309. Greens don’t debate they run away
    but yesterday I took on one and he doesn’t run away
    He comes up with gotcha replies ..which actually don’t stand close analysis

    eg I said “What would be the surface area if you made all of the UK’s energy from solar and wind ?
    Mega It’s in David MacKay’s book”
    he replies that h’s dead and Osford Uni have updated his work
    And gives a a screenshot
    highlighteing the words

    Last month, Brian O’Callaghan and colleagues from the University of Oxford published a policy paper looking at the potential for solar and wind to meet Great Britain’s energy needs.1 Here’s their summary.

    Far from being an “appaling delusion” they think that its “wind and solar resources are more than sufficient to meet ^all its energy needs*, both practically and economically”.

    The tweeters claim is bold , and bound to be flawed
    I track down the article , search it on Twitter and find 80% of comments call it out
    Firstly many say it’s NOT all energy it’s electricity only
    That far from it being an authoritative anaylysis by Oxford University it’s rather PR by an Oxford GreenDream academic
    respun and promoted by GreenDream activist Hannah Ritchie
    and that she provided that line at the start for my guy to cherrypick
    although her own article ends
    “To be clear: this does not mean that this is the ‘optimal’ electricity mix in 2050. Not least because energy storage costs would be very high.

    The report reduced surface area by saying much windpower would be floating ,
    (but we know that is an unproven technology)

    Liked by 2 people

  310. Stew, the floating wind turbines will take up surface area and will be responsible for killing birds and displacing them from foraging areas. Also, if you google news on Hywind, you’ll see that it is having to be shut down for maintenance, the turbines transported to Norway to be serviced.

    Liked by 1 person

  311. A rather ironic bit of news…
    A study shows that using ammonia as an alternative fuel for shipping because ” if, and when, we make a shift to ammonia, it is to solve the problem of using fossil fuels, and at the moment it seems like we might end up creating more problems instead,” to quote the last line of this article:
    https://gcaptain.com/ammonia-marine-fuel-switch-may-cause-new-environmental-issues-warns-study/?subscriber=true&goal=0_f50174ef03-104a176e39-170410014&mc_cid=104a176e39&mc_eid=9275323244

    Liked by 1 person

  312. This evening the BBC 1 news began, as expected with more than a ten minute session upon the King’s cancer. In stark contrast, Channel 4’s news did not (and hasn’t for now more than 20 mins). When I commented upon this unexpected absence ‘she who should be listened to’ commented that channel 4’s news was like the Guardian (I.e. not the BBC) and the Guardian is not overly interested in the Monarchy (This despite the lead story in today’s Guardian being the King’s cancer).
    Given Cliscept’s almost universal linkage of The Guardian and the BBC mentalities, I am now somewhat confused. My wife obviously doesn’t agree with you all.

    Like

  313. Then in my response to my point that granny taxpayer should not go in subsidies to the wind powered grid ..he’s got another screenshot gotcha
    Look here’s a Guardian article saying that Fossil Fuels have had loads of subsidies
    For a a start that is mere whataboutery
    but when I check the article it’s research for the LibDems ..ie its reallyPRasNews FROM the Libdems
    saying that when an oil corp pays £100m in tax and claims £3m in site clean up costs against tax
    that is a £3m subsidy .. which it isn’t
    I point that out …https://twitter.com/No2BS/status/1754552020512489635
    His response is to ..not respond but rather open up a new attack in another part of the thread

    Like

  314. Alan – I am also somewhat confused, what was the question again?

    ps – I agree with She –

    “After receiving honorable discharges from the British Army in Palestine in 1918, Professor Holly, young Leo Vincey and their orderly Job embark on an expedition into a previously unexplored region of central-east Africa. They discover the lost city of Kuma after Leo receives a mysterious map revealing the city’s whereabouts.

    This lost realm is ruled by Ayesha, who is also known as “She-Who-Waits” and “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.” Ayesha is a beautiful, immortal queen, who believes Leo is the reincarnation of her former lover, the priest Kallikratees, whom she had killed two thousand years before when she found him in the intimate embrace of another woman. It was she who met with Leo in Palestine, giving him the map to Kuma, and urging him to travel there. Leo is filled with a dogged determination to do so, as he sees visions of Ayesha beckoning to him with outstretched arms.”

    Funny how you remember odd trivia.

    Like

  315. Do you mean Tuesday or Monday ?
    We didnt have any local ITV news Monday , we had ITV news speculating for an hour instead

    I find Channel 4 news so Guardian it’s highly offensive
    endless sneering at Trump and Boris etc.

    BBCnews is garbage but it’s not as hatey

    The BBC is LondonSupremacist, WokeSupremacist, GreenSupremacist
    so is lefty but is not actually Labour supporting
    It does hate Trump and hate Tories
    However it depends on establishment for it’s money
    so is ken to show it’ supports the king ..he is a Green Supremacist (and hypocrite too)
    It’s politics was strongly in favour of hard lockdowns and Covid doom
    So it played along when the government was like that

    Like

  317. em, cos that is what playground bullies do
    “Oh look at that kid over there he smells” the bully kids point
    and coerce the other kids to join in to make a lynch mob

    Surely we tackle arguments not the man
    Libmob seem to monster their political opponents, and use that as licence to behave like monsters to that person

    Like

  318. From the Knowledge:
    “Russia is in the grip of an “unusually cold winter”, says Business Insider, with Siberia reaching –56C in December. The country’s crumbling, Soviet-era infrastructure can’t cope: there have been a “spate of breakdowns in central heating systems” in recent months, with burst pipes and power cuts even in comparatively wealthy regions around St Petersburg and Moscow.”
    Any mention by the BBC?

    Like

  319. The guy had started out the thread by stepping in
    Someone had said the windfarms wouldn’t get recycled
    He replied with a screenshot saying 96% of wind turbine components were recycclable

    I pointed out that was a cherrypick, cos the same article pointed out that in practice they weren’t

    He then rooted up an article saying that a company had tech to recycle glass fibre blades into pelletts
    I rooted up th point that that company is subsequently being sued by GE for failing to deliver recylce promises

    Like

  320. Throughout the thread the guy kept strawmanning and I resisted
    so he made a final strawman “trying to make out you’re an expert at everything”
    I had never waved an expert flag

    and then blocked me
    ..proving when you hold greens to account they run away
    He probably got cognitive dissonance as he realised his holy religion is not sound.

    Like

  322. “A powerful message through song’: the UK’s Climate Choir Movement is growing
    Founded in Bristol in 2022, ‘the moderate flank of protest’ has 600 members in 11 choirs”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/07/a-powerful-message-through-song-the-uks-climate-choir-movement-is-growing

    …The singers congregate under a banner quoting Kurt Vonnegut: “Dear future generations, please forgive us. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.’ The London Climate Choir’s monthly rehearsal has begun.

    “The climate’s changing, what are we doing?” the 40-strong choir sings, to the tune of a Zimbabwean traditional song. The conductor holds his baton high. “There’s no ending to this song,” he says. “I’ll just wave my stick around when we’re done.”

    Jo Flanagan, the co-founder of the Climate Choir Movement, watches with pride. “We’re growing the moderate flank of protest on the back of those who have the courage to glue themselves to bridges,” she says. “People hear about protests like that and want to do something that doesn’t involve the risk of getting arrested, and that’s where we come in.”…

    Oh well, each to their own.

    Like

  323. A surprising headline from the BBC:

    “Chocolate: Cocoa price hits record high as El Niño hurts crops”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68248145

    Global cocoa prices have hit a fresh record high as dry weather hurts crops in West Africa….

    …Cocoa prices have been driven up by poor harvests in West Africa, which produces the bulk of global supply.

    The El Niño weather phenomenon has been causing drier weather in Ghana and Ivory Coast, which are the world’s two biggest producers of cocoa beans.

    Hotter temperatures and shifts in rainfall patterns caused by climate change can also have an impact on harvests.

    “Traders are worried about another short production year and these feelings have been enhanced by El Niño that is threatening West Africa crops with hot and dry weather,” said Jack Scoville, an analyst at Price Futures Group.

    Only one reference to climate change, and by and large it’s not blamed for the drought. Curious, but refreshing. Even then, as Jaime would opine, it’s still a simplistic narrative, with no curiosity as to how a modest El Nino event can, so early in its cycle, be causing such an increase in temperatures (and other weather-related issues). Still, never mind. One step at a time.

    Like

  324. “We are a cross-party All Party Parliamentary Group of MPs and Peers, focusing on issues of racial justice.
    Chaired by @labourlewis, secretariat @runnymedetrust ”
    .
    Peter North is highlighting their September RACIST tweet where they called for ACTIVISTS of colour to give evidence
    … https://twitter.com/appg_race/status/1704162532968038816
    Now in Feb they have praised the contributors and got just 8 LIkes for their Twitter thread.
    .. https://twitter.com/appg_race/status/1753391714302132353
    ·
    They also had a tweet Aug 31, 2023
    Join our fantastic lineup of speakers and co-chairs for an online panel event exploring the intersections of systemic racism and the climate crisis to launch our join inquiry with @greennewdealgrp’s APPG on the Green New Deal!

    Like

  325. The German anti-Green MEP who has to live in hiding cos of the threats
    very good performance on the Neil Oliver show
    (Christine Anderson)
    “The EU is just doing a tactical retreat and will turn course after Jun 9th election”

    Like

  326. “Atmospheric river storms are getting stronger, and deadlier. The race to understand them is on”

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/11/atmospheric-river-pacific-storms-climate-crisis

    The race to understand them is on? But the science is settled:

    As the climate crisis supercharges storms over the Pacific, scientists are creating tools that can measure them from the inside

    Except that it isn’t:

    …Now, scientists are racing to better understand these systems before they get worse. The work is greatly expanding the accuracy of weather predictions, giving water managers more time to plan and communities earlier warnings to prepare, long before overhead clouds darken, but there’s far more to learn about these systems, especially as the dangers from them grow….

    …Scientists are working to make sense of the layered and complicated conversations that happen among the ocean, the atmosphere and the land, and are hoping to gain stronger insights on how, when and where storms will strike.

    “The more we learn, the more we recognize we need more data about this,” said Maike Sonnewald, the leader of the computational climate and ocean group at UC Davis.

    Sonnewald, an oceanographer who uses computer science to gain insights about the climate and long-range weather forecasts, added that recent advances in the satellite age helped paint a picture of how the ocean and the atmosphere interact. That picture, metaphorically speaking, still has too few pixels….

    Then there’s this stunning Guardian headline:

    “The world is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels – except for in three key sectors”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/09/biggest-fossil-fuel-emissions-shipping-plane-manufacturing

    So the world isn’t actually reducing its reliance on fossil fuels after all:

    …All told, global fossil fuel use will likely flatten or decline by mid-century before starting to grow again due to rising energy demand in various parts of the world, according to the report’s projections. Gas will lead the way, rising significantly in use even as oil and coal decline….

    You can always trust the Guardian!

    Like

  328. Mike,

    I would describe that as a clash between real greens and faux greens. One of the things that is guaranteed to annoy me is when the media describe groups who want to destroy our countryside and wild places as green or environmentalists. There isn’t much green or environmentally friendly about net zero.

    Liked by 1 person

  329. Mark,

    Agreed! The renewables industry is only interested in “green” in the sense of funding and subsidies.

    Like the controversy over whale deaths, this sort of thing needs more publicity. There are some straws in the wind with certain projects facing resistance but they need to be pulled together into an overall story. How to get that to happen with the present media crew is a challenge.

    Liked by 2 people

  330. Mark, regarding flattening fossil fuel use: yesterday in the WSJ it was alleged that the IEA’s forecasts of decreasing consumption of oil and gas are based on them having caved to green interests who were angry about baseline forecasts showing no decline. “As a result, IEA’s influential demand forecasts now reflect wishful thinking about the timing and cost of a peak in oil and gas consumption.”

    Sorry no link – I read it on the Pressreader app.

    Liked by 3 people

  331. From CourtnewsUK
    13FEB2024 @ SOLAR PANEL SALESMEN WERE SWINDLERS
    (It’s actualy a minor update on an old case)

    A serial fraudster who helped run a sham investment company that defrauded 1,500 elderly customers out of £17m breached his licence when he was let out of jail by changing his name.
    David Black, 40, was previously jailed along with five others, including brother Ludovic Black, for selling solar panels to their victims, through their Manchester company.
    Father-of-two Black, also known by the surnames Hardie, Diaz and Stark, was part of a gang of fraudsters who used misleading sales techniques…

    Like

  332. My maths on what BBC Verify call “Methane mega-leak exposed in Kazakhstan”
    Their mega is one 44,000th of world annual gas production

    That Kazakh leak was “It is estimated that 127,000 tonnes of the gas escaped”
    IS THAT A BIG NUMBER ?
    Annual world LNG is 400 million, so the leak is less than a 3,000th of LNG alone

    “global production of natural gas is forecast to increase by approximately two percent in 2023 to reach 4.1 trillion cubic meters.”
    each billion is 1.36million tonnes
    so 4100x 1.36= 5576 million tonnes
    So the leak is one 44,000th of world annual gas production
    That’s not mega

    Like

  333. That’s the value of BBC Verify, stewgreen. You can always rely on them to provide context.

    The irony is that the BBC sees the Verify brand as an indicator of particular trustworthiness, whereas whenever I see it now, I am immediately suspicious.

    Like

  335. Sorry stewgreen, but it’s methane that’s being released in Kazakhstan and there’s a lot of it. You are comparing this with worldwide methane production, most of which is burnt (so not released as methane).

    This occurrence reminds me of the past when global atmospheric values were much higher and some attributed their decline as due to improvement of leakages associated with Russian gas pipelines.

    Like

  336. The Guardian ran an article the other day pointing to allegedly huge methane emissions in Spain, South America (Brazil, iirc) and India – especially India. At this rate, Indian and Chinese GHG emissions are going to be over half of the world’s emissions, and growing. Yet it’s the UK that has to cripple itself in order to save the planet, apparently.

    Like

  337. Talking of context, whenever CO2, methane, etc are mentioned there is never any reference to water vapour which, as everyone here knows, is responsible for 70 – 80% of the greenhouse effect.

    Equally, while much fuss is made of methane’s warming potential being 30, 50, even 80 times greater than CO2, nobody ever points out that those figures were obtained in lab tests in dry air. I have not seen any explanation of how methane can have any significant effect in the real world when its absorption spectrum is almost completely blanketed by water vapour which is typically present at 10 – 20,000 times the concentration. (If anyone is aware of an explanation, please post it up as I bang this drum quite often and would like to know of any counter-arguments.)

    Like

  338. Alan do you think you have a gotcha ?
    The whole BBC article is about how the methane is on fire as it exits
    ie the release is CO2
    “a blowout started a fire that raged for over six months. “

    Like

  339. Have you ever seen a gas well on fire Stew? I’ve only seen small ones in Alberta, but even those released methane. The rates of methane release from the wells were faster than oxygen could be supplied and much of the gas escapes the flames. I would imagine that for a major disaster like that in Kazakhstan the loss of unburnt methane would greater still. But you are correct, I don’t actually know this to be a fact.

    Like

  340. Reread BBC report on Kazakhstan methane release. This comes with areal photograph or satellite images of plumes of identified methane releases from a single well. Methane itself is transparent (as is carbon dioxide) so the visible plumes must be water vapour – another product of the oxidation of methane. But methane was first, and then continuously, identified from satellites equipped with methane detectors. Comparison was also made with a leaking gas main in south Wales where methane was also detected using satellite imagery. It’s methane being released and detected, not just carbon dioxide and water vapour. But it’s difficult to determine how much methane has been released to the atmosphere as the gas compared with how much was initially released from the well, part of which burnt to form carbon dioxide and water vapour. Given how tempting it must be to “big up”any potential “climate disaster” I would wager that the BBC Verify estimate is the later.

    Liked by 2 people

  341. Talking about methane release –
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0h9zgvq?at_mid=lHtDK20sVP&at_campaign=The_Global_Story_Taylor_Swift&at_medium=display_ad&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_origin=promo_box&at_audience_id=TV&at_product=sounds&at_brand=w13xtvsd&at_ptr_name=bbc&at_ptr_type=media&at_format=image&at_objective=consumption&at_link_title=The_Global_Story_Taylor_Swift&at_bbc_team=BBC

    “Released On: 09 Feb 2024Available for over a year
    Taylor Swift is the world’s biggest pop star and an economic powerhouse. She has become so popular that allies of the likely Republican nominee Donald Trump are worried about her political influence if she publicly endorses Joe Biden. But does the singer really have the sway to decide the outcome of the US election? The BBC’s North America Business Correspondent Erin Delmore looks at the evidence.”

    Like

  342. ps – Is it just me or is the UK BBC TV licence Fee a joke as it we now fund IPlayer, Sounds etc?

    Like

  343. dfhunter,

    The BBC and the Guardian seem to be obsessed with Taylor Swift. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have heard of her. She does seem to have rather a large “carbon footprint”, but that does nothing to dull their obsession with her.

    Liked by 1 person

  344. An alarmist spells out a possible downside of AI

    Like

  345. Not sure about that – if humans are the problem, they are also the victims. It would not make sense to save humans from rising sea levels etc etc by killing them.

    Somebody will have asked an AI that question, and the reply was probably gibberish. Giant rat ‘nads or Spanglish or a prescription for more renewable energy.

    Like

  346. “It would not make sense”

    None of alarmism makes sense. Nor any genocide, for any reason, at any time.

    Like Elon Musk and his close friend David Sacks (who I’ve just quoted elsewhere), Yishan Wong is listed as one of the PayPal Mafia by Wikipedia, albeit at 22nd out of 23. I thought his appreciation of the dangers was noteworthy. I’m agnostic on whether applications of AI will turn out to be that dangerous.

    Like

  347. Mark H., I seem to remember that you have written in the past that you, on occasion, have access to a TV. If this is correct, may I recommend a Channel 4 series that started last night and will be continued each night until Thursday. It’s about a reenactment of a murder trial before two juries (isolated from each other) in an attempt to examine our jury system (I suspect the two juries will come to different conclusions). If you are interested and manage to watch it, would you grace us with your thoughts. I, for one, would be most interested to hear them ( as l’m sure will others here be).

    Like

  348. Alan,

    I’m very busy with other stuff just now, but despite not having a TV licence, I can watch Channel 4 perfectly legally, so long as I restrict my viewing to catch-up on iplayer. I can’t make any promises in view of my current busy schedule, but if I get the chance, I will watch it. Can you give me the name of the programme, please, to make it easier for me to find it?

    Like

  349. The programme is “The Jury: Murder Trial “. In total it will be 4 hours long and is being broadcast Monday to Thursday this week. It has gathered high praise, even from a former U.K. Chief Prosecutor.

    Monday’s episode covered the essential details of the crime, whether it be murder or manslaughter. Tuesday’s gave the defence case, arguing that the accused “lost control”. Tonight’s episode treats the prosecution’s arguments arguing for a murder conviction. Thursday’s episode will cover the two juries’ deliberations and verdicts.

    What is fascinating are the comments and discussions of and between jury members. Even before the defence some jury members were deciding upon murder convictions. Many of these people, after hearing the nature of the murdered woman switched, arguing for a manslaughter verdict. I expect renewed murder verdicts after they have heard from the prosecution in tonight’s episode. Another most interesting facet is how jurors life experience influences their verdicts. It makes me even more in favour of the American practices of jury selection, weeding out potential jurors the prosecution and defence believe might be prejudiced.

    Anyway I hope you get a chance to see it. I fully expect that you would find it of great interest.

    P.S. I hadn’t given it any thought before, but I wasn’t aware the British jurors were forbidden to discuss jury matters even long after the trial. Does this mean, as the programme maintains, that this regulation applies everywhere that jury trials like those in Britain have similar regulations: in other words we know little about jury deliberations anywhere?

    Like

  350. Swaths of land in Alberta will be barred from hosting renewable power projects under sweeping new rules that will govern the industry:
    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-alberta-to-ban-renewables-on-prime-land-declare-no-build-zones-for/

    Alberta has recently elected a right wing government which is cracking down on the renewables industry despite Alberta being the leader in Canada in renewable energy development (excluding hydropower) I particularly approve of the emphasis on protecting cropland and visual impacts.
    Some extracts:
    “Under the changes, Alberta will ban renewable electricity projects from private property deemed to have excellent or good irrigation capability according to the province’s land classification system, and land deemed “fair” if it can host specific specialty crops.
    When it comes to reclamation, developers will be responsible for eventual clean-up costs via a bond or security, paid to the government.
    Buffer zones of a minimum of 35 kilometres will be introduced around protected areas, or whatever the government deems “pristine viewscapes.” New wind projects will not be permitted within those zones, and other forms of renewables may be subject to a so-called “visual impact statement” before approval.
    While many municipalities have welcomed the windfall to their coffers, some have also raised concerns about friction between using land for crops versus massive solar installations or wind farms.
    And there were worries that – much like what has happened with oil and gas – they would be left dealing with the remnants of wind turbines or solar panels if projects failed or companies went bankrupt.”

    Liked by 2 people

  351. Fireworks greet the historic breakthrough of HS2’s longest tunnel:

    Hurrah! Another thirty seconds knocked off future London to Brum train journeys.

    The tunnelling machine was named after Florence Nightingale. The reason for that?

    ‘She was a nurse who campaigned her whole life for funding for her charity which provided health care and hospitals for poor people before we had the NHS.’

    Right. No arguing with that, then.

    Like

  352. Alan K at 4.10pm.

    Thanks, I will watch it if time permits. I have sat on a jury only once, and I was very impressed by the seriousness with which the jury undertook its task. But I don’t think I’m allowed to say any more than that about the experience!

    Like

  353. Youtube fed me this about a Stockport guy Steve Hatton pushing back in a council meeting
    #1 He starts with a lecture as a question
    which I dislike , even from our side
    #2 However the councillors reply is to call him Climate Illiterate
    #smear

    Like

  354. Our neighbour is involved in charity and he’s always saying there is actually too much charity money sloshing around in Britain so that leads to huge waste and jobs for the girls
    He just forwarded me an example
    “We administer community funds (CF) on behalf of Local Authorities, large scale renewable energy developers including wind farms and solar farms, landfill operators (through the Landfill Communities Fund), and other renewable energy plants.”

    Like

  355. BBC radio Humberside has a very close relationship with green PR
    9am news ending line
    “It’s thought to be the wettest February EVER”

    What in 6 billion years of Earth’s history ?
    … I don’t think so

    The third Radio Humberside headline was “A government minister has said the Humber region has world leading area potential to start achieving net zero industry
    Climate Minister Graham Stuart made the comments whilst being shown around Phillips 66 refinery.. which is moving to greener tech*
    .. produces 20%$of UK motor vehicle fuel and also batterycoke which is used in EV batteries.”

    Nothing on Twitter except he visited their stand 10 months ago
    ..https://twitter.com/Phillips66UK/status/1661720539835117569

    #1 what is battery coke ?
    The only mention on Google is on the Philli[ps website
    except for a paper which says the product is not used in the UK but rather sent to China

    * By greener tech .. they mean the plant is trying to escape oil taxes by arranging a CCS programme

    Like

  356. Graham Stuart put up his own Twitter thread 8 hours later

    Like

  358. Many thanks Mark. I had not seen this review. It sums up much of what I concluded about the British jury system from viewing this series of programs. The programs clearly illustrate many of the major failings of our judicial system. The article ends with a hope that the failings exposed by the programs might, like those dealing with the postmasters’ scandal, bring about outrage and possible changes. I don’t think it will.
    The program ends with the result of the real-life trial. Interestingly I would have strongly disagreed with it. I believe the judge had the same view given the high tariff imposed.

    Liked by 1 person

  359. Stewgreen; “battery coke” is better known as petcoke. That refinery exports its petcoke to China where it is processed into synthetic graphite for EV battery anodes. It is one more material controlled by China which is crucial to modern technology.

    Liked by 2 people

  361. FooC : Peter Oborne is coming up
    Will he say something nutty ?
    “Al Shabaab withdrew from the Somalian capital Mogadishu
    … there is an even greater menace in the country: climate change ..”

    Peter Oborne “the short term reason for the drought then flood is EL NINO, but the real long term reason is Climate Change”
    that seems like contradiction and heavy spin

    His line ” there is an even greater menace in the country: climate change ..”
    is contrived
    .. he asked one bloke, he disagreed
    he asked one more and he agreed , but that was the takeaway end line of the item.

    Like

  362. prog has another more sceptical green item

    Peter Yeung in Ecuador
    “a fleet of solar-powered boats run by Indigenous communities to provide a sustainable model of transport for the future. This has been met with a mixed response by some indigenous leaders.”

    Cheeky man his item was him reading his old NPR article from December 2nd almost word for word.
    which starts with immense hype,
    In Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, solar-powered boats are a boon for the trees
    but tucked away near the bottom
    “Kara Solar is also working against the currents of convenience. The solar boats are considerably slower than gasoline-powered boats, meaning that many still prefer the latter for important or urgent matters. And given the new technology, breakdowns and technological hiccups are still an issue.”

    He also mentions the second problem. Tat the tribes want to develop , so are OK with some roads and Chinese investment.

    Like

  364. context : Founding Trustee Niall Ferguson on why the time to found the University of Austin is now.
    “Individual freedom is the sine qua non for the pursuit of truth.
    This is why we won’t fail.
    This is why we must succeed.
    A hundred intrepid young people will be in the founding class.
    We are in the midst of hiring the world-class faculty to teach them, and to teach them to the highest possible pedagogical standard.”

    Like

  365. I see that Geoff C has liked one of my posts from 6 years ago.
    Why’d he open that old page ?
    Ah see suddenly after all these years a new comment was made.
    Alex Westberg
    Feb 10, 2020
    Conservative elected officials politicized this as a hoax. The scientific community says otherwise. I’m not sure how this is still debatable

    That sounds like a bot programmed to visit skeptic sites
    not like a real human

    Like

  369. Jit: Thanks for posting the Niall Ferguson talk at the Univ of Austin inaugural thingie. Interesting that nowadays he does mention climate extremism, wanting to set aside democracy and other safeguards, as part of how the academy has gone horribly wrong. But he does immediately say that such ‘woke’ ideology is what the new axis of evil, including China, believe. And that is bunk. The Chinese are using climate extremism for their own advantage and don’t believe a word of it.

    But a very stirring talk, thanks.

    Liked by 1 person

  371. Jit, interesting article you recommended about CO2 variation in the geologic past and extinctions. However it contains a major error. It indicates a massive reduction of forests during the Permian and so an absence of coals. This shows the authors are focussed on the northern hemisphere because they seem to be unaware of the Karoo coals of Australia and Southern Africa which are extensive and definitely Permian and must indicate high atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. This is also indicated by the abundance of marine calcareous algae in the Permian, that form reefs in the U.K. and the U.S.A.
    This error throws into question much of the unsupported conclusions in the article about CO2 levels in the distant past.

    Liked by 1 person

  373. It would be better if Jim Steel referenced his figures – it would be interesting to know whether the figure representing coal deposition is global in scale (it shows a very low level of coal production in the Permian).

    It seems natural to suppose that CO2 was stripped out of the atmosphere to a large extent in the Carboniferous. However, there are those who insist that the rainforest collapse was due, not to starvation of the plants, but to climate change.

    My own understanding of ecology and the importance of fungi, leads me to think that the digestion of wood before it is buried results in a low level of coal formation in such situations nowadays.

    Like

  374. Jit, what do think prevented the wood digesting fungi from removing wood from Pennsylvanian and Permian coal swamps (and to a lesser extent the Cretaceous)? The absence/rarity of Triassic and Jurassic coals suggests they may have operated at those times – as they do now. This in turn indicates wood consuming fungi must have evolved before the Cretaceous and should have been operating by then. There are also plentiful Tertiary lignites world-wide, also indicating the ineffectiveness of those fungi at certain times and/or places.

    Like

  375. Well, I guess it’s like fossils. Most animals do not become fossilized, but there are always some that do, based on circumstances. If you can get large bits of tree into anoxic conditions fast enough, fungal decay is completely halted.

    An interesting question for me is what killed trees in the absence of fungi? There are the natural hazards of waterlogging, strong winds, fires, but I wonder whether there were any biological mechanisms? There are of course wood-boring insects, but these days it is usually the access they give to fungi that causes the trouble.

    Like

  376. As of 9:00 total electricity demand is 29.3 GW with 9.5 GW of that being supplied by the interconnectors – that’s the highest I have ever seen. Must be windy on the continent!

    Like

  377. MikeH,

    We seem to be increasingly dependent on the interconnectors. As David Turver has demonstrated, we sell electricity to Europe cheap and buy it from them expensively. So much for cheap energy. So much for energy security. 😕

    Like

  378. Mark; I have absolutely no idea how the commercial side of the grid works. I assume the driver for high levels of imports is low prices on the continent. Presumably that drives down our own CCGT output, further undermining the economics of those plants. Their utilisation rates – as opposed to availability – must be woeful.
    Also, what impact, if any, does such a high level of imports have on grid stability? Aiui, the interconnectors are DC so cannot help with balancing.

    Like

  379. The last week I have tried finding something I wrote on Bishop Hill discussions. Ploughing through multiple pages* I found innumerable instances where I was a lone voice (especially defending UEA or the BBC) where it became most acrimonious. Insults and names were sometimes viciously spewed (by me as well).

    Then I turned to Cliscep: what a contrast! Heated and strong opinions vented perhaps on occasion but absolutely no comparison with what occurred in that other place. I’m so glad I shifted.

    * is there an easy way of navigating around, other than starting at either the beginning or end and ploughing towards the centre, two pages at a time.

    Liked by 1 person

  380. Alan, it depends if you know what you’re looking for. You can search for words or phrases thusly. Type into the [Google or whatever] search box:

    site:bishophill.squarespace.com supertroll

    And you should find all mentions of “supertroll” at Bishop Hill. [Having just tried that out, and read one of the threads, perhaps I should have chosen something else! I know what you mean about the vitriol]

    Typing in my own name I only see 2 links. Did I really only comment twice at BH, in 2013? Seems unlikely. But the method I show is a start.

    Like

  381. Does anyone want to write flash fiction for a competition that’s being run by XR’s Writers Rebel offshoot?

    https://writersrebel.com/flash-fiction-competition/

    You have only 500 words. Your themes are Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Power and it would be good if you could also explore ‘the ongoing impacts of colonialism, wealth extraction and oppression.’ Deadline: 1st April. (No, really.)

    Here’s a possible first half:

    It was a dark and stormy night when Verity Vanity (formerly Nigel Neville) Malmduke-Shimduthers finally ventured out to post their letter to the incumbent and, it being so late, probably also recumbent Prime Minister – but the night was not, Verity Vanity told themself, as dark and stormy as nights would be if the climate crisis were to be allowed to further exacerbate the impacts of colonialism, wealth extraction and oppression. So they kept their head down to dodge the wind and rain and soldiered on, trudging determinedly across the sodden earth of their modest Cotswolds estate’s neglected rear pastures.

    Part of them wished that they still owned a car. Their last one, a Lucid Air, had caught fire at a Travel Smarter meeting hosted by Stroud District Council. A councillor told them that they shouldn’t throw buckets of water at such fires because that would be like throwing petrol at global heating. So they didn’t, even though they didn’t understand the logic. They just watched their beloved EV burn, loving it, loving it, loving it as it smoked and flamed somewhat stinkily.

    But on this dark and stormy night a deeper part of Verity Vanity knew that all cars were wrong and always would be, even if they could get all of their power from…

    Hang on! What is that by the hedge next to that other hedge over there? No, not that one, you ninny! The one by the yurt! Could it be a…

    Liked by 1 person

  382. Jacob Graham the Green Party terrorist
    : Some leftists often claim there are no leftwing terrorists
    Reporting restrictions have been lifted after the trial of the Liverpool guy self describing as “A left-wing anarchist”
    https://news.sky.com/story/jacob-graham-left-wing-anarchist-jailed-for-13-years-over-terror-offences-after-declaring-he-wanted-to-kill-at-least-50-people-13097584

    IMHO the guy is a mental case who wouldn’t have got to kill he plotted to, even though he had filmed his bomb making experiments

    But key thing is there are more of them out there unless they are all undercover police.

    … “On another platform called Telegram, he exchanged messages with others who shared his hatred of government in groups called Earth Militia, Total Earth Liberation and Neo Luddite Action

    Graham was the administrator for a number of chatrooms on the encrypted Telegram app, including one called Total Earth Liberation Group, with 150 members, into which he shared his bomb-making manual.

    Graham told police he was “left-wing” but “more like an anarchist”, adding: “I don’t like the idea of a central control and I don’t really like the monarchy.”
    His ideal government would be the size of “Merseyside or Liverpool”,
    he said, adding he supported the Green Party and was an “environmentalist” who did not like the way “corporations act and how they damage the Earth”.

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  383. Jit searching BH Unthreaded is a bit difficult cos the page name doesn’t stay fixed, cos yesterday’s page 1 , becomes page 2 today etc
    So when Google tells you something was on page 2311 you have to guess that 50 pages have passed since Google crawled the page
    so look at page 2361

    Like

  384. I am looking at Cambridge Science Festival
    (Free and 3 weeks and this weekend is mainly for kids)

    A bit of Climate brainwashing
    Over the festival 50 events are marked as Environment for children. That’s a lot
    A further 28 in that category are targeted at adults

    I checked this weekend
    Climate Research Happenings is marked as EVENT CANCELLED
    why’s that ?
    9:00am daily from Wednesday 13 March until Thursday 28 March Online
    Different short videos and documentaries will be running in a continuous loop at location.

    Kids activity
    11:00am-1:00pm 2:00pm-4:00pm on Saturday 23 March
    Join us for a fun and educational day of discovery about how to protect the Earth from global warming.
    You will have the chance to try out some exciting experiments with researchers from the Centre for Climate Repair,

    Sustain/Education presents: The Sustainability Quest
    10:00am-4:00pm on Saturday 23 March
    11:00am-4:00pm on Sunday 24 March

    2:00pm-4:00pm on Sunday 24 March
    Climate Café with Abbey People

    Like

  385. Oh I missed last week’s
    – Islamic approaches to the natural world and the natural sciences
    at the Cambridge Central Mosque, which is the first eco-Mosque in Europe and hosts a permanent exhibition on ‘Islam & Science’.
    2 academics from the Centre of Islamic Studies introduce members of the public to how Muslims have traditionally approached the natural world and the natural sciences.

    also
    – How can we prepare students for a different future? Getting climate and sustainability education into the classroom
    6:00pm-7:30pm on Thursday 21 March (on Youtube too)
    Mike Hulme and supervisee Madeleine Ary Hahne
    published book – Climate Change Isn’t Everything: Liberating Climate Politics from Alarmism – and Madeleine’s new climate action platform, Rootd Earth https://www.rootd.earth/

    – How to become a young climate leader with ActNowFilm
    5:30pm-7:00pm on Friday 22 March

    =======================
    Coming up
    – Creating a liveable future: positive action to avert climate catastrophe
    8:00pm-9:00pm on Thursday 28 March

    Enviro items list
    https://www.festival.cam.ac.uk/events/theme/environment?page=6

    Like

  386. The legendary Feargal Sharkey was on The World at One, calling out the abysmal efforts of the water industry / Environment Agency / Ofwat to curtail sewage spills into rivers. He was incandescent about the EA spokesperson’s shruggist attitude. Following on from Feargal we had someone on from the industry who tried to play the climate card.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001xmc6
    [First item after headlines. Feargal from 9.30]

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