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Climate Scepticism
%d
Continuing from the last comment on the previous thread. The first page in the series, from early May 2021, is here.
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Monday tweeter to TalkRadio..
“Our heating supplier says he is delivering 300,000 litres of Red Diesel every week to a Cotswold solar farm”
I guess they have a contract for standby diesel generators to feed the grid
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1pm BBC local news “Sir Key Starmer has said the Humber lies at the foot of our hydrogen future”
clip “The smelly Tories closed the Rough gas plant*
and that is why we have high gas prices
The workers there aren’t looking back
they are looking to the future as a world centre for hydrogen storage “
* It’s not a plant… it a storage facility
.. it kept getting leaks
British gas had asked for more money to fix them the gov said no
Now the gov wants to repurpose the caverns as a hydrogen storage facility
A more difficult job cos hydrogen molecules are even smaller so even more prone to escaping.
.. The hydrogen project is NOT green .. A plant in Hull will buy gas and use steam to split it to get hydrogen ..it will output hydrogen and CO2
They dream they will not release the CO2, but rather Capture it
However no one in the world has got viable CCS to work.
The irony is the hydrogen mostly then gets sent to Drax to be burnt
Daft cos they might as well have sent the natural-gas straight to Drax and cut out the waste of the hydrogen stage.
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#CapitalReports tweet
Labour leader @Keir_Starmer is visiting @TyseleyEnergy in Birmingham
– being shown hydrogen-powered busses,
and hearing from local politicians about plans for the Commonwealth Games this year
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Transcript
A Labour Britain must be a prosperous nation
This country needs an industrial strategy to improve our productivity
to ensure that we buy, make and sell more in Britain.
And to revive the places that made Britain wealthy
So eg at our conference we pledged an extra £28bn/year (that £1,000/household)
in capital investment to combat climate change
to create the next generation of jobs
and to inspire innovation for a clean future
Ad this promises a future to places that were once defined by what they made
Let me give you a flavor of what I think might be possible
Not long ago I visited the Humber gas *works*
The gas they stored helped to keep the prices low but the government let it close in 2017
and you’ve seen what’s happened to gas prices since
but the workers there are not looking to the past;
they’re convinced that with the right investment and government support the Humber could become a hub for the production of hydrogen
These workers want to make a historic contribution to combating the climate crisis
They want to be in the vanguard of the next industrial revolution
All they need is a government that shares their ambition and runs with it
……
..Business
. And here in Birmingham there’s Brando which began life as a pen manufacturer and which now produces plates used in hydrogen fuel cells
A technology that could help to power *lorries* (haha) to have new zero emissions
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Wind in the Starmer speech
30:00 Mirror journo part of her 3 part lecture/question
“What do you think is more of an immediate priority
: easing energy bills so that families can sort of prepare
on whether they need to be you know feeding their children or paying their energy bills
that we’re expecting the worst in April
or should we be pursuing net zero ?”
31:00 Starmer “On the choice between energy bills and Net Zero, I don’t think it is a choice
I think we can and we should have the ambition to *have BOTH*
One of the things that struck me most in the last 12 months or so was going to Scotland to see the biggest onshore wind farm
Of 250 turbines generating enough electricity for many many thousands hundreds of thousands of houses
* at very low cost * (That’s a big LIE)
and I asked um the people running the wind farm
“How many of these wind turbines then were built in Britain ?”
They said “none of them”
and I said “why not ?”
and they said “because ten years ago the government (Remember he’s in SNP Scotland)
didn’t have the ambition to invest in this strategically
and therefore it went to another country
… (FFS turbines have 3 parts
Towers .. used to be made in Scotland but Bi-fab closed after millions in grants
Blades .. can be made in Hull at the Siemens factory ..received millions in grants
Generator .. dunno where they are made)
So it’s not either or … it’s actually having ambition about your country
And having clarity and planning
And it’s why there’s all chaos of Johnson versus the sort of the planning that you saw in previous Labour governments …
34:13 And then the £28 billion a year investment in the green jobs of the future
is is again very Labour It’s the complete opposite of what we’ve had from this government
Those wind farms have not been built in Scotland because this government didn’t have a 10-year strategy
The like of which we out trailed in our conference
.. we invite people to sign up to this vision of *a new Britain* coming out of the pandemic ..” (is that phrase same as Build Back Better ?)
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No mention of solar or renewables
Energy
02:19 the cost of living is increasing, energy bills are going up, wages are stagnant”
———————-
27:00 PA Journo
“.. the choice between Heating and Eating
I know that you took in, the price of energy crisis
I just wonder what um you you think the government could do to ameliorate it ?
… Before you mentioned nationalization of the energy industry .. ?”
Starmer “Firstly on the cost of living; I think this is very quickly going to become the major story of this winter and this spring
because there’s a real cost of living crisis
There are too many elements of it almost to to list
you’ve got inflation you’ve got food prices going up
fuel prices um going up
you’ve got stagnant wages
And there’s the obviously the energy price gap is about to change in just a few weeks time (new price cap)
… There are practical measures like cutting the vat on energy prices which we called four months ago”
.. He skipped the rest of the question
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A thought for the day:
Cognitive biases are generally understood to be universal rather than the exclusive peccadillo of a particular personality type. In particular, we all have a predilection for in-group bias, in which we characterise a debate as being between an in-group and an out-group and tend to devalue the opinion of anyone perceived to be in the out-group. Similarly, we are all to some extent guilty of suffering Bias Blind Spot, in which we are able to recognize cognitive bias in others whilst remaining unaware of similar biases in ourselves. Put them together and you have the conviction that your own group recognises the universality of cognitive bias whilst the outgroup stubbornly rejects the notion that such biases are universal. Take, for example, the following comment recently found on a blog dedicated to climate change concern:
“So then, am I also someone who cares about the poors [sic] AND who leverages poor people to score points in ideological warfare? All I can say is that I like to think not, and I work hard to examine for that mechanism in myself. In contrast, if I raise this with someone from WUWT, I will virtually always get a facile argument where whomever I am discussing this with uniformly distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’ in a way that just screams fundamental attribution error. So that is where I can draw… a legitimate distinction. I’ll say, ‘Yup, these [basic human cognitive and psychological] patterns do play out on both sides’ whereas my interlocutor rejects that reality flat out.”
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2021/12/27/maybe-a-little-science-denial-is-actually-in-order/#comment-204068
The moral of the story is that it is logically inconsistent to concede that cognitive bias is universal and at the same time imply that Bias Blind Spot is the preserve of your opponent. Furthermore, the author of the above passage should have stopped to think just as soon as he had written “uniformly distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’”. Uniformly? I think it may be the author who is doing the distinguishing here.
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If the Market Data section of the Business Page on the BBC website is to be believed, oil has just gone back over $80 per barrel, and the price of gas increased by 27.67% today.
Meanwhile (h/t stewgreen), Sir Keir Starmer has just been explaining why the electorate would be mad to vote Labour (or indeed for any other mainstream political party, come to that).
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“Watching Don’t Look Up made me see my whole life of campaigning flash before me
George Monbiot”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/04/dont-look-up-life-of-campaigning
“…While the film is fast and funny, for me, as for many environmental activists and climate scientists, it seemed all too real. I felt as if I were watching my adult life flash past me. As the scientists in the film, trying to draw attention to the approach of a planet-killing comet, bashed their heads against the Great Wall of Denial erected by the media and sought to reach politicians with 10-second attention spans, all the anger and frustration and desperation I’ve felt over the years boiled over.
Above all, when the scientist who had discovered the comet was pushed to the bottom of the schedule by fatuous celebrity gossip on a morning TV show and erupted in fury, I was reminded of my own mortifying loss of control on Good Morning Britain in November. It was soon after the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, where we had seen the least serious of all governments (the UK was hosting the talks) failing to rise to the most serious of all issues. I tried, for the thousandth time, to explain what we are facing, and suddenly couldn’t hold it in any longer. I burst into tears on live TV….
…So, as we race towards Earth system collapse, trying to raise the alarm feels like being trapped behind a thick plate of glass. People can see our mouths opening and closing, but they struggle to hear what we are saying. As we frantically bang the glass, we look ever crazier. And feel it. The situation is genuinely maddening. I’ve been working on these issues since I was 22, and full of confidence and hope. I’m about to turn 59, and the confidence is turning to cold fear, the hope to horror. As manufactured indifference ensures that we remain unheard, it becomes ever harder to know how to hold it together. I cry most days now.”
Oh dear. I genuinely find that rather sad. It sounds as though George is almost exactly one year older than I am, and I think I have a much more positive outlook. Technology has delivered so many benefits, we are truly blessed to live when we do, compared to all who have gone before us, though I do become despondent at the way humanity (including many who claim to be “green”) is trashing the environment.
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Mark,
I actually watched ‘Don’t Look Up’ last week and I found it very entertaining. I even had in mind to write up a review for Cliscep readers but, after reading what Spiked magazine had to say about it, I realized I had nothing much to add. Besides which, I couldn’t possibly beat their line, ‘the next time that you watch The Revenant you will find yourself rooting for the bear’.
As for Monbiot crying every day, that’s what I do most days, but that’s because I am a Leeds United supporter.
Seriously though, there are plenty of people with genuinely tragic things going on in their private lives at the moment who nevertheless do not cry about it every day. So when Monbiot broadcasts his self-inflicted angst to the world, I am inclined to say, just get a grip.
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BBC4 9pm a 2014 repeat
Documentary following solar scientist Dr Lucie Green as she reveals how some of the UK’s worst and most dramatic weather disasters occurred many years ago,
despite the popular belief that the brunt of climate change has been felt in the 21st century.
Considering how many people today are pre-warned about potential catastrophes due to innovations in weather prediction, the presenter learns how an 18th-century storm surge once led to a the deaths of a thousand workers in Somerset fields,
a hurricane drowned a fifth of Britain’s naval officers, a
nd several brutal winters threatened to completely shut down most services in the country
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Mark – from your George Monbiot quote above.
“As manufactured indifference ensures that we remain unheard” – WTF, has he lost the plot ?
no wonder he says “I cry most days now” – 22-59yrs money in the bank, but to no avail for St George.
as John says “just get a grip”
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@ stewgreensays: 04 JAN 22 AT 3:14 PM
thanks for the Keir Starmer quotes
“31:00 Starmer “On the choice between energy bills and Net Zero, I don’t think it is a choice
I think we can and we should have the ambition to *have BOTH*
One of the things that struck me most in the last 12 months or so was going to Scotland to see the biggest onshore wind farm Of 250 turbines generating enough electricity for many many thousands hundreds of thousands of houses * at very low cost *”
he/they in charge seem to be clueless. for gods sake get an grid engineer into this debate !!!
ps – reminds of the other thread where somebody said “get a guy off the street into decision making positions if you want results”
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“Kazakhstan government resigns amid unprecedented unrest following energy price hike”
Londonistan next ?
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Who are the deniers ?
Everything George writes seems to be projection,
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Mark re Snowdonia Nationl Trust hydro “20 million KWh over 8 years”
OK that’s 20,000 MWh
1 MWh over a year averages £40 wholesale price
So the NT have supplied £800K over 8 years
ie £100K each year
.. that is not much
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“Ullswater to get 10,000 new trees to reduce flooding”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-59879246
“Thousands of trees are to be planted in a Lake District valley in an attempt to reduce flooding and improve habitats for wildlife.
Volunteers working with the National Trust have begun planting about 10,000 saplings across 16 farms in Ullswater.
The scheme, which will create 170 hectares of woods and hedgerow, is being funded by the government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund.”
Fair enough – I’m sure that trees can help to reduce flooding in a number of ways (including avoiding ground saturation by sucking up significant amounts of water through their roots). However. this sentence struck me as odd, if not complete claptrap – am I wrong?
“Tree leaves, branches and trunks slow down rain giving it time to evaporate before it hits the ground.”
I also hope they’re careful about where they plant them, because flooding incidents can be created or exacerbated by trees, plucked out of the ground by fast-flowing overflowing rivers, blocking the free flow beneath bridges etc.
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An interesting read, IMO:
“Germany’s green-on-green wind power battle
Steffi Lemke, the new German environment minister, says she intends to balance nature protection and climate policies.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-green-wind-power-electricity/
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From my perspective this is a trend that could spoil many wonderful Lake District views. Just look at the vandalism perpetrated by the Forestry Commission particularly in Ennerdale.
“Tree leaves, branches and trunks slow down rain giving it time to evaporate before it hits the ground.” This might apply for a short summer shower. Major floods in Cumbria usually occur in late fall and winter. Deciduous trees are dormant at that time, and if a big flood is going to occur, the ground and evergreen trees would already be saturated from a few days of rain. Furthermore much of the Lake District has shallow soils over bedrock with not much soil water holding capacity, maybe a bit in the summer months. But if planting a few trees make you feel better, mind the views!
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“Tories in open civil war as Boris urged to abandon key policy pledge immediately”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/tories-in-open-civil-war-as-boris-urged-to-abandon-key-policy-pledge-immediately/ar-AASqkVd
“In October, the Tory Government revealed wide-ranging plans to reduce emissions significantly by 2035 and take the country towards being a zero-carbon economy by 2050. This would be helped through the production of more electric cars, planting trees and a gradual shift away from gas-powered central heating. But Mr Johnson immediately came under huge pressure from his own MPs who raised serious doubts over the economic arguments in favour of what they consider to be an over-reliance on renewable energy sources….
…Now in an address to the Bow Group think tank, senior Bow Group patron and Tory MP for Wokingham, Sir John Redwood, said: “The government should not demolish any power stations as long as issues over security of supply remain.
“Thank goodness we had those coal power stations left in the dying months of last year that kept us going – do not knock them down.
“We need to be realistic, we are going to have less nuclear power in 2030 than we do today, we need affordable power, we need available power, we need to trust our own sources more and import less, we cannot rely on imports.
“We are blessed with access to a lot of oil and gas. It is greener as well as more reliable to have our own sources of energy, rather than importing it, and relying only on the goodwill of foreigners….”.
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Just watched Timeshift: Series 14: 2. Killer Storms and Cruel Winters: The History of Extreme Weather. Somebody here suggested it a few days ago. It was first broadcast in 2014. As might be expected, it was buried very deep on BBC iPlayer so was hard to find.
Anyway it’s worth a watch. Digs out some interesting facts about historic extreme events and there is a pleasing focus on adaptation through the ages. Climate change hardly gets a look in until the very end and is understated. I suspect the presenter, Lucie Green is something of a closet sceptic. She is a solar physicist and some of them are known to have heretical views. I liked one of her last comments regarding our inability to predict future climate extremes. She said “one thing is for sure, the future will be no less harsh than the past”. I can agree with that.
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ITV has a cheap way of filling airtime
Instead of having actual local news, a central team make features which are dropped into your local ITV regional news.
Of course such items are often PRasNews, often Green PR
So today they had “A new study has found that only a quarter of people consider the environment when it comes to their drinking habits”
.. “experts are asking us o consider what impact our drinking can have on the planet and to consider buying from sustainable suppliers instead FFS it’s an advert for “sustainable beer”
“Here’s @mattpriceitv”
Item has shots from The Purity Brewery
4 mins of sustainability PR like Countryfile
expert “your 500ml lager takes 120 litres of water to make”
… Fake number ?
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The guy blocks me on Twitter
but when I check i see he is now looking to an Electric Car PR story
#ElectricVehicles people – we need you! I’m working on an item about EV’s
and what 2022 has in store for them?
Are you a #car dealer or maker? We’d love to hire a car for a day for some filming.
If you can help please drop me a line
His previous story was not Green PR
“We are keen to hear from people who’ve had parcels stolen from outside their home. “
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Here’s his colleague also doing a green-doom item
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Next item was supposed to be about the lack of new cars due to chip shortage (actually item is a promo for ITV prog that night)
then cos the interviewee loves electric cars the presenter fed her a line
“The phenomenon that is electric cars that is coming
and *THE FACT* that by 2030 we EVERYONE will have to have that vehicle by our side”
.. That is vast misrepresentation
The law is that petrol/diesel NEW sales will stop in 2030
You could do what you want other wise , buy no car, hydrogen, a secondhand diesel
keep your old petrol car for another 50 years etc.
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Fairly standard from the Guardian today:
“The UK faces an energy bill crisis. What options does it have to tackle it?
A VAT cut and a windfall tax on oil and gas profits are just two of the routes the government could take”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/07/energy-bill-crisis-uk-government-options
Among the options NOT covered are scrapping “green” subsidies from customers’ bills, allowing fracking to make us less dependent on expensive foreign gas, and reversing the mad rush to “net zero”. These, it would seem, are verboten.
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“‘The ducklings might not survive’: readers’ concerns over early spring
Trees are blossoming, ducklings hatching and bees foraging. But spring-like activity in the depths of winter may imperil many species”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/06/early-signs-of-spring-readers-photos
Apart from New Year’s Day and New Year’s Eve this winter has been as cold as usual where I live. The clickbait picture of flowering daffodils, when you make your way to the article, was taken in Berkshire in January 2020 (when in January? The 31st?).
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“Fears SNP shunning nuclear power could lead to higher energy bills as Hunterston shuts down”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19830169.fears-snp-shunning-nuclear-power-lead-higher-energy-bills-hunterston-shuts/
“FEARS have been raised that Scotland will be forced to import fossil fuels if a new generation of nuclear generators are not deployed – further hiking already high energy bills for householders.
The concerns comes as electricity generation from the Hunterston B nuclear plant in North Ayrshire, one of only two facilities remaining in Scotland, is switched off today after almost 46 years.
Nuclear industry leaders have warned that unless the SNP Government reconsiders its opposition to the energy, Scotland will be left “reliant on burning imported fossil fuels” to meet energy demands and put net zero pledges at risk.
The Nuclear Industry Association has pointed to figures that more than 1.3 billion cubic metres of natural gas would be required to replace the electricity output of Hunterston B.
The organisation has also claimed that Hunterston has provided savings on consumer bills during the current energy crisis, which was seen costs soar for households.”
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R4 now show opens with couple doing Air Source heat pumps
£16K initially then had to buy even bigger radiators and bigger pumps later
Now after years it works
They sound happy but say pump electricity costs have doubled this last year.
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ITV local news ..probably on TV tonight.
Hull families spending winter without heating due to rising costs
There are fears that wholesale energy prices could push costs up by a further 50% in April, meaning average bills could go from £1,277 a year to around £1,865.
PM refuses to cut VAT on energy bills despite Brexit promise that he would
‘I am very worried’: Fears more disabled people could slip into fuel poverty
What help is available if I’m struggling with rising energy bills?
https://www.itv.com/news/calendar
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Thursday BBC local news … “a hotel in Sutton on Sea is carbon neutral
the first one in the country. It featured in COP26
with solar panels and heat pumps
In the summer it exports, in the winter it produces 70% of its power”
#GreenPRasNews
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“Energy firms call for green levies on bills to be scrapped”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59906223
“The bosses of two energy firms are calling for green levies on bills to be scrapped to help customers facing higher prices.
The founder of Ecotricity described the levies on energy bills as a “stealth tax” of hundreds of pounds a year.
Centrica’s boss is also urging government to fund green programmes through general taxation instead….
…Ecotricity boss Dale Vince told the BBC’s Wake up to Money programme: “The government talk about high energy prices and bemoan them… but what they don’t talk about is the fact they take £9bn a year from our energy bills in a combination of VAT and about five social and environmental policies.”
Currently, about 12% of an energy bill set at the level of the Energy Price Cap of £1,277 goes towards funding green energy programmes, such as support for low-carbon electricity generation….”.
Bit of an irony in Dale Vince calling for green levies to be scrapped, though I note he just wants them to be taken off energy bills so that companies like his can avoid collecting them (and maybe make more money). He still wants us to pay for them, but through general taxation instead. Chickens may be coming home to roost.
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“More than 400 weather stations beat heat records in 2021
Maximiliano Herrera, watcher of extreme weather, says last year likely to be in top five or six hottest in history”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/07/heat-records-broken-all-around-the-world-in-2021-says-climatologist
I wonder how many cold records were broken in 2021? Quite a few I’d wager, but you won’t read about them at the Guardian, because that doesn’t fit the narrative. We are told that “Maximiliano Herrera keeps track of extreme weather around the world, and publishes an annual list of records broken in the previous year.” But we don’t get to find out in this article about the cold records that were broken. Instead, we are treated to the “news” that 2021 “is likely to be in the top five or six” “hottest years in history”. How disappointing that it might not make the top 5.
Well, for a bit of balance, here are some headlines that you might have spotted through 2021 if you were paying attention:
“Antarctica’s last 6 months were the coldest on record”
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-cold-antarctica-climate-change/index.html
and
“RECORD COLD STRIKES BRAZIL: HEAVY FROSTS RAVAGE SUGARCANE, COFFEE AND CORN CROPS”
https://electroverse.net/record-cold-strikes-brazil-heavy-frosts-ravage-sugarcane-coffee-and-corn-crops/
and
“Spain records coldest ever temperature at -35.8°C”
https://www.euronews.com/2021/01/07/spain-records-coldest-ever-temperature-at-35-8-c
and
“April’s lowest average minimum temperatures since 1922”
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2021/lowest-average-minimum-temperatures-since-1922-as-part-of-dry-april
and
“Brutal cold wave hits Europe with lowest temperatures in 40 years – Energy prices soar to new record”
https://strangesounds.org/2021/11/brutal-cold-wave-europe-low-temperature-record-sweden-norway-uk.html
and
“RECORD BREAKING COLD BLASTS AUSTRALIA AND CANADA: “GLOBAL” COOLING”
https://electroverse.net/record-breaking-cold-blasts-australia-and-canada-global-cooling/
No doubt there are loads more. They were the first few I found after a few seconds on the internet. I wonder why the Guardian didn’t think to mention them?
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I guess there’s still more money to be made by foreign firms from the UK taxpayer and the obsession of UK politicians with “net zero”:
“New heat pump could ease UK shift to low-carbon homes, say developers
Swedish and Dutch firms claim their technology could replace gas and oil boilers without added insulation”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/07/new-heat-pump-could-ease-uk-shift-to-low-carbon-homes-say-developers
“The developers claim their product is not a “one-size-fits-all solution” for everywhere in the country, but it could be the most effective solution to low-carbon heating in rural and suburban areas.”
Ah, so not so simple after all.
“Jerry Whiteley, technical manager at the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering, said new products claiming not to require insulation do not offer a quick fix because it will take time to train enough people to be able to install the heat pumps as most engineers are experienced with boilers.
He also said it was important for these engineers, including newcomers retraining from other professions, to understand how the design of a heating system works and not simply the installation of a heat pump without considering other parts, including the insulation.
“The more insulation you have in your property, the less heat you have to put in it. It doesn’t matter how high the heat pump works, you don’t want to be having to use that much heat,” he said.
Stew Horne, the head of policy at the Energy Saving Trust, said both high- and low-temperature heat pumps needed to be considered, because emissions from heating and hot water needed to be cut by 95% to meet 2050 net zero targets.
“It is a bold target that will require significant changes within the next 10 years. We need to become more energy efficient and support householders to retrofit their homes,” said Horne.”
Aye, there’s the rub.
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“Wi are making a list” that’s a very Nazi/Stasi thing
Top GreenPR guy Leo Hickman tweets a list
So the ‘net zero scrutiny’ group of climate-sceptic Tory MPs has finally revealed names
and numbers in today’s Sunday Telegraph.
Note how they don’t lay out how they think the UK should meet its legally binding net-zero goal. Why are they not just being brave enough to admit to their constituents their anti-science ideology (check their views on Covid) mean they don’t think climate change is a problem?
It’s an angry 6 tweet thread
Hickmans tone is INTIMIDATION like a school bully
‘how dare these people campaign’
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Now our local BBC enviro reporter is in the cult so retweeted Hickman
On tonight’s local news prog he did a GreenPRasNews item
“According to new research and the university of Hull : Young people are switching to secondhand clothes to save the planet
.. fast fashion is in decline !”
.. The item features Prof Dan Parsons the Hull Uni guy that local BBC have on regularly to help spread doom.
Also a market stall which sells vintage fashion at a big price.
Just stop “a survey said” is worthless
cos pollsters get whatever results they want by skewing questions
Thread : https://twitter.com/PhilWinterUoH/status/1478346092395782144
As ever BBC have used licence payer cash to make Facebook/Twitter propaganda, that hardly anyone reads.
…https://www.facebook.com/BBCLookNorth/videos/1093028241519266/
Three times tweeted .. https://twitter.com/looknorthBBC/status/1479566764249792512
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“Tories call on Treasury to fund green energy plans”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59915299
“A group of green-minded Tory MPs says the government should fund environmental and social energy policies from the Treasury, instead of from consumer bills.
The Conservative Environment Network (CEN) of 116 MPs says the temporary measure would ease the surge in household costs….”.
Pity they don’t say “stop the green madness”.
Meanwhile:
“The plan to scrap VAT on energy has been pushed by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of Tory MPs and peers.
The caucus, with around 20 followers, has been linked to the anti-green pressure group formerly known as the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was founded by the former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
Although its numbers are small, it is well connected in Conservative media.
Its leader, the Tory MP for South Thanet, Craig Mackinlay has regularly voted against measures to tackle climate change.
He doesn’t deny climate change science, but believes the costs of climate policies are falling unfairly on the UK.
In December, Mr Mackinlay tweeted that he blamed “the rush to Net Zero” for creating the “madness in the energy market”.
But this view is disputed by the industry body Energy UK, which says the rise in gas prices has caused the crisis, not Net Zero policies.”
Well, the industry body, whose members have done very nicely out of all this (at the expense of the taxpayer and the end-user) isn’t going to support stopping the money-go-round, is it?
Worse still:
“Sam Hall, director of the environmental CEN, pointed out that his organisation had almost six times more members that the sceptic NZSG.
He told BBC News: “A clear majority of Conservative backbenchers supports the government’s Net Zero agenda – the PM should know that we’ve got his back.”
The director added: “Last year, no Conservative MP voted against the government’s sixth carbon budget, which aims to cut emissions by 78% by 2035.
“Although a small minority of MPs are raising concerns about the cost of achieving the target, it is perfectly possible to deliver Net Zero in a way that is fair and keeps down energy costs for consumers and businesses.””
He doesn’t explain how it’s achievable, though.
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“Simon Reeve: ‘I feel a hypocrite over my carbon footprint'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59921012
“TV adventurer Simon Reeve has admitted he sometimes feels like a “hypocrite” over the carbon footprint his travel documentaries leave behind.
The presenter has journeyed around the world fronting travel shows for the BBC in far-flung locations including Australia, Cuba and the Caribbean.
But in recent years Reeve has spent time showcasing British landscapes.
He said he hoped the “honest stories” his shows convey about the planet help mitigate their environmental impact.”
I’ve always enjoyed Simon’s programmes, but the latest series in the UK (Cornwall and Cumbria) were wall-to-wall lecturing about climate change, and were hard to take, especially given (which he acknowledges) the hypocrisy of his own “carbon” footprint.
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“Labour proposes windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas to reduce bills
Party says measure could ease cost of living squeeze by reducing average household energy bill by £200”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/08/labour-proposes-windfall-tax-on-north-sea-oil-and-gas-to-reduce-bills
“Labour would impose a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas producers to fund measures to ease the cost of living squeeze, by reducing the average household energy bill by £200.
The £6.6bn plan would include removing VAT on domestic energy bills for a whole year, as well as expanding and increasing the warm homes discount for those most at risk.
The producers would be forced to contribute £1.2bn to help fund the proposals, through a year-long increase to their corporation tax of 10 percentage points.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves blamed ministers for creating a “price crisis” by responding to surging wholesale energy costs with “dither and delay” as she detailed the plan.
The government is under increasing pressure to act, with experts predicting a 50% hike to bills in April, meaning an average household paying about £700 more a year.
Labour says its plan would save most households about £200, while targeted support to low earners, pensioners and the squeezed middle would save them £600.”
Give me strength! Taxing still further the dying days of a gas and oil industry that they are committed to killing off is not a long-term plan, and will only accelerate its demise. That will then (in the absence of reliable renewables) leave us still more exposed to market pressures surrounding imports of oil and gas from around the world, often from countries with fairly unsavoury governments.
I want to return to voting Labour, but I can’t, not while policies and mindsets like these are in place at the top of the party.
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Countryfile : “Tom Heap investigates the cost of BRITAIN’S ENERGY revolution, to rural dwellers”
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boy “waming temperatures are causing British dragonflies to move north”
He is in the frozen Cairngorms looking for larvae
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Irony alert:
“Manchester electronic ad boards each use electricity of three households
Exclusive: FoI request shows screens that earn council rent of £2.4m a year consume over 11,000 kWh annually”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/09/electronic-advertising-boards-manchester-energy-use-consumption
“Hi-tech advertising screens that have been criticised for blocking pavements in Manchester each use the same amount of electricity as three households, the Guardian has learned.
The council-branded screens, which became a pedestrian bugbear when they were covered with mysterious grey boxes during their installation, earn the local authority £2.4m a year in rent from the advertising firm JCDecaux, plus 2.8% of the revenue from each advert.
In recent weeks the boards have advertised GB News and Floki, a cryptocurrency whose marketing is being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
According to analysis of data revealed by a freedom of information (FoI) request, each of the 86 digital advertising boards in Manchester city centre uses 11,501 kWh of electricity every year.
Manchester city council, which declared a climate emergency in 2019, says the screens are powered by renewable energy, but they are connected to the mains supply, rather than powered, for example, by a solar panel.
“JCDecaux’s electricity supplier has supply agreements with independent UK wind generators and purchases renewable electricity certificates and renewable energy guarantees of origin (or Regos),” a council spokesperson said.
“The council’s aim of becoming zero-carbon by the year 2038 isn’t about not using electricity at all. This would be an absurd assumption. What it does mean is about a cultural change locally, which the council is trying to effect, to use electricity which is renewably sourced and does not involve the burning of fossil fuels to generate.”
Regos have been criticised for loopholes that risk “double counting” the UK’s renewable energy use or even claiming foreign renewables as its own….”.
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Another irony alert:
“Brexit decision left UK firms paying 10% more than EU rivals for emissions
Government refusal to link carbon market to EU’s has led to higher cost for British businesses”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/09/brexit-decision-left-uk-firms-paying-10-more-than-eu-rivals-for-emissions
“British businesses are paying substantially more to produce carbon dioxide than their EU rivals because of the government’s refusal to link the UK carbon market to the bigger European market after Brexit.
The difference is putting UK industry at a significant competitive disadvantage to European rivals, at a time of soaring energy prices, but does not result in any additional benefit to the environment.
UK companies are paying more than £75 (€90) a tonne for the carbon they emit, while similar industries in the EU are paying up to about €85 a tonne. The difference has narrowed slightly in recent days, but was reaching about €8-9 a tonne of carbon in the past month, equating to a premium of about 10% being paid by UK companies.
Britain’s carbon price is higher because the UK carbon market, set up last year with the first permit auctions taking place last May, is much smaller and lacks the liquidity of the larger EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) that has been operating since 2005 and covers all of the EU’s heavy industries.
Under both schemes, companies buy tradeable permits to cover the carbon dioxide they produce, with cleaner companies able to sell spares to laggards. The price acts as an incentive to companies to clean up their operations, and is seen as an economically efficient way to help meet the net zero emissions target.
Ministers have a short window in which to reduce UK carbon prices before 18 January, the deadline for the government to release extra permits on to the market, which could reduce some of the price pressure. But experts said linking to the EU market would provide a better long-term answer, and make economic and environmental sense.
Tom Lord, the head of trading at Redshaw Advisors, said: “UK companies are paying substantially more than they are in the EU. The big problem for the UK market is liquidity, and the fact that it is new. The EU has a historic surplus [of permits] to fall back on, but the UK has pent-up demand and only a drip-feed of supply.”
Lawson Steele, joint head of carbon and utilities research at Berenberg bank, said: “This is a disadvantage [to UK companies]. The reality is that the UK carbon market is dwarfed by the EU ETS. Given that the UK wants to trade with the EU, and the EU wants to trade with the UK, it would make sense for companies to be on the same carbon footing.”
British companies already paid higher prices for energy than their EU counterparts, amounting to about £35 a megawatt hour more, added Joe Morris, of UK Steel, which represents the steel industry. “This is a long-running bugbear for the steel sector, and something that continues to hamper our international competitiveness,” he said….
…The Liberal Democrats and the Green party called on the government to link the UK ETS to the EU system. If the EU agreed, linking could probably be achieved fairly easily, as the UK system is modelled on the EU market, which the UK was a core part of and took a leading role in designing and updating while an EU member.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said: “The UK needs ambitious climate policies, but they will always be better if we work together with international partners. The Conservatives’ failure to do this is now hitting British business at the worst possible time, as energy-intensive firms are struggling with sky-high gas prices.”
Molly Scott Cato, of the Green party, said: “It’s clearly irrational, inefficient and the result of the destructive Brexit ideology to try to run an independent UK carbon trading system with all its additional costs, inevitable inconsistencies and opportunities for gaming the market.”…”.
Do I understand this correctly? The Green Party and the Lib Dems are now campaigning for LOWER carbon pricing?
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Oh dear, oh dear:
“Tory rejection of windfall tax on energy firms ‘beggars belief’, says Ed Miliband
Ex-shadow business secretary attacks opposition to proposals on grounds that oil and gas companies ‘are already struggling’”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/10/tory-rejection-of-windfall-tax-on-energy-firms-beggars-belief-says-ed-miliband
“Ed Miliband has said it “beggars belief” that the government is opposing a windfall tax on oil and gas companies on the grounds that they are struggling, after Labour proposed a £1.2bn levy on producers to help households and businesses with soaring bills.
The shadow secretary for climate change and net zero and former shadow business secretary said there was “no greater proof that this government’s incompetence and weak leadership is costing millions of hard-working families”, as energy producers have been making near-record profits because of soaring wholesale gas prices that are driving up bills.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, set out her plan over the weekend for a £1.2bn tax on producers to fund a £200-average cut to household bills, plus £600 of targeted support for those most in need, but on Sunday the government dismissed this as a solution.
Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary and a former oil industry executive, told LBC radio: “What Labour are putting out just doesn’t add up. A windfall tax on oil and gas companies that are already struggling in the North Sea is never going to cut it.””
The former oil industry executive is right, and the views of the politician who has never had a real world job are the ones that beggar relief. By the way, note how the Guardian plays the man, not the ball, and doesn’t address the issue the real issues behind this Miliband-engineered crisis. The Climate Change Act is behind all this.
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“Here’s how to solve the UK energy crisis for the long term – store more power
Four storage solutions to help Britain keep the lights on deep into the future”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/10/heres-how-to-solve-the-uk-energy-crisis-for-the-long-term-store-more-power
“But while gas is being phased out, Britain’s growing reliance on renewables, such as offshore wind and solar, does not solve the problem of intermittency – what happens when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.
The key to securing enough affordable, low-carbon energy is more storage to make the most of the renewable energy available. A storage boom has been forecast over the coming decade as governments race to meet their climate targets.”
The first paragraph is spot on – at last! The second is much more dubious, given that “low-carbon energy” isn’t cheap and is environmentally damaging. As for the forecast storage boom, read the article to see that it’s just more hot air, at least over the timescale of the current energy crisis that faces us.
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10:30am TalkRadio MP Craig @cmackinlay
really slagging off Net Zero ideas .. UK should have own gas/fracking etc.
He tweeted graph to show UK’s crazy halving of production https://twitter.com/cmackinlay/status/1479371513690271752
@DaveAtherton20 tweeted Listening to @Iromg on @talkRADIO with Conservative MP Craig @cmackinlay
talking about net zero & the horrors of children working in cobalt mines for batteries in the Congo.
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The Doom Elf
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“As energy costs soar, we cannot balance environmentalism on the backs of the poor”
https://www.politics.co.uk/mps-comment/2022/01/10/we-cannot-balance-environmentalism-on-the-backs-of-the-poor-as-energy-costs-soar/
“One blindly obvious solution to help people with the expected rise in fuel costs from April would be to scrap VAT and the so-called ‘green levies’ on bills. Collectively these make up around 25% of the average fuel bill and scrapping them would save the average household somewhere in the region of £250 pounds per year. Whilst this wouldn’t fully protect consumers against the expected £600 rise, it would go an awful long way towards helping families in the short-term. It is imperative that the government doesn’t become blinded by green ideology in retaining these levies in the midst of millions of working people being plunged into fuel poverty. If there is one single thing which would demonstrate my Party being out of touch with working people it would be this. In short, you can’t balance environmentalism on the backs of the poor who are struggling to keep the heating on. In any case, the green levy is spend on some very dubious projects: not least, a £1 billion subsidy to a power station burning wood chip pellets. Doesn’t sound very green does it?
Whilst cutting VAT and green levies would be a helpful short term measure it does not of course solve our energy crisis. Governments of both colours have hopelessly mismanaged our energy policy for decades. A reluctance to properly pursue nuclear energy and a reliance on fair weather green power has brought us to the point where we are dangerously reliant on the whims of a geo-political foe in Russia. Our long term energy security surely necessitates expanding North Sea exploration and looking again at shale gas where appropriate. Whilst this may be unpalatable to some, the alternative of huge price volatility, the enormous costs to our economy, and working people suffering in cold homes is simply not an option.”
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“Veg diet plus re-wilding gives ‘double climate dividend'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59941016
“One hundred billion tons of carbon dioxide could be removed from the air by the end of the century through veggie diets plus re-wilding farmland.
That’s the estimate of a study of potential carbon savings from turning the land freed up to nature.
A quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food and agriculture, with livestock accounting for the bulk, in rich nations.
And the animals need a huge amount of land for grazing and growing feed.
If wealthier countries moved away from meat-rich diets, much less land would be needed to grow food, and vast areas could be left to revert to their natural state, with wild plants and trees drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, a study found.
This “double climate dividend” could be achieved through linking land, food, public health and climate policy.
“It’s a double whammy,” said Dr Paul Behrens of Leiden University in The Netherlands, who led the research.”
Yes, but is this what people want? And what do you do with the land that can’t readily be used to grow crops but which supports animals? And would we grow enough vegetarian food here or would we have to import large parts of it? And if so, don’t the transport miles cancel out the “benefits”?
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I see that the BBC now claims to have a ‘Health and disinformation reporter’:
“Covid: Fact-checking the doctor who challenged the health secretary — By Rachel Schraer, Health and disinformation reporter”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59929638
As far as I am concerned, it’s not a good thing that the BBC has become obsessed with combating misinformation, particularly since its idea of misinformation is anything that challenges the authorized view. I am reminded of the late Alex Cockburn when he said: “The First Law of Journalism: to confirm prejudice, rather than contradict it.”
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Greens : Norway is really green : they buy some electric cars
FFS ! “Norway is spending $47 billion on bridges and *floating tunnels* to connect coastal cities with the new E39 coastal highway.”
That is surely a massive subsidy per journey
.. https://youtu.be/WMbSzFf_wTc
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Talk Radio 1:05pm IEA’s Mark Littlewood pointed out that If you look at the part of your energy bill that goes in profit to the energy retailers, the part of your bill that goes to government is 10 times bigger.
Bottom right of the graph : Green block + VAT vs the tiny Orange block.
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He’s actually missed a big chunk ..if your gas is mined in the UK, the government takes a mining tax
It would be part of the red block.
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@Mark – “It’s a double whammy,” said Dr Paul Behrens”
tried looking up “whammy” in Dutch with no luck!!!
@John – agree with “BBC has become obsessed with combating misinformation” – just reading OFCOM rules, may take a while.
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probably covered before – OFCOM rules Section Five:
“Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and
Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions
To ensure that news, in whatever form, is reported with due accuracy
and presented with due impartiality.To ensure that the special impartiality requirements of the Act are
complied with.
Rules
Meaning of “due impartiality”:
“Due” is an important qualification to the concept of impartiality. Impartiality itself
means not favouring one side over another. “Due” means adequate or appropriate
to the subject and nature of the programme. So “due impartiality” does not mean an
equal division of time has to be given to every view, or that every argument and every
facet of every argument has to be represented. The approach to due impartiality may
vary according to the nature of the subject, the type of programme and channel, the
likely expectation of the audience as to content, and the extent to which the content
and approach is signalled to the audience. Context, as defined in Section Two: Harm
and Offence of the Code, is important.”
can’t be assed to read the rest after that.
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Welcome to the world of net zero:
“Ovo Energy sorry over advice to cuddle pets to stay warm”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59946622
“One of Britain’s largest energy suppliers has apologised after it advised customers they could cuddle pets and eat porridge to stay warm.
Ovo Energy said it was “embarrassed” after a link to a blog “containing energy-saving tips” was sent to its SSE customers, a brand which it owns.
The company said it had removed the blog so it could “update it” with “more meaningful information for customers”.
It comes after concerns over the cost of living amid rising energy bills.”
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“The controversy of wood pellets as a green energy source”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546278
“This is the first of two Business of Technology articles examining the way wood pellets are produced and used as an energy source.”
Why has the BBC suddenly decided to report on this? It manages to introduce a race angle, which seems to make it hostile to the concept of burning wood pellets – as am I. Or, more precisely, I am hostile to taxpayer subsidies going to Drax for this because somehow burning wood has been labelled “green”. It ends with this:
“The second story on wood pellets in this series will cover how power stations are using biomass to generate electricity and will be published on Friday 14th January.
Reporting for this article was supported by the Exploring Biomass and Climate Change fellowship of the National Press Foundation.”
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Dfhunter,
Yes, part of the concern is that the BBC’s concept of fact checking is in violation of their charter. It is okay for them to report disparate views but not for them to take sides and use their reputation to brand the favoured viewpoint as factual. The other problem, however, is that they have given this role to individuals who are often ill-trained and cognitively ill-equiped to follow and understand the technicality of the issues raised. In this instance, the perfectly valid concern that the vaccines are not effective enough to support an on-going programme of mass vaccination is dismissed as having no basis in fact simply because vaccines have been effective for the vulnerable. It’s embarrassing. Who told this reporter that they had special skills to sniff out disinformation? Why does the BBC presume that all of these specially skilled individuals work for them? The arrogance of the BBC is one of its least endearing characteristics.
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The new campaign of labelling the other person’s point of view (with which the BBC or other organisation disagrees with) as misinformation, is a particularly sinister development, especially when those doing the labelling carry the authority that somehow (despite everything) the BBC still has. It’s a slightly less obvious way of denigrating those with whom you disagree than labelling them a denier, and it carries with it faux authority that might persuade some who would otherwise not be persuaded by the tactic of playing the man rather the ball. The BBC continues to sink into opprobrium in this household.
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“Christian train activists went too far in climate protest, court hears”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59957330
“Three Christian environmentalists “went too far” in their climate change protest by stopping a busy train, a court has heard.
Passengers begged the Reverend Sue Parfitt, 79, Father Martin Newell, 54, and Philip Kingston, 85, to move from the rush-hour train at east London’s Shadwell station in October 2019.
The trio refused until police officers arrived.
They had to unstick Mr Kingston after he glued himself to the locomotive.
Inner London Crown Court was told that Ms Parfitt, from Bristol, and Mr Newell, from Birmingham, used a ladder to climb on the train roof while Mr Kingston, from South Gloucestershire, superglued himself to the side of the carriage.
Prosecution barrister Edmund Blackman told the jury that although the three had the “precious right” to protest, in this case they went too far.
The train was travelling from Lewisham to Bank shortly before 07:00 and was about three-quarters full.
The protest caused more than an hour of disruption and 15 Docklands Light Railway (DLR) services were delayed or cancelled.
The protesters, who are members of Christian Climate Action, an arm of Extinction Rebellion, deny charges of obstructing an engine or carriage on the railway.
The jury heard that a passenger pleaded “we have got to go to work, the kids are on the train and we have got to go to school”.
In response, Mr Newell said he was “sorry”, adding: “But this is what we have to resort to”, as he refused calls from members of the public to come down.”
It doesn’t seem like particularly Christian behaviour to me.
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Unbelievable, given the energy crisis:
“Isle of Man climate group against further gas exploration”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-59954941
“Extracting fossil fuels from new sources on the Isle of Man would be “unjustified and unacceptable”, a climate group has said.
The Isle of Man Climate Coalition’s objection comes after local firm Crogga was granted a further four months to explore for gas off the Manx coast.
The government said this would allow time to consider its stance on offshore energy ahead of any long-term decision.
Joney Faragher MHK claimed it showed a “lack of clear policy direction”.
The Manx Labour Party leader is one of the founding members of the coalition, which includes the Liberal Vannin party, as well as collection of environmental charities and businesses.
In a statement, the group said using any extracted gas as a transition fuel was “politically and ethically” unjustified.”
It’s not politically and ethically justifiable to allow people to stay warm in their homes at a reasonable cost?
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We can hope!
Johnson’s political weakness leaves climate agenda at risk, say campaigners
Analysts fear government’s commitment to net zero is facing most severe test yet as PM comes under increasing pressure”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/11/boris-johnson-climate-action-net-zero-conservative-party
“The government’s climate agenda is under threat as Boris Johnson’s popularity slumps, according to green campaigners who work closely with the Conservative party.
As the prime minister faces further lockdown party allegations, and angry Conservative MPs seek answers over energy price rises and the cost of living crisis, analysts fear the government’s commitment to net zero is facing its most severe test yet.”
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“German climate minister says speed of carbon cuts needs to be trebled
Robert Habeck has called for nation to act to realise ‘gigantic task’ of creating climate neutral country”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/11/germany-must-pull-together-to-achieve-climate-targets-says-green-minister
“Germany’s new economy and climate protection minister has called for the nation to pull together to realise the “gigantic task” of creating a climate neutral country, saying it posed a considerable social and financial challenge as well as a big opportunity.
Introducing a broad outline of his ambitious plans to the public for the first time since entering government as part of a three-way coalition last month, the Green party’s Robert Habeck called for a threefold increase in the speed with which carbon dioxide emissions are reduced, arguing Germany faced a race against time and required a “massive national debate” to achieve the goals set out by his ministry. He said the government faced an uphill task to win many people over to the idea of a transition.”
At least he’s proposing to have a national debate. The UK’s politicians are almost all signed up to it, and here debate about net zero is apparently verboten, in Parliament at least.
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“Gas is the bad habit Europe can’t kick
Despite Russia, energy prices and climate disaster, the EU still loves natural gas.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/european-union-natural-gas-energy-russia-climate/
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“Cornwall Council apology over climate change policy failure”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-59966908
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“Covid has undermined fight against global heating, says WEF
Sharper divisions between rich and poor countries are making a united response more difficult, survey finds”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/11/covid-has-undermined-fight-against-global-heating-says-wef
“Scars left by the Covid-19 pandemic have deepened the global divide between rich and poor countries and will make it harder to find common cause in the fight against global heating, according to the World Economic Forum.
A WEF report puts climate or environment-related threats in the top five slots in its list of the 10 long-term risks but warned a “vaccine divide” was making collaboration to limit temperature increases more difficult.
Børge Brende, the WEF’s president said the report showed the cost of inaction on the climate emergency was far greater than the cost of action. “Our planet is on fire and we have to deal with it,” he said.”
What if we can’t?
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“The rain in Spain causes financial pain
Increased rainfall caused by climate change has unexpected economic impacts, says a new study.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/climate-change-rain-finance-economy/
“…“In general, everything that’s a deviation from what we’re used to can be bad,” Wenz said. …”.
Oh well, we’re stuffed, then! Or…might deviations from what we’re used to possibly be good? Oh sorry, silly question.
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There are some astonishing quotes in the Spain article considering the source.
“More rainy days: that’s bad for the economy,” said Leonie Wenz, deputy head of the complexity science department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the research authors. “Droughts and extreme rainfall events and the number of wet days … are all changing due to climate change.”
The effect of even slight changes was substantial. An increase in the number of wet days that would normally be expected during a six-year period could shave more than 1 percentage point off annual economic growth.
“In general, everything that’s a deviation from what we’re used to can be bad,” Wenz said. “If we don’t stabilize the climate, this will be so much more costly,”
So Mr Wenz of the “complexity science department” what are you used to? Are you expecting average temperatures and average rainfall day in and day out to produce a “stable climate”? In Canada they use the term “climate normals” for averages. I can assure Mr. Wenz that the only thing normal about climate is variability. And you would think he would know coming from his “complexity science department” that complexity is an integral and important component of weather and climate.
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potentilla, thanks for that. One of my early problems with the “climate crisis” narrative, was the thought that it depends on some date in the 19th or 20th century being labelled the paradigm, the perfect climate, that has to be preserved at all costs (and I mean at ALL costs), despite the fact that it just happens to be the climate at that date of human awakening, one climate out of many many varieties of climate (from snowball earth to tropical poles and everything in-between) over 4.5 billion years of the planet’s existence, all coming about without any intervention at all from humankind.
Had the industrial revolution (followed by increasing GHG emissions) occurred a couple of centuries earlier, I can only assume that we would be desperately trying to preserve the paradigm cold of the Little Ice Age.
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“Google Cancels Ex-NASA Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer Because His Satellite Temperature Data Reports Aren’t Hot Enough”
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/01/13/google-cancels-ex-nasa-scientist-dr-roy-spencer-because-his-satellite-temperature-data-reports-arent-hot-enough/
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Thought for the day:
I was in a wistfully nostalgic mood earlier today, recalling my childhood days when deciding whether to buy Black Jacks or Fruit Salads was the most difficult choice that life had to offer. So I went on line to find out when Fruit Salads came out. The answer, of course is that they never did — they are still in denial.
The less said about Black Jacks, the better.
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And midget gems…
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Mark,
Full disclosure:
I lied about being nostalgic. The truth is that I had just finished reading the news about midget gems and I turned to my wife and said, “Next they will be claiming that ‘fruit salad’ is homophobic”. The real problem here is that the pejorative connotations of the noun have been inappropriately transfered to the adjective. So midget submarines should be looking over their shoulder now.
We have come a long way from the days when Black Jacks had a golliwog on the wrapper. And a good job too. It was eating Black Jacks as a 5 year old that got me into the Klu Klux Klan — obviously 🙂
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John, I guessed where you were coming from. 😉 I used to love midget gems, but can happily claim never to have been so keen on black jacks, otherwise my youth might have gone the same way as yours. I joined the Labour Party instead (looking at it now, I wonder why).
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“Fracking in Lake Eyre basin ‘would derail Queensland’s emissions plan’
Gas extraction could generate up to 199m tonnes of C02-equivalent a year, expert warns”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/13/fracking-in-lake-eyre-basin-would-derail-queenslands-emissions-plan
Very possibly, but isn’t gas better than coal, and won’t this relieve Aussies from the energy bills the rest of us are facing as a result of having to buy foreign gas?
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Pray inform this illiterate one the link between questionably named sweets and the perils of climate change that we all face? Also are dolly mixtures sexist?
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Stop press – Guardian calls Chinese and Indians racists:
“Inaction on global warming amounts to racism – let me tell you why
Elise Yarde
Because the global south is bearing the brunt of climate breakdown, it’s people of colour who are suffering most”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/13/inaction-global-warming-racism-climate-breakdown-people-of-colour
Only joking, it’s just us who are the racists:
“The countries that make up the global north are responsible for 92% of excess global emissions, but it’s the people in the global south who are suffering from the climate crisis right now. ”
What does that phrase “excess global emissions” mean? Well, the Guardian article provides a link to this (from 28th October 2020):
“Global North Is Responsible for 92% of Excess Emissions
The United States and European Union bear disproportionate liability for emitting to the atmospheric commons, new research argues.”
https://eos.org/articles/global-north-is-responsible-for-92-of-excess-emissions
The article doesn’t seem to have gained much traction at the time (or if it did, I didn’t notice, in which case mea culpa), so perhaps the people at the Guardian felt it was time to give it another push?
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Alan Kendall: “Also are dolly mixtures sexist?”
Alan, I’m surprised you even need to ask!
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Alan,
There is no link whatsoever. Nothing even comes up on Climate Only Connect. It’s just that every now and then I get fed up with flogging the climate sceptic horse and prefer instead indulging in the utterly trivial.
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Lady fingers?
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Alan Kendall: “Also are dolly mixtures sexist?”
Maybe, but gobstoppers are a speciality of the woke.
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Looks like Jordan Peterson is expressing himself in a very un-Canadian way:
Alan Kendall: “Also are dolly mixtures sexist?”
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I’ll say that again…
Looks like Jordan Peterson has been expressing himself in a very un-Canadian way:
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I am truly ashamed of myself – to so lightheartedly break the axiom that in the Only Connect realm there always is a link between X and Climate Change, and to do it with sweeties! Oh the shame, I’m so very sorry John. The work of a lifetime gone and in such a saccharine manner.
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Alan,
Rejoice! The World is back on its axis. You just needed to know what was on the itinerary for the DB Plazza in 2014:
“At Midget Gems Kids Club’s themed weekly programmes, running June 30 to August 20 in DB Plazza, kids, aged two to five, are offered arts and crafts, music, games, stories and phonics.”
Also, the children could take part in the EcoKids Project, in which:
“Children participate in gardening projects and outdoor games, while learning about wildlife, energy, climate change, the ocean, recycling and land use.”
Sometimes, Climate Only Connect requires some thinking outside of the box.
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I’ve been out hill-walking today, and climbed through thick cloud to glorious sunshine above 2,000′, but the lower land was shrouded in mirk and there was no wind, so I guessed renewables would be pretty useless. Here’s what they are doing in the UK right now:
Coal: 4.1%
Gas: 52.9%
Solar 0% (obviously, it’s after dark)
Wind: 3.2%
Hydro: 2.5%
Pumped storage: 2.8%
Nuclear: 13.4%
Biomass: 6.7%
Interconnectors: 12.7%.
Right now, coal is producing more than wind and solar combined, and we are having to import more than all renewables combined (I don’t consider biomass to be renewable).
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Bill – thanks for the Jordan Peterson link (a very pissed of guy methinks).
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“The ‘green’ row over the UK’s largest renewable power plant”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546281
“This is the second of two articles examining the way wood pellets are produced and used as a green energy source.”
[First one here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546278 ]
“…Drax’s green credentials have been comprehensively challenged by environmentalists and others recently. The climate think tank, Ember, calculates that the power station is now the UK’s single largest source of carbon dioxide….
…When it comes to the arcane world of climate accounting, biomass energy is classed as renewable based on the premise that trees grow back. So greenhouse gas emissions from trees are counted in the nation of land use rather than the place where they are burnt.
Yet, Mary Booth, founder of the environmental organisation Partnership for Policy Integrity, points out that “just because something is counted as zero because of an accounting convention does not mean it’s carbon neutral”…
…According to the think tank Chatham House, wood pellets from the US burnt in the UK generated 13-16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2019 – equivalent to the emissions from 6-7 million cars…
…In 2020, the company received £832m in UK government subsidies – which are set to continue until at least 2027….
…At Glasgow’s COP26 climate summit, officials did not take a clear stance on biomass – a leading EU climate official called for its biomass use, though with reservations….”.
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“World’s poorest bear brunt of climate crisis: 10 underreported emergencies
Care International report highlights ‘deep injustice’ neglected by world’s media, as extreme weather along with Covid wipes out decades of progress”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/14/worlds-poorest-bear-brunt-of-climate-crisis-10-underreported-emergencies
The reason they’re “underreported” is because they aren’t climate emergencies – the countries highlighted have much bigger problems to worry about.
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There was an interesting piece by Malcolm Kendrick this morning. Ostensibly it’s about the medical profession’s reaction to Covid, but I think it has a very much wider application.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2022/01/14/dont-just-do-something-stand-there/
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“Global heating linked to early birth and damage to babies’ health, scientists find
Exclusive: Studies show high temperatures and air pollution during pregnancy can cause lifelong health effects”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/15/global-heating-linked-early-birth-damage-babies-health
And behind the headline?
“The link between heat and rapid weight gain in the first year of life was found by scientists in Israel. They analysed 200,000 births and found that babies exposed to the highest 20% of night-time temperatures had a 5% higher risk of fast weight gain.”
Hmmm.
I’ve been dismissive without reading the report, which can be found here, if anyone wants to:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/13653016/2022/36/1
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Scouts : have the teachers got them all brainwashed ??
Apparently not, some just been on Radio Lincs raising money to fund their flights to the Jamboree in South Korea
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MP’s list of extra work
Julian Smith
– Ryse Hydrogen Ltd, £60,000pa for 20 hours
– Simply Blue Management (UK) Ltd, £24,000pa for 12-24 hours
– MJM Marine Ltd, £60,000pa for 30-40 hours
– Total £144,000pa for 62-84 hours
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Sir Ed Davey
– Herbert Smith Freehills, political issues and policy analysis, £60K for 72 hours
– Next Energy Capital, member of advisory board, £18K for 48 hours
( money used to benefit Sir Ed’s disabled son !)
Andrew Percy converted to Judaism cos he likes it
– Iogen Corporation (Canada), a clean energy company, £36K for 36 hours
Sir John Hayes
– BB Energy Trading Ltd, £50Kpa for 80-90 hours .. £600/hour
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/mps-second-jobs-list/
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True or tongue-in-cheek, I know not, but I leave this here for what it’s worth:
“Russia says ‘short-sighted’ EU has only itself to blame for energy crisis
‘Incorrect planning, short-term energy policy is a headache for European politicians, which they are trying to pass on to others,’ says deputy PM.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-says-short-sighted-eu-has-only-itself-to-blame-for-energy-crisis/
“The EU is to blame for its energy crisis, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Saturday.
A global gas supply crunch has sent consumer bills soaring across Europe, fueling inflation and accusations, most recently by International Energy Agency boss Fatih Birol, that Moscow is exacerbating the problem by withholding imports.
Novak said Russia had fulfilled its long-term contracts with the EU. And, he added, the crisis was due to “the short-sighted policy of the European Union and the European Commission, which for many years has deliberately moved away from long-term contracts, shifted its energy sector toward reducing dependence on by switching from long-term contracts to spot ones.”
About 40 percent of Europe’s natural gas imports come from Russia, but this year the flow into the bloc is down by around a quarter.
Novak said Russia had “huge resources” and could increase its supply to Europe. But that would require stable contracts to encourage investment in production. “We delivered much more to Germany, to Turkey, to other countries that chose their volumes,” he said.
“Incorrect planning, short-term energy policy is a headache for European politicians, which they are trying to pass on to others,” he added. Novak was speaking to Russian public television and the comments were reported by TASS.”
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Climate alarmism continues to damage mental health:
“Getting sterilised to save the planet is a sad but understandable choice”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/14/getting-sterilised-to-save-the-planet-is-a-sad-but-understandable-choice
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Is this apocalyptic enough for you?
“The Met Office warns of armed militias roaming a UK ravaged by climate change in doomsday report”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10406521/Met-Office-predicts-collapse-society-following-climate-disaster.html
The report is full of imaginative scenarios, such as:
“… a surge in ‘Right-wing populism’, resulting in the collapse of ‘political and governance systems’. After that ‘a tipping point is reached when the police and justice system (as known in the past) cease to exist’.”
On the other hand, ready solutions are offered:
“It advances the thesis that the most ‘sustainable’ scenario for surviving global warming would be the ‘establishment of a federal UK, with citizens’ assemblies becoming the “primary” decision-making mode’ and the UK re-entering ‘a progressive and expanded European Union’.”
I never realised the weatherman was such an expert in the field of socio-political predictions. He forecast fog for us yesterday.
It never happened.
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“Millions under weather alerts as major winter storm hits US and Canada”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60017300
“A winter storm is bringing heavy snow and ice to parts of the US and Canada, with millions under weather warnings.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled, and power cuts have been reported in some south-eastern states.
Virginia, Georgia, and North and South Carolina declared states of emergency.
The US National Weather Service (NWS) said the storm would hit much of the eastern third of the country over the next two days, with more than 1ft (30cm) of snow expected in some areas.
The huge storm system is approaching the eastern US from the Midwest.
Snow and ice could result in “dangerous travel, power outages, and tree damage”, the NWS warned.”
OK, it’s weather, not climate, but it’s a useful corrective to the never-ending narrative that it’s hot. And fair play to the BBC for reporting it prominently. And indeed to the Guardian, for once, albeit less prominently (but fairly fully if you find your way to the article):
“Tens of thousands without power as winter storm blasts US south-east
More than an inch of snow fell per hour in some parts of the south, making air travel extremely difficult”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/16/us-south-east-winter-storm
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“Energy price hike prompts Italian nuclear rethink
Nuclear power splits the ruling coalition as the issue gains prominence thanks to surging electricity prices.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/energy-price-hike-prompt-italy-nuclear-rethink/
“The surge in global energy costs is reigniting the debate on Italy’s no-nuclear stance.
Right-wing parties are pushing for a rethink of the country’s long-standing nuclear ban, citing the need to attain energy sovereignty to manage rising energy bills and to fill the gap left by fossil fuels as they’re phased out thanks to climate change pledges.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the pro-industry League, on Saturday announced a petition to force a consultative referendum on reintroducing nuclear energy.
The League “is ready to collect signatures for a referendum which will bring our country toward an independent, safe and clean energy future,” he said, tying the effort to the European Commission’s recent draft policy that would give gas and nuclear energy a climate-friendly label for investors.
Salvini is trying to roll back history.
Italy was a pioneer in nuclear energy, but a referendum after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster led to the closure of its reactors by 1990. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attempted to resurrect nuclear, but his plan was derailed in 2011 by another referendum, this time following the Fukushima accident in Japan.
That’s made Italy the only G7 country without its own nuclear power plants, and it’s also the world’s second-largest net importer of electricity. “
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Eh?
“Could we bring back mammoths to fight climate change?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/could-we-bring-back-mammoths-to-fight-climate-chan/p09cdh9z
“How genetically-engineered woolly mammoths could be hugely beneficial to the Siberian Arctic – and help us fight climate change.”
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thanks for the link Mark – liked this as well “https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/what-would-a-world-without-humans-be-like/p078352j?playlist=thought-experiments” – is this for kids ?
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“Climate change: Wales has ‘duty’ due to coal mining history”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59983492
“Wales has a “particular responsibility” to help fight climate change because of its coal mining past, a leading conservationist has claimed.
Director of Carbon Link Ru Hartwell said the country “invented” a model of industrial development based on exploiting fossil fuels.
His charity runs one of the tree-planting programmes the Welsh government funds in Africa…
…One of the “tragic ironies of climate change,” he said was poorer nations that had contributed least to the carbon emissions problem were being worst hit by the impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather….”.
This is the latest big push – historical climate guilt. It’s rubbish, of course. Wales’ historic/total CO2 emissions, large though they might be, pale into insignificance against, say, the CO2 emissions to date of China, or even India, and certainly against those of the USA. The problem is finding a website which will break down emissions to the level of small entities such as Wales, rather than, say, just the UK. We can say, however, that historic emissions from North America, Europe and Asia are broadly the same (29%; 33& and 29%):
https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
That statistic is already over 2 years old, so the Asian proportion is almost certainly higher now, and will continue to grow.
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“EU budget offers debt loophole to battle climate change
Policymakers are trying to turn the economy green while keeping EU finances in check.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-budget-climate-change-greenhouse-gas-emissions-fossil-fuels/
“Deputy finance ministers discussed last Tuesday the idea of using the EU’s next seven-year budget, which runs through 2027, to help Europe reduce its use of fossil fuels. That meeting was preparation ahead of their bosses’ monthly meeting in Brussels next week.
The challenge is to reduce the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent compared to 1990 levels by the end of the decade, a herculean effort that will cost around €520 billion a year — a tough ask for an indebted continent that’s recovering from the worst recession since World War II.
Failing to plug that green hole would see Europe fall short of its own green goals and risk damaging its credibility as a global force for climate action. The EU budget could be the solution to avoid that dilemma, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund.”
Yet, I thought we are constantly being told that “going green” is cheap and far less expensive than not doing so.
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“Climate-related deaths fall in England and Wales – ONS”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60024156
–Rowlatt
vs.
“Government says its climate change curbs inadequate”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60026378
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ITV local news “And now to the huge rise in Electric cars
last month 25% of cars sold were entirely electric
that’s 25,600”
Then they quoted 2 towns in our area as 11% & 13%
At least they cherrypicking
maybe their figs are entirely bogus
AFAIK cars sales are screwed up by chip shortages.
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What Climate related deaths ?
Weather related deaths they mean
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Jit, isn’t that “analysis” by Rowlatt just shocking? Utterly one-sided, can’t accept unmitigated good news, looks to pick non-existent holes in it, because it doesn’t match the narrative. And the BBC wonders why the licence fee is under attack!
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Mark, Jit,
It’s just marvellous, isn’t it? They bludgeon forward with climate change as the only relevant causation when bad things happen, like floods and forest fires. But as soon as a positive trend can be attributed to climate change, statistics become ‘slippery’ and causal analysis becomes complicated. They make me ill.
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John Ridgway says:
16 Jan 22 at 5:03 pm – any link to the “The Met Office warns of armed militias roaming a UK ravaged by climate change in doomsday report” ?
[tidied up a bit as requested – jit]
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oops – messy comment – delete the double bits
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found this tho – https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1047003/climate-change-risk-assessment-2022.pdf
liked this bit – “Climate change will also present some opportunities for the UK – there is a role for
government to help fully realise these: This includes some areas of trade, where the UK
may gain a comparative advantage, either because the climate becomes more suitable in
the UK, or because climate change impacts are greater in competitor countries. These
include, for example, tourism and some agricultural exports. These opportunities can help
strengthen the case for political engagement in adaptation but will only be fully realised
with the right enabling environment”
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“Poor UK households may have to spend half their income on energy, says charity
Joseph Rowntree Foundation calls on the government to help vulnerable people facing ‘heat or eat’ decisions”
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/jan/18/poor-uk-households-may-have-to-spend-half-their-income-on-energy-says-charity
“Soaring energy bills could eat up more than half of some UK households’ incomes, a leading poverty charity has said, amid warnings that vulnerable people will be left unable to eat regularly or could even be at risk of death from the cold.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said that while households across the board faced bill increases of 40% to 47% from April, there would be huge variations in the ability of families to cope.
Energy bills would amount to 6% of the average income of a middle-income family but 18% for a low-income family. This would rise to 25% for lone parents and couples without children, while single-adult households on low incomes could be forced to spend 54% of their income on gas and electricity when the new energy price cap comes in on 1 April, the JRF found.”
No suggestion that JRF is campaigning to end the net zero pledge that is causing all this harm.
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“Sadiq Khan proposes journey charge for motorists in London
Mayor says air pollution and climate crisis are issues of ‘social justice’ in capital and across the globe”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/18/sadiq-khan-proposes-journey-charge-for-motorists-in-london
Which is why he proposes a policy that will mean only rich people can afford to drive across London?
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“Germany’s transport minister goes cool on e-fuels
‘It’s not realistic to expect a solution to fall from the sky,’ says Volker Wissing.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/volker-wissing-germany-car-industry-electric-synthetic-fuels-transport-climate-change/
“When it comes to greening its massive car industry, Germany can’t quite make up its mind: Should it go all in for electric vehicles or place a side bet on synthetic fuels?
The new government’s transport minister, Volker Wissing, is vacillating on the question — and angering the country’s powerful car lobby in the process.
In its coalition agreement, Germany’s new government — which unites the Social Democrats, the Greens and Wissing’s liberal Free Democrats — committed to having 15 million electric cars on the road by 2030 and phasing out the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles before an EU ban, slated for 2035, comes into force.
But it also pledged to continue to allow the sale of combustion engine vehicles that run on synthetic fuels — a clause inserted by Wissing’s liberal party.
Just weeks into the job, Wissing now appears to have gone cool on the prospect of sourcing large enough quantities of the so-called e-fuels, which are generated using renewable energy, to replace gasoline and diesel in millions of combustion engines already on the road across Germany.
“We should take advantage of the opportunities we already have today,” Wissing said Monday at a conference organized by business daily Handelsblatt, referring to available technology for electric vehicles.
“Of course, e-fuels are also an important contribution,” he said, but noted that it would make sense, given limited stocks, to reserve their use for airplanes and trucks where batteries aren’t as easily deployed.
“If you have a lot of it to spare, I’m grateful for every liter that replaces a fossil fuel,” he added. But he cautioned that “it’s not realistic to expect a solution to fall from the sky” when it comes to massively scaling up the fuels.
The comments came as a shock to Germany’s car lobby, which has long backed e-fuels as a way to slash emissions from the millions of fossil fuel cars that will remain in use even after sales of new polluting cars are no longer allowed. Betting on e-fuels would also help keep alive the sprawling supply chain of companies across Germany that make the parts for traditional combustion engines, the industry argues.
“Without e-fuels, the vehicles that are already in operation cannot make any contribution to climate protection,” said Hildegard Müller, the German auto industry’s chief lobbyist….”.
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Dougie,
As for your missing link problem, I’m not sure what to say, because I can’t see your difficulty from where I am sat. In case it helps, I repeat the link below:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10406521/Met-Office-predicts-collapse-society-following-climate-disaster.html
If that still isn’t readable for you, all I can suggest is that if you were to put ‘The Met Office warns of armed militias’ into your search engine I’m confident it would find the link for you. And if it does, you will see for yourself that something is very wrong. Either the Met Office is now operating far beyond its remit and far beyond its area of competence, or, worse still, socio-political speculation is now its core business and the UK government is happy to endorse, fund and staff it upon that basis.
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Times on Sat Jan 8th : 15 Green Resolutions
then “come to our meeting with Lucy Siegle”
#GreenPR
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“Together Energy is latest UK supplier to go bust
Ofgem will appoint new firm to take on 176,000 households affected by collapse of Bristol Energy owner”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/18/bristol-energy-owner-is-latest-uk-supplier-to-go-bust
“Together Energy has become the latest supplier to go bust weeks after the struggling council-owned company assured its customers that the business was stable despite record-high gas market prices.
The energy regulator, Ofgem, will appoint a new supplier to take on the 176,000 households affected by the collapse of Together Energy, and its subsidiary Bristol Energy, which are part-owned by Warrington borough council.
The energy company was forced to deny press reports earlier this year that it was on the brink of calling in administrators and told customers that the company was “stable” and operating on a “business as usual” basis.
Bristol Energy said it was “saddened” to announce its exit from the UK’s energy market but it was “untenable for us to continue”. It also denied press reports that suggested it had not bought enough gas and electricity to meet its customers’ needs.
Warrington borough council is thought to be on the hook for about £52m in equity, loans and guarantees to the company, which is based 200 miles north in Clydebank.
The council’s investment was made in 2019 with the aim of earning a return to plug holes in its budget left by central government cuts to local authority budgets. The council also hoped to use its stake to advance tackling issues such as fuel poverty and global heating.
However, critics warned the energy supplier was a bad investment from the start, due to the company’s poor customer ratings and risks from wrapping up taxpayers’ money in a complex industry exposed to changeable wholesale markets.”
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A new study by the Office for National Statistics reckons that climate change saved ~550k lives in England and Wales from 2001 to 2020.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/climaterelatedmortalityandhospitaladmissionsenglandandwales2001to2020
The study is mathturbation, and prolly not very good mathturbation at that – one set of corrections already (I reckon more are imminent).
Whatever its quality, it would have got a lot more press coverage if its results had been doomier.
So far, the study has been covered only at Wired.com and in The Telegraph (and, in an obvious steal from The Telegraph, The Independent).
Perhaps The Graun will finally get there tomorrow: ‘ONS denies the climate emergency – heads must roll’.
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Vinny, see Jit’s comment yesterday, and this link to it at the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60024156
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Whoops!
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John, I could find the Mail link ok, but not a link to the report it Quotes from.
having been over at TALOPKT Blog a few posters have gave me the link I was after (may have missed it in the Mail post)
https://uk-scape.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/projects/SPEED/shared-socioeconomic-pathways
I think the Mail Quotes come from this link from above –
Click to access UK-SSP3-ScenarioFactSheet.pdf
well worth a full read & expect the BEEB to have a new drama in the making as I post 🙂
ps – my name has reverted back !!!
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pps – seems the above report was funded by “The UK Climate Resilience programme is supported by the UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund.The programme is co-delivered by the Met Office and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) on behalf of UKRI partners AHRC, EPSRC, ESRC.”
so the Met was just one of many giving funding to the – “The UK-SSPs products have been jointly developed with Cambridge Econometrics, University of Edinburgh and University of Exeter through co-funding from the Met Office as part of the UK Climate Resilience Programme (DN420214 – CR19-3).”
the money go round & cr*p produced makes me wonder why any young person in the UK would ever go into Engineering.
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Sorry, Dougie. I was obviously being a bit obtuse again. I shall take a look at the report tomorrow.
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no probs John – still reading it – but can’t get the band/song “Madness – One Step Beyond” out of my mind for some reason !!!
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“Climate protesters call for ban on Manx fossil fuel extraction”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-60042977
All 6 of them, to judge by the photo accompanying the story, although the BBC claims there were “about 30 protestors”.
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Those IoM protestors were from XR, and they appear to have a co-ordinated set of activities just now (and of course are guaranteed BBC publicity for it):
“Extinction Rebellion blasts Cornwall Council’s ‘hot air’ on climate”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-60040596
According to the BBC: “A group of about 50 climate protestors gathered outside county hall”, though they managed at best to get 8 or 9 in a photo.
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Dougie,
Okay, I’ve taken a quick look at the set of reports from which the doomsaying is derived and something is immediately apparent. The abstract for the first scenario, in which the green route is followed, is a good description of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and the alternative scenarios, in contrast, read as variations on the theme of social armageddon. Take home message: nothing is going to work apart from green politics. To arrive at this conclusion a great deal of horrible contrivance is involved — although I suspect that, in practice, the conclusion preceeded the contrivance. It is shocking to see just how politicised the Met Office has become.
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Sometimes I think we’re living in a parallel universe:
“Isle of Man ministers commit to review offshore energy strategy”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-60054157
“During the debate, Tynwald members made reference to the potential extraction of gas by Crogga, with a decision over a long-term extension to the company’s licence to be made later this year.
MLC Paul Craine called for a “substantial refocus” toward wind and marine renewable electricity instead.
However, Stu Peters MHK, who was the only member not to support the motion, said he felt nothing should be done to stop a commercial operator from extracting gas “if it is available as expected”.
The island must “aim for energy security”, he added.
Ms Barber told Tynwald the strategy would now be reviewed, with an update provided to to the parliament by the end of June.
The Isle of Man government has committed to reaching a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
I think the aim for energy security and the target of net zero emissions are in direct conflict.
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“Brighton bee bricks initiative may do more harm than good, say scientists
Special bricks could attract mites or encourage spread of disease if not cleaned properly, say some experts”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/18/brighton-bee-bricks-initiative-may-do-more-harm-than-good-say-scientists
“An initiative in Brighton aimed at helping protect the bee population could do more harm than good, scientists have warned.
The council in Brighton has passed a planning condition that means any new building more than five metres high will have to include swift boxes and special bricks with holes known as bee bricks. They will provide nesting and hibernating space for solitary bees.
However, scientists have warned that such a move will not make any real difference for biodiversity, with some arguing that it could make matters worse for bees if the holes are not cleaned properly and attract mites or encourage the spread of disease.”
Greens – destroying nature every way you turn.
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“Liverpool Council funding airport at odds with climate aims, councillor says”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-60057119
“Liverpool’s council must stop funding the city’s airport because doing so is “incompatible” with its effort to fight climate change, a councillor has said.
In a motion to the Labour-led council, Green member Anna Key said supporting Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA) was not in line with the authority’s climate emergency declaration in 2019.
She also called for opposition to LJLA’s “potential future expansion”.
An airport spokesman said it had its own plans to be carbon neutral by 2040.”
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“The people moving from high to low-carbon careers”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60036245
Basically an advert for XR and pushing veganism.
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“Two More Contributions On The Impossibility Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar And Batteries”
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-1-17-two-more-contributions-on-the-impossibility-of-electrifying-everything-using-only-wind-solar-and-batteries
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“Cornwall’s rockpool species ‘threatened by climate change'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-60055099
“A study has suggested that many rockpool species are threatened by climate change and would not survive crossing the Channel’s currents.
The University of Exeter’s study focused on the St Piran’s hermit crab, which appeared in Cornwall in 2016.
The crab travelled on “freak” currents from South Brittany in France, searching for a cooler climate.
With sea temperatures expected to rise, many rockpool species in south-west England are at risk.”
I’d like to know how they know that the crab was “searching for a cooler climate.”
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I do hope they re-visit this story a few years after its implementation to see how it’s going:
“Stormont energy plan ‘will create jobs and lower bills'”
“Northern Ireland’s first energy strategy action plan has been published by the Department for the Economy.
It outlines 22 actions for 2022, as the first step to reduce energy-related emissions by 56% by 2030.
Economy Minister Gordon Lyons said it will create jobs and lead to lower costs for consumers.
About a third of the actions outlined in the plan aim to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”
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“Cargo without carbon: the rise and rise of e-bike deliveries
Demand for electric cargo bike couriers has boomed since first lockdown, bringing the hope of cleaner, quieter, safer streets”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/20/cargo-without-carbon-the-rise-and-rise-of-e-bike-deliveries
Well, I’ll grant you that e-bikes are more environmentally friendly than vans, but “cargo without carbon”? Where do they think the electricity comes from? They’re not push bikes!
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“The EU’s taxonomy tussle
Most countries back rules treating gas and nuclear as sustainable.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-eus-taxonomy-tussle/
“Climate campaigners, German and Austrian Greens, scientists and even some investors are aghast at the European Commission’s proposal to add nuclear and gas to its definition of what qualifies as a sustainable investment — but there’s very little they can do about it.
That’s because not nearly enough countries are opposed to the Commission’s draft act — blocking it needs a supermajority of at least 72 percent of countries representing 65 percent of the EU’s population.
The fast-track feedback period on the draft ends Friday, and the Commission aims to move swiftly. “Our intention is to adopt the act as soon as possible,” a Commission spokesperson said.
But the political anger over the measure is very high.
“We find the new draft problematic both from a political and technical point of view,” said a Thursday letter to the Commission signed by Spain, Austria, Luxembourg and Denmark. It warns that the Commission risks the EU’s energy transition and calls classifying gas and nuclear as sustainable “a step backwards.”
There’s also concern from investors that adding nuclear and gas to the list of acceptable technologies might compromise the Sustainable Finance Taxonomy and undermine its goal of combating greenwashing by allowing investors to identify sustainable assets….”.
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Still mostly powered by the grid therefore gas/nuclear/coal and sometimes wind and bits of solar
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R4 reporting on how Europe is dealing with gas/energy price rise
France ..cos of the upcoming presidential election, Macron acted quickly
#1 Poor people given 2 x €100 grants
#2 Market price was to rise by 44% this month but this was held to 4%
..by forcing the state owned EDF to discounted the nuclear leccy it sells the grid
..leaving an €8bn hole in its accounts
Germany
Heating gas rose by 54% from Sept-Dec
#1 Proposed grants to poorer households – Single person house £110, 4 person £200
.. will take to summer to implement
#2 Levy to fund new green electricity will be reduced then scrapped
Spain : The cost of leccy almost doubled in 2021
Leftwing government measures
#1 VAT cut
#2 Electric production tax reduced
both extended to beginning of April
#3 Special energy discount for vulnerable households
#4 Windfall tax on energy corp profits .. now watered down due to their complaints
UK expert
“Family of 4 can expect annual bill to go from £1,300 to £2K”
“if the price causes everyone to cut back, then that eases some pressure”
He wrongly claimed that government money is useless cos it’s just giving money to taxpayers, who then end up paying more tax.
No biz and charities would take some of the tax burden
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Sun “desmond tutu asked that his body be disposed of using alkaline hydrolysis, or aquamation, which is an eco-friendly alternative to cremation using water & potassium hydroxide.”
Does it really lock away your body’s CO2
What’s the CO2 cost of producing potassium hydroxide ?
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Mark, at times like these I reach for my 1996 Collins Sea Shore handbook. On the distribution of Clibanarius erythropus, it says:
Moving on to the ludicrous assertion that Mr. Crab was in search of cooler climes – well, I hardly need to dignify stupidity like that. But I will answer it because I am angry. Crab larvae are planktonic and therefore go wherever the current takes them.
(Perhaps I should have written that in all caps.)
As adults they do not migrate anywhere except by short perambulations, dragging their gastropod shell home along with them. That probably limits them to a few hundred metres of range.
Ye gods!
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Mark, I now move on to another subject on which I should know at least something. Bees.
First off, there is no world in which it is possible to clean a bee hotel. If in use, a hole will be permanently occupied. When adults emerge they have but a short time to gather pollen stores for the next generation. They may well re-use the hole instantly. If not in use, any parasites would be absent also, so there would be no point in cleaning.
Second, many species of mites found on bees are not parasites but are hitching a ride to disperse (“phoresis”). They may well feed on the pollen store meant for the bee larva meaning that the next generation bee is undersized. Not the end of the world.
Third, most of the bees using these hotels will be common species at no risk. Indeed there are many bees that are cleptoparasites of other bees: they allow a different species to provision a hole, sneak in and lay an egg, upon which their larva kills the host larva and develops on the pollen store in its place. The less common cleptoparasites would presumably benefit from continuous occupation of bee hotels by common hosts.
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“Firms call for urgent help with energy bills”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60087798
NB:
“Energy-intensive industries such as steel, ceramics and glass makers also needed support to be competitive internationally, the groups said.”
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Front page news on the BBC website:
“False banana: Is Ethiopia’s enset ‘wondercrop’ for climate change?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60074407
“Scientists say the plant enset, an Ethiopian staple, could be a new superfood and a lifesaver in the face of climate change.
The banana-like crop has the potential to feed more than 100 million people in a warming world, according to a new study.
The plant is almost unknown outside of Ethiopia, where it is used to make porridge and bread.
Research suggests the crop can be grown over a much larger range in Africa.
“This is a crop that can play a really important role in addressing food security and sustainable development,” said Dr Wendawek Abebe of Hawassa University in Awasa, Ethiopia.
Enset or “false banana” is a close relative of the banana, but is consumed only in one part of Ethiopia.
The banana-like fruit of the plant is inedible, but the starchy stems and roots can be fermented and used to make porridge and bread.”
Hmm. A study, eh?
“Using agricultural surveys and modelling work, scientists predicted the potential range of enset over the next four decades. They found the crop could potentially feed more than 100 million people and boost food security in Ethiopia and other African countries, including Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
Study researcher Dr James Borrell, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said planting enset as a buffer crop for lean times could help boost food security.”
Well, maybe, but it’s not really a climate change story, is it? Nor does it sound as though it’s of much, if any, relevance to UK consumers.
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Maybe worth a read:
“Why a gas pipeline in Russia could affect your phone bill”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60060478
“Huge tankers, each carrying enough liquid natural gas to meet a third of the UK’s needs for a day.
This valuable cargo will be unloaded at London Thamesport and delivered to energy companies which have paid record prices for the gas, much of which was fracked in the US. In fact, one of these ships was on its way across the Pacific to China, having passed through the Panama Canal, when it was rediverted to the UK where buyers were willing to pay 25% more for its cargo.”
Much of which was fracked in the US…..But we can’t frack for cheap gas here apparently – energy security not allowed.
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Serbia pulls plug on Rio Tinto’s $2.4 billion lithium project
bowing to protesters who opposed the development of the project by the Anglo-Australian mining giant on environmental grounds.
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/serbian-government-revokes-rio-tintos-licences-lithium-project-2022-01-20/
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@TheSun on Jan 2nd
UK has sent £86m in green aid to COP26 saboteurs China & India in past 5 years
Clickbait title it just means UK has sent £86m aid to China & India projects, including some green projects/research.
but it’s interesting the Sun takes a kind of anti Green activist line.
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R4 just now consumer show was fair
Qn “I’m on 100% renewable tariff, why is my bill going up with gas price rises ?”
Expert “The electricity market is very interconnected
there is nowhere of telling where you actual electricity really come from gas/nuclear/wind.
Windfarms are incredibly expensive to set up, so have been vastly subsidised by the rest of the market”
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stewgreen, did you listen to Moneybox on Radio 4? Did they provide a plausible explanation?
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3pm Sunday Radio4 drama about the Dark Summer of 1816
based on Lord Byron’s writing
That’s the year when there was a great change in world Climate due to the volcano eruption.
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Video clip of the Unmentioned Insurrection
Thursday October 14th 2021
Lefty climate protesters try to storm into the Department of the Interior
“multiple injuries including security personnel
and one officer had to be airlifted to a hospital
50 plus were arrested”
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The video says it all there, compared to lines of RT text
.. (Other times videos are a waste of time as they can be summarised in 2 lines of text)
Longer clips show more detail protesters breaking through and occupying the building
.. https://youtu.be/pG64a3B9wwg
… https://twitter.com/FightFossils/status/1448689189562851335
The establishment said “Oh this is just a peaceful protest”
Not a surprise cos lefty activists have run for years as “The Occupy movement” storming buildings and occupying them
.. Then Jan 6th comes along and the media which have seen it all many times before suddenly feign extreme outrage at actual “mainly peaceful” protesters.
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Video of Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) holding up the two photos
and asking Attorney General Merrick Garland during a House Judiciary hearing on Thursday over his awareness, or lack their off of left-wing protests.
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People scoffed at a badly titled BBC article in NOvember
about reducing NO2 loss in hospitals.
All they were doing was using a Swedish mask which collects the expelled air instead of venting it.
I wonder if the magnitude is worth it ?
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“Major investor will target bosses at firms failing on climate”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60091071
“A major UK investment fund has said it will vote to try to get directors kicked out of firms that fail to make good on environmental pledges.
Aviva Investors also wants bosses’ pay to be linked to sustainability goals.
It is the latest big investment firm to ramp up the pressure on corporations in a bid to make them clean up their acts.
BlackRock, the world’s largest fund, has told the firms it invests in to step up on sustainability or face the consequences.
Aviva Investors, which has £262bn of assets under management, set out its expectations in a letter that will be sent to 1,500 firms in 30 countries this week.”
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Countryfile was a coal coast special
So took the opportunity to smear coal, and push green dreams
A promised “Clean Green energy” item is a damp squib if you look closely
The Dawdon project first started treating mine water cos it was rising up and affecting drinking water etc.
Now they hope to heat 1,500 homes with this warmed water (that’s not much)
Council PR guy ..”we could use the water to heat greenhouses and cut food imports.”
(Wonder what they do with the heat in summer ?)
Promo tweet January marks the 50-year anniversary of *the* miners’ strike,
join Anita and Matt as they travel to County Durham an area which has rebuilt itself since the decline of the coal industry.
(They mean “a miners strike in 1972, not the one in 1984)
Matt “After 1972, the one year strike in 1984, More walk outs , *demand for coal fell*, leading to pit closures”
Twitter
================
– Extreme Weather & coal mines with Tom Heap
At Skewer near Swansea, floods caused a high river to flow down a street
Heap claimed collapsed tunnels caused it
(Actually at the end of the report they clarified a mine drainage tunnel got blocked. so the water got directed to the street)
“A quarter of old buildings in the UK are above abandoned coal mines” sounds like BS.
Heap quated all spoil heaps collapses with Aberfan ..No that was a special big one.
Yet Tom mentioned two recent slippages near schools
Then “Prof @DavePetley believes these tips are much more dangerous cos of C Change”
Prof “The heaviest rainfall events are becoming heavier and duration is inc as well”
.. He specifically said there would NOT be an Aberfan
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/01/climate-change-and-landslides-the-slippery-slope-towards-disaster/
Finally Julie James, Wales Climate Minister “accelerating CC ..blah blah”
===============
Item : National Trust PR about their land renovation clearing coal waste
Item : Scientist looking at the offshore kelp forests damaged by coal waste
“not as good as unmined areas”
Item : Poultry farm , Bird Flu problems
Winter 2021 1.8m birds CULLED so far ..more than last year … Second Bird Flu year in the row, that’s unisial.
Industry is holding back on vax.. cos could make worse !
===================
Item : Vegan farm orchards
Hunny .. bee free honey
Banging their hippy drums around the orchard.
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I’d already put the answer in the above comment “R4 just now consumer show was fair”
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“Fortescue: Firm owned by Australia’s richest man buys Williams F1 battery arm”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60106871
“The mining giant founded by Australia’s richest man is buying the battery and technology arm of the Williams Formula One racing team for $222.2m (£164m).
Fortescue Metals will purchase UK-based Williams Advanced Engineering from private equity firm EMK Capital and Williams Grand Prix Engineering.
The deal is aimed to help the iron ore producer achieve its target to be carbon neutral by 2030.
One of the first projects to be developed will be a battery train.”
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Attenborough’s the Green Planet which was broadcast yesterday focussed upon areas with a seasonal climate. Most of it wonderful stuff; much of it already well known but with the new camera systems and Attenborough’s commentary presented in a new and fascinating way – the writhing of dodder stems (speeded up) feeling out for plant prey to suck upon was particularly notable. But there was new stuff too – the flower wealth of South Africa consumed by firestorms and the appearance of a startlingly red fire lilies amongst the blacked ruins, having waited 15 years since the last fire to germinate.
Yet for me it was spoilt at the end of the programme by Attenborough’s insistence in ending with reference to climate change (our fault) changing the timing of the seasons causing mistimings, especially between flowering and appearance of pollinators. This message came in the groves of giant sequoias that are apparently suffering from drought caused by our changing the climate.
I thought to myself how did the plant kingdom cope with the multiple changes from glacial to interglacial conditions, changes far greater than are occurring today? Did Attenborough and his minions ever consider such a question? I think not. Nor how tropical rain forests survived full glacials when, for example much of the African rain forest was replaced by sand dunes.
Opportunities missed to the overwhelming necessity to relate everything to the new Shibboleth that is human-caused climate change. Other BBC programme presenters have recognised their own hypocrisy by recognising the huge carbon footprint their programmes represent, but not our Richard A.
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Damn spellchecker it substituted my “interglacial” with “interracial” making a nonsense.
[Fixed — rd]
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Alan, yesterday it replaced my “green path” (I was talking about an OS map) with “Green Party.”
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In the headlines: “Fears mount Russia will weaponise gas supplies.” (The Times.) No-one could have seen this coming.
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But JIT according to our “betters” (sarc) we have already weaponised CO2 gas and it has devastated our beloved planet paradise.
Also MY militarised spell checker has nothing to do changing YOUR Green path with Green Party. Looks like your little spellchecker has been indoctrinated.
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Donna Laframboise has a clip of Allan Savory’s take on academia and expands on the apparent uselessness of peer review on her blog today.
https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2022/01/24/higher-education-science-peer-review/
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Bill, Donna’s non-verbal philippic against academics and especially against peer review provides nothing new and erroneously believes peer review should remove error. It can’t, authors obviously know more about the subject matter of their paper and there is no possible way reviewers can always catch any but the most obvious of errors. Reviewers (and I did this task for nearly thirty years) are unpaid yet provide journal editors with an independent evaluation. As an editor (for about six years, I relied upon a small group of well qualified colleagues to provide me with advice. Good reviewers make suggestions for a paper’s improvement rather than exercise a picket-fence strategy as Donna suggests.
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Heavy snowfall disrupted air and road traffic Monday in the Greek capital of Athens and neighboring Turkey’s largest city of Istanbul, while most of Greece, including — unusually — several Aegean islands, and much of Turkey were blanketed by snow..
Last year, the Greek capital was hit by a major snowstorm that caused severe problems, knocking out power for days in certain neighborhoods and making all streets impassable without snow chains. Thousands of trees collapsed from the weight of the snow and ice..
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/severe-weather-brings-snow-athens-greek-islands-82435668
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“Climate change: ‘Carbon offsetting not get-out-of-jail-free card'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-60116972
“…Asher Minns, executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, says carbon offsetting “tends to be used a little bit as an excuse sometimes”.
“I can carry on this behaviour, I can fly, I can drive, I can use as much energy as I like, but that’s not offsetting,” he says.
“You absolutely have to reduce your emissions, get them as low as you can. The emission you absolutely can’t do anything about, that’s what you offset.”…”.
In other words, I can’t fly, I can’t drive? Good luck with that.
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@ Alan – “As an editor (for about six years….” – you can’t not tell for which !!!
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anybody see/have comment on this – https://www.academia.edu/49442870/The_Axial_Seamount_Nature_s_Response_To_500_Years_of_Cooling
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Pretty much everything, it seems, is at risk from climate change:
“Climate change threatening buried UK treasures
By Justin Rowlatt
Climate Editor”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60091485
“Climate change is threatening to destroy treasures buried in the UK as the soils that protect them dry out.
A Roman toilet seat, the world’s oldest boxing glove, and the oldest handwritten letter by a woman are some of the extraordinary objects discovered in at-risk British peatlands.
It means climate change could undermine our understanding of our past, say archaeologists.
About 22,500 archaeological sites in UK may be in danger.
The problem is that changing weather patterns are drying out some peatlands – the waterlogged soils that cover about 10% of the UK.”
Using the interactive tool devised between the BBC and the Met Office, and described by me in “Millimetres from Disaster” I find that for Vindolanda’s post code (Vindolanda being the example given in the article) they are forecasting a reduction in summer rainy days from 13 to 12 month on the basis of a 2C temperature rise. They forecast the number of winter rainy days will stay the same (at an average of 15 per month) even if the temperature rises by as much as 4C.
I’m struggling to find real world data for anywhere near Vindolanda, but based on personal experience, since I don’t live so far away, it doesn’t feel as though it’s getting less wet there (or here).
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And an article on the same day explores other reasons why peat may be drying out:
“Northern Ireland’s peatlands face ‘toxic’ nitrogen risk”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60117908
“Almost a fifth of Northern Ireland (18%) is covered in peatland.
But much of it is already damaged.
Over the decades, it’s been drained to extract turf for fuel, or make the land suitable for farming…”.
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National Grid right now (in cold January):
Coal: 4.3%
Gas: 59.1%
Pumped storage: 4.7%
Nuclear: 12.5%
Biomass: 7.2%
Solar: 0%
Wind: 6.7%
Hydro:
1.2%
Interconnectors: 2.8%
It’s interesting that the interconnectors are providing far less electricity than usual – the wind isn’t blowing in Europe, either. Plus, I suppose, with gas prices being where they are, the Europeans will be less keen to export electricity to us at pretty much any price.
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But I thought net zero was cheap, and certainly cheaper than the alternative?
“McKinsey: fundamental transformation of global economy needed for net zero
$9tn of annual investment required to avoid most catastrophic climate impacts, consultancy says”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/25/transformation-global-economy-net-zero-mckinsey
“It estimates that $9.2tn will need to be invested every year for decades to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C and end the climate emergency. The sum is a 40% increase on current investment levels and equivalent to half of global corporate profits.”
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df. I was an editor of an American-based journal dealing with the interpretation of sedimentary rocks
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Irony alert:
“Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone causing financial anxiety, MPs say”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-60111076
“Fifteen Labour MPs have called on the government to offer greater support to those facing “financial anxiety” over the implementation of an air quality scheme in Greater Manchester.
From 30 May, the region will be subject to a Clean Air Zone (CAZ) plan.
In a letter, the MPs said since the plan was agreed, the cost of upgrading a vehicle had seen a steep increase.
They added that they backed a decision by the region’s ten councils to refer the plan back to government for review.
CAZs are designed to encourage people to drive less-polluting vehicles, including those powered by electric, and more modern petrol and diesels.”
Mind you, it’s not causing so much financial anxiety as net zero!
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“Top diplomat Borrell: EU must reduce energy dependency on Russia amid Ukraine conflict
Europe is facing its ‘most dangerous moment’ since the Cold War, says Josep Borrell.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-josep-borrell-russia-ukraine-crisis-energy-security/
“Europe is facing its “most dangerous moment” since the Cold War amid fears Moscow will invade Ukraine, said top EU diplomat Josep Borrell, calling on the bloc to reduce its energy dependency on Russia and unite around a comprehensive security strategy.
“The last two years have seen a serious worsening of our strategic environment to the extent that today we are living through the most dangerous moment of the post-Cold War period,” Borrell said Tuesday during an event hosted jointly by the European External Action Service, and the EU Institute for Security Studies.
“Russia has made its economy more sanctions-proof, it has been building a strong resilience. Russia is today the third holder of assets in dollars — $400,000 million. But we have not done the same in the energy field and we must reduce our dependency on the Russian energy,” Borrell added.
His remarks come as the EU struggles to agree on how to retaliate against Moscow if it attacks its neighbor, which might impact the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany, with Berlin so far ruling out linking it to Russian aggression.
“The Ukraine-Russia crisis has demonstrated that we face an increasingly strategic environment. But once again, the debate on European security goes far beyond the Ukraine-Russia crisis,” Borrell said. “Look around us: the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, NATO, Pacific — these days, threats are coming from everywhere and manifest themselves in all the strategic domains.”
He added that after two decades of security planning that have only resulted in “analyses, initiatives, and plans with lots of acronyms,” the EU must agree on a comprehensive security approach that translates into concrete actions.”
Better late than never, I suppose.
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thanks for the reply Alan.
all thing to do with the Earth & geography have always fascinated me. your life & work on this must have been Fascinating.
wonder what you make of the short Paper I linked to above ?
partial quote – ” The Axial Seamount
300 kilometers off the coast of Oregon there is an undersea volcano, The Axial Seamount. It erupted in 1982, 1998, 2011 and 2015. New Scientist July 9th, 2007 suggests that there are roughly 3 million volcanoes under the oceans of the world, this one is the only under sea volcano ever, regularly, studied. It is estimated that about 80 % of all volcanic activity on Earth occurs under the oceans. Almost nothing is known about these volcanoes. Scientists do not even have a scale by which to measure volcanoes that erupt under the sea. No system has ever been developed to describe or rate their magnitude like the systems rating Volcanoes above land.”
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just to add another link from NOLOPKNT on Ukraine – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
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“Airlines flying near-empty ‘ghost flights’ to retain EU airport slots
Analysis from Greenpeace finds deserted flights are generating millions of tons of harmful emissions”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/26/airlines-flying-near-empty-ghost-flights-to-retain-eu-airport-slots
“At least 100,000 “ghost flights” could be flown across Europe this winter because of EU airport slot usage rules, according to analysis by Greenpeace.
The deserted, unnecessary or unprofitable flights are intended to allow airlines to keep their takeoff and landing runway rights in major airports, but they could also generate up to 2.1 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions – or as much as 1.4 million average petrol or diesel cars emit in a year – Greenpeace says.
“The EU Commission requiring airlines to fly empty planes to meet an arbitrary quota is not only polluting, but extremely hypocritical given their climate rhetoric,” said Herwig Schuster, a spokesperson for Greenpeace’s European Mobility for All campaign.”
If true, then for once I agree with a Greenpeace spokesperson.
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Nudge nudge, wink wink:
“Messages on menus can double number of diners choosing plant-based options
Themes of making a small change for a big impact and joining a movement are effective in nudging consumers, research finds”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/26/plant-based-food-restaurants-climate-menu-messages
“Simple changes to messages on restaurants’ menus can double the frequency of customers choosing plant-based options instead of meat, research on the impact of food on the climate crisis has found.
The production, transportation and consumption of food has become an increasing focus for climate researchers, with a recent study finding the food industry accounts for more than a third of the world’s total annual planet-heating emissions.
Much of the pollution is centered on meat. Raising cattle, chickens and pigs for meat, a process that often involves clearing large tracts of forest, causes about double the emissions of plant-based foods.
Meat consumption remains stubbornly high in the US – the average American gobbled down 264lb of meat in 2020 – and is rising quickly in countries such as China.”
Ah, China again!
But fear not:
“Many people are receptive to the idea of switching to vegetarian options in order to help the environment, however, the research found, with messaging on restaurant menus a potentially significant way of shifting behaviour.
A multi-stage experiment by the research non-profit organisation World Resources Institute (WRI) involved about 6,000 people in the US and their reaction to menu descriptions.
Researchers tested responses to 10 different sustainability-themed messages when the participants were asked to choose between different options on a menu, such as a bean burrito or beef burrito.
Several of the messages produced dramatic results. Diners who read “Each of us can make a positive difference for the planet. Swapping just one meat dish for a plant-based one saves greenhouse gas emissions that are equivalent to the energy used to charge your phone for two years. Your small change can make a big difference” on their menus chose a vegetarian dish 25% of the time, more than double the rate of diners who were shown no message at all.
Another message – “90% of Americans are making the change to eat less meat. Join this growing movement and choose plant-based dishes that have less impact on the climate and are kinder to the planet” – prompted 22% of people to opt for a plant-based dish, again far higher than the standard group.”
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Worth a read, IMO:
“The Rich Get Richer as the Great Green Rush Gets Rolling”
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/01/26/the-rich-get-richer-as-the-great-green-rush-gets-rolling/
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dj. I haven’t read the paper you quote from but from what you have quoted I doubt that I shall bother. Those few quotes contain several dubious statements – not least about a lack of knowledge about oceanic volcanicity. Oceanic volcanos occur in two main settings – mid oceanic ridges and above hot plumes in the oceanic mantle. The Tonga volcanic event probably is one of the latter although I don’t know this for sure and haven’t checked. It is true that most ocean ridge volcanos lie at depths, but not all. Those constituting Iceland are well above sea level and are extensively studied. Rocks formed from older versions form much of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
As for plume related volcanicity perhaps the best known examples are the Hawaiian chain – hardly understudied.
As for your fascination with things geographical and geological, this I can well understand, having been bitten by the same bug as a schoolboy, so many years ago.
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Church history exhibition has an ancient doggerel verse
One line says “by their plastick power”
.. I thought that is an old use of a modern word.
Yet when I check it actually comes from Ancient Greek πλαστικός (plastikós),
“fit for moulding; plastic
(of people) gifted in sculpture”
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How could I have forgotten? Ashamed of myself for my lethargy over the nature of the Tongan volcanic event. I remembered the Tongan Trench – one of the deepest parts of the Pacific. trenches are associated with plate boundaries – in this case a boundary extending northeast from NewZealand. This makes the Tongan volcanicity not related to ocean plumes.
Sorry for the misleading statement and my lethargy.
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12:50pm Communal Heating contracts are NOT protected by the price cap
so their prices go up just like a commercial/industry customers does.
One guy has seen his prices double.
but so far most administrators have not vastly increased prices for customers.
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Alan: You’ve been extremely helpful and educational here. The odd wrong category, fine … we’re still better off for reading.
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“Coal: Aberpergwm colliery gets OK to mine 40 million tonnes”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-60147423
“A Green Party MP has said it is “shameful” that a colliery in south Wales has been given permission to mine a further 40 million tonnes of coal.
Caroline Lucas said fossil fuels must be left in the ground.
The UK government, which oversees the Coal Authority which is responsible for licensing mines, has been asked to comment.
Operator Energybuild previously said most of its coal was not burned for energy.
Welsh ministers wanted the UK government to cancel the licence for Aberpergwm mine, near Glynneath in Neath Port Talbot.
But on Wednesday evening the Welsh government said it was “committed to working” with the company on business models that were sustainable.
The colliery is the only producer of high-grade anthracite in Western Europe and supplies nearby Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot.”
Good. Now can the Cumbrian coal mine please also have the go-ahead. If not, why not?
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“In pictures: Scotland’s climate story in art and images”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9z8p86per7o
“Historic Environment Scotland has announced the winners of its Visions of Climate Heritage competition
The artworks and images captured scenes of Scotland’s changing landscapes and the impacts of pollution and extreme weather
Organisers said the winners all told the nation’s climate story “in their own unique way””
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“Climate change: Cold callers annoy farmers with tree-plant plea”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60125398
“Farmers are being “cold called” by agents working for investors who want to buy farmland to plant trees that would offset their carbon footprint.
Farming unions claim “powerful players are seeking to offset emissions” at the expense of rural communities in what one politician called a “land grab.”
Land agent Savills said it has made “direct approaches” to farmers in Wales on behalf of clients.
One of those approached said they feared farmers were an “easy take”.
Kyra Somerfield said she was “annoyed” and “shocked” by the unsolicited call from Savills to ask if she was interested in selling the 220-acre family farm in Carmarthenshire where she has lived and worked for 60 years.”
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“Ministers invest £100m in EDF’s £20bn Sizewell C nuclear power station
Government’s cash injection is designed to ‘maximise investor confidence’ while the company courts private investors”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/27/ministers-invest-100m-in-edfs-20bn-sizewell-c-nuclear-power-station
“Ministers have thrown further support behind EDF Energy’s £20bn Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk with a £100m investment to help develop the project while the company courts private investors.
The government’s cash injection is designed to “maximise investor confidence” in the project while French state-owned EDF works towards setting out a funding plan which satisfies investors and UK ministers.
In return the government will have rights to an equity stake in the development company behind the project and over the land on which EDF plans to build it. If EDF is able to secure enough investor backing to make a final investment decision on Sizewell it would reimburse the government with a stake in the project or in cash.”
Has somebody woken up to the energy crisis? Better late than never, I suppose.
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“French economy minister compares gas crisis to 1973 oil shock
The minister said French government needs to blunt the shock, or social and economic consequences will be considerable.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/le-maire-current-gas-crisis-as-bad-as-1973-oil-shock/
“French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire said Wednesday Europe’s energy crisis is “comparable” to the 1973 oil shock, and that it warrants exceptional mitigation measures.
“Every country in Europe is today facing an energy crisis that is the most serious in decades,” Le Maire said in a telephone press briefing, adding: “The response and responsibility of the government is to act, to decide, and to use all the levers at its disposal to blunt that shock, because otherwise the social consequences for French consumers and economic consequences for businesses would be considerable.”
The declaration was followed by an impassioned finance ministry defense of the government’s decision this month to force state-controlled utility EDF to sell more nuclear electricity to competing power providers at a fixed low price.
EDF employees went on strike in protest on Wednesday, calling it an “unacceptable weakening of EDF” in an open letter to Le Maire.”
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“A Green Party MP has said it is “shameful” that a colliery in South Wales has been given permission to mine a further 40 million tonnes of coal.
Caroline Lucas said fossil fuels must be left in the ground.”
I suggest HMG starts a Net Carbon Zero experiment by picking a small city and withdrawing the supplies of fossil fuels for the duration of the experiment. No natural gas, no petroleum products and electricity supply in proportion to that produced by renewable sources. We can then see exactly what effect this would have on a population.
May I humbly suggest that Brighton should be chosen as the best place to lead the country in this way?
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Where are our news services? Or is it because I’m reading the wrong stuff? Looking at Jo Nova after a short break I come across stories of truckers travelling in huge convoys across Canada in protest against mandatory vaccinations. One convoy is reputedly 70 km long. Now I know that some of those trucks that travel the Trans Canada highways are massively hummungus, but 70 km, really?
But why was I ignorant of such protests,? Where were the BBC, ITV and our esteemed press? Where is the Guardian centerpage photospred of one of these events? Are they all trying to ignore 70km long truckfests? Can we expect ambulances to travel on British highways on similar protest convoys. I
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Alan: It’s just a small minority of truckers and their fellow travellers objecting to the Federal Government requiring cross-border (Canada/USA) truckers to be vaccinated. From the right -leaning Globe and Mail (paywalled):
“This page has spent the past year advocating for the scientifically obvious, which is that vaccination is key to getting beyond the pandemic. We have supported vaccine passports in non-essential businesses, and vaccine mandates in workplaces and higher education. We also questioned the cost-benefit analysis behind the vaccine mandate for truckers, which requires a cross-border driver returning from the U.S. to be fully vaccinated in order to avoid a 14-day quarantine.
But whatever the merits of Canada doing away with the border mandate, the case is now moot: Last weekend, the White House imposed a similar mandate, which means that, even if Ottawa reversed itself, the 15 per cent of Canadian truckers who aren’t vaccinated are still stuck on this side of the border.
And in any case, the convoy has devolved into a promotional vehicle for all manner of anti-vaxxers, take-back-my-country types and conspiracy hucksters, including such luminaries as Donald Trump Jr.
Those in the convoy are of course within their rights to protest peacefully. But they, along with the Conservative MPs supporting them, are completely out of touch with the vast majority of Canadians.
As of this week, 91 per cent of Canadian adults have had at least one shot, and more than 88 per cent are double-dosed.
Mr. Trudeau, the guy who imposed federal vaccine mandates – because he knew they would be popular – has twice the support of Mr. O’Toole (the opposition leader) in recent polls.”
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And BTW:
The Canadian Trucking Alliance and the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) have both come out against the convoy, saying 90 per cent of cross-border truckers are vaccinated
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Potentilla. Thanks for the information about the truck convoys. I sure wouldn’t want to be behind one if I were travelling on the narrow road between the US-Canada border and Regina if it has remained the same as it was when I travelled it in the 1970s.
I was more interested in the absence of interest in this story in the U.K. which as far as I can ascertain is total. I wonder why?
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When I read the headline, I briefly thought that the Isle of Man had become a shining beacon for democracy around gthe question of climate change targets:
“Isle of Man public asked for views on 2030 interim climate targets”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-60159204
No such luck:
“Manx residents have been urged to choose interim targets to cut carbon emissions on the Isle of Man by 2030.
A public consultation has been launched asking for views on what steps could be taken to achieve either a 35% or 45% reduction.
Daphne Caine MHK said the level chosen would “indicate the island’s ambition to help tackle the global threat of climate change”.
Results will be fed back into a climate action plan due in March, she added.
The government has committed achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 under the Climate Change Act, which includes a legal requirement for an interim target to be set by April.”
Isle of Man residents don’t get to choose (any more than do residents of the UK) whether there should be a climate change target, or if so, what that target should be. No their sole involvement is to have input as to what policies should be adopted to achieve the targets that their masters have already decreed.
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“One in five UK councils have no climate action plan, campaigners say
Exclusive: Climate Emergency UK’s analysis finds regional variations, with a Somerset council scoring best”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/27/one-in-five-uk-councils-have-no-climate-action-plan-campaigners-say
“More than one in five of all councils in the UK have no climate action plan, research shows.
In 2019, Theresa May’s government committed the UK to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Since then, hundreds of local authorities have published plans to show how they intend to become carbon neutral.
But analysis by the not-for-profit campaigning organisation Climate Emergency UK, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that of the 409 local authorities across the UK, 84 still did not have climate action plans, while 139 had not committed to reach net zero emissions by a specific date.”
I imagine many voters would prefer their councils to have a plan for collecting the bins and filling in potholes.
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Alan: “I was more interested in the absence of interest in this story in the U.K. which as far as I can ascertain is total. I wonder why?”
In my view it’s because it’s a non-story. These types of antivax minority mob protests are happening all over. It’s just that this lot have a load of big trucks with loud horns and shining lights and can cause havoc on the road. Some truckers in Canada like doing this to get TV attention which, as we know is geared mostly to visuals rather than analysis. If they were really concerned about supply chain issues they would get on with delivering stuff rather than posturing.
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Potentilla, in my juvenile world, convoys of huge trucks travelling in procession and for a cause (any cause) would be worthy of notice internationally -even if only to illustrate how very odd a segment of the North American road distribution network really is. From the few examples I have seen, photographs of close-spaced trucks are very newsworthy and should have appealed to the Guardian and its penchant for large photographs.
But the message they are selling is not acceptable here and our press “will have no truck with it”.
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“West accused of ‘climate hypocrisy’ as emissions dwarf those of poor countries
Average Briton produces more carbon in two days than Congolese person does in entire year, study finds”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/28/west-accused-of-climate-hypocrisy-as-emissions-dwarf-those-of-poor-countries
“In the first two days of January, the average Briton was already responsible for more carbon dioxide emissions than someone from the Democratic Republic of the Congo would produce in an entire year, according to analysis by the Center for Global Development (CGD).
The study, which highlights the “vast energy inequality” between rich and poor countries, found that each Briton produces 200 times the climate emissions of the average Congolese person, with people in the US producing 585 times as much. By the end of January, the carbon emitted by someone living in the UK will surpass the annual emissions of citizens of 30 low- and middle-income countries, it found.
Euan Ritchie, a policy analyst at CGD Europe, said his work was prompted by the “climate hypocrisy” of western countries, including the UK and the US, that have pledged to stop aid funding to fossil fuel projects in developing states.”
Why is it always the west under attack in this area, and never China? China doesn’t receive a single mention in this article. There are more than 20 times as many Chinese residents as there are UK residents, and their per capita emissions are almost 50% higher than those of UK residents, which explains why China’s annual CO2 emissions are around 30 times those of the UK. So why is the UK being pilloried in the article, while China is not?
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Regarding the Canadian truckers’ protest convoy:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/01/27/truckers-in-canada-form-worlds-longest-truck-convoy-estimated-70km-long-in-protest-at-vaccine-mandates/
and
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-freedom-truckers-may-form-worlds-longest-convoy
Thank you potentilla for the view from Canada.
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Alan
Are convoys of trucks going nowhere newsworthy too?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-26/flooded-stuart-highway-blocks-freight-trucks-northern-territory/100782544?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
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Bill obviously the answer to your question is yes, stranded and/or diverted trains of lorries in Oz are indeed newsworthy and also photogenic almost by definition. But I’m sure someone will blame climate chaos for them. However whereas I had not seen anything of the Canadian lorry fests before Jo Nova, I was aware of the Australian examples especially their train-like characteristics.
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Straw bale power stations .. second day of fire at the Helmswell Cliff old runway where 30,000 bales are on fire.
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BBC local news item on Rathlin energy re-applying for East Yorks planning permission
basically makes out directional drilling is evil
“they’ll be drilling under villages”
And of course leaving bit say to the anti-oil activists.
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Alan K, it has finally made the Guardian:
“Canada truckers’ vaccine protest spirals into calls to repeal all public health rules
Ahead of Saturday’s protest in Ottawa, Trudeau dismisses the group as a ‘small fringe’ that holds ‘unacceptable views’”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/28/canada-truckers-covid-vaccine-mandate-protest-government
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Many people were watching the coverage on GB news on Thursday Night on the Mark Steyn Show (Born British, he is Canadian)
Then in the morning it came up on YouTube on the Foc News Tucker Carlson show
.. And on VivaFrei the French Canadian, Youtube Lawyer
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20:48 Channel5 We had wind industry PR on the Kate Humble show
“For decades I have been banging on about it’s absolutely VITAL that we take action on Climate Change .. and here behind me we have these 3 windfarms of Conwy Bay producing power to power half a million homes …”
And she continued as if she was reading off a Wind Industry PR script
The half a million homes bit is PR BS , the UK probably consumes 100 million homes worth of electricity.
She did say “I am concerned about the effects they may have on wildlife” but actually the item didn’t tackle it head one.
Instead we got things like her guide an ex-fisherman letting it slip there are far less gurnards the species he used to catch, cos of the vibrations in the seabed from the turbines and cables (he reckons)
But now he doe work for the wind corp and there was talk of how turbines are getting bigger, implying that means better.
He also mentioned that part of their job is pressure washing cormorant guano off the towers cos it makes them dangerously slippery to the technicians who have to climb them.
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Third night of the straw bale power station store fire
and I can see it from 15 miles away.
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Friday BBC local news :PRasNews for rewilding they started with the Knepp estate in West Sussex
“we couldn’t make farming pay a profit on this poor clay soil, so we just let it all go wild
and now make money from tourism/glamping etc.”
£700m /year spending plan for Defra
The item did feature people saying ..’if you tried that in Lincolnshire where would Britain’s food come from ?’
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6:30pm BBCnews finally put up an item link on their US/Canada news page
“The truckers shutting down Canada’s capital
The ‘Freedom Convoy’ is protesting vaccine mandates but police are worried about fringe elements”
bit leading that .. and why air quote Freedom Convoy ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60164561
one line “But police say they are concerned about how the convoy has attracted extremist rhetoric, and some far-right groups have suggested they might also head to Ottawa.”
FFS everyone has the right to attend
especially if they are expected to pay Canadian taxes.
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“US East Coast blanketed by ‘bombogenesis’ snowstorm”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60177979
“The US East Coast is being battered by the first major blizzard to hit the region in four years.
Five states declared an emergency hours before heavy snow and hurricane-force winds blasted the area.
Experts warn of “historic” snowfall in some places and flood warnings have been issued near the coast. More than 5,000 US flights have been cancelled.
As the storm arrived, more than 116,000 households across Massachusetts were without power.
Forecasters say there is a chance the storm, known as a Nor’easter, will blanket the Boston area with up to 2ft (61cm) of snow, and up to 1ft (30cm) of snow has already fallen in parts of New York.”
But of course it’s weather not climate (which indeed is true). Meanwhile, though, this is climate, apparently:
“Storm Ana: Deadly Africa storm shows climate crisis reality – UN”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60180738
“The deadly storm that hit southern African countries this week has shown the reality of the climate crisis, a UN official has said….”
Despite this:
“Flooding on the Zambezi delta in Mozambique is a historical phenomenon with records dating back as far as 1586 (Chidiamassamba and Liesegang, 1997). In the 19th century, 21 big floods have been recorded (Monteiro, 1955, Beilfuss, 2005). The delta constitutes a flood plain that houses almost one million people, mainly from the Sena ethnic group (INE, 2007). They build their livelihoods from agricultural production, fishing and ‘petty’ trading. Their lifestyles are highly influenced by flooding regimes. They take advantage of the Zambezi River and its ecosystem, and have developed numerous adaptation practices against flooding.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378011002007#bib0030
And this:
“Tropical cyclones (TCs) represent the most significant natural hazard for the economy and population of Madagascar. Planning for the impacts of future cyclone strikes requires a detailed understanding of the frequency of destructive storms in the past. In this paper, we utilise historical documentary materials to construct an initial framework of TCs making landfall on Madagascar during the latter half of the 19th century. The study focuses on 1862–1900 as this is the period of most extensive documentary records. Accounts of storm damage contained within historical sources are used to reconstruct TC tracks over land, with details of wind damage converted into Fujita (F) Scale classes to classify TC intensity. A total of 20 TCs are identified, of which only 17 are included within the IBTrACS dataset for the southwest Indian Ocean. The TCs of 13–14 March 1872 and 28 January–1 February 1893 were the most destructive of the late 19th century, with F3+ levels of wind damage identified from historical accounts. We compare our results with data for TCs within the IBTrACS dataset that made landfall on Madagascar during the period 1970–2012. This comparison suggests that (1) fewer TCs made landfall during the 19th century compared with the post-satellite era, but that of these (2) a greater proportion appear to have crossed the northeast of the island. ”
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Tropical-cyclone-activity-over-Madagascar-during-Nash-Nash/9b5b03e20cace1e5e0e1ec766c2f4dbd593e2b76
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“The Netherlands’ earthshaking gas deal with Germany
German demands for more gas are putting the Netherlands in a tricky position.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-netherlands-earthshaking-gas-deal-with-germany/“Germany has asked for more gas, and thanks to its ongoing contractual obligations the Netherlands will have to boost output from its Groningen field, despite the risk that such an increase could cause earthquakes in the north of the country.
It’s causing a political headache for the Dutch government, which has pledged to end production this year at what had been Europe’s largest gas field because years of extraction were linked to seismic events.
The phaseout is still in the works, but in the meantime, an additional 1.1 billion cubic meters gas will go to Germany if the government approves the production boost in a decision due before April 1.”
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Mark, thanks for the link.
partial quote – “Infrastructure operator Gasunie, which handles L-gas pipelines in both countries, said the German demand for more gas was due to rising consumption in the northwest of the country, where “previously predicted savings due to energy efficiency have not become reality yet,” coupled with “a significant decline in German L-gas production from 2021 onward.”
“previously predicted savings due to energy efficiency” – wonder what that means ? are warm winters on the way ?
ends with – “We both [recognize] that this is a sensitive issue … but at the same time we have to look very carefully at what the German wishes are and how that fits into the need to phase out gas production as soon as possible,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.
oohh no – they (Dutch) also have “the risk that such an increase could cause earthquakes in the north of the country.”
join the UK Ex – frackers
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dfhunter, interesting quote. Compare and contrast with the quote from the headline in the Guardian article discussed at The Missing Jigsaw Pieces: (“Energy efficiency measures have already saved the average British household about £1,000 a year in energy bills”).
I suspect that the reality is more likely to be that predicted savings due to energy efficiency haven’t occurred yet (whether in Germany or in the UK) rather than that they are saving the average UK household £1,000 p.a.
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A few XR updates.
A) From XR-UK’s strategy doc for 2022:
Let’s get the straightforward gibberish out of the way first.
1) There should be a colon, not a comma, after ‘Subsidies’.
2) The UK didn’t calculate that number. (Nor did the OECD.)
Less obvious:
3) The estimate came from IISD and it was $16 billion, not £16 billion.
4) I can’t be arsed to look at how IISD defines ‘subsidy’ but will note that activist definitions usually include price caps for energy consumers, which, if relevant in this case, would make XR’s ‘taken from our tax, and given to murderers’ a beastly slur on all energy consumers everywhere. I buy and use electricity, butane and petrol, all in modest quantities. Does that make me a murderer? (I did shoot three squirrels, but that was about fifteen years ago. Record expired by now, no?)
B) Gail Bradbrook’s trial for vandalising a bank in March 2020 is currently scheduled for 28th April at Cirencester Courthouse.
URL:www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/founder-extinction-rebellion-faces-trial-6490241
Bradbrook said exactly that at her last hearing, when the judge and the bank manager both said it was bollocks.
So her defence has already been rejected.
Silly so-and-so.
C) XR used to have several fundraisers on the go at once but this is the only one I can find at the mo:
https://chuffed.org/project/xrapril2022
It was set up shortly after the end of COP26. Currently at about £46k. That might sound like a lot but earlier XR fundraisers raised much, much more in much shorter timeframes, so hopefully XR has had its day.
D) Insulate Britain has had a fake Einstein quote on the front page of its website since its launch in July last year. Churchill said recently that if this quote is still there by the end of next month then he’ll make Gandhi rise from the dead and cut off Hillary Clinton’s hair.
Churchill: ‘If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just get Gandhi to change Hillary Clinton’s hairstyle.’
This would be wrong, says Abraham Lincoln. ‘There must be an easier way to correct the error.’
E) Glad your eye op went well, Richard.
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Alan K, the Canadian truckers have certainly made the news now:
“Freedom Convoy: Why Canadian truckers are protesting in Ottawa”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60164561
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Vinny: Thanks. I’ve been mulling over, since 3:30pm, after ten painless minutes in the surgery, why the first two attempts, in Feb 21 and Jun 21, came to nothing. It was I think the excess of caution that came in with Covid, plus the genuine disruption caused by the virus to hospitals (by the reaction to the virus, one could say, but mostly fair enough imo). A cataract op is the most common procedure on any body part globally (as others will know, I’m sure). I was diagnosed in Nov 20. It was just really bad timing.
The first diagnosis, by an exhausted eye doctor at the end of a gruelling day, was in fact that I had another macular hole, just like I’d had correctly diagnosed in my left eye in Jul 18. A much more serious scenario. That was a low point in my life – but at least I think I showed some character by expressing care to the poor guy, which led him to open up a little about his struggles that day in A&E and his expectation that he wasn’t going to get to bed till very late due to one very difficult case. Anyway. Over now.
Brilliant report on XR by the way. Like you say, any evidence that the fundraising is going south has got to be taken as a sign of the UK’s sanity being restored. If only for the sake of our own sanity.
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Vinny, I wrote about the UK’s obscene fossil fuel subsidies in an earlier note: https://cliscep.com/2021/07/24/the-uks-obscene-fossil-fuel-subsidies/
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My mother got a cataract done within about 3 weeks in December, that speed was a surprise.
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Strawbale power station store fire is still burning
and visible from 15 miles away lighting up the sky
for the FOURTH night.
First day was 30,000 megabales
Saturday’s winds spread it to 3 other stacks so about 90,000 inn total gone.
That NOT “Clean Green Energy”, that’s lots of carbon particulate matter going into the atmosphere.
Unstopped by filters, that a coal power station would have.
#AirPollution #GreenBlob #FakeGreens
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Irony alert:
“Concerns over food shortages as CO2 deal ends”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60152768
“UK food and drink firms say they remain concerned about supply shortages as a deal which ensured carbon dioxide (CO2) supplies comes to an end.
CO2 is used in fizzy drinks, to keep packaged food fresh and to stun livestock before slaughter.
The government stepped in to subsidise a major CO2 producer in October after its shutdown due to high gas prices threatened food supplies.
The arrangement ends on Monday, despite continuing high global demand for gas.”
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“HMP Guy’s Marsh: Solar panels to be installed on estate”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-60182982
“Solar panels will be installed on a prison’s grounds as part of a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) programme.
It says the panels at HMP Guy’s Marsh in Dorset will produce about 10% of the prison’s annual use.
The project will use 90 solar panels, in seven rows, will be linked into the prison’s main switch room and will provide 112kW of electricity.
Dorset Council officially gave the planning application permission earlier this month.
The solar panels do not need foundations and can be removed at the end of their operational life, which can vary between 25 and 40 years.
The application forms part of the MoJ’s programme to cut carbon emissions, as part of the government project to become net zero by 2050, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said.”
I wonder if they’ll report back down the line and let us know how much energy they actually produce?
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“Australian regulator finds large-scale emissions misreporting by coalminer Peabody
US giant agrees to hire auditors after calculation errors, poor record-keeping and inconsistent data collection discovered”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/31/australian-regulator-finds-large-scale-emissions-misreporting-by-coalminer-peabody
Will the UN now make the same request of China? Given that its reporting of covid statistics to the UN is lamentable, why trust what it says about its GHG emissions?
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Stew, I would not have heard of the straw bale fire if you hadn’t mentioned it. I have now found it on the beeb, where the site is described thus: “The site is a former RAF bomber base which closed in 1967 and was converted into industrial and agricultural use.”
No mention of the purpose of the bale mountains there. Turning to the Lincolnite:
“Drone footage: 200,000 hay bales up in flames as gale force winds wreck havoc in Hemswell
The blaze ravages on”
I won’t mention the responsible Associate Editor’s name, but I think she has picked the wrong job.
It looks like the power station in question is the Brigg EFW plant. It seems to be mostly owned by PensionDanmark.
Finally, something I have often wondered re: burning straw bales is, are they really waste? They wanted to build a power station in the centre of Norwich burning pelletted bales, which was unpopular over pollution fears. At an open day I was assured that the straw had no other use, but I wasn’t convinced.
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Stew:
That’s great to hear. It was eight weeks for me for my left eye at the Bristol Eye Hospital in Oct/Nov 2019 – the cataract being an expected side-effect of the vitrectomy to try and sort out my macular hole a year before. I had the highest opinion of the Bristol Eye Hospital through to Jan 2020, when I got the all-clear from the consultant who’d originally diagnosed me in July 2018 (by chance) – saying that the macular hole had ‘closed’ very successfully. (The process can take up to a year to complete, one’s sight improving throughout.)
My experience of the same hospital, on three different occasions in 2020 and 2021, was much less positive and that was just sad. They were clearly under intense strain due to Covid-19. Three times I felt I was being blamed, in effect, for various things. This led to significant stress leading to my op in a clinic in leafy Clifton (it being the Eye Hospital’s decision to transfer me, for reasons unknown). Testing positive in a lateral flow test on the day of the op on 4th Jan didn’t help. (It was fourth time lucky, correction Mark!) The rescheduled op, though, was the doddle I’d experienced in Nov 19.
I feel I got caught in the Covid crossfire. I remain very grateful for the care I did receive and I’m glad for the small insight into the very real conflicts that arose in the UK hospital system in the last two years.
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Yesterday another wonderful exploration of pant life in David Attenborough’s documentary series – this time on desert climates and their plants. A few brushes with climate change, but for me, the huge gaping hole was the total absence of any mention of recent greening caused by larger amounts of atmospheric CO2. Once again a deliberate omission of anything that might be considered as a positive linked to climate change.
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Jit, thanks for the reminder. A very useful (and entertaining) breakdown. It must have taken you ages.
Browser bookmarks are my memory these days. I have added your analysis to my memory.
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A correction to my XR comment: Bradbrook broke the bank’s window in March 2021, not 2020.
The same day, she posted a video on YouTube in which she prayed, with hands clasped, eyes closed and head bowed, that ‘as we break windows let it be like the breaking of our waters as we birth a new paradigm’. After reassuring the bank staff that her vandalism was ‘an act of deep love’, she ended her prayer with this: ‘Amen. Aho mitakuye oyasin to all of our relations.’
The Lakota snippet means something like ‘I acknowledge that we are all related’, so: ‘I acknowledge that we are all related to all of our relations.’
Deep.
Bradbrook might also face a jury trial some time in April. This will be for birthing a new deep love paradigm at the Department for Transport in October 2019. It being a jury trial, she’ll probably escape punishment.
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Richards cataract op & related comments are interesting to me.
can I ask if they were done Private or on the NHS ?
i ask because i’m waiting for my Manx NHS op almost 2yr’s after my optometrist at Specsavers spotted it (after me noticing a problem/deterioration in my right eye).
I realise Covid has pushed back all non urgent op’s & i’m back of the queue, but am now thinking private may be my only answer.
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“Truro Cathedral to switch off floodlights”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-60200164
“Truro Cathedral’s floodlights will be switched off to help the environment, it has been announced.
Canon Elly Sheard said in a blog the decision was “a worthwhile start on the cathedral’s journey towards reducing its carbon footprint to zero”….
…”Like all churches and cathedrals, Truro Cathedral has been challenged by the Church of England nationally to reduce our carbon footprint to zero by the year 2030,” Canon Sheard said.
“According to my rough calculations, the cathedral floodlights as currently used, emit roughly 2 tonnes of CO2e per year.
“For comparison, this is roughly half the amount of carbon emitted by the average car as used by most people in the UK.”…”.
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“EU Commissioner McGuinness defends gas, nuclear in green investment guidance
‘We won’t be rewriting the text,’ EU’s financial services chief says.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commissioner-mcguiness-defends-gas-nuclear-in-green-taxonomy-guidance/
“…“I fully accept that gas is a fossil fuel — we’re not blind to this — but it’s much better than the continuing use of dirty coal. Equally, nuclear is carbon free,” the Irish commissioner said, arguing that the proposal deals with the issue of toxic waste disposal and requires that nuclear sources cause “no significant harm” to the environment….”.
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Mark – from your Truro Cathedral link – to this link https://www.trurocathedral.org.uk/news/turning-off-the-cathedral-floodlights
“From the end of January, the cathedral floodlights will be switched off. Although the system has not worked fully for some time”
as for the fag packet calc –
“According to my rough calculations, the cathedral floodlights as currently used, emit roughly 2 tonnes of CO2e per year. For comparison, this is roughly half the amount of carbon emitted by the average car as used by most people in the UK. Like most of these calculations, these figures are estimates rather than accurate measures, but even so, it is evident that this decision gives us a worthwhile start on our Cathedral’s journey towards reducing our carbon footprint to zero.
Canon Elly Sheard
Canon for Creation Care”
I may be out off line with this comment, but is God ever mentioned anymore ?
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“Climate change: Stormont to debate Edwin Poots’ bill at Stormont”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60202192
“A draft law which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Northern Ireland will be debated by assembly members later.
The Climate Change (No.2) Bill sets a target of reducing emissions by 82% by 2050.
A rival bill from the Green Party has a target of net-zero emissions by 2045.
Assembly members will vote on up to 80 amendments to the No.2 Bill, which include proposals to switch its target to net zero.
The Climate Change (No.2) Bill has been brought by Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK without its own climate legislation, though it is contributing to wider UK reduction targets.”
But not for long, it seems.
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Dominic Cummings is doing an Ask Me Anything on Substack after Sue Gray’s neutered report. This bit may interest people.
At https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/ask-me-anything-dec if you want to stump up for a month.
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Boy, do the people at the Guardian not like the Net Zero Scrutiny Group:
“A new Tory faction is ‘scrutinising’ net zero – with tactics learned from Brexit
Eleanor Salter
The Net Zero Scrutiny Group is blaming the cost-of-living crisis on green policies. Its potential influence shouldn’t be ignored”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/01/tory-faction-net-zero-brexit-green-policies
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“Insulate Britain: Activists unglued from step and in custody”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60216774
“Four Insulate Britain protesters who left a hearing and glued themselves to the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice have been taken into custody.
Theresa Norton, 63, Diana Warner, 62, El Litten, 35 and Steve Pritchard, 62, along with 16 others, were due to answer charges of contempt of court.
They are accused of ignoring an injunction aimed at preventing protests on the M25 in October.
They described their walkout as “a show of resistance”.
Once glued in place, the front gates of the building were locked, shutting the four inside. Police later unstuck them one by one before taking them into custody as fellow protesters cheered.
In court, Lord Justice William Davis read out a note from the four protesters, which said: “We feel we have to continue our resistance today because we don’t want to cooperate with a system which is causing so much death and hardship.”
He issued a bench warrant for the four….”.
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“Climate change: Stormont debates Edwin Poots’ bill”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60202192
“A plan to reduce greenhouse gases by 100% by 2050 would cost billions, a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) assembly member has said.
William Irwin was criticising an attempt to amend the Climate Change Bill under discussion at Stormont….
…Analysis commissioned by agri-food business groups suggested a net-zero strategy would have to mean a drastic reduction in the livestock sector.
The work, by consultants KPMG, calculated it could mean the closure of almost 90% of dairy farms.
Agri-food business groups have urged assembly members to back the 82% reduction and reject the proposed amendments to the bill.
The business groups, which include the Ulster Farmers’ Union and NI Food & Drink, say a net-zero target would lead to the livestock sector becoming a “cottage industry” and mean “large job losses in food processing”….”.
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“‘Why is no one up in arms?’ Six householders on the menace of fuel poverty”
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/feb/02/why-is-no-one-up-in-arms-six-householders-on-the-menace-of-fuel-poverty
More to the point, perhaps, why is the Guardian not up in arms about the consequences of Net Zero policies?
“Almost one in 10 households are now experiencing “fuel stress” amid surging gas and electricity prices – a figure expected to treble overnight after the new energy price cap comes in on 1 April.
The Resolution Foundation forecasts that energy bills will become unaffordable for 27% of households when the price cap rises to about £2,000 a year. The poorest households may have to spend half their income on energy.”
And so much for the much-vaunted “green” Octopus Energy:
“…“In November we managed to negotiate our electricity bill down from £276 to £150 a month,” said Chris in Devon, who is on a variable rate with Octopus. She and her partner used to pay £68 a month but were asked to increase their direct debit in October because they weren’t covering the cost. They now owe Octopus about £1,400 but have decided to stick to the new monthly payments for the foreseeable future….”.
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“Flowers arriving a month early in UK as climate heats up
Plants now bloom in mid-April on average, with scientists warning of mismatches with insects and birds”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/02/flowers-arriving-month-early-uk-climate-heats-up-bloom-insects-birds
I notice that the graph they use ceases in 2019, thereby excluding the bitterly cold spring (with no doubt associated late flowering) of 2021. I can’t argue with them, but based on my own observations over 50+ years I don’t see anything much going on in these parts by way of early flowering. Certainly snowdrops have shown up this year around the same time they always do.
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“Climate change: The science briefing that convinced Boris Johnson”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60203674
“A slide show that Prime Minister Boris Johnson says helped convince him on climate change has been revealed for the first time.
The slides used to “teach” him about climate science have been released after a freedom of information request by UK climate website Carbon Brief.
While Mr Johnson has urged action on climate change, he previously, as a journalist, expressed scepticism.
He called the presentation, given just after he took office, “very important”.
The “teach in”, as it was described in email correspondence, took place in the Cabinet Room of Number 10 Downing Street on 28 January 2020.
It was organised by the office of Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser.
The briefing consisted of 11 slides showing key aspects of climate science and its impacts and the presentation was led by Prof Stephen Belcher, the chief scientist at the Met Office….”.
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What else do we know was happening at the time? Wiki:
From the BBC article:
I am so glad the BBC’s Climate Editor explained to us what the meaning of that is, or honestly none of his readers would have known. Please. Do not patronise us.
I note that the sea level rise slide begins in 1993. Tide gauge data, as we know, goes back more than a hundred years and shows a steady rise over that period. I call that misinformation.
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1pm Local news end item PRasNews for Wind industry
“to celebrate the Humber renewables industry a replica of the Spurn Point rail landship will go on a tour of the region’s rail stations.”
FFS all it was, was something like kids make up
Take a trolley stick a mast on it, and then hang a sheet off it.
.. https://twitter.com/RailStoryIngrow/status/1194200866250788865
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Much attention being paid by the BBC to a report claiming that increasing temperatures in the U.K. are causing plants to flower almost a month earlier, and this is coupled with delayed leaf fall of trees in warmer autumns. I am dubious about measurable early flowering and, if my 1950s O-level biology can still be trusted, believe leaf fall is controlled by the decreasing length of daylight.
Some “scientists” seem awfully eager to push climate change so they forget we old types were taught “proper” and have long memories.
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Alan, I hesitate to mention this in front of a geologist, but……..
“Calls to allow people to return to Edinburgh’s Radical Road”
A fall of rock led to part of the famous footpath being closed off.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-60111776
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JIT I would guess that rock falls would be promoted by increased numbers of freeze thaw cycles, but unless climate warriors are claiming this as a result of climate change, I somehow doubt it
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“Climate change: EU moves to label nuclear and gas as sustainable despite internal row”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60229199
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“Insulate Britain activists jailed over M25 protest”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60233793
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“Coal Authority overhaul demand after Aberpergwm mine row”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60238344
“The Welsh government has called for an overhaul of the Coal Authority following a dispute over plans to expand a south Wales mine.
Ministers said the organisation’s responsibilities clashed with the UK’s climate change commitments.
Last week the authority gave the go-ahead for a further 40 million tonnes of coal to be dug up at Aberpergwm colliery in Neath Port Talbot.
The UK government said its ministers have “no formal role” in the process.
Campaigners have told BBC Wales they are considering legal action to stop the expansion of the mine near Glynneath.
Its operators Energybuild insist most of the coal will be used for processes such as water filtration and to make batteries for electric vehicles, rather than burned.”
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“Green bust or green flush: Figuring out the impact of the EU’s new investment rules
The financial taxonomy creates a ‘common language’ for green investing.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/green-investment-bust-or-green-flush-european-commission/
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“Insulate Britain: Jailed protester faces calls to quit council”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-60244032
“A councillor jailed for her part in Insulate Britain protests should step down, opponents have said.
Therese Norton, 62, a member of Scarborough Borough Council’s Labour group, was sentenced with four fellow campaigners at the High Court on Wednesday.
Derek Bastiman, leader of the North Yorkshire town’s Conservative group, said she had “brought the borough into disrepute” and must quit.
Labour has been approached for comment.”
And probably continues to sit on the fence.
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I listened to Stephen Pinkers episode 2 of his series about critical thinking
‘Look at us we are cool Thinkers ! If you don’t believe in Climate change you aren’t a Thinker !
.. Here’s a list of logical fallacies ”
… OK that’s good
Then one of their cosy panel said
‘Yeh Bob at Bob’s climate blog is nothing compared to a real expert
you have to weight the OPINIONS of experts higher’
No, that is the fallacy of Argument from Authority
FFS In the old days at a skeptic meeting, there were these old timer guys who explained the rules of science
and how you can defeat a bad argument with logic
.. Then skeptic science groups got trendy and new kids came along
they liked disproving arguments, but not the work so they latched on to saying “yeh that guy’s argument is bad, cos here’s an expert who disagrees with him’
FFS that is not how proper argument works
The common example is that in the Emperor’s New Clothes story
It is the small boy that gives the truth., that the Emperor is naked
and the experts, the courtiers ..that ail to state the truth.
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In my area snowdrops and daffodils were very early last years. Then at the beginning of Feb it snowed.
This year the snowdrops didn’t come in December ..more like 22nd of January
and now there are warm days
but it wouldn’t surprise me if there is more snow before Easter.
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Andy West has done a second podcast with Canadian blogger Chris Balkaran titled “Climate Change Attitudes are Cultural.” It can be seen on Youtube here
Do watch.
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“How to store excess wind power underwater”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60066690
The difficult reality is saved for the end of the article:
“…But there are concerns about the financial viability of the system, says reader in energy systems and policy, Dr Jonathan Radcliffe, who is also at Birmingham University.
“In principle, the technology is aiming to store large amounts of energy over periods of many hours, days or weeks. The problem that a lot of energy storage technologies face is that the value of storing energy at that scale is not high in the current market, so it would take a long time to pay back.”
Land-based battery storage is more useful to power firms as it can be used to handle other problems with the grid, such as when power lines are near their limits, he says.
“Those applications are quite highly valued and need storage over short periods of time, so quite a few projects are proving to be commercial.”…”.
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stewgreen says:
“In my area snowdrops and daffodils were very early last years. Then at the beginning of Feb it snowed.
This year the snowdrops didn’t come in December ..more like 22nd of January
and now there are warm days”
I saw my first bloom of the year in the flower boxes outside my window – a miniature iris. It seems to be one of a batch that always flowers early.
“but it wouldn’t surprise me if there is more snow before Easter.”
Things everybody knows No 385: There is always more chance of snow at Easter than Christmas.
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Mark, these people need help from the scientific giants of old.
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ITV local news
– Bakery to install own gas power station to deal with the rising cost of electricity to 250K per year.
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BBC local news ..energy bills
‘Here’s our nutty green environment reporter with some PRasNewsfor the Octopus Energy “wind farm club”
”
“*If* the local community wind turbine us turning we get 20% off the electricity”
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@ geofff chambers – thanks for the Andy West second podcast link – great vid & as usual Andy is great.
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Obviously a big deal to the BBC, with two pieces on it in quick succession:
“Climate change: Tesco using electric lorries in ‘UK first'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60084457
And:
“Climate change: Electric HGV gives trucker ‘lovely silence'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-60262733
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“Former German Chancellor Schröder nominated for Gazprom board
The former chancellor is already chairman of Nord Stream and a good friend of Vladimir Putin.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancellor-schroder-gazprom-board-nomination/
“Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has been nominated to join the board of directors at Gazprom, the state-owned Russian energy company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Gazprom published an official list of nominees on Friday, saying the names would be voted on in June during a shareholders’ meeting in Saint Petersburg.
The news came a week after Schröder — a long-time friend of Vladimir Putin and who holds senior positions at Nord Stream and Rosneft — made headlines by saying on his podcast that Ukraine, not Russia, was “saber-rattling.”…”.
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Mark, from one of the EV articles:
I don’t think the momentary warm glow from this is going to be worth the pain it brings.
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I’ll just leave this here:
“Cutting green levies on energy bills is false economy, say analysts
UK needs to reduce gas addiction and ramp up clean energy investment to bring energy bills down permanently”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/04/cuts-to-green-levies-on-energy-bills-is-false-economy-say-analysts
Feel free to debunk….
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We can live in hope:
“Fears Partygate could kill off UK’s net zero plans
Can Britain’s climate policy survive the turbulence created by Boris Johnson’s latest scandal?”
https://www.politico.eu/article/partygate-uk-net-zero-plans-boris-johnson-climate-change/
The end of Boris as PM and the end of net zero – sounds like a win/win to me.
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Looks like Boris is following in the footsteps of his hero.
Churchill was elected PM to take one major decision, and having taken it he was more or less sidelined. Boris managed ‘to get Brexit done’ and now he’s not the right man for the job.
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“The fast fashion graveyard in Chile’s Atacama Desert”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-60249712
“The second-hand clothing trade is a well-established business in Chile.
Traders import unwanted garments – mainly from Europe and the US – to resell locally and to other Latin American nations.
But more than half of the 60,000 tonnes of clothes imported each year ends up in illegal desert landfills, with dire consequences for the environment and the local community.”
Truly appalling, I agree. So why not burn it instead, and create some energy in the process?
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The BBC and other sources of second-hand climate paraphernalia are full of information about a recent report that the ice thickness of Mt. Everest’s highest Icefield (South Col Glacier) has halved as a result of melting, losing 54 m in 25 years. The glacier lies a smidge under 8 km above sea level, yet the ice loss is attributed to increasing temperatures (I.e. climate change) and strong winds.
I somehow doubt this. Firstly, I would be most surprised if there were to be a weather station that measures temperatures or wind speeds at that location, so there would be no data to substantiate changes. Second at almost 8 km up does the temperature ever rise above freezing point to allow melting? From the amount of cold-weather gear climbers wear I very much doubt it. So ice loss must be due to sublimation and not melting. Increased rates of sublimation (and or decreased rates of snowfall/ice formation) will be due to changes in humidity.
Remind you of the loss of snow from Mt. Kilimanjaro and Al Gore’s ignorance?
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Reading further about the missing South Col Glacier ice, there is more information from the National Geographic and it turns out the estimate of the loss is not a comparison of two measurements. Instead the investigators took an ice core and found that the surface of the glacier was 2000years old. The ice contains annual banding. Using an average thickness of the bands the investigators estimated the thickness of the ice removed (2000 x average annual thickness) as 54 metres. I can already see at least 3 possible sources of error.
The important observation is that the surface ice is so old, with no net accumulation for 2000 years. What I have failed to discover is how they determined 2000 years of accumulation has been removed in only 25 years. Still looking.
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Tonight Countryfile kept shoving Climate change action phrases into almost every item
basically pushing Carbonphobia
5:02pm BBC1 Matt “As farms across the country have the set the target of being NET-ZERO by 2040
the work that goes on here* in more CRUCIAL than evah !”
* (Allerton Project, Leicestershire)
Matt “I’ll be discovering how sheep wee is contributing to Climate Change”
.. Hmm almost everything that comes OUT of an animal
comes from the natural stuff that went IN
AFAIK only if what goes in comes from fossil fuels can it be out of balance.
“The transition to nature friendly farming”
Final item was a claim denser hedging would make a huge difference to UK carbon sequestration
“We cut hedge brush and then chip it and burn it instead of fossil fuels”
Yep but the chipping process ..involves fossil fuels.
I have more notes I’ll write it up tmw
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“More than half our farmland bird species have disappeared from farmland since the 1970s ”
I expect that as usual that will be misleading through cherrypicking
and change of crop choice.
“corn bunting, tree sparrow, grey partridge”
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Alan,
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Reading the BBC story offers up a link to the study itself:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-022-00230-0
Among other claims is this one:
“Climate reanalysis data show June/September freezing level heights rising ~7 m per year since 2005”.
It can feel surprisingly warm at high altitude (thin air) in full sunlight if there is no wind ( the latter being an extremely rare event at the South Col of Everest). I’m not convinced that freezing level rising by less than 400′ since 2005 can explain the claimed ice loss, especially given that the report also tells us that at that altitude the “mean annual air temperature 1991–2020 = −22.6 °C”.
I have only skimmed the report, so I may summarise it inaccurately, and I would urge all who are interested to read it for themselves. So far as I understand it, however, they seem to be blaming ice loss on sublimation (which I take to mean melting thanks to higher temperatures) and that they don’t find any significant reduction in snowfall over relevant periods.
Colour me unconvinced.
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Edwina Currie is usually well based in the real world
But tonight on GBnews she is pushing Green Dream and talking crap
She started by pushing heat pumps
When asked about illegal immigration she diverted the question to answer everyone should get electric cars.
After she tweeted
I keep telling you, Stuart, get a Tesla.
You’ll instantly become a *disciple* like me.
She made out that you can lease a Tesla for £230/month
She forgot to say that is after an enormous deposit
(video .. https://youtu.be/XUWaJWaZZ5o )
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More news by press release:
“Climate change: Top companies exaggerating their progress – study”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60248830
“Many of the world’s biggest companies are failing to meet their own targets on tackling climate change, according to a study of 25 corporations.
They also routinely exaggerate or misreport their progress, the New Climate Institute report says.
Google, Amazon, Ikea, Apple and Nestle are among those failing to change quickly enough, the study alleges.
Corporations are under pressure to cut their environmental impact as more consumers want green products.
Some of the companies told BBC News they disagreed with some of the methods used in the report and said they were committed to taking action to curb climate change.”
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From the BBC front page:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60248830
The thing is, I haven’t seen many of the world’s biggest companies exaggerate this amazing situation:
Damian says the strange silence on this great news is due to anti-capitalism.
But anti-capitalism from the world’s largest companies?
We have to face uncomfortable reality: this amazing progress is down to all of us, just like the climate concerned say. And it’s the poorest that benefit the most. Except the climate concerned never mention this key fact of humanity’s progress. It’s almost as if they don’t care about the thing they claim to care about the most.
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Guardian, 25th January 2022:
“Rising temperatures threaten future of Winter Olympics, say experts
Only one of 21 previous locations would be able to reliably host Games in future if emissions remain on current path, study shows”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/jan/25/rising-temperatures-threaten-future-winter-olympics-games-global-emissions
“Rising temperatures caused by the escalating climate crisis mean future Winter Olympics will struggle to find host cities with enough snow and ice, according to a study.
Only one of 21 previous Winter Olympics locations would be able to reliably host the Games in future if global greenhouse gas emissions remain on their current trajectory, the report says.
The findings, which come as the world’s top winter sports athletes prepare to compete on artificial snow at the Beijing Games in February, show that cities such as Vancouver, Turin and PyeongChang may become unsuitable locations for the Winter Olympics by the end of the century, with global heating leading to increasingly unsafe and unfair competition conditions.”
Guardian 7th February 2022:
“‘I have no more tears’: Beijing’s Winter Olympics hit by athlete complaints
Swedish team suggest schedule needs altering due to cold
Isolation issues continue; Germany bemoan lack of hot food”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/06/i-have-no-more-tears-beijing-winter-olympics-hit-by-athlete-complaints
“On the eve of the Winter Olympics, China promised the world a “streamlined, safe and most splendid” Games. But just two days into the event organisers are facing a litany of complaints from athletes and countries on multiple fronts.
The Swedes have suggested that the conditions in the mountains are perilously cold…
…Plummeting temperatures are usually a given at the Games, but the Swedish delegation are urging cross-country skiing events to be held earlier in the day after one athlete, Frida Karlsson, was seen shaking and close to collapse at the end of the women’s 7.5km+7.5km skiathlon.
Under the rules of the International Ski Federation (FIS), competitions are stopped from taking place when temperatures are below -20c. When Karlsson competed on Saturday, temperatures at the National Cross-Country Centre in the mountains of Zhangjiakou, 130 miles north-west of Beijing, were -13C – but with windchill it was far colder.
“We have the cold limits but I do not know if they also measure the wind effect,” the Swedish team boss Anders Bystroem told reporters. “If FIS says it’s -17 degrees and it’s windy, and it’s -35 degrees with the wind chill, what do you do then?”
The Swede called for Tuesday’s women’s sprint race to be moved earlier in the day because of the freezing temperatures. “The skiathlon started at 4pm and Frida Karlsson was completely destroyed by the cold. It’s not good that the sprint starts even later,” he added….”.
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By the way, I just noticed what the Guardian wrote in the first article I cited:
““Rising temperatures caused by the escalating climate crisis …”.
I see, first it was global warming, then climate change, then climate crisis, now it’s an escalating climate crisis. When will the exaggerated and increasingly desperate language end? When we actually notice a difference in the climate, perhaps (whenever that might be)?
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Richard Drake:
“But anti-capitalism from the world’s largest companies?”
Not anti-capitalism as much as Asset-Management Capitalism. I’ll let Mark Blyth explain:
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Yep, thanks Bill. The study is of 25 of the world’s biggest companies, with Google, Amazon, Ikea, Apple and Nestle specifically mentioned in the small amount I read. And I’m sure they are very different. I like Matt Ridley’s self-description of being a “free market anti-capitalist“. I only picked up on the anti-capitalism because that’s what Mr Byrne used. My bigger point is that we are all responsible for this amazing good news about climate – from big companies to small ones, from health and safety bureaucrats to developing world spads. It’s a great human success story. The only word that doesn’t work is crisis.
[Previous message under ‘Scepticus’ was an administrative glitch!]
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10:20pm Matt Ridley is on GBnews
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BBC local news did the same item as ITV local news did
Presenter “The problem of *lorry pollution* could be solved by a proposed electric scheme on the M180”
#1 There is no lorry pollution problem
Modern lorry engines are super clean
#2 The project is not about POLLUTION
it’s about lowering UK CO2
#3 Electric trucks are not zero CO2
more than half the leccy on the grid is from burning something
There is often little wind and solar
“The project will electrify the route from Immingham to the Doncaster depot with 19 miles of pantograph.”
Eh up. that route between Immingham and the M18 junction is not just 19 miles
It’s about 39
The first 10 miles are on the A180 before it changes name to the M180.
I can’t work out where the 19 miles comes in
That sounds like Scunthorpe to the M18
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“Cut meat and dairy output by a third to save climate, British farmers told
WWF report says reduction must be made in the next 10 years to tackle climate crisis and nature loss”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/08/cut-meat-and-dairy-by-a-third-to-save-climate-british-farmers-told
“British farmers must reduce their production of meat and dairy by a third in the next 10 years if scientific advice on limiting greenhouse gas emissions is to be met, the conservation charity WWF has said.
Even greater cuts may be needed to the UK’s pig herds and poultry flocks, because of the imported feed they eat, and people will need to eat much less meat than they do today, the charity warned. But the result would be lower greenhouse gas emissions, a countryside with more wildlife and flourishing nature, and better health, according to the report.”
If anyone can be bothered, and wants to read the report – tough! The Guardian purport to provide a link, but it’s just to the WWF website, not to the report itself.
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But, but, but…
“Australia’s coolest year in a decade still warmer than average, Bureau of Meteorology reports
In its annual climate statement, BoM says contrasting weather conditions in the country’s 19th warmest year on record included long heatwaves and widespread flooding”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/08/australias-coolest-year-in-a-decade-still-warmer-than-average-bureau-of-meteorology-reports
“Australia’s mean temperature last year was 0.56C warmer than the long-term average despite 2021 being the country’s coolest year in a decade.
It was a year of contrasting weather and climate conditions, the Bureau of Meteorology said in its annual climate statement, with long-running heatwaves in northern Australia and widespread flooding in eastern states, in part due to a La Niña event.
In the west, severe tropical cyclone Seroja was the southernmost tropical cyclone to make landfall since the 1950s.
Averaged across the continent, last year was Australia’s 19th warmest year on record.”
In other words – just a normal year of weather; nothing to see here. Doesn’t stop the Guardian though:
““Although 2021 was Australia’s coolest year since 2012, temperatures were still much warmer than the historical average,” said climatologist Jonathon Pollock. “In fact, of all the years on record prior to the year 2000, only five were warmer than 2021.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year reported that Australian land areas were on average 1.4C hotter than early last century, and warming was unequivocally due to human influence.”
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“”Homes risk energy rating downgrade if they install a heat pump
Ministers to overhaul Energy Performance Certificate rules amid fears of hit to house prices”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/06/homes-risk-energy-rating-downgrade-install-heat-pump/
Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall.
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3:30pm R4 “The historical parallels of today’s shift to renewable energy *due to climate change*.
They include the Ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom and the 1952 Great Smog.
.. In our *era of environmental crisis*,
can these historical events offer guidance on how best to adapt our own energy resources?
Jonathan Freedland’s The Long View : Energy Transitions”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00146wr
#ConstantPropaganda
BTW they’ve admitted something there that using renewables is NOT about making electricity cheaper.
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“After BP’s £10bn year here are three reasons for a windfall tax rethink”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/sunak-should-reconsider-oil-and-gas-windfall-tax-after-bps-10bn-year
And, as usual, BP in lockstep with the Guardian:
“Energy prices: What is a windfall tax and how would it work?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60295177
“Labour is calling for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies in the North Sea to help households and energy-intensive industries to cope with higher fuel bills.
It comes as companies such as BP and Shell announce big increases in profits.”
Just BP and Shell, huh?
“SSE forecasts profits of nearly £1bn as gas prices soar
Company says revenue from gas-fired plants is more than offsetting disappointing output from windfarms”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/sse-forecasts-profits-of-nearly-1bn-as-gas-prices-soar
“SSE, the electricity generator and network company, has upgraded its profit forecasts to nearly £1bn for its latest financial year as soaring gas prices more than made up for disappointing renewable energy output.
The FTSE 100 company runs gas-fired power plants alongside hydroelectric and windfarms, meaning it can make up for still periods by burning more gas – albeit at the cost of increased carbon dioxide emissions.
That has allowed it to take advantage of the tight global gas market, in which prices have quadrupled, adding to the squeeze on household incomes but providing a huge surge in profits for some of the UK’s biggest energy companies.”
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Top story just now in the Guardian – suggests they’re rattled:
“Tories fighting net zero plans are dragging climate into new culture war, experts say
More than half members of Net Zero Scrutiny Group were also in group that promoted Brexit vote, as fears grow for UK’s green agenda”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/08/tories-fighting-net-zero-plans-are-dragging-climate-into-new-culture-war-experts-say
“A group of Conservative politicians and their allies are on the “frontline” of a new climate war and are attempting to derail the government’s green agenda, according to claims by leading climate scientists.
Tory MPs and peers in the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) have gained widespread media coverage in the past month, attempting to link the government’s net zero agenda to the cost-of-living crisis and calling for cuts to green taxes and an increase of fossil fuel production.”
…”Two leading members have links to an organisation, often described as “climate-sceptic”, that was founded by the long-term climate denier Nigel Lawson. The group’s chair, the MP Craig Mackinlay, has also been accused by a leading climate institute of using misleading and inaccurate information.
Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading authorities on the climate and author of The New Climate War, said the group appeared to be attempting to drag climate policies into a culture war, which he described as a “dangerous new tactic being used by those opposed to addressing the ecological emergency”.
“This is where the frontline of the battle is now, and yes, we do have to push back fiercely on this sort of pernicious disinformation,” he told the Guardian.”.
Hmm. Calling Nigel Lawson a “climate denier” isn’t misinformation, then?
Meanwhile:
Hmmm again.
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Oh, and there’s more. They really MUST be rattled:
“‘It’s all a bit cynical’: the politicians behind the Tory attack on net zero agenda
Amid fears about the cost of living crisis, those opposed to government’s climate agenda appear to have sensed an opportunity”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/08/its-all-a-bit-cynical-the-politicians-behind-the-tory-attack-on-net-zero-agenda
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Plus this from a week ago:
“A new Tory faction is ‘scrutinising’ net zero – with tactics learned from Brexit
Eleanor Salter
The Net Zero Scrutiny Group is blaming the cost-of-living crisis on green policies. Its potential influence shouldn’t be ignored”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/01/tory-faction-net-zero-brexit-green-policies
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“Farmers protest over Oxfordshire County Council’s vegan menu plan”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-60303571
“Plans to ban meat and dairy from council events send a “dangerous message”, farmers have warned.
Oxfordshire County Council proposes providing only vegan food at meetings and events, and to put more plant-based meals on school lunch menus.
Local farmers, staging a protest at County Hall in Oxford, insisted the local authority should be supporting local produce.
The council said the move was part of its efforts to tackle climate change.”
As I’ve opined before, I have no problem with veganism. But I do have a problem with people who seek to deny choice to others by – effectively – banning alternatives rather than seeking to persuade.
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“The clash of science and politics over North Sea oil and gas”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60304389
“The science is clear that if we’re to tackle climate change we need to eliminate our carbon emissions.
That, of course, principally comes from burning oil and gas in our industries, our cars and our homes.
But there’s less of a consensus on how quickly we should be doing that.
Environmentalists say yesterday, India say by 2070. The middle ground is around 2050.
And that’s where it gets political with the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of Conservative MPs and peers essentially urging ministers to slow down and consider the cost.
But now The Telegraph is reporting that Chancellor Rishi Sunak wants six North Sea projects to be given the go-ahead this year.
Businesses are speeding up, seeing the potential for profit in these new industries. Even the oil majors want in on the action by investing in offshore wind, electric vehicle charging and carbon capture and storage.
They don’t, though, want to let go of hydrocarbons just yet with the Oil and Gas Authority currently considering at least a dozen field development proposals. Just last month, Ithaca Energy was granted permission to develop its Abigail field.”
Looks like the BBC is rattled, too! I think the penny might be dropping that huge energy bills is a sure-fire turn-off for the public when it comes to “net zero”.
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Also worth a read, IMO:
“No silver-bullet solutions for saving used planet”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60295788
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9:45pm GBnews Farage is on campaigning against Net Zero
“This is another of those things imposed on up by the political class
all sides agree”
.. We the public never get a choice in it.
‘Trump made the US self sufficient
The result US gas retails for HALF the UK price’
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Farage via Stewgreen:
‘Trump made the US self sufficient
The result US gas retails for HALF the UK price’
That price difference is not likely to last very long:
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/shooting-oil-in-a-barrel
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Mark – that comment “founded by the long-term climate denier Nigel Lawson” needs addressed I think as hate speech.
found this as a starter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
see they also say in that post – “The group’s chair, the MP Craig Mackinlay, has also been accused by a leading climate institute of using misleading and inaccurate information.” but fail to to name the “leading climate institute” for some reason (or did I miss it ?)
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“When it comes to the ‘costs’ of going green, the Tories suddenly care about poverty
George Monbiot”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/09/costs-going-green-tories-energy-bills-environmental-levies-tax
Well, it’s as well that somebody cares, George – “greens” don’t.
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“Identify A-ha moments to trigger fast climate action, say UK scientists
Using ‘tipping points’ can unlock the changes needed on energy, food and plastics, analysis shows”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/09/identify-a-ha-moments-fast-climate-action-tipping-points
“…Lenton and colleagues are working to see if similar indicators can be seen in social systems. For example, seeing an increase in size and duration of spikes in social media attention for a particular climate solution, for instance electric car adverts, could indicate that the point where a small push could cause a big change is getting closer.
Lenton said further research was needed to identify exactly how to trigger tipping points: “I feel we’ve identified the cooks, and probably a lot of the ingredients, but have not quite got to the point where we’ve got a definitive recipe for how to bake the cake. But hopefully, there’s quite a few recipes available and we’ve made a decent stab at it here.”…”.
Sounds like nudging again – know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink. Bombarding us with propaganda hasn’t worked, so now they’re going to nudge as well. Oh great.
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“Cambridgeshire council vows to spend £6.8m on tackling climate change”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-60304821
“A council is proposing to spend a tenth of its annual budget on measures to tackle climate change locally.
South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC) wants to allocate £6.83m of its £70m total spend to its Zero Carbon Strategy and Action Plan.
The measures range from a solar farm to power bin lorries – to the roll-out of energy-efficient LED streetlights.
Councillors will be asked to vote on the budget plans at a full council meeting on 22 February.
The action plan, discussed at a council meeting on Monday, would see the Liberal Democrat-led authority push to halve carbon emissions locally by 2030 – and reduce them to zero by 2050.
More than £4m of the money would be spent on the installation of a solar farm at the Waterbeach depot of Greater Cambridge Shared Waste, which would power the council’s growing fleet of electric bin lorries.”
Where to start? Quite apart from the fact that this is stark staring bonkers, I love the headline writer’s assumption that a Council can tackle climate change. Meanwhile, a little over 18 months ago:
“Pandemic could cost Cambridgeshire councils more than £100million”
https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/local-news/pandemic-could-cost-cambridgeshire-councils-18590923
“Cambridgeshire’s councils have estimated the pandemic may cost them more than £100million collectively this financial year.
Part of the costs and losses incurred will be covered by central government, but concerns have been raised that support will not cover the full amount….
South Cambridgeshire
The end of June returns show South Cambridgeshire District Council has estimated an additional spending pressure of £900,000, and lost income of £1.5million, and has received extra funding of £1.6million.
However the council disputed the figures when approached by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, saying its additional spending pressure is not £900,000 but actually around £818,000, with around £468,000 of additional spending and £350,000 in delayed savings.
South Cambridgeshire District Council’s Lead Cabinet Member for Finance, Cllr John Williams, said the “biggest issue” financially is likely to be a drop off in business rates, but said he is “confident we will weather the storm”.
Cllr Williams said: “We expect our biggest source of lost income to be from reduced business rate payments as a result of local companies suffering financially from the Coronavirus outbreak.
“We know it’s incredibly tough for businesses out there and want to do all we can to support them.
“There is no indication as to how long this will last for and this is the biggest issue for us. Like any other business we are still suffering from the shock of the pandemic and continue to work through the impacts, both for us as a council and for our residents….”.
There must be a magic money tree somewhere.
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Worrying:
“Most Conservative MPs support net zero, says Tory environment group
Body representing MPs and peers insists vast majority support climate plans despite vocal backbenchers”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/09/most-conservative-mps-support-net-zero-says-tory-environment-network
“The “vast majority” of Conservative MPs support the government’s net zero climate plans despite increasingly vocal opposition from a small number of backbenchers, according to a Tory environment group.
On Tuesday the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of 19 Conservatives was accused of attempting to derail the government’s green agenda, linking it to the cost-of-living crisis and calling for cuts to green taxes and an increase in fossil fuel production.
But the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), which represents 123 MPs and 15 Tory peers, insisted the party’s rank and file remained committed to the government’s climate agenda.”
On the other hand, it looks like another Guardian hit job on the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, so perhaps, far from being worrying, it’s actually rather encouraging. This must be the 4th Guardian attack on them in little more than a week, which does imply significant concern that the net zero agenda could be derailed.
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“Germany appoints ex-Greenpeace chief as special climate envoy
Jennifer Morgan is first person to hold role and vows to put climate crisis at top of diplomatic agenda”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/09/germany-appoints-jennifer-morgan-ex-greenpeace-chief-climate-envoy
“Germany has named the former Greenpeace chief Jennifer Morgan as its special climate envoy, as part of a promise to put the climate crisis “at the top” of the diplomatic agenda.
The US-born Morgan, 55, who has been co-leader of Greenpeace International since 2016, will be the first person to hold the role in Germany.
The appointment comes as Germany’s two-month-old coalition government, led by the Social Democrat chancellor, Olaf Scholz, aims to pursue more global cooperation to fight the climate emergency.
The foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, from the Green party, introduced Morgan as “the face of Germany’s international climate policy”.
“Even in our foreign policy we are putting the climate crisis where it belongs: at the top of the agenda,” said Baerbock after Scholz’s cabinet approved Morgan’s appointment.The selection of Morgan caused a stir in Germany, with supporters hailing it a coup for Baerbock, while critics accused the foreign minister of blurring the line between lobbying and governing.
Morgan’s US nationality also drew scrutiny, which Baerbock countered by saying the climate envoy was in the process of applying for German citizenship and that it suited the foreign ministry to have international staff.
In the newly created role, Morgan will work initially as a special representative for international climate policy and once she has acquired German citizenship as state secretary in the foreign ministry.”
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Mark:
How about this guy in the Wall Street Journal on 22nd December 2009?
That was the former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson over twelve years ago.
George Monbiot just hasn’t been listening, has he?
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Weather forecasts seem to have got the windspeed wrong
Supposed to be 18 Kmh but it seems stronger than that as it’s being gusting through marketplace since 9am.
The forecast temp is low about 6/7
but feels lower than than cos its shady.
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11am Radio4 FooC: Climate Change in The French mountains
Lebanon SNOW: Syrian refugees, now freakishly cold weather/snow, & economic crisis.
. Leila Molana-Allen.
France (Climate Change Denial)
Just as millions suffer from freezing cold under
“Those making a living from winter sports are seeing ski seasons shorten, as climate change speeds up the rate at which mountain snow is melting.
Yet when Polina Bachlackova went to a ski resort in France, she found some locals sceptical about whether humans were the cause of a changing climate, and rejecting the suggestion that urgent action is needed to tackle it.
How dare they !
She found an expert who says it’s a crisis
and a local man who points out glaciers go through cycles and retreat changes back to growth.
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The BBC mis-spelled her name
Polina Bachlakova @polinathewriter
Freelance editor, writer and sex workers’ rights activist
In her Instagram page she says part of her family lives in the village.
“Those interviewed are either my relatives or their friends”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CZy737oskqV/comments/?hl=en-gb
“This story is very close to my heart.
Part of my family lives in the village the piece is centred around; many of those I interviewed are either family or family friends.
In short: digging into how climate change is already affecting the glaciers, winter tourism and people’s mentalities as a whole in this region feels personal to me.
I hope some of those delicate emotions come across if you listen to the story“
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Malcolm Kendrick has posted a new blog post today, and while it is ostensively about Covid data, it shows an example of something that underlies much of what we discuss here on Clisep. That is that much of what we take as fact is not much more than plausibility if not actual guesses.
Well worth reading and contemplating for an hour or two.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2022/02/10/some-observations-on-the-infection-fatality-rate-of-covid19/
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Did anyone listen to You and Yours on BBC Radio 4 today? I am still in a state of shock. A non-agressive interview with Sir Dieter Helm, who told listeners that the energy cost crisis is a net zero cost crisis; that the UK can’t solve climate change; that Germany is burning lots of coal; that China is building more coal-fired power stations than the USA and Europe combined; that Government claims about renewable energy saving consumers money is wrong in anything but the long run (quoting Keynes to the effect that in the long run we are all dead); and pointing out that current policy means UK consumers are going to pay the costs of both climate mitigation and adaptation because mitigation is going to fail, given that Asia and Africa are not joining in. Wow!
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For some reason Dieter Helm is someone who can sneak under the consensus enforcers’ radar. (A bit like Hans Rosling could – but not Bjorn Lomborg, who makes very similar points.) Anyway, that sounds really positive Mark. A BBC Sounds link should last seven days at least.
[Actually, Available for over a year. That’ll do nicely.]
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Richard,
Many thanks for supplying the link. If anyone wants to listen to it, please note that you don’t have to listen to the whole programme. The interview with Helm is at the end of the show.
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Helm’s interview starts around 32min10sec. He does say we should decarbonise, including getting electricity generation to net zero by 2035, but he is at least honest about the costs. The acceptance of the goal of net zero would explain I think why the BBC consensus enforcers let this one through.
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Well who would believe it.? Damaged neck vertebrae of a sauropod interpreted as resulting from a respiratory disease. A dinosaur with Covid -75million🦕
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Prince William has flown to Dubai again to preach about climate change.
URL:www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2022/02/10/duke-cambridge-calls-fast-fashion-promotes-earthshot-prize/
We reached a tipping point for TED-style blather by globetrotting elites a long time ago. We’re on the other side. The blatherers are in control and we’re coasting downhill towards poverty and a slightly warmer planet.
I quite like his wife, though.
And Princess Anne.
And Her Maj scores 100/10.
Charles? He can **** off. If he gets to be king, the monarchy is doomed.
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Do you remember that study about mountain hares in the Peak District, and how they were in trouble because of climate change? This one:
“Peak District’s last surviving mountain hares ‘at risk’
By Simon Hare
Reporter, BBC East Midlands Today
Published31 January 2021”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55704996
“England’s last surviving population of mountain hares may be under threat due to global warming, a conservation group has said.
Recent studies suggest there are about 2,500 of the creatures in the Peak District which, experts say, is “not large” for an isolated population….
…”The Peak District’s altitude and colder climate is ideal habitat for mountain hares, who have adapted perfectly.
“But, with the onset warmer and more erratic weather, these hares could be in trouble.”..
…The trust said it believes climate change is an increasing risk to the creatures’ survival, making summers too warm and reducing food sources, such as heather.
Reduced snow coverings mean the hares may not be as camouflaged in winter, despite their white coats.
“We can’t let them die out,” Ms Al-Fulaij added…”
Well, here’s an update, and from the BBC too:
“Peak District mountain hare population study welcomed”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-60308198
“A preliminary study suggests the Peak District’s mountain hare population may be higher than previously thought.
About 2,500 of the creatures were previously estimated to be in the area.
Research by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), part of the Moorland Association for upland landowners, said numbers may be higher….
…Nick Hesford, lead author of the study, said the “very much preliminary results” came as “welcome news”.
He said the new study suggests population density could be “around 52-126 mountain hares per square kilometre”.
He said the research differed from that previously carried out by Manchester Metropolitan University in that it had surveyed a greater proportion of driven grouse moors.
Mr Hesford, who has a PhD in community ecology from Queen’s University, Belfast, added the counts were conducted using spot lamps at dusk, when hares are likely to be more active….”.
Not a mention of climate change or global warming any more, though the person pushing that line doesn’t seem quite as pleased about the results as the author of the report, or as we might have hoped. Instead, the results seem to be being downplayed:
“Nida Al-Fulaij, conservation research manager at the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), said the organisation had been funding research into mountain hare conservation in the Peak District for several years.
“Both the scientific data and anecdotal evidence show that numbers have been dropping annually,” she said.
“There are limitations, with any technique, establishing how many hares there are, but the data shows the population is smaller than reported 20 years ago.
“We welcome any new research or information about mountain hares, but these, as the authors of the report state, are very preliminary results.””
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“Force pension funds to align with net zero goal, says Richard Curtis
Film-maker urges UK ministers to make it mandatory for schemes to align portfolios with climate target”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/10/force-pension-funds-align-with-net-zero-goal-richard-curtis-climate
“Pension funds should face legal obligations to bring their investments in line with the net zero greenhouse gas emissions goal, the film-maker Richard Curtis has said.
Curtis, a co-founder of the Make My Money Matter campaigning group, urged ministers to follow up the UK’s legal commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 by making it mandatory for pension schemes to align their portfolios with the target.
He told the Guardian: “The moment has arrived. Why not invest in sustainable investments? We can see the risks of the climate crisis. This is one of the most practical changes possible.”
He added that everyone must take responsibility for their impact on the climate crisis. “People can’t say, I will sit this one out. It’s not going to go away. And [making net zero mandatory on pension schemes] is one of the levers of change.”…”.
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“Great Barrier Reef: cooler weather reduces threat of mass bleaching outbreak this summer
Cloud and rain over the past 10 days bring much-needed relief to heat-stressed coral, government authority says”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/11/great-barrier-reef-cooler-weather-reduces-threat-of-mass-bleaching-outbreak-this-summer
“The risk of widespread coral bleaching across the Great Barrier Reef has subsided after cloud and rain over the past 10 days caused “substantial cooling” of heat-stressed corals, according to the government’s reef management authority.
Scientists and conservationists have feared it could suffer its sixth major mass bleaching outbreak this summer with record high temperatures over the reef in December.
But now there is cautious optimism the world heritage-listed reef – the ocean’s biggest at 2,300km long – could escape a major event with the potential to kill and weaken corals.”
10 days’ of cool wet weather causes “substantial cooling”? Really?
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Mark – from “Identify A-ha moment” link above
“Early subsidies and mass production rapidly crushed costs to leave solar and wind energy as the cheapest power in much of the world and electric cars are now accelerating towards mass adoption, while Greta Thunberg’s solo protest sparked an influential global campaign”
Damian like the BEEB really like to think they know what “in much of the world & Global” really means (in reality not a lot)
it’s just pushing an agenda/meme to the viewer/reader that fossil fuels are so “uncool”
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1pm Radio Humberside #PRasNews
* She’s used the wrong units
It’s probably 200MWh,, cos their other project says
“Work has started immediately at the 99MW / 198MWh Clay Tye site near the M25 in Essex, which is the biggest project of its kind under construction in the UK in terms of energy capacity.
It will use a system of Tesla Megapack lithium-ion batteries, together with Tesla’s Autobidder AI software for real-time trading and control.”
** 0.5million LOCAL homes for 2 hours = 1 million for an hour
Is 200MWh is enough to cover 1 million homes’ average hourly EVENING demand in winter ?
Outputting at 200MW is 0.4% of a 50GW grid demand
Outputting at 100MW is 0.2%
so the plant is not very big
A local commenter says
Yes, they actually objected to a fracking pad in Malton
then put in their own proposal for a solar & battery site 5 miles away
That of course is industrialisation of the countryside at a much lower value of energy per acre used.
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Google pulls ads on meteorologist tracking climate for ‘unreliable and harmful claims’
Dr Roy Spencer said Google was “not specific about what claims” led to the decision.
“What their website tells me is that all of my whole website basically is unreliable and harmful claims,” he said.
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IMO, a predictable, and predictably disappointing read:
“Here’s how to demolish the most common excuses for climate crisis apathy
Elizabeth Cripps
Every one of us now has a duty to do something, if not for ourselves then for the survival of future generations”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/12/excuses-tackle-climate-crisis-apathy
And guess what?
“Elizabeth Cripps is a writer and moral philosopher at the University of Edinburgh, and author of What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care”
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“climate crisis apathy”
Ha.
Could it be the third word is present purely because of the second?
Lindzen calls it the imaginary climate crisis.
So “imaginary climate crisis apathy”.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Glad I don’t have to read the article now.
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Remember this?
“Rising temperatures threaten future of Winter Olympics, say experts
Only one of 21 previous locations would be able to reliably host Games in future if emissions remain on current path, study shows”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/jan/25/rising-temperatures-threaten-future-winter-olympics-games-global-emissions
Irony alert:
“Winter Olympics: Heavy snowfall in Beijing causes disruption to alpine & freestyle skiing”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-olympics/60365573
“Heavy snow has caused major disruption to the Winter Olympics schedule with temperatures set to plummet below -22C at the Beijing Games.
Several ski slopestyle events had to be pushed back a day because of the conditions at the Genting Snow Park.
The women’s freeski qualifications were postponed on Sunday because of heavy snow and poor visibility.
Difficult conditions at the alpine skiing meant 33 of the 87 men’s giant slalom starters were unable to finish.
Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen, who finished fourth in the opening run, used an expletive when asked to describe how little he could see in the blustery snow at the National Alpine Skiing Centre in Yanqing.
More snow is forecast on Monday, with temperatures in the mountains set to drop further and reach -35C with windchill.”
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“Blooming flowers, fledgling birds … the UK’s spring is early – and always will be
Anomalies are a sign that global heating is changing behaviour of flora and fauna”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/13/early-spring-changing-behaviour-flora-fauna-climate-change
They keep pushing this narrative. Yet this appears to be the crucial paragraph:
“Using the “spring index” calculators – first flowering of the horse chestnut and hawthorn and the first sightings of an orange-tip butterfly and swallow – between the early 1900s and now, she said spring has moved forward more than eight days.”
So, not such a big deal at all, especially with annual natural variability. This winter has been mild in the UK so far, but last year’s was cold and prolonged. I saw daffodils flowering in late May last year – I don’t call that an early spring.
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Mark
“This winter has been mild in the UK so far,”
but the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has been bl**dy cold.
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Bill, fair point – look at the Winter Olympics, look at Japan, look at USA.
Meanwhile:
“Why women are often worst hit by climate change
By Harriet Bradshaw
BBC Scotland Climate Change reporter”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60347748
[Scotland Climate Change reporter? Seriously?]
“Climate change affects every person on the planet but studies have found it affects women more.
The Centre for Climate Justice based at Glasgow Caledonian University puts this down to two things.
Firstly, extreme weather disasters intensify existing inequalities in society.
Secondly, women don’t have good enough representation at climate talks to have their say on effective solutions.”
Hmmmm.
Centre for Climate Justice?
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Her’s something from the Grauniad that may add something to the mirth of the nation:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/13/northern-powergrid-accidentally-compensation-cheques-trillions-of-pounds-storm-arwen
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“UK urged not to abandon climate goals amid net zero row
Climate experts fear attacks falsely linking net zero to energy price rises are undermining UK emissions targets”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/14/uk-urged-not-to-abandon-climate-goals-amid-net-zero-row
“…falsely linking net zero to energy price rises…” eh? And the evidence is?
Er, none, other than a couple of net zero enthusiasts saying the claims are false:
“…Birol added: “The current high energy prices are nothing to do with net zero. This is not a clean energy crisis, or a renewable energy crisis. These claims are irresponsible and are being used to attack public support for the net zero transition.”…”
“…The British public was also being harmed, added Rachel Kyte, a former World Bank climate official, now dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a climate adviser to the UN secretary-general. “There is something deeply disturbing about would-be political leaders jockeying for position by seizing on high energy prices, wilfully misdiagnosing the causes as shifting to renewable energy, and then suggesting as a remedy a harmful about-face by abandoning net zero goals….”…”
And that seems to be about it. A bit weak in the content line in view of the categorical headline.
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“Climate activists plan direct action against UK oil infrastructure
Just Stop Oil campaign to target petrol stations, fuel depots and refineries to demand end to fossil fuel investment”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/14/just-stop-oil-activist-direct-action-against-uk-oil-infrastructure-target-petrol-stations-depots-refineries
“Activists fronting a new campaign masterminded by Roger Hallam, the strategist behind Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain, have said they are now preparing to move beyond protest and “into civil resistance”.
Two young supporters of Just Stop Oil went to Downing Street on Monday morning, where they delivered an ultimatum to ministers calling for an immediate end to new fossil fuel investments.
“If you do not provide such assurance by 14 March 2022 it will be our duty to intervene – to prevent the ultimate crime against our country, humanity and life on earth,” said the letter, read out at the gates and delivered by hand.
The Guardian understands that the intention is to take direct action against Britain’s oil infrastructure – from petrol stations to fuel depots and refineries.
In a brief speech to reporters, Louis McKechnie, 21, who was recently released from jail for taking part in court injunction-breaking road blockades with Insulate Britain, said: “We know what needs to be done, it’s simple, just stop oil. Right now they are doing the opposite.”
For weeks Hallam and other supporters of the campaign, seen as a successor to Insulate Britain, have been touring universities calling on students to sign up. Unlike Insulate Britain, which was predominantly composed of older activists, including several over 70, Just Stop Oil is intended as a youth-led campaign.”
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Mark – “If you do not provide such assurance by 14 March 2022 it will be our duty to intervene”
as the courts seem to let these “protestors” get away with this type of action time and time again, they grow ever bolder.
as seen on the “Insulate Britain” protests, Joe Public will be not happy when petrol stations are blocked by “Louis McKechnie, 21 & her pals”
you have to wonder if they are willing to be injured or even die for the cause or is it bravado ?
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Mark – ooh you are naughty – made me have a look at that link ““Climate activists plan direct action against UK oil infrastructure”
the pic is awe inspiring – 2 guys !!! (could make a joke on cropped placard)
Quote from the link –
“Hallam told students at Glasgow University last month they “had to become revolutionaries” to avert climate disaster. The Guardian understands that hundreds of activists have signed up and said they were willing to be arrested as part of the campaign.
Jess Causby, 25, a supporter of the campaign, said it would involve an escalation of tactics compared with recent environmental protests”
ps – should have said -“Louis McKechnie, 21 & his pals”
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dfhunter,
I actually think Hallam’s latest exploit, if accurately reported by the Guardian, is pretty sinister. I think that naive brainwashed students are ripe for the plucking by Hallam and his ilk, but it seems very wrong to me to use them in this way, If they spend a lot of time on these protests, end up arrested and in Court, and ultimately possibly (successfully) prosecuted, it could wreck their futures far more effectively then climate change could ever do.
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I’m in a hurry this morning (busy, busy) and haven’t read this yet, but I’ll leave the link here:
“Why global warming is good for us
Climate change is creating a greener, safer planet.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/15/why-global-warming-is-good-for-us/
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If ever your resolve not to succumb to the blandishments of alarmism should falter, read Ridley’s article (not read by Mark above). A truly excellent piece, full of information we probably already know but assembled together in barnstorming style. Suitable for any wavering alarmists you might know. I wish I had something similar when I taught.
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Do we really think that Hallam could continue to do what he does without some sort of protection from “Da Management”?
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There is an interesting video of an interview with Dr Darrell Bricker, a demographer who has been studying the world’s fall in birthrates and its consequences. while the whole interview is worth watching, the answer to the question at this point might be relevant to denizens of cliscep:
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If anyone is going to be in Manchester this evening, they can go to a church and hear Just Stop Oil give a talk with the marvellously pompous title, ‘Our Responsibilities At This Time’.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/our-responsibilities-at-this-time-manchester-tickets-256794769067
Gibberish.
(There are similar talks at 7pm in St Helens, Derby and Chichester.)
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“A 300ft wind turbine has been blown over in a south Wales valley as the UK braces for more dangerous stormy weather and high winds later this week. Residents of the village of Gilfach Goch, near Bridgend, were woken at 6.50am on Monday when the £20m turbine – double the height of Nelson’s Column – snapped apart and crashed into the valley below”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/15/storms-uk-weather-wind-turbine-blown-over-wales
Must be the wrong kind of wind !
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From a few days ago:
“EXCLUSIVE: Trouble in paradise? Scowling Barack Obama inspects the construction of his new multimillion-dollar Hawaii mansion and controversial sea wall which his neighbors fear will erode the beachline”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10481075/Scowling-Obama-inspects-new-multi-million-dollar-Hawaii-mansion-controversial-sea-wall.html
To the amateur eye, it looks to be about an inch above sea level. It has its own sea wall, about which there is apparently some controversy owing to the knock-on effects that defences on sandy shores always have.
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Yesterday, in Boris’s favourite chip-wrapper:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1565747/russia-crisis-boris-johnson-nord-stream-2-bloodstream-gas-putin-ukraine-war
Don’t worry, we’ll have a serious PM again one sunny day.
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Alan K, I’ve now read Matt Ridley’s piece at Spiked, and agree with your assessment. I loved the line “Good news is no news”. Does Matt visit Cliscep?
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The BBC seems to have learned from the Guardian to link to its own articles by way of supposed evidence in support of a claim, when the link – for those who trouble to follow it – provides no such thing:
“Climate change: Flooding is ‘the new reality’ in Wales”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60386125
“Record-breaking flooding is becoming “the new reality” for communities, according to Natural Resources Wales (NRW).
Two years after storms wreaked havoc across Wales, the environmental watchdog warned urgent action was needed to prepare for climate change.
“The need to act now to prepare for climate impacts is more pressing than ever,” it said.
Storms Chiara, Dennis and Jorge led to record rainfall in February 2020.”
It’s the last few words that, in the original, provide an embedded link to another BBC article:
“Flooding: Call for UK cash to fund flood relief in Wales”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51604946
Nowhere does that article, from Feb 2020, refer to or justify a claim of record rainfall in Wales in Feb 2020. In fact, a quick internet search shows that Dec 2015 was much wetter than Feb 2020 in Wales. I can’t be bothered to trawl through all the Met Office data for Wales, but the first one I looked at – purely because it was the first alphabetically – namely Aberporth, if anything shows a less wet trend lately, with the wettest month since the detailed records began in 1941, being November 1959, so far as I can tell:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/aberporthdata.txt
If anyone wishes to be more diligent and check them all, the data can be found here:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/historic-station-data
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“US west ‘megadrought’ is worst in at least 1,200 years, new study says
Human-caused climate change significant driver of destructive conditions as even drier decades lie ahead, researchers say”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/us-west-megadrought-worst-1200-years-study
For the debunk, visit Paul Homewood’s site:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/02/15/uclas-hypothetical-droughts/#more-55413
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30th Jan Oil rebrand
The leading trade body for the North Sea Oil and Gas UK (OGUK)
is dropping “oil and gas” from its name in a rebrand
which will see its focus and remit broaden to new energy sources.
It will now be called Offshore Energies UK (OEUK).
“We represent an integrating offshore energy industry which safely provides cleaner fuel, power and products to everyone in the UK.
Working together with our members, we are a driving force supporting the UK to meet its net zero ambitions.
err puke
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Just found “@STWorg blocked you”
Why would Lew block me ? I have never tweeted him
Neither of the sidekicks have blocked me.
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Countryfile “The amount of microplastics on Snowdon is shocking”
Expert it makes up “1-5% of samples”
em that’s unlikely, I expect he means 1% to 5% of cubic centimetre blocks test positive
Item seems to be PRasNews for Bangor University
The are suggesting “every washing machine needs a microplastic filter”
OK but I don’t see how that changes Snowden
“We also want to build reedbeds to capture microplastics”
As ever the “show me the bodies” rule applies,
yet the item showed no bodies
There was no claim like “here are all these dead voles killed by microplastic”
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Now Adam is set to do an item promoting dairy farm biogas
First he says look at my solar panels we are saving 60% on our electricity
hmm, he’s not a dairy farm or chicken farm, so his leccy could be mostly light at night.
So basically he’ll be exporting leccy at a subsidy price
then at night he grabs a bit a of leccy off the grid at retail price.
#2 The dairy farm is using cow poo to make biogas
Fair enough but on a normal farm the slurry would not be wasted it goes as fertiliser
This farmer claims after own use he’s exporting at 500KW (0.5MW)
if that were at £40/MWh he’s getting £20/hour
He reckons he’s already paid back the £5m cost in 10 years
that’s £0.5m leccy sales/year
that’s £1,370/day
£57/hr ..that suggests to me he’s getting a 120/MWh SUBSIDISED FIT
ie 3 times market rate.
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There must be an explanation for this strange phenomenon – please can someone explain it to me:
“US sea level to rise as much in next 30 years as in past century – study
Seas rising faster around the US than global average will cause ‘dramatic increase’ in number of people vulnerable to flooding”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/16/us-sea-level-rise-study-flooding
Sea level is sea level, surely? How can (other than tide and storm surges) the sea be higher in some parts of the globe than others?
Eminent scientists are making climate alarmist claims in this article, and I assume that they know what they are talking about, but how does this work?
“The seawater lapping at the edges of the contiguous US has already risen by about a foot since 1920, a faster increase than the 6-8in (15-20cm) experienced, on average, around the world over the same period.”
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There are two components to sea level rise: the water level and land subsidence . Land subsidence can dominate particularly with extensive groundwater usage.
All explained rather well here
https://sealevelrise.org/states/
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Thank you potentilla, I guess that explains it. However, that being the case, I think the alarmist claims about sea level rise are overdone, since land subsidence can’t properly be blamed on climate change.
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Mark/potentilla
There is also the isostatic adjustment.
There are also depths of desperation/opportunism/stupidity. This from NPR as quoted by Albert Parker at WUWT in 2016:
The claim of a tripling was answered by Parker, but I had at the back of my mind to revisit the data and show that the acceleration was noise. However, I don’t think tide gauge data for Miami Beach is available.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/11/9-mmyear-of-sea-level-rise-in-south-east-florida-only-if-you-cherry-pick/
Of course, there is plenty of subsidence going round too.
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Alan:
Stet.
(A new usage of the old proofreading term, meaning: don’t let subsequent comments cause you to miss this one.)
Why global warming is good for us: Climate change is creating a greener, safer planet
It’s great to see Matt writing for Spiked in such a vein.
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Sea level rise in USA It is p most unlikely that sea levels would be exceptional on both Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, nor for that matter between Gulf Coast and New England coasts. Pacific coast lies along plate boundaries where plate margins are suffering subduction,. This is in contrast to the Atlantic coasts that lie along a passive coastline. The Gulf Coast lies upon a site where sediment has been dumped in successive huge delta systems. This sediment influx weighs down the crust which is subject to subsidence. In contrast much of New England is rising after removal of ice sheets.
Coasts of the USA are very diverse, so that no average can be attributed to sea-level rise. I suspect the very basis of the report. And I haven’t mentioned Alaska and Hawaii.
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Quite a day at the Guardian:
“Tory MPs fear that net zero is hurting poor people. Ignore their crocodile tears
Caroline Lucas”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/16/tory-mps-high-energy-bills-net-zero-scrutiny-group
And:
“Prepare for mass migration to cities in climate crisis, UK mayors warn
Sadiq Khan and Marvin Rees call for action as major report launched during UN Migration Week”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/16/prepare-for-mass-migration-to-cities-in-climate-crisis-uk-mayors-warn
Total nonsense, the lot of it, IMO.
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“Biggest power plant in coal-reliant Australia to close early”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60411622
“Australia’s largest coal-fired power station will close seven years earlier than planned, as its operator says it is increasingly unable to compete with the “influx of renewables”.
The 2.88 gigawatt Eraring plant is located in the Hunter region north of Sydney and operated by Origin Energy.
The plant will now close in 2025 and be replaced by a large-scale battery.”
Er, REPLACED by a battery? I don’t think so. Coal power plants generate energy. Batteries don’t generate it, they store it. In what way is that a replacement? Other than that sole reference, nothing more is said about the battery. Hmmm.
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Big headline, but shockingly light on details. Never mind it’s all part of the Guardian’s increasingly concerned campaign to do down Net Zero Watch, which presumably they recognise is gaining traction:
“Constituents set up ‘Steve Baker Watch’ over MP’s climate stance
Campaigners say Tory MP for Wycombe is trying to ‘wreck’ government plans for environment”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/16/constituents-set-up-steve-baker-watch-over-mps-climate-stance
“Constituents of Steve Baker MP who are concerned about his environmental position have set up a “Steve Baker Watch” group and are launching a crowdfunding page to raise money. The constituents in Baker’s constituency of Wycombe in the rolling Chiltern Hills believe that Baker is trying to “wreck the government plans to improve the environment”.”
Who ARE these constituents and how many of them are they? We don’t know; the Guardian doesn’t tell us. THis is as much as we get:
“The group, however, says it does not represent any political faction. It said: “We’re a group of concerned citizens who care about climate change and the lives of ordinary people. We don’t represent any political party.””
Colour me unimpressed.
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7:30pm ITV train subsidies and travel
“last year the gov gave the rail corps £10bn Covid propup
but in a normal year the subsidy is 6p/Km/passenger”
I bet the effective subsidy is way more than that.
I bet a 60Km journey that costs £12, costs £20 in subsidy.
So you pay 20p/Km and taxpayer 30p
And look at the true effective cost
If you spend £100 on a car journey most of that is fuel tax that comes back to fund the NHS
but rail fuel isn’t taxed.
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“Hesket Newmarket wind turbine breaks due to Storm Dudley”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-cumbria-60421760
“A wind turbine has broken apart in Cumbria during Storm Dudley.
The high winds caused the blades to shear off in Hesket Newmarket, and a passer-by found the wreckage and captured it on camera on Wednesday.”
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Another one down. Quite a few more to go. Need to stand clear!
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potentilla/Mark
At the risk of increasing this page’s load time, I couldn’t help but think of this song:
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I feel I’ve just learned a lot about the Canadian truckers protest and the response from Tom Slater in spiked today: The truckers’ revolt has exposed the left’s class hatred. I haven’t been following the story at all, so others may not feel as educated by it as me. But Slater ends: “The left as we knew it is gone, and it isn’t coming back.” That’s something leftist climate activism has also suggested: no more connection with or interest in real workers.
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Richard be very cautions about learning a lot from Spiked. While I really appreciated Matt Ridley’s article he other day at Spiked there is a lot more going on with the “peaceful “trucker protest in Canada.
“On Monday morning, Alberta RCMP announced they had detained 11 people after seizing more than a dozen long guns, handguns, ammunition, a machete, and body armour while executing a search warrant on three trailers following an investigation at the Coutts crossing.” Three have since been charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8621733/coutts-blockaders-discussed-blocking-airport-cargo-terminals-private-threat-assessment/
About 90% of truckers are fully vaccinated in Canada and have lost business because of the blockades. The really daft thing is that the fringe group of truckers started their protest because of needing to be fully vaccinated to return to Canada from the US when they would not be allowed into the US without being vaccinated in the first place!
The current occupation of downtown Ottawa is untenable and is an appalling breakdown of law and order.
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potentilla: Thanks for putting some of the ‘other side’ – of which there was bound to be plenty. I am a sceptical reader of Spiked as a general rule. Although I really didn’t know any of the details I was impressed with this video on Tuesday of Dave Rubin relaying Jordan Peterson’s cautionary message to the truckers.
We’ll have to see.
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There are two (or more) sides to most stories.- at our physical distance here in the UK from the Canadian truckers’ protests, we can’t really judge the merits or demerits of their claims and behaviour, nor do we know what sort of people they are. Some are keen to demonise them, others to exonerate them, and to demonise the Canadian government. Potentilla is always of a voice of reason and common sense, so I take her comments seriously.
Despite that, claims that the Canadian government is abusing emergency powers are potentially of concern, and I would appreciate potentilla’s views on that story too.
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From the “you couldn’t make it up” school of reporting:
“Sandeel fishing ban proposed near Berwick Bank wind farm”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-60420983
“An energy company says it wants sandeel fishing banned around its proposed North Sea wind farm to help prevent a decline in seabird numbers.
SSE Renewables – which is building the Berwick Bank wind development – hopes the move will mitigate any losses caused by birds hitting the turbines.
But fishing leaders are planning to fight the move and say boats still need access to fishing grounds.
The firm says it needs an “ecosystem-based approach” to protect birds.
Breeds such as kittiwakes are already in long-term decline because of a range of factors including a lack of food.
Sandeels are an important food source and it is hoped that protecting their population would allow bird numbers to increase.
Having more birds would lessen the impact of them being killed by striking the moving blades.”
This is extraordinary. We were told that climate change is decimating sand eel populations, and hence the populations of birds that feed on them. Many of us had our doubts, being aware of over-fishing, especially by Danish super boats. We were also concerned about wind turbines killing birds. Now we see what amounts to an admission that sand eels aren’t affected by climate change, but by over-fishing, and that turbines kill birds. To claim that we need to reduce sand eel fishing to help sustain bird populations that are killed by wind turbines just makes my draw drop. Whrre are the environmentalists? What does the RSPB have to say about this?
Oh hang on, here’s some spin:
“Project director Alex Meredith said: “We think that it’s important that we manage the sandeel fisheries carefully to allow enough prey for the seabirds and to allow for offshore wind development, which is key to addressing the climate emergency which also sits behind the decline in seabird numbers.
“We recognise that there might be an impact from an offshore wind farm on birds but we know that the bigger impact is caused by climate change.””
Oh, and here’s the RSPB and some more on the story:
“But RSPB Scotland said it would accelerate some seabird species towards extinction in Scotland.
It has previously been involved in legal challenges against offshore wind farms and says there still is not enough conclusive research about their impact on birds.
Senior marine conservation planner Catherine Kelham said: “In Scotland we have 24 internationally-important seabirds and 22 of those are on the amber or red list so they’re species of conservation concern.
“Everything that we do know about nature tells us that the protections that are in place aren’t sufficient and so our seabirds really do need looking after.”
The Scottish government said it did not support fishing for sandeels and that it took the protection of the marine environment seriously.
The UK fleet is unable to catch them because no quota has been issued for the species but foreign vessels – mainly Danish – can still target sandeels.”
What a mess!
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Climate change causes biodiversity extinction. Or words to that effect.
Under the heading More venues in England confirm closure (see what I did with that URL?) at 7:16am on the BBC live Eunice page, let’s call it.
One gets the feeling they were finding it hard to keep the wall-to-wall news urgent at that point. But there will I assume be some useful news function during the day.
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Untrue. There is no world in which the diffuse effect of CO2 saved by this scheme, if any, could save more seabirds than will be knocked out of the sky or displaced from feeding grounds.
The RSPB has a large share of blame for not drawing a red line on wind turbines at the start. Only once the turbineers had encroached to unthinkable levels did they start opposing wind farms. Too late. An organisation like the RSPB with the power it has through its massive membership could actually have done what it was created to do: protect birds. But it didn’t. Now it’s too late.
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More from BBC live Eunice.
Is there a link between Storm Eunice and climate change?
Matt McGrath, then Baroness Brown
UK not planning enough for extreme weather – climate adviser
Chair of the Climate Change Committee’s adaptation group so a big day for her.
And we can always learn how to adapt better.
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Chaotic system or what?
My emphasis.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60419268
Around 9:30am.
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Richard,
My first reaction after reading the Mcgrath analysis was to wonder when the BBC became interested in data. My second reflection was that some of what he is saying would be enough to get him shut down on social media. What’s going on?
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John: Extinction Rebellion has overplayed their hand? The suffering that is obviously going to be caused by energy prices this year and not buying the ‘nothing to do with renewables’ line? Your guess is as good as mine. But it’s not bad, is it?
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12:15 Record-breaking 122mph wind gust on Isle of Wight
However, the St. Jude storm of October 2013 caused 17 deaths.
And the Great Storm of 1703 caused 8000. (Thanks Spence at Bishop Hill in January 2014, who listed many others back in time.)
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Generally global sea level is what it is,
add a load of melting glaciers and it would rise by about the same worldwide.
However the level, relative to local land is affected by things happening to local land
and it could be rising or sinking too
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The official BBC Young Reporter account is a big pusher of activist agendas
but it is largely ignored
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Mark: “Despite that, claims that the Canadian government is abusing emergency powers are potentially of concern, and I would appreciate potentilla’s views on that story too.”
I am somewhat reluctant to get into non-climate related political issues on this excellent site but here goes:
It all starts with Canadians being too nice. When Extinction Rebellion block roads and other activists block railway lines the police approach is to avoid conflict at all costs. When the “Freedom Convoy” arrived in Ottawa, the police let them park their huge trucks throughout the downtown area and assumed they would leave at the end of the weekend. Well they have been there for four weeks now and have set up barbecues, hot tubs, bouncy castles, wooden sheds etc all allowed by the police. The trucks have been blowing their air horns 24 hours a day despite a court injunction brought by a resident. Pretty much all businesses have been closed in downtown Ottawa because of intimidation and threats regarding mask wearing. Here’s what they want from the Globe and Mail (paywalled0
“The convoy of the confused that has been blocking the streets of Ottawa would seem to have failed in most of its aims. The government of Canada has not been replaced by a committee made up of protest organizers, the Governor-General, and the Senate. Vaccine mandates and other public-health measures remain in place over most of the country.” simply because public health measures are under the jurisdiction of the provinces, not the Federal government.
It is now extremely difficult to remove the jammed-in trucks and hundreds of people from downtown Ottawa. One of the complications is that about a 100 truckers have children with them. You need specialized tow truck drivers to remove the big trucks some of which have been immobilized. The tow truck drivers refuse to work for the police because of threats and losing business. When the bridge between Ontario and Detroit was cleared earlier they had to use tow truck drivers from the US.
So here’s why we need emergency powers.
1. The police have established a no-go area around downtown Ottawa. After warnings, anyone in that area can be arrested and criminally charged unless they have good reason to be there. That stops backfilling with more trucks as some leave.
2. Tow truck drivers are compelled to assist the police under threat of arrest. As I type, large tow trucks are arriving in downtown Ottawa, their drivers with complete face coverings and logos covered up. The “Freedom Convoy” are trying to identify them and put up names on social media.
3. Freezing bank accounts of protesters in the no-go area prevents the flow of money to what is deemed a criminal operation.
Heavy handed? Sure. But there were no alternatives. Many of these guys are off their rocker and are willing to go to jail and risk $100,000 fines in the cause of what they deem to be their “freedom”. Many are still in denial that they face that risk.
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A major police operation happening in Ottawa right now: From the Ottawa Citizen:
“Police said that protesters have placed children between police operations and the unlawful protest site.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/trucker-protest-day-22-more-arrested-in-central-area-two-convoy-leaders-due-in-court-friday
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I’ve just watched the Dave Rubin/Jordan Peterson video. It’s nonsense. The relaxation of some public health measures in some provinces was planned in advance. With the decline in COVID cases (BECAUSE of the public health measures) some have been relaxed. It has been repeatedly emphasized by the provincial premiers that the partial relaxation was not influenced by the protests.
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potentilla,
Thank you for that clear-sighted review of what is going on in Canada. Over here, with reporting at opposite extremes regarding the Canadian truckers and Trudeau, it is difficult what to make of it. Instinctively I am nervous of any government using emergency powers to do things like blocking bank accounts – a massively illiberal measure in danger of state overreach. On the other hand I am instinctively nervous about writers saying things like Trudeau’s government must fall over this and others suggesting that Canada should be expelled from the Commonwealth. Such opinions are to my mind equally extreme and dangerous.
I value your opinion, and having pondered on your comments, and what I have read elsewhere, I certainly think it is time for the truckers to go home. They have been allowed to protest for a long time. No protestors have the right to bring down a Government or insist on law changes, refusing to move until they get their way – that is what, in a democracy, elections are for.
To anyone here who disagrees, try a thought experiment – what would we be saying about the protestors if they were Canadian XR? Despite the fact that I have SOME (but only some) sympathy for the protestors, and none for XR, I don’t believe in double standards. If I wouldn’t approveof XR doing this, then I can’t approve of the truckers doing it. Four weeks is plenty of time to make your point.
PS, I hare your reluctance “to get into non-climate related political issues” here, but I suppose there are two parts to the website name – climate and scepticism.
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What?
“Climate change: Covid shutdown linked to record rainfall in China”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60423329
“Scientists say that a rapid drop in emissions because of Covid played a key role in record rainfall in China in 2020.
The decline in greenhouse gases and small particles called aerosols caused atmospheric changes that intensified the downpours…
…Many parts of eastern China experienced severe flooding in June and July in 2020. The researchers say the reductions in emissions contributed about one third of the extreme summer rain…..”
Even though it was less extreme than in the past. But it’s OK, because “…long-term cuts in emissions are unlikely to trigger similar events….”.
We are told:
“…Now an international team has put forward a new theory. They argue that the abrupt reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, caused by shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, was a key cause of the intense downpours.
In their study the authors show that over the past four decades summer rainfall over eastern and central China has decreased significantly due to the increase in the number of aerosols in the atmosphere.
These particles, often associated with the burning of coal, can reduce the occurrence of large-scale storms which resulted in lower rainfall….”.
We are also told that the study appears in Nature, but the BBC doesn’t offer a link. I’m no scientist, but it all looks a bit tenuous to me:
“…However, the chain of events that connects the pandemic shutdown to the floods is quite complex.
“There was heating over land due to aerosol reductions but also cooling over the ocean due to a decrease in greenhouse gases, which intensified the land/sea temperature difference in the summer,” explained lead author Prof Yang Yang from Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, in China.
“This in turn, increased sea level pressure over the South China/Philippines sea and intensified the winds bringing moist air to eastern China which then saw intense precipitation.”…”.
I am particularly sceptical of this bit, given the short timescales we are discussing here:
“…cooling over the ocean due to a decrease in greenhouse gases…”.
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The right to protest does not equate to a right to occupy, so after due time you should arrest folk who refuse to move on. Which is what should happen with XR blocking bridges etc. [Note there is a difference between blocking a right of way and say camping out in a square – one should be settled in minutes, the other in days.]
I think the vaccine mandate is a dumb idea, given that vaccinated folk are not immune and can therefore still transmit the virus. And that the protection against illness wears off so fast. The mandates simply cannot last. The boosters can’t be for ever.
And why enforce such mandates on folk who spend 99% of their time alone in their truck? Seems reasonable to ask it of hospital staff, who may encounter 100+ other humans per day, some vulnerable – at least up to the point when the variant of the day is weak. In the UK we have backed out of ours, leaving a lot of care workers fuming.
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“Lancaster University submits plan for solar farm next to M6”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-60423437
“A university’s plan for a solar farm alongside a motorway will help its aim “to become carbon neutral by 2035″, a council has been told.”
But:
“The report to the council said the development would be “temporary and fully reversible” and the site would be returned to farmland after the university finished using it.”
When will it finish using it, then? And when it does, will it still be “carbon neutral” at that point?
“The land is currently open countryside, mainly fields with hedgerows, a barn and a former hole previously belonging to Forrest Hills Golf Club, and is mainly used for grazing animals.”
Not such a green plan after all, then!
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I suppose this was inevitable (Matt McGrath at 18.40):
“Is there a link between Storm Eunice and climate change?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-60421388
“While there are undoubtedly some important influences from our changing climate, it is not possible to say that climate change has “caused” this extreme event.
There has been considerable debate here among UK researchers about whether we are seeing more frequent and more intense storms as a result of climate change, but two studies after the extremely stormy winter of 2013-14 concluded there was no clear evidence for a link between climate change and increased storminess.
The UK Met Office also said in their State of the Climate report in 2020: “There are no compelling trends in maximum gust speeds recorded by the UK wind network in the last five decades.””
That seems fairly clear, then? Oh no!
“But warming can influence a storm like Eunice in other ways.
For example, a warmer atmosphere can hold considerably more moisture, which increases the intensity of downpours and hence the risk of flooding.
Climate change has also pushed up sea levels around the globe which makes it easier for storms to whip up large sea surges.
On the central question of climate change and the frequency of storms like Eunice, scientists are clear that more research is needed.”
More research is needed….In other words, keep sending us money, and we’ll come up with the “right” answer.
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The Guardian seems to be fixated on bitcoin mining and associated CO2 emissions. I just think the idea of cryptocurrencies such as Btcoin is crazy – another South Sea Bubble or Tulip Mania:
“Bitcoin miners revived a dying coal plant – then CO2 emissions soared”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared
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And returning to Storm Eunice, the BBC and the Guardian are in lock-step as usual:
“How bad is Storm Eunice – and is it a result of climate breakdown?
A rare red warning has been issued as back-to-back storms sweep the UK”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/feb/18/storm-eunice-climate-breakdown-crisis-extreme-weather
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Jit, at 7.22pm, I agree entirely. That doesn’t, I think, involve a contradiction with agreeing also with potentilla.
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Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act 2008 was more successful in destroying manufacturing than the Luftwaffe.
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I missed this at the time (31st Jan 2022) (possibly because it doesn’t fit the narrative and consequently didn’t receive any publicity), but have just stumbled on it while looking for something else. NB I understand that it’s weather, not climate:
“Iguanas fall from trees as cold snap hits Florida”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60090861
“Iguanas are falling from trees in Florida as the US Sunshine State is hit with unusually cold weather conditions.
In South Florida, temperatures reached a low of -4C (25F) early on Sunday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.
The agency said the region was experiencing some of the coldest temperatures in more than a decade.”
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potentilla:
Although that was to Mark I’ll chip in here as I started it! Thanks for giving us your take, at some length!
I don’t have a fixed view at all. I don’t regret mentioning it. We should be able to differ on such a thing without getting distracted on what is our central concern – climate/energy. On the nuances of which we will also differ!
So, thanks again.
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ITV local news “It’s been 100 days since COP26”
JamesITV* “here I am standing outside the building in Glasgow
blah blah .. growing renewables sector”
The format was a live segment from Glasgow
then a clip of a local climate activist from your ITV region
eg Meridian had @andythegreenie https://twitter.com/andythegreenie/status/1493198341395599361
We got Simon Bowens of Yorkshire FoE Yorkshire
“The govt is going wrong.. Govt committed to £11bn oil & gad development in N Sea, Bristol and Leeds Airports, A new coal mine being made in Cumbria”
Here is a Zoom interview with Alok Sharma
James ITV “The *Independent* CCC say”
Alok Sharma .. “Net Zero is great ..Green growth”
activist Ben Margolis from Climate Change Commission (they never explained who this body is)
‘The public want all these green things’ “but there are not enough incentives”
(.. What he said is a contradiction)
Leeds edition item ended there after 6 mins
Hull edition gave another 2 minutes .. studio presenter interviewed James
James scowled when asked about progress
“Independent experts say not enough is being done”
It was @JamesWebsterITV.
* technically COP26 finished 98 days ago
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Mark – from that Guardian link, we now have “There is talk of a deadly ‘sting jet’ coming with the storm, but what is that?”
never heard of it before – but “sting” sounds bad/deadly.
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Multiple ITV accounts tweeted this
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“…engaging and empowering audiences…”. I suspect that translates as “overwhelming them with propaganda”.
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Mark
Re diving iguanas
It’s not only weather but climate as well, in that cold snaps have affected Miami and Miami Beach in Florida for decades. Back in the 1980s I worked with a geologist from the University of Miami teaching students, then petroleum geologists about the origin of modern carbonate sediments in Florida Bay and the Reef tract. He told me that the cold snaps didn’t occur every year but were not infrequent. I remember this because he also told me that during such events they would open up all the windows and doors to let the cold in and kill off all the bugs. The family decamped to a hotel for the night.
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“Greek wind projects annoy environmentalists
The government is boosting habitat protection efforts after coming under fire for a rapid expansion of wind farms.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/greece-wind-project-environmentalist-energy/
“Greece is launching schemes to protect its mountains and beaches from development — a move critics say is an effort to respond to complaints following a massive investment surge in wind energy that has already destroyed many habitats.
The first initiative, known as “Untrodden Mountains” and announced at November’s COP26 climate summit, will initially put six mountainous areas under protected status. The second, “1,000 Pristine Beaches,” is expected to launch later this year and will prohibit any new development or business activities on beaches put under strict environmental status.
“We want to build a shield against the climate crisis and these large undisturbed areas are the best carbon stores,” Deputy Environment and Energy Minister Georgios Amyras told POLITICO. “We will leave those places to the next generations in the same way that our grandparents walked them or swam in them.”
Among the first six mountainous areas to be selected are Mount Saos, the highest peak in the Aegean and home to a native daisy variety; Tymfi, in northwestern Greece, home to a rare species of wild goat; and Smolikas, one of the world’s most important biotopes for vultures.
The ministry is currently reviewing research by the University of Ioannina to determine what areas can be included in future, based on their biodiversity, among other factors, said Amyras.
Activist groups have welcome the effort, but warn that it is not nearly enough to protect fragile ecosystems and natural habitats that have been disrupted by the rapid construction of wind farms — including in areas that are part of the European Union’s Natura 2000 network of protected areas.”
What a welcome contrast to the UK, especially Scotland.
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Ok, I’m going to try again. I finished up my original comment on the Canadian truckers like this:
This was making a link with climate, our central concern. And overnight, thinking about this, I was reminded of one of the most prophetic tweets I believe I saw in my time on Twitter. From another Canadian, albeit over twelve months ago:
Finding that again caused me to look at James Heartfield’s twitter feed. As you’ll see, he’s not too impressed by the actions of the current Canadian regime. But, for me, much more important, there’s this:
I agree with this. They’re desperate for war with Russia. Donald Trump, for all his faults, didn’t start any new wars.
They’re also the rabid fear-mongers of the imaginary climate crisis. These things are connected, though we may of course disagree on exactly how.
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Mark
I am so very sick of hearing the claim that “ warmer atmosphere can hold considerably more moisture, which increases the intensity of downpours and hence the risk of flooding.”
It is true that warmer air can hold more moisture (that’s basic physics) but the air that has released its moisture lies at high elevations and is cold – so cold that the initial water that is shed is usually in the form of ice, that melts during its descent. Also much of the precipitation that falls through the atmosphere is evaporated. Clearly the warmer the air that the precipitation is transiting, the greater it’s potential to evaporate. So warmer air should allow LESS rain to fall. Or have I got my physics totally wrong.
Also if, by some arcane process warmer air does cause more rain, then in the U.K. more rain should fall in the warmer summer months than in the winter. Yet the U.K. has about the same rainfall in the summer as during the winter.
I used to ask questions on these matters of visiting academics to UEA (until firmly requested to hold my breath). I never did get sensible answers.
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This has to be the best explanation I’ve seen for the extreme weather yesterday.
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local news : Grimsby councillor says Cleethorpes should not have a new carpark cos it will cause POLLUTION
Strange cos
#1 Cleethorpes is a pretty windy place
#2 The Guardianistas would have you believe that soon all cars will be electric
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Strange those money hungry bitcoin people went for PROPER RELIABLE electricity
instead of solar/wind INTERMITTENTS plus fossil fuel backup.
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11:30am R4 2 green propaganda items
Claim Netherlands gas causes Earthquakes
Claim Kenya will be clean green IT economy
Netherlands : in the 1960s gas was discovered
some people living near the gas fields
now claim that the exploration has damaged their homes with earthquakes.
Anna Holligan.
“Residents developed an addiction to gas ..all appliances run on it ”
( ..what tosh ..per KWh gas is way cheaper than leccy
To me the claims resemble the fake documentary Gaslands)
Anna says the courts said many residents claims had little merit.
She says that Dutch minister will end gas extraction in 2023.
(Great they’ll be taking Russian gas then)
“Developing Kenya in a Greener Way”
Kenya going for IT based economy
The aim is to find a development route which does not necessarily copy the heavy industrialisation of wealthier countries.
Indeed, Zeinab Badawi says Kenya is already pursuing a greener path, which could make for a more prosperous future.
“Here we are where everything is powered by solar”
“In Kenya 92% is powered by renewables” (… I reckon that’s a lie.)
“solar powered irrigation has led to a 300% growth in yields”
“Electric buses come to Nairobi next month”
(FFS the normal BBC Greendreamery
Bet Kenya has bitcoin mining ops)
ZB “western nations will depend on fossil fuels and NUCLEAR for decades”
(FFS nuclear is good and clean, not evil like she makes out)
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Stewgreen I read recently that, owing to a shortfall of gas supplies from Russia to Germany the Netherlands gas field was being asked to produce at faster than the optimal rate. Not only would this reduce the overall supply of gas in the long run, but an increase in small earthquakes was predicted. I recall this because production of gas is not normally associated with Earth tremors.
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