BBC REPORTER SPREADS YET MORE EXAGGERATION AND LIES

 Is it any wonder that people are confused about global warming when the BBC puts out false  information? See here: Insiders say Justin Rowlatt is more 'campaigner' than reporter | Daily Mail Online 

Last week, it was reported that the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) had upheld complaints about two claims made in the  BBC's Panorama programme on November 3 last year by reporter Justin Rowlatt.

First, it wasn't true that the death toll from natural disasters is rising. In fact, the opposite is true.

According to ourworldindata.com, the number of deaths globally from natural disasters has tumbled each decade for the past century, apart from a small blip in the 2000s, from an average of 524,000 a year in the 1920s to just 45,000 in the 2010s — despite a booming global population.

The ECU also ruled that Rowlatt's claim that southern Madagascar was 'on the brink of the world's first climate-induced famine' was incorrect, as other factors were involved.

THE WARMING TREND HAS WEAKENED OVER THE LAST 40 YEARS

 Yes, the good news is that "the warming trend of the last 40 years is weakening”, says German expert.

No Tricks Zone, 11 May 2022
 
By Professor Fritz Vahrenholt
 
During the energy crisis that has become visible in Germany and Europe over the past few months, things have gotten quieter about the supposedly imminent climate emergency. On the one hand, energy prices and security of supply have pushed the climate issue into the background. On the other hand, a weakening of the warming trend of the last 40 years is apparent.


 
The temperature curve of the satellite-based measurements of the University of Alabama UAH has been oscillating between -0.2 and 0.4 degrees for 20 years and seems to have remained stable since 2015, as shown in the next graph in the enlargement.
 

(Source: woodfortrees). The mean value is drawn in green- it shows a slightly decreasing trend since 2015. Why hasn’t this been reported?
 
What are the reasons for this stagnation?
 
CO2 concentrations in the air have continued to rise unabated. It is true that global annual CO2 emissions have been more or less constant for some years now, at 40 billion tons of CO2. Slightly more than half is absorbed by the oceans and plants, so that currently each year the equivalent of about 2.5 ppm CO2 is added to the air concentration. In 2015, there were 401 ppm of CO2 in the air; in 2021, there were 416 ppm. At this rate, by the way, we would never reach the IPCC’s scary scenarios of 800 to 1000 ppm in 2100.



No, the lack of warming must have other reason

What has been the amount of natural warming in the last 30 years?
 
And how big is the natural cooling in the next 30 years?
A change in global temperature can also happen naturally. We know that clouds have decreased by about 2% after the turn of the millennium, and that for the last ten years cloud cover has been stable at a low level. Second, there are oceanic temperature cycles such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation AMO, which increased sharply from 1980 to the beginning of this millennium (by 0.5 degrees, after all), has remained at maximum since then, and is now weakening slightly again (see next graph).
 


The United States Weather and Oceanographic Administration, NOAA, writes that the AMO can amplify anthropogenic warming in the warm phase and make it disappear in the cold phase. According to NOAA, the AMO is a naturally occurring change in North Atlantic temperatures that has occurred for at least 1000 years with alternating warm and cold phases of 20-40 years. Add to this the weakening solar radiation since 2008, and further significant warming beyond 1.5 degrees is unlikely in the next 30 years.
 
Sea ice melt has stalled
 
The stagnant trend of temperatures that has been observed for several years can also be seen in the halted decline in Arctic sea ice extent reported by the European Copernicus program in March (see next graph)



This is actually good news.

Wouldn’t it be time for climate researchers to bring these trends to the attention of politicians and the public? After all, politicians are currently readjusting the priorities of energy supply. While until last year’s price explosion and the aftermath of the Ukraine war it was apparently taken for granted that climate impacts would be the sole determining factor for energy policy, we are all now being made aware of the importance of security of supply and price trends.
 
However, German policymakers are still reacting inadequately. They believe they can solve the problem of self-generated energy shortages due to the double phase-out of coal and nuclear energy by simply building more wind farms and solar plants. It must always be remembered that in 2021 the share of wind and solar energy was just over 5% of primary energy supply (oil, gas, coal, nuclear, renewables). Even in a good windy year, it would not be much more than 6%.
 
Politicians do not have the necessary courage to repeal the coal phase-out law, to stop the nuclear phase-out, to lift the natural gas fracking ban and the ban on CO2 capture at coal-fired power plants. Not yet.

Gas-fired power plants like the one in Leipzig are still being built to replace coal-fired power plants with domestic lignite. Industry is already further ahead. Volkswagen has postponed the conversion of two of its own coal-fired power plants into gas-fired power plants indefinitely. This statement by CEO Diess was not widely reported in Germany, but it was abroad.
 
The U.S. government is also repositioning itself. John Kerry, the U.S. government’s climate envoy, for whom the 1.5-degree target was previously the sole political guideline, is now putting things into perspective and, in view of skyrocketing energy prices, saying that 1.8 degrees should be quite sufficient as a target. China, India and Southeast Asia, whose growth path is threatened by the price explosion, are practicing a renaissance of coal production.
 
That’s where we should listen when Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg says: “It’s unrealistic to bring global emissions to zero by 2050… a 2.5 degree world is still better than a 3.5 degree world.”
 
Let us reassure Mr. Marotzke: a 2.5 degree world will not be achieved in this century because natural variations in climate dampen anthropogenic warming. Had this been adequately accounted for in climate models, we would all have been spared much public panic and flawed policy decisions.
 
With best wishes
Fritz Vahrenholt
 
Professor Fritz Vahrenholt is a member of the GWPF's Board of Trustees.

BBC CLIMATE PROPAGANDA FOR 5 TO 11 YEAR OLDS

 I stumbled across this: The Regenerators - Lessons age 7 to 11 - BBC Bitesize while browsing the BBC website. It looks like one-sided brain-washing to me. On the bright side I can't see the majority of seven to eleven year old's finding this material all that interesting.

As for the video on 'Talking about climate change' with Adam - all I can say is, he would not convince anyone who could think for themselves! 

Five to seven year old's are supposed to understand this: Why is our climate changing? - KS1 - BBC Bitesize - The Regenerators - BBC Bitesize It seems to me that they have completely lost the plot with this simplified nonsense. Notice they state that the 'planet' has warmed by 1 degree C, whereas it is only the atmosphere near the surface. Of course no 5 to 7 year old would question this. 

UK ELECTRICITY CONSUMERS BEING RIPPED OFF BY WIND FARM OWNERS FOR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF POUNDS

 

Delaying tactics by wind industry will cost consumers hundreds of £millions

Press Release

 

Boris Johnson's promise to reduce consumer electricity prices “in tatters”

London, 3 May - According to a new analysis, consumers could be hundreds of million pounds worse off due to wind companies' delaying tactics in delivering electricity at fixed prices.   Ministers have promised that a new generation of “low-cost” renewable generators will get bills down, and there are several gigawatts of offshore windfarms, either under construction, or newly completed, in the North Sea. These have all agreed to sell power to the grid at low fixed prices under the government’s “Contracts for Difference” (CfD) scheme.   But since the start of the energy price crisis, newly completed windfarms are delaying taking up their CfDs, most probably because they can earn much higher prices in the open market. Moray East, a huge windfarm off the Scottish coast, recently reached full operational capacity, but then announced that it was delaying taking up its CfD until 2023. As a result, consumers will potentially have to pay this one windfarm an extra half a billion pounds in its first 12 months of operations.   In fact, since energy prices soared last autumn, no new renewables capacity has been added to the CfD scheme, and every renewables generator that was supposed to take up a contract in 2022 has now delayed until next year. There is nothing to stop them putting the date back further after that.   There is no suggestion that anyone is doing anything illegal. CfD contracts allow a great deal of flexibility on start dates, with delays of up to three years possible. The contracts are extraordinarily generous to developers, with all of the risk taken by consumers and none by the windfarms themselves.   “The Government has a chicken and egg problem”, says Net Zero Watch’s Andrew Montford.   “They say that low-bidding CfD windfarms will lower consumer prices, but no windfarm will take up its CfD with market prices so high. The Government’s energy strategy is in tatters”.   Craig Mackinlay MP, the chair of the parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said: "The false promise of cheap renewable energy is in tatters with ineptly agreed heads they win, tails we lose contracts littering UK energy strategy.   "If energy prices are low, CfDs mean consumers pay out to artificially increase energy prices; when energy prices are high these companies hold back to permanently fix high prices for themselves.   "It’s a shameful racket that households are paying for all in the name of the Net Zero con-trick."   Steve Baker MP said:    "Pleading for fair play is an admission of massive regulatory failure. We urgently need sensible energy policy based on free market prices, profit and loss, not the present failing tangle of state intervention. Public welfare depends upon it." Contact Andrew Montford e: awmontford@gmail.com

THE GROWING INFLUENCE OF THE GWPF

 The report linked below was written by an organisation called Engineering and Technology. While it is not a wholly supportive piece as it quotes extensively the points made by Bob Ward who runs a climate activist organisation, this extensive article provides a lot of extremely positive information about the GWPF and so I thought readers would find it of interest. Although I have only just come across it, it was written in January 2020, so is a little out of date. Nevertheless it gives a broad picture of the extremely influential GWPF.

Link: UK climate change sceptics group is stronger than ever | E&T Magazine (theiet.org)   

FRACKING IS SAFE AND HERE'S THE PROOF

Just read the double page article from today's Mail on Sunday to see what the UK could be doing if we had a government that was brave enough to face down the eco zealots who want to take us back to the dark ages.

 As Britain's shale gas lies untapped, a US state shows how fracking is thriving with nature | Daily Mail Online

"There have not been any fracking-related health problems (despite opponents claiming a link between the extraction process and rare cancers among children). Nor has noise — generally from the fracking equipment rather than road traffic — been an issue, he adds. 

Mr Coolidge (a local farmer and politician) concedes there had been ‘rare’ occurrences early on of fracking waste-water spilling next to wells, but adds that this hadn’t happened in years.

As for allegations that drinking water from wells near fracking sites had been tainted, he stresses that subsequent official testing had established no link to fracking.

Mr Coolidge blames ‘people looking to make money’ for the contaminated-water allegations, noting that on two occasions, the complainants continued to have gas wells on their property ‘so I guess it wasn’t too bad for them’.

On a country-wide level, myriad studies about the environmental effects of fracking have often contradicted each other.

However, two academic studies in 2018 found fracking in Pennsylvania was not contaminating groundwater.

Mr Coolidge admits that sometimes it’s necessary to play hardball with the energy industry. He urged anyone regulating fracking in the UK to consult Pennsylvania’s current strict environmental guidelines.

Fines running into millions of dollars for breaches had been crucial, he says, in keeping energy companies compliant.

Pennsylvania bans fracking within 500ft of any residential property. In 2015, the state required shale gas companies to publish online all details of the chemicals — typically amounting to just 0.5 per cent of the mixture — they use in the fracking liquid pumped down each well.

The industry emphasises most of the chemicals can be found in any home, including salt, acids used in swimming pool cleaners, disinfectant, hydrochloric acid and citric acid.

Another important consideration, says Mr Coolidge, is that the upheaval caused by the actual drilling and the fracking process is only temporary.

According to Rob Boulware, a spokesman for Seneca Resources, which has drilled 1,300 gas wells in the state and is now the main energy company in Tioga County, it takes about 25 days to drill each well and another 17 days to frack it. (A typical pad contains eight wells.)

After that, the wells will produce gas for at least another 30 years. Eventually the site will be restored as closely as possible to what it looked like beforehand.

‘Done properly, there’s no reason British people shouldn’t embrace fracking and care for themselves,’ says Mr Coolidge.

People in the fracking industry agree. ‘It’s a highly regulated industry — there are strict guidelines for every phase of the operations,’ says Seneca’s Mr Boulware.

‘We need an honest conversation about natural gas and hydrocarbons, and the fact that renewable energy needs something to back it up. But right now, we’re a convenient industry to blame a lot of stuff on."’

WORLD ENERGY FUTURE NEEDS

 Here is a short five minute video to make you think about how we can power the world with renewables. Here is the link: How Much Energy Will the World Need? - YouTube

CLIMATE QUIZ - TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

 Here is the link:

Climate Strike: The Big Quiz (netzerowatch.com)

Good luck! I managed to get one wrong, so think carefully. 

NEW PAGE FOR TONY HELLER VIDEOS

 Tony Heller is a prolific video-maker and most of them are on the subject of global warming/climate change and they are packed with useful information which you won't find anywhere else, certainly not on any mainstream media. Some may find his American drawl not to their taste, but I urge you to persevere. 

To find the page go to the side-bar on the right and at the top find the PAGES section and click on TONY HELLER.

CLIMATE SCIENCE GOES GREEN

I hope readers like the new look of the blog. I am still learning by just trying a few changes and seeing what happens. I was never keen on the colour scheme, but after suffering major problems with the blog a while back I am wary of altering anything. If this change goes ok I may try and be more adventurous. Just watch this space! 

By the way I really am keen to protect the environment and so green is a colour I am very pleased to be associated with. We need to dispose of our waste much better by recycling where it is economic to do so and incineration for the rest. There is no excuse for allowing waste to get into our rivers and seas. 

We should consider the welfare of wildlife when we make development. We must protect the fish stocks from over-fishing. All these ideals do not mean we have to reduce CO2 emissions, they stand alone and quite separate. That is something a lot of green activists don't seem to accept. 

NO SIGN OF A CLIMATE CRISIS IN NEW REPORT ON 2021 OBSERVATIONS

Yes, the good news is summarised below. 

State of the Climate 2021

Empirical observations show no sign of ‘climate crisis’ 

Press Release

London, 14 April - A systematic review of climate trends and observational data by an eminent climate scientist has found no evidence to support the claim of a climate crisis.

In his annual State of the Climate report, Ole Humlum, emeritus professor at the University of Oslo, examined detailed patterns in temperature changes in the atmosphere and oceans together with trends in climate impacts.

Many of these show no significant trends and suggest that poorly understood natural cycles are involved.

And while the report finds gentle warming, there is no evidence of dramatic changes, with snow cover stable, sea ice levels recovering, and no change in storm activity.
 
Professor Humlum said:
 
“A year ago, I warned that there was great risk in using computer modelling and immature science to make extraordinary claims. The empirical observations I have reviewed show very gentle warming and no evidence of a climate crisis.”
 
GWPF director, Dr Benny Peiser said:
 
“It’s extraordinary that anyone should think there is a climate crisis. Year after year our annual assessment of climate trends document just how little has been changing in the last 30 years. The habitual climate alarmism is mainly driven by scientists’ computer modelling rather than observational evidence.”
 

Ole Humlum: State of the Climate 2021 (pdf)
 


Hard copies of the report are available on request.
 

Contact
 
Dr Benny Peiser
e: benny.peiser@thegwpf.org 

UK CLIMATE POLICY - IT GETS WORSE!

Who would have thought that planting trees in the UK could be detrimental to net zero? Read on to see why. 

 London, 12 April – Findings by an international team of climate scientists suggest that the government’s Net Zero project to plant millions of trees in Britain is likely to increase rather than decrease global temperature.

In a new paper published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change the scientists look at the climate effects of deforestation at different latitudes.

The researchers find that at latitudes 50°N to 60°N – in other words essentially all of the UK – and above, deforestation contributes to global cooling, so afforestation (which has opposing effects to deforestation) will contribute to global warming. That is because increased forestation reduces reflection of solar radiation, substantially outweighing its cooling effect via carbon dioxide sequestration.

As part of their Net Zero strategy, the government is spending £750 million on reforesting in England by 2025, at a time when public finances are under immense strain, and with food shortages threatened.

The new research findings, however, suggests that the Government’s plans are not only wasteful – and often detrimental to the environment and food security – but may actually increase global temperature, the opposite of the intended effect of the Net Zero project.

Full paper: Deborah Lawrence et al. (2022) The Unseen Effects of Deforestation: Biophysical Effects on Climate, Front. For. Glob. Change, 24 March 2022

Contact

Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Net Zero Watch

WHAT WILL THE USA ENERGY USE BE LIKE IN 2050?

Read on to see how reality appears to trump fantasy, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA is the part of the federal Department of Energy that provides data and statistics on U.S. energy production and consumption, both historical and projected. Once a year, generally in March, they issue what they call their Annual Energy Outlook, or AEO. AEO2022 just came out on March 3. 

Francis Menton: The future of energy in the U.S.: Which projection do you believe?

Manhattan Contrarian, 10 April 2022
 
What will the production and consumption of energy look like in the United States in 2050? There are two very different answers to that question.
 
On Side One are those who assert that we face a “climate crisis” that can only be addressed by the rapid forced suppression of the production and use of fossil fuels. Therefore, some combination of government coercion, investor pressure and voluntary institutional action will shortly drive coal, oil and natural gas from the energy marketplace, to be replaced by carbon-free “renewables.” And thus by 2050 we will have achieved the utopia of “net zero” carbon emissions.

Those on Side Two think that the Side One vision is completely unrealistic fantasy. Simple arithmetic shows that without massive energy storage no amount of building of wind and solar generators can make much difference in fossil fuel use for electricity production; and adequate energy storage devices to fill the gap do not even exist as a technical matter, let alone at remotely reasonable cost. Result: no matter what the grandees say, fossil fuel production and use in 2050 will be as high or higher than they are now.

Which Side do you think is right?

At the moment, all of the Great and the Good seem to have planted their flags on Side One. President Biden leaves no doubt as to where he stands. By Press Release of April 22, 2021, Biden committed the U.S. to a “net zero” economy by 2050:
 
"On Day One, President Biden fulfilled his promise to rejoin the Paris Agreement and set a course for the United States to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad, reaching net zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050."
 
And by various Executive Orders, Biden has the whole federal bureaucracy committed to the fossil fuel suppression project, from stopping drilling to blocking pipelines to decommissioning power plants.
 
In the investment world, all of the biggest banks and money managers are on board. Here is a link to the “Road to Net Zero” web page of BlackRock, the nation’s largest mutual fund manager. Pithy quote:
 
"We believe that the transition to a net zero world is the shared responsibility of every citizen, corporation, and government. . . . In January 2021, we committed to supporting the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner – and announced a number of steps to help our clients navigate the transition."

And it goes without saying that the world of academia has joined Side One with full unanimity. After all, these are the “smartest” people; and the “smartest” people all know that the “climate crisis” can only be solved by suppressing fossil fuels. Here is a representative statement from President Peter Salovey of Yale University, June 24, 2021:
 
"To avoid the most severe outcomes of climate change, experts recommend taking immediate action to reach world-wide carbon net neutrality in the next three decades. Yale will become a net zero carbon emissions campus in less than half of that time.  Along our path to zero actual emission by 2050, we expect to reduce our actual emissions by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2035."

So surely then, with this kind of unanimous agreement from the top, backed by the full force of federal government coercion, fossil fuels will be completely gone by 2050.
 
 The opening page of AEO2022 provides a wealth of links that can keep you busy for hours if you have the inclination.
 
The incredible thing about this AEO is it’s like nobody told them that the fossil fuels are about to be suppressed. Basically, they treat the whole “net zero by 2050” clamor as so much background noise. For example, what is the EIA’s view as to U.S. natural gas consumption from now through 2050? That’s in this chart:



Net zero anyone? Instead, it looks like ongoing slow but steady growth throughout the entire projection period.
How about U.S. crude oil production? Surely that will plummet toward zero well before 2050. Not according to the EIA:



Basically, they predict that U.S. crude production will increase substantially over the next few years, and then level out and remain there through 2050.
 
To be fair, the two charts above represent what they call their “reference case.” They have other charts that show high production/consumption cases and also low production/consumption cases. However, the high cases are driven by high prices, and the low cases are driven by low prices. There is no effect discernible in the EIA projections resulting from regulatory suppression, let alone from woke investors or the pompous pronouncements of academia.
 
One of my favorite charts is this one covering projected “light duty vehicle” sales, aka cars.



And you thought that buying anything but a fully-electric vehicle would be illegal by 2030? The EIA’s projection is that even by 2050, fully-electric vehicles will not have achieved 10% of the market, while fully gasoline-powered vehicles will still have a market share around 75%.
 
Numerous other links on the AEO2022 intro page provide for fascinating reading, essentially contradicting everything about our energy future that is coming out of the White House. For example, there is “EIA projects U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fall in the near term, then rise.” In other words, the claims of “net zero” emissions by 2050 are so much hot air. Or there’s “Petroleum and natural gas are the most-used fuels in the United States through 2050.”
 
So place your bet as to which projections you believe. For myself, obviously I’m going with reality over fantasy.