UK GOVERNMENT HIDES THE FULL COST OF DECARBONISING ELECTRICITY

 

This piece looks at the recently published energy white paper and finds the key detailed costings are missing. The GWPF are asking for the information to be made public. How long will they fail to do so?

USA CITY TO POST CLIMATE WARNING SIGNS ON PETROL PUMPS

 

Here are the details. Do they really think this will have any effect on drivers who come to fill up? It is simply a futile gesture. I suppose they think it will have a subliminal effect, but I doubt it. The warnings on cigarette packets made more sense in that there was little doubt that inhaling smoke caused damage to their lungs, but hardly anyone can believe that exhaust fumes can do much harm as they disperse and get diluted in the air. 

UK AND IRELAND AUTUMN TEMPERATURES HAVE STALLED SINCE 1990'S

 

This piece  gives the details to show that the mean autumn temperatures in the UK and Ireland have not increased since 1995. So why have they stalled? Global warming alarmists don’t want you to know this, but there are oceanic cycles that dominate regional climates on a decadal scale. For Western Europe especially the Atlantic Meridional Overturn (AMO) has a significant impact.

GREENLAND ICE MELT CAUSED BY GEOTHERMAL ACTIVITY SAYS NEW STUDY

 

This article explains the new findings. So next time you hear that the Greenland ice shelf is melting due to "climate change" you can be sure that this finding will not be mentioned.

THE HUGE COST OF DECARBONISING HOUSING

 

This article summarises the two main ways of achieving this and comes to the conclusion that it is unaffordable at £46,000 per household. But will the public be told before it is too late?

CHINA CONTROLS THE ESSENTIAL MATERIALS FOR A GREEN FUTURE

 Europe's wind and e-car industry dependent on China's magnetic metals 

Clean Energy Wire, 22 December 2020

The green energy industry, in particular the wind energy sector, has become increasingly dependent on China for vital magnetic metals, writes Stefan Hajek in WirtschaftsWoche Online.
 
Wind farms are set to play an ever larger role in the world’s future energy supply. Offshore wind power capacity in the EU alone is expected to increase 25-fold by 2050.

Magnetic metals such as neodymium are an essential component for wind turbines as well as for every modern electric motor, including those used in almost every electric car and plug-in hybrid. That’s leading to a bottleneck in two main sectors of the energy transition that very few political leaders and industry executives have addressed, Hajek notes. The extraction and processing of neodymium almost entirely in the hands of one country, China. The country already used its market power once before, in 2009, and paralysed entire industries worldwide with an export boycott on rare earths for computers.

Hajek warns that China could do this again in other industries in view of its ongoing trade conflicts with the US, which he says are not expected to ease under President-elect Joe Biden. “This time there is even more at stake than in 2009,” Hajek writes. “Without a sufficient supply of magnetic metals, climate protection will be much more difficult, protracted and much more expensive,” says Oliver Gutfleisch, professor of Functional Materials at the Technical University of Darmstadt. “The energy transition is also a material transition -- it doesn't work without certain raw materials. That is often overlooked.”

Bernd Schäfer and Andreas Klossek, who head the EU’s European Innovation and Technology (EIT) Raw Materials think tank, are sounding the alarm despite the fact that companies have not yet had any problems getting magnets. The US Geological Survey agency expects the demand for permanent magnets to double by 2029. "90 percent of e-cars and all hybrid cars have electric motors with permanent magnets," says Klossek. “We expect a supply shortfall of 65,000 tonnes per year for the ores required from 2030 onwards.”

WILL WE BE FORCED TO HAVE HEAT PUMPS BY AN INCREASE IN THE COST OF GAS?

This article points out exactly why heat pumps will not be popular. This begs the question of how exactly will the government 'persuade' us to swap our gas boilers for more expensive alternatives. I doubt if they will offer to pay for them, so that leaves the other option of increasing the price of gas.

TONY HELLER PUTS HIS VIDEOS ON NEWTUBE

 As censorship on the main video channel Youtube becomes more invasive Tony Heller has decided to put his videos onto a new channel called Newtube 

It will be interesting to see if the censorship causes more popular, but controversial people to follow suite. I am not very up with these new formats, but it is just as easy to go to Newtube as it is to go to Youtube and once viewers have found it, if they find its content good then they may prefer to go there. 

THE GWPF CHRISTMAS LECTURE

 

This lecture raises some interesting and important ideas about the way our society views the fears in our modern world. The speaker, Frank Furedi, mentions the role of scientists and how they have become crucial to policies to deal with any matter which has a fear element, such as global warming and covid. 

While these fears do have some things in common it is important to note that there are also differences. Covid is a real and present threat, while global warming is not a proven threat and its supposed effects will come in the distant future. However in both cases there are very costly policies advocated by some prominent scientists, while other equally well-qualified scientists claim that these policies are unnecessary or extreme.

Because science has become so specialised, politicians usually defer to the scientists, and it always seems to be the alarmist scientists whose advice is chosen. The reason for this is simple, no political leader wants to be blamed for not doing enough, so the solution is to err on the side of caution and do (or appear to be doing) everything possible. That way they cannot be blamed for what happens. If it turns out to be bad, they are covered, and it isn't so bad they can claim credit for the policy they adopted, despite its high cost.

HERE'S A REAL LIFE EXPERIMENT WITH 750000 PPM CO2

 It is interesting to find that there are some areas of the world where CO2 bubbles up into the atmosphere naturally creating a local atmosphere which has an extremely high level of CO2 of up to 75%. At this level it would be impossible to breathe, so I expect there are warnings to keep people out. 

Here is an article to explain the effect of such conditions on the local temperature. Surprisingly the effect is zero - no difference from a nearby area with levels which are at the normal value of around 400 ppm.

WHO WILL PAY FOR THE NEW HEATING SYSTEM FORCED ON YOU BY THE GOVERNMENT?

 

This article contains some very concerning thinking by the government's climate change committee (CCC). The following extract is rather important:

"Chris Stark, the CCC chief executive, said: 'I think a large proportion of this should be met by households, especially those who are able to afford it"

I expected this would be the case, but no one has admitted it until now. Just imagine the reaction of the people when it becomes widely known. All those families who have a perfectly good gas boiler, gas cooker, etc. being told that they will have to fork out to replace them in, say two years time. We will not be happy.

All this to comply with a policy which will have no measurable effect on the climate. What a ridiculous state of affairs.

GREENHOUSE EFFECT EXPLAINED AND THE FUTILITY OF ATTEMPTS TO CONTROL CLIMATE

 

Here is a good article which explains how greenhouse gases work and the human contribution to them, which is incredibly small. These facts are never mentioned on the mainstream media, yet they lie at the heart of the global warming debate. As Joe Biden plans to spend 1.75 Trillion dollars to lower world temperatures by 0.1 degrees C. it is a good time to remind ourselves of the utter futility of the whole project.

GWPF -NOTE TO THE GOVERNMENT

 The Prime Minister’s radical decarbonisation plans will burden Britons with astronomical costs which will trigger rising public discontent.

London, 4 December: The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has today announced that as part of the drive to Net Zero the United Kingdom will aim to cut its emissions in 2030 by 68% as compared to the 1990 baseline, a substantial increase over and above the previous 57% target.

 

The official 1990 baseline for the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions is 794.4 MtCO2e (million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent). Increasing the official 2030 target from a 57% to a 68% reduction implies a total reduction of 540 MtCO2e per year.

 

The cost of emissions reductions through current policies, such as wind power, is approximately £100-£150/tCO2e, and, in spite of industry propaganda, figures of more than £200/tCO2e are plausible for the future. Hence, the new target translates to a cost of between £50 billion and £100 billion per year.

 

The “Express Service” required to deliver the Prime Minister’s target can only increase this cost still further.

 

Even at the lower end of these estimates, spending at this level will place a significant burden on households already faced with the long-run impact of the measures taken to address coronavirus.

 

British businesses will see their competitiveness post-Brexit eroded when they most need to be rebuilding their position in the international markets.

 

Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF director, said

 

"Boris Johnson is indulging in radical gesture politics in the run up to COP26, and attempts to send friendly messages to Mr Biden. But these gestures come at astronomical costs and burdens which are unsustainable.

 

"As the unaffordability and infeasibility of these extreme plans becomes apparent, public discontent will only grow while the irresponsibility of this Conservative government is unlikely to be forgotten by voters.”

 

Contact

 

Dr Benny Peiser

Director, Global Warming Policy Forum

m: 07553 361717

e: peiser@thegwpf.com

Reading the above made me find out what Boris has written about climate change before becoming PM. I found an interesting summary here: Boris Johnson | DeSmog UK

Here are a few extracts: January 2013

In a Telegraph opinion column entitled “It’s snowing, and it really feels like the start of a mini ice age. Something is up with our winter weather. Could it be the Sun is having a slow patch?” he wrote the following: [10]

“As a species, we human beings have become so blind with conceit and self-love that we genuinely believe that the fate of the planet is in our hands — when the reality is that everything, or almost everything, depends on the behaviour and caprice of the gigantic thermonuclear fireball around which we revolve.”

“I am all for theories about climate change, and would not for a moment dispute the wisdom or good intentions of the vast majority of scientists. But I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be up with our winter weather, and to call it “warming” is obviously to strain the language.” 

“I wish I knew more about what is going on, and why. It is time to consult once again the learned astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn. Now Piers has a very good record of forecasting the weather. He has been bang on about these cold winters. Like JMW Turner and the Aztecs he thinks we should be paying more attention to the Sun. According to Piers, global temperature depends not on concentrations of CO2 but on the mood of our celestial orb.” 

December 20, 2015

Writing in the Telegraph, Johnson argued recent warm winter weather had nothing to do with climate change: [9]

“In the view of Piers and his colleagues at WeatherAction, it is all about sun spots, and he is on record as believing that we are now due for a new 'Maunder Minimum' – like the famous cold spell in the 17th century, when the Thames froze several times,” Johnson wrote. 

“Whatever is happening to the weather at the moment, he said, it is nothing to do with the conventional doctrine of climate change.”

So, what does he really believe? I don't think anyone really knows, but the above suggests that he is inconsistent, at least. I hope that his present support for such ruinous policies is simply opportunist. The problem is there are plenty of others who are only too willing to bankrupt the country, even though they must know that these policies will have no measurable effect on the Earth's temperature or climate. 

 

WHERE DOES THE BBC GET ITS CLIMATE "FACTS"?

 

This Article refers to a source called the Climate Action Tracker which claims to be ble to link pledges made by governments to cut their CO2 emissions with the actual changes in temperature of the atmosphere over the next century. They produce graphs in the linked aticle to show the correlation. Laughably they claim that the new pledges by president-elect Biden will actaully lower temperatures by an amazing 0.1 degrees Celcius. They don't show how this is calcuated nor do they give the cost of achieving it (put at a staggering $1,750,000,000,000 (that's trillion) I wonder if the Americans will think it is such a good deal when they finally wake up to the reality?