Friday 31 December 2021

NO NEED TO REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS SAYS LEADING SCIENTIST, WILLIAM HAPPER

Happy New Year to you all.

Below is a link to a very interesting lecture by Dr William Happer in which he completely debunks the idea that increases in the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions could lead to dangerous increases in the temperature of the Earth's surface. It is an hour long and to start with he goes over a lot of basic principles. The most important section is at about 24 minutes in where he looks at a graph showing the amount of radiation which escapes to space and the effect of doubling the amount of CO2 on this. Even if you haven't got an hour to watch the whole lecture, I recommend you look at that part.

 Climate Change and CO2 Not a Problem | Science Matters (rclutz.com)

Wednesday 29 December 2021

UK GOVERNMENT MUST ABANDON NET ZERO IF IT IS TO SURVIVE

 London, 29 December - Net Zero Watch has called on Boris Johnson to declare an energy emergency and introduce radical policy reforms in order to prevent the energy cost crisis turning into an economic and social disaster.


The call comes as fears grow over a devastating energy cost and energy security crisis, with spiralling prices hitting households and businesses hard, and warnings that energy bills could double or even treble next year.

It is reported that Boris Johnson is considering to hand out £20 billion of taxpayers' money to energy suppliers who are threatening to double or treble energy costs.

Despite the fact that Britain will need natural gas for decades to come, the ban on fracking and the curtailing of conventional gas exploration has led to serious shortages of domestic natural gas production. The result is super-charged energy prices and rising inflation, a painful cost burden already struggling households are now facing.

The government should suspend costly Net Zero plans as a matter of urgency and put energy costs and security of supply at the centre of national security.

The government has only one way to avoid political oblivion, and that’s for Britain to introduce radical policy reforms and to start using the UK’s massive natural gas resources, which would bring down energy costs and enhance energy security significantly.  

In fact, natural gas prices in the UK are nearly ten times higher ($35/MMBtu) than they are in the US ($4/MMBtu) where fracking is widely used and shale gas is cheap and abundant.

If the shale gas moratorium was lifted tomorrow, it would take at least 12 months to get the gas flowing. But the Government needs to take strong steps now, in order to send out a clear signal to investors. Otherwise the energy and cost of living crises will become permanent, posing an existential threat to this government and many businesses.

The British Geological Survey estimates that the total volume of shale gas in the Bowland basin is between 820 and 2200 trillion cubic feet, with a central estimate of some 1300 trillion cubic feet. It is estimated that if 25 trillion cubic feet of this huge resource could be recovered it would be worth nearly one £trillion at current gas prices.

The current energy cost and supply crisis is the result of decades of ill-considered climate policy which has prioritised costly emissions reductions technologies while neglecting national security, security of supply and economic and social impacts.

The severity of the current crisis merits emergency measures, not only to protect consumers and the economy, but also to avoid the crisis from turning into an economic and social disaster.

Net Zero Watch is calling on the Government to:

1. Suspend Net Zero plans as a matter of urgency and put energy costs and security of supply at the centre of national security.

2. Suspend all green levies on energy bills, funding subsidies temporarily out of taxation, but acting firmly to cancel these subsidies in the near term.

3. Cancel constraint payments, and compel wind and solar generators to pay for their own balancing costs, thus incentivising them to self-dispatch only when economic.

4. Remove all fiscal and other disincentives to oil and gas exploration, including shale gas, to increase domestic production levels.

5. Suspend carbon taxation on coal and gas generation in order to provide consumer relief and ensure security of supply.

6. Re-open recently closed gas storage facilities and support new storage projects.

7. Suspend all further policy initiatives directed towards the Net Zero target, including the Carbon Budgets, the heat pump targets, and the overly ambitious timetable for the ban on petrol and diesel engines, until the UK energy sector has been stabilised.

8. Facilitate the acceleration of building and deploying Small Modular Reactors for both electricity and heat.


Dr Benny Peiser, Net Zero Watch director, said:

"It is almost certain that energy companies, should they survive the coming storm, will not repay the £20 billion fund they are demanding. In any case, handing out billions to energy suppliers while energy prices are going through the roof would go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters."

"Boris Johnson must prioritise national security as a matter of urgency by declaring an energy emergency, restarting North Sea gas exploration immediately and abandoning the effective ban on the development of shale gas."

"By continuing to prioritise the Net Zero agenda over national security and economic stability, Boris Johnson risks turning a crisis into a national disaster."



Contact

Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Net Zero Watch
e: benny.peiser@netzerowatch.com
m: 07553 361717

Friday 24 December 2021

Tuesday 14 December 2021

POLAR SEA ICE TRENDS DO NOT SUPPORT CLIMATE ALARM

 

London, 14 December - A new paper by an eminent meteorologist says that trends in polar sea-ice levels give little cause for alarm. The paper, by Professor J. Ray Bates, has just been published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.


According to Professor Bates, climate model simulations indicate significantly decreasing sea ice levels in both hemispheres, with the greatest decreases occurring in September each year.

However, the observed September trend in the Antarctic is actually slightly upwards, and while observed levels in the Arctic have fallen over the last 40 years, they have been quite stable since around 2007.


Professor Bates said:

"In 2007, Al Gore told us that Arctic sea ice levels were 'falling off a cliff'. It's clear now that he was completely wrong. In fact, the trends in sea-ice are an antidote to climate alarm."


Professor Bates also says that little reliance should be placed on model simulations of future sea-ice decline:

"Climate models failed to predict the growth in Antarctic sea ice, and they missed the recent marked slowdown of sea-ice decline in the Arctic. It would be unwarranted to think they are going to get things right over the next 30 years".


Professor Bates' paper is published today, and can be downloaded here (pdf).


About the author

Professor J. Ray Bates is Adjunct Professor of Meteorology at University College Dublin. He was formerly Professor of Meteorology at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and a Senior Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre. He is a former President of the Irish Meteorological Society.


Contact

Professor Ray Bates
e: ray.bates@ucd.ie

Tuesday 7 December 2021

REGULATION, REGULATION, REGULATION

 The headline came to mind when I was sent an article containing this extract:

"Our headline session for the conference was a fireside chat with Jonathan Brearley the CEO of Ofgem. We discussed many things but the one thing that I can report clearly, was the certainty that more regulation will be coming as we head further down the net zero pathway.
 
This got me thinking. The broker market is much maligned but there are hundreds if not thousands of brokers out there, who do a great job for their clients. Many are partners for us helping to distribute our 
future Net Zero Standard, which offers carbon accounting, accreditation and advice.
 
And that is the future. Advice and assistance to help companies cut their carbon and that is a role the brokers can not only fulfil but excel at, because they are seen as independent.
 
More regulation will be needed as we transition – how will we govern peer to peer energy trading? Charging standards and infrastructure? Battery storage and usage tariffs or investments. Financial reporting for carbon and investment vehicles?
 
All of these will be areas for regulation and therefore opportunity. Brokers can be ideally placed to offer the end business consumer the right advice to exploit these opportunities of the future. But they MUST also ensure they and their customers comply to regulatory changes."

This is hardly something the government, or any politician will want to highlight, but it certainly rings true. We already feel over-regulated with all the legislation that we currently have to comply with, but the next generation will look back at this time and think of it as a relatively free period compared with what is coming. I remember when politicians spoke of a "bonfire of regulations", but I have yet to see it. As you can see from the extract, there are large numbers of people whose whole existence depends on regulations.  
 

Saturday 4 December 2021

IMAGINE A WORLD OF CARBON RATIONING FOR ALL

 Since the end of food rationing after world war 2 we have not experienced rationing here in the UK, and yet some are advocating a return to those dark days in order to get to net zero emissions. See this article: Should everyone have their own personal carbon quota? | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)

I would expect such restrictions to result in mass protests and civil disobedience and any government bringing in such policies being voted out of office, but that would require a political party to come forward and oppose the policy - something that none of our major parties has, so far, done. We could be edging towards an Orwellian future if we are not careful. 

Wednesday 1 December 2021

LATEST CLIMATE SCARE STORIES

 A whole host of scare stories have been pushed out recently in the media to try and convince a sceptical public that it is necessary to make them pay for much more expensive heating, electricity and practically everything else. Here is an article to keep you up to date:

Climate change: one to savour (eureferendum.com)

Some of the stories are laughable, but they can easily take in the more naïve and gullible members of society, which, sadly, is quite a lot!