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 Although I have only just come across it, it was written in January 2020, so is a little out of date.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.

THE DARK SIDE OF WIND ENERGY

 Blood on the blades: are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for “clean” energy (humanevents.com)

I wonder why there is no outcry about this?

INTERESTING LETTER BY LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON

 Your suggestion that warmer worldwide weather has caused net loss of life, particularly among the world’s fast-declining population of poor people, is fashionable but misplaced.

The Editor, The Lancet

Sir,

Your notion of a “climate crisis” (editorial "Climate and COVID-19: converging crises," December 2; click here for the PDF), though fashionable among the classe politique, is misplaced. That notion sprang from an elementary error of physics perpetrated in the 1980s by climate scientists who had borrowed feedback formulism from control theory, another branch of physics, without quite understanding it. Interdisciplinary compartmentalization delayed its identification until now.

After correcting the error, anthropogenic global warming will be only one-third of current midrange projections, well within natural variability and net-beneficial to life and health. CO₂ fertilization (for CO₂ is plant food) has assisted in steadily increasing crop yields – this year’s global harvest has set yet another record – and in improving drought resistance (Hao et al., 2014) and greening the planet.

Your suggestion that warmer worldwide weather has caused net loss of life, particularly among the world’s fast-declining population of poor people, is fashionable but misplaced. Cold is a bigger killer than warmth. Research conducted three years ago for the European Commission found that, for this reason, even if there were 5.4 C° global warming from 2020-2080, there would be 100,000 more Europeans than with no warming at all.

However, now that nearly all major banks – citing “global warming” as their pretext – refuse to lend to developing countries for coal-fired electricity, a billion people lack the capacity to turn on a 60 W lightbulb for just four hours a day (the International Energy Agency’s scarcely generous definition of “access to electricity”). According to the WHO, 4 million annually die of particulate pollution from smoke in cooking fires because they lack domestic electrical power and, for the same lack, 500,000 women die in childbirth. These are just two of the many causes of death from lack of access to electricity that kill tens of millions annually. The chief reason why so many cannot turn on a light is not global warming but misconceived policies intended to address what is in reality a non-problem.

More than 90% of all new greenhouse-gas emissions (BP Annual Review of Energy, 2019) are in nations exempt from the Paris agreement, which, after correction of the error of physics, is in any event supererogatory. You have said China must do more, but China – though it has its own space programme and continues to occupy Tibet by military force – is exempt from Paris on the ground that it is a “developing country”. It is not required to forswear its sins of emission.

Your advocacy of “low-carbon diets” is fashionable but misplaced. Like it or not, we have evolved over 2 million years to eat meat, which can provide all necessary energy, nutrients and vitamins. Yet ill-informed official guidelines on both sides of the Atlantic recommend low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets. Those recommendations have demonstrably been the chief cause of the surge in obesity and diabetes in both the UK and the USA. They were abandoned by court order a decade ago in Sweden at the instance of a brave doctor whom the medical authorities had attempted to prosecute because she cured all her diabetes patients by ignoring the guidelines and recommending a high-fat, low-carb diet.

Your advocacy of “renewable” energy is fashionable but misplaced. Using 14^th-century technology to address a 21^st-century non-problem would be silly enough in itself. What is worse, however, is that “renewables” have not only quadrupled the price of electricity but have also added to CO₂ emissions. The chief reason for this apparent paradox is that the more windmills and solar panels are connected to the grid the more grossly-inefficient, CO₂-emitting spinning reserve must be maintained in the often vain hope of preventing blackouts when the wind stops or the night falls.

With respect, The Lancet should study more science and economics, however unfashionable, and peddle less totalitarian politics, however fashionable and profitable – and deadly.

With all good wishes,

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

Supporting documents:

"Climate of Error: The grave error of physics that created a climate 'emergency'"; Alex Henney, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley (2020).

"The 2020 report of The Lancet - Countdown on health and climate change: Responding to converging crises," The Lancet, December 2, 2020.

ARTICLE TAGS

CLIMATE CHANGE

AUTHOR

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, was Special Advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from 1982 to 1986.

Full Bio

monckton@mail.com

THE POWER OF PROPAGANDA

 Recent events in Russia have highlighted the power of propaganda whereby the Russian people have been fed a version of events which we know is completely false and yet a large number of them completely accept it, as they are not allowed to see or hear anything which conflicts with it. Here in the West we pride ourselves as being free to look at both sides of controversial issues. We even put out Putin's version of the events in Ukraine.

However on the controversial issue of the degree of global warming and its affect on the climate there is no alternative put out as an alternative to the dire predictions which are constantly put out on our mainstream TV channels, either on the news or any current affairs or documentary. There was one exception back in 2008 when the documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle Full Movie - YouTube> was aired on Channel 4. Even then it was very controversial and caused a massive objection from the climate extremists. Today it is unthinkable that this would be allowed. Quite extraordinary that we should not offer any serious discussion on the most expensive policy issue in peace-time.

UK ELECTRIC CAR JOURNEY FROM HELL

Read this article from the Daily Mail: 

IAIN DALE: My 11-hour journey from hell proves Britain is hopelessly unprepared for electric cars | Daily Mail Online

This article shows the reason why it will be very difficult to persuade people to buy an EV. The more people share this kind of negative experience the worse it will be.

HUGE PROFITS FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY COMPANIES

 It's not only oil and gas companies that have made huge profits from the inflated energy prices, just look at this: Windfall Profits For ROC Generators Running At £1 Billion A Month | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com) 

Time for a windfall tax on these excessive profits. Why should the poor public be fleeced in this way?