This site is a reference point for those with a cool head for climate science, arguably the most political science ever. When the government and most of the media concentrate on alarmism, this site is the antidote for those who don't believe the scare stories - YOU ARE NOT ALONE! (blog started on 7/11/07) We have over 3 million hits and blog is updated regularly most days.
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.
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.
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.”
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
“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. LikeJMWTurner and the Aztecs he thinks we should be paying more attention to the Sun. According to Piers, global temperature depends not on concentrations ofCO2but on the mood of our celestial orb.”
“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.
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?
This article explains how the new USA administration is keen to take the lead on stopping CO2 emissions. When will they understand that this action is futile and will have no measurable effect on temeperature or the climate.
You can see the pressure he is under from the alarmist brigade here
Electric vehicles (EVs), benefiting globally from a push for tighter emissions controls, are facing challenges after a global string of fires from overheating batteries.
Here are some vehicle recalls and investigations facing major EV makers worldwide.
HYUNDAI MOTOR
After 16 Kona EVs caught fire in Korea, Canada and Europe over two years, Hyundai Motor Co is expanding a recall to cover at least 74,000 of its top-selling EVs in South Korea, the United States, Europe and Canada to update its battery management system.
About 23,000 Kona EVs in South Korea have completed the software upgrade, with 800 of them found to have battery defects requiring replacement of affected modules, according to the office of lawmaker Jang Kyung-tae, which was briefed by South Korea's transport ministry.
Hyundai, in a filing to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in October, blamed "internal damage to certain cells of the lithium-ion battery increasing the risk of an electrical short circuit."
The battery maker, LG Chem Ltd denied any cell defects, saying a joint investigation was under way.
GENERAL MOTORS
General Motors Co said last week it was recalling nearly 69,000 Chevrolet Bolt EVs worldwide that pose a fire risk after five reported fires and two minor injuries. Affected vehicles will get battery software updates, limiting charges to 90% of capacity.
In October, NHTSA opened a probe after reviewing reports of three Bolt EVs catching fire under the rear seat while parked. The probe covers 77,842 Bolt EVs from the 2017 through 2020 model years. Full story
This article may upset those of a nervous disposition!
If the ‘Great Reset’ really is so good for us, let’s hold a referendum on it, so it can have a democratic mandate (or not)
Neil Clark
is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66
The World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ and associated Fourth Industrial Revolution would, if implemented, mean far deeper changes to our everyday lives than Brexit, yet is being pushed through without any proper debate.
Compare and contrast. On the issue of whether Britain should leave the EU we’ve had:
A national referendum.
Four years of debates in Parliament on how/when/under what conditions we should leave.
In fact, for the period May 2016 until March 2020, it seemed MPs were talking about nothing else.
No one can say that Brexit, if it indeed finally happens at the end of this year, hasn’t been properly discussed, or that it hasn’t had democratic endorsement. The ‘Leave’ side won the referendum vote and then in 2019 the Tory government was re-elected on the promise of ‘Get Brexit Done’. Traditional ‘Red Wall’ Labour seats went Tory for the first time in 2019 largely because of Brexit.
Contrast this with the Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution. The UK government, like many others in the West, is clearly trying to implement the Klaus Schwab/WEF programme, under the guise of fighting a virus, but unlike Brexit, not only is there no public vote, there is not even a debate.
How can this be right? The Great Reset/4IR (and the closely linked UN 2030 Agenda) represents not only the most radical changes ever proposed in our lifetimes, but the most radical changes to everyday life IN HISTORY.
The Great Reset/4IR is actually about redefining what it means to be human.
For centuries, it has been accepted that man is a social animal. That meeting up with other people is good for us. That we have certain freedoms which are inalienable. But the Great Reset/4IR threatens all of this.
Klaus Schwab says “What the fourth industrial revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity.”
Wow. A fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity. That’s Transhumanism. Cyborgs. I Robot. That represents a slightly bigger change to our lives than anything argued about in the Brexit negotiations.
So will the abolition of private property, except for a privileged few. The WEF predicts that by 2030, “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”
Is this what the public really wants? Ditto a ‘cashless society’? Humans have been using cash banknotes and coins for millennia, now we’re told they have to go. The civil liberties repercussions of a cashless society are truly terrifying as they mean anyone can be ‘cut off’ from the system for non-compliance. Eliminate cash, and you eliminate freedom.
Then there are the draconian changes to our lives on the grounds of ‘sustainability’. The Conservatives had pledged to ban the sale of diesel and petrol cars from 2040. But this week, Prime Minister Johnson, again without any public debate, brought the date forward to 2030. Again, where’s the democracy here?
The Great Reset/4IR means that the golden age of travel for ordinary people will be at an end. The WEF has been promoting digital health passes raising the very real prospect that only those who have had Covid-19 vaccines or negative test results would be able to leave their country, or indeed attend a sporting or cultural event.
Combine that with the collapse of the airline industry, the mass closure of all but the most expensive hotels, the end of cheaper petrol-fuelled cars and the advent of ‘smart’ motorways where access can easily be restricted, and most people will be stuck in their homes. But not, of course, Davos Man. Davos Man doesn’t use Easy Jet. Davos Man uses Private Jet. He’ll still be flying to Switzerland to elite conferences where fellow billionaires discuss further how they can use hi-tech methods to restrict the travel of everyone else, to ‘save the planet’.
What life would be like in Britain under the Great Reset was laid out for us in Boris Johnson’s ‘socially distanced’ speech to the Tory Party Conference in October.
It was an oration which could easily have been written by Klaus Schwab. “From internet shopping to working from home, it looks as though Covid has massively accelerated changes in the world of work… as old jobs are lost and as new jobs are created… The Covid crisis is a catalyst for change,” Johnson enthused.
Previous generations were told that the world was their oyster, but under the Great Reset, horizons are much narrower. “Instead of being dragged on big commutes to the city,” people can “start a business in their home town… and bring up their children in the neighbourhoods where they grew up themselves,” Johnson went on. But of course, the elites will still be moving around, it’s just the plebs who will be grounded.
The premise of the Great Reset is that there is absolutely no going back to the lives we enjoyed prior to March 2020. “The people assume we are just going back to the good old world which we had and everything will be normal again in how we are used to normal in the old fashioned. This is, let’s say, fiction, it will not happen, the cut which we have now is much too strong in order not to leave traces,” says Schwab.
Now of course, some people might like the idea of working permanently from home (that’s if they’re lucky enough to have a job), ordering everything they need online (to arrive by drone), having to have a continually updated digitalised health pass to go anywhere, owning nothing and having their biological, physical and digital identities ‘fused’, but shouldn’t they be consulted about it first?
And what about those of us who actually miss the ‘old-fashioned’ normal of mixing freely with people, of paying in cash, of driving petrol-fuelled cars wherever we want to go, and being in crowded pubs? Most of us care about the environment, but are suspicious that, like Covid-19, ‘sustainable development’ has become a Trojan Horse to introduce regressive changes to our lives that most definitely are not to our benefit.
A referendum on the Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution is urgently needed so that the ‘Build Back Better’ brigade can put their case directly to the electorate. If what they are proposing really is so great, then what on earth are they frightened of?
Petrol and diesel vehicle ban to cause £40 billion black hole A similar plan was shelved by Labour ministers in 2007 amid fears drivers would be billed up to £1.50 a mile. Rishi Sunak is considering plans to charge motorists for every mile they drive on Britain’s roads to fill a £40billion tax hole left by a push to electric cars, according to reports.
The Chancellor is reportedly ‘very interested’ in the idea of a national road pricing scheme – which would steer motorists into a new ‘pay-as-you-drive’ type system.
Road pricing in England is limited to schemes such as the M6 Toll in the Midlands, the Dartford crossing on the M25, London’s Congestion Zone and a handful of small tunnels and bridges.
But a national scheme is now being considered amid fears a switch to electric vehicles will leave a massive tax shortfall from the loss of key revenue raisers such as Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty, according to the Times. […]
It comes amid reports Boris Johnson wants to accelerate his green plans – including bringing forward a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars to 2030.
A similar plan was shelved by Labour ministers in 2007 amid fears drivers would be billed up to £1.50 a mile.
A petition was signed by 1.8million motorists opposing the idea.
The Climate Assembly UK which has been brought together by the government to drive forward their climate change agenda has just issued a report. The government are now asking people to send in their views via a survey, so why not tell them what you think?
This assembly seem to think we should be eating less meat and buying less new items and recycling old things more. Do you think this is the business of the government?
Share your answers via this online survey
You should return your responses by Friday 20th November 2020.
Information provided in the survey will be used to inform the select committees’ ongoing work on net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Here is an example of a council squandering large amounts of taxpayers cash in order to make out they are being virtuous about climate change, but in practice achieving very little.
This article points out the utter futility of attempts to cut global warming. We learn that if Biden spends $1.7 trillion it will reduce world temperature by a staggering 0.1 degrees C.
London, 9 November: The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has today written to the chairman of the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons providing new evidence for their inquiry into the Net Zero target.
The letter presents data from windfarm accounts showing that the wind industry has overestimated the technically accessible wind resource around the UK.
This new information shows that it will be necessary to introduce greater separation distances between wind turbines and wind farms, at greater costs.
This will force a move further away from shore, into much deeper water, and with a higher share of floating turbines, both increasing costs significantly.
The letter draws attention to evidence in the audited accounts of Burbo Bank Extension wind farm, recording payments made to another wind farm nearby, in compensation for reduced output caused by so-called “wake effects”. In effect, the Burbo Extension turbines have been taking the wind out of its neighbour’s sails.
Photograph showing the “wake effect” at the Horns Rev off-shore wind farm off the shores of Denmark. Source: Hasager et al. (2013)
The new evidence reveals that the industry has overestimated the density at which wind farms can be constructed, even at sea, an error that has serious implications for the Prime Minister’s aspiration for an additional 30 GW of offshore wind by the end of the decade.
GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser, said:
“Boris Johnson’s utopian wind ‘vision’ for 2030 was always going to be extremely expensive, but it now seems his plans may require spreading the wind turbines over a much bigger area, and in deeper water, with very significant environmental and economic implications. This is unlikely to be feasible, let alone affordable.”
This piece explains what some extremists are asking the government to do. I can imagine they might just do it, as they are desperate to increase the tax take to recoup all the expenditure on fighting corona virus.
This article explains the extreme measures that are being taken by the Irish government to try and remove a little CO2 from the atmosphere. They are returning farm land to its former bog land state.
When the wind drops and the turbines slow down to a trickle, where will all the electricity to power our homes in the cold winter days that lie ahead? This article looks at this scenario.
Economic growth is bad for the climate, Europe’s Science Academies claim
GWPF, 30 October 2020 Europe’s main science academies reveal their anti-growth agenda
Europe faces a catastrophic economic crisis and tens of millions of redundancies as a result of the political measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, there is growing tension among policy makers between saving the economy and economic growth or saving Europe’s costly climate agenda.
In her speech to the United Nations last year, the eco-socialist activist Greta Thunberg denounced world leaders for their main focus on what she called “the fairy tale of eternal economic growth.” Her anti-growth attack didn’t come as a surprise. After all, critical observers have always known that this kind of radical climate activism is driven by an anti-capitalist agenda. Now Europe’s main scientific body, the European Academies Science Advisory Council (which comprises of the National Academies of Science of EU Member States, plus Norway, Switzerland and UK), has followed in Greta’s footsteps, hitting out against policy makers and governments who prioritise economic growth.
“Generation Greta gets it. Our focus should be on well-being and welfare, but our economic system puts all focus on growth and GDP which adds fuel to the climate and biodiversity crises.” That’s how the European Academies Science Advisory Council press release highlights the main take of its report that calls for “‘transformational’ change that is necessary if policy-makers and their public (sic) are to support the conclusions of the advocates of change.” The capture of Europe’s scientific institutions and organisations by degrowth ideologues is a tragic reflection on the state of green ideology which is bringing institutional science ever more into disrepute.
This article explains the evidence which the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has submitted to the government. No doubt it will be ignored like all the other evidence that their policy will wreck the economy, because the real damage will come later well after they have left office. They hope that the slow creeping cost increases for energy won't be noticed and they can blame them on something other than their policies, such as the energy companies or world conditions.
This article looks at the simple fact that the temperatures in the Arctic can vary greatly from year to year, as well as the cyclic patterns which operate over decades. It is totally unscientific to cherry-pick starting points or individual years to try to argue that the climate is changing dramatically.
This article explains what is going on in Dubai with respect to energy. With China's help they have decided to build a modern coal-fired power station. They want cheap reliable energy, just like we used to.
This article reports on the latest decision taken by the normally climate change mad institution. Even the EU cannot satisfy the latest demands of the climate extremists.
This article explains how the rush for so-called renewable energy from wood is in fact causing forests to be felled in Africa - not something you will ever hear on the main TV news bulletins which would far sooner take up their time interviewing people on the street to ask their opinions about any subject under the sun.
This article blows the consensus on this issue. You will see that in practice there is no one measurement and so it is impossible to give an accurate average.
Emmanuel Macron reacted furiously to Boris Johnson's claims that trade talks are "over" between the UK and EU. Mr Macron has played hardball in the talks on fisheries, insisting on Thursday that French fishermen would "not be sacrificed" for the sake of a deal.
However, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal then French fishermen could faced being banned from British waters.
In response, the French President has signalled the EU would launch a devastating energy embargo against the UK unless Boris Johnson gives in on fisheries.
Following the EU summit in Brussels on Friday, Mr Macron told French radio that if the UK does not allow French fishermen in its waters, the EU would have to block the UK's energy supplies to the European market.
He suggested the right to fish in British waters was worth 650 million euros to EU fishermen, but that access to European energy markets was worth up to £2.3billion (€2.5bn) to the UK.
This piece looks at the hearings for the proposed Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, made by President Trump. It particularly looks at her answers to questions on climate change where she is studiously non-committal, which seems to inflame the climate lobby.
This article looks at the latest pronouncements on the Great Barrier Reef, and compares their findings with those of Prof Peter Ridd who has surveyed the reef with the Australian Institute of Marine Science for the last 35 years and has found that its condition remains broadly the same.
The UK’s most efficient* offshore windfarm is Kentish Flats, owned by the nationalised Swedish conglomerate Vattenfall, and situated just outside the Thames estuary, north of Whitstable. Its low costs are due to the very shallow waters in which it sits.
Strangely, being part of an industry that claims to be enjoying rapidly declining costs, Kentish Flats is not a new windfarm. In fact it was one of the UK’s first, commissioned in 2005. Later windfarms moved further offshore, in search of more reliable wind speeds, but were rewarded with higher costs and only marginally better output.
Kentish Flats’ management reckon the useful life of their wind turbines is 20 years, so the windfarm may close at some point in the next few years. It is probably no coincidence that 20 years is also the period for which the operators can claim subsidies. Just how generous the subsidy regime is can be seen from the windfarm’s 2017 results. In that year, it made a profit before tax of £11 million, but as the notes to the accounts reveal, it also received £11.4 million in subsidies. A further £0.5 million of government grants is being written off each year. In other words, without state support, Kentish Flats would have lost £1 million. Recall that this is the UK’s lowest-cost offshore windfarm.
Note also that it is selling electricity at far above market prices; the 2018 accounts note a rise in prices from £95 to £122/MWh since the previous year, suggesting that a buyer willing to pay vastly over the odds – presumably within the Vattenfall group – had been found to cover up their embarrassment. Last year, that change was largely reversed, and the windfarm only managed to break even before subsidies.
Since Kentish Flats was built 15 years ago, the cost of building and operating an offshore windfarm in the UK has soared. In fact, if you look at those commissioned since 2010, they all have costs more than double those of Kentish Flats. And yet, as we can see, without its subsidies, Kentish Flats is marginally profitable at best. If we also took away its ability to sell at far-above market prices, it would be well and truly sunk.
What we can therefore say, with some certainty, is that the offshore wind fleet is, as a whole, destroying wealth at a remarkable pace.
This Article was a two page spread in Saturday's Daily Mail. It confirms what has been said for many years, that wind energy is not cheap. No doubt there are many other equally stupid schemes out there. Our energy bills are set to treble in the coming two decades as more and more unreliable and very costly wind farms are added to the grid. When will enough people wake up and demand a change of policy?
This short video contains some interesting commentary on Boris's windfarm pledge.
This post explains the UK Chancellor's idea. Yet more madness from our Conservative government. Why can't they see through this climate madness and get back to good conservative ideas for lower prices driven by free competition. We are being stifled by state control driven by left-wing ideologues.
Here is an example of the many conferences that go on year after year to preach to the converted and encourage them to carry on trying to control the climate by cutting out CO2 emissions.
Why would anyone want to sit through a whole day of waffle defeats me. What's more they will be paying between £300 to £550 for the privilege. Will this conference in January 2021 even take place, given all the current restrictions? The organisers will be hoping so or they may stand to lose out financially.
Whatever happens I can guarantee that I won't be there, nor I doubt will you!
This piece looks at the decision by the government to commit the UK to a large increase in wind energy in the next few years. Sadly they have ignored the growing evidence that this decision will prove very costly as well as potentially very unreliable.
This article explains what happened. It seems to be a daft decision as the mine would produce specialised coking coal needed for steel production and unless we are intending to close our steel-making down then we would have to import this coal anyway.
This article refers to the unseasonably cold weather. I know that weather is not the same as climate, but still if the alarmists can use it then why not the realists?
This report explains the huge amount of extra electricity that will be needed to power our motoring needs and the woefully inadequate plans being used to supply it. I don't know about you, but I will be keeping my petrol car for as long as possible. Millions of others will do the same.
This article looks at the significance of the change taking place in the Pacific Ocean. It is too early to predict what will happen, but we know it can have a strong effect.
