Texas had a very mild December which the state climatologist described as “hot.” Last month Texas experienced its warmest December on record since 1889, said Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, a regents professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University who also … Continue reading →
via Real Climate Science
January 18, 2022 at 07:19AM
By Paul Homewood
The Met Office has finally totally lost the plot!
It is a bleak forecast even by the Met Office’s standards – the complete collapse of society leaving armed militias and criminal gangs to roam the land unchallenged.
That is one of the doomsday scenarios set out in a report commissioned by the UK’s weather service to model the potential consequences of climate change.
The extraordinary report, called Shared Socio-economic Pathways and developed for the Government-funded UK Climate Resilience Programme, sets out supposedly ‘plausible futures’ as a result of global warming.
A doomsday scenario considered by the Met Office involves armed militias and criminal gangs roaming the land following a climate change catastrophe
One of those scenarios described by the authors is a surge in ‘Right-wing populism’, resulting in the collapse of ‘political and governance systems’
One of those scenarios described by the authors is a surge in ‘Right-wing populism’, resulting in the collapse of ‘political and governance systems’. After that ‘a tipping point is reached when the police and justice system (as known in the past) cease to exist’. Due to ‘past investments in military and defence… without an effective central government, different military groups (militias, criminal groups, etc) rise to de facto power’.
Under a different scenario in the report, a ‘rich elite’ imposes conscription. ‘Society is more divided than ever,’ the report suggests, ‘with the majority of the population having low incomes and poor health, contrasting with a rich ruling elite. Social unrest increases and the prison population skyrockets. To keep the general population in line, governments introduce military conscription by the end of the century.’
The report makes another ‘woke’ political point by claiming that climate change would lead to the privatisation of the NHS.
It says: ‘Because of the high costs associated with reforming the NHS, the preferred solution is to increase privatisation of general and specialised health services and medication provision.
‘Citizens are encouraged to purchase private insurance policies in order to receive better healthcare. This transitional period worsens care for the poorest in society.’
The Meteorological Office report, which was carried out by Cambridge Econometrics, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and the universities of Edinburgh and Exeter, does however suggest a way of averting this future – by rejoining the EU.
It advances the thesis that the most ‘sustainable’ scenario for surviving global warming would be the ‘establishment of a federal UK, with citizens’ assemblies becoming the “primary” decision-making mode’ and the UK re-entering ‘a progressive and expanded European Union’.
The report says that creating such scenarios ‘are important to climate risk and resilience studies’.
It argues that physical climate change and continued socio-economic change are highly interrelated – and that socio-economic factors determine greenhouse gas emissions and land use changes that cause climate change.
Those factors also determine the ‘levels of vulnerability and capacity to adapt to climate change’ and are ‘plausible socio-economic future outlooks up to 2100 that provide the challenging context within which future decisions… must be determined and implemented’.
It is now apparent that the Met Office has been taken over by a handful of climate extremists. No serious public organisation, particularly one that is supposed to be scientific, would dream of putting its name to ultra garbage like this.
It is time that the Met Office was purged of these extremists, and that it returned to its real business of forecasting the weather.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 18, 2022 at 06:21AM
The RSPB has warned that the Government’s planned expansion of offshore wind power could drive some seabirds to extinction.
Their warning coincides with the publication of a new Net Zero Watch factsheet, which shows the extraordinary scale of the industrialisation that is planned for the seas around the UK.
Net Zero Watch director, Dr Benny Peiser said:
It’s shocking. Waters from Kent to Denmark will soon be back to back wind turbines. There will be a wall of blades right around the north of Scotland and down the Irish Sea too. There will be no escape for the birds”.
And Dr Peiser criticised the RSPB for remaining silent for so long:
The threat of offshore wind turbines to birds has been clear for 20 years, but it’s only now that the RSPB has chosen to speak out. I fear they may have left it too late.”
Note for bloggers and journalists
The GWPF has published a series of papers and articles on the devastating impact of wind farms on wildlife and the environment
The Impact of Wind Energy on Wildlife and the Environment (pdf)
Andrew Montford: Green Killing Machines – The impact of renewable energy on wildlife and nature (PDF)
John Constable: Kittiwake extinction risk and the death of Environmentalism
via Net Zero Watch
January 18, 2022 at 05:45AM
By Paul Homewood
Has so much nonsense ever been written on one page?
Two years ago, I was the energy minister who signed the target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 into law. It passed unopposed in the House of Commons, while the same year achieving net zero by 2050 was a core part of the Conservative 2019 General Election manifesto (indeed it was on the first page as a key pledge).
This hasn’t prevented an increasing sense of negativity around the policies needed to reach net zero – with an attempt by some to conflate the target with the rising cost of energy. The letter recently submitted by a group of MPs and peers calling for the removal of the ‘environmental and social levies’ (or as some would say ‘green taxes’) from energy bills on the face of it may seem like be a perfectly understandable thing to campaign for. After all, we are expecting to see a large increase in energy bills, possibly by 50%, and something needs to be done to mitigate that.
But it’s clearly not the levies that are driving the increase in bills – if anything these levies are falling. The problem is gas. As an internationally-traded commodity (we export 20% of our own gas) we are always (and always will be) at the whim of international markets. Rocketing wholesale gas prices will have added £400 to gas bills by April this year, way more than the levies themselves. And yet electricity bills, while rising, are doing so much more slowly.
And herein lies the elephant in the room. Over the past decade these levies have been paying to kick-start our homegrown renewables industry. So successful have they been that wind and solar are now the cheapest forms of electricity, and even the more expensive early-stage renewables are cushioning electricity prices as the cost of gas soars.
They’ve also paid for insulating homes of the fuel-poor and funded the Warm Homes Discount scheme for the vulnerable. Let’s not forget that without these levies families would be living in leakier homes and facing even higher bills. Again, the levies have worked.
So is this group seriously suggesting we cut insulation for the vulnerable and renege on contracts with British renewable energy projects? While the white heat of the headlines scream ‘scrap’, the only real alternative is to shift the levies from bills to general taxation – an idea that’s been doing the rounds for a long time.
The best way to protect ourselves from gas price spikes is to use much less by insulating homes and switching to cleaner forms of heating. History shows fossil fuel prices are volatile, whereas the unit price of sun and wind is always nil. It’s also unaffected by international game-playing and Putin’s threats of turning off the gas taps and hiking the price. Liz Truss as Foreign Secretary made a recent clear-eyed assessment of Ukraine’s perilous dependence on Russian oil: the solution is to boost green technology.
Some have argued, including on these pages, that the answer is more home-grown oil and gas. That we ‘need to lift the moratorium on fracking’ and allow further North Sea oil exploration. But the logic for this argument does not stack up. Recent history shows that trying to frack in the UK is very difficult, with nearly all efforts facing significant local opposition and getting bogged down in litigation. Also, the quantities of shale gas which we could produce would not be sufficient turn the tide on the impact of international prices driven by global geopolitics.
This clearly will not be any comfort to those expecting to see price rises in April, but neither would more shale gas, oil exploration or, indeed, a new coal mine. The fact that Shell withdrew its interest in the Cambo oil field shows that businesses are aware that any such work has a limited shelf life and risks becoming a stranded asset.
The British public, business and scientific community are clear that we need to get off polluting fossil fuels to pave the way to a safer, more prosperous net zero future. Let’s remember that net zero is not some political construct: it’s science, it’s physics. We have to stop adding emissions to the atmosphere to halt climate change. The target date of 2050 has been set to avoid the very worst impacts of climate change. The Treasury, Office of Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England have concluded the costs of inaction are far greater than acting – so don’t be fooled by those claiming to offer quick fixes.
https://capx.co/dont-listen-to-the-net-zero-naysayers-green-levies-work/
Let start with these claims:
1) “But it’s clearly not the levies that are driving the increase in bills – if anything these levies are falling.
Over the past decade these levies have been paying to kick-start our homegrown renewables industry. So successful have they been that wind and solar are now the cheapest forms of electricity, and even the more expensive early-stage renewables are cushioning electricity prices as the cost of gas soars.”
Levies are falling? I presume arithmetic is not Skidmore’s strongpoint!
And those “early stage renewables” are not cushioning electricity prices either. They are actually benefitting from higher market prices as well as still receiving their obscene subsidies. In other words, windfall profits which should be taxed.
As for wind and solar being the cheapest forms of electricity, why does wind power still have to be supported with CfDs? And why is so little new solar capacity being built, only increasing by 5% last year, withh of that subsidised via the National Grid’s Balancing System?
Indeed, what does any of this have to do with green levies? If somebody wants to build a solar farm, fine; but the poor public will still have to carry on paying billions a year in subsidies to existing generators.
He says that levies are not “driving the increase in bills”. But this misses the point, because they have already been driving up bills during the last decade.
2) He then goes on to defend the Warm Homes Discount. This is a red herring, because the cost of this is not included in the Environmental Levies above, and nobody that I am aware of is suggesting they are dropped.
“They’ve also paid for insulating homes of the fuel-poor and funded the Warm Homes Discount scheme for the vulnerable.”
The scheme is only open to the low paid or those on pension credit. It is a crazy system that pushes up energy prices so much via renewable subsidies, and then has to subsidise the poor who consequently afford them.
Worse still, Skidmore does not even understand the Warm Homes Discount scheme! It has nothing to do with “insulation”, which he claims. It is a straightforward one off payment of £140 each year designed to help reduce costs for those living on a low income or pension over the winter months.
3) “The best way to protect ourselves from gas price spikes is to use much less by insulating homes and switching to cleaner forms of heating”
He conveniently forgets to tell us that this “insulation” will cost tens of thousands in most houses, many times greater than any potential savings. Who will pay for that?
As for “cleaner forms of heating” (what an absolutely ludicrous description anyway), he does not tell us how we are supposed to be able to afford twenty grand for a heat pump plus extra insulation.
He also forgets to mention that electricity still costs five times as much as gas, despite recent prices rises:
4) “Some have argued, including on these pages, that the answer is more home-grown oil and gas. That we ‘need to lift the moratorium on fracking’ and allow further North Sea oil exploration. But the logic for this argument does not stack up. Recent history shows that trying to frack in the UK is very difficult, with nearly all efforts facing significant local opposition and getting bogged down in litigation. Also, the quantities of shale gas which we could produce would not be sufficient turn the tide on the impact of international prices driven by global geopolitics.
This clearly will not be any comfort to those expecting to see price rises in April, but neither would more shale gas, oil exploration or, indeed, a new coal mine. The fact that Shell withdrew its interest in the Cambo oil field shows that businesses are aware that any such work has a limited shelf life and risks becoming a stranded asset.”
This is a hopelessly confused statement.
For a start he dismissed fracking by mentioning litigation and local opposition. I note that local opposition has not succeeded the Sunnica solar farm from being rammed through.
Local opposition should not mean that fracking should not go ahead.
It may be that UK fracking won’t make much difference to global gas prices, but the UK would still benefit hugely through taxation revenue, just as it has done with North Sea oil.
As for Cambo, this highlights exactly what lies behind the latest energy crisis. Political pressure over the last few years has discouraged the likes of Shell from developing new fields, not only here but in the US too since Biden took over. Why on earth should Shell invest in Cambo, when fossil fuels might be banned or taxed out of existence in ten years time?
If their assets end up being “stranded”, it will be because of governments not the market.
Yet the world still desperately needs oil and gas, and will do for a long time to come. Consequently, there is a growing imbalance between supply and demand, which has led to the current crisis.
5) The British public, business and scientific community are clear that we need to get off polluting fossil fuels to pave the way to a safer, more prosperous net zero future.
Sorry, Mr Skidmore, but the British public most certainly are not “clear”. Indeed, they have never even been consulted by you or the rest of the climate establishment.
6) Let’s remember that net zero is not some political construct: it’s science, it’s physics. We have to stop adding emissions to the atmosphere to halt climate change.
Ah, the science! And what effect on the world’s climate does the science say will be brought about by eliminating Britain’s 1% of world emissions?
Despite the red herrings thrown out by Chris Skidmore, the basic facts remain very clear. Government climate policies are costing the public £14 billion a year, and this cost will continue to remorselessly increase in years to come, particularly when we are all forced to buy electric cars and heat pumps.
We have Chris Skidmore and his ilk to thank for this.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 18, 2022 at 05:27AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 