You would think a large financial house would be able to employ someone willing and able to understand a set of accounts. Unfortunately, it seems not.

Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM) recently published a paper that sets out the company’s position on decarbonisation. Written by Nick Stansbury and Justine Schafer of their “Climate Solutions” department, makes the remarkable claim that ‘the cost of transitioning [to Net Zero] is no longer an especially relevant factor’.

Is the magic money tree going to provide, you might wonder? But it’s not that. In fact, according to the authors, we have solved most of the technological problems already:

A low carbon energy system is now so cheap, that further improvements in costs and efficiencies are no longer likely to have as large an impact on the pace of change as they have had historically…Science and engineering have already delivered much of the cost reduction that we need.

I think I may have a bridge to sell Mr Stansbury.

In support of this extraordinary claim, the authors cite figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), showing long-term reductions in the cost of wind and solar. The naïvety is breathtaking. The energy sector is notorious for being full of wild claims about cost revolutions. Those working in the field usually learn to check and double check what they are told, and to view every claim with a critical eye. LGIM rather give the impression of having stepped into this den of thieves in good faith but without thinking too hard.

If they had decided to dig a little bit deeper, they might have noticed the interesting detail that IRENA translates all its cost figures into US dollars. With most renewables deployed outside America, performing that currency conversion introduces a spurious downwards trend into the cost figures, simply because there has been a long-term appreciation of the dollar against other countries.

They might also have attempted to verify IRENA’s numbers in some way. After all, a tiny think tank like the GWPF can manage to do it; why not a huge financial house? Their army of analysts, lawyers and accountants could surely have found their way to Companies House, where financial accounts of windfarms are readily available, and to Ofgem’s data portal, where generation data can be downloaded. I know this is a bit radical, but they could actually have recalculated the cost numbers themselves! Had they done so, they would have found little or no sign of reducing costs for offshore wind, and indeed of increasing costs onshore. And don’t get me started on the eye-watering system costs associated with renewables.

Instead we get what is essentially a public relations document, regurgitating renewables marketing fluff.

via Net Zero Watch

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May 16, 2023 at 07:13AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

The Met Office has given its verdict on reports claiming that “African plumes” could bring multiple heatwaves to the UK this summer with temperatures in excess of 35C.

In a widely reported forecast, Exacta Weather said hot air masses are likely to sweep across Europe between June and September that could repeatedly push the mercury into the thirties in the UK.

Met Office meteorologist Honor Criswick told The Independent that such a scenario would be “unprecedented, but not impossible”.

“We had a similar set-up last summer, though there were additional factors at play, with a high to the east of the UK bringing hot air up from the south/southeast,” the forecaster said.

Asked about the predictions of a scorching summer, Ms Criswick said that, “as always with a longer-range forecast, there is always some uncertainty”.

But she said that there is “a greater than normal chance” of heatwaves in the UK this summer, which is “consistent with our warming climate”.

“Outlook forecasts are for the average conditions over the UK as a whole, for the period as a whole, so we can expect regional variations,” Ms Criswick said.

“So far for May, there is a higher than normal chance of warmer temperatures, however near average or cool conditions remain possible. Looking ahead into June and July, the chance of it being hot is higher than normal however near average temperatures remains the most likely outcome.

“There is also a greater than normal chance of impacts from hot weather such as heatwaves. The increased chance of warm conditions through the period is consistent with our warming climate. Whilst this doesn’t necessarily mean a heatwave will occur, it does increase the likelihood of this compared to normal.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/weather/uk-weather-met-office-heatwave-forecast-b2339586.html

In other words, the clowns have no idea whether it will be hot, average or cold.

Meanwhile, since when were temperatures in the 30s “unprecedented”? It happens most summers.

As for the claim that global warming is making heatwaves more common, does not this silly woman know that heatwaves are the result of meteorological conditions, not climate change. They are caused by high pressure with plenty of sunshine. Climate change has no effect on those factors, and is not making them more common.

That is why last summer was not even as hot as 1976 or 1826.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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May 16, 2023 at 06:47AM

What is happening there will soon be affecting us here unless we have political leaders who have the courage to stop it. Read on to see why. 

 The international press has maintained near-total silence on the escalating insanity of what is happening in Germany.

 
Media outlets that routinely celebrate German progress towards energy transition don’t want you to know that Europe’s dominant industrial power has entered a deeply destructive political and administrative spiral from which it may never recover. The fault lies with the self-defeating and unworkable energy policies that have a death grip not merely on the Scholz Government, but on the entire administrative state. Since completing the nuclear phase-out in the midst of an ongoing energy crisis and avoiding winter catastrophe thanks only to the accident of mild weather, our rulers are now forcing devastating changes to the so-called Gebäudeenergiegesetz, or the Building Energy Act, which regulates energy consumption in residential and commercial structures.

 
The Spiegel reporting takes a close look at the careers of several key characters behind the energy transition, among them the Green politician Rainer Baake, and Robert Habeck’s scandal-riddled right-hand man Patrick Graichen, who is the policy brains driving most of the current insanity.
 
"The rise of the environmentalists in the Ministry of Economics began a full decade ago. For a long time, the view was that the state should impose as few rules as possible on the corporate sector. … According to this logic, environmentalism and economic policy were seen as nearly mutually exclusive. It was not until 2013 that the dominance of free-market civil servants began to crumble.
 
At this time, Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD became Minister of Economics and appointed an unusual State-Secretary for Energy: Rainer Baake. … The move was a surprise, because Baake is not a Social Democrat, but a Green. … As State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment … Baake helped orchestrate the first legislation on Germany’s nuclear phase-out. …
 
In 2012, Baake founded Agora Energiewende, probably the most influential think-tank advocating a carbon-neutral society in German politics. Patrick Graichen was at that time already Baake’s protegé. …"
 
As the old-guard industry-friendly civil servants in the German bureaucracy began to retire, Baake filled their posts with Green technocrats wherever possible, such that when control of the Ministry passed to the centre-Right CDU in 2018, the damage was done. The institutional momentum had already shifted towards climate change and begun to gather strength under its own power. The catchword for Baake’s political vision was the so-called ‘All Electric World’, one in which a grid powered entirely by renewables drives cars (electrical vehicles), heats buildings (heat pumps) and even powers industry (though here the solutions are much vaguer).
During his five-year tenure as State Secretary, Baake appointed Graichen to head the Agora think-tank, which began churning out policy papers, sponsoring Green scientific research andgathering an ever-growing crowd of loyal advocates and technocrats. This paid off:
 
Whenever energy and climate were discussed in Berlin [in the years after Baake’s resignation from the Ministry of Economics in 2018], Graichen’s name came up, often peddling unwieldy terms that only experts understand. The “merit order principle”, for example, or the “locked-in effect”. The red-haired man with the sonorous voice knew his way around this specialist world like no other. …

The ability appears to have come naturally to him. His mother worked in the Ministry of Development, his father for a while in the Ministry of Transport. He himself became involved in environmental issues as a schoolboy, initially in the youth organisation of BUND. In 1993, he began studying at the University of Heidelberg. In 1996, he joined the Green Party. In 2001, he became a consultant for international climate protection… and helped draft the Kyoto Protocol.

via climate science

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May 16, 2023 at 05:18AM

Now he’s King, it’s maybe time to remind ourselves of some of Charlie’s climate predictions!

via Watts Up With That?

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May 16, 2023 at 04:40AM