Month: March 2024

Daily News 11 Mar 2024

Climate Change causes attack of flesh eating bacteria!

Vibrio Vulnificus

By Jo Nova

Just another spot of climate porn for the industry

Like a bad b-grade movie, nearly every science news story also doubles as an advert for a cult and a carbon tax. Last August three people (three!) died from infections of Vibrio vunificus in New York.

The horror-show microbes are advancing up the East Coast of the US “thanks to climate change”. And they’re racing at the breakneck speed of 30 miles a year. Quick, put up some solar panels!

Some 3,464,228 people died of other causes last year in the USA, but nevermind about that. Let’s remodel the economy anyway.

Olivia Geiger, ScienceLine

Who needs satellites to measure temperatures, we can measure climate change with flesh eating bugs:

A “microbial barometer of climate change”

From 1988 to 2018, infections on the East Coast have increased from 10 to 80 cases a year, according to Archer’s research. The bacteria’s range has moved nearly 30 miles north per year and will continue to do so, even if the climate warms relatively slowly. By 2040, Vibrio vulnificus is likely to be at home in the Long Island Sound.

While very few people contract vulnificus infections, one in five who do are likely to die.

The real crime in this reporting is not the clickbait hyperbole, but the wallpaper intrusion of another disguised advert for a religion and a tax. Implicit in the headline is the “news” that coal causes flesh eating infections, that all climate change is bad, and that nothing remotely, even a tiny bit useful, could come from warming or fossil fuels. Our lives become filled with trivia and irrelevant misinformation, like litter. The big picture goes unspoken.

A far bigger killer is poverty and cold but they rarely get marked on the death certificate. Lower indoor temperatures kill six to twenty times times as many people as heat does. And when the heat comes, air conditioners save around 20,000 lives a year in the US, — if only people can afford to turn them on.

Obviously every medical association is advocating for cheap coal, oil and gas in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Yes, no, well… not even close.

Science journalists are the footsoldiers of voodoo.

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March 11, 2024 at 11:47AM

Daily News 11 Mar 2024

Calls for inquiry into Climate Change Committee

By Paul Homewood

Campaign group Net Zero Watch is again calling for an inquiry into the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the Government’s official advisers on decarbonisation. The move follows revelations at the weekend that the CCC’s chief executive, Chris Stark, had tried to use obfuscation to “kill” questions over the adequacy of its energy system model, rather than addressing them directly. This behaviour put Stark in direct breach of the Nolan standards for public officeholders.

The scandal, published in the Sunday Telegraph, is just the latest of a series of controversies that have dogged the CCC since its inception.

In 2013, it was revealed that CCC chairman Lord Deben had a conflict of interest, retaining his position as chairman of a company involved in windfarm installations after his appointment. He had told the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee that he would divest himself of all such interests if appointed.

In 2019, it was revealed that Lord Deben’s family company was still taking large sums of money from businesses working in the environmental sphere.

In 2023, it was revealed that those payments to Lord Deben’s company were not properly disclosed in the Register of Interests.

In 2021, it was revealed that the CCC had used spurious weather data in their modelling, thus enabling them to reduce the capacity of electricity generation and storage equipment apparently required.

It was also revealed that the CCC used spurious figures for the cost of electric vehicles, thus reducing the apparent costs.

The CCC tried to hide its model from public scrutiny, spending tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer’s money fighting a lawful Freedom of Information request.

More recently, the CCC admitted that its electricity system modelling is inadequate. The resulting understatement of costs is as much as tens of billions of pounds per year.

It has also been revealed that the CCC “waves away” most of the cost problem, simply by assuming extraordinary cost reductions in future. With current technology, the cost of Net Zero will be hundreds of billions of pounds higher.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

‘The list of scandals at the Climate Change Committee seems to be endless, but Parliamentarians seem to want to let them get away with it. If the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee again fails to launch an inquiry into the governance of the CCC, and in particular Chris Stark’s management and the adequacy of the modelling that underpinned the 2019 Net Zero report, it will look very bad.’

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March 11, 2024 at 11:42AM

Daily News 11 Mar 2024

Hudson Bay polar bears now considered most likely to survive future sea ice loss

By Paul Homewood

From Sue Crockford:

Over the last 10 years, Hudson Bay polar bears have morphed from being the “most at risk” across the Arctic to the “least at risk.” Who would have thought?

That’s probably because the experts now have to admit that polar bear numbers have not declined since 2004 and bears have been in good body condition since at least 2016. Southern Hudson Bay bears have apparently increased in number since 2016. How ironic is it that the photo above, taken in Hudson Bay — the only Arctic region where trees grow — was used to illustrate a recent Mother Jones article promoting a new prediction of future Arctic summer sea ice loss that’s said to pose a threat to polar bear survival.

Here is a brief retrospective of predictions for survival of Western Hudson Bay polar bears (based on predictions of future sea ice loss), my emphasis throughout:

2013

In 2013, Andrew Derocher told The Guardian (27 November):

“All indications are that this population could collapse in the space of a year or two if conditions got bad enough,” said Andrew Derocher, a polar bear scientist at the University of Alberta.

“In 2020, I think it is still an open bet that we are going to have polar bears in western Hudson Bay.”

Contrary to this prediction, sea ice conditions over Western Hudson Bay haven’t changed since about 1998: most years, the ice-free season has been about 3 weeks longer than it was in the 1980s. Summer sea ice conditions are not getting worse.

2016

In 2016, seal biologist Steve Ferguson told the Winnipeg Free Press (6 December):

Hudson Bay could experience its first ice-free winter within five to 10 years, Ferguson said.

“I don’t think polar bears and seals will be able to adapt. I think they’ll just die out in places like Hudson Bay. There’s little to stop the trend in loss of sea ice, even if we stop producing greenhouse gasses,” he said.

Contrary to this dire prediction, Hudson Bay has been no where near to ice-free in winter, see the sea ice development chart below showing ice thickness for the week of 4 March 2024:

2024

Steven Amstrup told the Winnipeg Free Press in 2024 (28 February) the following about Western Hudson Bay polar bears, seemingly in direct contradiction to a paper he co-authored last year:

Even so, the population seems to be faring better than the rest of the world, Amstrup said during his presentation.

“If there’s a likelihood of being able to save bears anywhere, it’s probably in (the) Hudson Bay,” he said.

The rate of decline in sea ice is lower in the western and southern portions of the Hudson Bay than anywhere else globally, Amstrup relayed.

This prediction seems like a clear admission that previous predictions were wrong. This means that any of the models that formerly used WH bears as a proxy to predict the survival of all other subpopulations, including the one published last year, are not worth the paper they were printed on. What a surprise!

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March 11, 2024 at 11:42AM

Daily News 11 Mar 2024

The German energy transition threatens to be an unaffordable, unrealisable disaster, according to the government’s own independent auditors

By Paul Homewood

h/t Dennis Ambler/Patsy Lacey

Germany’s Energiewende threatens to be a disaster:

The German Bundesrechnungshof, or the Federal Audit Office, is an independent government body charged by statute with overseeing the economic management of the Federal Republic. Last week, they published a devastating “Report … on the implementation of the energy transition” in Germany. Every one of its fifty-eight pages represents a brutal slap in the face to our Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck. German energy policies have not only made us the laughing stock of the developed world; they are deplored even by our own bureaucrats.

The report says clearly what everybody knows but nobody in charge will acknowledge, namely that wind and solar are relentlessly intermittent power sources, which require “a largely redundant” backup system to provide “secure, controllable power” when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Habeck’s much-ballyhooed “power plant strategy,” unveiled in February, will “probably not be sufficient” to supply these “secured, controllable backup capacities.” This is because the “strategy” plans for a mere half of the capacity that was originally envisioned, because it is not clear whether conditions will be attractive enough to entice any power plant operators, and because nobody can say when the backup will come online. We are transitioning from a functional electricity system into a lot of insubstantial aspirations, which are not the kinds of things that keep the lights on.

Read the full story here.

This is the translated introduction from the official report:

Energy transition not on track Germany is pursuing very ambitious goals for the energy transition. However, this is not on track and is lagging behind its goals. The federal government must respond immediately to ensure a safe, affordable and environmentally friendly electricity supply.

What is it about? The energy transition in the electricity sector is of outstanding importance for climate protection. However, the federal government is lagging behind its goals in expanding renewable energies and ensuring adequately secured, controllable power plant output. Security of supply is at risk, electricity is expensive and the federal government cannot comprehensively assess the effects of the energy transition on the landscape, nature and environment. This poses considerable risks for Germany as a business location and for the population’s acceptance of the energy transition.

What should I do? The federal government must react immediately. It must effectively ensure private investments in renewable energies, power plant output to back it up and the electricity grids. It must clearly state the costs of the energy transition. In addition, the federal government must finally introduce a target and monitoring system in order to systematically assess the environmental effects of the energy transition.

What is the goal? The recommendations are aimed at a secure, affordable and environmentally friendly energy supply and the success of the energy transition. This is central to Germany as a business location, social acceptance of the transformation and the achievement of climate protection goals.