By Paul Homewood

h/t Paul Kolk

It’s silly season again at the BBC!

A new species of sea slug has been discovered in UK waters.

It was caught off the south-west of England from a research ship.

The creature has been named Pleurobranchaea britannica. It belongs to a group found in warmer waters, which could be migrating north due to climate change.

With ocean temperatures at record levels there is concern about the impact on marine life.

Ross Bullimore of the Centre for the Environment, Food and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) made the serendipitous discovery.

About 100 different sea slugs are found in the seas off Britain and Ireland, but he knew instantly this was something special.

"It was like a light bulb going off," he said.

The scientists say the discovery shows we still have more to learn about life in our seas, which are among the best studied in the world.

"To find a new species that’s not microscopic is quite exciting. It shows that there’s still work to be done," said Peter Barry of CEFAS.

Often referred to as an "indicator species", they can help scientists understand the health of marine ecosystems due to their sensitivity to the impacts of climate change and human pressures.

Members of the group to which the new species belongs – Pleurobranchaea – are usually found in northern Spain, Senegal and throughout the Mediterranean Sea.

"We’re seeing the presence of a species [belonging to a group] which has always previously been recorded in warmer waters," said Ross Bullimore.

"It could indicate that what you’re observing is this group of species being able to expand its range further because conditions are becoming more favourable or more appropriate for it."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68438582

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I don’t claim to be a slug expert, but if this little beast is so rare, how do we know they have not been slithering around our coasts for years? The odds of finding one in this sort of fishing expedition must be minimal.

And the idea that our seas are now as warm as the Mediterranean is obviously absurd. Just as is the idea that these slugs have been “migrating” northwards. In fact it has been established by scientists that they can only move at about 5 cm an hour. If it moves steadily forward at this speed every hour in every day, it would still only cover about a quarter of a mile in a year, by which time it would probably be dead!

It shows just how shoddy environmental science has become, if Ross Bullimore can seriously suggest slugs are migrating. If this little specimen really has arrived from furthermore south, it has probably been carried here on ocean currents, or possibly hitched a lift!

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March 1, 2024 at 06:10AM

By Paul Homewood

London, 1 March – A new paper from Net Zero Watch makes a comprehensive case that efforts to decarbonise the steel and electricity fundamentals of the economy now represent a real and present danger to national security.

In an important intervention, Sir Gerald Howarth, Minister for International Security Strategy under David Cameron, says in the paper’s foreword:
“Our adversaries are watching us like hawks, so let us leave them in no doubt: we are rearming and rebuilding, and Net Zero is firmly on hold.”
Professor Gwythian Prins, a defence expert and one of the paper’s authors, agrees that with the recent deterioration of the world’s security situation, luxury beliefs such as Net Zero must be jettisoned as a matter of urgency:
“This is the moment when the music stops. The Port Talbot closure harshly exposes the costs of luxury ‘green’ beliefs. We cannot be dependent on imports for the full range of necessary steels to rebuild our arsenals – the Navy first and foremost – and, most ridiculously, we cannot depend for them on our global antagonists."
"Furthermore, our armed forces are wholly dependent on oil to keep them in the field, and our electricity grid will collapse without gas. Any attempt to abandon them will leave us entirely at the mercy of hostile powers."
The paper also includes contributions from Gautam Kalghatgi, a professor of combustion and energy engineering, who ridicules plans to decarbonise the armed forces through use of batteries and biofuels, and the historian Guy de la Bédoyère, who sets out the eternal historical lesson that technological laggards usually end up the victims of conquest by their more advanced neighbours.
Mr de la Bédoyère said:
“It is impossible to diminish the effectiveness of a nation’s armed forces without making it a sitting duck for a more ambitious rival’s greed. But that’s exactly what our leaders seem to want to do.”
Andrew Montford, director of Net Zero Watch said:
“The three contributors make it clear that Net Zero is leaving us at the mercy of hostile powers. A Net Zero army and a Net Zero economy could both be brought to their knees in a matter of days. In these dangerous times, our politicians must re-order their priorities.”
The Music Stops: Net Zero and National security (pdf)

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March 1, 2024 at 05:03AM

By Paul Homewood

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The Met Office’s UK temperature network is junk, according to new FOI information released:

From The Daily Sceptic:

Nearly one in three (29.2%) U.K. Met Office temperature measuring stations have an internationally-defined margin of error of up to 5°C. Another 48.7% of the total 380 stations could produce errors up to 2°C, meaning nearly eight out of ten stations (77.9%) are producing ‘junk’ or ‘near junk’ readings of surface air temperatures. Arguably, on no scientific basis should these figures be used for the Met Office’s constant promotion of the collectivist Net Zero project. Nevertheless, the state-funded operation frequently uses them to report and often catastrophise rises in temperature of as little as 0.01°C.

Under a freedom of information request, the Daily Sceptic has obtained a full list of the Met Office’s U.K. weather stations, along with an individual class rating defined by the World Meteorological Office. These CIMO ratings range from pristine class 1 and near pristine class 2, to an ‘anything goes’ or ‘junk’ class 5. The CIMO ratings penalise sites that are near any artificial heat sources such as buildings and concrete surfaces. According to the WMO, a class 5 site is one where nearby obstacles “create an inappropriate environment  for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”. Even the Met Office refers to sites next to buildings and vegetation as “undesirable”. It seems class 5 sites can be placed anywhere, and they come with a WMO warning of “additional estimated uncertainties added by siting up to 5°C”; class 4 notes “uncertainties” up to 2°C, while class 3 states 1°C. Only 13.7%, or 52 of the Met Office’s temperature and humidity stations come with no such ‘uncertainty’ warnings attached.

The above graph shows the percentage totals of each class. Class 1 and 2, identified in green, account for just 6.3% and 7.4% of the total respectively. Class 3 identified as orange comes in at 8.4%. The graph shows the huge majorities enjoyed by the darkening shades of red showing classes 4 and 5. It is possible that the margins of error identified for classes 3, 4 and 5 could be a minus amount – if for instance the measuring device was sited in a frost hollow – but the vast majority are certain to be pushed upwards by heat corruptions.

Last year, the investigative journalist Paul Homewood sought FOI information from the Met Office about the Welsh weather station Porthmadog, which often appears in ‘hottest of the day’ listings. He was informed that the site was listed as class 4 and “this is an acceptable rating for a temperature sensor”. Hence, continued the Met Office, “we will continue to quote from this site”. In short, observes Homewood, the Met Office is happy to use a class 4 site for climatological purposes, “even though that class is next to junk status”. It is bad enough that the Met Office is using this site, but it is even worse that they know about the issues but still plan to carry on doing so, Homewood continued. “How many other weather stations are of such poor quality?” he asked.

Now we know.

Full post here.

The Met Office of course pretends that it knows the average temperature of the UK to within 0.1C, and that it can accurately compare current temperatures with those a century ago.

Not only do we now that is a lie, but we also know that they knew this all the time as well.

It is time to establish a network of a small number of high quality stations, and only use these to publish official temperature trends in future.

If they want to still use the old datasets, they should show the appropriate error bars, along with a warning that the margin of error is so great that they have no statistical significance at all.

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March 1, 2024 at 04:15AM

Another idea for slaying imaginary climate dragons runs into trouble, as new research finds ‘an intervention that cools the air would not be able to … Why atmospheric geoengineering is dead in the water

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March 1, 2024 at 04:08AM