Essay by Eric Worrall

“… At an after-work drinks event I attended, a man fainted and collapsed. We gave him water and walked him to his car, through the city. The baking hot streets were utterly deserted. …”

WA had its hottest summer ever, but climate change and heat-related health problems barely made the news

ABC Science / By technology reporter James Purtill

…

We read that extreme heat kills more people in Australia than all the other natural disasters combined. 

This has been WA’s hottest summer on record — and the hot weather isn’t over yet.

…

At an after-work drinks event I attended, a man fainted and collapsed. We gave him water and walked him to his car, through the city. The baking hot streets were utterly deserted.

As the month progressed, there appeared to be a growing disconnection with the way news outlets were generally covering the ongoing natural disaster.

News stories often showed people “beating the heat” by going to the beach. A prominent politician devoted one sentence of their weekly column to the weather: “Yes, it’s summer, and yes, it’s hot.”

Richard Yin, a Perth GP and deputy chair of Doctors for the Environment, said the lack of acknowledgement in the media about the impact of heat and climate change was “vaguely terrifying”.

…

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-03-18/wa-summer-heat-broke-records-but-media-downplayed-climate-change/103572922#

If someone “faints” after a workplace drinking session, climate change is to blame? I can think of some other possible explanations.

The claim extreme heat is Australia’s biggest killer is not borne out by the evidence. The following is by scientists who claim the ration between summer and winter deaths is closing because of climate change – but there are still more deaths in winter.

Increased ratio of summer to winter deaths due to climate warming in Australia, 1968–2018

Ivan C. Hanigan, Keith B.G. Dear, Alistair Woodward
First published: 26 April 2021

The authors have stated they have no conflict of interest.

Abstract

Objective: To determine if global warming has changed the balance of summer and winter deaths in Australia.

Methods: Counts of summer and winter cause-specific deaths of subjects aged 55 and over for the years 1968–2018 were entered into a Poisson time-series regression. Analysis was stratified by states and territories of Australia, by sex, age and cause of death (respiratory, cardiovascular, and renal diseases). The warmest and coldest subsets of seasons were compared.

Results: Warming over 51 years was associated with a long-term increase in the ratio of summer to winter mortality from 0.73 in the summer of 1969 to 0.83 in the summer of 2018. The increase occurred faster in years that were warmer than average.

Conclusions: Mortality in the warmest and coldest times of the year is converging as annual average temperatures rise.

Implications for public health: If climate change continues, deaths in the hottest months will come to dominate the burden of mortality in Australia.

Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1753-6405.13107

Is this really what the climate alarm movement has come to? A dubious claim that extreme heat is the biggest killer, panic over someone passing out after an office drinking party where the manager was likely paying for the drinks, and a long whinge about people enjoying themselves at the beach in hot weather, instead of focussing on the climate crisis?

What a waste of column inches.

Back in the year of Glasgow’s COP26, TV land engaged in an unprecedented orgy of transtextuality to ensure that the climate crisis message was well and truly seared into the alpha-wave soused brains of the great unwashed British public. The collusion started with Emmerdale, where a bloke called Liam was shown producing a TikTok video featuring his new, ever so sustainable allotment. Apparently, this fictitious video went fictitiously viral before being fictitiously picked up by Coronation Street’s Gary, who shows it to Maria while they sit in a cafe discussing the plans for a new bypass. Maria clunkily explains for the benefit of the eavesdropping licence payers:

When are the council going to realise we are in a climate emergency — what with the storms and the floods not being a big enough wakeup call for it? Our council should be trying to save this planet, not building more roads.

To which Gary responds: “Yeh, your right, ‘course you are.”

Yes Gary, of course she was. And that is why she went on to organise a protest.

But that’s not where this extraordinary display of soapy cross-talk ends, because it wasn’t too long before Nate in Hollyoaks was showing his mate Ripley a news article reporting Maria’s fictitious air pollution protests. Nate then suggests working with Ripley to do business more sustainably.

And on it went. By the time they had finished fabricating their interwoven storylines, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks,  Eastenders, Casualty, Doctors and Holby City had all got in on the act.

An ensemble’s operatic production requires quite a substantial level of orchestration. But to witness such an ensemble of ensembles playing in such synchrony is to see orchestration taken to a new level, particularly when you consider that such crossover of storylines had previously been considered strictly verboten. So what brought about this remarkable tour de farce?  Could COP26 have had anything to do with it? I don’t know. Do bears shit in the woods?

We could of course just accept the earnest exhortations of the actors themselves. For example, Coronation Street actress, Samia Longchambon (aka Maria) said:

We sort of go out of our way not to usually ‘cross contaminate’ the soaps but with this, it’s been such a brilliant idea and it’s a unique opportunity for us to get together to cover this climate change message in a special and entertaining way that will stay in people’s minds.

I don’t want to sound bitchy, but ‘special and entertaining’ were her words, not mine. Nevertheless, I don’t doubt her sincerity. And to add to her special and entertaining pleading we had Emmerdale actor, Jonny McPherson, bemoaning that:

It’s hard not to feel like the world is burning around us…

Actually, it’s quite easy if you try. But I must admit, it is getting increasingly difficult to find anyone up to the task, thanks largely to the brainwashing that Samia and Jonny seem so eager to support using their special and entertaining talents. But rather than place the blame at the feet of the foot soldier, perhaps we should be asking who are the military masterminds behind all of this?

Well I might have guessed; look what we have here from those psycho-boffins at the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT):

An estimated 4.3 billion people watch TV content on different devices for an average of 2h 54 minutes a day, across the world. In our latest report, produced in collaboration with Sky TV, we provide new data on viewers’ attitudes towards green behaviours and nudging. We go on to outline 10 recommendations for broadcasters on how they can use their content to encourage sustainability.

If you want to plough through the report yourselves, that’s your lookout. Personally, I wouldn’t bother. Suffice it to say that, amongst a great deal more, the BIT advises:

Broadcasters should also make sure to feature relatable characters taking up green behaviours, including those who represent more sceptical audience groups (e.g. older more conservative viewers). Plotlines should build in credible motivations for taking up sustainable behaviours (e.g. preventing waste or saving money), show their learning and growth over time, and demonstrate their ability to overcome barriers. Broadcasters should also work with their talent – actors, moderators, sportspeople, and other television celebrities – and encourage them to use their reach to influence viewers via multiple platforms by sharing green knowledge, attitudes, and modelling green behaviours.

Before you go away thinking that the BIT is just another bandwagon-riding charity, peddling climate change snake oil, I should remind you that this is the UK Government’s own Nudge Unit we are talking about here. Do not be fooled when it presents itself as an independent advisory unit. It was set up as a government department and has only recently been partly privatised in order to give the impression of independence. Be aware that it is still 30% funded by the government and that the Cabinet Office remains its principal client. So when they ‘recommend’ what broadcasters should be doing, they are not just dropping hints. They might be a bunch of ‘weirdos’ and ‘ultra-lefty academics’, but they also speak with an authority that is not to be ignored. And, as behavioural scientist Dr Patrick Fagan indicates:

Like true leftists, behavioural scientists also salivate more than one of Pavlov’s dogs when it comes to the idea of state control, a handful of bureaucrats deciding on the “right” behaviour and then rewiring the entire public into compliance.

Not that I think the weirdos and lefties comprising your average TV production team would need any arm-twisting. You could just substitute ‘TV executives’ in the above quote and leave the rest as it stands. It’s not just behavioural scientists that are the problem here — it’s the whole of the liberal intelligentsia who just can’t help themselves when it comes to infantilising and preaching to the supposedly ‘gammon-faced’ lower echelons of society on matters as far-ranging as climate change, vaccination safety, Brexit, Islamophobia, and a new biology of the sexes.

But I do hope I haven’t put you off enjoying your favourite TV programme. I’m sure the wisdom of those clever chappies from the department of nudge, combined with the special and entertaining talents of the ‘actors, moderators, sportspeople, and other television celebrities’ from TV land are being put to good use, guiding you through the tricky minefield we used to call free will. Of course, you can switch off and try going it on your own. But, judging by the following tweet, the BIT mob are confident that you won’t:

New BIT research finds 8 in 10 support the idea of broadcasters nudging #green choices through content and 1 in 3 say TV has inspired them to make changes. #decarbonisation #netzero #cop26

New BIT research, eh? I think they forgot to add ‘#nudgingbullshit’.

Notwithstanding €billions in subsidies, Sweden’s embattled wind industry is on the brink of total financial collapse. The majority of Swedish wind power outfits are underwater, bleeding cash and have no hope of recovery.

In the piece below, Carl Deconinck reports on the work of two economists, Christian Sandström and Christian Steinbeck, who conclude that the industry’s collapse is not only inevitable, but imminent.

Icy blast of bankruptcies loom for Swedish wind-power sector, experts warn
Brussels Signal
Carl Deconinck
1 March 2024

Two Swedish economists have issued a warning that the country’s wind-power industry is on the brink of a wave of bankruptcies.

Christian Sandström and Christian Steinbeck analysed wind-power companies’ annual reports in Sweden and their work revealed “significant financial problems”, they told Swedish media outlet Kvartal on February 28.

“The total loss for the years 2017–2022 amounted to 13.5 billion Swedish krona [€1.2 billion], which meant a loss margin of 39 per cent,” they said about the sector.

Such heavy losses seem to be the rule rather than the exception for wind-power companies in Sweden, according to the annual reports.

The Swedish Government has been pushing its national energy policies in a “green” direction, promoting wind power and decommissioning nuclear power plants. But the cost appears to be much more painful than previously thought, the economists stressed.

Sandström and Steinbeck have been pointing towards profitability problems in the wind sector for some time “despite suppliers benefiting from Government support through electricity certificates and being exempt from covering the entire expenses associated with grid adaptation for wind energy or the depreciation of properties near installations”.

Since the economists’ initial findings, Markbygden Ett, Sweden’s largest wind-farm installation with 179 turbines, is already facing bankruptcy, stacking up hundreds of millions of krona in debt.

The firm is not alone – many other alternative-power companies in Sweden are in trouble.

Sandström and Steinbeck pointed out that the sector as a whole has not made a profit in any year since 2017.

Company losses have ranged from 19 per cent to 90 per cent of turnover between 2017 and 2022, they said.

“The losses are simply because the industry cannot produce electricity at a cost below the market price, despite extensive subsidies,” the economists noted.

“That would put any other industry out of business, [although] the rate of investment has been very high.”

Both newer and older plants in the heavily subsidised industry shed cash, while economies of scale are also a limitation. The biggest farms make the biggest losses and only moderate-sized wind farms, with between 20 and 30 turbines, are turning any profits and those are at best described as “modest”.

Costs have failed to come down despite growing experience among those operating in the sector and the researchers did not observe any correlation between time elapsed and increased electricity production from existing turbines.

“Just as sailors on sailing ships once had to pray to higher powers for wind to get somewhere, wind farms can only wait for the right amount of wind,” they added.

On top of that, just 20 per cent of wind turbines in Sweden are Swedish owned. The rest are operated by foreign enterprises. Some 13 per cent of the reviewed turbines are Chinese.

Sandström and Steinbeck said the Chinese investors made their calculations based on “wind mapping” carried out by the Swedish Energy Agency and they have doubts about the accuracy of the data.

Also hammering profits is the fact that large parts of the Swedish wind-power industry cannot transfer or save power over-generation, meaning electricity needs to be consumed instantly or not at all – making it effectively unsustainable.

A few wind farms in the South of the country have gained financial momentum in recent years but all the others are stacking up more losses.

The academics noted that the change in the Swedish energy mix – decommissioning nuclear plants in favour of wind power – was politically driven and that no robust, financial independent industry has subsequently emerged.

A peculiar paradox also haunts the sector, the economists stressed. Low levels of wind leads to high electricity prices yet it also hinders electricity delivery.

On the flip side, when the wind is more powerful, oversupply drives down prices when there is ample electricity for sale.

“It is difficult to see a way out of this dilemma,” Sandström and Steinbeck concluded.
Brussel Signal