From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

The BBC has been criticised for the colour scale it uses to represent temperatures, with lows of 11C shown as yellow while 41C is depicted as dark red.

The broadcaster has triggered confusion among some viewers with its temperature contour map, which switches to orange when temperatures hit 13C.

The colour scheme was introduced in 2017, with the BBC at the time saying it was intended to help those with colour blindness.

Toby Young, the founder of website The Daily Sceptic, suggested that the BBC was “going a bit far”.

“How is it going to represent temperatures above 20C? Fireballs?” he said.

A weather forecast on Tuesday night showed most of the country yellow and orange for Wednesday when temperatures were predicted to hit as high as 20C.

One viewer wrote on social media that the system was “utterly farcical”.

“I’m not a massive conspiracy theorist but I have to agree with those who castigate the utterly ludicrous use of bright yellow and orange/red on the weather maps to indicate temperatures of 18/19 degrees!” the viewer wrote.

Another wrote that the BBC “need to give their heads a collective wobble”.

“Since when has 13C warranted yellow/orange on the weather map?!” the viewer wrote.

A BBC spokesman said: “The colours used now range from blue for the coldest temperatures through to red for the hottest temperatures as these colours are easier to see if you live with colour blindness.”

Last year, the broadcaster was forced to clarify its colour scheme after viewers suggested that it had increased the intensity of the map to raise alarm over increasing temperatures.

An image that went viral at the time contrasted a weather map from August 2003 showing temperatures up to 35C with an image from 2016 showing temperatures up to 33C.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/01/bbc-criticism-confusing-colours-on-weather-map

Additional information on the weather map color story here.

The wind and solar transition is just like every other grand 5-year-plan dreamt up by socialists, except the fact that crony capitalists are loving every minute of it.

Ambitious (and ludicrous) wind and solar generation targets have given way to even more ambitious (and completely ludicrous) net-zero carbon oxide gas targets. Neither have a hope of ever being met which, the central planning bureaucrats, is half the point: their ‘work’ never ends. Just kick the target a decade down the road, reload and reset with another mountain of other people’s money, and ‘business’ looks after itself.

In the piece below, John Hinderaker reports on how Britain’s net zero CO2 target has already run aground. No doubt, ideologues will soon attempt to recalibrate by adding another decade to the (critical) end date. However, with their delusional obsession with wind and solar (and rabid rejection of nuclear power), it won’t be long before net zero targets join the dodo.

Net Zero? Oops, Never Mind
Powerline
John Hinderaker
17 April 2024

Great Britain, like other countries, has pledged to stop emitting carbon dioxide (“net zero”) by transitioning to a “green” economy. That means relying on wind and solar power rather than fossil fuels and nuclear. Such promises are easy to make, but it turns out they are impossible to keep.

The Telegraph reports on a new study that was commissioned by the British government:

Britain is incapable of building the wind farms, solar farms and transmission networks essential to net zero, a government report has warned.
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The report, a “readiness study” for the UK supply chain, was commissioned by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and released without any publicity on April 17.

Here are some of the problems identified in the report that came out earlier today. The first is, sadly, that the U.K. doesn’t have enough ships:

The UK lacks the ships needed to build offshore wind turbines and even if that were solved, would be unable to connect them to the shore because it cannot produce enough high voltage cables, according to the study.

Or enough high voltage cables. More:

For solar farms, it warned that the UK was also incapable of supplying enough switchgear and transformers, as well as cables.

Until now, no one, apparently, had figured this out. Britain doesn’t have the workers it needs to go green, either:

Disastrous shortages of skilled labour are also a factor. The report warned: “All renewables sectors face skills-related constraints. Shortages are particularly acute for design and commissioning engineers, project managers, and installation technicians.”

One thing about wind and solar installations is that, unlike reliable power plants, they can’t be sited near the urban areas that will consume their electricity (on those occasions when it is produced). Thus, long transmission lines are needed:

One of its most damaging findings is that the UK lacks the skills and engineering facilities to expand the transmission network, which is the network of high voltage cables essential for all electricity generators.

As I have said before, it is extraordinary that Western governments have promised to transition their economies from fossil fuels to intermittent and inefficient “green” energy without ever figuring out what it would take to do that. You might assume that someone, somewhere, has put pencil to paper and calculated the raw materials that would be needed; where those materials would come from; how they would be shipped to manufacturing sites; how and where the necessary equipment would be manufactured, and how it would be transported; what transmission wires would be needed, and where they would come from; and many other obvious elements.

But the fact is that no one has done this. There is no plan, just a fantasy. And it bears repeating that there is not a single demonstration project anywhere in the world–no state or province, no city, no town, no village–that has shown how wind or solar energy, alone, can power modern life.

The report discussed in the linked Telegraph article criticizes the British government for poor planning and coordination, but that strikes me as foolish. The idea that any government could plan and execute something as complicated as switching from fossil fuels–the greatest benefactors in all of human history–to regressive technologies like wind and solar, is absurd. No government planned the Industrial Revolution, and that was good.
Powerline