By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
More lies from the UN Liar-in Chief:
https://x.com/antonioguterres/status/1826585173338767782
What he did not mention is that the increase in sea level in Samoa is the result of the 2009 volcano eruption there:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2018JB017110
Maybe the UK should introduce a tax on volcanoes!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
August 23, 2024 at 05:12AM
Ray Sanders is re-booting Tim Channon’s UK Surface Stations Project and will be updating old entries as well as adding new ones. The state of the station network will shock you. Ray has uncovered a lot of serious issues and we will be highlighting them in regular posts here at the talkshop. We’re putting the MET-Office and relevant government ministers on notice: scientific data must be properly measured, collected, as well as being collated and curated in a transparent, accessible manner. We taxpayers demand our money is spent wisely and that the resulting outputs are available to be examined and used by any and all researchers. ~tb
51.39848 -0.49514 Met Office Rating – CIMO Class 3 Installed 1/1/1914 Temperature data from 4/4/2017
So here is the Met Office’s official station in Chertsey, Surrey. Although it is claimed to have existed since 1914 there are only archived temperature records from 2017 and it does not appear on google aerial images prior to then – probably originally a rain gauge site only. It is also a regular record breaker, this year’s hottest temperature to June was recorded here.
In 2022 Affinity Water installed the Solar Panels detailed with this youtube promotional film – the weather station makes a starring appearance from 2 minutes 49 seconds in but it’s worth watching the full clip to judge the scale involved.
Does the presence of these panels affect the accuracy of temperature readings and if so in what way? I put this very question to the Met Office – their response.
OFFICIAL
Dear Mr Sanders, thank you for your email dated June 26th 2024.
The Met Office is aware of the solar panels near Chertsey Abbey Meade Pumping Station Automated Weather Station. The weather station was originally given a CIMO 2 rating for temperature, however, following the installation of the solar panels this rating was adjusted to CIMO 3 in line with World Meteorological Organisation guidelines for screen temperatures due to the artificial heat sources and reflective surfaces.
For grading and classification purposes, for heat sources and reflective surfaces we look at 3m 10m, 30m and 100m land use circular areas from the Screen.
· CIMO 4: Close artificial heat sources, reflective surfaces (buildings, cars, etc.) and expanses of water. Occupying <30% of a 3m circular area.
· CIMO 3: More than 10m from artificial heat sources, reflective surfaces (buildings, cars, etc.) and expanses of water (<5% within 10m or 30% of a 3m circular area).
· CIMO 2: More than 30m from artificial heat sources, reflective surfaces (buildings, cars, etc.) and expanses of water (<10% of area within 30m radius, <5% within 5-10m or <30% of a 3m circular area).
· CIMO 1: More than 100m from artificial heat sources, reflective surfaces (buildings, cars etc.) and expanses of water. (<10% 100m radius).
Measurements at Chertsey Abbey Meade Pumping Station Automated Weather Station show at 3m radius from the Screen = 0% solar panels, 10m radius = 0%, 30m radius = 20%, 100m radius = >20%. The temperature measurements meet standards for publication and scientific use.
My Response:
“Thank you for your interesting interpretation of the CIMO assessment ratings. This leaves me to wonder which part of “Ground covered with natural and low vegetation (< 10 cm) representative of the region;” do Solar panels come under? Is that area of Surrey completely covered in solar panels?”
What does recent research into the effects of solar panels on the local environment say? Well this research clearly indicates they elevate temperatures surprisingly significantly.
https://phys.org/news/2016-11-solar-island-effect-large-scale-power.html
My alternative research comprised walking through a local solar farm in a tee shirt and judging by what my delicate skin recorded……it was warmer inside the confines than outside!
Is this an isolated site alteration? In future posts I will highlight several other sites similarly compromised by solar panel installations with data demonstrating the effects.
Meantime, lots of questions. What are the views of our readers? Does anyone know of any other definitive research on this subject? What do you think about this site and should its readings contribute to the UK’s climate record? ……Should it stay or should it go!
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
August 23, 2024 at 04:29AM
By Paul Homewood
Matthew Lynn in the Spectator:
It had the history, the manufacturing muscle, the capital, and the brand to make it work. When Ford announced plans to create an all-electric SUV, it looked like the moment the major auto manufacturers could finally bring battery-powered cars into the mass market. Until today. The American company has abandoned its plans to build the new electric car, and announced a $1.9 billion write-off on the project citing cost pressures. The trouble is, if the company that more or less invented the mass production of cars a century ago can’t make electric vehicles (EV) work, then it is very hard to believe that any of the Western manufacturers can.
If Ford is now scaling back, it is hard to see how anyone can compete
This is the latest blow to the struggling EV industry. Despite the billions of euros, dollars and pounds thrown at it in subsidies and tax breaks by governments, and despite targets to replace all the petrol-powered cars on European and American roads over the next decade, sales have stalled, costs have risen, and the manufacturers are struggling.
The likes of Volkswagen and Renault have already scaled back their plans. And now even Ford is throwing in the towel. The company also announced today that it is postponing the launch of its next electric pickup truck. At the same time, it would cut the share of annual capital expenditures dedicated to ‘pure’ electric vehicles from 40 per cent to 30 per cent, and write off much of the money it had already spent.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are still powering into the market. This week, Xaomi, a company best known for its smartphones, said it has comfortably beaten its targets, and now expected to sell 120,000 of its electric cars by the end of 2024 – 20,000 more than initially planned. Its rivals BYD announced last month that its sales were up by 21 per cent over the latest quarter, putting it on track to overtake Tesla; the other major Chinese players are doing just as well.
There is a significance to the Ford decision. Under its founder Henry Ford, this was the company whose the legendary Model T marked the perfection of automobile mass production a century ago, turning the car into a product that everyone could afford. It built manufacturing outposts around the world, including the UK. If Ford is now scaling back, it is hard to see how anyone can compete. The subsidies and industrial strategies have not worked.
True, if we want to hit net zero we may have to switch to battery-powered cars. But we have to accept that it will come at a huge industrial cost, handing one of the largest industries in the world to China, and all the jobs and wealth it creates with it. Ford’s decision this week has confirmed that.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/if-ford-cant-crack-electric-cars-no-one-can/
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
August 23, 2024 at 04:05AM
From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Far too much like common sense!
With the Conservative leadership race now swinging, we are hearing a lot about unity and the expected tough talk on immigration, defence, benefits and the tax burden. If only many of the candidates had been around the Cabinet table recently, to advance the Conservative policies our membership wishes to hear.
But there has been less discussion of net zero. Previous prime ministers, from Blair onwards, dithered on energy policy. But all committed by varying degrees to international Climate accords, even going as far as legislation.
Tony Blair oversaw the Climate Change Act (CCA) 2008, Theresa May the 2050 target amendment. We are one of just a handful of nations to have bound ourselves legislatively. But Parliament is sovereign and can repeal and adapt any legislation it wishes. I recommend, on energy policy, that it does.
The results of this target are now becoming clear, with British consumers paying some of the highest prices for electricity in the world. We pay 2.5 times that paid by US consumers, and four times the amount paid in China. We then wonder why high energy businesses, from steel to ceramics, are preferring to invest overseas.
What all previous administrations agreed on, no matter how misguidedly, was a reduction in fossil fuel use with little to no plan on how to replace the gigawatts of power lost through detonating perfectly serviceable power stations, and all the while planning for massive increases in electricity demand — electric cars, heat pumps and the substitution of gas or coal power from high energy industrial processes.
As we destroyed our traditional fossil fuel-provisioned power stations, our international competitors, notably China and India, have turbocharged the building of new ones. The power stations we haven’t knocked down have been repurposed to burn pelletised wood, largely from virgin North American forests.
The CO2 output per KWh of energy is roughly 1.5 that of coal burning and three times that of using natural gas. This form of biomass energy accounts for 15pc of UK electricity production and yet we call this a “zero carbon” form of energy. Net zero has indeed sunk this low.
Beyond burning North American forests, substitution, where planned at all, consists of wind turbines and solar power. Far from being “cheap”, a claim dependent on ideal conditions of generation in the right place, meeting demand through existing distribution networks, the true cost is yet to be seen.
Disparate wind or solar farms need to be connected to the grid through copper, aluminium and concrete-hungry pylons and cabling, and the reserve power needed to cope with generation irregularity has yet to be considered.
The choices include storage batteries at an unimaginable scale. Californian studies suggest a cost of $15 trillion (£11.5 trillion) for that state alone, with replacement every 10-12 years.
The plundering of Africa and South America to yield up the minerals required has not been calculated.
Other energy storage methods include: water being raised uphill to reservoirs, geography-permitting, using the stored gravitational energy for release later; the electrolysis of water into hydrogen; or the production of liquid e-fuels, but using current liquid fuel infrastructure and transportation via the reliable internal combustion engine.
In order to cope with often long periods of anticyclones of low wind, freezing conditions and low light which can sit upon an entire continent for days, the cost of wind and solar with back-up is significantly amplified. That’s a lot of copper, steel and concrete, and a lot of despoiled land taken out of productive agricultural use.
The other “grand plan” is for massive interconnectors between countries to share generation and match demand. How this is supposed to equate to energy independence and security is never explained. France’s threat to the energy supply of the Channel Islands in the face of a mini “fishing war” three years ago should be instructive that reliance on others, however benign, is not a good idea.
The final piece of the current thinking involves maintaining and building new gas-powered plants to provide reserve power when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. The wasted capital in building underused gas plants (the owners of which will demand super-high prices as their fixed cost, capital intensive plants are only partially used) is obvious.
Labour’s latest plan to stop further North Sea gas exploration guarantees imported gas, with a far higher carbon footprint, will be needed to burn in these plants. There will be little of GB plc left for Qatar to buy over future decades.
Whereas the last decade has been the battle for Brexit, the next decade will be the battle for energy. Labour’s plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 is not only impossible, it will be astronomically expensive in its futility and potentially dangerous. Electricity blackouts are likely. This will be a factor that will bring this Labour Government down.
Our energy policy needs to be entirely different. I propose the following.
First, we must amend the Climate Change Act 2008 to put Britain back on track with most of the world. Not only does the CCA result in warped energy policy, it is now being used regularly to oppose most infrastructure developments by well-funded activist groups. More worryingly, some Supreme Court judgments have supported this view. If we want growth, we must regain the right to build necessary infrastructure.
Second, we must move towards a nuclear future. We are still considering Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), but the Conservatives wasted our final years in government with more indecision. The large EDF reactors in progress or on the drawing board are complex, overpriced and beset with delays.
We need scalable Model-T Fords, not Bentleys. If nuclear fusion ever becomes a reality, a whole new chapter in human energy production opens up with sufficient cheap electricity to produce hydrogen and e-fuels at scale. Traditional fission reactors can still deliver this.
Third, we need a “dash for domestic gas”. Gas is the bridging fuel as we scale up nuclear. Domestic is key and we need to open up, as Norway continues to do, all and every extractable field in the North Sea basin.
We should look favourably at fracking to ensure domestic gas consumption, diminishing as is likely over coming decades, is at least matched by domestic production. Exports would be a bonus. The benefits are obvious: investment, high paying jobs, big tax receipts and balance of payment savings.
Lastly, we need an end to taxpayer support for wasteful wind and solar projects. Energy auctions need to be a price for 24/7, 365 energy provision. If wind and solar owners can provide this, then the economics should be a commercial decision for them, not an additional burden for the taxpayer.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/22/net-zero-is-sinking-to-new-lows
via Watts Up With That?
August 23, 2024 at 04:03AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 