Energy Minister, Michael Shanks’, claims last week that scrapping Net Zero, as Nigel Farage proposed, would cost a million jobs, were soon shown to be a fantasy when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its own analysis of green jobs the day after.
As usual they padded out the numbers to make it sound impressive, ending up with a total of 690,000. However the vast majority were jobs which have been around for decades and have nothing to do with Net Zero – waste, forestry, water, energy efficiency and so on:
Amazingly there are more jobs in environmental bureaucracy than there are in the whole of the renewable sector, which employs 77800.
Two thirds of the total have been around for years, as mentioned above. Another 48000 are simply rebadged – for instance, where carmakers switch from making petrol cars to electric ones.
But it is those 88100 jobs in the green bureaucracy that really stand out – environmental charities, consultants, education, civil servants and in house pen pushers. All the hangers on that you and me have to pay for one way or another.
If Reform get rid of them, we should all raise a toast!
50.78509 -0.9861 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1954
“A climate emergency has been declared by Havant Borough Council during a meeting held of the Full Council on Wednesday 20 November.
Councillors agreed to a motion that commits the council to do everything within its power to take the steps to become a greener borough.
The need for urgent and transformative action has been identified as a priority following a shift in the political balance of the council following the election earlier this year when members of the Labour Party, Liberal Democrat Party and Green Party formed an alliance to take on a new political leadership.“
This is an examination of the type of data from within the Havant Borough Council area on which that declaration was made.
Hayling island weather station was installed in its current location in Havant Borough Council area in 1954 and though the digital archives only show data from 1959, the manuscript copies can be viewed online for the additional first 4 years. The site has never moved and the record is continuous ever since. The Met Office Long Term Location Specific Climate averages runs from 1961 to 2020 which makes Hayling Island a perfect candidate to supply data but the Met office prefers to manipulate data otherwise. Rather than opt for Hayling Island’s complete period data they refer, in lieu, to the likes of the frankly ridiculous parody of a weather station at Solent pictured below. Tim Channon did a “must read” lengthy review detailing how appallingly bad Solent was showing unmodified data transfer from one site to another, dataset bonding, covert relocations over totally different climatologies and dubious record keeping.
Solent Weather station only existed (at various different locations) with archived records from 1986 and was closed down in 2015. Quite why the Met Office chose to use a site requiring mathematical conjuring tricks to supply data for the 25 years before its existence and a further 5 years after its demise in preference to the continuously running Hayling Island site is a question I doubt anyone at Havant Borough Council ever considered. Presumably they just “trusted” the Met Office, a dangerous practise.
What of the site quality at Hayling Island itself – at Class 4 it is only marginally better than the atrocious Class 5 that Solent would have been and the nearby, equally absurd taxpayer money pit precipitating “Climate Emergency” Bognor Regis. The headline image indicates a large circle within the Hayling enclosure and though I cannot identify what that actually is, I can guarantee it is not an improvement for meteorological reading quality. This is the Google Streetview look.
Clearly this is not the type of site likely to represent the natural environment of anywhere other than near an English Channel beach but that really has become an irrelevance since actually bothering to take meaningful observations here appears to have become typically a 21st century optional exercise. When originally installed in the 1950’s it had the sort of impeccable readings record typical of the age.
I started examining the recent observation record solely with regard to temperatures. As detailed in the Reification post, both daily maximum and minimum readings are required to formulate the meteorological daily mean. Hayling Island is a manual reporting station (fitted with a PRT for maximum readings in 2017) requiring reading at 09:00 GMT on a daily basis. Here are details of the last 8 full years on which a daily mean could be calculated.
2017 – just 234 days, 2018 – 54 days, 2019 – 120 days, 2020 – 347 days, 2021 362 days, 2022 – 327 days, 2023 – 294 days and 2024 at just 122 days. Ironically the best recording days were through the Covid lockdown era.
Out of the 2,922 total days only 1,865 (64%) were successful enough to derive a daily mean. 1,057 days (36%) were abject failures at the sole function of temperature observations. Compare that to the effort required for a long term perfect record at the likes of rural sites such as at Ipstones Edge and Lake Vyrnwy .
Are those councillors declaring a “Climate Emergency” emergency even aware that the responsible body for the required temperature data recording is so incredibly bad at their primary function that they cannot even get reliable and regular readings from a very large proportion of their sites including Hayling Island.
Well they will be soon as I will forward this report to their – “Proposer of the motion, Councillor Grainne Rason, who is Cabinet Lead for Climate Emergency, Environment and Water Quality, said “The risk from extreme weather events, that may have an impact on our residents, businesses, and the environment, is escalating.”
And I will point out to him that perhaps sticking to the functions of a local authority is far more important than his council tax payer funded virtue signalling from a position of ignorance of the facts. Should I get a response I will make it known – but don’t hold your breath!
During the first half of 2025, a new record was set for the number of deaths caused by climate and weather disasters. Can you guess what that record was?
If you read left-wing media sources, and believe anything they say, you might think that the recent record has something to do with a large and growing number of deaths. Recent articles in sources like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and CBS News all explicitly claim that climate change is making weather events “deadlier,” or leading to increasing numbers of deaths, or some variation of that same message. I’m sure if you checked thirty such “mainstream” news sources over the past year, all thirty of them would have pieces parroting that same narrative.
Therefore you might be surprised by the actual record that has been set: The first half of 2025 (January to June) has seen the fewest number of deaths from climate and weather disasters of any first half year this century.
But before getting to the details, let’s consider what you might believe if all you read or see is the usual “mainstream” sources:
From MSNBC, July 9, “How climate change is making natural disasters deadlier”: “At least 119 are dead and over 170 people are still missing after the catastrophic flooding in Texas. NBC News’ Jay Gray and The Kerry County Lead Editor and Publisher Louis Amestoy share the latest updates from Kerrville, Texas, and University of Pennsylvania Presidential Distinguished Professor Michael Mann joins Chris Jansing to discuss the impact of climate change on natural disasters.”
From CBS News, March 18, “World climate report warns of growing risks to lives, economy and planet”: “A new report from the World Meteorological Organization delivers a stark warning: climate change is accelerating, with some impacts now irreversible for centuries. The State of the Global Climate reportconfirms global temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions and sea levels all reached record highs in 2024.”
From the New York Times, October 31, 2024, “Climate Change Is Making Disasters Deadlier. Here’s How Much.” “Two weeks before world leaders meet to debate the climate crisis, a report released on Thursday shows the 10 deadliest extreme weather events in the past two decades were made worse by burning fossil fuels.”
So let’s now look at the actual data on deaths from climate and weather disasters during the 25 years since 2000, and specifically focusing on the first half of each year. The following statement (quoted by Pielke) appears in the Executive Summary of the Aon report:
At least 7,700 people were killed due to natural disasters during the first half of 2025, which is well below the 21st-century average of 37,250. Majority of the deaths (5,456) occurred as a result of the earthquake in Myanmar.
An earthquake is not a climate or weather disaster. Take out those 5,456 deaths from the Myanmar earthquake, and you have only 2,244 deaths left that could possibly fall in the climate or weather category.
How does that compare to other recent years? Pielke goes over to the EM-DAT data base, where he finds data for deaths from weather and climate-related disasters for each of the years from 2000 to 2024. Here is the chart he compiles for January to June of each year:
The tiny red bar at the right represents the ~2,200 climate/weather related deaths through June 30, 2025. Those ~2,200 deaths from climate and weather-related disasters this year is clearly the lowest in the comparable period of the 26 years in question. The second-lowest is 2009 at about 2,600. Also obvious is that the numbers of deaths are hugely dominated by major disasters that have occurred in a few years, particularly 2008, 2010 and 2022. But with or without those outlying years, there is no obvious trend up or down in the annual number of deaths from these causes.
So 2025 is clearly the record holder for fewest first-half-of-year climate/weather disaster deaths in the 21st century. But how about before that? Pielke does not have comparable data for the comparison. However, before modern weather reporting and disaster warnings, deaths from climate and weather disasters were generally hugely greater than they are today. Drawing on other sources, he finds fairly rough estimates of around 50,000,000 deaths from climate and weather disasters in the decade of the 1870s (that would be 5,000,000 per year), 5,000,000 in the 1920s (500,000 per year) and 500,000 as recently as the 1970s (50,000 per year). The generally much greater levels of deaths in prior decades leads Pielke to the following assertion:
I’d go so far as to suggest that it is likely that the first half of 2025 has seen the fewest deaths related to extreme weather of any half year in recorded human history.
It’s not possible to prove that assertion definitively, but it is very likely correct.
The constant efforts of the media to scare people out of their wits on this subject are, frankly, despicable.
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